26 replies to this topic

[JonahGrimm]

(or How I learned to stop worrying and love my C-Bills.)

So. As you may have guessed, I'm a new player in MWO, and have just finished my first fifteen days. I'm also one of those crazy, old-school (read: ancient!) gamers, and believe firmly in giving back when the community gives to you.

Thus, this ... guide. Of sorts.

The point of this post is to take someone who's really just starting and - in conjunction with all the useful stuff you'll find on the forums, and the helpful people who keep adding to it, help you avoid making my mistakes and get the most out of your time in MWO. I fell in love with this game /despite/ the hints here; imagine how much more fun you'll have if you fall in love without making these mistakes!

This is going to be.. er. Long. The nature of this sort of post requires it. Bear with!

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1. Your First 25 Games.
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What no one told me (and wasn't immediately obvious!) was that your first 25 games are the foundation of whether or not you're going to have a great time, or hang this whole thing up while wondering what those of us who love it find so compelling. To get the most out of that first 25, here's what you can (and probably should) do:

After you log in, learn the basics: Before you go gallvanting into the warzones, begin by doing the following:

• Before you do anything else, head to http://mwomercs.com/...rounds#controls. Print out the PDF, and prop it up somewhere convenient to your PC. Succinctly, there are a LOT of controls, and it's best to have a quick reference somewhere you can see it, especially early on.
  
  
  
  Items like 'weapon cover toggle', 'chain fire' and the 'visions' are important. We'll get to how to use 'em in a minute; in the meantime, make sure you at least have an idea what buttons do what.
  
  By the way - you should take a minute and add "J - Switch ECM modes" to the keyboard. It's not yet been added (or has been missed!) on the basic documentation.
  
• Now that it exists, do the movement tutorial. Make a point of switching between third- and first-person, and noting the different information you get in both.
  
  
  
  During the tutorial (or in redoing the tutorial), try shooting your weapons. Notice your heat scale. See how much it takes to overheat. How fast can you turn your own mech off?
  
• After you're done with the movement tutorial, pick a quick-launch mech and head into the testing grounds. To do this:
  
  
  
  1) Click the 'gear' icon at the top-right of your screen.
  2) Select 'Testing Grounds'. Choose "Canyon Network" as your first destination.
  
  This will put you in a mech in a 'neutral' map. It'll be daytime, with normal heat.
  
  Right in front of you will be a tiny mech. If you move left around the hill in front of you, along the canyon, you'll find several more. This is your chance to both practice movement AND play with guns - do both! Note how a mech takes damage when you shoot it. Try shooting off the arms and legs of a mech. Pay careful and close attention to what kills an opponent:
  
  - Shooting off their head.
  - taking out their center torso (or sides, for some mechs)
  - shooting off their legs.
  
  You should take a moment to take all of the first four mechs out for a spin. These are Trial Mechs - one from each size category. This will give you the basics of how each category moves, how their weapons work, and the underlying mechanics behind the chassis sizes.\

Now. Play some games. For your first 25 games, do not spend ANY C-Bills - money - no matter how tempting it is. Make sure you play all of the mechs!


Why? Two reasons.

• You have no idea what kind of mech will suit your style, and won't for some time.
  
• Your first 25 games have Bonus Cash - you'll never earn this much in one sitting again! Hoard as you get better, and by the time you reach the end of the Bonus Cash, you should have enough for the mech you want and most of the upgrades for it!

One last thing:



You can get more cash faster by dropping out of a game after you're defeated and joining a new one with a new mech. I don't reccomend it - I did that a lot early on, and it was a mistake.

Watching other players - spectating the end of a match? That'll teach you more about positioning, weapon grouping, and loadouts, than hours spent trolling the forums. Watch lots of games! Pay attention to what people use and how they use it... and, most especially, what doesn't work.

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2. An interlude about Weapon Grouping:
---------------------

One of the most important skills you can pick up in the early game is Weapon Grouping - i.e., assigning different weapons to different weapon groups to fire them. This is often the most confusing thing for a new player, but it really does mean the difference between 'beginner' and 'intermediate' mechwarrior.

Grouping weapons is a personal thing. I like grouping by purpose - I'll put all of my equivalent range and firing characteristic weapons on the same key. My Medium Lasers and SSRMs, for instance, will go on my 'brawling' weapon group. LRMs get their own button. Long range projectiles? Another one. Other players group for heat, or even 'sides of mechs' - whatever suits you!

