18 replies to this topic

[AutoMechanical]

Hello everyone,

I've only just finished my first 25 matches and have close to 20 Million CBills. I would like to know what is a good noob friendly Mech and build to start out with to better learn the game.

Thankyou for any and all help.

[Wedge Red Leader]

Well, I'd start with a medium or heavy mech first.

Assault mechs are very slow, and you really need to know the maps well to both take advantage of cover and keep up with the team.

Light mechs are very fast, however they are a double edged sword. The speed will get you out of many bad situations, but are fragile. Also, effectively piloting a light mech has little in common with piloting the other classes. Proper positioning is more important the slower your mech is, so starting in the fastest mechs will probably get you into some bad habits.

The Hunchback chassis is a good mech to start off with. I recommend the clan IICs, but if you want IS those hunchbacks are good too.

HBK-IIC - a great ballistic mech, I'd start with a 4 UAC2 build
HBK-IIC-A - laser mech, I'd recommend using pulse lasers to start with
HBK-IIC-B - missile mech, I'd use SRMs

I do recommend you eventually get all three, so you can master the current skill tree.
The bonus is you can use hunchbacks for scouting, and put 1,2 or all 3 of them in your faction warfare drop deck.

Edited by Wedge Red Leader, 11 December 2016 - 06:52 PM.

[Spheroid]

Which trial mech did you most enjoy?

[AutoMechanical]

Spheroid, on 11 December 2016 - 06:22 PM, said:

Which trial mech did you most enjoy?

Crab and Grasshopper are the two I've had the most success with at this point.

[Spheroid]

Lights:
Artic Cheetah

Mediums
Crab
Enforcer
Stormcrow

Heavies
Thunderbolt
Rifleman
Warhammer
Marauder
Timberwolf

Assaults
Battlemaster
Stalker(300 STD)
Kodiak-3

Edited by Spheroid, 11 December 2016 - 06:47 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Hold out if you can and wait for next Friday or the Friday after that for possible mechs sales.

[Warden Xim]

There are a lot of loadouts that players made on the battlemechs section. However i usually prefer coolong the mech and less firepower tan a lot of firepower and a lot of heat. A shutdown on the wrong moment can cost you the match. But if u find an equal numbers of cooling and firepower,then u have all the points for kill mechs.

I don't post here my current Nova loadout because i have a little experience with the game,but i recommend u a clan mech,they are more expensive but have advantages over the inner sphere mechs. I played both btw. And my first mech to test was the Raven X4,i was not successful because i don't know what i was doing. Now i know what i'm doing and i kill some mechs on battlefield. I suggest to still with those c-bills and still try trial mechs,but not for play with them,for observe the battlefield teammates when u are dead. Some people have good loadouts that there are not here writed.

For example on one of my last matches on a different account,i see a Cyclops with 8 Artemis+SRMs 4 and did the job very well. However this mech has capped at close quarters combat and as a new player u must manage all the distances.

A good mix mech is Mauler,have missile,energy and ballistic,but is an assault mech and is slow,maybe a good mech it's Thunderbolt,it's heavy and have all weapons on some variants,and it's very friendly starter player.

But it's up to you,you are the only one that manage ur mech on battlefield,and u are the only one that knows what is better for u. If u say that Crab (energy only) or Grasshopper (energy only too) are what serve u,then an energy mech is what is better for u. Black Knight is another energy based mech. I suggest to go here: http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/ and try loadouts without spend c-bills.

Once u found what u find better,then take notes and apply to the right mech. GL!!

Edited by Warden Xim, 12 December 2016 - 12:31 AM.

[Blind Baku]

When you're starting out you will hit the mech bay wall pretty fast. I'd recommend Clan omin-mechs first (if you intend to master them) since Omni-pods mean you don't need to keep 3 of a kind to run three unique builds.

That said, that advise will be obsolete in the not too distant future.

The larger list is a good start too. I would add
Lights:
Jenner IIC
Locust (unforgiving, brutal, unadulterated speed, also cheap)

Med:
Shadow Cats for range plays, not always noob friendly in a brawl

A lot also revolves around how you want to play. Brawl, 2nd line support, etc... Ultimately the Crab and the Grasshopper are both solid energy boats that should reward your effort.

[Horse Pryde]

I saw above you liked the Crab and the Grasshopper, why? do you like to snipe, run around and flank, utilize the speed of the mech to get kills, support the assaults?
To me finding the mech that fits you right is more about finding the loadout that fits you. You can make many different mechs fit a certain play style.

Also my best recommendation will always be, keep playing the trials till you find a mech you love and want to work with. You wont lose your CBills so you can always impulse buy later one.

[Koniving]

My recommendation is to tell us how you play. This means a lot towards what would be good or bad.

That said since you had success with the crab, go with it. Running them is cheap and easy. Just remember to keep a high ratio of cooling efficiency.

