Bickering thread
- Thread starter CmdrDunsail
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A gimmick build? Really?
Look, if you're one of those [Mod edit: Please be respectful, even in the Bickering thread] who's horrified by the nonsensical nature of the COIL weapons then I get it and I sympathize. Their presence is jarring, and the proper way to make light and over engined mechs viable is by expanding the strategic level of the game, not by adding weird new weapons. Death Star lasers are a bandaid at best and they don't follow the lore well at all.
But they're still pretty fun.
You apparently don't like COILs. That's fine. I'm not trying to convince you otherwise. You do you. But you're also arguing that COILs aren't good weapons. That's objectively false, at least in the case of the COIL-M. An easily attainable 5 pip COIL-M shot does 125 points to a single location. That's about what you can expect to get with a Precision Strike from a Discoback. It's more damage than an AC/20+++. And if you put it on an Assassin you've got the mobility to get a side or rear shot plus a significant to hit bonus and decent evasion, and it's available early in a career.
In my humble opinion a +6 recoil penalty - the second highest in the entire game - is "massive." We can agree to disagree.
And that's fine. Good for you.
You said that a newbie pilot with a UAC/10 needs to fire every other turn in order to hit anything. I've never actually found one, so I really wouldn't know.
No it doesn't.
The COIL hits one location for massive damage without the need for a Precision Strike or Called Shot, and if you put it on an Assassin it's extremely accurate, again without the need for a Precision Shot or Called Strike.
A battery of lasers or a bunch of SRMs go all over the place. A PPC hits one location, but for half as much damage. An AC/20+++ does almost as much damage, but weighs like 5 times as much and has an immediate +4 recoil penalty. A UAC/20 does far more damage, but weighs far more, is at least as hot, and has a +8 recoil penalty.
The numbers don't lie. An ASN with a COIL-M is crazy good for the first third of the game, and it's also easily attainable at the exact time when it's most useful.
It's the example you used earlier.
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Why, yes. A build aimed at specific opposition at a specific point in time in the game is... a gimmick build.
Really? They can potentially be found on any mining planet. The base UAC/10 should be just as common as the base COIL.
Not if you hit the flank. That is what you mentioed in your post, and the exact same tactic of flanking works just fine with regular weapons.
Look, I said it before, and I'll say it again. The COIL may have nice numbers, but the scenario where it's most useful is also the one that shouldn't present any major difficulty to a reasonably skilled/experienced player. I started a new career with HM, and at no point did I ever feel that I needed something special to deal with random mobs of light mechs.
I also gave examples of specific scenarios where I did have to mix things up, or change my approach. I'm talking about stuff like: base defence (bring a lurmboat and/or a Multi-targeting pilot); target acquisition (forget fighting, bring some fast mechs and run for it); Ravens and ECM (always bring someone with Sensor Lock). Here, I'll add a few more: convoy ambush (lurmboats/long-ranged ACs to kill the vehicles); recovery (bring firepower to score good salvage); anything with an AC/20 (kill it first).
I don't know what you're doing, but generic swarms of lights just dont rate as something that I actually need to devote brain cells to. SPECIFIC lights, yes: Firestarters, Urbanmechs, anything with a flamer, PPC or AC/10 -- these are priority targets. But as a general a rule, if I end up facing lights mixed with something else, I will usually target the something else first: mediums, heavies, vehicles, turrets, whatever.
This is what I said:
"You could say much the same thing about most HM toys. I got a pair of Ultra AC/10s and a Phoenix Hawk. Whatever it is, it's going to help you murder the opposition. (Well, maybe not if you get an LB-2X. Unless you're Edmon.)"
That was an example in passing, to illustrate the powercreep in HM.
Oh, and I don't have any issues about the COIL lore. I mean, this is a game about gigantic robots kicking each other's butts. I'm talking purely from a mechanics perspective.