To group your weapons, look at the 'matrix' on the right that shows your weapon status. Think of it like a spreadsheet - your arrow keys move your cursor around the sheet, and right-control toggles the weapon group for the selected weapon (wherever your cursor sits).

Take the time to set up your weapon groups in the training grounds before you go on a mission - they follow you from game to game, until you own your own mechs and start changing your loadouts.

We'll get to that in a sec.

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3. Your First Mech.
---------------------

After 25 games, you should have a considerable sum saved up - something around 8-10 million C-Bills. This is enough to buy just about any normal mech in the game... but usually just one.

At this point, you should have a good feel for how the game works, how the different mech chassis (in general!) operate, and what each class of mech does. Your first decision, then, is "what kind of chassis suits my playstyle?"

• Light players harrass and support, and are the best scouts. They're sneaky, small, quick, have practically no armor against a concentrated attack, and - though often startlingly well-armed for their size - can't really do the same kind of massive damage their larger brethern can. Move or die!
  
• Medium players are support mechs, generally fast(er) moving, that bring specific guns to bear on parts of the battlefield as necessary. Good Medium players back up heavies and assaults with guns tailored to a particular purpose - say, running brawling cover for an LRM carrier or augmenting the brawlers with some long-range guns.
  
• Heavy players are your baseline, front-line soldiers. They are slower, but take more punshiment, and excel at a specific role. You want to build your heavy around a purpose, but within that purpose it will be terrifyingly good at its job.
  
• Assaults are the ultra-heavies - the slow-moving behemoths that can do two or three things at once, and have the armor to withstand astounding punishment. While they need their support, they're the lynchpins of an assault, and actually suffer if tailored to too specific a role.

You'll want to pick a class you like, and a basic chassis that appeals to you. Don't worry - it's very hard to pick /wrong/ on a specific chassis; they really do all work, despite conventional wisdom about 'best'.


However, before you click 'buy', there's one, last, HUGE thing:

Don't worry about the guns you're buying - worry about the Expensive Stuff.

Seriously. When buying your first chassis, concentrate on the chassis you like, but the variant of that chassis that has as much of the following as possible:

• An XL engine (of the highest rating available to you!)
  
• Double heatsinks.
  
• Endo Steel internals.
  
• Specialized gear (LB-10X autocannon, Guardian ECM, Beagle Active Probe, NARC, or other unusual items!)

Why? Well, this stuff is EXPENSIVE later... and once you own it, you can use most of it it on anything that can use it, especially that engine. We'll get to kitting out a mech later, but consider, say, the Light Mech chassis, the Raven (my personal favorite):


- The 2X costs ~2.5 million CBills... but will cost you another 5.5 million just to 'bring up to spec!'
- The 3L costs ~5.8 million CBills... but already has most of the /basic/ upgrades you'll need, plus most of its equipment can be used in other mechs.

Another one?

The Trebuchet - another of my favorite mechs - has several variants. Consider, though, that the TRB-3C already has double heat sinks and a 5 million credit engine that can be used in lots of other mechs (and is often considered a 'best in weight engine for them)!.

Sure, it's three /million/ credits more expensive than the TBT-7K, but the engine + double heatsinks of the 3C would cost you far more than the difference in price!

Buy the most advanced mech in your chosen category with your starting creds. You will NOT regret it.

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4. Tinker!
-----------------

Once you own your own mech, the temptation (and fun!) is in the tinkering with it to get it just so- believe me, I understand.

However, tinkering in the live game requires that you spend C-Bills, and you'll often tinker your way into designs that just don't work for you, or - worse - that you back out of before a match. To help avoid losing money on gear, use a mechlab simulator.

Personally, I like Smurfy's. http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/mechlab - go play. You'll see.

However, no matter what you buy, no matter what you load- never. I MEAN NEVER - throw away old gear. Don't sell it, don't get rid of it - /keep/ it in your inventory!

Why? You can use it on any mech. After lots of tinkering? You'll have so much personal stock, rebuilding your mech costs you nothing. Sell it, and you'll only get back a fraction. Keep this stuff to use later - you never know when you'll want to monkey around with that six-flamer build!

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5. Stuff I wish People had Told Me:
-----------------

So. The above will get you through your first 25 games. Thing is, though - there's a lot of little twiddly details that I wish I'd known on my first game that I didn't find out without significant research. Hopefully, these things will help you - in no particular order:

• On heat and Double Heatsinks:
  
  
  With the game in its current incarnation, there is absolutely no reason NOT to take double heatsinks on a mech. In fact, it should always be your first upgrade when buying a mech - so much so that I budget 1.5 million credits above mech price when planning out my next mech buy, and won't buy the mech until I can get that scratch together.
  
