Max out armour before arming a mech, that way you have maximum armour coverage and don't get blown apart. Strip jump jets if you can. Beware of firestarters. Long range missiles are usually inferior to short range missiles. Use range and focus on one part of an enemy mech at a time. Legs are usually a good spot to hit first as it'll give you more time to deal with a mech if it's crippled. Consider using a joystick for immersion. There's a huge learning curve for this game so be ready for some tough missions! There's also a secret wolverine mech in the Valentina system.
>Beware of firestarters
Better yet get yourself a firestarter and get good with circle strafing with machine guns and flamers. There isn't an ai mech in the game that can 1v1 a firestarter.
the chad Hero firestarter vs virgin atlas
I have done that screwed up on a brawl thinking it was lights not open and took the ember into that.
I lost an arm they lost all the heavy and assault mechs.
also good at base destruction.
4th fav mech in the game
When maxing out armor make sure not to over Armor your back. I tend to brawl a lot so I tend to go a little heavier in the back. Medium mechs I tend to go around 15 center and 10 shoulders. Heave and assaults I go 20 middle and 15 shoulders. Don't be afraid to shave down your legs as they are rarely targeted by AI ( though they can leg you ) Also it's not horrible on a lot of mechs to shave down your Cockpit.
I know some people go even lighter on back armor but I've been taken down one to many times by light mechs behind me
To add on to stripping jump jets, placement of where things are in your mech matters a lot
I usually put all my ammo in the legs (AI focuses on legs less than they should) and if I still need more, the cockpit (I'm dying anyways if that gets popped), ammo explosions are a bitch
Engine Heatsinks are lovely once you start getting Double Heat Sinks, saves a lot of room to cram in other stuff
I just used a Logitech extreme 3d pro, mapped most of the gaming buttons to it, and tweaked to sensitivity a bit for better feel. In practice though, most default joystick setups will work really well with a computer- it's just a really steep learning curve in terms of using a joystick. Once you get the hang of it though, it feels awesome!
When it comes to movement, you're more like "a tank with legs". But if you want a simpler control option you can enable "fps mode" in the settings.
Medium mechs have the disadvantages of both light and heavy
Also a rule of thumb I go by is if it's small shoot the legs, if it's big shoot the arms/guns.
The Saturday morning cartoon from the 90s is considered in-universe propaganda
I personally love medium mechs, but with a caveat: they make poor generalists. Medium mechs shine in a specialist role, usually Striker or Close Support. They’re a great balance of speed and firepower for certain types of missions, but be wary of lingering too long in an enemy’s kill zone- try to stay on the flanks. A Hunchback with an AC20 can fk your whole day up, so my advice is if you see one in an approaching enemy lance, kill it first. It’s got a low profile so it’s harder to hit and it’s faster and better armored than it looks.
You’re definitely right about the wolverine and centurion, but I think of those as outliers. It’s usually hard to build a medium that is equally good at all ranges and roles, especially with the shadow Hawk. The only SH I’ve ever found or build that makes for a great go-anywhere-do-anything is the Grey Death hero mech. But that’s just my opinion and your mileage may vary.
I mean that's fair but I think there's just as many specialist heavy Mechs (catapult, archer, jagermech rifleman.)
>The only SH I’ve ever found or build that makes for a great go-anywhere-do-anything is the Grey Death hero mech.
Huh. Okay then. To me it's very similar to the Wolverine which functions very well on most occasions. Tbf Grey Death is almost better than Quarantine too.
A medium mech is still capable of dishing out some painful firepower. But they aren't as tough as bigger mechs.
So think about it this way, you have the choice of shooting a medium or assault mech, would you rather destroy the medium, or half destroy the assault? Always the former, less guns shooting at you sooner.
Yes, but there's 2 different sections that start at different dates
Operation GALAHAD shows up 1 April 3026 and can be started as late as 12 October 3026, this one's a pretty simple 3 part mission, but you **have** to do it in order to get into the rest of the storyline. Once it's over you're free to do as you wish
Operation RAT shows up 15 March 3028 and can be started as late as 23 September 3028, that's the one that takes a year to finish
They're both a part of Legend of the Kestrel Lancers
If you're on a fresh campaign or it's not September 3026 yet don't worry about getting it right away, iirc once you get a DLC it takes an in-game month for everything in a DLC to start showing up
It's fine if you miss the dates. After you've beaten campaign mode, you can import your save into the time locked DLC missions, allowing you to go back and do them with your existing save.
Stick to your plan, campaign is a thing in itself, you will miss the power curve fun if you mix all things in one playthrough.
These DLC mini campaigns work good without main campaign. They are balanced around clean career with fresh start and some missions before their start. So do not start bigger DLC campaigns yet.
But main campaign will benefit from small chained missions. You will see more handcrafted missions while get required reputation for campaign. It is more variative than random missions in vanilla
#New to MW5?
- Have all DLCs.
- Missions from DLC1 and DLC3 are not time-sensitive, the campaign from DLC2 and DLC4 is time-sensitive for 3026 / 3028 and 3031 / 3032. A mod can eliminate the both deadlines.
- There is a free secret 55ton Wolverine with excellent weapons available right after the start, just travel to the eastern part of the map (where the campaign starts) and visit the *Valentina* system.
- [**Sarna**](https://www.sarna.net/wiki/MechWarrior_5:_Mercenaries/High_Reward_Quests) shows all quests where you get a Hero Mech at the end. Recommended quest hero mech: *Dragon Sidewinder, Victor Basilisk, Corsair-Privateer, King Crab CAR, Archer Agincourt*.
- Mech Salvage has a random chance, with legging or headkilling having the higher chances.
- [**Mechoverview on Sarna**](https://www.sarna.net/wiki/MechWarrior_5:_Mercenaries/BattleMechs)
- Work for Kurita (red faction) at the beginning; do not work against Independents during the campaign; do not work against Federated Suns / Davion (the yellow faction) if you want to play the Kestrel Lancer campaign. After the end of the Kestrel Lancer campaign in 3030 you can work against FedSun/Davon and Steiner/Lyran as their respective reputation will reset in 3040,
- Do cantina missions. 15% more damage + 15% less cool down +15% more speed etc adds up.
- Better equipment: go to a reputation 13-15 conflict zone with one ore more industrial zones nearby. Your chances to get T4/T5 weapons either from enemies, from vendors or from rare items/weapons/mechs are there the highest. Cantina missions sometimes provide high end rewards as well, always check them out.
- Vendor inventory respawns after jumping 3 or 4 points away.
- Mech Spawn is random, with some areas having a higher chance. Nothing is guaranteed however.
- Putting mechs into cold storage removes upgrades. A mod can prevent that.
- Hero mechs often have better payloads and gadgets (endo, ferro, XL engine etc), so usually more free tonnage for better loadouts and have more upgrade slots. The combination makes them in many cases the best mechs by far.
- Check out rare & Hero mechs. Some of them have *Guardian ECM, Double Heat Sinks* and other good stuff. Spending 3mio on a Hero Urban Mech K9 for a juicy amount of Double Heatsinks early on means that your old Hunchback with 9 MLs will suddenly make *happy laservomit voices*.
