13 replies to this topic

[Shadey99]

As you may have seen already with the Artic Wolf & Osiris, I've been going through and evaluating all the newest mechs since I own the pack and I put in more than 40 hours playing them so far. This one has taken a good bit of time for reasons you will see below...

The Nova Cat is a clan omnimech and so has all several fixed components: No FF, fixed EE, XL 280 engine (base speed of 64.8 kph). They also do not have an option for Jump jets, ECM, or MASC.

Overall Impressions: The Nova Cat is slow for a clan heavy and lacks redeeming mobility options. It's also got huge 'shield' arms which tend to suck up damage, however they also hold 80% of your weapons. The sloping CT also tends to be decently easy to hit from the side by someone who is a good shot. Is there something good to say about it? Not that I've found. At best other mechs in it's weight class do the same thing better.

Variant Notes:

Arguably the best arms are the ones with ballistics: The NCT-C right arm with 3 ballistic hardpoints and the NCT-D left arm with a ballistic and energy hard point. The arms from the NCT-B and Cobra Cat heroes look to be good with 3 missile or 2 missile and 1 energy seem good, but with how easy the arms break SRMs are pretty much out so you want LRMS or ATMs instead. If you want energy the NCT-A and NCT-Prime have 2-3 energy hard points.

For torsos their is basically no reason not to go for the NCT-B of Cobra Cat. Both have single high mounted energy hard points in the torsos. No other torsos have any hard points.

So as you can see the arms hold almost all weapons you can have. If this mech had more torso hard point options it wouldn't be so bad. You could shield with the arms and use the torso mounts as your main guns. With just 2 energy hard points it's far to easy to end up with only a pair of ER PPCs or LPLs (the largest energy weapons the clans have). Which is underwhelming for a 70 ton clan mech.

Comparisons:

Hellbringer: Faster, lighter (by 5 tons), has ECM torsos, and most of at least half it's mounts are in the torsos. The only downside is it has less tonnage to use for weapons do to it's lack of EE (HB has 36.5 tons stripped, NC has 47.5).

Summoner: The same tonnage as the Nova Cat, but is faster and has jump jets for much higher mobility. Long term players no the pains the summoner has had finding good niches when up against the HBs and Timber Wolves. It's still arguably at least as good as the NC and has better mobility to use a pair of heavy energy weapons than the NC.

Night Gyr: These mechs look very similar at a quick glance, both visually and in features. They even have many similar loadout options (NCT-C and NGT-C both have triple ballistic arms). However with jump jets and more torso options the Night Gyr is better in almost all cases. So if your considering the Nova Cat or Night Gyr, go Night Gyr.

[panzer1b]

I agree, novacat is really meh with its combination of atrocious mobility (its not as bad as night gyr but its in that same bracket), lack of armor quirks, and bad (ok not bad, terrible) hitboxes. I can almost always dump 90% of a laser burn exactly where i want it to go on a novacat, and well, thats a very bad thing. Finally, its so wide, that you have convergence issues, and have to expose a huge amount to get all your guns downstream.

Its not DOA or anything, but ive had a hard time justifying it over any other clan heavy, even the niche summoner and orion and maddog do their respective niches better, and the more generalistic timby/ebon/helby do general builds better.

[Koniving]

I have personally found the Nova Cat to be an exceptional mech through my varied, less meta build designs. It was actually the fastest "Escalation" chassis that I have (out of itself, Nightstar and Arctic Wolf) to rack up the damage events on and the very first mech where the stock omnipods were actually viable without wanting or yearning to change them. Its mobility does not bother me, I'm a jack of all trades and honestly I tend to slow down my lighter mechs in favor of heftier weapon loadouts. This thing is a walking weapons platform and its lack of Hover Jets™ also does not bother me.


My singular, most game crippling gripe about it, however, is the god damn animations. The lower leg actuator does NOT move at any time, and when running even without speed tweak it hobbles in a very weird way, especially if you twist to the extreme left or right while running (I mean seriously that wouldn't just whiplash the pilot, that would outright kill the pilot inside!)

If you don't watch yourself move, however, I find that it is a very solid mech that plays similar to a lighter Assault. While not necessary, it also can play favorably to forward-loading the armor to extreme values, LRMs do not miraculously hit the back while facing the enemy as it does with many other Clan and IS mechs of humanoid shape.

