10 replies to this topic

[Carnivean]

Hi everyone,

Here is the scenario, bare with me I am pretty excited (I am reading through all the newb threads but I think this tail is pretty unique!)

I am a long-time Battletech and Mechwarrior fan, playing both the RPG and tabletop for years in the 80s and 90s. I have always dabbled in the idea of playing MWO and really looking forward to Mechwarrior 5 and HBS:BT.

I was tracking the MechCon waiting for news on those titles and started getting into the MWO champs and then saw the holiday announcements. Two free hero mechs, timing worked out with me finishing uni, had read how much of a grind the game can be, etc. and this seemed as good a time as any to get into it.

Getting Started
So i download MWO a few days ago and fire it up for the first time about an hour ago to get the freebies . . .

Jump into a game with a Jenner as it said shortest wait time for lights (not that I like Jenners) but thought quick as possible after doing the training.

After coming back out I start looking around at the mechs, seeing how the interface is etc, and there are some non-trial mechs . . . OK then

Having a look at the achievements. Titles.

One title available: Legendary Founder

Check my emails, search for "Mechwarrior Founder" and sure enough I have just forgotten about it.

So I logged in to get 2 free mechs and a few goodies after watching Mechcon MWO champs stream online and walk away with a founders pack!

So I now sit with 4 Founder mechs Jenner, Hunchback, Catapult, Atlas, and 3 Legendary mechs Centurion, Atlas and King Crab, plus 21,250 MC and 9mil CB.

11 mech bays, 10 days premium time in flight, 30 days banked and 90 days redeemable.

So my number 1 question is . . . What is the best approach for an untouched 5-year-old Legendary Founders pack at this point in the game?

• Are these Founder/Legendary mechs up to scratch?

• What would I spend the MC/CB on?

• All time favourite mechs (in order, sentimental attachment from RPG days!) are Rifleman, Wolfhound, Raven, Mad Dog. What exists is this space that is competitive? (I notice the RFL is on sale!)

• Nova, Stormcrow, Summoner, Thunderbolt, Timber Wolf, Warhammer, Marauder, Battlemaster, Warhawk, Direwolf are all favourites too in my second tier.

I likely wont be able to start playing heavily until February (Uni should finish then, old people should not study!)


Sorry for the long-winded first post but what was going to be a quick dash and grab for loot turned into something pretty cool!

Merry Christmas indeed!


Cheers,
Carnivean

Edited by Carnivean, 28 December 2017 - 01:32 PM.

[Jonathan8883]

You've got $100 worth of MC; I would spend it only on items that are on sale, and would otherwise sit on the MC until the next sale for best bang for your buck. All but the newest mechs can be bought with C-bills earned over time.

Do the Academy and get the cadet bonus for an extra ~12M C-bills over your first 25 battles. This + your 9M gets you a couple of mechs, especially with premium time.

I would wait to make large mech investments until you've played a number of matches and hit T4 or T3... you can't unspend MC/C-bills easily. Taking an IS mech and switching it from SHS to DHS and dropping in a Light Fusion Engine can easily eat 5M C-bills.

Clan mechs are more fragile, but carry more weapons and move faster. IS mechs are generally more sluggish, but better armored. Clan lasers have longer burn time, and their missiles fire in a stream instead of all at once, leading to a slightly slower rate of fire and more AMS vulnerability.

This link is a bit out of date:
https://mwomercs.com...eference-sheet/
But not all mechs of the same size drive the same way. Turn rates are apparently tied to acceleration values. Higher maneuverability means you are better at poking, getting out of the line of fire, and tracking fast-moving enemies. Low maneuverability mechs are less fun to drive unless you have the skill to position your walking turret in the right place at the right time.

In addition to maneuverability, look at hardpoint location and available pod space; use Smurfy's to test ideas before buying. A hardpoint at waist level will make you take more fire when coming over a hill before you can shoot back. Shape matters as well - a big boxy Dire Whale is easier to hit than a skinny Executioner.

