Thanks :). I try to make it as simple as possible as this my hope is to help the weakest players and if moderate / strong players pick something up, that's a bonus :).
Playing the version without cyclops. Ace pilot is nice early to mid game, when you're using light to medium mechs. It allows aggressive hit and run/jump tactics but I prefer the master tactician towards end game. You'll be using and fighting assault and heavy mechs which are not agile enough for aggressive hit and run. I'd prefer high initiative + call shot to quickly eliminate mechs. With master tactician + reserve + call shot + high level pilot you can quickly destroy center torso or even do head shots without getting scratched. High initiative also gives you a chance to get out of sticky situations. I agree with your breaching shot assessment. It's a bit lacking since you can only use 1 weapon however this is good with pure LRM boats. Personally I like bulwark + master tactician. Can easily reach 60% damage reduction with vigilance + bulwark.
I think ace pilot is better for double turns than master tactician by default. You can go down a weight class without losing half your firepower, so the ability to double shoot and move means you're still putting more firepower on them while dancing away, even though you're in a lighter mech for the initiative advantage. Complicated by the fact that maybe they just don't have enough material left for you to be worried about return fire after one double turn if you're in heavier mechs I guess. On the other hand even if you're tied on initiative, ace pilot lets you spread out their return fire across your entire lance: reserve down, move in and shoot, initiative rolls over, they shoot one of your mechs, you activate that mech next, shoot and move back, repeat. If your mechs are the same weight class and they each get shot once while you're putting 2 turns worth of firepower into focus targets and ending the turn safe you're miles ahead. Tacticians have to make a choice whether to move in and double shoot then take return fire from everything that's still standing, or move shoot move to stay safe. Ace pilots get to double shoot and still stay safe, in exchange for sometimes taking fire from one enemy IF you want to run equal tonnage with no cyclops.
If you were to use a full LRM squad focusing on double turns, what would your ideal setup be? I assume multi-shot would be useless as aim to have only 1 visible enemy each turn(from sensor lock). Bulwark and Evasive Movement don't seem particularly appealing either considering you generally aim at not getting hit, but out of those I think Bulwark is slightly better since you can always use Vigilance on the mech you think will get hit to get 40% mitigation rather than relying on evasion which you won't always get depending on the setup at hand. Which leaves us with just Sensor Lock as a guaranteed useful tier 1 ability, however having it on all 4 mechs isn't a necessity. 1 designated Sensor Locker can be good enough most of the time. Which leaves the 2 options for tier 2 abilities: Ace Pilot vs Master Tactician. If you run the Cyclops the Master Tactician is sort of moot unless you're not facing 100% assault mechs, at which case having +2 initiative(assuming it stacks) can still be nice. So with the Cyclops setup Ace Pilot seems like the clear winner, however for non Cyclops setups which one do you prefer? Also which accompanying skill do you prefer considering the above analysis? Lastly would the answers here change if we were talking about a high alpha hit squad rather than LRM, still trying to abuse double turns?
breaching shot is still great as many enemies do have bulwark, especially later in the game. its also pretty easy to get guarded whenever they are in the trees to decide to brace. 40% damage reduction is still significant and u dont want to waste firepower on those, without breaching shot. i like it on most of my heavy weapon mechs. yes, especially for missiles where the damage reduction is even higher. u can shoot all your remaining weapons on undefended targets, while using the breaching shot on the defended ones, which there are often more than 1. still, with the new skills, coolant vent is now very useful for many mechs, especially hot mechs in hot biomes. i often use it for mechs with lots of mlasers and SRMs, which dont benefit much from breaching shot anyway.
It does get strange doesn't it? In terms of pure DPT there is almost a bias towards multishot and breaching and bulwark. But as described... that would be very facile.
The "brace" nerf is what makes breeching shot a bad pick. You could gaurentee that incoming enemies would be braced for 50% reduction in previous versions. Now it's almost certainly just 20%. Hardly worth an ability pick, especially when you can fire "all" weapons for 80% or just one for "100%"
I get 40-60% out of it a lot by jumping or walking into woods. It even soaks up a fair amount of medium laser damage for me, or 60% with vigilance if I need to soak up the damage for a couple of turns. I personally prefer it because you get both evasion and the damage reduction instead of having to stand still. I also find use for a single person with breaching shot in my lance for that too.