My second complaint is the lack of lower arm actuators as an option. My preferred gameplay style loves arm-mounted weapons...but those are only as useful as can be with the ability to aim independently of the torso. The Nova Cat, in all forms that I have played (the main three Configs; I refuse to call them variants, some of us need to uphold some lore), lack lower arm actuators.

The visual range from the cockpit is quite exceptional and I especially like the modern low-windows on the far sides which have in fact help me spot sly little stealth Locusts that thought they were cute (and I suppose thanks to the lack of the arms tracking my pilot's head, they were also completely unaware that I was fully aware of them walking beside me and imitating me, so when I finally decided to do something about the little pair of clowns I caught them completely off guard, one shotting both of them back to back with a twin LPL blast to one of their legs, each so that they'd be stuck limping while I had some cruel fun with them).

All in all, I could say I'm completely happy with them if they had lower arm actuators....and some goddamn proper animations.

But that is just my opinion.

Edited by Koniving, 29 October 2017 - 01:27 PM.

[admiralbenbow123]

So, here is my opinion on this mech.
First, I'd say that it is an ok mech and it can actually be a good alternative to a Night Gyr and here's why: It has the same speed and jump distance as the Night Gyr but it has better turn speed and torso yaw speed. So, If you want to do some pop-tarting with dual gauss or dual ppc the Nova Cat is not a bad option. Although, I have to point out that this mech's arms are much wider when compared to the Night Gyr's.
Now I'd like to go over it's general strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths:
1)Great pod space for it's weight, which means that you can carry a lot of weapons.
2)Good hardpoints.
3)Can run a lot of different builds somewhat effectively.

Weaknesses:
1)Lack of lower arm actuators on most omnipods, except the NCT-C left arm.
2)Most hardpoints are mounted in the arms.
3)It's arms are low slung which results in this mech having a bad peeking profile unless you have wepons in the STs that house it's only high mounted hardpoints.
4)Bad stock camo pattern that basically highlights the whole CT hitbox (Big green line on it's center) and makes the mech a bit less new player friendly.
5)Low mobility that makes the Nova Cat harder to pilot.

In conclusion, I'd like to say that this is not a mech for everyone, although it can perform well in the right hands.

[MechaBattler]

I played it briefly a few times during the earliest PTS. It felt squishie and unable to get itself out of trouble. But the PTS isn't a good place to test it out. Since it's mostly brawling and you're often facing MKIIs. I do feel like it could use some love for it's CT. Since despite twisting it wasn't terribly hard to get cored out in the CT. Or better twist rate.

[VEJ JEY]

Hello MWO universe, I just started playing and I am outperforming even experienced players in Nova Cat Prime, and I am gonna share this beautiful experience on how to do it
So this is what I came to understand , and first thing first is its PERKS, oh my god they are so good.

Step 1 - Buy Nova Cat Prime
Step 2 - throw out 1 ER ppc
Step 3 - Targeting computer 7 In arm where PPC is
Step 4 - put Clan active probe in left arm
Step 5 - 14 DHS 5 in each shoulder 3 in left arm
Step 6 - see If you want TC6 + additional heat sink in the right arm
Note: remove armor from legs and head until you can fit all these components

After that you wanna go into your skill tree.

FIREPOWER / 5 % range 6% velocity / 7 nodes

SURVIVAL / armor bonus 16% ,structure bonus 31% / fall damage - 50%(cause you took away armor from legs, and since you are sniper you wanna be able to jump off in case of light hunters or other dangers) / critical hit chance (receiving) -12$

OPERATIONS - quick ignition (-21 % startup duration cause you cannot avoid it, and its useful when you overheat and power back up) / improved gyros (-70% screen shake, cause you wanna be able to trade and keep your guns on point vs ballistic snipers) / hill climb -15% (since you are sniper you will love high grounds and getting there faster is a must) / max heat +15% /
/heat dissipation +10%

SENSORS (this is the most important since you need data on armor because you have targeting computer and probe) - Target info gathering +35% / target decay (just 0.7 since you are forced to take to get seismic sensors) / Advanced zoom ( very very important to pinpoint damage and don't forget to keep very low mouse sensitivity) / radar deprivation +60% (damn lrms ) / seismic sensor range +200 ( so you can know when lights are near or any other robot to pop UAV and give your team info + you call help with command so they pay attention)
360 target retention range (so when you get caught alone you can keep eyes on targets movement and prevent back stabbing)

AUXILIARY - extra consumable slots +3 / enhanced cool shot +30% coolshot cooldown -25% + 1 capacity
/ UAV range +40% , duration +10, capacity +1

KEEP STOCK OMNI PARTS !!! IT GIVES YOU ABILITY TO SHOOT 3 ER LARGE LASERS WITHOUT GHOST HEAT.