  I know this is unequivocal, but the play experience between single and double heatsinks is so dramatic that it's the single best improvement you can make to your ride. Period. Bar none.
  
  For those of you that, like me, are veterans of the tabletop, this will actually come as a shock - IS single heatsinks vs. IS double heatsinks were a significant trade with lots of pluses and minuses either way. Here? There's no trade at all - Doubles just win. Period. See the next bit for why!

• On engine heatsinks:
  
  
  When you're building out your mech, you'll notice two things quickly: First, engines come with varying numbers of heatsinks (some even having 'heatsink slots'!), and, second, you'll need 10 heatsinks to 'drop' into a game.
  
  What isn't immediately obvious is that engine heatsinks are actually, mechanically better than internal sinks! Seriously.
  
  Engine heatsinks are part of the weight of the engine (up to 10 - adding extras still costs you weight), and take up no critical spaces (for any number). When you upgrade to double heatsinks, they're actually doubles!
  
  So what does that mean?
  
  If we rate single heatsinks as 1.0, double heatsinks aren't... double. They're rated at 1.4 - a little less than 50% better than a normal heatsink. Heatsinks /in your engine/, though, rate as 2.0 - literally twice as good for the majority of heatsinks any given mech will have!
  
  This means that a bigger engine offers two significant benefits: faster ground speed AND a lot more heat dissipation.
  
  When you're spec'cing out your mech? Pay attention to your engine heatsinks, your weight, and your engine rating. If your heat rating is low, and another ton of engine will get you another heatsink, it's almost always better to boost your engine than to just add a heatsink to the chassis for heat control.
  
  (as an aside, this is why I love the 300/300XL engine - 10 internal heat sinks, two more you can add, and a decent speed in anything up to an assault? It's a nice, sweet-spot engine!)
  
• Bay Doors.
  
  
  Ugh. Bay doors. Nothing messed with me more early on than bay doors.
  
  So, here's the deal: a bunch of mechs have protective armor that swings into place over your missile launchers. When that armor is open, the launchers are exposed and can be damaged by someone with pinpoint weapons and a steady hand. When it's closed, the launchers are more protected, but the doors will have to open to fire.
  
  In practice, having the bay doors closed will slow down your missile firing noticably - enough to throw off your aim.
  
  There is currently no cockpit indicator - you can use the key on your PDF you printed out early on to manually open the doors when precision is required, or to close them when it's not as important to get the missiles out now. Trust me, this makes a /huge/ difference - try it yourself!
  
• Selling Mechs.
  
  
  Lots of people will advise you to never sell mechs in your mechbays. I'm not one of them.
  
  In fact, I will tell you that - at least once you have enough money for a second mech - if you don't like a particular design? Junk it! Better to have a little cash than a mech you're not going to play in the forseeable future.
  
  HOWEVER. NEVER sell your mech's internals! ALWAYS sell the chassis only! This saves you a lot of heartache, even if you whimper over that 8-mil purchase coming back to you as a half-mil of credits. The key is you're not selling the equipment, just the empty shell - and it's just not worth all that much.
  
• ECM and the Beagle Active Probe.
  
  
  One of the cool subgames in MWO is ECM/ECCM - and, especially if you're a light-mecher, you'll end up in the middle of it at some point. Understanding the interaction of ECM and its counters is VITAL, and very poorly explained in the manual.
  
  The Guardian ECM device produces the ECM effect. In a bubble ~200m around your mech, you eliminate enemy targetting from outside in, and enemy mechs inside the bubble can't 'transmit' their targetting data outside of the bubble. Essentially, you make it impossible for enemies to lock on to your position by internal game mechanics - they need to actually talk to each other to find you.
  
  This is a beautiful thing.
  
  However, when you're on the receiving end of ECM, a whole bunch of stuff doesn't work. You can't target enemies, so you can't get target locks. LRMs and SSRMs basically quit working (the latter, completely!). You can't warn your team about enemy positions. Your scouting is pointless.
  
  You'll know you're in an enemy ECM bubble when your minimap in 1st person lights up with "low Signal". You'll know your teammates are in an ECM bubble when their HUD icons show a cellphone's 'Low Signal' bars - if you see that, go help!
  
  Countering ECM is a bit tricky. There are two active counters:
  
  - You can take your Guardian unit and, using the 'j' key, flip it to COUNTER mode. This disrupts an enemy ECM within ~200m... but also removes the protection of your ECM.
  - You can carry the Beagle Active Probe... which does the same, in addition to other benefits, within ~150m.
  