Different definitions, I guess. To me a gimmick build is something like a Grasshopper with 6 ERML+++s and a bunch of double heat sinks or one of those "max alpha" builds - something that you can't realistically field during a campaign (either ever or when it would do you some good) and might not even want to. An Assassin, a heat bank, and a COIL-M are all stock items.
Yep.
This is the most AC heavy company I've ever had. Every single mech I have, apart from the now retired Assassin and Firestarter, has at least one UAC. My Shadow Hawk has 2 and my Marauder has 3. But they're all 2s, 5s, and 20s. I've literally never laid eyes on a UAC/10. The game is odd like that. I went a real life year before I was able to salvage a single Cataphract. They just never showed up. It got to the point that when I finally saw one I couldn't figure out what it was. Go figure.
Sure, it works fine with regular weapons, but it works better with a weapon that deals massive damage to a single location. What a Discoback or SRM Boat alpha might destroy a 5-pip COIL-M shot will destroy.
Sure, you never need an ASN and/or a COIL. There is always a way to get by without one. But they're still handy.
It's not a one trick pony, either. Give it good rangefinder and leave the JJs on and and it's a good spotter and scout that can dart in for a brutal backstab. Load it up with 0-weight arm mods and it's a melee brute when it's on cool-down. It's not that it ceases to have a role, it's that as the opposition pilots get better and their mechs get bigger it starts to get outclassed. In that regard it's no different than the Jenner or Firestarter that I used to use (and will use again if that's what I wind up with next time) until I got the Shadow Hawk that I used until I got the Grasshopper that I used until I got the Cyclops or Highlander or something. Shadow Hawks aren't useless because Grasshoppers are better.
I think this conversation is getting too caught up in the specific opponents.
A COIL-M is great against those pesky lights because it swats them like bugs, but that's not all it does. It works well in just about any mission up to 3 skulls, although I probably wouldn't use one on a convoy raid or target acquisition and I sometimes leave it home in favor of my Firestarter if the biome is too hot. It's fantastic in most situations until you reach the point where a 100-125 point shot will no longer reliably cripple or kill your opponent and 5 pips of evasion is no longer sufficient to keep it alive. But by that point you'll already have replaced it with a 55-tonner or something anyway.
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So, tangenting because I was posting last month about this and finally got both the time and energy to get back to it. (Also, my new motherboard arrived just before New Year's and I was NOT going to spend time messing with that rather than being with friends.) So far looking like I'm 99% sure I did the build correctly the first time, just a faulty motherboard. (Or I screwed it up somehow but I'm not convinced of that.)
I got a second motherboard of the same model, and had to spend some time checking the case and then putting the parts together. I used a cardstock piece leftover from terrain building to scrape the old thermal paste off the cooler/CPU and then cut a fresh side to 'spread' the new stuff on. Never quite sure how much of it to put on, other than "not too much" and there didn't seem to be a great deal on both components when I removed them so I erred slightly heavy. As in "I need to use this white glue to hold two paper goods parts together". Things went in for a bare-bones start.
And then the brief oddity kicked in which is the 1% of uncertainty for me. See, the motherboard is an MSI B450M Plus with debug LEDs on it. When I started it up the first time (this build...) the CPU light blinked twice, and stayed on. I checked and jiggled the fan power cable connections for the CPU, checked everything else was secure, then when it started the next time it blinked once, then blinked DRAM once, then it ... as expected ... told me no video card was present. Well I hadn't put one in and the MB doesn't have integrated graphics (apparently) so it's time to move on...
I slid in the card, plugged the PCIe power cabling in (seriously, I don't like this much) and on the next start the CPU light comes on one second, then the VGA light for one second, then "Boot". I unplugged the HDMI cable I was using and put it back in. After the "monitor" (read: medium-sized television) came on it was telling me new components were installed and the BIOS needed to be set. Okay, fine, let's do that... reboot it again and the CPU light blinks, VGA light blinks, Boot light blinks, then into Windows load.
Which told me "hey this isn't the PC I used to be in!" and ran a preparation cycle until it went to boot into the OS ... and I learned it was passworded and nobody gave me the password. Well crap, time to do a OS reset for Win10, that is just going to take some time.
