This guide will cover ideal weapons for AI lancemates that I have tested and observed up to Shadow of Kerensky DLC. This guide will not cover the best weapons or the best mechs because that will depend on the player play style. Instead this guide is more general and will list out AI behaviours Mechwarriors will need to consider when building out their lance. AI Behaviours First thing to consider is how the AI acts: AI will fire weapons based on the weapons groups. Place all weapons in one group and the AI will alpha strike for every attack. Because the AI will cycle through the weapon groups, the first weapons group ends up being the primary weapons group. They will fire weapons based on weapon group availability to fire. If the target is out of range or the weapon is on cooldown, they will not fire the weapon. If the SHORT range weapon is available to fire before the LONG range weapon, they will move in to fire said short range weapon. This means LRMs may rarely get used. They will fire their weapons based on heat status. Too much heat and they will not fire. So placing all the weapons in one group is not efficient as the AI has to wait until heat level is low enough to fire the weapon group again. The AI will move to an ideal weapon range of each weapon. This means they will move close for SRMs and Medium Lasers, but move farther for PPCs and AC5s and potentially out of range of the SRMs and Medium Lasers. This will lower the AI DPS because they may spend precious seconds walking back and forth to the enemy to get into weapons range. Consider your loadout with this in mind. They will not recognise chain fire. So organise your weapons group with this in mind in regards to range and heat. Example: Instead of grouping 3 PPCs into 1 group, split each PPC into it's own group so at least 1 fires when the heat level permits. The AI are actually crackshots but poor trackers. This means high damage, high velocity, point damage weapons are the ideal weapons. These are lasers, PPCs and autocannons. Speed is life. The AI fully takes advantage of speed and the faster they move, the less likely they will get damaged. They take so much advantage of it that they seem to immune to the negative effects of Motive Equipment and will run them forever at max capability. Yes this means a Dragon-SDW and Gladiators outrunning light mechs. OK maybe there's such thing as too much speed for AI. If the AI moves to fast, about over 129km/h, they might run into terrain as it's pathfinding can't keep up. So there's a chance they get caught on a rock or something and take a face full of weapons fire as they struggle to wiggle their way out. AI is bad with jump jets because they use them illogically. While they can perform Death from Above and DfA is sometimes considered the last "weapon" available preventing ejections, they actually end up as slow moving targets. These can be safely removed. Trooper Lancemate These weapon considerations are for general purpose lancemates. They will see you through nearly every misson. The best weapons for this purpose have the following characteristics: Point damage to focus damage on a part instead of spreading it all over the target. Medium to long range (450m+) so they start shooting the moment the enemies enter sensor range. Low heat so they maintain the high rate of fire. Light enough to mass at least 2 of them for primary weapons. High rate of fire to keep up the DPS. Minimum over 10 RPM.* Sufficient damage per shot.* What this leaves you with is lasers, autocannons and PPCs and in that order. The points with an * are essentially asking you this question: How fast can your AI destroy the center torso, the most heavily armored part, of an enemy mech. Since MW5 sends waves of lances at you, it is in your best interest to kill them as fast as possible even with terrible shot placement. A tier 1 Large Laser - SB does 7 damage and fires 14 times in a minute for a potential damage of 98. That's enough to core out a 50 ton medium mech with max armor in a minute (assuming every shot hits the torso). Since the damage for these weapons type is 7-12 (until Clan weapons), the only significant way to increase damage is adding more weapons or increasing rate of fire. That's why having the ability to have at least a pair can improve AI performance. Lasers Clan Large Pulse Laser Clan Large ER Laser Clan Medium Pulse Laser Clan Medium ER Laser Large Pulse Laser ER Large Laser - SB Large Laser - SB Most Lasers end up being the preferred weapons due to balanced damage, light weight and rate of fire. Most. You will notice the Medium and standard and chem Large laser missing from the list and that is because the Medium Laser's lack of range and the Large Laser's rate of fire and laser duration. The Medium