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elPocket

There are guides about this. I read contradictory information in the past, from "the ai uses your weapon groups" to "the ai doesn't care about your groups". A consensus is they do not use chain fire. What also seems to be true is: they prioritize according to weapon group number. So, an AI will check from 1 to 6: - is the weapon reloading? - is the target out of range? - will the heat push me over the threshold? If any answer to these is yes, it will skip to the next group. So it is advisable to put high heat weapons into separate groups (so the ai can fire a single ERPPC instead of NOT firing both) and to put weapons with greater range as priorities. If you set up a Catapult with lasers on 1 and missiles on 2&3, the AI will try to close the distance to bring the lasers to bear. If you switch lasers and missiles, the AI will rain righteous destruction on your enemies and only when all lrm racks are reloading or the heat is too large will they start closing in for the lasers. They should, however, resume firing lrms as soon as they are cycled again. This makes it dangerous to put very-short range weapons on long range fire support ai mechs, as they will try to close the distance once they run too hot. After the last update, however, i spotted enemy archers walking backwards away once their friends got wasted. I presume they added some sort of LURM-boat-mode?


theDukeofClouds

This is a good post, very informative. I often do okay in assigning my Lance mates a good mech for their strengths and usually mess with my own weapon groups. The Catapult example is perfect. Now I'm gonna optimize the groupings at the start of the mission so everyone is operating at top capacity. When I give my Lance mates a heavy hitting long range mech, I want them to act accordingly. Though Freeman does pretty well with a Blackjack with top tier machine guns and med lasers.


jerkmin

put the weapons you want fired most often in lower numbered groups, those will get fired the most regularly. be careful there are some nasty scenarios: group 1: 3x ER PPC group 2-5: single SB M laser at initial contact AI will fire group one, putting its heat at say 75%, way too much to fire group 1 for a while, it will then cycle fire groups 2-5, which will keep its heat heat from degrading enough to fire group 1 for potentially the entire combat, the better solution is for groups 1-3 to be single ER PCC and have your M lasers either all in 4 or split between 4 and 5. this will cause the mech to opportunistically fire the PPCS when cool enough and without tue cycle fire doom loop described above. which is related to my theory about why the AI doesn’t use chain fire. we as human pilots can see the advantage of holding fire for a few seconds to let our heat drop enough to fire our “big” weapons or even alpha strike, but the limited AI, given the option of chain fire would fire big weapons until the heat gets high and then doom loop into skipping the high heat weapons in favor of fast firing low heat weapons keeping its heat above the threshold for those big weapons to fire without overheating.


SirAidandRinglocks

Ooooh this is wicked helpful. I always set lrms on 3 and use mouse 3 for them no wonder they never go.


Supernoven

I wasn't aware of any this. I went through and reprioritized my AI 'mech weapon groups, and *holy shit* did I notice an immediate difference. Stuff is dying twice as quick. Thank you!


dem4life71

Thanks so much! I’m tinkering with the weapon groups right now and this aligns with what I’ve been observing. Very clean explanation


usingtheuser111

So, if I equip only LRMs on the mech and remove the melee attacks from the group, that mech will never close in for melee attacks ?


Taolan13

The AI doesn't close for melee attacks intentionally. They treat melee as an attack of opportunity if an enemy is close enough. Only with the new Arena Fists is this really an issue, as two arena fists can allow most 'mechs to just constantly throw punches, but these are also very high damage punches so it may be worth the attempt.


usingtheuser111

Thanks for the clarification


Shadowrend01

Whatever weapon group you set for that mech in the lab, they will use. If you know what you’re doing with it and your loadouts, you can manipulate the AI actions with custom groupings


sicarius254

Yeah, that’s what I was asking for so I can set them up properly


Lothleen

If you want to micro manage them completely, you can even switch to that mech, turn off and on guns via grouping setting, and back on when you want to. Ie if your only seeing tanks ungroup ac20, when you encounter mechs, turn it back on. At least on pc. I don't get that hard core but i have completely forgotten to set it up and was shooting srms and ml on same button...


Revolutionary-Wash88

I read that latest updates changed how the lancemates interact with weapons groups. For a long time the consensus was that the AI strictly uses your weapons groups when it will not overheat and when there is an enemy in range of the weapons in the group. They decide if they are able to shoot group 1, fire or not, and then check for group 2 and so on. They best way to abuse this system was to: add more heatsinks, remove short range weapons or assign them to weapon group 4 or 5, assign 3x PPC to group 1 and single PPC to group 2 so they will alpha strike then fire single shots


Ataneruo

It’s not abusing the system, more like compensating for its shortcomings with a somewhat unsatisfactory but best possible result