  If you have a Guardian, the BAP doesn't do anything to counter enemy ECM. However, a friendly BAP running with a Guardian will still function correctly!
  
  So, practically? ECM should have tons of counters on the battlefield. Thing is, most people run more guns, and forget about ECCM. That should be food for thought, for most people - especially for anyone that's ever been frustrated by ECM coverage.
  
  In my limited opinion? If you're a brawler (an up-close build) and can't find the space for a BAP, you're cutting your team's throat and limiting the support they can bring to help you out of a bad spot. I has opinions.
  
• Optimizations.
  
  
  If anything has terrible documentation, it's optimizations.
  
  So, here's the deal: the more you play a mech, the more XP it earns. That XP can be used to improve the mech in any number of small ways. These small ways are equivalent across all mechs.
  
  There are three tiers of improvements. Basic improvements are always available to you. Elite improvements become available when you have three (3) mechs of the same chassis (different variants!) that have all basic improvements purchased for them. Master upgrades come open when you unlock all of the Elite skills on three mechs within the same weight class. They do not have to be the same chassis!
  
  Now, basic improvements are nice... but Elite improvements are absolutely game changing... especially because when you unlock all elite improvements on a variant, all of your basic improvements on that variant are doubled.
  
  
  Yes, you read that correctly. DOUBLED. More torso twisting, better heat control, faster accelleration, faster braking... all doubled. PLUS the elite improvements - speed tweak and precision alone will completly change how you play your mech!
  
  What does that mean for you?
  
  For your first mech, commit to a chassis. Stick with one mech, learning at least three of its variants, until you've Elited all three. If you find you don't appreciate some of the variants? Sell 'em!
  
  I am, for instance, Elite on the 2X, 4X and 3L variants of the Raven. I don't like the 2X - I've sold it - but my 4X and 3L are still in the mechbay. On the Trebuchet? I love my 7K, and have elited it and the 5J. However, I like the 3C more than the 5J - the 5J will probably be sold once I've done the work.
  
  The thing is - the difference in the chassis are /astounding/ at elite. It's worth the grind.
  
  (you can also use the time it takes to get elite to 'grind out' C-Bills for your next chassis!)
  
• Premium time? Worth it.
  
  
  I believe in supporting devs - for me, buying 30 days of premium time was a no-brainer. You get more XP and (more importantly) C-Bills, and your progression is much smoother. It has made my enjoyment of the game far better than if I'd tried to stick it out without the time.
  
  if you're enjoying MWO? Grab premium time - you won't regret it!

I will, of course, add more items as I think of them. Here's hoping they help you out!

Edited by JonahGrimm, 05 September 2013 - 09:55 AM.

[Dano_man]

Great points and I would have loved reading this when I first started about 4 weeks ago. I agree with everything you said here with one exception and I have not had enough time to see if this is a problem. I will keep everything on a mech, I don't sell chasis, however because I do change out engines I will sell low power standard engines that I would hope to never use on any of my mechs. If the engine is big enough I could potentially use it on another mech, probably would keep it. But so far I have been sticking to interchanging engines in mechs and actually got rid of the old ones I never ever used. Your thoughts or anyone's on this would be appreciated since I am not through buying mechs.

[Throet]

I would recommend playing around with Smurfy's 'Mechlab simulator before even purchasing your first 'Mech. Specifically, after you think you've found your ideal loadout, take a look at the top right corner, where it tells you how much this is going to cost. If it's more than ~10m CBills, start thinking about what you'll be piloting after your cadet bonus runs out, before you're able to finish the build.

[Dracol]

Jonah, your post should be displayed while new players are downloading the game.

One thing you may want to amend is the reference to selling end/ferro/artimis/double heatsinks. Those four are upgrades to a chassis and can not be sold. You may even want to mention it costs c-bills to refit a chassis with a downgrade.

[JonahGrimm]

@Dracol - Thanks for that! Added a couple of words here and there to hopefully indicate that /most/ items are transferrable; that's a good call.

Let me know if you can think of anything else - heck, you may have something I still don't know.


And, guys - thanks for the kind comments. Much appreciated!

Edited by JonahGrimm, 05 September 2013 - 09:58 AM.

[JonahGrimm]

@Dano117 -

Hrm. That's a good point - I've recently taken to selling off extra Standard engines myself, as the monies are good.

