I really started playing MWO about seven months ago. It all started because of the BattleTech pods at Gen Con. I LOVE playing in the pods every year – so does my son and my grandson. I was hoping to recapture some of that experience at home on my PC.
Bear in mind, I’m 56 years old – so I don’t have that energy-drink-fueled set of reflexes that a young kid playing the game does. I also didn’t do a lot of research into MWO before jumping in – other than it looked like it might be a good way for me to get my BattleTech fix on.
The first few weeks were depressing. I seemed to be a magnet for long range missile indirect fire. When I wasn’t being blown apart by LRM’s fired by enemies I couldn’t see, I was having freaking Ravens and Fleas running laps around me, firing at me with pea shooters until my ‘Mech collapsed into a pile of smoking debris. God I hate Ravens!
Some fellow fans (the 13th Oriente Hussars who I now regularly fight alongside on Friday nights) took me under their wing. First off, I learned, that the stock ‘Mechs were, “less than freaking effective.” Customizing a ‘Mech isn’t quite intuitive but I got some help. Heat is a real issue, but a lot of it was how I configured the target interlock triggers – so I worked on that. Also, I wasn’t using skills at all. I was sent by my comrades some great YouTube videos that helped me figure that morass.
I still suck…but not nearly as much. Moreover, once I got over those hurdles, I found my groove with the game. Now it is a treat for me. When I finish writing a chapter or something, I log on and give myself three quick drops.
My callsign is…are you ready…Blaine Lee Pardoe. Yeah, I know, real creative. Well it is. At least once a week I hear somebody threaten me, “Hey man, if the real Blaine Pardoe finds out that you are using his name, he’s going to be pissed.” Efforts to explain to them the truth often fall on deaf ears. “Yeah – right, you’re really HIM.” Also, it can be stupid to have that callsign, because a few folks have killed me and really enjoyed that. “I killed the guy that wrote some of this stuff!” “Laugh it up pretty boy – I’m switching to my Atlas Kraken for the next drop.”
I am now using it for research…at least that is my excuse with my wife. I have picked up some wonderful slang for BattleMech names and such which I am incorporating into my fiction. Funny how that works isn’t it?
So if you see me online – yes it is me. Yes it is cool to ask me questions. No it is not cool to shoot me in the back. It is most cool if you see a Raven heading my way to kill it.
Notes From The Bunker 
Is the game on Macintosh? Or is it only a PC game. i used to play the tabletop version, and I remember being very complicated with spreadsheets.
It is online…you know…the internet…
Yeah, the internet runs on Clouds and stuff. -duh-
Or…. the game data that is downloaded FROM THE INTERNET has operating system preferences. In this case, MWO is a Microsoft license that won’t inherently run on Mac and Linux (y’know, those “other” choices).
In doing a quick search, it was confirmed in a couple forums that a Mac running a virtual box like Wine plays MWO just fine.
MechWarrior as a franchise has it’s main license held by Microsoft. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that MechWarrior Online is Windows exclusive.
That’s really nice short note for MWO.
Thanks for coming clean on your MWO problem… that’s the first step to recovering your life. 😉
I’ll keep an eye out for you, if you find me, and kill me (Dark Marauder – My twitch channel is bloodmarauder) I’ll send you a cool Ghost lance sticker for your thermos/tumbler!
Dark
Sweet
Congrats on finding your way to MWO!
If you have a Rifleman-5D you should kit it out with a pair of HPPC and 6 small lasers. Put the HPPCs on last, take an LFE250, and fill it up with DHS.
The same build runs on the RFL-3N except with twin LB10x instead of the HPPC, and with five tons of ammo instead of lots of heat sinks. In both cases it’s a ridiculously devious combatant, using great weapon mounts and decent nimbleness to plant damage on the enemy team throughout the match.
The half dozen smalls is exactly enough to make them worthwhile, since that gets you 19.5 damage for 6.6 heat with a short burn and short recycle time. They’re good to at least twice the HPPC minimum range. You can ignore them for most of the match in order to keep your HPPCs firing as often as possible before the engagement creeps into the ~200m envelope.
Simple two-button weapon loadouts on classy chassis with nice mounts and sexy hitboxes are what I like to run. Sometimes they aren’t ‘meta’, but if they work well and you run them like Usain Bolt, then the ‘meta’ will come to accommodate them.
Or at the very least, your unitmates will stop saying it’s a terrible mech and switch to teasing you for running the same drop deck every match.
Shoot Omniseed or Gilgamecc a friend request if you’d like any other parcooked concepts to try out, you’re welcome to come drop with ComStar Postal Service and check out the way we run our mechs!
Might see you on the battlefield, there. If you spot a MAD-5R with an AC20 and 4 Med Lasers that’s wading into the fight hammering on assault mechs, it might just be me.
I can highly recommend watching Baradul’s videos, he’s got some interesting builds and commentary on tactics that a lot of people fail to pay attention to.