27 replies to this topic

[Lily from animove]

Ok, I try to explain you how I use my Nova Prime and how most People should try to play their trial Nova Prime. It works quite well for me, so it should do that for you as well.

While this one has a tc1 and 4 MG's additional to the Trial version and leaving some DHS out, they both play nearly the same. (tested it with my unskilled alt account). The Trial version has 3 more heatsinks to its advanatge.

Some basic tactics how I use mine (not entirely sure now if it has 2t of MG ammo or an additional heatsink:

Wepaon groups:

1 chainfire left arm
2 chainfire right arm
3 full volley left arm
4 full volley right arm
5 MG's - for my custom one

Skill unlocks (for non Trials):
1. cool run
2. kinetic burst
3. hard break
4. Heat containment
twist stuff is not that important in first place.

Some starting base behaviors:
- Never try to be the first guy around the corner in unknown territory.
- stick with ecm if avaialble.
- stay at LRM save areas
-- so basically anything where you can get out of locks very fast to make LRM's miss you.
-- cover that eats the LRM's like any high building blocking the arc or the rocks in canyon forets colony
- keep moving if uncovered, because then the LRM's may probably not all hit your CT.
- don't overheat
- be patient
- stop being a hero

Your geometry:
You are huge and your arms are vey low. At the beginning this is very frustrating. Without a feeling how many of your mech is covered this leads very often to your arms being shot while you think you are in cover. On hilltops you need to expose yourself a lot before you can fire over them. But having most firepower in the arms is not only a downside. Your aim is agile by the fact you can aim up and down in very big angles + sideways. Shooting from above downwards works very nice. you are not as much restricted like other more Torso armed mechs. Use free view to shoot at very low played opps. Sometimes at HPG or Alpine, the radar in your cockpoit can block sight to lower placed opponents. Using the free view (crtl by default) helps to "put down" the radar. at HPG when opponents hides down in the map and you stand at the top edge to these entrances you can use your geometry for your favor. You can easily shoot below there and see them approaching or shooting at their feet before they can see you. And so you have enough time to shoot and retreat before they can see you. A Volley of 6 CERML will make most opponents retreat back.
Torsotwisting hardly works. It does help a bit, but skilled opponents will be able to hit your CT wven with twisting. Thats why appearing, striking and appearing is the best method wiht your Nova geometry.

Pay attention to UAV's
Pug Life is hard Life, many people there do not pay attention to UAV's But when you seem to be constantly locked or teammates while no opponent is to be seen, there is mostlikely a UAV somewhere. Try to find and take it down. If its right above you, well then try to find a proper cover that covers you form the opponents directions LRM fire. Do not pop out as long as the UAV is active, someone may have targeted you already.

Modules:
Atm, I am using UAV and Airstrike, but I rarely use my airstrike at all, because I either forget it, or I am just bad with placing it right, I may replace with improved UAV.
But the UAV is a good thing to have at many maps. revealing the opponents position esepcially to see whats below you in the canyons is very helpful. It reveals you also, where opponents are looking to and where you can appear, strike unseen and retreat.

Pop out and retreat or run and retreat.
Now this is very much a situational behavior. Something you need to know the map for very well and for what you need a good feeling what the fight is doing. But basically:
If you think no one will know where you appear, pop out fire a volley of an arm at your opponent, quickly analyse the situation: is anyone going to focus on you or not? If yes instant return to cover. If not, you can quickly click and fire 3-5 Lasers of your second arm before returning. This depends on how your heatstatus is and how hot the map is. But always return, try never to be exposed for a long time. You aren't a heavy or Assault and you can not take much shots. And you aren't fats enough to dodge except maybe some PPC's. Only go out into the open when the battle is already running and your opponent is focused on other mechs. But still stay close to cover. If a opponent you can not expect to be killed within a Volley and some single lasers shoots at you, retreat. You can not risk any open terrain fights vs. heavies or assaults that have good bunch of weapons in proper range to your weapons. You can not swarm around them like a kintaro.