So right now it's doing the reset at ~25% and I'm only mildly concerned something is up with those debug LEDs. I'm going to keep the case side open for now and run a couple more hard reboots later on to see if it's "normal". Google just won't quite tell me if it's something standard which happens when booting from "stone cold, off for a while".
I got a second motherboard of the same model, and had to spend some time checking the case and then putting the parts together. I used a cardstock piece leftover from terrain building to scrape the old thermal paste off the cooler/CPU and then cut a fresh side to 'spread' the new stuff on. Never quite sure how much of it to put on, other than "not too much" and there didn't seem to be a great deal on both components when I removed them so I erred slightly heavy. As in "I need to use this white glue to hold two paper goods parts together". Things went in for a bare-bones start.
And then the brief oddity kicked in which is the 1% of uncertainty for me. See, the motherboard is an MSI B450M Plus with debug LEDs on it. When I started it up the first time (this build...) the CPU light blinked twice, and stayed on. I checked and jiggled the fan power cable connections for the CPU, checked everything else was secure, then when it started the next time it blinked once, then blinked DRAM once, then it ... as expected ... told me no video card was present. Well I hadn't put one in and the MB doesn't have integrated graphics (apparently) so it's time to move on...
I slid in the card, plugged the PCIe power cabling in (seriously, I don't like this much) and on the next start the CPU light comes on one second, then the VGA light for one second, then "Boot". I unplugged the HDMI cable I was using and put it back in. After the "monitor" (read: medium-sized television) came on it was telling me new components were installed and the BIOS needed to be set. Okay, fine, let's do that... reboot it again and the CPU light blinks, VGA light blinks, Boot light blinks, then into Windows load.
Which told me "hey this isn't the PC I used to be in!" and ran a preparation cycle until it went to boot into the OS ... and I learned it was passworded and nobody gave me the password. Well crap, time to do a OS reset for Win10, that is just going to take some time.
So right now it's doing the reset at ~25% and I'm only mildly concerned something is up with those debug LEDs. I'm going to keep the case side open for now and run a couple more hard reboots later on to see if it's "normal". Google just won't quite tell me if it's something standard which happens when booting from "stone cold, off for a while".
Good luck, Good @Keremjnde. I am rooting for you. :bow:
...and following your journey closely. You see, I am still weighing the pros and cons of doing something like this myself later in the year. : )
...and following your journey closely. You see, I am still weighing the pros and cons of doing something like this myself later in the year. : )
One reason I'm updating with "this is mostly painless". It takes some time and caution, as well as proper tools. Simple things learned this time
- Have long tweezers with an offset 'grab' area ready for dropped screws or gently moving them into position before screwing your motherboard in place... it will make your life easier.
- Make sure your area is well-lit, and I grabbed my light I use for miniature painting to be sure I had things (like screw locations) clearly visible.
- Check for required "standoff" screws to go into your case before you start putting the motherboard in place. And do NOT install them where they won't be meeting screws, because that can be bad.
(I almost had one out of place until I checked my motherboard's holes.)
Welp, after I finished the "reset" of the Operating System the thing decided "nah, can't boot". Wait what... okay, something got messed up then - but what? I am working through things right now but a lot of this is new to me. The computer will startup right into BIOS for some reason and when I try booting up it's been acting up. Sometimes the VGA debug LED turns on and stays on (power cycling seems to push it past it) but Windows 10 refuses to fully boot anymore. Still working on it, but at this point I'm trying not to grind teeth over having parts I am not 100% certain of being functional and not broken in the case.
(New protip - don't get secondhand parts from people you don't actually know... ugh, this is setting me back all day for now...)
I at least now am 99.9% certain the older motherboard was in fact defective/broken and so that's going to get put in return postage come Monday.
(New protip - don't get secondhand parts from people you don't actually know... ugh, this is setting me back all day for now...)
I at least now am 99.9% certain the older motherboard was in fact defective/broken and so that's going to get put in return postage come Monday.