- Mission points: money first, salvage later with high reputation.
**MechLab**
- Max armour. Torso front armour / rear armour should be 4/1 or 3/1. Legs and head are less targeted by the enemy => you can shove of 1/2t of armour there.
- Medium lasers and AC5 are considered well balanced weapons with a good damage / weight / heat ratio. When in doubt: go for the classics.
- Jump Jets are not useful in most missions / are usually dead weight. In most cases 1 JJ is enough.
- SRM boats kick way above their weight class in general, if you like the ninja play style.
- The *Firepower* stat is only alpha strike damage AND factors in melee damage, so the stat is very misleading, when it comes to the actual damage with ranged weapons. There are many sheets showing the full damage stats, including damage per second / heat / tonnage.
- Equipment like AMS, Probe, ECM, MASC or Supercharger need corresponding slots on the mech. Most mechs do not have such a slot, only special and usually rare versions have them.
- Heat management! You need to balance your cooling per second with the heat per second generated by the weapons (rate of fire x heat per attack). Your cooling will usually be something between 1 and 4, and your weapons total heat per second something between 1 and 10. Try as a very rough guideline to have **less** than 2 heat per second more than your cooling per second.
- Having a support mech in your lance is a good idea. Support = ECM, AMS and some good weapons to shoot down fliers and tanks, like the AC2/5/LBX10).
- Have a heavy/assault lance for endgame stuff. Have a [**speedy light lance**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/comments/r1xln9/speed_is_love_speed_is_life_a_miniguide_to_raid/) for quick demo/raid work with high evasion pilots.
- When using only a few MGs and/or AMS: half a ton of ammo is usually enough.
- As a very general guideline: a main weapon will need around 2-3 tons of ammo each for sustained fire on average.
- Having multiple weapons of the same type can be very powerful. 2 medium lasers are perhaps not that strong, but 8 create a powerful *Laservomiter*. 1 Flamer is poor, but 6 flamers in a Firestarter can shut down and kill an assault mech. 1 UAC5 is nice ... 4 of them in a King Crab is murder.
- Always check both the initial damage and the DPS of a weapon. Small lasers are funny and for memes ... until you do the math and you suddenly see that they are actually comparable with medium lasers, except for their range.
**Beginner builds**
- *Basic medium/heavy mech* combo 2x AC2/5 + 4x Medium Lasers, 2t of ammo for each ACs. Easy to build on several chassis. Good balance between weight, range, heat and damage. Playstyle: brawling
- *SRM-Boat*: medium mech + 81kph + enough modules for SRM14+ & a few M-Lasers: a hot missile boat, but very capable until the endgame. Example *Kintaro-18* and later *Zeus Hero Mech*. Playstyle: murder-stabby in kissing range into the legs or the back.
- *Laservomiter*: 6+ M-Lasers and perhaps 1-2 ER Large Lasers. Toasty mech, the ER laser for anti-flyer work and taking out turrets at range. Example: *Hunchback 4p, Blacknight, Hero Thunderbolt*. Playstyle: one-shot the enemy cockpit, cooldown, repeat, stay in cover.
- *Sniper*: 2x Gauss or 2-4x Heavy Rifle. Example: *Hero Cyclops* or *Hero King Crab*.
- *Raid/Demo*: *Firestarter*, use flamers and machine guns. Almost equal armour front / back, upgrades with +armor and +structure. Speedy, easy to use, devastating.
**Example endgame lance**
- Atlas Boar (MPL, UAC5, Streak2)
- Free Choice
- Hero Dragon Sidewinder (LBX10, AMS)
- Viktor Basilisk (LBX10, ECM)
**Combat**
- Concentrate your damage on one part of the mech. A bit of damage everywhere is useless, as "hit points" are per hit location, not overall.
- Lance AI is at best average with *"Aattack my target"* and brawling. Use *"Go to location"* and long range ballistic/energy weapons.
- Use cover
- Use chainfire when overheating
- *Legging a mech* means destroying both legs of a mech, which is *very* effective even for lighter mechs and SRM boats.
- **Speed is love, speed is life.** The faster your mech moves the more the enemy will miss. Learn to circle your enemy, turning the torso at him and shooting at him. Mechs can out-turn enemies this way, massively reducing incoming damage. It is a basic skill you will always need.
- Present undamaged parts to the enemy. Attempt to spread incoming damage. Let your AI lance tank. Sacrifice cheap empty arms to protect expensive weapons or the torso.
- Light mechs with multi-machine guns and Small SB lasers or flamers are surprisingly murderous, especially when combined with ECM. Still requires high level pilots, because you want these evasion skills.
- Do not ignore tanks, light & fast mechs and fliers. They do not seem threatening, until they get their act together and into your back. Then they hurt.
- There is a maximum weapon range and an optimal weapon range. Energy weapon can only go to the maximum weapon range, while ballistic weapons can go over it with a ballistic arc.
**Lance A.I.**
- In recent weeks the discussion about the quality of the lance AI intensified, with people testing and describing the lance AI being improved in certain scenarios.
- The AI can manage pinpoint weapons (PPC) and low-heat weapons (LBX) decently, cannot use gadget / special actions on weapons like the cooldown fire of the UAC5 (only the normal mode), and has problems with LRM boats + short range weapons. The best AI setup are low heat precise weapons.
- The AI is heat conservative and will not fire above a certain threshold, even if that would mean missing out killing an enemy assault mech. So see above. Being near heat neutrality is important for the AI.
- The AI is not affected by recoil (a high recoil weapon will throw your view as a human port around), nor is it affected by MASC/Supercharger damage. The AI can and will use MASC/Supercharger 100% of the time, boosting NPC-Mechs incredibly. So the *Hero Dragon* will constantly travel with around 120kph if piloted by a mech ... but only if you are that fast, as the AI will never move faster than you during travel. It will however speed up during combat for evasion.
**Discussions**
- [Discussions on weapons](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/comments/re5enb/the_big_talk_open_discussion_on_weapons/)
- [Discussions on light mechs](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/comments/rk7inb/the_big_talk_open_discussion_on_light_mechs/)
- [Discussion on equipment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/comments/rgdwit/the_big_talk_open_discussion_on_equipment/)
and
- [Guide on weapons](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/comments/rexcey/the_big_talk_weapons_the_tools_of_destruction_and/)
- [Guide on equipment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/comments/ristgs/the_big_talk_equipment_tools_to_control_the/)
**Mods - PC only**
- On the PC you can use mods. Mods make the game *so much better*. [**Here are some personal recommendations.**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/comments/vi38gk/mods_a_curated_list_for_dlc3//)
SYL
This is not armored core 6. You are in a tank with legs, not a glitter boy. Max out your armor. Buy heavier mechs ASAP. Keep a couple extra pilots in your roster, because pilots can get injured or killed. Having superior range will save you a lot on repairs, because the enemy can't hit you if they never get into range. ER lasers and low caliber autocannons are great, with the PPC and gauss rifle coming in as another good choice that I personally don't value as much. A single gauss round can one shot most mechs, if you hit the cockpit, but the \~15 second reload time isn't really my style. I prefer using as many ER large lasers as possible, but I'm also used to managing heat. Final tip: It's better to just not get hit. Sometimes the best choice is to backtrack and ambush. If you get good at managing threats and stay mobile, enemies will rarely hit you.
