Hey, fairly new player, maybe 2 weeks, but about 40 hours already. I always loved the black knight in tabletop, so I decided to grab the partisan on sale today. This was the build I whipped up, and it's absolutely terrifyingly effective against everything but a few atlases I've run into. _ If you have any suggestions for improvements, let me know, again, I'm a pretty new player but this seems to work hilariously well for me.
Hey, welcome to MechSpecs Good that you're enjoying the game! The general firepower seems all good, so I guess just a few general pointers: You'll be better off moving all ammo to your left arm with 1 C.A.S.E in this case. No point keeping potential bombs around in your mech after you lose the weapon, and CASE prevents explosion damage propagation from your left arm (fairly recent change that CASE can be mounted in IS arms). The LAMS cuts into your heat, which is needed to keep your MPL alpha strike running at peak efficiency, maybe better to put in a regular AMS with 1 ton of ammo (in the cockpit, not very many people reliably hit headshots), or use the tonnage for more heatsinks as a single AMS isn't very impactful in reducing incoming missile damage. You can reduce your leg armor a bit to have more tonnage available for a targeting computer, this increases your MPL range and crit chances a bit, and is always a nice investment. General rule would be to have as much leg armor as you have CT front armor (can do a bit less if you're a build that peeks over hills a lot). You'll also want to shift as much armor as you're comfortable with to the front, as you'll be facing your enemy at all times, if someone shoots in your back, you're probably surrounded or out of position, meaning you'll be doomed regardless of your armor, while front armor is useful in any standoff battle. With the extra tonnage saved, you can also mount an AC10 instead of the RAC5. The RAC definitely feels very powerful, but the AC10 deals more focused damage and doesn't need constant facetime to deal its damage, allowing you to twist/turn and spread incoming damage. This is purely up to personal preference though! I hope that helps, I posted my versions below RAC5 update: _ AC10 adaptation: _
Welcome to mechspecs! Excalibaard made some excellent points. I would also add that being a short ranged MPL build you need al the speed you can get, so fitting a Light Engine is in you best interest. Light Engines have some big pros and cons. PROs: Lighter while keeping the same engine rating (speed and engine Heat Sinks or available HS slots) CONs: More expensive than STD (but actually cheaper than XL engines) Occupy more slots In case of a side torso loss, you also lose speed (~25%) and engine heat sinks (~4). If you lose both side torsoes, you are dead. As bad as the CONs looks like, don't be fooled: the additional speed is more than often welcome and the builds that truly shines with a standard engine are very, VERY few (e.g.: "zombie" crab that mounts 3 MPLs out of 5 on CT and and head, so you can keep hammering even when both site torsoes are lost) Last but not least, especially on low tiers you can safely drop head armor to almost none: Black knight head is REALLY small and away from the center of your mech, so you can easily shave another half ton for whatever you like (and trust me on this one: I often Headshot mechs and I've never headshotted a black knight) _ If you notice that you are not being so much targeted by SMR / ATM / LRM, I would drop AMS and ammo in favor of another DHS for maximum cooling. My general rule of thumb is to keep all mechs above 45% cooling efficiency, but cooling efficiency values on RAC builds aren't that meaningful, so maybe I'm wrong on this one. _ EDIT: if you want an even cooler build, instead of a RAC5 or AC10 you could fit an LBX10: you will lose any pinpoint capability at mid range, but it is slightly cooler, lighter and occupy -1 slot compared to RAC5 and AC10... Not big downsides considering your average optimal range is still ~200 meters (MPL optimal range and LBX "low spread" range) _
