I'm told that currently in the beta, long ranged mechs are kinda screwed as the maps are all smaller areas.

Long Ranged Mechs are ALWAYS screwed in Battletech/Mechwarrior.
Especially if they can't boat Lasers or PPC's.

Battletech is sitting in dozends of tons of steel and walking up to somebody else sitting in dozends of tons of steel and looking them square in the eyes while shooting them up and finally punching and kicking the living daylights out of them . .


Clan Stuff will probably come next year or so . .
The Beta starts next month for people that have paid.
And one day in real life is one day in game.
And the Game starts about 0,5 to 1 year before the Clans arrive if i remember correctly.

All of them are back in the tabletop game, albeit with new artwork and sculpts. Just base the models off the new minis rather than the Unseen art, and you're golden. The Archer, Warhammer, and Marauder are among the classics; you can't just leave them out.

yep, all of the above. Honestly I just hope you can color your mech how you choose. I was always partial to bannson's raiders in terms of colors.

Yuck, it's just PvP deathmatch? At least they promise slavish devotion to aging canon, though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Right now, players are in the Inner Sphere as either mercs, house warriors, or unaffiliated free lancers. They're keeping a 1:1 timeline. 1 day of real time is 1 day of MW:O time. Right now it's July 12, 3049. They're also adhering to established canon very closely, with the exception of one aspect to their Community Warfare pillar. House aligned players can fight for control over border worlds with other factions. They are locking the core and "buffer" worlds (I forget the term they used), so the borders can only shift so far. As the timeline progresses, worlds can shift from core, buffer, and border to any other category in keeping with the BattleTech timeline. So no, the Draconis Combine can't blitz to New Avalon.


Sorry, but the Timber Wolf and Nova won't debut until March of next year at the earliest. Players getting access to Clan tech will most likely take a while longer. The Bushwaker doesn't come out until 3053.

There is an override function... just don't hit it too often (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)


No, they've said there will be other game modes as well. I can't find the link, but I'm pretty sure there were 3 types officially confirmed so far.

As for the unseens, Harmony Gold never actually owned the rights to the images or intellectual property. At best they had the distribution rights for North America. The problem is, while they had no leg to stand on (legally), they did have an army of lawyers to hide behind. Their strategy was basically to be a giant prick of a company and make legal recourse too expensive for whoever they were going after. Which is why, you'll notice, the Microsoft MechWarrior titles had a few of the unseen 'Mechs.

EDIT: Oh, and one last thing worth a mention, they've locked out canon groups as MercCorp (guild) names. A number of players were trying to claim canon Mercenary groups or Clans, but the devs have said no one gets to claim any of those names. They have started considering opening up some of the major Mercenary Companies as joinable factions (Grey Death Legion, Wolf's Dragoons, Northwind Highlanders, etc...) but no official word beyond that.

While we're on that note - I want my Phoenix Hawk, Shadowhawk, and Crusader

Yes you can, but the Reseen Models are fucking ugly -.-

Same with these, the Reseen would be targeted first because nobody can bear to look at these for a longer time . .



As for Merc Companies:
Eridanie Light Pony will be there at least . .
I plan on going Lone Wolf.

I actually like some of the reseen designs better than the originals (which were just ripped off from Japanese anime anyway). And I always thought the Marauder looked really dumb.

*dives for cover*

You. Will. Die.
Slooowlyyy . .

Over the course of your natural lifespan! Muahahaha!

Check out Dev Blog #6 on the MechLab. There will be color customization. They won't be allowing user made skins (at least for a while), since copyright issues crop up and PGI is responsible for all the content in-game.

I agree that most of the reseen are fugly. At least in the case of the archer I want the loadout. Same for the Marauder and warhammer.

YMMV. I quite like the Reseen Warhammer.

You can get similar, if not identical, loadouts with other 'Mech variants. More than this I am forbidden from saying.

Trust me when I say this - The Catapult is NOT the Archer. That 5 tons makes a huge difference.

(Also, the reseen Rifleman is actually pretty decent artwork.)

Smithson's Chinese Bandits ho!

Seeing how they will be using a MIX between TABLETOP AND MW4 MECHLAB, there is close to no limit as to what you can actually pack into a Mech.
Especially, seeing how the Canon-Variants will be in. Nothing stopping you from replacing the AC20 on the Hunchback with something more usefull.
Nothing stopping you from replacing the 8 Medium Lasers on the 4P Variant with an ER-PPC or some Large Lasers either.
There is, basically, no role-protection ever in any kind of Mechwarrior/Battletech Game, if you don't have VERY strict restrictions on the MechLab.
And if you do, nobody will pilot anything but certain ultimate Mechs . . And if you don't, nobody will pilot anything but certain ultimate LOADOUTS too.

This is true, though PGI is working to lessen this issue. Beyond the restrictions on ability to place what weapons where (hardpoints), there is the experience system which not only rewards familiarity with a particular variant, but requires you to branch out at least a little bit to access the upper tiers of the XP reward tree. (See Dev Blog 4.) There is also the hurdle of actually buying the extra gear to shove into the 'Mech. Based on the MechLab video, it looks like they'll be sticking to the tabletop's prices. They haven't told us what the final C-Bill earnings per match will be, but I'd wager 300,000 C-Bills for an ER PPC is going to take a while to earn.

There's also the issue of heat, more for energy weapons than ballistics. That ER PPC is 5 more points of heat than the regular PPC (and more than any other weapon). Heat won't just disappear if you've got 15 heatsinks. You'll still take the heat and it'll drop at a rate of X/second depending on how many heatsinks you've got.

Wonder how close to the BT Stats they are going to stick in MWO . .
Technically, a Hunchback 4P can fire everything aside from 1Medium Laser and the Small Laser and stay completely cold all the time.
Laser-Gatling.

As close as they can. The heatsink deal comes from tabletop being abstractions of 10 second turns, where MW:O is real time. Heatsinks don't negate heat generation, they dissipate it. More heatsinks gives you faster dissipation.

The 4P should, in theory, be able to dissipate all heat generated, as long as he does not fire one of the medium lasers . .

Well, give this one a shot, see if I like it. At least there'll be folks I know online.

Yeah, if the pilot waits 10 seconds between shots, then fires them all again. As I said, the tabletop is an abstraction. I can't recall any previous MW title that gave medium lasers (or any weapon, for that matter) a 10 second recycle time.

Since it's real time, vs. turn based, any 'Mech could theoretically dissipate all the heat it generates so long as doesn't cook off its ammo or melt its reactor. In a real time situation, it's not a question of "can I?" but rather "how long will it take?"

Base should be 10 heat takes 10 seconds to dissipate and a 10 Heat Weapon should take 10 seconds to reload.
Everything else? Go from there. 15 Heat? Takes 15 Seconds to dissipate and 15 seconds to reload.
5 Heat? 5 Seconds to dissipate, 5 second reload cycle.

And each Single Heat-Sink dissipates 1 Heat per Second. Double Heat-Sinks will dissipate 2 Heat per Second.

Sounds easy enough to me somehow . . Yes, this will make for a quite fast paced game, but come on . . this is a shooter basically, not something where you wait minutes to reload . .