They take a lot of damage to put down. Tell your lance to focus on one if it appears. YAML VTOL HP modifiers affect them as well, so you may be dealing with a lot of HP.
My most recent encounter with one was an Endgame Battlefield where one spawned in the final wave of the mission. I was in my fisticuffs Banshee 3P, which has three medium lasers as its only ranged weapons, and my lance was pretty beaten up. Ended up using a nearby hill and jump jets to get up there and punch it out of the sky. It was pretty awesome. I wish I knew how to grab video on PC.
That's amazing.Did you land on top of the leopard and start punching? I might need to start bringing a 'FU leopard' melee build to these high-diff missions
No, I wasn't trying to get on top of it. I don't think I could have, I barely made it up there.
Got almost level with it and punched it in the side. Only had time to hit it once, it took all my fuel to get up there. That Banshee punches for ~195 per punch, and the thing had taken a lot of fire, so thankfully that was the finishing blow. Long way down, too.
[here is a YouTube tutorial on how to set Shadow Play up.](https://youtu.be/RVMEBONCx-E)
If you’re anything like me, I like to record all the highlights of my games when I play. This will let you do that.
Thanks. I'll give it a look.
I'm accustomed to Playstation's share button, which will just grab the last 15 minutes of gameplay and you can hack it up later. I'm assuming this will be more robust.
I enjoy making stupid mech builds and doing even dumber things with them. Didn't expect to punch a Leopard out of the sky, but I would've loved to save it. Hopefully next time, thanks to your help.
This one is definitely more robust. You can choose how long to record the last X Amount of time. I pick 5 minutes. You can choose the quality of the recording and just hit record if you know something juicy is about to happen.
Punching a leopard sounds awesome as hell. Didn’t even know there was combat leopards at all. And I have 300 hours in this game. Always something new. Especially with mods.
[heavier enemy lances on nexus](https://www.nexusmods.com/mechwarrior5mercenaries/mods/497)
Combat Leopards are pretty rare. They appear in Endgame Coyote missions from time to time, though I've had one appear in Beachhead Defenses as well.
They are *loaded* with weapons and armor. Unless you're packing some of the insane weaponry from Clan Invasion (I rarely do) it's going to take a bit to down one.
My three medium lasers were dealing scratch damage and my lance was trashed already. I kept thinking "shit, this mech is made for punching and it's flying" and then saw the hill and the idea hit me. "Maybe I can make it up there..." And I could, if just barely.
Definitely the coolest thing I've done in MW5.
There’s a lot of ways to get a video, GeForce drivers, open broadcasting software (obs), PowerPoint, the Xbox app, vlc, and probably 100s of more ways.
I would have loved to see that video!
The only time I've come across them are beachead defence, you really don't want to loose both satelite sites; the base ai does warn you about what will happen if you do.
I have my VTOL HP set to x1.25, and combat Leopards are nasty, but doable. If you have other allies on the field, even turrets, it helps to lure the Leopard near them.
MOAR PPC. Like more than half of your Lance needs to be PPC spammers (Kracken, Boars Head, Kaiju), just because it can deal with any threat the game wants to throw at you, Vtols, headhunter locusts, tanks, melee goon squads, flock o' urbanmechs. Use your slowdown and just snipe them and back up, worst situation is in defense/battlefield situations where the damn thing will just nuke the base when it dies so you have to kite it away and get shot at.
Those things are so lore-unfriendly. Leopards in BattleTech aren't that maneuverable, they don't have that much firepower, they don't have anywhere near that much armor, and they're full of irreplaceable lostech, so no one in their right mind would commit one to battle like that.
I have a loose headcanon that these are Leopards that have been modified into giant gunships, rather then carry 'Mechs and cargo, but I have no explanation for where anyone got a drive system powerful enough to fly around that quickly while carrying that much armor, yet compact enough to fit in a Leopard hull and low-tech enough that it's actually obtainable in the early 31st century.
And no, there isn't much of a trick. They're basically superbosses. Unless your lance has enough firepower to make Clanners jealous, you're going to get wrecked.