From a lot of your videos I'm thinking of starting a new game and using a team of all light mechs for double-turning. It seems like a very fun way to play. I wouldn't need master tactician so much in this case, right? I was thinking Ace Pilot as my main ability, but considering using Bulwark as my second ability, not so much for bracing, but for even more survivability when cover matters? Also considering using a team of 3 lights and an LRM boat for knockdowns and softening.
I really enjoy my Marauder with 4 LLs piloted with MultiShot and BreachingShot. Precision strikes on head will one shot anything about 2 out of 3 tries. Quite the pile of parts to pick from when that happens
I have tried the double jump build mentioned herein and have found it to be hard countered by assault mechs which natively get their turn in round 5. Due to this you cannot reserve 'past' their turn and thus they get to shoot at you when you pop out of cover. As a result, since the majority of mechs you end up facing in the campaign are assaults, I don't think the double turn method is as good as mentioned here. Thanks for the theory-crafting though.
Exact method used *though not with jumping* in the "There are four lights" campaign, in missions with a lot of assaults. It still works, but you do need to use one or two mechs as bait, while you circle others around back for takedowns. It is very difficult against 8+ assaults, but 5 or less can be managed relatively easily. There is a lot of complexity to the methods used though, much more than is briefly covered here. Thanks for the coment though, just wanted to say that it is a very powerful strategy that is not in any way theory, but it does require some turn wasting and baiting to work in the very late game.
Thanks a ton for making this, its a huge help. I never got a chance to finish the campaign when it initially came out(got halfway thru before having to stop for reasons), but I tried booting it up a week ago and had no idea where to start anymore, lol. Is boating lasers more meta now than they used then?
PPC hit +1 to unit hit. Sensor lock +2 to unit hit. Never really tested if they combine but needed to point out the difference in the quoted value of 1 and the game value of 2 for sensor lock. For myself personally my melee/point blank units and early game many of my pilots take Sure Footing. This is nerfed later once the AI starts getting units with Sensor Lock but when combo'd with Bulwark the pilot is very stable. Bulwark strikes me as a sometimes skill. If I repeat similar actions it will sometimes come on and sometimes not come on, is there a distinct reason for this?
Not quite sure what your saying here, but the PPC debuff and the sensorlock debuff do stack both with themselves and with each other. Not sure what's going on with your bulwark, it's consistant for me.
Bulwark works with another terrain modifier from experience. I just watched episode 29 to see exactly if it works as I suspected. Jumped in clear.... does not work, jump into woods.... works, jumped into spores.... works, jumped into clear ... does not work. Walk into woods.... works. It also activates in clear if you brace I believe. I haven't played all that much recently but I did see that but wanted to be sure by watching some of your vids for consistency.
Remember that Atlas with the Defender-Pilot? Yes. That guy hiding in the woods. Man. He really gave us a hard time, scrubbing away anything we sent at him. Until that little girl in her Cicada popped up and put a bunch of PPC-Salvos on him. After one last precision shot to the head the Atlas was history. Good she was skilled in breaching shot. Otherwise that could have lasted for a couple of hours and a few dead pilots longer.
(It's a situative skill. It is good to have a pilot with that skill on terrains where a lot of cover is to expect. If you go lunar or martian let the pilot having a good time at home with drinks and a few hours of Solaris on the lounge screen. Just like the coolant flush people who have a lazy time when the mission says tundra or polar)
Verty good tutorial, i hope see same by roguetech mod once. But i find late game assaults slash M-shot not so usefull, u need entere alpha strike in one target, that dont have large eva pips. Only lrm boats stiill can use it well with B-shot.
Breaching shot is shit tier now, since bulwark got nerfed. Before nerf AI could get easy +50% by simply standing, and you had to get breaching shot to counter it. But now AI rarely get more than 20% def, it's easier to find softer target than try to go around minor fortification. I have 4 main pilots with breaching shot, and i never use it.
