MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries by Piranha Games - now on Steam and GOG

[GhostCow]

mw3 was the last one which let you build mechs which would suicidexplode with a single click. that can't be bad.

I didn't play this one back in the day. Only tried it recently. From what I saw it had throttle decay like mwo and no way to turn it off. That was a dealbreaker for me

 

[someone else]

What the hell, is the Vulcan a joke mech? I salvaged one, put some regular Tier 0 or Tier 1 weapons on it and it doesn't even have enough tonnage for armor left.

Did you stick an AC10 on a 40ton fast mech?
I used AC5 + Med Laser + jumpjets with good armor and completed the solo stealth mission with it (the one where you get the Hero Dragon).

 

[razvedchiki]

why is everyone running around like headless chickens?
even tanks charge you, for what? to hit you with their sword?

 

[Shitty Kitty]

Huh just realised some of the Hero mechs are better tonnage wise due to endo steel and all those other stuff, but can't see without stripping them in instant action.
That unique rifleman running around with 2 Gauss Rifles, well until you lose your arms.
I'm running around with base rifleman with 2 cheap Heavy Rifles instead, keep getting overheats but fun for those headshots.
Fun with firestarter, shut down enemy mechs and roast them with 6 flamers.

I abandoned vanilla game early but the DLC made the missions better, very few of those boring crater base maps now.
Still to reach late game to see if the spawns break then.
Get the skip jump sector mod.

As a rule it's very risky to have expensive weapons in your arms because AI prioritizes arms in targeting.

why is everyone running around like headless chickens?
even tanks charge you, for what? to hit you with their sword?

Bad AI is a problem in vanilla, there are good AI improvement mods for enemies and lancemates, highly recommend them.

 

[Fedora Master]

Im at Rep 7 and faffing about in conflict zones made for Rep 6 but individual mission just give pitiful experience, am I missing something?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i tried this again and i must say it improved, at least from "not even close to being an alpha" to "barely a working beta".

 

[Cael]

The Cyclops is a real POS, too.

90 tons of assault mech dogshit that can get its ass whooped by a 55t mech. In lore, it's a C3 vehicle, justifying its painfully terrible armaments. In-game, there's literally no representation of that capability that's affected by any mech characteristic, so it's just fucking shit.

AC20 is always a mistake.

Man you are really going for "worst Battletech poster ever" here man

Bwahahahahahahahahaha! Ahahahahahahaha!

Man, this guy is a laugh riot. Stick to your MW nonsense, kid, and leave tabletop to people who have actually played it.

 

[Fedora Master]

I don't get the mission balance in this. Some of the higher up ones (60+) have such an onslaught of shit mechs and tanks it just becomes a matter of attrition and luck whether you can survive to the end.
Also I constantly feel like enemy mechs can tank much much more damage than my own, my lance keeps pouring fire into a goddamn Urbie and it just keeps on trucking. Sure, it lost all its guns but it wont fucking go down.

 

[warpig]

I basically ignored everything about this game up until today but from what I gathered just now the launch must have been a horrible mess?

They fixed that shitty 'enemies spawning on top of your head' mechanic now so playing it now is definetely going to be a better experience than at launch.

 

[Cael]

I don't get the mission balance in this. Some of the higher up ones (60+) have such an onslaught of shit mechs and tanks it just becomes a matter of attrition and luck whether you can survive to the end.
Also I constantly feel like enemy mechs can tank much much more damage than my own, my lance keeps pouring fire into a goddamn Urbie and it just keeps on trucking. Sure, it lost all its guns but it wont fucking go down.

Urbies basically have near max armour for its weight (6t vs 6.5t, IIRC), which is more armour than some stock medium machines (most, if not all, 40t, for example) in 3025. They are tough as hell for even a lance of light 'mechs to take down, and its jump jets make it harder than normal to fight against in a FPS like MW. Especially MW2, where you can strafe with jump jets...

 

[Shitty Kitty]

The Cyclops is a real POS, too.