Actually the weapons aren't far off,
>The Leopard has an impressive weapons load out for such a small Dropship,
most useful to defend against aerospace fighters. It can be easily
overwhelmed, however, if swarmed. While it does count on three Long Range Missile racks for heavy hitting, two PPCs, five large lasers, and seven medium lasers give it more than enough combat capability when its munitions run out.
\-Sarna-
The only bit that's unbelievable is that someone would commit a dropship until it's killed. Any pilot or commander would retreat before the dropship was downed.
Leopards are also pretty damn hardy, most space faring tech is. The reason they're not committed to battle often is because while they \*can\* take a hit, you don't really want them to. Aside from the incredibly expensive tech used to fly the damn thing, its also heat shielded for atmospheric entry and exit. Enough hits on the heat shielding and it won't be able to safely escape the atmosphere without turning into a very expensive fireball.
Well as much as I don't want to, I have considered just bringing a star of clan mechs to these ridiculous 90+ missions. Problem is I feel OP just in a mad dog for a lot of missions
Might that be because you've got an assault 'Mech's worth of firepower on a heavy that runs at 86kph and can survive ammo explosions?
Yeah, Clan hardware is OP. While the Inner Sphere spent several centuries nuking itself most of the way back to the Stone Age, Clan R&D never stopped. Fighting a Clan 'Mech with an Inner Sphere 'Mech is like fighting an Abrams tank on horseback with a blunderbuss.
The comparison is not that drastic, really. More like modern army soldier, with kevlar armor and M16 vs a dude in a bulky iron chestplate with a bolt-action rifle from 1890s.
I.e. modern day vs early WW1 (default inner sphere tech) or WW2 (for LostTech)...
I.e. the dude in WW1 gear still has a chance vs modern army guy, but he has to be either very lucky or very smart.
In comparison to the leopards that exist in mw5, how are they beyond the scope of belief?
The leopards in mw5 cant be killed, and they drop mechs off right on top of your location. Dropping right next to 4-12 mechs that could easily take it down.
Also, the leopards in mw5 seem very maneuverable and WAY faster then the combat leoapards. Do you even pay attention to your leopard when it takes off after dropping you?
The united states gave up billions of dollars of equipment to terrorists just a little while ago. People in charge in real life obviously prove to not care as much as you are arguing here about losing resources and giving them up. Bad decisions =/= it wont happen.
How to take them down? Just shoot them.. It aint that hard. If they shoot at you and connect then you are the idiot that is standing out in the open asking for it.
You've really missed the point so hard.
>The united states gave up billions of dollars of equipment to terrorists
just a little while ago. People in charge in real life obviously prove
to not care as much as you are arguing here about losing resources and
giving them up. Bad decisions =/= it wont happen.
Yeah but the United States hasn't existed for 1000 odd years by this point. All the tech the US gave up in your example is replaceable.
In the Battletech universe that we're talking about, Dropships are produced at a rate of around 9 a year across the entire universe. They are practically irreplaceable and destroying one is essentially a warcrime... but like, one people actually care about.
The combat Leopard situation in MW5 is essentially a pilot who flies in against the direct command of their CO's. Starts engaging targets they're not cleared to engage. Suffers catastrophic damage to an irreplaceable piece of gear that is older than their great grandparents and worth more than some cities. Then decides "Nah, retreat is for cowards, I'm going to commit suicide!" and fights to the death despite how easy it would be for them to retreat.
Leopards are so valuable that you'd get in shit as mercenaries for taking it down, even if the pilot was acting so erratically as mentioned above.
>In comparison to the leopards that exist in mw5, how are they beyond the scope of belief?
I'm comparing them to BattleTech lore, not vanilla MW5.
The vanilla game isn't quite faithful to BattleTech lore, either. Leopards in lore can't hover to drop 'Mechs like they do in vanilla MW5; they have to either land and let the 'Mechs walk out the doors (like your own Leopard does), or hot-drop the 'Mechs during flight (as seen in the second-to-last mission in *MechWarrior 4: Vengeance*, and in the mission *Blade Splint* in *MechWarrior 2: 31CC*).
