I had high hopes for the 8Q - all those energy slots. Sadly, any time I tried short-range weapons and got anywhere close to the brawl I got hammered. I just didn't seem to have the speed to compensate for being such a big target. And who does't love a nice, juicy Awesome to shoot at? So I settled on the fire-support role and things have gone much better. I think you can feel perfectly justified loading up on PPCs on the 8Q - it is the original PPC boat after all. Five or six seemed excessive to me, so I settled on four. I think it has a better balance. AMS is always handy, and the MPLasers give you something to shoot at lights or other pests up close. You can switch them for MLasers if you prefer to mount a BAP and max armour. I tried the BAP and one MPLas for a while and enjoyed the extra spotting distance when coupled with Long Range Sensors. Adds a nice bit of utility for your team. Heat efficiency may seem a little low, but take the MPLasers out of the equation and it's 39%. They're purely a close-range back-up anyway. PPC placement can be tweaked slightly to taste (2 arm/2 torso vs. 1 arm/3 torso) but I think two in the arm is handy for poking round corners since the torso mounts are low anyway. Alternate Config: Replaces two of the PPCs with ERPPCs to give you that extreme range punch. Good on longer range maps, but you do have to watch your heat a bit more closely. They're also good for smashing lights at point blank. BAP was a bit of an afterthought, but it can be handy for spotting. Not much else to do with the leftover tonnage anyway since I'm reluctant to drop a DHS from this config to mount AMS and/or an extra laser. PPCs can all go in the torso if preferred. One final note: this config can be run on the 8T as well, you'll just have all your PPCs in your arms instead. Addendum: Fire your PPCs in pairs! Alpha striking 4 PPCs is adding an extra 26.88 heat now, almost double the base heat.
im not having any luck with this build at all or the chassis only thing that happens is i get picked apart by lights
Imo the fourth PPC is redundant. Drop it and replace the MPLas with regular MLas, and go for a STD Engine.
Yeah, these were a lot more viable before the final PPC nerf. The regular PPC version may be *just* manageable now, but I wouldn't go near the ERPPC version anymore. It's definitely a fire-support build though, so you need to stick with the group so you don't get swarmed by lights. As much as I like(d) being able to fire the PPCs in pairs, you're probably right Blagg - three looks like a much better number now. I haven't had too many issues with an XL on the Awesome because of its giant CT, but with the upcoming hitbox tweaks a Std might become a lot more useful.
