Mechwarrior Online

Seeing as trial mechs have 1) no XP gains and 2) around 30% money penalty I believe, wouldn't it make sense to go for the cheapest mech you can find just to get into a position of making decent money per match? I went for a Commando for that exact reason, and haven't been back to trial mechs since.

The xp is only really worthwhile if you're getting it on a mech you want to play, and with the reduced resale value, if you want a different light or medium it's probably faster to grind up on the trial mech than to pick up a commando first. So I'd only get a commando if you're sure you want to play a commando. The jenner is a much better noob mech right now, imho.

I'd just drop 10-15 bucks and buy yourself a mech or two.

Yes. My bad. Posting after drinking.

Urbanmech:

Raven 4X
140 engine, 5 extra heatsinks for a total of 10
232 points of ferro-fibrous armour
endo-steel IS
AC/10, 3 tons of ammo (45 shots)
2x small lasers
1x jump jet

Twice as fast as the original urbanmech, 5 tons heavier, slightly more armour. The jump jet is more for rapid turning than jumping (although note that right now one jump jet seems to be as effective as four, though I am sure eventually they will fix that).

If you feel even braver (or more foolish) you can downsize to a 100 engine giving you slightly less than the speed of an atlas, gaining another 3 tons for weapons. This will let you mount a Gauss rifle or an AC/20 with ease.

You can still squeeze an AC/20 onto the faster design but you will have a paltry 6 shots.

Alternately you can buy an XL engine, though you will have to go back to standard armor. However an XL engine is kind of against the spirit of the urbanmech, which should be as cheap and disposable as possible.

The canonical 70 rated engine unfortunately does not exist, but I think a top speed of 30ish kph would simply not be viable in MWO.

I... surely... Do you actually pilot that mech?!

I wouldn't call that piloting, exactly.

It's the same principle as the T95 in WoT: you are an ambush predator/roadblock. The "trash can" was actually a very crunchy mech in the right tabletop scenarios, because at level 1 tech, light mechs (and even many mediums) don't handle getting hit by an AC/10 very well. The AC/20 version is of course even more extreme in its weaknesses, but even Clan lights had to handle that thing with care.

If you follow that rebuild with a gauss rifle, you basically have the Hollander. Which, really, is the canonical one-purpose mech.

Yes! My first match I killed two cicadas solo, which I guess decided I was easy meat and walked politiely towards me as I retrograded and pumped AC/10 shells into them. 8 salvos later they were both dead. I have also killed unsuspecting commandos, and legged a jenner when he stopped to blast an atlas in the back.

The AC/10 is not generally a good anti-light mech weapon though, so the main way to play it is to hang out with the assult mechs and follow their lead. Nobody really sees a raven as a threat so if you are moving around with atlases and awesomes you tend not to get targeted. I've had a number of matches where I have literally fired all 45 rounds and hit with most of them, usually picking up a kill or two and landing in the top 3 for damage. On maps like river city and frozen city, the jump jets also give you an easy way of getting out of trouble.

New patch is live.

Cataphract is the mech created to make the people who whined incessantly that twin-gauss catapults were unbalancing burst into flame and explode in a geyser of nerd rage. You can probably do triple gauss with this, maybe quad if you're really crazy.

If that means I can manage triple or quad AC20s I'm so buying one those.

I just bought my second mech, a Raven 4X, just to make a gauss version of this. Because apparently I like gimmicky things.

On that note, the Jenner JR7-F with 6 small lasers is working pretty well, now that I have Dual Heat Sinks installed. I'm getting kills (Atlases often don't even bother turning around as I burn out their rear armor) and contributing by scouting for our LRM boats! I'm finally useful!

Edit -- Game is fun as fuck once you're past Trial Mech Hell.

This is why I've decided that my role as a light is to identify and murder the competent lights on the opposing team. Otherwise they get ignored completely and the match ends and surprise, that Jenner with six mediums did 500 damage!

Lots of players have tunnel vision, which is fatal. I had a match with my AC20 K2 in which I single-handedly destroyed two Atlases, a Hunback, and a Jenner--because only the Jenner shot at me. The others focused on, uh, on chasing a Commando.

Heh. :-)

Get yourself some DHS then, and use the tonnage saved to upgrade to a bigger engine and Medium Lasers!

[Edit] Hrm, or wait. There is now some funky rule about needing to add a minimum number of heatsinks to smaller engines, isn't there? Not sure how the numbers work out in that case.

According to the patch notes they boosted Streaks, which should help nicely with that. :-)

Hey, my Jenner has streaks so that's fine by me.