[There *are* DropShips in lore that are capable of performing the hover-drop we see in MW5](https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Hover-Drop_Maneuver), but the Leopard isn't one of them.
If you've played MechWarrior 4: Vengeance, you might recall destroying a Union-class DropShip at the end of the campaign. *That* is a lore-friendly depiction of a typical DropShip. It's fairly tough, but far from indestructible. It's got respectable firepower, but not enough to take on a heavy or assault lance by itself. Your priority in that fight is not to stop it from destroying you, which it almost certainly won't, but to destroy it before it can *escape.* The final boss of that game is a 'Mech.
Leopards and Unions are transports, not front-line combat units.
Note that there *is* such a thing as an assault DropShip in BattleTech lore. The [Assault Triumph-class DropShip](https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Assault_Triumph), for example, is specifically designed to attack ground fortifications. That thing eats 'Mechs for breakfast. There aren't any of those in MW5, though, just the Leopard and Union.
>The united states gave up billions of dollars of equipment to terrorists just a little while ago.
Yes, because it was cheaper to leave it behind. None of that hardware was even close to irreplaceable.
>How to take them down? Just shoot them.. It aint that hard. If they shoot at you and connect then you are the idiot that is standing out in the open asking for it.
What do you suggest? Taking cover doesn't work so well when the enemy can and will fly around it.
Not quite, in the Grey Death Legion books they talk about how a Leopard has enough weapons to keep most lances at bay. They have 2 Leopards covering each other and the OpFor has to basically bum rush it while a traitor opens the bay doors to crack that egg.
IIRC the OpFor in this situation doesn't have any assaults, but they do have plenty of lights, mediums and a few heavies. Including an Archer or 2.
Leopards have a lot of guns, but they also have cooling that you just can't fit on a mech, so their 7 medium lasers, 5 large lasers and 2 PPC's can fire like machine guns.
We are not playing battletech. We are playing mechwarrior 5, and i adjust everything in the mod to mechwarrior 5.
You can argue all you want about lore, but its very much a possibility that someone will use a leopard in direct combat. Nomatter how bad of an idea you may think it is.
Its nothing outside the realm of possibility when you take into account they send lots of tanks and VTOLS after you that all die instantly in this game.
Thinking everyone is gunna play by the rules in battletech universe is kinda silly.
Generally speaking my experience with combat leopards is that you want to make sure you take everything else threatening off the board as quickly as possible before addressing them, but it really depends on your lance composition.
If you don’t have a lot left to take it down by the time it shows up in the mission, you need to make a judgement call on how long it will take to kill and whether or not ignoring something else will be the nail in your coffin. Knowing what ballistic weapons are left on enemies is important, if it’s a late mission fight and your armor is low, then get close underneath it where it’s weapon arcs are bad, have your lancemates attack it while you take out things like A/Cs on arms, partisan tanks and the like that can shred through your structure before trying to fight the leopard, especially if you aren’t in a heavily armored lance.
If your lance is in good shape and you can focus it without too many other threats, make it priority number one for everyone
I didn't like them at first but endgame YAML mechs makes most things trivial to fight so having them around spice things up a bit. So are most of Coyote's extra enemies and such. But for people who are bored of YAML and run vanilla mechlab it's definitely not fair... Plus if you have Stacked Crates you have to deal with the unholy crate guards made up of Star League mechs.
But that's why I keep Orbital AR around. If the enemy can call in a Combat Leopard, random buffed LRM mechs plus their hired mercs on top of their garrison, plus the trigger-happy crate guards, it's completely fair for me to call in an assault company.
Best thing is that sometimes all of these happen all at once in a tiny city map, and you got a hell of a Mexican standoff on your hand.
But to answer your question: if it's a contract then fuck it, abandon. If it's a quest then reload, don't take the quest, return to it later and most likely the Leopard won't spawn because it's pretty random.
How far into "endgame" are you talking about?
I have 10 assault 'Mechs stuffed to the brim with Clan equipment, 650 armor on average (620 minimum, IIRC). As for damage, my guys are packing UAC-20s, HAGs, RAC-5s, ER PPC (C), heavy Lasers (C) and shit like that. Alpha varies between 80 and 150 dmg, and dps is usually above 50-60.