Targeting:
Well, Nova is hot and will always be hot. You can throw out a lot of damage in a short time but then you are stuck to very low damage. And your damage if all hits 100% the same section will not be able to take out much, you are theoretically able to kill lights and a few mediums and but you will probably only core most mediums. But anything else is not a target to take on directly if you can't stay behind it. Even Nova vs. atlas and DW's is not an option, you are not agile enough and too big to constantly stay behing them. So don't try to be a ninja light guy back scratcher. Be a backstabber coward.
Whenever you have the chance to unlaod a Volley in the back CT do it. It will (when Hitreg likes you) core the back of the target and deal a good bunch of damage to the CT. This will cause the opponent to be more careful the rest of the game. But don't run for the backstab kill. Better retreat and let your damage do affect the battlefield. Your lights will mostlikely be the finisher for open backs.
Aim for vital things. When you coverpoping like in canyon you mostlikely try to hit anything and retreat. Thats fine for achieving some attrition on the opponents and getting assists. But when you are in a battle where others fight too and you are not getting attention take yourself time to gather the target info!!!. You can not unload much firepwer before you are out of battle for cooling down your mech. Your shots must hit where needed. Main target is of course the CT. But when you see and can take out a whole arm or Sidetorso on a mech having important arms there, do so. You are a support mech, anything helping the mainbattle is important, even if you don't get the kill. So don't wait until the Direwolf gets a orange CT to get the kill, because this may grant the DW another 100 damage to do and do serveral damage to your team.
What your mech can do very well is to core a section. And cored sections are very often where people aim for. So you can partially influence what poeple target for. And so don't core uneneccassary sections just because you can hit your opponent. So when the Opponent is torsotwisting and his arms are at full health, Don't waste your heatbar to shoot at an Atlas' armored arm. Better wait until he turns back. Because if you unlaod you will mostlikely by heat not be able to deal much damage to his vital sections anymore.
And know your amount of damage, A cored but undamaged naked DW CT is not a valid target to rush at. You will not be able to take his internal HP out and even less if some damage spreads to other sections. But for him, your HP even with armor are like a cored Opponent. No stare battles, no heroism.
Be carefull with lights. While you are a big threat for lights, be careful with some of them. Currently ravens and spiders from ym EU connection with 110ms are horrible to fight. They seem to have some special laser Hitreg issues. Even if you perfectly hit them lots of damage is going to be gone. Don't try to entirely solo them. Also you are FAT, and with FAT I mean nearly atlas FAT. But you are fast. In narrow passages like the Cities a "flying by" light is indeed something you can make run into you and get stuck for a few seconds. Thats an evil way you can deal with them to make them an easier target for you or teammates.

Never Overheat.
Just never, until you are 100% sure that the overheat process WILL kill your opponents and you are 99% safe. You are too easily shot with your low HP, and you can not take much overheat damage due to low internal HP. So don't even think about the override button. Or try override and fire 12 CERML in Testing grounds.

You have JJ's
Well you cannot unequip them, so use them. JJ's are a good way to peak over a hill, even if you may not be able to shoot over it, you can "scout" whats behind it. Especially on Caustic this is very helpfull. Also when you know the opponent is not paying attention the JJ's can bring you on the hill to fire and retreat. Hillpeaking works nice on the Nova as well, if you are sure you are not focused. Nova has decent JJ's. They are punchy enough to get you out of the Canyon. Or to simply get over or on most other environment. Actually there is nothing special about Nova and JJ's to talk about, except use them. I rarely see other Nova pilots using them on the battlefield. Best usage is to make short way drops from high locations because your JJ's will have enough power to negate falling damage.

Take any other mech serious.
Every other mech can be a serious Opponent. While many heavies or assaults may not care to face specific mechs, as a Nova Pilot, you need to take any opponent serious.

When everything runs bad.
Everything is bad. It happens from time to time to just fail by running into a crappy situation. In a Nova this is often the end. It's quite an unforgiving mech compared to others. Deal with it and retry it. Probably unlaod a full alpha into something important.At least leave a serious wound to one of your opponents before your existence vanishes form the battlefield.

Lots of gaming needed.
Imho, the Nova is one of the mechs you need a lot of experience for. The more you play it, the more you get the right feeling for it. If you play it a lot you just pay a quick view on the heatbar before engaging and you do know how many you can fire without overheating. If you play enough, you know what places on the maps you can shoot and from where you can shoot at them. Because your geometry is quite different from many mechs. Same counts for cover, A medium of that size and wide build plays a lot different in finding the right cover. that is something you will figre out by playing and failing. Which mostlikely will tell you what not to do.
Whenever I use a mech that I played only a fraction of time compared to my Nova, It's very visible that the nova is extremely unforgiving. Even minor mistakes can lead to serious troubles. While this counts for all mechs, in other mechs that I am not so familiar with this is often never that penalising. I think improving your Nova gameplay is more about avoiding mistakes on your own side than improving you playskills with the mech itself. There is hardly much to improve. You boat a lot of lasers, and you fire and track on the opponent. But as said in the long post before. Avoiding missplacement of yourself in the battlefield and overheating are major keys to play the Nova. And Patience, Patience is the no.1 virtue to avoid these mistakes.

