As you may know I am not a fan of all ammo builds. Even if you take crazy amounts of ammo you are at the mercy of losing limbs drastically reducing your available ammo. Add to that even if you do good damage for the first half of the match if it comes down to the end and its you and a 1 legged Jenner with 1 medium laser but you have no ammo it is still a loss. Keeping that in mind I built this compromise build. I call it a compromise but really it isn't. Since starting to use this build I get at least 500 damage a match. Even if you do not use the medium lasers they are always there as backup if you need them for that extra little bit of alpha or when you have run out of ammunition which, with this build, means you have done upwards of 1000 damage already. The ammo only damage potential is nearly 1400 damage. The XL engine is perfectly okay on a build that will generally be used outside the range of many enemy guns. Heat as always is an issue with AC2s but you can step back cool off a bit then go right back to sniping. Even when the heat is above 90% you can still fire a volley about every second to keep the heat down if you just have to keep shooting and cannot take the time to cool off. I generally try to stay about 500 meters out depending on cover, sometimes closer if I am in a good hide that allows me to get flanking fire. I have yet to have an ammo explosion in the 2 tons of AC2 ammo stored in the arm so I dropped the C.A.S.E. With speed tweak I am plenty fast enough for a heavy at just shy of 70KPH so a bigger engine was not necessary in my opinion on a mech that is going to be able to hit anything it sees. As with all my mechs with XL engines I shift 4 armor from the rear side torso armor to the front. By losing 1 Ton of Ammo you can gain ferro-fibrous which allows you to fit a larger engine, the same number of heatsinks and more armor but at a cost of total damage potential. Personally I think the larger engine is unecessary but I know there are guys out there, coughV3RG3cough, who can never get enough speed 20A4L8jT628
Only 12 DHS for 4 AC/2s, not speaking about the lasers, this mech is real pressure cooker. I'd personally try to fit at least one more DHS - removing a ton of ammo is easy, more tonnage will demand sacrifices. What's the point of such a big gun if you can't use it at it full capacity? I agree about the 255 engine, it's enough for this kind of mech. CASE would have been useless with an XL engine anyway (it only prevents damage propagation from side torsos to center torso, XL engine is destroyed before CASE does anything).
Very well thought out, well built Dakka Jager. Works on a JM6-S as well. Basically, Micheal's Flak Gun w/ energy backup. I'm not sold on the ammo amount as I have run the 4x AC/2 build plenty and rarely went through 7T of ammo, let alone 9. However, if it suits your play-style, good on ya! I think I would run this with a modified version of Micheal's Chainsaw and Flak Gun macros combined to have a toggleable full-auto and heat-neutral firing mode then a group-fire as well... Maybe see about setting up a 2x2 macro... A lot of options with this type of setup. It's been a long time since I've visited the world of AC/2s and you may have just pulled me back in. I shall be running a compromise of your two suggestions;
The lasers are almost never used so immediately discount them from the heat. The lasers are there as backup. I have and often do blow through 9 tons of ammo so that tells ya a couple things. First, heat is manageable and second this thing can seriously dish out the pain. As I said though its an easy 1 ton ammo for something else swap to suit your playstyle. I tend to play very aggressively and try to always be putting damage SOMEWHERE even if it is just harrassing fire and with 9 tons you never have to worry about the occasional missed shot and can afford to do a little suppressing fire. I have all 4 grouped on 1 then 2 only grouped on 2 that way if I get higher on heat I can fire only a couple at a time or you can chainfire its VERY versatile. Like I said previously about the MLas though pretty much discount them from your chain. They can be used for a little more oomph when you first engage before switching to just ACs but I mainly use them as backup weapons in case of weapon destruction, loss of ammo etc. Gave me the idea was seeing a 4x AC2 Jager cost us the match today because he ran out of ammo and was our last mech standing with only a jenner standing between us and victory. Video is uploading now, I will post it so you can see its playstyle.