Are you playing with mods? Base game, a T5 gauss can't cockpit in one shot and a T0 gauss has a cooldown of 7.2 seconds.
Not a big fan of gauss in MW5 either, but was curious about your numbers.
I love the gauss, but only due to flavor. They really aren't that great in MW5 and it makes me sad. Recently I've found just filling something that can take it with as many ac5-rf will outperform my gauss set ups every time. Granted I've ventured into modded now and whoo boy is life different.
You're forgetting to account for the 15 cockpit structure, right? So even a 13 armor cockpit would need 28 damage. With full cantina damage support a T5 gauss would deal ((21\*1.1)\*1.05)\*1.05 = 25.5 damage, still shy.
I suppose if a mech is storing ammo in its cockpit for some reason you could roll an ammo explosion, though.
Why I like the nightstars, 2gauss and a ppc on the same trigger and it's over. Sleipnir,not really a fan but i know a lot of folks that do well with it.
Honestly, I pulled the numbers out of my ass, but a T5 gauss does sometimes one shot a mech. Maybe they took a little damage from something else.
While I do play with mods, since I have about 500 hours in this game, I try to give people advice not based on mods.
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In campaign don’t be afraid early on to put your Pc in the light mechs and put your NPC Lance mates in the more survivable medium mechs. Your PC can afford to get blown up, they can’t.
Get up to at least 400 million c-bills, and mech hunt. Get a good lance of heavy mechs, and assault mechs, and level the 60 potential pilots to max. then play the campaign. once you have a few atlas K's, a nightstar and a marauder II, you can beat everything. Then do the dlc campaigns in a career.it takes a while, but it's worth it. Night stars can show anytime, Gauss rifles will show later. you want a mad II 4a because with the right coolin you complete any beach head by jumping over artillery, run a mad II and 3 other assault mechs do stop the launch to get the car, tear everything up.
Import into career, and just hunt heroes.
Also. If you can spend it, buy every hero mech you find. spend time stacking bills, buy em all, eventually you get the kraken and Kaiju. You are golden. Every hero you buy takes them out of the pool. With you piloting a Kaiju or CAR you can slam so much damage, you're good until 12 +rep, just give them the best weapons you can find.
Try to choose salvage over c bills. Overall nets more money and equipment.
Tldr take it slow, there's no rush
Oh yeah, there are way too many shinys. I try to only buy t4 or 5 weapons, if you're hunting heros later on in the gane, it eats your cash. But each hero bought takes that "out of the pool" so long as you dont sell it. A few of the wiser posters told me about that, and finally i got my kaiju.
make yourself a harder target, stay mobile.
take your time, let your pilot's skills improve and get better mechs before taking on higher difficulty missions.
the fastest way to kill/disable threats is being able to focus all your damage on one component, weapons with spread suffer at doing this (LRMs, burst fire autocannons), weapons that deliver all the damage at once are great at this (single shot autocannons, PPC). There are a few weapons that deal enough damage to make up for there spread, SRMs are the prime example.
learn the mechs, figure out which one can do, not only for your own use but to be able to judge how much of a threat they are as a enemy. Learn where to shoot them to take out as many of their weapons as possible, or if it's just better to go in for the kill.
Up armor when you can. as you get better you'll understand when it's safe to not fully armor a component
Get loyalty high with one or two factions and work for them. Find a good 50 ton mech you like for the beginning usually a hunchback is good if you don’t like the centurion. Buy a few extra weapons and ammo at the industrial hubs. Don’t worry if you have to restart a mission because you walk into an ambush. Try to agro one enemy and separate him from his lance mates if possible ganging up on one mech is the best way to stay safe. The faster you kill an enemy the less damage you take.
Don't ever make kurita mad, or it will be hard to find assault mechs at a decent price. Liao and Marik are good targets because they don't have much to do with campaign missions.
For campaign davion and independent are good. For career it changes a lot depending on the dlc you play but davion and Steiner merge in 2030s and Liao space is cut in half in the same time. Unless you don’t have kestrel lancers
I wouldn't bother with Davion and Steiner since when they form FedCom their reputation towards you resets to 0, regardless if they think you're awesome or they think you suck
Edit: actually I do slightly take that back, Kestrel Lancers runs off of Davion rep, I'm on Sarna Part 5 after dumping Davion rep in favor of Kurita and besides a few Battlemasters I haven't seen anything particularly juicy on the salvage list
Pirates are a free rep dump since they'll love you if you do Cantina missions
Number one thing you should know:
**THIS GAME IS NOTHING LIKE AC6**
I adore both games, but they essentially have nothing in common.
A mech is a clunky machine, it is very much a walking tank.
Only some of them can even leave the ground, and its combat utility in this game are limited to just getting a better angle.
Time to kill is longer for a basic enemy, but not much longer for an elite one. What passes for a "boss" is a standard mech that shoots more accurately, but otherwise is just piloting a rare mech.
Heat management is perhaps the biggest difference to most other games.
All weapons generate heat. Energy weapons especially, though missiles are up there.
You need to add heat sinks during mech customization to dissipate them. Early game learn to treasure Double Heat Sinks as they are rare starting out and extraordinarily powerful.
If you overheat you shut down, you can override shutdown, but then the heat does damage to you.
This forces you to take a very methodical approach to combat.
You can't just send fire downrange you have to balance it out with heat management and incoming damage management.
In general, aim for the legs for light mechs, center torso for everything else.
Exceptions you will learn are some heavy/assault mechs where you aim for the head. Some other mechs with large fractions of their weapons in one arm or torso. And some mechs with bad leg armor.
Also, you do not need to be looking at a target while you cooldown. Get in the habit of torso twisting the least damaged side of your mech so it faces the incoming fire.
It's always preferable to have two torsos low on armor than one torso blown up while one is undamaged.
mainly, when you get frustrated and it feels like you arent good enough, you just need to play another 100 or so hours.
also - the DLCs are absolutely worth it.
also, also - the best path is to play through the campaign, complete to 100%. then start a career, and import your campaign - youll import all of your cash and mechs in to your career. from there, youll grind through most of the campaign missions and a ton more strictly cash missions in the career, and you can restart as many times as youd like, importing your prior career each time.
good luck / have fun!
Point reticle at enemy, pull trigger.
Keep your speed up. In real combat, speed is life. You go slow, you die.
Jump jets have a few niche uses, but aren't terribly useful in most campaign missions. Don't feel too bad about taking them off in favor of armor.
You can step on tanks.
Bumping into enemies will damage both of you. Punching only damages the other guy.
Have fun storming the castle!
First off, now and always, remember that Instant Action is your friend: Instant Action is an option that allows you to play single missions of any type with whatever mechs and configurations you wish, it's a great tool to try out mechs and weapons in order to see if you like them and what versions they have available, as well as playing through missions to see what they're about and to experience combat in completely consequence-free scenarios.