90 tons of assault mech dogshit that can get its ass whooped by a 55t mech. In lore, it's a C3 vehicle, justifying its painfully terrible armaments. In-game, there's literally no representation of that capability that's affected by any mech characteristic, so it's just fucking shit.

AC20 is always a mistake.

Man you are really going for "worst Battletech poster ever" here man

Bwahahahahahahahahaha! Ahahahahahahaha!

Man, this guy is a laugh riot. Stick to your MW nonsense, kid, and leave tabletop to people who have actually played it.

You have no room to talk you retard, and nobody badmouths the AC20 and lives

I don't get the mission balance in this. Some of the higher up ones (60+) have such an onslaught of shit mechs and tanks it just becomes a matter of attrition and luck whether you can survive to the end.
Also I constantly feel like enemy mechs can tank much much more damage than my own, my lance keeps pouring fire into a goddamn Urbie and it just keeps on trucking. Sure, it lost all its guns but it wont fucking go down.

The way the game's RNG chooses enemies in drops tends to bias it towards non-threatening things like Cicadas especially in early sectors. Also I don't know why that Urbie isn't ejecting upon losing all weapons, that's something any mech that isn't a scripted mission-critical will do when disarmed. Scripted mission-criticals will just kind of derp around until you finish them off, RNG mechs will eject after having their weapons removed.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

They fixed that shitty 'enemies spawning on top of your head'

almost. not really. i've had plenty of mechs spawning right in front of my face, especially in a never expiring mission, i could do it as many times as i wanted, and every time there was this hardcoded spawn 3-400m in front of me.

 

[Cael]

The Cyclops is a real POS, too.

90 tons of assault mech dogshit that can get its ass whooped by a 55t mech. In lore, it's a C3 vehicle, justifying its painfully terrible armaments. In-game, there's literally no representation of that capability that's affected by any mech characteristic, so it's just fucking shit.

AC20 is always a mistake.

Man you are really going for "worst Battletech poster ever" here man

Bwahahahahahahahahaha! Ahahahahahahaha!

Man, this guy is a laugh riot. Stick to your MW nonsense, kid, and leave tabletop to people who have actually played it.

You have no room to talk you retard, and nobody badmouths the AC20 and lives

The AC20 is the defining line between a retard noob and someone with half a brain cell. And anyone who has played the tabletop will know why the AC20 is a waste of tonnage and space.

 

[Fedora Master]

As far as I can tell this is about as close to the TT as BG3 is to the Infinity Engine games.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

The Cyclops is a real POS, too.

90 tons of assault mech dogshit that can get its ass whooped by a 55t mech. In lore, it's a C3 vehicle, justifying its painfully terrible armaments. In-game, there's literally no representation of that capability that's affected by any mech characteristic, so it's just fucking shit.

AC20 is always a mistake.

Man you are really going for "worst Battletech poster ever" here man

Bwahahahahahahahahaha! Ahahahahahahaha!

Man, this guy is a laugh riot. Stick to your MW nonsense, kid, and leave tabletop to people who have actually played it.

You have no room to talk you retard, and nobody badmouths the AC20 and lives

The AC20 is the defining line between a retard noob and someone with half a brain cell. And anyone who has played the tabletop will know why the AC20 is a waste of tonnage and space.

If you're actually rolling for unit comp/loadout like an actual TT player and playing Succession Wars era like someone with an ounce of taste you should jump for fucking joy at the prospect of getting an AC20 in there somewhere, as it ends fights FAST and attrition/unnecessarily prolonged engagements never pan out well for you. As long as you know how to leverage it (read: you're not an utter fucking dipshit) it's probably one of the best assets you can hope for in a lance composition, the ability to not merely punch ungodly holes in enemies but potentially outright headcap for better odds on salvaging something useful and at the very least forcing some hellacious piloting rolls on opponents when the fucker connects and rips off a limb, damage transfers to a ST with an ammo bin or renders a leg a pillar of molten scrap loosely held to its owner by myomer fibers... holy everloving shit you are an absolute fucking retard and you're the kind of person I'd throw a platoon of Savannah Masters at just to fucking make you tard rage.