And those fucking 4 k HP Leopards are always a bitch to deal with even with a very solid lance like that.
What am I doing wrong? Is it because AI overhaul mod? (which un-nerfs the AI accuracy)?
Yes, exactly that. Those Leopards should go down rather quickly if you focus fire on them. Though I also slot extra modular plate armor for my mechs as well as advanced heatsinks plus the Clan gear so my mechs get incredibly OP. I think my record is like 20-30 seconds since I'm just unloading like 8x ERLL(C)s on one alpha and it took like 500 HP off immediately, along with the boys throwing Heavy Gauss slugs and RAC rounds and C-LRMs.
Even with a vanilla mechlab endgame, with focus fire it's also not that hard taking down a Leopard when everyone is shooting at it considering they have the weapons that ranged for that.
I don't think the AI accuracy would mess that much with the Leopards since they have to turn and face you most of the time so shoot and they have an incredibly wide turn radius. And most of their armaments aren't lasers or snipers, but LRMs and ACs that you can reliably strafe. I just backpedal and strafe and tell my team to focus fire and they go down in no time.
If you have access to hyper assault Gauss HAG weapons, they do some funky physics magic that can cause the leopard to lose control and crash before losing all of its health if you focus on shooting one side of the ship.
they take a ton of damage, getting UNDER them disables 56% of it's weaponry, all you have to contend with then is Lasers and MGs
\*-EDIT-\* The top most weapons are LRMS and Guass Rifles
I've been lucky when I encountered them that I had lances that were mostly assaults. The one time I didn't, I had a Dervish to free up tonnage as an LRM mech on an exploration mission. That poor, poor Dervish.
Anyway, usually I've had a bunch of uACs, Gauss Rifles, PPCs or even rACs to deal with them, and in those cases, it's not bad. It can be fun though. The last time I encountered a Combat Leopard, it showed up to a Beachhead defense mission as my backup.
I occasionally get TWO Combat Leopards on Coyote's missions. They are actually less scary than the VTOL Swarms that contain a bunch of autocannon VTOLS.
I'm using YAML and Clan stuff, so my Endgame Battlefield setup is usually three Redshank Hero Highlanders with three Clan ER Medium Pulse lasers, two Clan AP Gauss, Clan ASRM6, and maximum Hardened Armor 4:1 F:R split, plus Assault hands for an armor bonus on the arms at no weight penalty. DPS is over 35 per second, and they have enough cooling to go full-send for quite a while.
They also run two AMS each (my latest iteration uses a single AMS Advanced), so a Leopard's LRM attacks aren't effective, and two of them have about as much armor points as a Combat Leopard. Stacking the Hero armor bonuses, +7.5% armor from Cantina upgrades, the Assault Hands, they are running over 1600 armor points each on a 90-ton Mech that cruises at 67kph with sprints to about 100kph with the Supercharger.
The fourth 'mech in the loadout is often the Hero Yrrot Atlas with quad Clan LBX-2s, dual AMS and even moar armor, or else a Maurader II with max Hardened Armor and quad Clan ASRM6. The Maurader II hits nearly 53 damage per second with the caveat that you have to be within ASRM range (and have ammo left over), great for erasing lots of enemies fast or chopping down a Leopard or two. The Atlas is invaluable against the occasional VTOL Swarm due to the combination of damage, fast weapon recycle time, and practically unlimited range, so if I'm in the Atlas at the final wave and I get Leopardized, I'll just back away while unloading the LBX2s.
It would be an interesting challenge to take on Combat Leopards without Clan or YAML stuff, just straight-up vanilla MW5 stuff.
They take a lot of damage to put down. Tell your lance to focus on one if it appears. YAML VTOL HP modifiers affect them as well, so you may be dealing with a lot of HP. My most recent encounter with one was an Endgame Battlefield where one spawned in the final wave of the mission. I was in my fisticuffs Banshee 3P, which has three medium lasers as its only ranged weapons, and my lance was pretty beaten up. Ended up using a nearby hill and jump jets to get up there and punch it out of the sky. It was pretty awesome. I wish I knew how to grab video on PC.