Familiarizing yourself with the mechs will also learn you something extremely useful: their weakspots. It's no mystery that all mechs have more armor in front of them than behind them, but not all mechs are built equal: if you destroy the cockpit of a mech you'll immediately destroy the enemy with only a few shots (note that you don't necessarily want to do this all the time), but some mechs require very good aim to pull it off. So when in doubt, shooting their legs off will make them an easy target as long as you remember that they can still fire back at you.
Another thing getting to know mechs will teach you is to be wary of some more than others: the Urbanmech UM, for one, may not look like much. And that's because it's not much. But, it carries a huge gun that mechs of its size and even one size larger can't ever hope to equip, and it can do a ton of damage if left unsupervised for too long.
But, regardless of if you familiarize yourself with mechs pre-campaign, keep in mind some of the undisputed MVPs of the battlefield, both so you can get them yourself to drive or give to squadmates or so you can be prepared against them in the battlefield: mechs like the Hunchback HBK and the Marauder MAD, which can dish out and soak up tons of damage, yet still remain in fighting shape and can punch way above their tonnage with the right equipment. Worth remembering that not all mechs are created equal, and that goes for different variants of the same chassis: some are stupidly powerful and others just stupid. Learning the difference will save you a lot of stress later on.
Last, use your squad. The way AI works in this game is that they will aggressively target whatever mech is doing the most damage, and most of the time, that'll be you. You can switch mechs, but if you go down, the mission is over; so command your squad to not just follow you, but target enemy mechs and defend chokepoints so you can stay alive for longer.
The DLC that are "must haves" are Heroes of the Inner Sphere and Solaris Showdown, while Kestrel Lancers/Rise of Rasalhague add more story content and Call to Arms adds more melee-focused mechs- so all three are well worth it if you enjoy those aspects. The remaining DLC, Dragon's Gambit, is the least impressive but it's also very cheap so if you enjoy everything else then don't feel bad for getting it too.
As for difficulty, I find it best to turn down enemy accuracy and lethality to 90 or 95. Otherwise every enemy is a literal sniper. Repair times are also a bit excessive when combined with some tight timelines on multi-mission contracts/campaigns, so I turn that down to 85-90 as well while turning up repair costs to 115, and mech storage costs to 110. Just my personal preferences after playing awhile, time to money felt imbalanced and my reasoning is that paying more to repair and store mechs so they are battle-ready more often makes sense.
I think some mods are really good for enhancing vanilla gameplay. **Delayed Deadlines** is okay if you want to explore all the storylines without worrying about the few campaign missions with deadlines. **Faction Standing Tweaks** goes well with it, making reputation gain more even (and balanced with losses so you don't end up punished for doing lower difficulty missions than your reputation). **See All Loot** just increases the range to see in-mission loot boxes, which given their scarcity, huge map size, and meager loot rewards, this one feels necessary to prevent unnecessary frustration. **Better Lance Mate Status** gives your lance mates a paper doll on your UI, simple but important. Before I lowered accuracy/lethality and got this mod, I would have lance mates dying despite appearing safe at 90% health, all because the enemies cored them with sniper accuracy. **Pilot Promotion** just allows you to continue advancing your pilots instead of them becoming obsolete compared to the randoms you can hire at any point. You still need to ensure you train them to their potential before you can advance further, so it's very balanced compared to the minimal cash drain that hiring new pilots has. **Marketplace QOL,** just for sorting/bulk selling in the marketplace. Then **Unofficial MW5 patch**, does it do anything? IDK but I know developers have left bugs in games before so I figure it's not harmful.
Lastly, after I got good at the game and wanted more challenge (without every enemy being a sniper) I downloaded **AdjustableBattleValue** which allows you to modify enemy spawns, I did run into an issue with Infiltration missions with this one, so I don't recommend increasing the number of turret enemies. Instead I increased enemy light mechs 20%, medium mechs 15%, ground vehicles 35%, and air vehicles 35%. This helped the missions/enemies feel more like an actual battlefield and resulted in some crazy fights with lasers and missiles all over the place. It also helped with completing operations from the cantina to kill X of a certain enemy. It just didn't make sense that an enemy stronghold would have like 7 tanks, 4 mechs, and 5 helicopters. At least adding a couple more of each felt reasonable.
Value mobility above all, if you lack that focus firepower. Up armor as much as you can.
Learn your 'Mechs, so you can better take them apart and what your strengths and weaknesses can exploit or use.
Buy the DLC, they add another 200 hours' worth of gameplay.
Take care of your AI. They are a little lobotomized. Or get friends, though take care, the difficulty jumps for every player.
For difficulty, you can switch it to custom and make it as easy or hard as you want. Easy is like a preschool art class while hard is like Dark Souls on steroids.
Learn to lose. Sometimes you get screwed, but outside of story missions, if you lose, it's no big deal sometimes.
This game is going to be slow, and you are going to get hit, and you can't avoid it. The tricks are taking the hits where you have the most armor, using trees and buildings as cover, avoiding aggro and flanking.
Focus first on making money, in early zones the repair penalties are low so just order the repairs and jump to the next star. The goal is to get 2 squads of light and medium mechs so you can run multi-mission operations. Once you can run those, you'll get a lot of money for them. Take that big sack of money and sail north into the red seas (Kurita territory) and you can buy a big ass assault mech. I recommend saving up 20 mil before you jump up there. Try to take missions where you help the red team and your mechs will be cheaper.
Spend some time looking at mechs and memorizing where the cockpit is, headshots can be a bitch to pull off in the heat of battle but they'll kill a mech right away, and headshotted mechs show up on post-mission salvage more frequently
I say memorize where they are because I have to remember that Thunderbolt cockpits aren't dead center, and Crabs look like they'd have a Mad Cat style cockpit, but it's actually above the giant Barbara Streisand nose
There's no shame in restarting missions if things go completely tits up, and I'd actually recommend it on a few to figure out a more efficient way forward - there's a number of missions where I've taken way less losses by running ahead, popping objectives and scurrying to the extraction zone while my ~~cannon fodder goons~~ loyal lancemates distract all those angry red triangles that would've done more damage to my lance if I hadn't rushed past them
Mods help, specifically YAML because it'll let you change out weapons and weapon sizes.
Also torso twisting. Learn the timing of weapons and learn when to turn to spread damage. Things like Lasers, missiles, burst fire ACs or LBX weapons, If you are turning as you are hit, you can spread the damage over multiple components, OR if you are in a mech with a valuable part like a hunchy and their hunch, you use your off side to act like a shield to soak damage.
Understand that losing parts and mechs is part of the process. It's what can lead you to experiment and come up with some unique builds and unique lances. Bigger also isn't always better. The fast you move the harder time the AI has trying to hit you. Also don't underestimate vehicles or turrets. They are quick to kill but can still dish out some nasty damage.
Don't be afraid to use cover to your advantage. Also FEAR THE URBIE. Urbies are very common on low to mid level missions but they tend to pack AC10s and AC20s which will WRECK light and medium mechs. Focus those heavy auto cannons. (Their right, your left. Same with Atlas's)
Finally, don't feel like you HAVE to clear the map. On some missions it's worth far more to just do the OBJ and leave. Sometimes the salvage isn't worth the repair cost.
only put low quality weapons on your arms so you don't feel like you got to restart the mission every time you lose one. if you have a rare weapon you can't find more of, put it in a torso.
