The Victor

This issue will again revert back to MW2, actually to Ghost Bear’s Legacy. As best that I can remember that was the very 1st appearance of a Victor. If memory serves, the mission started in a cave mech bay on a snowy landscape. Ravens fell from the sky on top of your mountainside base and you had to kill them quickly. You were part of a lance of about 4 or 5 mechs. A Gladiator (I think) was leading the charge for your side. After the ravens were wiped, the Glad just started heading off to the void, so you followed him. I don’t remember the exact mechs way out in the middle of nowhere, but I think there were 2 or 3. After you did those in, you started back to base only to run up on a Victor as well as another couple of Ravens. That Victor had almost a helmet for a head and jump jets. It packed a bit of firepower and took awhile to bring down.

To be honest, I never played a Victor in MW2, ever. It wasn’t until MW4 Mercs came out that I piloted a Victor. One of the cool things about new releases being issued in a game you are currently playing is checking out what’s new. The first time I saw a Victor in the Mech lab, I knew this was the mech for me. At 80tons, it is an Assault, but just barely.

The Inner Sphere Victor has everything I want in a mech. It is strong, tough, good weapons load out, Jump Jets, ECM and fairly good speed. From the factory floor, a Victor comes with 15.5 tons of ferro armour. When fully armoured, it carries just over 16tons. It has LAMs installed but offers ECM, Jump Jets and Advanced Gyro. I like the ECM / Jump Jet combo, taking LAMs where needed and AG if I am going into a street fight.

I have to say here that many of you know this is probably my most favourite mech in the game. When you think Vettie, you just think Victor. I have close to 50 configs for this mech and who knows how many I have deleted. I have driven a Victor since Mercs came out. In the early days, I used to play mission play before being on a team in NBT. Griffon Base was one of my favourite maps. That is where I learned to Jump effectively, fire on objectives from range and fight enemies that I couldn’t see.

I have spent many hours driving one of these in almost every terrain the MW universe has to offer. At 80tons, its not too big for many drop decs and if on mission play in the opens, it is actually smaller than most. The Victor is not a big target, standing only about the height of a Thor. The speed is set at 72 from the factory and that seems to be a good speed for it, allowing you to pack on lots of nice weapons.

The slots of a Victor are mostly in its arms. The right arm houses a 4-slot ballistic, capable of holding a HVAC20 or a Heavy Gauss Rifle. The left arm has a 3-slot ballistic and a 3-slot energy. This arm can pack a Gauss rifle and a PPC. The torsos each contain a 2-slot energy and a 2-slot missile. It is rare that the Victor is used for missiles, but I actually have a config or two with missiles in them.

A couple of deadly load outs for this assault mech include a HVAC 20 and 3 Large Lasers or 2 regular Gauss Rifles and a PPC. As I said, I have about 50 configs, some in each type of armour, some for speed (+87kph, imagine a Victor charging your ass at 87+kph…), some for sustained fire with multiple ammo loads, some for brawling. I can use the Victor in almost any role except possibly scouting.

The ECM is a good choice on this mech because it is an assault mech. When on the battlefield or in league drops, it quite possibly could be the biggest (weight wise) mech on your team, therefore, the number 1 target. In the opens, the Victor is dangerous and often targeted to be killed quickly.

The Victor is stout and holds up well in a firefight. Typically, the arms get blown off, or it takes lots of CT damage. Most of the weapons are housed in the arms so if they get blown away your firepower is automatically cut down. I like to put a laser or two in the torso just for that reason. The Ct is big, but it is not made of glass. It is easily hit, but it takes several hits before going critical. The Speed and size of the Victor help you to move from a hot spot and I often find myself moving right or left after sustaining a crit CT, killing the enemy and still standing after the skirmish.

The Victor climbs well and turns well. It handles relatively smooth for an assault. It responds to forward or backward movement quickly. The cockpit has very good vision and for those of you that shoot from the side view, both side are completely clear.

Yeah, this is Vettie’s favourite mech but he has to rate it objectively. The Victor has its weaknesses, arms and Ct, but it is a tough mech. It can take deadly loads to the battlefield and deal out some serious punishment. Some of the newer mechs are harder to bring down, like the Canis, but if handled correctly the Victor can be just as tough. It’s hard to match the load out of a Canis, 2 Clan gauss Rifles and 2 ERPPCs, but the Victor gets very close with 2 gauss and a PPC. Of course you can out range the bastages with HVAC5s or Lt Gauss rifles.

Vettie’s View? The Victor gets a solid 4 minutes. Its tough, its fast enough and it has a lot of firepower. ECM makes this battlemech hard to detect until it is within range of all its weapons. It can take a lot fire before giving up and it can dish out a lot of hurt.



The Victor MP3 Style

As probably all of you know, the Victor is my favourite mech. I cant explain exactly what it is, but a Victor just suites me. It offers everything (almost anyway) a pilot could want in a mech, reasonable speed, lots of armour, LAMs for those pesky missiles and ample firepower to do away with thine enemies.

MP3 did not make many (if any) direct changes to the Victor. The Stock load out is the same, LAMs, near full Ferro Armour, A Heavy Gauss with double ammo, a regular Gauss with double ammo, two medium pulse lasers and an SRM4. The speed is set to 72kph and the fun is cranked way up.

About the only thing I can see that MP3 changed in the Victor was not a change TO the Victor, but an overall change. The heat scale was altered in MP3, as many of you know by now, and things seem to be a lot hotter than before. So much so, that some of my configs that once had a speed of 77kph or 72kph have been lowered to allow for extra heat sinks.