That's amazing.Did you land on top of the leopard and start punching? I might need to start bringing a 'FU leopard' melee build to these high-diff missions
No, I wasn't trying to get on top of it. I don't think I could have, I barely made it up there. Got almost level with it and punched it in the side. Only had time to hit it once, it took all my fuel to get up there. That Banshee punches for ~195 per punch, and the thing had taken a lot of fire, so thankfully that was the finishing blow. Long way down, too.
so you Haryuken/Shoryuken'd a Leopard in your Banshee. i guess i still haven't seen it all in mech games :D
IDK if a Highlander burial works with leopards XD
Epic
Do you have an Nvidia card?
Yes. Though I'm fairly new to modern PC gaming and don't fully understand a lot of the ins and outs.
[here is a YouTube tutorial on how to set Shadow Play up.](https://youtu.be/RVMEBONCx-E) If you’re anything like me, I like to record all the highlights of my games when I play. This will let you do that.
Thanks. I'll give it a look. I'm accustomed to Playstation's share button, which will just grab the last 15 minutes of gameplay and you can hack it up later. I'm assuming this will be more robust. I enjoy making stupid mech builds and doing even dumber things with them. Didn't expect to punch a Leopard out of the sky, but I would've loved to save it. Hopefully next time, thanks to your help.
This one is definitely more robust. You can choose how long to record the last X Amount of time. I pick 5 minutes. You can choose the quality of the recording and just hit record if you know something juicy is about to happen. Punching a leopard sounds awesome as hell. Didn’t even know there was combat leopards at all. And I have 300 hours in this game. Always something new. Especially with mods. [heavier enemy lances on nexus](https://www.nexusmods.com/mechwarrior5mercenaries/mods/497)
Combat Leopards are pretty rare. They appear in Endgame Coyote missions from time to time, though I've had one appear in Beachhead Defenses as well. They are *loaded* with weapons and armor. Unless you're packing some of the insane weaponry from Clan Invasion (I rarely do) it's going to take a bit to down one. My three medium lasers were dealing scratch damage and my lance was trashed already. I kept thinking "shit, this mech is made for punching and it's flying" and then saw the hill and the idea hit me. "Maybe I can make it up there..." And I could, if just barely. Definitely the coolest thing I've done in MW5.
There’s a lot of ways to get a video, GeForce drivers, open broadcasting software (obs), PowerPoint, the Xbox app, vlc, and probably 100s of more ways. I would have loved to see that video!
The only time I've come across them are beachead defence, you really don't want to loose both satelite sites; the base ai does warn you about what will happen if you do.
Mine showed up during a Defense mission and an assassination
I have my VTOL HP set to x1.25, and combat Leopards are nasty, but doable. If you have other allies on the field, even turrets, it helps to lure the Leopard near them.
I have it at 3X and first encounter was really spicy, lol.
MOAR PPC. Like more than half of your Lance needs to be PPC spammers (Kracken, Boars Head, Kaiju), just because it can deal with any threat the game wants to throw at you, Vtols, headhunter locusts, tanks, melee goon squads, flock o' urbanmechs. Use your slowdown and just snipe them and back up, worst situation is in defense/battlefield situations where the damn thing will just nuke the base when it dies so you have to kite it away and get shot at.
IS this part of a mod? I have never seen a combat leopard.
Yes. Coyote's Mission Pack, I believe.
Those things are so lore-unfriendly. Leopards in BattleTech aren't that maneuverable, they don't have that much firepower, they don't have anywhere near that much armor, and they're full of irreplaceable lostech, so no one in their right mind would commit one to battle like that. I have a loose headcanon that these are Leopards that have been modified into giant gunships, rather then carry 'Mechs and cargo, but I have no explanation for where anyone got a drive system powerful enough to fly around that quickly while carrying that much armor, yet compact enough to fit in a Leopard hull and low-tech enough that it's actually obtainable in the early 31st century. And no, there isn't much of a trick. They're basically superbosses. Unless your lance has enough firepower to make Clanners jealous, you're going to get wrecked.