Torso twist- turn away from the enemy as they shoot so you spread out the damage. Also don’t mount expensive or super rare stuff like UAC into the arms for the same reason. Arms are expendable.
Took me a while since playing fps got me to turn towards enemy.
Also always have a long range fire support mech with good arm swing and arc for those pesky pesky fliers/ turrets. Igor heavy Vtol will bring the pain.
You can force an AI to eject their mech if you destroy all their weapons. This is really easy for mechs that have all their weapons in their arms, such as the Phoenix Hawk.
Just started recently and things that helped:
Unlike mw2 Mercs, you don’t pay for ammo used. So don’t worry about needing to horde that stuff or sending missles down range.
Spend a while in instant action playing with different control setups and options.
As soon as you can afford new mechs find a hunchback that has the 6 medium lasers. It'll dead stop a light and they're great in the medium 1vs1 or 2vs2. Solaris will help you gain mechs fast. Most mechs carry weapons in the right sides, so aim for the left and take off that arm.
Some of this you may have already done, so bear with me.
This is the general list of advice I accumulated. It helped me and hopefully it will help you.
Unless you have a reason, don't keep more than 4 Mechs outside of cold storage. More Mechs outside of cold storage raises your upkeep fee, which you pay every cycle and cycles pass as you travel long distances.
Same for pilots. If you hire a lot of pilots, their salaries cannot be avoided so that drives up per cycle costs too. At first, hire no more pilots than you have Mechs, with an allowance for one extra pilot in case someone dies or is injured.
To elaborate on the previous statement, multi mission contracts are the exception and it is recommended to equip everything ahead of the first mission. Time passes during missions but not long enough to fully overhaul/re-equip a mech.
In a multi mission, assume you will have to replace all 4 Mechs after each mission due to repairs, especially in the Dragon's Gambit.
You most likely won't suffer such severe losses but being cautious and stowing the untouched Mechs after the final mission is easier than hitting an impasse on the final mission because you reused a broken down Mech from earlier in the mission series.
Everyone has their own prideful opinions when it comes to restarting a mission, but if I lose any mech that is unique or expensive, I restart the mission. Too risky to have an auto save at the end of a mission, to find out a valuable pilot or mech is lost for good.
This goes for heavy damage as well.
A side note here that should not be overlooked. You CAN restart any mission without taking a reputation penalty, but you CANNOT "Abort" a mission or campaign without taking a penalty to your reputation with the employer.
Always have cantina missions equipped. They don't appear at very low levels. Keep checking your transmissions and you will get an email in game that tells you "Fixer Cantinas Available" when you first reach the minimum level. Look for a green circular emblem on the star map after that.
Be careful not punch too far above your weight class. Assault Mechs and the missions they appear in bring expensive repairs you can't always afford to fix. There is a numerical difficulty rating assigned to every conflict zone and individual mission. Be mindful of that. The difficulty increases as you travel clockwise around the starmap.
Be mindful to not go on unnecessary road trips, that long travel costs a lot.
If the repairs are not expensive, start them immediately after the mission ends, prior to traveling. If they are expensive (more than half a million per unit) travel to the nearest industrial hub (stars connected by a line) then start repairs at the hub.
Watch out for the zones that are hostile or neutral to you. The repair cost and duration gets multiplied by 1.5x 2x and 3x depending on how much the owner of the zone dislikes you.
Grinding for resources and reputation is completely acceptable.
The game does not expect you to travel straight through the campaign prior to exploring.
A lot of people miss the DLC events on their first playthrough, don't sweat it. Get established and load your save into a career later.
A suggestion from my own experience.
I bought the game at launch and got my butt whooped so many times I put the game on a shelf for several years. Mistakes can be discouraging but perseverance is rewarded.
Try to avoid constant, close quarters combat where you're standing still. Constantly walking perpendicular to your line of sight will spare you from getting saturated with rockets from various sources.
Turn aim assist to the highest setting and turn difficulty to the lowest setting in the main menu options. After you feel comfortable with more challenge, gradually scale back the aim assist to medium then the difficulty to normal. If you still more challenge, turn down aim assist then up difficulty, in that pattern.
In heavier (tonnage) missions and as you get more involved in the game world, the game can subtly keep increasing the volume of enemies you face. You will find the enemies still send tanks, vehicle based missile launchers, and agile but fragile Mechs alongside the enemies of your weight class. Some people prefer to decrease aim assist no lower than medium due to the volume of small units that need to be quickly dispatched at range, in the dark, to focus on heavier Mechs that are closing distance.
And go to planet Valentina then check your transmissions. It is in the bottom far right edge of the Davion/Kurita border. A message/transmission shows up mentioning a Wolverine. You can collect the Mech without fighting a mission.
It’s entirely possible to play without mods, i’ve had problems with the game in the past which stopped the game from being playable but all you need to do is research the problem and fix it yourself.
Not everyone wants to play a modded game or get onto modding, let people discover mods by themselves. It’s not “inferior”, it’s a decently common preference to not play games modded. It’s best to let a beginner play a game unmodded first so they can get the chance to fully understand the game before possibly causing problems and mod overlaps.
Max out armour before arming a mech, that way you have maximum armour coverage and don't get blown apart. Strip jump jets if you can. Beware of firestarters. Long range missiles are usually inferior to short range missiles. Use range and focus on one part of an enemy mech at a time. Legs are usually a good spot to hit first as it'll give you more time to deal with a mech if it's crippled. Consider using a joystick for immersion. There's a huge learning curve for this game so be ready for some tough missions! There's also a secret wolverine mech in the Valentina system.
>Beware of firestarters Better yet get yourself a firestarter and get good with circle strafing with machine guns and flamers. There isn't an ai mech in the game that can 1v1 a firestarter.
the chad Hero firestarter vs virgin atlas I have done that screwed up on a brawl thinking it was lights not open and took the ember into that. I lost an arm they lost all the heavy and assault mechs. also good at base destruction. 4th fav mech in the game
When maxing out armor make sure not to over Armor your back. I tend to brawl a lot so I tend to go a little heavier in the back. Medium mechs I tend to go around 15 center and 10 shoulders. Heave and assaults I go 20 middle and 15 shoulders. Don't be afraid to shave down your legs as they are rarely targeted by AI ( though they can leg you ) Also it's not horrible on a lot of mechs to shave down your Cockpit. I know some people go even lighter on back armor but I've been taken down one to many times by light mechs behind me
But do leg AI mechs.
That's all I do.
To add on to stripping jump jets, placement of where things are in your mech matters a lot I usually put all my ammo in the legs (AI focuses on legs less than they should) and if I still need more, the cockpit (I'm dying anyways if that gets popped), ammo explosions are a bitch Engine Heatsinks are lovely once you start getting Double Heat Sinks, saves a lot of room to cram in other stuff
Is there a good way to get a joystick set up? I really wanted to, but haven't been able to get mine working.
I just used a Logitech extreme 3d pro, mapped most of the gaming buttons to it, and tweaked to sensitivity a bit for better feel. In practice though, most default joystick setups will work really well with a computer- it's just a really steep learning curve in terms of using a joystick. Once you get the hang of it though, it feels awesome!
