Mechwarrior Online

[MiddleAgedKen]

Haven't messed with that in ages. I once had a mercenary outfit (only got to use it once on the table) that was a "light cavalry" regiment with no 'mechs. I had an attack helicopter of my own design with a PPC, airmobile infantry delivered via Karnovs, and a company each of recon (Savannah Master) and medium (I forget what) hovertanks -- I used the 3025 book and some other stuff. In the event, what the outfit was mostly good for was setting cities on fire with the PPCs in the Whirlwinds (my AH).

[Draven]

I've been playing the closed beta for awhile and my comments are:

1: they are still doing waaay too much play balance refinement for this late a stage.

2:*grumbles about the whole we've lost our technology and we cant get up thing* (my kingdom for a unit of infantry equipped with Javelins.)

3: with it being 'free to play' i was afraid it was going to end up being 'pay to win'. I was right. a unit in Founders mechs will clean your clocks if you're in trial mechs or even cheap mechs you bought. It is pretty much possible to spend your way into a far superior mech (this is why battletech tabletop games have c-bill limits for a battle, and why most other tabletop games have some kind of points system)

[HTRN]

not C bill limits, but battle value. Initially, we would use tonnage, but that can get mighty unbalanced, mighty quick - put 3 Warhammers up against a Hellstar, and you wind up with 3 vaped Warhammers, despite the tonnage advantage of the Warhammers being better than 2 to 1.

[SoupOrMan]

I miss running around in my modded Wolverine, sometimes. Switching out the AC/5 for a Heavy Laser and extra heat sinks reduced my range, but made for a hell of a punch in city settings.

[Greg]

Chris, did you ever play on any of the BT MUSEs/MUSHs in the early to mid 90's? I was on a few of those.

A 30 ton 8/12/8 with pulse lasers can be terrifying. IIRC, it's called a Venom. In our faction we used to use them in sims as a training tool.

[HTRN]

The Hellstar is, AFAIK, the highest BV production mech ever printed in an official TRO. I will say that they're are some omni configurations that may exceed it, but then basically their reproducing the same idea.

Frankly you can do some scary, scary things if you have a very good handle on the rules.

[Greg]

The Hellstar is, AFAIK, the highest BV production mech ever printed in an official TRO. I will say that they're are some omni configurations that may exceed it, but then basically their reproducing the same idea.

Frankly you can do some scary, scary things if you have a very good handle on the rules.

/starts muttering about arena mechs.

[HTRN]

Part of the problem is some of the rules are less than complete, and thus grey areas are born "If it's not forbidden, it's allowed"..

The last major rulebook came out that finally ruled on one of the more egregious examples, pulse lasers and targeting computers - Total Warfare updated that you can't use the targeting computer to aim. What was happening was custom mechs using a fair number of Large pulse lasers and a targeting computer, because of bonuses, were sitting at max range(15-20) and picking away at the enemy mech, targeting the same location. Because of the bonuses, it works out to +1, instead of +3. I know you can stick 4 of them into a 70 ton mech with jump jets and targeting computer if you use clan tech.

The Hellstar is scary for a simple reason, it can fire it's 4, 15 point damage weapons every round. It has a better than 1:3 chance to hit the head every round if all of them hit, and because of the damage, It's a guaranteed win if it hits the head.

[bubblewhip]

Unfortunately the LBX-AC-10 is the only LBX load they have for the mechs.

My favorite is always outfitting something like a Puma with an LBX-AC-20 on it and just one shotting other light mechs.

Dual LBX-AC-20s almost have the potential to one shot ANYTHING on the field.

[HTRN]

Dual LBX-AC-20s almost have the potential to one shot ANYTHING on the field.

Even better - dual Ultra 20s. I occasionally used a custom 75 ton mech that had a pair of them, and an Angel ECM setup. It was great for playing Urban Warfare campaigns.