I don't think you can pull that off, though I'm eying 4x either AC5 or UAC5...

I'm waiting to see what the word is on the Cataphract though -- that cockpit looks like an easier target than a Catapults...

Early word is that its a walking death-trap. Avoid.

Shame. I was looking forward to ditching the dragon.

My early word (after exactly one match!) is that it kicks ass -- 5 kills! I've yet to get cockpit shot though, so I might well change my tune...

I went with 4xAC2, which is way more impressive than the 2xAC2 I tried in the past.

[Edit] Sure enough, second match I got popped right in the cockpit!

They hotfixed the cockpit issue pretty quickly. I didnt get headshot at all from about 7pm est on.

Have a 4X with 2 UAC5 which is just murderous. Tried 4x AC2 and that is fun but not as effective (though probably a little more reliable since jamming can eat into your damage at bad moments). The speed is a liability however, its basically a mini-atlas and someone needs to watch your back. Also experienced pilots will target your arms toute suite, there is not much in the way of backup firepower on this thing. Also running UAC5s requires @10 tons of ammo... and I still run out sometimes.

Also have a 1X with 4x LL which works well also, with 2 on the arms and 2 on the torsos. The torso mounts are nice and high making it a great "hull down" shooter.

Saving up to get a 3D, which I will probably fit as an AC/20 brawler.

After some experimenting, the best Cataphract X build is clearly 2xUAC5 + 2xAC2. Not very survivable as you have to constantly face foes and so no arm shielding or laser spreading, but the 26 (peak) DPS is just face melting.

Not sure how you are squeezing on 2x AC2 as well without crippling the mech... XL engine maybe?

I think I will be replacing the AC10 on my urbanmech with a UAC5, even with jam time it is putting out more damage. The saved weight will go to medium lasers.

I went with a 255XL, Endo, and DHS.

XL feels too fragile for me to use in anything but light mech builds. I'd be curious to know how your survivability is with that configuration.

It's decent, the extra speed compensates for the side torso vulnerability, and people mostly don't shoot Cataphracts in the side torso anyway. Plus it's difficult for foes to aim so specifically at you when you lay the Lead Hose down on them. It does help to have teammates cover you so you can take advantage of your long range though.

I use XL engines a fair bit in long range mechs, and it rarely bites me. Usually I die only if several foes get up close, and losing half your firepower is already a death sentence in such situations.

I bought a Hunchback-4SP yesterday, replaced the SRM6s with SSRM2s, stripped the small laser, installed endo-steel, then installed AMS. I still need to get DHS and a bigger engine, but that is a badass little machine. I've mostly been using it as a base defender that just shreds enemy lights that try to be cute and cap our base. I'd highly, highly recommend it as a first mech for someone just getting through trials, if you don't want to play in the light class.

And a comment on an earlier discussion: Fuck the Commando, never buy a Commando, just run 10 more trial missions for a Jenner or 20 or whatever for a Hunchback. Not gaining XP is not a big deal at all since your main XP gain is tied to chassis, GXP barely matters right now, and to get to elite skills you'd need to run three Commando variants. Which sounds like the worst idea ever when you could be running a useful light mech.

Jesus Christ a Cat with six SSRMs is fucking ridiculous. After getting rocked by a bunch of them I got my own. If you don't get focused down (which is to say, if you're smart about not running in first), your sustained dps is obscene. I had a seven kill match in which my damage was over 800.

Also, there's a light mech exclusion zone with a radius of 270m centered on you, and any light which violates that zone is totally and completely fucked. Two volleys to down a Jenner, and there's nothing they can do about it except be out of range.

I have this feeling the SSRM bug-fix/buff may necessitate a SSRM nerf.

The thing is that in tabletop you still had to actually roll to hit with streaks; they just didn't suffer damage reduction from partial misses (and didn't waste ammo or heat if you didn't get a lock). But just getting a lock in Mechwarrior is much easier than hitting with a non-hitscan weapon. In MW3 there was a phase where streaks were also more or less guaranteed to hit CT, thus making streak boats incredibly cheesy. If there's at least some variation in the hit location in MWO, it won't be quite that bad.

They've toned Streak down a bit, as there was a period where they'd all hit the same spot, and before there were engine size limits by chasis you could make Streakapults go really fast.

The downside of a Streakapult is that one on one you're in a rough spot in a circle brawl against someone who can both aim well enough to hit you and understands how to spread the streak damage around. Not only can you turn your torso or reverse direction to spread the damage, you can also work slopes since streaks fired from below hit your legs (though a savvy Catapult will use his jump jets to offset this, at least until they finally fix those).