GG HAVE FUN AND FIND A FRIEND TO SNIPER WITH

Edited by VEJ JEY, 09 January 2019 - 06:37 PM.

[VEJ JEY]

Hello MWO universe, I just started playing and I am outperforming even experienced players in Nova Cat Prime, and I am gonna share this beautiful experience on how to do it
So this is what I came to understand , and first thing first is its PERKS, oh my god they are so good.

Step 1 - Buy Nova Cat Prime
Step 2 - throw out 1 ER ppc
Step 3 - Targeting computer 7 In arm where PPC is
Step 4 - put Clan active probe in left arm
Step 5 - 14 DHS 5 in each shoulder 3 in left arm
Step 6 - see If you want TC6 + additional heat sink in the right arm
Note: remove armor from legs and head until you can fit all these components

After that you wanna go into your skill tree.

FIREPOWER / 5 % range 6% velocity / 7 nodes

SURVIVAL / armor bonus 16% ,structure bonus 31% / fall damage - 50%(cause you took away armor from legs, and since you are sniper you wanna be able to jump off in case of light hunters or other dangers) / critical hit chance (receiving) -12$

OPERATIONS - quick ignition (-21 % startup duration cause you cannot avoid it, and its useful when you overheat and power back up) / improved gyros (-70% screen shake, cause you wanna be able to trade and keep your guns on point vs ballistic snipers) / hill climb -15% (since you are sniper you will love high grounds and getting there faster is a must) / max heat +15% /
/heat dissipation +10%

SENSORS (this is the most important since you need data on armor because you have targeting computer and probe) - Target info gathering +35% / target decay (just 0.7 since you are forced to take to get seismic sensors) / Advanced zoom ( very very important to pinpoint damage and don't forget to keep very low mouse sensitivity) / radar deprivation +60% (damn lrms ) / seismic sensor range +200 ( so you can know when lights are near or any other robot to pop UAV and give your team info + you call help with command so they pay attention)
360 target retention range (so when you get caught alone you can keep eyes on targets movement and prevent back stabbing)

AUXILIARY - extra consumable slots +3 / enhanced cool hot +30% coolshot cooldown -25% + 1 capacity / UAV range +40% , duration +10, capacity +1

GG HAVE FUN AND FIND A FRIEND TO SNIPER WITH

[S 0 L E N Y A]

oh noes..

[slowcrash101]

I have a build that works semi decent, as long as you take advantage of the range it affords. I use the shoulder mounted laser torsos, and then whichever arm has at least 1 energy hard point. Then I just run 4 large pulse lasers, and as many heat sinks as possible, along with the biggest targeting computer I can justify. I can just pelt people with chain fired large pulse lasers, it's ridiculous DPS much higher than quad ER PPC's or any other large laser. Only balistics has more DPS, and the ballistics with higher DPS has 2/3'rds of the range so you can trade from distance with full survival tree.

Probably only works due to my play style, but I think the Nova Cat is a fun mech with some crazy firepower for 70 tons. If you can play around it's disadvantages, and use it as a just beyond mid range brawler, ~600-700 meters it can do some damage. It is not a close up brawler, it's not a front line mech, it's not even a fire support mech. It's an opportunistic sweeper, any mech that isn't looking at you from ~600m gets 100 damage in a matter of seconds. After that it's up to someone else to finish the job as you should be moving to the next target so you don't get poked by some light.

[Pfuscher1]

Pro:
Nothing can carry more tonnage at 70t.
Con:
Should get some armor quirks though.

[slowcrash101]

The D variant works with a gauss rifle and 3 heavy lasers.

[CygnusX7]

2 uac20's and 2 hm's goes well in the right match.

[Shade4x]

NCT-D with 3 Heavy Large Lasers and a Gauss rifle. The quirks make it interesting

[slowcrash101]

Shade4x, on 25 May 2019 - 01:17 AM, said:

NCT-D with 3 Heavy Large Lasers and a Gauss rifle. The quirks make it interesting

My new favorite, 2 UAC10's 3 1/2tons of ammo and 2 LPL's, having a good time so far. Or swap the LPLs for 2 HLLs, and additional heat sinks or a targeting computer.

Edited by slowcrash101, 01 June 2019 - 10:07 AM.