Default Mech Loadouts?

[ronhatch]

Interesting that there is a chorus of "do not put ammo in the CT," but I have to say: having played for 86 hours now, I've only been "got" by this once, so I'm gonna have to disagree.
Chest is where you can put the most armor. It seems pretty obvious from the way the combats play out that chests get hit less than arms which get hit more than sides, which get hit less than legs. So something like: Head/Legs < Chest < Sides < Arms.

The point being: if your chest armor is breached you are near death anyway, and the difference it makes to have ammo stored there is--in my experience to date--negligible.

It also depends on whether or not you prefer to play with the mech destruction option on. Personally, I always have it modded to a 90% chance that the mech is destroyed if the CT was taken out (similarly to the pilot survival roll, I like to have at least a chance of avoiding it, so that I can hope).

With those settings, I absolutely would consider having it happen once being one time too many. YMMV.

 

[Spartakus]

Chest is where you can put the most armor.

If you're willing to fiddle with armor. I run all my mechs very close to stock builds and getting the ammo out of the CT is therefore the one thing I do consistently.

This is also the main reason I want a button to return a mech to stock (or another saved design). Doing this manually is just a PITA.

 

[Corraidhin]

If you're willing to fiddle with armor. I run all my mechs very close to stock builds and getting the ammo out of the CT is therefore the one thing I do consistently.

This is also the main reason I want a button to return a mech to stock (or another saved design). Doing this manually is just a PITA.

I view the stock mech approach differently. We're mercenaries, effectively legal pirates. In pirate terms the first thing they would do was change the gun layout, add weapons and additional protection for boarding etc.

I can't see why our mercs wouldn't do exactly the same as far as they could, even if it changes the usual use of the chassis.

Note that this is just my view, not questioning others.

 

[KDubya]

I find armor the best return on investment. Armor protects your interior structure which takes time to repair, minimizing downtime helps immensely letting you run five plus missions on a planet in a day instead of needing a few days repair in between each one.

A "shield arm" works well, and it works even better with max armor.

I hit the 'max armor' button and then drop armor from the center rear torso and the legs to get to an even tonnage. I find that near max rear armor helps a bunch even on fire support mechs when reinforcements can often appear behind you. No back armor + enemy reinforcement in the rear arc = possible major internal damage and loss of a torso or rare weapons. A few less tons of weapons will result in slower kills but have much higher survivability and reduced repairs. A max armor fire support can even get into short range of the enemy and take some of the incoming fire to further assist your brawlers. If only two mechs are in sight they'll have to tank all the enemy damage, with four mechs in sight it gets spread out a lot more and reduces repairs on everyone.

 

[Kereminde]

I put ammo into the CT.

Usually the easy way, by firing it into someone else's CT.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

Having played and won a significant number of BATTLETECH Multilayer games, I have found value in trading Armor for Weapons on my Fire Support Mechs. Depending on the tactics used, it is quite possible to get more Steel on Target than a more Armor-focused opponent...

...best of all, hanging those under-Armored Mechs out on a flank can surprisingly often tempt an opponent into an ultimately unwise pursuit. :bow:

 

[Blade_mercurial]

having played for 86 hours now, I've only been "got" by this once, so I'm gonna have to disagree.
Chest is where you can put the most armor. It seems pretty obvious from the way the combats play out that chests get hit less than arms which get hit more than sides, which get hit less than legs. So something like: Head/Legs < Chest < Sides < Arms.

I've had plenty of times where one of my mechs takes the brunt of enemy fire, and due to RNG, it mostly goes into a single location, completely stripping the armour and hitting internals. So you can't really say 'Head/Legs < Chest < Sides < Arms' as some sort of reliable expectation.

Also, if you have played '86 hours', but most of your battles so far have been in the 1 - 3 skull range, then I can understand why you haven't been burned more than once by a CT ammo explosion. Although maybe you've played some more higher skull missions and just have gotten lucky? Its those 4 - 5 skull missions where you can really get screwed over by a bad string of RNG (that leads to an early ammo explosion) due to the odds already stacked against you. At least in my experience (and I've got close to 1000 hrs on record now)