When it comes to movement, you're more like "a tank with legs". But if you want a simpler control option you can enable "fps mode" in the settings. Medium mechs have the disadvantages of both light and heavy Also a rule of thumb I go by is if it's small shoot the legs, if it's big shoot the arms/guns. The Saturday morning cartoon from the 90s is considered in-universe propaganda
So stay away from Medium?
I personally love medium mechs, but with a caveat: they make poor generalists. Medium mechs shine in a specialist role, usually Striker or Close Support. They’re a great balance of speed and firepower for certain types of missions, but be wary of lingering too long in an enemy’s kill zone- try to stay on the flanks. A Hunchback with an AC20 can fk your whole day up, so my advice is if you see one in an approaching enemy lance, kill it first. It’s got a low profile so it’s harder to hit and it’s faster and better armored than it looks.
Really? I think the generalist mediums like the Wolverine Centurion and Shadow Hawk are great generalists.
You’re definitely right about the wolverine and centurion, but I think of those as outliers. It’s usually hard to build a medium that is equally good at all ranges and roles, especially with the shadow Hawk. The only SH I’ve ever found or build that makes for a great go-anywhere-do-anything is the Grey Death hero mech. But that’s just my opinion and your mileage may vary.
I mean that's fair but I think there's just as many specialist heavy Mechs (catapult, archer, jagermech rifleman.) >The only SH I’ve ever found or build that makes for a great go-anywhere-do-anything is the Grey Death hero mech. Huh. Okay then. To me it's very similar to the Wolverine which functions very well on most occasions. Tbf Grey Death is almost better than Quarantine too.
A medium mech is still capable of dishing out some painful firepower. But they aren't as tough as bigger mechs. So think about it this way, you have the choice of shooting a medium or assault mech, would you rather destroy the medium, or half destroy the assault? Always the former, less guns shooting at you sooner.
Not necessarily. The hunchback and the assassin have their strengths but it is something to be aware of.
Get the dlcs. Don't wait or you'll regret it, trust me. The quests are time-locked to specific in-game dates
Or at least Kestral lancers
And HOTIS. It's got a LOT of qol features
It’s got the most mechs and weapons. But the DLCs are cheap on steam more expensive on consoles.
pick them up in a sale on console that come up very often on the ps5
Seconding this, the base game is okay but with the DLC it's got tons of stuff to do!
What?? Do I have to start a new campaign if I have passed those dates? I was waiting to beat the game first.
Yes, but there's 2 different sections that start at different dates Operation GALAHAD shows up 1 April 3026 and can be started as late as 12 October 3026, this one's a pretty simple 3 part mission, but you **have** to do it in order to get into the rest of the storyline. Once it's over you're free to do as you wish Operation RAT shows up 15 March 3028 and can be started as late as 23 September 3028, that's the one that takes a year to finish
Which DLC is that out of? Is there one I should go ahead and buy now? (When Xbox Live comes back up.)
They're both a part of Legend of the Kestrel Lancers If you're on a fresh campaign or it's not September 3026 yet don't worry about getting it right away, iirc once you get a DLC it takes an in-game month for everything in a DLC to start showing up
There’s career mode, but you won’t get the rewards in story mode
Should I buy them all now? Or just certain ones?
All. The dlc bundle upgrade has 2 of them for the price of 1
It's fine if you miss the dates. After you've beaten campaign mode, you can import your save into the time locked DLC missions, allowing you to go back and do them with your existing save.
Stick to your plan, campaign is a thing in itself, you will miss the power curve fun if you mix all things in one playthrough. These DLC mini campaigns work good without main campaign. They are balanced around clean career with fresh start and some missions before their start. So do not start bigger DLC campaigns yet. But main campaign will benefit from small chained missions. You will see more handcrafted missions while get required reputation for campaign. It is more variative than random missions in vanilla
#New to MW5? - Have all DLCs. - Missions from DLC1 and DLC3 are not time-sensitive, the campaign from DLC2 and DLC4 is time-sensitive for 3026 / 3028 and 3031 / 3032. A mod can eliminate the both deadlines. - There is a free secret 55ton Wolverine with excellent weapons available right after the start, just travel to the eastern part of the map (where the campaign starts) and visit the *Valentina* system. - [**Sarna**](https://www.sarna.net/wiki/MechWarrior_5:_Mercenaries/High_Reward_Quests) shows all quests where you get a Hero Mech at the end. Recommended quest hero mech: *Dragon Sidewinder, Victor Basilisk, Corsair-Privateer, King Crab CAR, Archer Agincourt*. - Mech Salvage has a random chance, with legging or headkilling having the higher chances. - [**Mechoverview on Sarna**](https://www.sarna.net/wiki/MechWarrior_5:_Mercenaries/BattleMechs) - Work for Kurita (red faction) at the beginning; do not work against Independents during the campaign; do not work against Federated Suns / Davion (the yellow faction) if you want to play the Kestrel Lancer campaign. After the end of the Kestrel Lancer campaign in 3030 you can work against FedSun/Davon and Steiner/Lyran as their respective reputation will reset in 3040, - Do cantina missions. 15% more damage + 15% less cool down +15% more speed etc adds up. - Better equipment: go to a reputation 13-15 conflict zone with one ore more industrial zones nearby. Your chances to get T4/T5 weapons either from enemies, from vendors or from rare items/weapons/mechs are there the highest. Cantina missions sometimes provide high end rewards as well, always check them out. - Vendor inventory respawns after jumping 3 or 4 points away. - Mech Spawn is random, with some areas having a higher chance. Nothing is guaranteed however. - Putting mechs into cold storage removes upgrades. A mod can prevent that. - Hero mechs often have better payloads and gadgets (endo, ferro, XL engine etc), so usually more free tonnage for better loadouts and have more upgrade slots. The combination makes them in many cases the best mechs by far. - Check out rare & Hero mechs. Some of them have *Guardian ECM, Double Heat Sinks* and other good stuff. Spending 3mio on a Hero Urban Mech K9 for a juicy amount of Double Heatsinks early on means that your old Hunchback with 9 MLs will suddenly make *happy laservomit voices*. - Mission points: money first, salvage later with high reputation. **MechLab** - Max armour. Torso front armour / rear armour should be 4/1 or 3/1. Legs and head are less targeted by the enemy => you can shove of 1/2t of armour there. - Medium lasers and AC5 are considered well balanced weapons with a good damage / weight / heat ratio. When in doubt: go for the classics. - Jump Jets are not useful in most missions / are usually dead weight. In most cases 1 JJ is enough. - SRM boats kick way above their weight class in general, if you like the ninja play style. - The *Firepower* stat is only alpha strike damage AND factors in melee damage, so the stat is very misleading, when it comes to the actual damage with ranged weapons. There are many sheets showing the full damage stats, including damage per second / heat / tonnage. - Equipment like AMS, Probe, ECM, MASC or Supercharger need corresponding slots on the mech. Most mechs do not have such a slot, only special and usually rare versions have them. - Heat management! You need to balance your cooling per second with the heat per second generated by the weapons (rate of fire x heat per attack). Your cooling will usually be something between 1 and 4, and your weapons total heat per second something between 1 and 10. Try as a very rough guideline to have **less** than 2 heat per second more than your cooling per second. - Having a support mech in your lance is a good idea. Support = ECM, AMS and some good weapons to shoot down fliers and tanks, like the AC2/5/LBX10). - Have a heavy/assault lance for endgame stuff. Have a [**speedy light lance**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/comments/r1xln9/speed_is_love_speed_is_life_a_miniguide_to_raid/) for quick demo/raid work with high evasion pilots. - When using only a few MGs and/or AMS: half a ton of ammo is usually enough. - As a very general guideline: a main weapon will need around 2-3 tons of ammo each for sustained fire on average. - Having multiple weapons of the same type can be very powerful. 