The Awesome

Vengeance provided me with my first interface with the battlemech that I will discuss today. The Inner Sphere, 80ton assault mech called the Awesome is the topic.

For whatever reason I have always been a jump jet fan. I guess I feel jump jets give you that extra measure to be able to climb, jump snipe, hurdle walls, dfa an opponent or whatever, I just have always liked them. That fondness of jump jets often leads me to play other battlemechs that could take jumpies.

Back in the Vengeance days there were no IS Assaults with jumpies. If I remember correctly, only the Mad Cat MKII had jump jets. But there was this one map called Lunacy that I enjoyed taking an Awesome on. I didn’t know much about map heat efficiencies in those days, I simply knew I could play a stock Awesome and not overheat.

As stock, the Awesome likes a mere .1 ton of armour to be full and it comes with 3 PPCs. Once I learned how to arrange my fire groups, I could blast away at enemies on the red or blue team, not overheat, keep shooting and kill lots of them. I think its kind of funny how when you find something that works, others want to know your load out and then suddenly you see multiple mechs with your load out on the battlefield. Many a “What? Stock?” posts came to the chat window when I replied.

Today’s Awesome is not much different; it still has 3 PPCs, a stupid missile and 2 medium lasers. All that is wrapped in an Assault Mech that does 75kph stock. If you go into the mech lab, you quickly find out that the Awesome can carry up to 4 PPCs or 3 PPCs and a CapPPC. The Missile slot is rarely used but it can carry any missile system in the game including either Arrow.

The Awesome handles the heat well but you do need to use heatsinks. A famous load out for the Awesome is the Blood Pearl 4 LXP put to great use by our own Hugh Manatee. Another one is 4 Assault Lasers or 5 Large Lasers or 12 MPL.

The Awesome is an energy mech. Other than the missile rack, all slots are energy. The Awesome has 16tons of ferro armour packed on a standard frame. Its tough. The awesome can take a lot of fire before going down. The Awesome can easily pack on Spec armour and still take a deadly weapons load.

Having very little in the way of electronics, LAMs and AG are all that are offered, makes this mech a little more vulnerable, but if you run passive, you will be able to close and utilize your weapon load.

I like the Awesome. It handles well, it turns good, it’s tough and brings a lot of firepower to the party. It ranks way up on my list when a stock drop is called for, but I just like it. As for ground-pounders, the Awesome ranks up there as one of my favourites. Being basically an all energy mech, it is not my first choice for maps like griffon base or tumbleweeds, but 100% (or better) heat maps will see this mech in use.

Although I drove the Awesome quite a bit in Vengeance, I really don’t have any good stories to tell. No overly eventful drops or battles. I have managed lots of kills in this battlemech but I killed a lot as well. Some of the more fun times were playing a respawn game of team battle on Gator bait.

As we all know, this map has lots of water wrapped around an old airbase sort of island. Most of the killing takes place on the base part, but I would always like to go passive and try to sneak around one side or the other and come up behind the enemy and get a few rounds in before they turned to return fire. When they did, it would allow my teammates to close in across some of that open ground and take a few down. The Awesome was perfect for that because it carried PPCs and I could start the shooting at long range. Many Highlanders and Kodiaks will be hiding behind a hill, hill humping my guys when the sploog machine started to pump them. Yep those were some fun battles.

Vettie’s View? Well, if you read the review, its no secret I like the Awesome. Better than that, the Awesome is a tough mech with outstanding firepower. The downfalls are that it has no jumpies or ECM or BAP and that is basically an all energy mech. Without proper heatsinks you will spend more time shut down than shooting. The Awesome is tough; it’s hard to bring down. I rate this mech at 4 minutes, above average for an Assault.



The Awesome MP3 Style

The first look at the Awesome in the mech lab gives us little info regarding what this mech can do. The mech lab tells us the Awesome is an 80 Ton Inner Sphere Assault Mech that has 16 heat sinks and does a speed of 75Kph with Advanced Gryo installed. Taking a closer look at the armour section reveals that the Awesome is filled 16 tons of Ferro Fibrous Armour (lacking only 1/10th of a ton). Moving to take a look at the load out shows us some nice toys, 3 PPCs, an SRM4 and 2 Med Lasers.

Stripping everything away but the armour shows us much more. The Awesome can take ECM and LAMs as well as the Advanced Gyro. The speed ranges from 65 to 90kph so a few options there as well. The slots are a bit different than before. MekTek gave the right arm a 4-slot energy allowing a pilot to take the CapPPC or 2 Large Laser (or 2 of the Large Pulse Family (pulse or X-Pulse)). They made the Left arm a “heat generating” hard point, that is one that can take either energy weapons or missiles. The is a 3-slot rack. The center torso now has 2, 2-slot missile racks rather than a 3 or 4 slot rack.

The Awesome presents itself as a short but wide target. It is built on standard internals and it is a very tough mech. Because of the width of the torso, this mech takes hits to any of the 3 torsos very quickly. As basically an energy based weapons platform, losing a torso or either of the arms could take out a quarter or more of the weapons load. The addition of ECM helps protect this mech from early death and I suggest it be taken. LAMs also help and again, for those that don’t know Vettie’s suggestion, if it has LAMs and you can fit them in with your load out, take them, better to have than to want or wish.