It's often difficult for those who have been playing the game since the beginning to judge the value of the skills and abilities, without comparisons to how things used to be before the update. I am sorry that, much, much later on from that time, you don't find that information to be that useful anymore.
On the contrary I find the "old vs new" insight to be helpful. Reading the guides in steam gave me the impression that the "lancer" build (8 gunnery 5 guts) is the way to go. I'm still in early game (pre-pirate queen) and already made 2 of my mechwarrior took multishot and bulwark before I watch this video. However, up until now, if one say bulwark is situational (due to reliance on cover), I found multishot to be even more so. Most of the time it's either a lack of target, my mech's gear not exactly supporting that, or maybe focus fire is still more advantageous despite presence of multiple targets. I'm glad this kind of video exist. It stimulated me to consider my own Lance building strategy, to take my preferred tactics and the mech/equipment available into account.
Multi-shot is also highly useful during defend base missions in drawing aggro to you instead of the buildings.
PERFECT GUIDE for me who recently started playing
Glad it helped :)
Same here. Thanks!
@@Sidicus Glad to have helped you.
Good stuff! Thanks for breaking it down ELI5 style.
Thanks :). I try to make it as simple as possible as this my hope is to help the weakest players and if moderate / strong players pick something up, that's a bonus :).
Playing the version without cyclops. Ace pilot is nice early to mid game, when you're using light to medium mechs. It allows aggressive hit and run/jump tactics but I prefer the master tactician towards end game. You'll be using and fighting assault and heavy mechs which are not agile enough for aggressive hit and run. I'd prefer high initiative + call shot to quickly eliminate mechs. With master tactician + reserve + call shot + high level pilot you can quickly destroy center torso or even do head shots without getting scratched. High initiative also gives you a chance to get out of sticky situations. I agree with your breaching shot assessment. It's a bit lacking since you can only use 1 weapon however this is good with pure LRM boats. Personally I like bulwark + master tactician. Can easily reach 60% damage reduction with vigilance + bulwark.
Always enjoy your BT vids.
Thanks for this!
Thanks mate :)
I think ace pilot is better for double turns than master tactician by default. You can go down a weight class without losing half your firepower, so the ability to double shoot and move means you're still putting more firepower on them while dancing away, even though you're in a lighter mech for the initiative advantage. Complicated by the fact that maybe they just don't have enough material left for you to be worried about return fire after one double turn if you're in heavier mechs I guess.
On the other hand even if you're tied on initiative, ace pilot lets you spread out their return fire across your entire lance: reserve down, move in and shoot, initiative rolls over, they shoot one of your mechs, you activate that mech next, shoot and move back, repeat. If your mechs are the same weight class and they each get shot once while you're putting 2 turns worth of firepower into focus targets and ending the turn safe you're miles ahead. Tacticians have to make a choice whether to move in and double shoot then take return fire from everything that's still standing, or move shoot move to stay safe. Ace pilots get to double shoot and still stay safe, in exchange for sometimes taking fire from one enemy IF you want to run equal tonnage with no cyclops.
If you were to use a full LRM squad focusing on double turns, what would your ideal setup be? I assume multi-shot would be useless as aim to have only 1 visible enemy each turn(from sensor lock). Bulwark and Evasive Movement don't seem particularly appealing either considering you generally aim at not getting hit, but out of those I think Bulwark is slightly better since you can always use Vigilance on the mech you think will get hit to get 40% mitigation rather than relying on evasion which you won't always get depending on the setup at hand. Which leaves us with just Sensor Lock as a guaranteed useful tier 1 ability, however having it on all 4 mechs isn't a necessity. 1 designated Sensor Locker can be good enough most of the time. Which leaves the 2 options for tier 2 abilities: Ace Pilot vs Master Tactician. If you run the Cyclops the Master Tactician is sort of moot unless you're not facing 100% assault mechs, at which case having +2 initiative(assuming it stacks) can still be nice. So with the Cyclops setup Ace Pilot seems like the clear winner, however for non Cyclops setups which one do you prefer? Also which accompanying skill do you prefer considering the above analysis? Lastly would the answers here change if we were talking about a high alpha hit squad rather than LRM, still trying to abuse double turns?