 

[someone else]

Hmm some of the non-hero variants like the Atlas-K have better tonnage as well, but it is developed 3050.
Yay spreadsheet with the DLC mechs.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...YA1ZP147SuEP2olkPzLJCLAFmQ/edit#gid=343802686
There appears to be an error with the Orion YAJ in that table, it has better tonnage ingame.

AC20BF goes brrrrr! Fun!

 

[Shitty Kitty]

Hmm some of the non-hero variants like the Atlas-K have better tonnage as well, but it is developed 3050.
Yay spreadsheet with the DLC.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...YA1ZP147SuEP2olkPzLJCLAFmQ/edit#gid=343802686

The reason the AS7-K has more free tonnage is because it has an XL stock. In vanilla MW5M there is ZERO combat disadvantage to having an XL because ST loss doesn't result in a mission kill with XL. The thing about the K is in vanilla MW5M its hardpoints are inferior to the D, but it's better than the RS. The RS cannot mount a Gauss or AC20 in the ballistic point on RT, it has no CT energy hardpoints and while it can be fairly strong (I mean, it's a damned Atlas) if you slap in PPCs and an AC10/LB10X the K is better at longer ranges and the D is hands-down better at closer ranges. The K in vanilla will do well for AI lancemates with a Gauss, LRMs in both Missile hardpoints and some Medium Lasers as backups. Because the expensive stuff is not in the arms, the K can keep you from losing super-expensive weapons due to lancemate incompetence. It's expensive as hell in the markets but it's a worthwhile investment (and you'll actually see the fucker surprisingly early, because MW5M's markets only LOOSELY obey the timeline/tech restrictions at best in Vanilla). The Atlas heroes (Kraken and Boar's Head) can be useful, though Kraken is better. Boar's Head has a 400XL that takes up a lot of tonnage despite being XL, its hardpoints allow for an AC10/LB10X at best in the ballistic slot and a single LRM10/SRM6 in the missile slot but it DOES have the ability to mount six Medium Lasers or Medium Pulse Lasers in the arms. Kraken's got better hardpoints overall, and despite having that STD 300 in there it's an Atlas and if you're running out of payload space on an Atlas you're doing SOMETHING wrong.

 

[someone else]

wat

 

[Shitty Kitty]

wat

The Atlas-K has gobs of free tonnage because it uses an Extra-Light engine. It's not really shown to you in the vanilla MW5M client/mechlab. An Atlas-D or -RS has a Standard engine. XL engines weigh HALF of what a STD engine weighs - the STD 300 weighs 19 tons, the XL 300 weighs 9.5 tons. Damn near 10 extra tons to play with and because there's no mission kill on losing a side torso with XL in it (XLs occupy 3 slots in either side torso, and normally 3 engine hits = dead mech meaning normally losing an entire side torso when you're running an XL is game over) there's zero disadvantage to having an XL. They don't even model the crit allocation in MW5M correctly, as normally having those 3 slots in a side torso dedicated to engine means you can't fit anything bigger than 9 crits into that location, but the K absolutely can put an AC20 (10 crits normally) into the right torso's Ballistic hardpoint because MW5M, again, doesn't model crits or much of anything else particularly faithfully. Vanilla doesn't even give you a movement penalty for losing a side torso and the engine slots therein.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

in my opinion the truth is in the middle: ac20 is gigantic, weights just too much, has only spare ammo and pitiful range, but no other weapon can replicate the joy of ripping arms and legs and *heads* in a single shot. when an ac20 is around any minimal mistake means death, even if it sucks everybody play with the ass clenched.
after all, we all know no weapon is better than the medium laser.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

in my opinion the truth is in the middle: ac20 is gigantic, weights just too much, has only spare ammo and pitiful range, but no other weapon can replicate the joy of ripping arms and legs and *heads* in a single shot. when an ac20 is around any minimal mistake means death, even if it sucks everybody play with the ass clenched.
after all, we all know no weapon is better than the medium laser.