2 medium lasers are perhaps not that strong, but 8 create a powerful *Laservomiter*. 1 Flamer is poor, but 6 flamers in a Firestarter can shut down and kill an assault mech. 1 UAC5 is nice ... 4 of them in a King Crab is murder. - Always check both the initial damage and the DPS of a weapon. Small lasers are funny and for memes ... until you do the math and you suddenly see that they are actually comparable with medium lasers, except for their range. **Beginner builds** - *Basic medium/heavy mech* combo 2x AC2/5 + 4x Medium Lasers, 2t of ammo for each ACs. Easy to build on several chassis. Good balance between weight, range, heat and damage. Playstyle: brawling - *SRM-Boat*: medium mech + 81kph + enough modules for SRM14+ & a few M-Lasers: a hot missile boat, but very capable until the endgame. Example *Kintaro-18* and later *Zeus Hero Mech*. Playstyle: murder-stabby in kissing range into the legs or the back. - *Laservomiter*: 6+ M-Lasers and perhaps 1-2 ER Large Lasers. Toasty mech, the ER laser for anti-flyer work and taking out turrets at range. Example: *Hunchback 4p, Blacknight, Hero Thunderbolt*. Playstyle: one-shot the enemy cockpit, cooldown, repeat, stay in cover. - *Sniper*: 2x Gauss or 2-4x Heavy Rifle. Example: *Hero Cyclops* or *Hero King Crab*. - *Raid/Demo*: *Firestarter*, use flamers and machine guns. Almost equal armour front / back, upgrades with +armor and +structure. Speedy, easy to use, devastating. **Example endgame lance** - Atlas Boar (MPL, UAC5, Streak2) - Free Choice - Hero Dragon Sidewinder (LBX10, AMS) - Viktor Basilisk (LBX10, ECM) **Combat** - Concentrate your damage on one part of the mech. A bit of damage everywhere is useless, as "hit points" are per hit location, not overall. - Lance AI is at best average with *"Aattack my target"* and brawling. Use *"Go to location"* and long range ballistic/energy weapons. - Use cover - Use chainfire when overheating - *Legging a mech* means destroying both legs of a mech, which is *very* effective even for lighter mechs and SRM boats. - **Speed is love, speed is life.** The faster your mech moves the more the enemy will miss. Learn to circle your enemy, turning the torso at him and shooting at him. Mechs can out-turn enemies this way, massively reducing incoming damage. It is a basic skill you will always need. - Present undamaged parts to the enemy. Attempt to spread incoming damage. Let your AI lance tank. Sacrifice cheap empty arms to protect expensive weapons or the torso. - Light mechs with multi-machine guns and Small SB lasers or flamers are surprisingly murderous, especially when combined with ECM. Still requires high level pilots, because you want these evasion skills. - Do not ignore tanks, light & fast mechs and fliers. They do not seem threatening, until they get their act together and into your back. Then they hurt. - There is a maximum weapon range and an optimal weapon range. Energy weapon can only go to the maximum weapon range, while ballistic weapons can go over it with a ballistic arc. **Lance A.I.** - In recent weeks the discussion about the quality of the lance AI intensified, with people testing and describing the lance AI being improved in certain scenarios. - The AI can manage pinpoint weapons (PPC) and low-heat weapons (LBX) decently, cannot use gadget / special actions on weapons like the cooldown fire of the UAC5 (only the normal mode), and has problems with LRM boats + short range weapons. The best AI setup are low heat precise weapons. - The AI is heat conservative and will not fire above a certain threshold, even if that would mean missing out killing an enemy assault mech. So see above. Being near heat neutrality is important for the AI. - The AI is not affected by recoil (a high recoil weapon will throw your view as a human port around), nor is it affected by MASC/Supercharger damage. The AI can and will use MASC/Supercharger 100% of the time, boosting NPC-Mechs incredibly. So the *Hero Dragon* will constantly travel with around 120kph if piloted by a mech ... but only if you are that fast, as the AI will never move faster than you during travel. It will however speed up during combat for evasion. **Discussions** - [Discussions on weapons](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/comments/re5enb/the_big_talk_open_discussion_on_weapons/) - [Discussions on light mechs](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/comments/rk7inb/the_big_talk_open_discussion_on_light_mechs/) - [Discussion on equipment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/comments/rgdwit/the_big_talk_open_discussion_on_equipment/) and - [Guide on weapons](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/comments/rexcey/the_big_talk_weapons_the_tools_of_destruction_and/) - [Guide on equipment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/comments/ristgs/the_big_talk_equipment_tools_to_control_the/) **Mods - PC only** - On the PC you can use mods. Mods make the game *so much better*. [**Here are some personal recommendations.**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/comments/vi38gk/mods_a_curated_list_for_dlc3//) SYL
You are a scholar and a saint
Get a Hunchback. Either a 4G or 4P.
That's what all Hunchback pilots say.
Grid Iron my beloved, but shooting ballistic watermelons out of an AC/20 is also always fun.
This is not armored core 6. You are in a tank with legs, not a glitter boy. Max out your armor. Buy heavier mechs ASAP. Keep a couple extra pilots in your roster, because pilots can get injured or killed. Having superior range will save you a lot on repairs, because the enemy can't hit you if they never get into range. ER lasers and low caliber autocannons are great, with the PPC and gauss rifle coming in as another good choice that I personally don't value as much. A single gauss round can one shot most mechs, if you hit the cockpit, but the \~15 second reload time isn't really my style. I prefer using as many ER large lasers as possible, but I'm also used to managing heat. Final tip: It's better to just not get hit. Sometimes the best choice is to backtrack and ambush. If you get good at managing threats and stay mobile, enemies will rarely hit you.
Are you playing with mods? Base game, a T5 gauss can't cockpit in one shot and a T0 gauss has a cooldown of 7.2 seconds. Not a big fan of gauss in MW5 either, but was curious about your numbers.
I love the gauss, but only due to flavor. They really aren't that great in MW5 and it makes me sad. Recently I've found just filling something that can take it with as many ac5-rf will outperform my gauss set ups every time. Granted I've ventured into modded now and whoo boy is life different.
Some cockpits are only 13 to 15 armor, with a t5 gauss and upgrades, it can one shot a cockpit. 2 nd a ppc and they are gone.
You're forgetting to account for the 15 cockpit structure, right? So even a 13 armor cockpit would need 28 damage. With full cantina damage support a T5 gauss would deal ((21\*1.1)\*1.05)\*1.05 = 25.5 damage, still shy. I suppose if a mech is storing ammo in its cockpit for some reason you could roll an ammo explosion, though.