The speed of the Awesome is preset at 75kph. It is costly in terms of tonnage to upgrade much beyond this speed (3 tons get you to 80kph, another 4 gets you to 85kph) and I don’t think it is worth the loss in tonnage. At 75kph, this mech handles as good as it ever will (unless MekTek makes some changes) The torso twist is not great, but it is sufficient. It turns rather slowly and this even seems worse if you are traveling at a high rate of speed. The acceleration is not great, but it does respond when given the go juice.

The Arms are a bit low slung, as are the ct mounted missiles. The torso weapons are a bit higher, allowing good fire from behind hills or rocks and allowing for decent hill humping. IF you want to get the arms into play you have to expose your entire torso. Again, ECM helps conceal your location so use it.

The Awesome has a very good heat capacity meaning that it handles heat well. This is a good thing because it is an energy based weapons platform (for the most part) and energy based weapons generate heat. Now you have to use heat sinks or you will spend a lot of time shut down depending on your weapons load out. Again ECM will help you here if you spend most of your time shut down from over heating. Only those with BAP will see you at over 450 meters when you finally do power up. Vettie says use heat sinks, spending your time shooting not flushing.

Weapons? Well you have some choices. PPCs, CapPPC, and any laser from Assault Lasers to Continuous Large Beams to Pulse Lasers to Medium to small types. The Awesome can also carry missiles, in fact, it can carry every missile except the Artemis Arrow. This includes rocket launchers and heavy rocket launchers as well as the inferno version. From Thunder LRMs to Arty Beacons, you can load ‘em up. I warn you, the left arm is the biggest missile slot. With Ferro Armour 49pts of damage removes the arm and the weapon (49pt of damage if the arm has full armour).

The Awesome is one of those mechs that just begs you to take spec armour. The age old question is which spec to take, reactive or reflective? I answer this question with several that I always ask myself. What is the heat index on the map to be played? What is the radar setting? What is the visibility and what weapons type do I expect to face? All of these factors affect my choice. If it’s a cold map, I can expect to face PPCs and Lasers so reflective is a decent choice giving me better protection against ERPPCs, PPCs and all types of lasers. IF it’s a map I can expect RACs or HVACs or UACs or something like that, then its reactive especially if it’s a city map or one lending itself to brawling. CapPPCs and Light PPCs even loaded and treated like energy weapons are ballistic in their damage applications so reflective doesn’t add additional protection from them.

Something interesting to know about spec armour, both types seem to run hotter than ferro. Even tho the heat efficiency rating on the mech is the same no matter what type of armour you use, the actual heat efficiency is affected. This is, of course, assuming full armour application, not just converting the ferro to reflective and not adding more armour to fill the voids. Just keep that in mind, you might want to add 1 or 2 more heat sinks than you normally would to keep your mech firing rather than flushing.

Configs? Well there are many. The most popular is of course the 4 PPC Awesome. As a brawler, take reactive armour, 70kph, all the electronic toys and 13 medium lasers with 2 SRM6s. The SRMs for the Inner Sphere include the inferno option so they are sure to heat up the party. Those of you that think 13 medium lasers don’t hurt have never felt the sting. You can substitute medium pulse or medium X-Pulse but you will need more heat sinks.

The Awesome is a ground pounder with the potential to pack a nasty alpha. It can hit you from a long distance or smack you up close if you want. The addition of the missile potential and ECM have added to the threat this mech adds when on the battlefield. In a league setting this is a scary foe that you want to put away as fast as possible else you will be the one watching from the site of your destroyed mech. If you don’t agree, ask and of the KC guys when Hugh Manatee began ripping their butts with a 4 Large X-Pulse version on Gatorbait. The rest of the Blood Pearls made our rush and slow withdrawal firing away and pulling the KC guys right into the range of those X-Pulses. I think Hugh got 4 kills on that map, but we got the win and in very short time.

You don’t see many Awesomes on Sunder, unless it is a stock drop, and I think that is because it doesn’t jump. The wide torso make it a large target like the Templar. However, it is a very good mech and deserves some battle time. Like many, non-n00b mechs, you have to learn to use it to be effective and to survive. Maybe that’s why we don’t see many, nobody wants to ‘learn’ to use it. They just want to get in a mech, take fire from everyone and not die, but kill folks with 1 or 2 shots. Bah, the Awesome, when used at range is a finesse mech that actually requires you to ‘pilot’ it. IT can take some damage, but, as with many, it wont last long if you don’t protect it by using cover and spreading the damage.

4 Minutes was the original rating. You may think that to be a high number. IT may be. Learn to use an Awesome and you will see 4 minutes is a reasonable rating. IF it only had Jumpies…nah, it wouldn’t be so awesome then, it would be more like an energy based Templar. I like the mech. Its not for everyone. Many wont like it and many will disagree with the rating. Those that do like it and learn it will agree. Try one out, but try it more than 1 or 2 maps. Report back, let us hear your thoughts.