TL:DR, it's a guide, there is no tl:dr

[eFTy]

Nice guide. I only tried the Nova in Testing Grounds and even there I failed miserably. But I am a Hunchback 4P afficionado so learning to drive this thing is at the top of my bucket list.

[Communism]

An important thing to add.

When you know you are mere seconds from dieing, hit the override button (O), and unload both your arms, making sure to wait the 0.5 seconds between them so that the ghost heat doesn't instapop you too quickly.

Sometimes you can fire more than 1 alpha this way and you can often take someone down with you if all your damage is on the center torso of your enemy.

The Nova is most definitely my favorite Mech in the game, even more than Timberwolf and Direwolf.

I'm looking forward to Eliteing and Mastering the Nova so that I can get back to 12 ERML alphas (Had to lower myself to 11 ERML alphas to not auto-overheat since I don't have elite yet).

Edited by Communism, 17 September 2014 - 07:12 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Communism, on 17 September 2014 - 07:07 AM, said:

An important thing to add.

When you know you are mere seconds from dieing, hit the override button (O), and unload both your arms, making sure to wait the 0.5 seconds between them so that the ghost heat doesn't instapop you too quickly.

Sometimes you can fire more than 1 alpha this way and you can often take someone down with you if all your damage is on the center torso of your enemy.

The Nova is most definitely my favorite Mech in the game, even more than Timberwolf and Direwolf.

I'm looking forward to Eliteing and Mastering the Nova so that I can get back to 12 ERML alphas (Had to lower myself to 11 ERML alphas to not auto-overheat since I don't have elite yet).

Well you don't alpha all 12, you gire them in volleys, alpha would mean ALL Lasers. So overriding and volelyfire 2 arms wotha delay of 0,5 secs only works when you still have a good bunch of internal HP, otherwise your overheat process kills you. or the opponent kills you before your lasers are available to shoot again.

An unskilled Overriden Nova alphaing all 12 Lasers kills yourself in like 2 seconds.
Non overriden, you are out for like 36 seonds in the overheat status. And you come back with deep red CT.
I recorded some stuff, but I can not find any free and easy to use video editing tool allowing to add some text to a movie and keeping it 16:10 ratio. Windows Movie Maker only knows 16:9 and 4:3 putting ugly black bars on the outsides.

[Communism]

Lily from animove, on 17 September 2014 - 07:22 AM, said:

Well you don't alpha all 12, you gire them in volleys, alpha would mean ALL Lasers. So overriding and volelyfire 2 arms wotha delay of 0,5 secs only works when you still have a good bunch of internal HP, otherwise your overheat process kills you. or the opponent kills you before your lasers are available to shoot again.

An unskilled Overriden Nova alphaing all 12 Lasers kills yourself in like 2 seconds.
Non overriden, you are out for like 36 seonds in the overheat status. And you come back with deep red CT.
I recorded some stuff, but I can not find any free and easy to use video editing tool allowing to add some text to a movie and keeping it 16:10 ratio. Windows Movie Maker only knows 16:9 and 4:3 putting ugly black bars on the outsides.

When you know you are mere seconds from dieing

Edited by Communism, 17 September 2014 - 07:31 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Communism, on 17 September 2014 - 07:31 AM, said:

When you know you are mere seconds from dieing

your opponent sonyl need mere seconds to kill you at all, so you either are in a situation where you won't have mere seconds.
or you still can get into cover.

your decscribed scenario requires:

fire 6 lasers, wait 0,51 secs, fire again 6 lasers. this takes 3,01 seconds when you finish shooting your second volley. Now to pull out another alpha you have to wait for another 3 seconds to cool down all lasers and another 1,25 second sto fire them off.

makes 7,26 seconds and at all, which I would consider a lot time in the heat of a battle. So when you know you are "mere seconds" from dying all you may be able to do is fire all the remaining lasers or put out an alpha instantly. But whole 7,26 seconds, thats a lot time.