However, personally, I sell off engines that are duplicates rather than even the low-rating ones; I think I may have a hoarding complex on engines, but right now? I just can't justify spending cash on an engine if I've already got it laying around.

Note that there are some gimmick builds I've seen that look like good, silly fun - but you need some low-rated engines for 'em. I probably should sell my Standard 150... but... I ... yeah.


Anyway - extras? Yup. Standards, sure! XLs? Never!

[Scorpyon]

Jonah, nice post. You and I started at about the same time and we have a similar history :-)

All that you've posted is good information...some I wish I had known before I started.

There is a set of videos that I watched before I started my first match, all by the same guy(s), that I highly recommend to all newbs....and I can't find them anymore....maybe No Guts, No Galaxy? They had about 6 starter tutorials that were very good done by Daeron/Bombadil. Somewhere I saw them all grouped together and watched every one of them. I've been looking for them but I can no longer find them :-(

Some other information I had to hunt around for that newbs will find useful..please feel free to cut and paste them back up to your post:

Lasers work like DoT's...the longer you hold them on a target the more damage they'll do. This also means that you can rake them and do SOME damage, but, it won't be optimal, nor will it be localized onto a single part of the mech.

Ammo for Ballistic weapons gives that specific weapon that many shots. IE, AC5 Ammo gives 30 rounds per ton. That's actually 30 shots for a single AC5 (initially, I thought it was just 6 shots of 5 projectiles each).

Missile Ammo is the acutal number of missiles. LRM ammo gives 180 missiles per ton. That's 36 shots for an LRM5, 18 shots for an LRM10, 9 shots for an LRM20.

The distance listed on your HUD for Ballistic and Lasers is the OPTIMAL distance. You will still do damage at longer distances, but, the damage is mitigated the further the shot.

Some weapons have a MINIMUM distance. LRMs, PPC's (last patch) & Gauss (?) come to mind. Shooting LRMs at point blank do absolutely nothing but use heat....SSRMs point blank are a whole 'nother thing :-)

If you have a heat efficiency of less than 1.00 (as listed in the mechlabs), an Alpha Strike will probably shut you down. At less than 1.20 you'll be shutting down a lot. At about 1.30 you can manage and still do optimum damage without shutting down TOO much....two alphas in a row will still shut you down. The point? Learn to manage your heat. If you're at 1.00, only alpha when it's a dying gasp, or you KNOW you're going to get the kill; at 1.20 you can alpha for dps, but, you're going to have to dodge a few seconds to recover heat before firing again.

'O' overrides heat shutdown. You CAN kill yourself with this.
'P' alternately shuts down your mech or starts it up.
These are programmable in your options.

Yes, you CAN hit the good guys and damage them. I didn't know this at first, and did an alpha strike just as a friendly heavy mech moved in front of me...hit him right in the head, dropped him like a box of rocks :-(
Pay attention to where you shoot and where the good guys are. Some friendly fire is unavoidable, but try and keep it to a minimum.

Move and shoot, shoot and move...do NOT stand still. Use the training ground to practice. One of the very neat things that they have in the training grounds is dummy enemy mechs for you to shoot. One of my favorite moves with my Quickdraw is to run straight at the bad guy, alpha him right in the face, jump over his head, spin and alpha him right in the back of the head. It took me about 30 minutes in the training grounds to get it to work the way I liked. It cost nothing but time. USE THE TRAINING GROUNDS.

When you have missiles incoming, MOVE. Move out of sight to cause them to lose target; find high cover that will block the missiles; or get with good guys with Anti-Missile System (AMS). Grouping with 3 or 4 folks all with AMS makes you nearly invinceable with respect to missiles. If you have missiles incoming, and no cover nearby, run to the nearest friendly heavy or assault...almost all of them have AMS. If you just stand there, you'll be hamburger.

That's all I got for now :-)

Scorpyon

[IllCaesar]

This is great. Good job man. I don't really think there's much I could add to this, having been here for just a slightly shorter duration than you have. There is one thing though...

If you are a fan of the Mechwarrior games, and you're starting an account with MWO, plan to begin on a day where you have hours to play, and buy one day of premium time. The Cadet bonus plus premium time will easily put you over 10 million C-Bills. Instead of spending thirty-something, forty-something dollars, you can spend about three dollars and after twenty-five sessions have enough to buy any variant you want, even the most expensive, the Atlas-D-DC. Think of it as a gamble - if you like the game, you just saved yourself hours of grinding. If not, well, you only spent a few bucks on an otherwise free-to-play game. Totally worth it, I wish I had actually done that a week ago when I concocted the idea of creating a new account instead of merely thinking about it.