The Centurion, King Crab, and Catapult are all good as-is. Atlases are brawlers (not LRM boats) and currently suffer some maneuverability issues; Jenners are a bit too big and are often considered fragile, but are viable.

Rifleman is decent, Legend-Killer is considered good. Wolfhounds are pretty good (fast, tough, lasers), Ravens are a bit weak right now but still pack ECM, and Mad Dogs are good with ATMs (if you learn to use ATMs, it's a skill requiring lots of maneuvering) and for lower-tier LRMing.

Novas are wide, and are designed to boat large numbers of smaller, short-ranged weapons. I found it hard to play. Stormcrows are fast and carry a good number of weapon options; I like mine. Summoners are light on pod space, but very maneuverable for a heavy; you have to know what you're going to carry before you buy one. T-bolts have a good reputation. Warhammers are generally considered very good; they have high-ish torso hardpoints enough to mount ballistics or laser vomit, depending on the model. Marauders are also durable, although don't go the PPC route. Battlemasters have a variant with a bunch of high-mounted torso lasers that's considered great. Warhawks carry most of their weapons in the arms and are thus easy to disarm; they are pretty rare. Dire whales carry lots of firepower, but are slow and are big targets. Easy to kill relative to an Atlas or an Annihilator.

[The Basilisk]

So my number 1 question is . . . What is the best approach for an untouched 5-year-old Legendary Founders pack at this point in the game?

• Are these Founder/Legendary mechs up to scratch?

• What would I spend the MC/CB on?

• All time favourite mechs (in order, sentimental attachment from RPG days!) are Rifleman, Wolfhound, Raven, Mad Dog. What exists is this space that is competitive? (I notice the RFL is on sale!)

• Nova, Stormcrow, Summoner, Thunderbolt, Timber Wolf, Warhammer, Marauder, Battlemaster, Warhawk, Direwolf are all favourites too in my second tier.

Wellcome Carnivean. Your Founders mechs Atlas, Catapult, Centurion, Jenner and in addition the Kingcrab may not exactly be the most recent models but still servicable Mechs to drive.
Especially Catapult and Centurion might not be outstanding but still decent chassis...as long as you do not try to follow the Battletech lore or TT-performance guidlines.

I suggest starting with the CN9-AH (L) you got (L stands for loyalty not for legandary...it is a consumer appreciation promo gift that finds place every year in MWO)

To avoid sensless waste of your hard bought money you should not use those MCs untill you got a pretty good idea about the game.

Also to avoid useless C-bills waste use the smurfys webbrowser mechlab (thereyougo) to construct your first mechs.

Here some builds for your Cents as orientation:

CN9-AH (L) shortrange AC+SRM build.
Some prefer larger SRMs and more speed so you could forgo the large AC and use a larger engine and 3x6tubes lauchers and 3 MGs in place of the AC.

CN9-A a modern tech take on the old A Centurion. Since the single Ac does you no good most of the time the medium range missiles will teach you a lot about ranges and leading a target with projectile weapons without beeing too punishing.

CN9-A hard to pilot when you are new due to the 3 different kinds of weapons.

Some Catapult builds:

CPLT-C1 MRM walker. A solid mech for work out of the midst of friendly mechs.
A variant would be to forgo the 4 medlasers and two heatsinks for 4 ERSLasers and some jumpjets.

CPLT-C1 Laser and MRM jumper. Smaler MRMs for larger Lasers, jumpcapability and more heatsinks.

So far so good enjoy and try to find out how things work first before investing too much of your ingame currency or even real money.

[Damnedtroll]

Two weapons types are best to begin with.

The Atlas and Kingcrab are harder to play because of their speed but can be very powerful at short range. UAC20 and MRM are a good combination for the Atlas or LBX20 and SRM6 artemis.

Right now, speed is one of the biggest factor in game, lot of player like to run fast in circle (called Nascar...) and if you cannot keep up you will be slaughtered. Speed is very good for positioning and saving yourself from bad positioning.

Edited by Damnedtroll, 28 December 2017 - 06:36 AM.