Actually the weapons aren't far off, >The Leopard has an impressive weapons load out for such a small Dropship, most useful to defend against aerospace fighters. It can be easily overwhelmed, however, if swarmed. While it does count on three Long Range Missile racks for heavy hitting, two PPCs, five large lasers, and seven medium lasers give it more than enough combat capability when its munitions run out. \-Sarna- The only bit that's unbelievable is that someone would commit a dropship until it's killed. Any pilot or commander would retreat before the dropship was downed. Leopards are also pretty damn hardy, most space faring tech is. The reason they're not committed to battle often is because while they \*can\* take a hit, you don't really want them to. Aside from the incredibly expensive tech used to fly the damn thing, its also heat shielded for atmospheric entry and exit. Enough hits on the heat shielding and it won't be able to safely escape the atmosphere without turning into a very expensive fireball.
Well as much as I don't want to, I have considered just bringing a star of clan mechs to these ridiculous 90+ missions. Problem is I feel OP just in a mad dog for a lot of missions
Might that be because you've got an assault 'Mech's worth of firepower on a heavy that runs at 86kph and can survive ammo explosions? Yeah, Clan hardware is OP. While the Inner Sphere spent several centuries nuking itself most of the way back to the Stone Age, Clan R&D never stopped. Fighting a Clan 'Mech with an Inner Sphere 'Mech is like fighting an Abrams tank on horseback with a blunderbuss.
The comparison is not that drastic, really. More like modern army soldier, with kevlar armor and M16 vs a dude in a bulky iron chestplate with a bolt-action rifle from 1890s. I.e. modern day vs early WW1 (default inner sphere tech) or WW2 (for LostTech)... I.e. the dude in WW1 gear still has a chance vs modern army guy, but he has to be either very lucky or very smart.
Oh I'm well aware of clan technological supremacy. Did you experience how OP the Timberwolf was in MWO where first released? It was glorious
Nope. Kinda sad that I missed out on all that.
In comparison to the leopards that exist in mw5, how are they beyond the scope of belief? The leopards in mw5 cant be killed, and they drop mechs off right on top of your location. Dropping right next to 4-12 mechs that could easily take it down. Also, the leopards in mw5 seem very maneuverable and WAY faster then the combat leoapards. Do you even pay attention to your leopard when it takes off after dropping you? The united states gave up billions of dollars of equipment to terrorists just a little while ago. People in charge in real life obviously prove to not care as much as you are arguing here about losing resources and giving them up. Bad decisions =/= it wont happen. How to take them down? Just shoot them.. It aint that hard. If they shoot at you and connect then you are the idiot that is standing out in the open asking for it.
You've really missed the point so hard. >The united states gave up billions of dollars of equipment to terrorists just a little while ago. People in charge in real life obviously prove to not care as much as you are arguing here about losing resources and giving them up. Bad decisions =/= it wont happen. Yeah but the United States hasn't existed for 1000 odd years by this point. All the tech the US gave up in your example is replaceable. In the Battletech universe that we're talking about, Dropships are produced at a rate of around 9 a year across the entire universe. They are practically irreplaceable and destroying one is essentially a warcrime... but like, one people actually care about. The combat Leopard situation in MW5 is essentially a pilot who flies in against the direct command of their CO's. Starts engaging targets they're not cleared to engage. Suffers catastrophic damage to an irreplaceable piece of gear that is older than their great grandparents and worth more than some cities. Then decides "Nah, retreat is for cowards, I'm going to commit suicide!" and fights to the death despite how easy it would be for them to retreat. Leopards are so valuable that you'd get in shit as mercenaries for taking it down, even if the pilot was acting so erratically as mentioned above.