Laser brings the enemy and AI too close to each other. Not only will the enemy aim improve, but by forcing your AI to use weapons with a longer range, they will move out of the range of short ranged weapons. With most 3025 mechs spamming SRMs and Medium Lasers, this will reduce the amount of time AI mechs spend in the repair bay. Standard and Chem Large Lasers have good damage but their rate of fire is painfully slow and the laser duration of the standard is too long which allows enemy mechs to spread the damage by simply moving. That being said, these weapons become viable if you invest in the Laser cooldown and duration upgrades, but those upgrades are expensive, slot heavy and time consuming so they may not be best option for many mechs. Autocannons All Clan 20 class LBX/UAC All Clan 10 class LBC/UAC All Clan 5 class LBX/UAC Clan Gauss Rifle All IS Class 10 LBX-SLD/AC except RF models All IS Class 5 UAC/AC except RF models The reason autocannons are preferred over PPCs is because the rate of fire and lack of heat to maintain that rate of fire. Though ballistic weapons are heavier, energy weapons require more heat sinks to maintain a similar rate of fire which negates the weight advantage. Inner Sphere AC/20 isn't on the list because of it's low rate of fire, slow projectile speed and short range despite it's great damage. While human players can ignore the range limits, the AI cannot. That being said, the ballistic range, velocity and cooldown upgrades not only make the AC/20 viable, but incredibly deadly. With the maximum upgrades, the AC/20 almost moves as fast as an AC/10 and this will have your lancemates landing a lot more head shots. This is actually my preferred AI King Crab setup and a full lance of these turns high difficulty missions into head hunting and limb removal operations. Inner Sphere Gauss Rifle suffers rate of fire problems while also being heavier than an AC/20. With rate or fire upgrades, they're more viable for AI use but generally an AC/10 or LB 10-X is better and become take advantage of the same upgrades. For Inner Sphere LB-X cannons, SLD versions are preferred over the regular version because each individual pellet is not that strong compared to Clan pellets. AI will waste pellets unless they get within point blank range but at that point, you were better off with the SLD version to begin with. Burst Fire (BF) versions can work and the LB 10-X BF does as much damage as a Gauss rifle so long as the projectiles all hit the same part which can be helped with velocity upgrades. AI doesn't really take advantage of the UAC force fire function so it functions as a heavier and hotter AC making them the worst option of the 3 cannon types. AC-Rapid Fire options are great for human players, but perform poorly for AI because they will burn through ammo quickly. AC/10-RF would make the list only if the chassis has space for the ammo, but you probably get a lot more mileage out of regular AC/5 which has double the ammo per slot for the same damage albeit lower RoF. Rifles have too low of a RoF for AI to take advantage of despite the damage. Conversely, class 2 autocannons of all types have too little damage despite the high rate of fire. Good for humans, not for AI lancemates. PPC Clan ER PPC PPC ER PPC PPCs are great and are better than autocannons in certain circumstances. They have a decent RoF, do significant point damage, never run out of ammo and don't have explodey ammo. But in the hundreds of simulations I ran, PPCs underperformed compared to Large Laser-SB because the heat they generated hampered the RoF. Even with more heat sinks, the Large Laser-SB would simply benefit as well because you would be able to group fire them instead of splitting them individually into groups. This means the lasers would act as one weapon surpassing the damage of a PPC. Also if the PPC misses, it misses. With lasers, there is a chance the AI can go back on target. Even if the laser spreads the damage there is at still some damage instead of a complete lost shot. ER PPCs are arguably worse than PPC because of the heat it generates while having the same RoF and damage. Most maps will not take advantage of the extra 500m. The Clan ER PPC, on the other hand, is a clear upgrade and one of the best weapons in game if you have the heat sinks for it. Example BuildMarauder MAD-3R Weapons Group 1 1 x Large Laser - SB (RA) Weapons Group 2 1 x Large Laser - SB (LA) Weapons Group 3 1 x AC/10 (RT) or AC/5 for more Heat Sinks 2 x AC/10 or AC/5 ammo (RL, LL) 4 x Single Heat Sinks (CT) Max Armor on everything except leg (59 each)This is a basic 3025 era mech that the AI can use well. As time moves on, it will scale well with Lostech and Clan versions of the above equipment when they become available.