From a standpoint of pure crunch it is a feast or famine weapon. The Medium Laser is old Reliable, the ur-weapon against which others tend to be measured. In banks it can be devastating with favorable location rolls - the Hunchback-4P is utterly insane for prolonged campaigns in urban and similar environs if you have it available.

 

[someone else]

wat

The Atlas-K has gobs of free tonnage because it uses an Extra-Light engine. It's not really shown to you in the vanilla MW5M client/mechlab. An Atlas-D or -RS has a Standard engine. XL engines weigh HALF of what a STD engine weighs - the STD 300 weighs 19 tons, the XL 300 weighs 9.5 tons. Damn near 10 extra tons to play with and because there's no mission kill on losing a side torso with XL in it (XLs occupy 3 slots in either side torso, and normally 3 engine hits = dead mech meaning normally losing an entire side torso when you're running an XL is game over) there's zero disadvantage to having an XL. They don't even model the crit allocation in MW5M correctly, as normally having those 3 slots in a side torso dedicated to engine means you can't fit anything bigger than 9 crits into that location, but the K absolutely can put an AC20 (10 crits normally) into the right torso's Ballistic hardpoint because MW5M, again, doesn't model crits or much of anything else particularly faithfully. Vanilla doesn't even give you a movement penalty for losing a side torso and the engine slots therein.

Sir this is a Wendy's.
I just put a link to a mech info table(it has info about installed special components like XL engines) and you went TLDR about Atlas engines and variants.

 

[Cael]

in my opinion the truth is in the middle: ac20 is gigantic, weights just too much, has only spare ammo and pitiful range, but no other weapon can replicate the joy of ripping arms and legs and *heads* in a single shot. when an ac20 is around any minimal mistake means death, even if it sucks everybody play with the ass clenched.
after all, we all know no weapon is better than the medium laser.

If you want to rip things apart, a pack of 3 SRM-6, a PPC and an extra heatsink will serve you better in the place of the AC20 in the Atlas.

The reason why a AC20 is the line between a moron and a veteran is the range (and note I said Battletech, not MW). With an extremely limited amount of ammo, you want to make every shot count. That means you don't want to shoot at everything every time. The problem is that with the typical speed of 'mechs it is mounted on, getting close enough to get that shot is practically impossible. Just about anything will be able to out manouevre it. You will always be better off replacing the AC20 with other things (e.g., LRM20 or PPC with extra heat sinks, etc.). An AC20 on a 3/5 'mech is a joke.

Even in an urban environment, where the AC20 is supposed to shine, replacing the AC20 with a trio of SRM6 will give you the same average damage (and higher potential damage) and save you 8 tons of weight. Replacing it with 4 SRM6 (12t vs 14t, 8 crits vs 10) will actually give you much more average and potential damage although your ammo per ton will be slightly less. With the Atlas, you have the advantage of being able to share the SRM ammo that it already has. Of course, the heat will be higher, but that is manageable, especially with the 3 pack rather than the 4.

Autocannons have long been acknowledged as being the most inefficient weapons in the CBT universe, which is, of course, the running joke of Davions being enamoured with the stupid things (and central to the Jaegermech story). There is no AC that is worth the weight in the 3025 era. LB10-X redeems the category somewhat, but I would still prefer a pack of 5xStreak SRM4 over the LB20-X.