[Communism]

Lily from animove, on 17 September 2014 - 07:46 AM, said:

your opponent sonyl need mere seconds to kill you at all, so you either are in a situation where you won't have mere seconds.
or you still can get into cover.

your decscribed scenario requires:

fire 6 lasers, wait 0,51 secs, fire again 6 lasers. this takes 3,01 seconds when you finish shooting your second volley. Now to pull out another alpha you have to wait for another 3 seconds to cool down all lasers and another 1,25 second sto fire them off.

makes 7,26 seconds and at all, which I would consider a lot time in the heat of a battle. So when you know you are "mere seconds" from dying all you may be able to do is fire all the remaining lasers or put out an alpha instantly. But whole 7,26 seconds, thats a lot time.

Your contrived scenario would require me to die within 0.51 seconds of me starting the first shot.

IRL you don't know exactly how long you will live, but you can be certain that you will not get the accuracy of that calculation down to the hundreds of milliseconds between full 12 laser single alpha and the 0.51 seconds.you need to wait to be able to do a 2x6 laser staggered alpha.

You most certainly can get more than one alpha out in an override without coreing yourself sometimes because of how the override mechanic works.

[Mad Ox]

My prime I switched to 2 - ERLL and 10 - ER SL (before range was nerfed, but even still probably stay this way). Think I did the 4 M.Guns but been a week or 2 since last played.

ER LL use at start of battle while everyone is at LRM ranges long range dueling back and forth. Helps keep from from rushing into a brawl which at start of battle will kill ya fast.

ER SL each arm is a separate group with Chain fire. Hot map or getting near over ride Chain fire helps keep things in control. But if i need firepower instead of holding down fire button, I just rapidly tap button rapidly firing each laser not quite Alpha/Group fire but pretty close. Allows me to keep things simpler with less buttons to push instead of having chainfire and group fire buttons for each arm.

Found to be quite a good mixture of range ER LL still hit very hard with good range and brawling hard hitting 10 ER SL hit hard and recycle fast.

Edited by Mad Ox, 17 September 2014 - 09:33 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Communism, on 17 September 2014 - 07:53 AM, said:

Your contrived scenario would require me to die within 0.51 seconds of me starting the first shot.

IRL you don't know exactly how long you will live, but you can be certain that you will not get the accuracy of that calculation down to the hundreds of milliseconds between full 12 laser single alpha and the 0.51 seconds.you need to wait to be able to do a 2x6 laser staggered alpha.

You most certainly can get more than one alpha out in an override without coreing yourself sometimes because of how the override mechanic works.

yes in reality this works even less. What is an alpha when you speak about 12 CERML? firign them ALL 12? you said about delay of 0,51 secs.

But as said, your scenario would need the required tiem I calculated, or maybe more since you won't hit perfect timing.
And this is a lot time, and without knowing how long you gonna live, prepareing such a "long time" scenario is strange,. In 7 seconds which is what you need to execute the whole scenario, you would also find some cover. Except some lights and mediums chasing you. And when you really think: FUUU Im about to die, then you will mostlikely not have this time.

I am not sure why you say die within 0,51 seconds. because when you fire volley number one you do not overheat. you only overheat after volley number two. So your way to use override here would only make sense, when you volley 2x6 ML and whant to execute anther full alpha after these two volleys. Or another single alpha. And when you expect to die so early, that you wont live after the second volley to execute another Volley, there is hardly any sense to not fire ALL lasers in the first shot.

also, why 0,51 seconds again? because your scenario executes at time 0 when you fire the first volley. which means already 1,25 seconds before you can wait for further 0,51 seconds to fire the second volley.

[Communism]

Lily from animove, on 18 September 2014 - 01:35 AM, said:

Third reply full of rhetorical questions, assertions and straw men.

Not going to feed the troll any longer.

Have fun with your ******** psychopathy on your own.

[Kmieciu]

When you are outnumbered just enable the override and fire everything you've got!
Very Honorable!

[totgeboren]

Communism, on 18 September 2014 - 01:57 AM, said:

Not going to feed the troll any longer.

Have fun with your ******** psychopathy on your own.