breaching shot is still great as many enemies do have bulwark, especially later in the game. its also pretty easy to get guarded whenever they are in the trees to decide to brace. 40% damage reduction is still significant and u dont want to waste firepower on those, without breaching shot. i like it on most of my heavy weapon mechs. yes, especially for missiles where the damage reduction is even higher. u can shoot all your remaining weapons on undefended targets, while using the breaching shot on the defended ones, which there are often more than 1.
still, with the new skills, coolant vent is now very useful for many mechs, especially hot mechs in hot biomes. i often use it for mechs with lots of mlasers and SRMs, which dont benefit much from breaching shot anyway.
Great explanation. Makes me rethink my builds and pilots a bit. I think breaching shot is only useful if you have an AC/20.
It does get strange doesn't it? In terms of pure DPT there is almost a bias towards multishot and breaching and bulwark. But as described... that would be very facile.
The "brace" nerf is what makes breeching shot a bad pick. You could gaurentee that incoming enemies would be braced for 50% reduction in previous versions. Now it's almost certainly just 20%. Hardly worth an ability pick, especially when you can fire "all" weapons for 80% or just one for "100%"
I get 40-60% out of it a lot by jumping or walking into woods. It even soaks up a fair amount of medium laser damage for me, or 60% with vigilance if I need to soak up the damage for a couple of turns. I personally prefer it because you get both evasion and the damage reduction instead of having to stand still. I also find use for a single person with breaching shot in my lance for that too.
@@TheEdmon Breaching shot is still useful in jungle map since it also ignore cover.
I always thought the multi/breaching shot combo for my lrm boats was good. Especially in the jungle forest maps with multiple targets.
From a lot of your videos I'm thinking of starting a new game and using a team of all light mechs for double-turning. It seems like a very fun way to play. I wouldn't need master tactician so much in this case, right? I was thinking Ace Pilot as my main ability, but considering using Bulwark as my second ability, not so much for bracing, but for even more survivability when cover matters? Also considering using a team of 3 lights and an LRM boat for knockdowns and softening.
Ace pilot and bulwark is all you need. Check out the "Four Lights" campaign if you want to see the style of play.
This is very informative, I'm going to see if you have the same thing but about current skills as of build 1.9.3
Sadly not, but it's hardly changed at all...
I really enjoy my Marauder with 4 LLs piloted with MultiShot and BreachingShot. Precision strikes on head will one shot anything about 2 out of 3 tries. Quite the pile of parts to pick from when that happens
The base game really has some balance issues these days. But I am working on a new mod to address some of these issues...
Also a Marauder with 2 UAC5++s for same.
I have tried the double jump build mentioned herein and have found it to be hard countered by assault mechs which natively get their turn in round 5. Due to this you cannot reserve 'past' their turn and thus they get to shoot at you when you pop out of cover. As a result, since the majority of mechs you end up facing in the campaign are assaults, I don't think the double turn method is as good as mentioned here. Thanks for the theory-crafting though.
Exact method used *though not with jumping* in the "There are four lights" campaign, in missions with a lot of assaults. It still works, but you do need to use one or two mechs as bait, while you circle others around back for takedowns.
It is very difficult against 8+ assaults, but 5 or less can be managed relatively easily. There is a lot of complexity to the methods used though, much more than is briefly covered here.
Thanks for the coment though, just wanted to say that it is a very powerful strategy that is not in any way theory, but it does require some turn wasting and baiting to work in the very late game.
Thanx for this Edmon. Is this still valid info for BEX:CE ? Has the AI changed much since this guide?
(did my comment survive UA-cam)
Mostly yes, mostly no, yes.
Have you done one of these for the currecnt BTR build? I think BTR has the same abilities but I don't remember if BTR changed what they do.
Nah. Abilities have not changed much for BTR. Just some minor balance stuff.
Thanks a ton for making this, its a huge help. I never got a chance to finish the campaign when it initially came out(got halfway thru before having to stop for reasons), but I tried booting it up a week ago and had no idea where to start anymore, lol. Is boating lasers more meta now than they used then?