I'm on my way - purchased Windows 10, waiting on it to arrive on a USB so I can install it fresh. I'm going on the assumption the old SSD was wrecked in a subtle way, and while I can probably find a way to use it? I'd rather not if it's acting ... weird. But once the OS arrives then I'll be ready to move ahead to the less dicey part. Installing everything from the ground up. This is the part which is easiest, since a fresh drive means a fresh start and no chance of hidden minefields. I wish I had a fresh new GPU too but I don't have spare money to keep throwing at this
Once this is done, I then need to start lining up the next build because I wanted two computers eventually. One for me, one for my brother, to replace our aged rigs
Once this is done, I then need to start lining up the next build because I wanted two computers eventually. One for me, one for my brother, to replace our aged rigs
Huh. Never knew Microsoft delivered on USB sticks. Or do you have someone download it and stick it on a USB for you?
Either way, good luck with the fresh install, I had to do ten simultaneous factory-installed Win 10 setups before Christmas, it nearly drove me (even more) bonkers - it's so many clicks just to tell them to only gather a bit of my personal data, not all of it. To make matters worse, it was on really slow Atom CPUs as well, so every step took like half an eternity.
And if I ever hear that Cortana voice again, I might just break down and cry.
I'm on my way - purchased Windows 10, waiting on it to arrive on a USB so I can install it fresh. I'm going on the assumption the old SSD was wrecked in a subtle way, and while I can probably find a way to use it? I'd rather not if it's acting ... weird. But once the OS arrives then I'll be ready to move ahead to the less dicey part. Installing everything from the ground up. This is the part which is easiest, since a fresh drive means a fresh start and no chance of hidden minefields. I wish I had a fresh new GPU too but I don't have spare money to keep throwing at this
Once this is done, I then need to start lining up the next build because I wanted two computers eventually. One for me, one for my brother, to replace our aged rigs
ive had similar issues with having the OS on a SSD...had a couple instances where pc crashed/shutdown and it did something to the ssd to where it would not boot into windows any longer.
however after installing OS on regular hdd and reformatting and checking the ssd i have been using it for games without issue.
MS offers a whole download WIN10 installation media program at this point that can create a USB stick or and ISO for burning. No purchase necessary.
I like GSmartControl for checking questionable drives... and on SSDs the tests don't take all day.
and speaking of ssds....the one used for OS but now use for games decided not to showup anymore after a dayfull of win10 updates.
yay..me
yay..me
It's an option when you buy a license direct from Microsoft, you can either "Download" or "USB - Regional Language". Download probably would have gotten me the license faster but having a USB stick ready to go to install from . . . instead of having to set one up myself? I'm all for that, as I have a . . . thing . . . about only having digital copies of things which are kinda important.
(... if I could hack it to not have Cortana and FILSS instead, I'd be happier.)
It's the problem of it simply not showing up in the BIOS. Not booting? If it showed up I could push it into a repair mode, I had the instructions ready. But when it stopped showing up in the BIOS at all, and the other drive made some weirdness during POST go away I decided to just be like Scar and let it go.
(Long live the king.)
And now back to plotting a bribe for HBS to develop hovertanks, because Scimitars, Saracens, Saladins, and Condors need to be in this game for that nice little challenge boost
It's the problem of it simply not showing up in the BIOS. Not booting? If it showed up I could push it into a repair mode, I had the instructions ready. But when it stopped showing up in the BIOS at all, and the other drive made some weirdness during POST go away I decided to just be like Scar and let it go.
(Long live the king.)
And now back to plotting a bribe for HBS to develop hovertanks, because Scimitars, Saracens, Saladins, and Condors need to be in this game for that nice little challenge boost
ya this time it was just not showing up in the bios....simply just unplugging sata cbale and plugin back in fixes it.
never had to do that with hdds
This did not work for me after the first time I did it - and the first time it still didn't boot, reset and then vanished from CMOS. That was when I thought "I have a spare brand new drive, I can troubleshoot this crap right now".