as a new player I strongly recommend trying all the trial Mechs and weapons, different people do well with different weapons and equipment, I can do ok with any weapon except the AC10 or PPC, but many people swear by those, I need a minimum of 75KPH to be effective but some are quite happy in the 55kph Dire Wolf.
the best Mechs are arguably the Clan Stormcrow and Timber Wolf, but pretty much any Mech can be effective in the right hands.
as for weapons, here is a brief breakdown,
Lasers fire a beam, you must hold the beam on target for its full burn time to deal full damage, small is very short range, medium is short to med range, large is short to long range, the medium does about twice the damage of the small, and the large does about twice the damage of the medium,
ER Lasers weigh the same, and do the same damage as regular lasers but do damage out to longer ranges with more heat and a longer burn time
Pulse Lasers have a shorter discharge time but weigh more and have a shorter range,
Flamers are probably the worst weapon in the game, they blind your enemy and apply heat to your enemy, but apply more heat to you, they are effective against unarmored components
PPCs fire a bolt of energy at the enemy, like ballistic shells they do have travel time,the standard PPC has a minimum range of 90m the ERPPC and regular PPC deal 10 damage, the Clan ERPPC deals 10 to the componant you hit + 2.5 damage each to 2 adjacent components
TAG, a laser pointer, helps you lock onto a target under ECM, and helps get a stronger missile lock, and speeds up lock time
missiles come in 4 basic versions,
NARC fires a missile, which provides a targeting beacon for 30 seconds provided it hits an enemy Mech
LRMs are guided Long Range Missiles, they have a max range of 1km, they can be dumb fired without a lock, if you fire with a lock they will track the target unless it breaks a lock, the Clan version is half the weight of the IS version and while the IS version has a minimum range of 180m the Clan missiles have scaling damage from 0-180 damage, so at 50m a Clan LRM will deal maybe 0.2 damage, the more tubes you fire at once the wider the spread, fire 40 missiles in a volley and some will miss even the largest Mechs, available in 5, 10, 15 and 20 tube variants.
SRMs, basically dumb fire rockets, the more you fire at once the more they will spread, low weight for potentialy high damage at short range, available with 2, 4, or 6 tubes
SSRMs are Streak Short Range Missiles, Streak means homing, you cannot fire them without a lock, if taking streaks it is best to also take an Active Probe or Beagle Active probe, otherwise an ECM will make you unable to use them, only available with 2 tubes for the IS but Clans get 2, 4, and 6 tube versons
Artemus is an upgrade for missiles, it speeds lock on for LRMs and SSRMs and tightens missile spread for LRMs and SRMs but requires you have line of sight on the target to get the benefits, adds 1 ton per launcher
Balistic weapons can be very good, but they weigh more than the other weapon types,
if you are in an Inner Sphere Mech the Autocannons and Ultra AC5 fire a single slug for their damage number, so an AC2 fires a shell for 2 damage, an AC20 does 20 damage. the larger the number the shorter range and lower velocity the projectile is,
for Clan Mechs the ACs fire multiple shells for a share of the total damage, so the Clan (U)AC2 fires 1 shell for 2 damage, the 5 fires 2 sor 2.5 damage each, the 10 fires 3 for 3.333 damage each, and the 20 fires 4 for 5 damage each.
ultra Autocannons can fire twice as fast as normal ACs but at the risk of jamming, the jam takes something like 10 seconds to clear, for the Clans the UAC is outright superior to normal ACs being cheaper and smaller, you have to keep tapping the fire button to get the faster rate of fire, if you just hold down fire it fires at the same rate as the regular AC
the LBX ACs are basically shotguns, they fire a cluster of pellets at the target, the pellets spread so at longer range some will probably miss, thus you will not deal full damage, the LBX is far more effective against unarmored components
the Machine Gun is extremely short range, and fires 10 "bullets" a second, each bulet deals .08 damage against armor however they are extremely good against structure, so against structure each bullet is capable of dealing 1 point of damage (if you get lucky)
the Gauss Rifle is probably the best ballistic weapon, it fires 1 high velocity shell for 15 damage, it still deals limited damage at 2km, this is balanced by a slow 5.5 second reload time and a charge up mechanic, you must hold the fire button down for 0.75 seconds to charge it, then you have 1.25 seconds to release the button to fire, if you do not release within that time you will loose the charge.
Edited by Rogue Jedi, 12 December 2015 - 03:45 AM.