Maintain spacing, stay within range. Brawler Lancemate This loadout is for close combat or where trading blows with the enemy is unavoidable. The build is simple: Fast mech for better movement, to avoid damage, get close and flank. Max armor. Damage will be traded. Spam PPC-X, all Medium Laser types, all Small Lasers types and SRMs. Still mind the heat and weapon groupings. The name of the game is fire as many weapons as possible consistently and without shutting down. Under 400m opens up nearly every weapon in the game to fire so your AI lancemates must out DPS your enemies. A very important but much looked over function at this range is facing. How fast can your AI mech torso twist to face the enemy so it can bring it's weapons to bear. How long will your AI mech face the enemy and in turn receive a face full of return fire. How long will your AI mech focus on an enemy exposing their rear to enemy teammates. At this range, there aren't many places to run. This is why short bursting lasers, PPC-X and non-ST SRMs are preferred for torso hard points to reduce the amount of time the AI will stare at an enemy. This is also why most light and medium mechs will excel with this build because the running speed and torso twist rates are much better than heavy and assault mechs without the torso twist and speed boost upgrades. Keep in mind, lock on weapons will increase facing time. Streak SRMs are decent weapons and the AI can actually employ them well especially when Elementals arrive on the battlefield. Just keep note that regular SRM and the Artemis versions will fire faster and disengage faster at the cost of accuracy since they don't require lock on. It is highly recommended to not use the Stream (ST) versions because the missiles move too slow for AI to compensate and will miss a lot while increasing facing time. This will leave you with the standard versions that will have wider spread which will spread the damage but any damage is better than no damage. Larger launchers will have a wider spread while also reloading slower so it is recommended to carry or group the same size launchers if possible. SRM2s will be ready to fire much faster and spread less so if you have the hard points, spam them. Artemis SRMs are not worth the additional weight. At the range these SRMs are being fired, the spread improvement is negligible. Since the weapons at this range have specific quirks, it is recommended that the same weapons are grouped together. Medium Lasers with Medium Lasers, Small Lasers with Small Lasers, SRMs with SRMs, etc. Also it is wise to separate torso and arm weapons at this range since arms move faster and have a wider field of fire than the torso. This will allow arm weapons to fire first instead of waiting for the torso to line up. You may notice I mention Small Lasers and not Machine Guns or Melee Weapons. If you have a lot of ballastic hardpoints, and I'm talking A LOT, Machine Guns can be a menace in sword swinging range but the chances for these to come into play are far and few inbetween. While awesome to witness an AI blow apart torso armor with 2 Assault Arena Fists and then watch them use 8 Machine Guns to core it out, you will probably get more mileage out of Small Lasers; Standard, Short Burst or Pulse. This is because: Almost double the range of Machine Guns so they will be used more. More mechs have multiple energy hardpoints than ballistic hardpoints for spam to matter. Slightly more damage than Machine Guns but much better point damage. Half the heat and weight of corresponding Medium Laser equivalents while providing less than half the damage at twice the rate of fire. If you have the hardpoints, 2 Small Lasers will outperform a single Medium Laser. This will help maximize DPS for certain builds where you can't mass enough Medium Lasers due to heat constraints. It's usually easier and cheaper to obtain Tier 4 and 5 versions compared to Medium Lasers Due to maths, Small Lasers benefit more from energy weapon range upgrades than Machine Guns do from ballistic weapon range upgrades. The above 2 points can result in Small Lasers with almost the range of a Tier 1 Medium Laser (405m) while firing twice as fast at a quarter of the heat with 80% of the damage per shot.Clan Small Lasers are a league of their own as they're better than a tier 5 IS Medium Laser on all stats. So if you have the hard points, try a Small Laser and SRM build. If you want to be a special kind of pain, equip your entire lance with Inferno missiles so you can watch Assault mechs shut down and melt away from barrage of 48 Infernos. Example BuildKintaro KTO-18 Weapons Group 1 2 x Medium Laser - SB (RA, LA) Weapons Group 2 1 x SRM4 (LA) Weapons Group 3 2 x SRM4 (RT, CT) 2 x SSRM ammo (RL, LL) 6 x Single Heat Sinks (HD, CT, RT, LT) Max Armor This build works from 3015 and can be upgraded with Lostech and Clan equipment as the technology becomes available. Lostech introduces double heat sinks and SSRM2s. With the 4 missile hard points on the Kintaro, SSRM2s can be spammed to be effective but SRM4s might still outperform depending on circumstance. Clan tech will allow 4 Clan SSRM4s to be installed and the Medium Lasers can be replaced with Clan Small ER Laser for the low heat penalty but similar range and damage. One might be tempted to spam SRM6s but the heat penalty will affect the rate of fire. While the total damage output would work against a single opponent, MW5 launches multiple lances at you so your AI companions don't have the luxury of waiting around. This is one of the reasons why the Wolverine is one of the most effective vanilla mechs for AI because the total heat generated from it's weapons can be handled by it's heat sinks.