[Mechteric]

JonahGrimm, on 05 September 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

On the Trebuchet? I love my 7K, and have elited it and the 5J. However, I like the 3C more than the 5J - the 5J will probably be sold once I've done the work.

I would recommend keeping the 5J, or if anything else trade it in for the 7M. You really ought to keep one that has jump jets. The 3C definitely a keeper for its speed, the 7K is the one I decided to sell off since its essentially no better than a hunchback IMO. But assuming as a new player you may not yet have a Hunchback or Blackjack to satisfy your AC20 needs, then keeping it around is a good idea still.

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 05 September 2013 - 11:04 AM.

[Hammerhai]

A trick you can play: If you are running an ECM mech and want to sneak up on an enemy -flip it to counter.
Why?
He does not get the Low Signal warning, so he might react just a smidgen too late.
With thanks to the Spider pilot who came up with that trick.

[SquawkHawk]

Good Info Jonah! Something you may like to add:

New Players often dont realise that the ENDO Steel Structure upgrade is ALWAYS better than the Ferro Fibrous Armor Upgrade:

Example for a Stalker:
FF saves you 1.7 tons for 14 slots but
ENDO saves you 4 tons for 14 slots.

FF does not increase the amount of armor your MECH can carry or make your armor more powerful, it just makes the armour you are carrying a little bit lighter. This lighter armour never saves you as much weight as ENDO steel would have.

Normal Mech upgrade pathway is:
1. DHS (Pretty much mandatory)
2. Endo (Possibly wont fit on some Assault and Heavy builds)
3. For lights or some fast Mediums that can fit it in addition to DHS and ENDO: Ferro Fibrous (but only on some builds)

Basically ENDO Steel Structure is better than Ferro Fibrous Armor.

I put Ferro Fibrous on my first Hunchback, before I realised it was inferior to ENDO and it couldnt fit both. I then bit the bullet and paid the cbills to switch them over.

As Philip Marik said above Smurfys Mech Lab: http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/mechlab is really useful, to get started choose your Mech from the dropdown in the "No Mech Selected box in the top left".
Another useful site when starting to build Mechs is Mechspecs: http://www.mechspecs.com/forum/ which has Mech builds other people have posted.

Edited by SquawkHawk, 05 September 2013 - 03:02 PM.

[stevemac]

this should get a sticky well done

[Rascula]

Really good read, and some great advice.
Should definitely be pinned!

[Lan]

Very nicely written, one of the issues that has kept many of us and I suspect the devs from making more intro material is the constant flux of the game mechanics. When the game is released, things will settle down and we can produce more things like this. I know Jazz is working on a imitative from the users perspective.

This link is to a neutral, build orientated site where you can find all possible makes and shapes discussed. There are plenty of user input from the creators and quite a few videos of the mechs in play. http://www.mechspecs.com

I highly recommend No Guts No Galaxy also for a lot of friendly Battletech, not only the MWO game but for anyone who likes the genre. Everything from MWO games, podcast interviews, comics and funny soundclips. http://www.nogutsnogalaxy.net/

Edited by Lan, 05 September 2013 - 05:35 PM.

[Johnny Two Legs]

A good article.
Seriously, this sort of stuff is what PGI so desperately need for new players.

j2l

[Alaskan Nobody]

Here is for hoping that when the game stabilizing we will get something like this then - massive kudos for a positive intro toward new players.

[Hammerfinn]

Beautiful post, sir. Well done. Must-read for new players--I've already got the url on a sticky-note for when I'm teaching friends.

[Shiro Matsumoto]

Fine work, good sir, fine work.

Edited by John McFianna, 05 September 2013 - 11:16 PM.

[Rushin Roulette]

Well written and formulated. For the counters to ECM you might also want to add the TAG laser and PPC hits.

The TAG laser cancels out the jamming effect of the ECM and the PPC completely neutralises the ECM (including the slowdown for locking that target).

[Jam the Bam]

Excellent post Jonah

You have learned an astounding amount in 2 weeks of play.

The only thing I would add (I apologise if you already have and I overlooked it) is torso twisting is a very important skill to learn:

As the mech is composed of many components that take damage separately, the ideal way of taking damage is to spread it out as much as possible so as not to lose any one specific component (such as your engine, or side torsos if you have an XL) so when you are fighting another mech you want to turn your least damage facing towards them when they shoot then try to focus on their most damaged section. If in doubt just twist like a madman and pray .

Anyway good luck and I hope you enjoy the game.