[Koniving]

Mechbays if the sale is still doing them at 150 MC each, saves you from spending money later (I have over 280 mechbays and I still don't have enough).
Another spendy idea is pattern unlocks and paint... or hero mechs though with the 4 founders and 3 loyalty mechs you already have 7 mechs with 30% cbill bonuses, plus premium time (only activate 30 day chunks from your MWO profile on the site; don't activate in game or it will ask to activate it all... did that once, almost two years of premium time ticked away for what seemed like forever.

The "L" is for "Loyalty" rather than "Legendary", evidently you qualified for the first loyalty thing which the conditions were having bought MC in your lifetime (since founder pack came with MC, check), and a few other little tidbits.

The founder mechs are very good (same as their cbill counterparts). The Atlas D might lose favor for the D-DC but only due to PGI slapping an ECM hardpoint on it and an extra missile slot to make up for the reduced energy slots.
The Catapult is a personal joy of mine.
The Hunchback is the epitome of awesomeness (unlike the Awesome in MWO's interpretation), very cheap to get it going and very effective and tanky. Funnel right rear armor forward, the rear hitbox for the Hunch side is maybe 1.5 times its fist in length while the 'front' is almost the entire thing, including some of the back.
The Jenner's one of the biggest pains in the battlefield, you'll have fun with it.

Centurion -- careful about ammo limits, and all its weapons for that particular model are heavy since missiles and ballistics only.
Atlas S is what many would call the missile spam rig. Its rear missile launchers are slapped to the front because PGI, so may as well spam them right?
King Crab's been my only King Crab for years. Love it. Finally got more. Be wary of being broadsided and LRMs do not like you...okay they love you but you'll hate them, you're a walking canopy.

Rifle's probably the most competitive of them with Wolfhound right in there. Anything 60 tons is on the lowest end of the heavy bracket, nothing wrong with that but it does present some minor hurdles of heftier engine weights versus little gains in max tonnage. Mad dog holds its own but ammo is always an issue, make sure to have some energy weapons as backup. We spend ammo and generate heat 3 to 19 times faster than Battletech...
Raven's pretty good, funnel armor forward the rear hitbox is like the size of your foot; just don't let people shoot your back. 3L is the fastest, the 2x, 4x and Huginn are less competitive but good in their own right.
Anything in the 75 and 85 ton range is phenomenal. Many say Warhawk takes a backseat to Marauder IIC but I believe this is entirely contextual.

Of your list, Summoner is a minor challenge as the issue is primarily slots to store everything. The rest are all good. Thunderbolt serves very well here. Timber Wolf you will want to spend some skill points in mobility particularly torso twist; they set it at the same speed as the Timber Wolf in both the Mechwarrior Tactical Command and the MechCommander 1 intro videos. I think that's awesome, but oh the tears when the OP rapi-twist™ Timber Wolf couldn't do the Death Blossom.

Good luck out there.

P.S.: Dire Wolf -- just be aware this thing is a weapons platform, deadly to anything in front and very easily flanked. Be careful not to overextend.

And Rifleman sample; using only the 3 to 4 unlocks to get advanced zoom (entirely sensor unlocks).

Twin ER PPCs and Light MGs.

Edited by Koniving, 28 December 2017 - 09:44 AM.

[Leone]

So, for the slower heftier mechs I offer A tactical discussion of Assault mechs and playstlyes. This is, of course, for when you actually take up playing. As for mech choices, honestly, I'd suggest getting anything in your favorites list that's for c-bills, an only saving a million or two for later tweaking. You can earn that stuff back in game, but c-bill sales are rare enough I'd just suggest you take the chance. You might not care much for the chassis after some time, but I've never felt bad about purchasing and piloting a bad mech if'n it was one I felt nostalgic about.

I even still pilot 'em from time to time. Oh, and I whole heartedly agree with Koniving about mech bays.

~Leone.

[Carnivean]

First of all, thanks everyone for the replies . . .

Jonathan8883, on 28 December 2017 - 05:48 AM, said:

I would spend it only on items that are on sale, and would otherwise sit on the MC until the next sale for best bang for your buck. All but the newest mechs can be bought with C-bills earned over time.