Talk about overreacting. The only thing odd here is that one counts the 0.51 sec delay to minimize ghost heat from when the lasers have finished their beam duration, while the other counts from when they start their beam duration. Hardly a difference that would warrant calling someone a troll or psychopath wouldn't you say?
If the lasers need to finish firing and then require a 0.51 sec delay to avoid ghost heat, then yes, it would take a really long time to fire off all the lasers in two volleys, much more time than what you have if you are seconds away from dying.

I personally though the ghost heat timers counts from when the gun starts firing, not from when it's done firing, meaning you only need 0+0.51+1.25 = 1.76 seconds to fire all 12 lasers without ghost heat (or, see his post from before, all the maths add up, but might be based on an incorrect statement. I don't know from when the ghost heat timer resets, start of firing or end of firing?).

[Lily from animove]

totgeboren, on 18 September 2014 - 03:26 AM, said:

Talk about overreacting. The only thing odd here is that one counts the 0.51 sec delay to minimize ghost heat from when the lasers have finished their beam duration, while the other counts from when they start their beam duration. Hardly a difference that would warrant calling someone a troll or psychopath wouldn't you say?
If the lasers need to finish firing and then require a 0.51 sec delay to avoid ghost heat, then yes, it would take a really long time to fire off all the lasers in two volleys, much more time than what you have if you are seconds away from dying.

I personally though the ghost heat timers counts from when the gun starts firing, not from when it's done firing, meaning you only need 0+0.51+1.25 = 1.76 seconds to fire all 12 lasers without ghost heat (or, see his post from before, all the maths add up, but might be based on an incorrect statement. I don't know from when the ghost heat timer resets, start of firing or end of firing?).

Gonna test this today, But I am quite sure its when they end firing, because before the heatnerf I could shoot both arms in volleys without overheating. But whenever I accidently shot a bit too early after the first I overheated, so at leats a part of ghostheat should then appear.

Kmieciu, on 18 September 2014 - 02:14 AM, said:

When you are outnumbered just enable the override and fire everything you've got!
Very Honorable!

At least you will instant pop yourself not granting the opponent any damage and component destruction related rewards.

[Kmieciu]

Lily from animove, on 19 September 2014 - 03:14 AM, said:

At least you will instant pop yourself not granting the opponent any damage and component destruction related rewards.

To be frank, I've never done this. I don't even remember what button I use for overriding shutdown.
We're all in this together, grinding C-Bills. If you are the last one to die, shoot at multiple enemies moments before you go down. That way each of them will get multiple savior kill assists.

Edited by Kmieciu, 19 September 2014 - 03:29 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Kmieciu, on 19 September 2014 - 03:28 AM, said:

To be frank, I've never done this. I don't even remember what button I use for overriding shutdown.
We're all in this together, grinding C-Bills. If you are the last one to die, shoot at multiple enemies moments before you go down. That way each of them will get multiple savior kill assists.

I know ^^ thats what I do too, just try to hit as many different mechs as possible and hope someone else will kill something, becaue then you get some C-Bills for assists. But when you are the last guy on the battlefield it isn't working like that xD

also Override is 'O' its too far away to be used, and its good when you use a Nova to have it that far away.

[That Dawg]

Communism, on 17 September 2014 - 07:07 AM, said:

I'm looking forward to Eliteing and Mastering the Nova so that I can get back to 12 ERML alphas (Had to lower myself to 11 ERML alphas to not auto-overheat since I don't have elite yet).

uhm.....with cool shot, fully mastered Nova...you still do NOT want to alpha strike, even on cold map, even full idle (heat)

[That Dawg]

...silly communist...

[Lily from animove]

ThatDawg, on 19 September 2014 - 03:56 AM, said:

uhm.....with cool shot, fully mastered Nova...you still do NOT want to alpha strike, even on cold map, even full idle (heat)

I guess he means with alpha volleys of both arms. For Nova pilots thats the real therm of "Alpha", there is only the other term called "Fire all the laz0rs" which is a standed Alpha by definition of other Pilots. But no Nova pilot is using it because all that used it toasted themselfs out of Life.

Actually, i never tested full 12CERML alpha on a cold map on skilled Nova. I wonder how much CT is left after such a strike. Gets on the todays To-Do list.

[That Dawg]

^ trust me, you're as orange as if you'd stood in front of a direwolf for 10 seconds...you're only 94%, but cored, front, and back.

you shut down for so long, you begin to wonder if you're actually dead or not.

I am unable to alpha left, then right immediately without shutting down on most maps

[That Dawg]

Nova, but only 10 ERML's