[Rogue Jedi]

In the right hands any Mech can be good, however many people have Mechs they do not like piloting, but to say with anything resembling confidence which Mechs will be good for you I would need more information.
I noticed you say earlier you liked the Crab and Grasshopper, why, what did you like about them?
What weapons do you like/dislike an why
How fast do you want to go
Which is more important firepower or durability
Do you want jumpjets
Answer most of those questions and we should be able to give you a shortlist of suitable Mechs

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 12 December 2016 - 09:33 AM.

[Metus regem]

Everything Koniving said, with a bit more...

Generally speaking, I have two recommended starter mech families.

Hunchback and Centurion.

The Hunchback offers a good bit of verity in terms of varaints, but the HBK-4G is one of the best teachers of basic gunnery in the game, this is due to it's reliance on the short ranged but very powerful AC/20.

On the flip side, the CN9-A is a fantastic teacher of rolling damage across your entire mech, on the plus side, the Centurion family are one of the few IS chassis that work well with either Standard Engines or XL engines.

[Kurvi]

Tangential, but I believe the code for the free NCIX mech is still works. Might be worth playing with.

[Lupis Volk]

Kurvi, on 12 December 2016 - 10:51 AM, said:

Tangential, but I believe the code for the free NCIX mech is still works. Might be worth playing with.

He's got that.

[Jiffy]

No mention of the regular Hunchback? That's what I always recommend as a first mech. The Hunchback 4SP in particular is very forgiving to play. It's fast, so you can escape bad situations pretty easily, and has great structure quirks that render it very tanky for a medium. Load up 2 SRM6 and 5 ML, and the biggest STD engine you can fit, and go brawl!

[Jingseng]

As kon mentioned, the more information and detail you give, the better the answer you receive in return.

the more generic the question, the more generic the answer.

[Lupis Volk]

Jingseng, on 12 December 2016 - 05:37 PM, said:

As kon mentioned, the more information and detail you give, the better the answer you receive in return.

the more generic the question, the more generic the answer.

This is his first Mech sim game.

I've set up a brawler build for his NCIX Cent. He's enjoying that and the Crab. But i'll tell him he should refine his question of choice and detail his preferred play style.

Edited by Lupis Volk, 12 December 2016 - 07:54 PM.

[harmageddon]

What is the reasoning behind prompting us to make such a heavy decision when we know so little about the game?

As a dirty casual, it will probably be around summer 2017 before I have enough CBills to consider purchasing a different frame. I think it's great that we have so much to spend our merc wages on, but I think it's kinda odd that there isn't more obvious progression.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I can't figure out how to experiment with trial mech loadouts. I kinda want to try an SHC with an AC loadout for example. Would it be unreasonable to have some mainstream chassis that become increasingly pricey as you migrate them into sidegrades?

If you give people a large sum, and then by their actions they only earn <0.5% of that by their actions, the natural psychological response to that seems entirely predictable. If it weren't for my friend who plays and his clan who tries to explain it to me, I doubt I would remain invested in the experience. It seems like it would accomplish the same thing to just have us do some story and choose one of several starter pokemon mechs with middle of the road stats.

It's cool that you want to give us so much choice; I just find it a bit overwhelming.

I used to expend a fair bit of time and money on Planetside 2, because I was very invested in it. They had a very intuitive progression/side-grade model even if the class balance was never very good.

[Koniving]

In response...
There's some 30+ years of Battletech fans that PGI is trying to cater to as well as new players. Progression would make sense, however the Mechwarrior game series was very pivotal in allowing player freedom -- well beyond what the source material would really allow when 'genuinely' playing it and to not have that freedom especially in this format would probably upset about half the player base.

....the other half would probably love it. At least a third.

Individual chassis suit roles and play-styles to varying degrees. Some suit literally anybody (the Hunchback is one such example in MWO's implementation) and some better suit specific types of players (Dragon and Phoenix Hawk, for example, best suit the same type of player (run-and-gun, arm-use heavy, run one way look a different way and shoot a third way style players)... which is really far removed from most playstyles, and the polar opposite of the play-style a Dire Wolf or King Crab would suit, those being the sort 'if I look at you, you will run; if I stare at you, you and everyone you know will die. Get behind me, I dare you' players).

I do agree it would be nice to have more story and lore in MWO and its contexts. It is often a big complaint. Some of the freedom in choice does stem, however, in the assumption that most of the people coming in already have had some progression in past Mechwarrior games or in the Battletech tabletop and may already have their favorite mechs.

It seems PGI is saving lore/story/progression (evolution) through mechs for the single player game Mechwarrior 5, recently announced.

And "Battletech" the PC Game, by Harebrained Schemes (owned by the original creator of the Battletech tabletop game).



PGI's most recent statement is that it considers MWO to be the multiplayer component to its upcoming game, which from the sound of it will have a much more progression-oriented style to it.

Edited by Koniving, 15 December 2016 - 08:27 PM.