Ol’ Vettie is one of those pilots that hates to shut down because of heat. I will take off armour, or speed or even weapons to keep my mech running instead of shutting down because I shot too often. I used to run a Victor with a HVAC20 and 3 Large Lasers at 72Kph, now, I run it at 67 with 1 or 2 heat sinks. My thoughts are that I would rather be able to fire as often as I need to without worry of shutting down or even flushing than have that extra bit of speed or protection.
You wont see Vettie driving a 7 ERLarge Nova cat or 8 ERLarge Super Nova in the opens. Sure those are nasty cofigs with lots of alpha value, but, and again this is my opinion, what good is it if you shoot and shut down (even on the very coldest maps) exposing yourself to incoming fire for the rest of the team you just fired at. League play is a different story and yes I might use those configs because in League Play it is all about winning the match, especially if you are being ‘paid’ to win whether you are a Merc or Privateer.

Back to the Victor. When I did the first look I stated that I had over 50 configs for the Victor. Well that number has grown a bit since those days. I now have over 70 configs and it keeps growing because, for me, the Victor is that versatile.

Let me make one thing clear, what I consider a config may not be the same as what you might consider a true config. Let me give you an example. One of my more favourite configs is 72kph, ECM, Jump Jets, Lams, 2 HVAC10s and a PPC with full or near full Ferro Armour. That is one config. If I lower the speed and convert the Ferro armour to Reactive then that becomes another config. You may consider that as a separate varient, not a config. Its all semantics. If I have a good confg that works well and I find a way to make it usable in both spec armour types, then I now have 3 configs, each with a specific use, or different maps in mind.

One of my most popular configs is the 4 mini gauss 1 PPC version. The mini gauss give the Victor something it was lacking, reach with punch. I used to run a 77kph Victor with 2 Lt. gauss and a PPC. The Light Gauss seem to have lost their punch in the transition to MP3 altho I don’t think MekTek ‘nerfed’ the weapon so much as they increased armour values across the assault class of mechs. Four mini gauss are almost the same as 2 regular gauss rifles with a 1k range on them. Now, with mini gauss, the Victor is a real threat to anyone at a 1k range. I have a config with just 3 mini gauss, but you can get that on a BK or even a Tenchi and it just didn’t seem to be enough.

One day I was fooling around in the mech lab. I do this a lot, just strip a mech down of everything, speed, electronics and armour, just to see what weapons load out I can come up with. So there I was, looking at a naked Victor (ah! Mech Porn!) and wondering what I could do to make the Victor complete with Behemoths with RailGuns. I needed something with a reasonable recycle and plenty of range as well as punch. I didn’t need a huge alpha number if I could several hits in without dieing in the process. So I loaded 4 mini gauss and ppcs on the Victor. From there I added ECM, Jjs and LAMs and some speed. When I went to the armour section I realized there wasn’t much tonnage left for armour. I decided to strip the speed and LAMs and beef up the armour. I went into my server to see how it worked.

I was surprised. The mini gauss and ppcs all recycle at the same rate. This was a fine machine. I went back to the lab and did some more tweaking. Now I have a Victor with this load out AND LAMs and one with more speed and no LAMs. Sure the Armour is not full, but I a not going to say where it is shy, besides, that is up to each individual pilot as you know where you can take hits better and where you can shrug tem off or spread them out.

The Victor is not the best heat dissipating mech. Laser weapons, or PPCs on this mech requires heat sinks. I have one with 3 LX-Pulse lasers. Even with 20+heat sinks, it gets warm, hurts like hell when it hits, but it runs hot. Another config I have has 3 AC10s and a LX-Pulse. This particular config used to be a real smacker on Tumbleweeds or in a city fight. I had to drop the speed a bit to add additional heat sinks because the heat scale went up and the heat from all the Pulse family was increased.

As far as MP4, not much on the Victor needs changing with the possible exception of making the missile racks special slots. These two slots are probably the least used slots in the game. I have a few Vics with missiles, but just a few. The Thunder LRMs work nicely on this chassis for team only or no radar maps, but the lack of BAP causes more pilots not to load missiles on a Vic.

Most of the other stuff I covered previously, like the climbing ability, the agility, accel and decel (works best at 72k to 77kph, 67 and 61 seem sluggish), the turning ability, the rotation is good and the side views are clear. Jump Jets make this a threat anywhere on the field. None of that changed. Essentially, the Victor out of MW4 Mercs is the same as the current version.

The Victor is a threat to any mech on the battlefield. Weaker than many assaults, stronger than many others with the ability to take a beating and keep firing back, the Victor is one of the best. I have fought (just about) every mech in the game in one of these and I have killed just about every mech in the game. Conversely, I have been killed by just about every mech in the game in a Victor. If played correctly, never think you are invincible, the Victor can go toe to toe with all of them. Sure, you will get wiped, but most of you reading this are accomplished pilots surviving in this game for years, and you will all find a variant to your choosing that will suit your needs.

On second thought, forget that. Most of you will hate the Victor and the rest of you will think I am nuts. I say just keep to your favourite mechs and leave this one to Ol’ Vettie. I have plenty of variants that have never made it to multiplayer, enough to keep me going until MP4 is released possibly bringing forth a new favourite for me. Nah…, the Victor will always be my favourite.

It still gets a 4 minute rating. It still has the same weaknesses as before. Many more of you know how to kill a Vic faster now than before, but it is still a tough one. Not the best mech, not the toughest and it doesn’t carry the biggest weapons load, but it can get the job done.