Do the Academy and get the cadet bonus for an extra ~12M C-bills over your first 25 battles. This + your 9M gets you a couple of mechs, especially with premium time.

I would wait to make large mech investments until you've played a number of matches and hit T4 or T3... you can't unspend MC/C-bills easily. Taking an IS mech and switching it from SHS to DHS and dropping in a Light Fusion Engine can easily eat 5M C-bills.

The Basilisk, on 28 December 2017 - 05:54 AM, said:

To avoid sensless waste of your hard bought money you should not use those MCs untill you got a pretty good idea about the game.

Also to avoid useless C-bills waste use the smurfys webbrowser mechlab (thereyougo) to construct your first mechs.

So far so good enjoy and try to find out how things work first before investing too much of your ingame currency or even real money.

Koniving, on 28 December 2017 - 07:59 AM, said:

Mechbays if the sale is still doing them at 150 MC each, saves you from spending money later (I have over 280 mechbays and I still don't have enough).
Another spendy idea is pattern unlocks and paint... or hero mechs though with the 4 founders and 3 loyalty mechs you already have 7 mechs with 30% cbill bonuses, plus premium time (only activate 30 day chunks from your MWO profile on the site; don't activate in game or it will ask to activate it all... did that once, almost two years of premium time ticked away for what seemed like forever.

OK so I took all of this information on board: only spend on sale items, save cash for potential conversions, dont waste CB and if I spend Hero mechs are worth it.

With that in mind:

Rifleman - Can't imagine playing without it so it was either

• 7300 MC - 3 x RFL plus LK, plus 4 mech bays ($22 equivalent based on maximum purchase rate and current sale),
  
• $38.5 - 3 x RFL plus LK plus RFL-S, 5 mech bays, 60 days premium, items/titles/badges (13000 MC equivalent)

So doing the maths, there was very little difference between MC and hard earned Cash in terms of value other than cash is out of my pocket. With all the extras I have gone for the cash premium pack.


After doing the sums, I then also bought the Wolfhound "Grinner", Summoner "Pride" and Timber Wolf "Warrant".

That gives me my two top choices in Rifleman and Wolfhound and a few extras to play around with and work up. I dont think I will need to buy new mechs for a while and when I do get the urge I have kept a few bays free.

Just over $70, keeps my CB and MC for other items as I play through the game for upgrades.

Will keep everything vanilla at this point until I sink into it!

[Carnivean]

Leone, on 28 December 2017 - 04:25 PM, said:

So, for the slower heftier mechs I offer A tactical discussion of Assault mechs and playstlyes. This is, of course, for when you actually take up playing. As for mech choices, honestly, I'd suggest getting anything in your favorites list that's for c-bills, an only saving a million or two for later tweaking. You can earn that stuff back in game, but c-bill sales are rare enough I'd just suggest you take the chance. You might not care much for the chassis after some time, but I've never felt bad about purchasing and piloting a bad mech if'n it was one I felt nostalgic about. I even still pilot 'em from time to time. Oh, and I whole heartedly agree with Koniving about mech bays. ~Leone.

Good to hear about your nostalgia Leone. I have always loved the look of the Unseen Rifleman and then the IIC and Phoenix versions were great too. The PGI one holds true which is good. In the RPG always played a SpecOps type character and had Wolfhound and Raven at different points.

In the end I went for the Cash option over CB but essentially the same premise as you suggest, I just have extra for tweaking later. I was looking for a game to buy and things kinda fell in the right order for me with the Holiday promos leading into me discovering Founder status.

[Horseman]

Carnivean, on 28 December 2017 - 04:03 AM, said:

So my number 1 question is . . . What is the best approach for an untouched 5-year-old Legendary Founders pack at this point in the game?

• Are these Founder/Legendary mechs up to scratch?

• What would I spend the MC/CB on?

• All time favourite mechs (in order, sentimental attachment from RPG days!) are Rifleman, Wolfhound, Raven, Mad Dog. What exists is this space that is competitive? (I notice the RFL is on sale!)

