Bossing Around Mad Cats for Fun and Profit: Let's Play MechCommander 2!

[Timberwolf]

One Summoner, one Ryoken / Stormcrow

The chance is...

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At the end of the attack on the Mandrissa's Palace where you fight the Liao elite guard who have those wretched Swarm LRM Catapults

[SparkMandriller]

And you can't even buy Summoners for some reason. At least, I think. Not that it really matters when you have pretty much infinite amounts of Timber Wolves, I guess.

[Artanis]

Go Night Ops. Your stealth is already legendary. Needs moar of it. I hope there are lots of fuel cells around?

Two of the objectives are to blow up large amounts of explosives

Really? Huh. Coulda sworn there was only one.

There's only one Summoner, though, right?

I have Cho's Cyclops, and you can buy them towards the end of the Liao campaign.

I don't really use them mostly because using a little mech like an Uller is what I've gotten used to, so I find it easier to manage the weight restrictions with the Uller than with the Cyclops.

I will be using the Cyclops in the last couple missions though.

And yes, there is only one Thor (and one Ryoken, for that matter). I actually find the Thor to be one of my most useful mechs because it's a jumper, and as such it gets a high priority.

I vote for a good ration of Rooster, and keeping him in the main lance

And what's your Mad Cat loadout, Artanis? I admit I'm curious about a laser-based MCat

Lots of Clan ER Large Lasers and Clan Large Pulse Lasers. I believe a couple of Clan ER Lasers as well - two of them are the same size and heat as one Large Pulse, so I often swap out one for the other.

Plenty of armor as well.

[SparkMandriller]

I have Cho's Cyclops, and you can buy them towards the end of the Liao campaign.

Well, you can't buy them now. But there's that one I forgot about, so I guess it wouldn't be a problem even if you hadn't grabbed one.

I don't really use them mostly because using a little mech like an Uller is what I've gotten used to, so I find it easier to manage the weight restrictions with the Uller than with the Cyclops.

Guess there's less waiting for slooooow mechs to get to places this way too.

[Timberwolf]

This is just my personal view on the 'clops question.

If I'm only taking one sensor mech (which is sensible as they're the ones with less guns) then I like it to be able to survive and contribute lots, which is where the 'clops comes in. Palerider thought he'd died and gone to heaven when I got my hands on it. Generally speaking, for the Davion missions, there's usually no need to be obsessive about weight (due to the presence of the Great Advantage, namely being the only side that can field Clan tech and mechs) and I find that the ridiculous sensor range of the Cyclops makes it essential even when you have been hit with the <200 ton stick. If you do run into a powered down mech that escaped your quarter of the map sensor suite then who cares ? You have an assault mech You can happily stick a Gauss and PPC or a bunch of PPCs on without worry and if you do get caught out and expose your sensor mech to the world then it can take hits that the Uller / Raven / Razorback would fall over for. The Men Shen is what I use when weight really, really is an issue as it's tougher, has a decent sensor suite and you can stick a load of large lasers of whatever flavour on.

[Rustic Dude]

Thanks for the answer Artanis, I'll have to try it to see if I like it more than my usual CPP-Heavy Laser MCat.

This is just my personal view on the 'clops question.

If I'm only taking one sensor mech (which is sensible as they're the ones with less guns) then I like it to be able to survive and contribute lots, which is where the 'clops comes in. Palerider thought he'd died and gone to heaven when I got my hands on it. Generally speaking, for the Davion missions, there's usually no need to be obsessive about weight (due to the presence of the Great Advantage, namely being the only side that can field Clan tech and mechs) and I find that the ridiculous sensor range of the Cyclops makes it essential even when you have been hit with the <200 ton stick. If you do run into a powered down mech that escaped your quarter of the map sensor suite then who cares ? You have an assault mech You can happily stick a Gauss and PPC or a bunch of PPCs on without worry and if you do get caught out and expose your sensor mech to the world then it can take hits that the Uller / Raven / Razorback would fall over for. The Men Shen is what I use when weight really, really is an issue as it's tougher, has a decent sensor suite and you can stick a load of large lasers of whatever flavour on.

Remember that the Uller is much more nimble and because of that it's capable of doing two functions: harassing/baiting and sensors, using only 30 tons.

It's great with LRM and a Clan Light UltraAC when you have to pick greater, and short-ranged, targets. (Atlases, Zeuses, Hunchies...almost all Steiner Mechs. Highlander is trickier with that Gauss)

I liked the Men Shen too, though. Better when faced with LRM intensive enemies like Liao.

[Timberwolf]

Remember that the Uller is much more nimble and because of that it's capable of doing two functions: harassing/baiting and sensors, using only 30 tons.

It's great with LRM and a Clan Light UltraAC when you have to pick greater, and short-ranged, targets. (Atlases, Zeuses, Hunchies...almost all Steiner Mechs. Highlander is trickier with that Gauss)

Oh true, it's very nimble and one on one with almost any other light mech then I would favour it. Anubis... too thinly armoured to last long, Raven too lightly gunned. The Razorback, if set up right could be a handful though.

My worry about using the Uller as your only sensor mech is that it is built like it was made of soggy paper. It just eats a couple of PPC's / a decent sized LRM salvo and then falls over, leaving you with no sensors and a potentially dead sensor specialist. The armours' far too thin even after reconfigging it and the sensor suite is too basic for me to be comfortable even thinking about it as my primary sensor mech.

As what I see as my joint most important asset (with Longshot) Palerider is coddled and protected behind the biggest, baddest armour I can give him. If I really, really want to harass then I'll use the Uller sure, it's the best mech there for it, but not when it's my only sensor platform. If I was making a team for harassing with, say, a 200 ton drop weight then it would be a Cyclops (information is power and the scan radius being 3 times better than the Ullers is, this means that I can set things up to better suit me, attack from where I know the enemy is nowhere near etc etc) to pack some decent sized guns, an Enfield / Starslayer and 2 Ullers. However, since I'd want to blow things up ASAP, I tend to load up differently and the Uller only comes out when I have a 30 ton hole to fill / I don't have much weight to play with.

Highlanders are no bother at all when, in that same 200 tons, you have the Cyclops, a 5 PPC Zeus and your Uller (skulking at the back and letting the Zeus take the hits). I would be confident of killing said Highlander in maybe 2 shots from the Zeus and 1 shot from everyone else (assuming everything goes right).

[[QBS]TheMonkey]

Bump! Was greatly enjoying reliving MC2, have lost my disk!! :(

[Arwan]

what happened. i was enjoying ninja stealth and mechwarrior rights to live violations. via trials of fire.

[The Glyphstone]

Great Modthulhu: Thread necromancy.