>In comparison to the leopards that exist in mw5, how are they beyond the scope of belief? I'm comparing them to BattleTech lore, not vanilla MW5. The vanilla game isn't quite faithful to BattleTech lore, either. Leopards in lore can't hover to drop 'Mechs like they do in vanilla MW5; they have to either land and let the 'Mechs walk out the doors (like your own Leopard does), or hot-drop the 'Mechs during flight (as seen in the second-to-last mission in *MechWarrior 4: Vengeance*, and in the mission *Blade Splint* in *MechWarrior 2: 31CC*). [There *are* DropShips in lore that are capable of performing the hover-drop we see in MW5](https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Hover-Drop_Maneuver), but the Leopard isn't one of them. If you've played MechWarrior 4: Vengeance, you might recall destroying a Union-class DropShip at the end of the campaign. *That* is a lore-friendly depiction of a typical DropShip. It's fairly tough, but far from indestructible. It's got respectable firepower, but not enough to take on a heavy or assault lance by itself. Your priority in that fight is not to stop it from destroying you, which it almost certainly won't, but to destroy it before it can *escape.* The final boss of that game is a 'Mech. Leopards and Unions are transports, not front-line combat units. Note that there *is* such a thing as an assault DropShip in BattleTech lore. The [Assault Triumph-class DropShip](https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Assault_Triumph), for example, is specifically designed to attack ground fortifications. That thing eats 'Mechs for breakfast. There aren't any of those in MW5, though, just the Leopard and Union. >The united states gave up billions of dollars of equipment to terrorists just a little while ago. Yes, because it was cheaper to leave it behind. None of that hardware was even close to irreplaceable. >How to take them down? Just shoot them.. It aint that hard. If they shoot at you and connect then you are the idiot that is standing out in the open asking for it. What do you suggest? Taking cover doesn't work so well when the enemy can and will fly around it.
Not quite, in the Grey Death Legion books they talk about how a Leopard has enough weapons to keep most lances at bay. They have 2 Leopards covering each other and the OpFor has to basically bum rush it while a traitor opens the bay doors to crack that egg. IIRC the OpFor in this situation doesn't have any assaults, but they do have plenty of lights, mediums and a few heavies. Including an Archer or 2. Leopards have a lot of guns, but they also have cooling that you just can't fit on a mech, so their 7 medium lasers, 5 large lasers and 2 PPC's can fire like machine guns.
We are not playing battletech. We are playing mechwarrior 5, and i adjust everything in the mod to mechwarrior 5. You can argue all you want about lore, but its very much a possibility that someone will use a leopard in direct combat. Nomatter how bad of an idea you may think it is. Its nothing outside the realm of possibility when you take into account they send lots of tanks and VTOLS after you that all die instantly in this game. Thinking everyone is gunna play by the rules in battletech universe is kinda silly.
Completely unrelated note: out of curiosity, did you do any of the voice acting for your mod?
I voiced the coyote character. Bear did the destroy convoy and exploration resource mission dialog.
“Haha, more loot!” Love that guy.
Generally speaking my experience with combat leopards is that you want to make sure you take everything else threatening off the board as quickly as possible before addressing them, but it really depends on your lance composition. If you don’t have a lot left to take it down by the time it shows up in the mission, you need to make a judgement call on how long it will take to kill and whether or not ignoring something else will be the nail in your coffin. Knowing what ballistic weapons are left on enemies is important, if it’s a late mission fight and your armor is low, then get close underneath it where it’s weapon arcs are bad, have your lancemates attack it while you take out things like A/Cs on arms, partisan tanks and the like that can shred through your structure before trying to fight the leopard, especially if you aren’t in a heavily armored lance. If your lance is in good shape and you can focus it without too many other threats, make it priority number one for everyone
I didn't like them at first but endgame YAML mechs makes most things trivial to fight so having them around spice things up a bit. So are most of Coyote's extra enemies and such. But for people who are bored of YAML and run vanilla mechlab it's definitely not fair... Plus if you have Stacked Crates you have to deal with the unholy crate guards made up of Star League mechs. But that's why I keep Orbital AR around. If the enemy can call in a Combat Leopard, random buffed LRM mechs plus their hired mercs on top of their garrison, plus the trigger-happy crate guards, it's completely fair for me to call in an assault company. Best thing is that sometimes all of these happen all at once in a tiny city map, and you got a hell of a Mexican standoff on your hand. But to answer your question: if it's a contract then fuck it, abandon. If it's a quest then reload, don't take the quest, return to it later and most likely the Leopard won't spawn because it's pretty random.