Even if the combat is in real time, anyone who has played The Crescent Hawk's Revenge will tell you the Archer and the Catapult is far more dangerous than the Atlas. The Puma is scarier than the Black Hawk for the same reason. And the best 'mech you can get in that game is not the Atlas but the Marauder*. The reasons are exactly the same: Long range firepower.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

wat

The Atlas-K has gobs of free tonnage because it uses an Extra-Light engine. It's not really shown to you in the vanilla MW5M client/mechlab. An Atlas-D or -RS has a Standard engine. XL engines weigh HALF of what a STD engine weighs - the STD 300 weighs 19 tons, the XL 300 weighs 9.5 tons. Damn near 10 extra tons to play with and because there's no mission kill on losing a side torso with XL in it (XLs occupy 3 slots in either side torso, and normally 3 engine hits = dead mech meaning normally losing an entire side torso when you're running an XL is game over) there's zero disadvantage to having an XL. They don't even model the crit allocation in MW5M correctly, as normally having those 3 slots in a side torso dedicated to engine means you can't fit anything bigger than 9 crits into that location, but the K absolutely can put an AC20 (10 crits normally) into the right torso's Ballistic hardpoint because MW5M, again, doesn't model crits or much of anything else particularly faithfully. Vanilla doesn't even give you a movement penalty for losing a side torso and the engine slots therein.

Sir this is a Wendy's.
I just put a link to a mech info table(it has info about installed special components like XL engines) and you went TLDR about Atlas engines and variants.

You seemed to be wondering why the K had so much extra tonnage to allocate, was just explaining why and giving you a heads up on what else you might see.

in my opinion the truth is in the middle: ac20 is gigantic, weights just too much, has only spare ammo and pitiful range, but no other weapon can replicate the joy of ripping arms and legs and *heads* in a single shot. when an ac20 is around any minimal mistake means death, even if it sucks everybody play with the ass clenched.
after all, we all know no weapon is better than the medium laser.

If you want to rip things apart, a pack of 3 SRM-6, a PPC and an extra heatsink will serve you better in the place of the AC20 in the Atlas.

The reason why a AC20 is the line between a moron and a veteran is the range (and note I said Battletech, not MW). With an extremely limited amount of ammo, you want to make every shot count. That means you don't want to shoot at everything every time. The problem is that with the typical speed of 'mechs it is mounted on, getting close enough to get that shot is practically impossible. Just about anything will be able to out manouevre it. You will always be better off replacing the AC20 with other things (e.g., LRM20 or PPC with extra heat sinks, etc.). An AC20 on a 3/5 'mech is a joke.

Even in an urban environment, where the AC20 is supposed to shine, replacing the AC20 with a trio of SRM6 will give you the same average damage (and higher potential damage) and save you 8 tons of weight. Replacing it with 4 SRM6 (12t vs 14t, 8 crits vs 10) will actually give you much more average and potential damage although your ammo per ton will be slightly less. With the Atlas, you have the advantage of being able to share the SRM ammo that it already has. Of course, the heat will be higher, but that is manageable, especially with the 3 pack rather than the 4.

Autocannons have long been acknowledged as being the most inefficient weapons in the CBT universe, which is, of course, the running joke of Davions being enamoured with the stupid things (and central to the Jaegermech story). There is no AC that is worth the weight in the 3025 era. LB10-X redeems the category somewhat, but I would still prefer a pack of 5xStreak SRM4 over the LB20-X.

Even if the combat is in real time, anyone who has played The Crescent Hawk's Revenge will tell you the Archer and the Catapult is far more dangerous than the Atlas. The Puma is scarier than the Black Hawk for the same reason. And the best 'mech you can get in that game is not the Atlas but the Marauder*. The reasons are exactly the same: Long range firepower.

You keep talking like a custom player. If you're running stocks on TT like a decent human being you're not guaranteed to get some optimized SSRM truck in unit comp and frankly optimized customs are boring. If you can't handle the challenge involved in working within normal rules and risking loss you're a fucking pussy. It isn't hard to make an optimized monster, and there are plenty of optimized stocks post Clan Invasion. The AC20 is fine if you aren't an absolute mouth breather who needs to shoot something every damned turn with it and you don't do something patently absurd like use a Hunchback-4G to charge across an open field without screening fire. Part of the game is learning to use something besides twinked customs.

 

[someone else]

Huh I shot all my LRM ammo and then noticed I got more ammo later, must be that salvage package picked up, they also gives ammo? I noticed it didn't give any loot only cash.