拿下他们！ LRM Boat（LRM 炮艇） 如果你想要一个能把弹头精准砸在敌人脑门上的LRM队友，又不想通过指挥让AI待在特定位置，那就移除所有短程武器，只给他们配备远程武器，这样他们就会自动保持200米以上的距离，以便ATM和LRM开火。我们说的是 PPC、AC/5，甚至AC/2。氏族ER中型激光炮对这类配置来说简直是天赐之物。另外，使用氏族LRM和热发射LRM，它们没有最小射程限制，这样你就能打造一台纯LRM武装的机甲，无需担心距离问题。 AI使用普通LRM通常比使用集束LRM表现更好，主要是因为集束LRM需要更长的锁定时间。如果能保持完美锁定，集束LRM的表现会优于普通发射器，但优势并不明显，所以其实不太值得。阿尔忒弥斯版本的这两种武器都非常有效，值得增加额外的重量。 需要注意的另一点是，LRM 15是内天体LRM发射器中效率最高的。在选择LRM 15或LRM 20时需要考虑，因为两者3吨的重量差异可以用来安装散热片或弹药。从技术上讲，LRM 5通过更快的装填速度成为效率最高的，并且比LRM 15更节省重量，但没有足够导弹硬点的机甲来发挥这一优势。氏族的所有导弹系统都很出色，所以无论使用哪种都没关系，因为它们的功能就像一堆LRM 5发射器。

效力射击

呕！这就是吃了400发LRM的下场。 计算散热片 在《机甲战士》中，热量的重要性与它的桌面战棋原作《 BattleTech》不相上下。有趣的是，如果你了解《 BattleTech》中的热量机制，那么你可以将其应用到《机甲战士》中，因为两者非常接近。这将帮助你确定需要多少散热片，才能让你的AI僚机保持不错的射速。相比使用《机甲战士5》的内置数据，我更倾向于这种方法，因为游戏内置数据往往会推荐过多的散热片。 重要注意事项： 在桌面战棋《 BattleTech》中，所有机甲必须至少配备10个散热片。在《机甲战士5》中，某些机甲允许低于这个阈值，但除非你清楚散热片与武器产热的比例，否则不建议这样做。 所有内天体机甲的设计至少配备10个单散热片。这表示为1.0的热量/秒速率。 所有氏族机甲均设计有至少10个双重散热器，这表示为2.0的热量/秒速率。 你可以通过查询武器产生的热量来了解散热器与武器产生热量的比例。例如：大型激光在桌面规则中产生8点热量。如果你在机甲上安装2个大型激光，它们总共会产生16点热量。假设你的内天体机甲已配备10个单散热器，这意味着你需要额外6个单散热器来抵消其热量，或在《机甲战士5》中达到1.6的热量/秒速率。这并非完美计算，因为环境、升级和武器等级也会产生影响。 机甲移动产生的热量也需纳入考虑。在桌面战棋游戏中，步行速度会产生1点热量，奔跑则产生2点热量。由于在《机甲战士5：雇佣兵》中，玩家几乎一直在奔跑，因此可以认为需要额外配备2个单热沉或1个双热沉才能达到热量平衡。 可以看出，像粒子炮（PPC）这类武器，随着数量的增加，其重量优势会逐渐丧失。每增加一门粒子炮，就需要10个单热沉或5个双热沉来抵消其产生的热量，以维持有效的射速。这一点很重要，因为与人类玩家不同，AI不会选择或忽略特定武器，而是会循环使用武器组并发射所有可用武器。