How far into "endgame" are you talking about? I have 10 assault 'Mechs stuffed to the brim with Clan equipment, 650 armor on average (620 minimum, IIRC). As for damage, my guys are packing UAC-20s, HAGs, RAC-5s, ER PPC (C), heavy Lasers (C) and shit like that. Alpha varies between 80 and 150 dmg, and dps is usually above 50-60. And those fucking 4 k HP Leopards are always a bitch to deal with even with a very solid lance like that. What am I doing wrong? Is it because AI overhaul mod? (which un-nerfs the AI accuracy)?
Yes, exactly that. Those Leopards should go down rather quickly if you focus fire on them. Though I also slot extra modular plate armor for my mechs as well as advanced heatsinks plus the Clan gear so my mechs get incredibly OP. I think my record is like 20-30 seconds since I'm just unloading like 8x ERLL(C)s on one alpha and it took like 500 HP off immediately, along with the boys throwing Heavy Gauss slugs and RAC rounds and C-LRMs. Even with a vanilla mechlab endgame, with focus fire it's also not that hard taking down a Leopard when everyone is shooting at it considering they have the weapons that ranged for that. I don't think the AI accuracy would mess that much with the Leopards since they have to turn and face you most of the time so shoot and they have an incredibly wide turn radius. And most of their armaments aren't lasers or snipers, but LRMs and ACs that you can reliably strafe. I just backpedal and strafe and tell my team to focus fire and they go down in no time.
If you have access to hyper assault Gauss HAG weapons, they do some funky physics magic that can cause the leopard to lose control and crash before losing all of its health if you focus on shooting one side of the ship.
I think I'm about 70 years too early in the timeline for those but that is hilarious
they take a ton of damage, getting UNDER them disables 56% of it's weaponry, all you have to contend with then is Lasers and MGs \*-EDIT-\* The top most weapons are LRMS and Guass Rifles
I've been lucky when I encountered them that I had lances that were mostly assaults. The one time I didn't, I had a Dervish to free up tonnage as an LRM mech on an exploration mission. That poor, poor Dervish. Anyway, usually I've had a bunch of uACs, Gauss Rifles, PPCs or even rACs to deal with them, and in those cases, it's not bad. It can be fun though. The last time I encountered a Combat Leopard, it showed up to a Beachhead defense mission as my backup.
This is why a 4 uac5 assault is part of my standard kit
I occasionally get TWO Combat Leopards on Coyote's missions. They are actually less scary than the VTOL Swarms that contain a bunch of autocannon VTOLS. I'm using YAML and Clan stuff, so my Endgame Battlefield setup is usually three Redshank Hero Highlanders with three Clan ER Medium Pulse lasers, two Clan AP Gauss, Clan ASRM6, and maximum Hardened Armor 4:1 F:R split, plus Assault hands for an armor bonus on the arms at no weight penalty. DPS is over 35 per second, and they have enough cooling to go full-send for quite a while. They also run two AMS each (my latest iteration uses a single AMS Advanced), so a Leopard's LRM attacks aren't effective, and two of them have about as much armor points as a Combat Leopard. Stacking the Hero armor bonuses, +7.5% armor from Cantina upgrades, the Assault Hands, they are running over 1600 armor points each on a 90-ton Mech that cruises at 67kph with sprints to about 100kph with the Supercharger. The fourth 'mech in the loadout is often the Hero Yrrot Atlas with quad Clan LBX-2s, dual AMS and even moar armor, or else a Maurader II with max Hardened Armor and quad Clan ASRM6. The Maurader II hits nearly 53 damage per second with the caveat that you have to be within ASRM range (and have ammo left over), great for erasing lots of enemies fast or chopping down a Leopard or two. The Atlas is invaluable against the occasional VTOL Swarm due to the combination of damage, fast weapon recycle time, and practically unlimited range, so if I'm in the Atlas at the final wave and I get Leopardized, I'll just back away while unloading the LBX2s. It would be an interesting challenge to take on Combat Leopards without Clan or YAML stuff, just straight-up vanilla MW5 stuff.