A good light pilot is also pretty hard to keep a lock on, and at right angles can often make Streaks miss outright. Or at least it used to be true you could make them miss; the last patch notes hinted that now it's not? I've only tried Streaks a bit since then, and haven't really got a feel for whether they meant you always hit, or just that you'd no longer miss with a few streak Streaks.

Steaks only miss now if you can interpose something solid in their line of flight, which good city fighters can. AMS can shave off a few, too, I think.

While granting that Streaks need to be toned down a bit, I'm not that much in a panic over Streakapults. They're just another mech loaded up with short range weaponry. Engage them at range. Identify them early and focus fire (requires some scouting and communication, of course).

And speaking of.. I have to take issue with the "Jenner is the only good early mech." Rubbish. While it's true that the Jenner is the easiest mech to get into if you're only used to run and gun first person shooters, it's also a bad mech in that it will only reinforce those bad habits. Any game trying to capture the spirit of Mechwarrior deserves better.

Which is why I have focused on the Commando. Poorly defined as a scout, it really comes into its own as a close in city fighter. It rewards the pilot who can keep his hand off the throttle, and really punishes those Jenner pilots who can't keep the finger off the W key while navigating tight city streets.

Wait, what can a Commando do that a Jenner can't? The only thing I can think of is the COM-2D can pack 3 SSRM2s, compared to the JR7-D's 2, but the Jenner hits the speed cap easier while still having more armor, a smaller silhouette, more energy hardpoints, and it has an easier time fitting in heatsinks.

This isn't trolling, I can't think of a reason to run a Commando over a Jenner. If you want to move slowly, just don't push the throttle up.

Short answer? You're absolutely right.

Longer answer... It all comes to personal style and fun. I like taking the machine that gives a challenge. Mastering that machine and surprising those in a "better" mech is what I enjoy the most. That said, I've rarely met a Jenner pilot who could refrain from "pushing the throttle up." That's what I mean about rewarding bad habits -- the Jenner is *too* easy. And once you "graduate" to a larger mech, you'll have not practiced those survival skills you need when you're not the fastest machine on the map.

I can't remember, and I'm too lazy to go look it up, but didn't the Jenner come along later in the Mechwarrior timeline? One of the things I wish they had done differently was to start the Online timeline much earlier, so we could have the Tier 1 mechs facing off against more reasonable odds. Then start introducing the later mechs and technology, possibly even with in-game ways to research the tech. I think we're in too much of a hurry to meet the Clans, and I am not looking forward to it. The Clans were gamebreaking enough in the tabletop game, I can't see how they are going to be handled any better by PGI.

I think when they take tonnage into account rather than simple weight class for matchmaking, the commando will become more valuable. That said, things like XL engines and endo-steel internal structure are what make the jenner excellent in MWO, with standard equipment it's much more of a contest. XL engines in particular have allowed 35 and 40 ton mechs to become effective scouts, somewhat obsoleting the 20-30 ton weight class. The other thing that people do not take into account, but probably should, is that all those jenners out there are currently mounting only 1 jump jet and getting full benefit. What will happen when they need to dedicate 3-4 tons for jump jets?

The spider will be interesting to see.

Well, the first game I played with the Commando in it was MechCommander, so I got the impression that is was a late-era mech, but apparently the Commando is actually pre-Star League, preceding the Jenner by 300 years.

Does the matchmaker account for the ten ton difference?

AFAIK it just matches up by weight class, so they're both considered lights.

it doesn't currently. it may in the future. now MM only considers weight classes.

Not accounting for tonnage/battle value is a big problem though. Not much reason if any to use commando over jenner, nor awesome over atlas. definitely no reason to take a cicada over a jenner since that means the other team gets a medium and you basically get a slightly bigger light.

It should really be BV if anything I agree. A 3025 stock Atlas is not the same thing as a 3050/star league tech highly modded Atlas.

I dunno. I was skeptical at first, but I think it's worked out fairly well. There are problems, but tonnage difference is vastly overshadowed by differences in player skill, cooperation, mech design (especially trial mechs), partial premades, etc.

As it stands the only mech that I think really loses out is a Commando, and that's mostly because you risk facing a full speed Jenner:
- Atlases? I don't think Atlases are better than Awesomes -- that slower speed is a serious handicap, and they turn much worse.
- Cicada? Then you get to be a fast scout yet not face Jenners as your counterpart.

All that said though, simply roughly matching total tonnage on each team seems like it'd work just as well yet yield a bit more variety in matchups.