• Nova, Stormcrow, Summoner, Thunderbolt, Timber Wolf, Warhammer, Marauder, Battlemaster, Warhawk, Direwolf are all favourites too in my second tier.

1. Founder mechs run stock loadouts and will need some rearming. The Catapult can do very well after some upgrades, the Hunchback isn't bad although mileage may vary. The Centurion is all right and there's a number of builds that work on the KGC. Can't speak much of the Jenner and Atlas.

2. Mechbays will be your first thing to get. Don't spend MC on C-Bill mechs and think twice before spending them on Champion mechs (they're just pre-built copies of C-Bill mechs). Hero mechs may be worth it, but I would recommend first getting a bit more familiarity with the game to make sure you don't waste MC on mechs you won't like.

3. Wolfhound has a reputation for being quite tanky for a light. Can't speak of the others.

4. Timber Wolf, Warhammer, Marauder and Battlemaster are all pretty decent in my experience.

Edited by Horseman, 28 December 2017 - 11:31 PM.

[Carnivean]

Horseman, on 28 December 2017 - 11:27 PM, said:

2. Mechbays will be your first thing to get. Don't spend MC on C-Bill mechs and think twice before spending them on Champion mechs (they're just pre-built copies of C-Bill mechs). Hero mechs may be worth it, but I would recommend first getting a bit more familiarity with the game to make sure you don't waste MC on mechs you won't like.

Yeah the Mech bays thing is something I need to watch and with the sales is why I went for the premium packs to get nostalgia Mechs.

This point you make Horseman is coming through a bit so I am comfortable with a bit of cash outlay up-front and build up my reserves before buying anything else new at this point.

The question I still have now is what to spend my MC on. Reading through above:

• Spend MC on on-sale items only
  
• Dont waste MC, play until I know what I like
  
• Spend MC on bays on-sale
  
• Dont spend MC on C-Bill mechs

So should I just use MCs for upgrades? Just for bays? Just for new mechs I REALLY want? What else can they be spent on other than decorative items etc?

[Horseman]

Carnivean, on 29 December 2017 - 04:50 AM, said:

So should I just use MCs for upgrades?

"Upgrades"? Do you mean XP conversion? It's kind of pointless, at least in my experience.
Or do you mean C-Bills? Don't buy C-Bill bundles for MC, the return value is quite poor.

Quote

Just for bays?

There's a limit to how many bays even a hopeless addict can fill in a year. I think the sale on mechbays ended, if not - grab at least 10, otherwise wait until you need one or there's another sale on them.

Quote

Just for new mechs I REALLY want?

If you really want a mech that isn't out for CB yet, the cash shop packs are usually better value than buying it for MC.

Another caveat: check the prices of cash shop heroes - Resistance Heroes, Clan Heroes - before buying them for MC. The cash prices are often much lower than the cash equivalent of the MC price.

Quote

What else can they be spent on other than decorative items etc?

Supply cache keys - aka lockboxes, if you're familiar with the term. If you're in need of a quick injection of C-Bills, the caches tend to give a better C-Bill for MC value than buying C-Bill bundles from the store (you might need to make another stop in your weapons or equipment inventory to sell off the item you received from the cache).

Cockpit decorative items are mostly not worth spending MC on - you will get a bunch from mech packs and events anyway, over time - perhaps except for Warhorns (which are entertaining, if nothing else).

Another decorative thing you can spend your MC on is painting your mechs. You can unlock camo patterns permanently (per all variants of the chassos) or one-time (per single mech, pattern is lost if you switch for a different one, but you can change colors without paying extra). Decals are one-time purchases and so are paint colors.
Certain cash shop packs come with a bunch of extra paint colors - Resistance II and Origins are pretty good for that, with six colors per faction pack (take a quick look through https://mwomercs.com...-mechs-paintjob to see what can be done with various paints, patterns and decals) - and since last year, pre-ordering mech packs also provides you with several colors and decals once the pack is delivered.