The "Unholy Grail" is largely considered to be Small lasers, Medium lasers and SRM's. Unless you are boating LRM's
PPC hit +1 to unit hit. Sensor lock +2 to unit hit. Never really tested if they combine but needed to point out the difference in the quoted value of 1 and the game value of 2 for sensor lock. For myself personally my melee/point blank units and early game many of my pilots take Sure Footing. This is nerfed later once the AI starts getting units with Sensor Lock but when combo'd with Bulwark the pilot is very stable. Bulwark strikes me as a sometimes skill. If I repeat similar actions it will sometimes come on and sometimes not come on, is there a distinct reason for this?
Not quite sure what your saying here, but the PPC debuff and the sensorlock debuff do stack both with themselves and with each other. Not sure what's going on with your bulwark, it's consistant for me.
Bulwark works with another terrain modifier from experience. I just watched episode 29 to see exactly if it works as I suspected. Jumped in clear.... does not work, jump into woods.... works, jumped into spores.... works, jumped into clear ... does not work. Walk into woods.... works. It also activates in clear if you brace I believe. I haven't played all that much recently but I did see that but wanted to be sure by watching some of your vids for consistency.
If you have defense for some reason, bulwark increases it by 20%.
Remember that Atlas with the Defender-Pilot?
Yes. That guy hiding in the woods. Man.
He really gave us a hard time, scrubbing away anything we sent at him.
Until that little girl in her Cicada popped up and put a bunch of PPC-Salvos on him. After one last precision shot to the head the Atlas was history.
Good she was skilled in breaching shot. Otherwise that could have lasted for a couple of hours and a few dead pilots longer.
(It's a situative skill. It is good to have a pilot with that skill on terrains where a lot of cover is to expect. If you go lunar or martian let the pilot having a good time at home with drinks and a few hours of Solaris on the lounge screen. Just like the coolant flush people who have a lazy time when the mission says tundra or polar)
Verty good tutorial, i hope see same by roguetech mod once.
But i find late game assaults slash M-shot not so usefull, u need entere alpha strike in one target, that dont have large eva pips. Only lrm boats stiill can use it well with B-shot.
Roguetech changes a lot, any guide I make would be quickly out of date. That said, I may look into some extra Roguetech guides.
Breaching shot is shit tier now, since bulwark got nerfed. Before nerf AI could get easy +50% by simply standing, and you had to get breaching shot to counter it. But now AI rarely get more than 20% def, it's easier to find softer target than try to go around minor fortification. I have 4 main pilots with breaching shot, and i never use it.
Yep, I talk about this in the video. Breaching shot has been weakened by the bulwark nerf.
What is the cyclops?
A flashpoint mech that has a Battlecomputer, that allows for +1 initive for the lance.
Спасибо за информацию! Вы мне очень помогли)
всегда пожалуйста
has this changed again? I'm new to the game
Nah, the game is basically unchanged since v1.3 abilities wise.
Ace Piloting is trash because unlike bulwark, you can't rotate with AP...It counts as movement.
Sorry, but I clicked on this expecting a guide explaining the abilities/skills, not you whining about how good everything used to be before an update.
It's often difficult for those who have been playing the game since the beginning to judge the value of the skills and abilities, without comparisons to how things used to be before the update. I am sorry that, much, much later on from that time, you don't find that information to be that useful anymore.
On the contrary I find the "old vs new" insight to be helpful.
Reading the guides in steam gave me the impression that the "lancer" build (8 gunnery 5 guts) is the way to go. I'm still in early game (pre-pirate queen) and already made 2 of my mechwarrior took multishot and bulwark before I watch this video. However, up until now, if one say bulwark is situational (due to reliance on cover), I found multishot to be even more so. Most of the time it's either a lack of target, my mech's gear not exactly supporting that, or maybe focus fire is still more advantageous despite presence of multiple targets.
I'm glad this kind of video exist. It stimulated me to consider my own Lance building strategy, to take my preferred tactics and the mech/equipment available into account.
@@andy_hk
i still love lancers and now also gladiators for the coolant vent. many have bulwark and u need a way to deal with those efficiently too.