Why I like the nightstars, 2gauss and a ppc on the same trigger and it's over. Sleipnir,not really a fan but i know a lot of folks that do well with it.
Honestly, I pulled the numbers out of my ass, but a T5 gauss does sometimes one shot a mech. Maybe they took a little damage from something else. While I do play with mods, since I have about 500 hours in this game, I try to give people advice not based on mods.
BUY ALL THE DLC. All of them should be on sale too right now.
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In campaign don’t be afraid early on to put your Pc in the light mechs and put your NPC Lance mates in the more survivable medium mechs. Your PC can afford to get blown up, they can’t.
Get up to at least 400 million c-bills, and mech hunt. Get a good lance of heavy mechs, and assault mechs, and level the 60 potential pilots to max. then play the campaign. once you have a few atlas K's, a nightstar and a marauder II, you can beat everything. Then do the dlc campaigns in a career.it takes a while, but it's worth it. Night stars can show anytime, Gauss rifles will show later. you want a mad II 4a because with the right coolin you complete any beach head by jumping over artillery, run a mad II and 3 other assault mechs do stop the launch to get the car, tear everything up. Import into career, and just hunt heroes. Also. If you can spend it, buy every hero mech you find. spend time stacking bills, buy em all, eventually you get the kraken and Kaiju. You are golden. Every hero you buy takes them out of the pool. With you piloting a Kaiju or CAR you can slam so much damage, you're good until 12 +rep, just give them the best weapons you can find. Try to choose salvage over c bills. Overall nets more money and equipment. Tldr take it slow, there's no rush
I have never in my life seen more than 50 million in my bank balance.
Need to farm the missions you can handle, then get enough mechs and gear, and move on. It ain't a race.
That cash sure does like to burn a hole in my pocket though!
Oh yeah, there are way too many shinys. I try to only buy t4 or 5 weapons, if you're hunting heros later on in the gane, it eats your cash. But each hero bought takes that "out of the pool" so long as you dont sell it. A few of the wiser posters told me about that, and finally i got my kaiju.
Xbox Elite 2 controller with weapon groups mapped to the back paddle buttons.
God, yes. I don't use those for any other game, but I pop then in every time for MW5.
make yourself a harder target, stay mobile. take your time, let your pilot's skills improve and get better mechs before taking on higher difficulty missions. the fastest way to kill/disable threats is being able to focus all your damage on one component, weapons with spread suffer at doing this (LRMs, burst fire autocannons), weapons that deliver all the damage at once are great at this (single shot autocannons, PPC). There are a few weapons that deal enough damage to make up for there spread, SRMs are the prime example. learn the mechs, figure out which one can do, not only for your own use but to be able to judge how much of a threat they are as a enemy. Learn where to shoot them to take out as many of their weapons as possible, or if it's just better to go in for the kill. Up armor when you can. as you get better you'll understand when it's safe to not fully armor a component
Fuck money, max salvage!!!
Yes, the hero version is worth it
Get loyalty high with one or two factions and work for them. Find a good 50 ton mech you like for the beginning usually a hunchback is good if you don’t like the centurion. Buy a few extra weapons and ammo at the industrial hubs. Don’t worry if you have to restart a mission because you walk into an ambush. Try to agro one enemy and separate him from his lance mates if possible ganging up on one mech is the best way to stay safe. The faster you kill an enemy the less damage you take.
Any recommendations on which factions?
Don't ever make kurita mad, or it will be hard to find assault mechs at a decent price. Liao and Marik are good targets because they don't have much to do with campaign missions.
For campaign davion and independent are good. For career it changes a lot depending on the dlc you play but davion and Steiner merge in 2030s and Liao space is cut in half in the same time. Unless you don’t have kestrel lancers
I wouldn't bother with Davion and Steiner since when they form FedCom their reputation towards you resets to 0, regardless if they think you're awesome or they think you suck Edit: actually I do slightly take that back, Kestrel Lancers runs off of Davion rep, I'm on Sarna Part 5 after dumping Davion rep in favor of Kurita and besides a few Battlemasters I haven't seen anything particularly juicy on the salvage list Pirates are a free rep dump since they'll love you if you do Cantina missions
Play through all the content vanilla first. Then explore mods.
Number one thing you should know: **THIS GAME IS NOTHING LIKE AC6** I adore both games, but they essentially have nothing in common. A mech is a clunky machine, it is very much a walking tank. Only some of them can even leave the ground, and its combat utility in this game are limited to just getting a better angle. Time to kill is longer for a basic enemy, but not much longer for an elite one. What passes for a "boss" is a standard mech that shoots more accurately, but otherwise is just piloting a rare mech. Heat management is perhaps the biggest difference to most other games. All weapons generate heat. Energy weapons especially, though missiles are up there. You need to add heat sinks during mech customization to dissipate them. Early game learn to treasure Double Heat Sinks as they are rare starting out and extraordinarily powerful. If you overheat you shut down, you can override shutdown, but then the heat does damage to you. This forces you to take a very methodical approach to combat. You can't just send fire downrange you have to balance it out with heat management and incoming damage management. In general, aim for the legs for light mechs, center torso for everything else. Exceptions you will learn are some heavy/assault mechs where you aim for the head. Some other mechs with large fractions of their weapons in one arm or torso. And some mechs with bad leg armor. Also, you do not need to be looking at a target while you cooldown. Get in the habit of torso twisting the least damaged side of your mech so it faces the incoming fire. It's always preferable to have two torsos low on armor than one torso blown up while one is undamaged.
There ain't no rocket skating here chief, its nice and slow and tanky. Hope that ain't a problem.....
mainly, when you get frustrated and it feels like you arent good enough, you just need to play another 100 or so hours. also - the DLCs are absolutely worth it. also, also - the best path is to play through the campaign, complete to 100%. then start a career, and import your campaign - youll import all of your cash and mechs in to your career. from there, youll grind through most of the campaign missions and a ton more strictly cash missions in the career, and you can restart as many times as youd like, importing your prior career each time. good luck / have fun!
Point reticle at enemy, pull trigger. Keep your speed up. In real combat, speed is life. You go slow, you die. Jump jets have a few niche uses, but aren't terribly useful in most campaign missions. Don't feel too bad about taking them off in favor of armor. You can step on tanks. Bumping into enemies will damage both of you. Punching only damages the other guy. Have fun storming the castle!
Make sure to learn to turn the torso independent of the legs. That way, you can shield a damaged weapon or limb from direct fire. Core skill.
First off, now and always, remember that Instant Action is your friend: Instant Action is an option that allows you to play single missions of any type with whatever mechs and configurations you wish, it's a great tool to try out mechs and weapons in order to see if you like them and what versions they have available, as well as playing through missions to see what they're about and to experience combat in completely consequence-free scenarios. Familiarizing yourself with the mechs will also learn you something extremely useful: their weakspots. It's no mystery that all mechs have more armor in front of them than behind them, but not all mechs are built equal: if you destroy the cockpit of a mech you'll immediately destroy the enemy with only a few shots (note that you don't necessarily want to do this all the time), but some mechs require very good aim to pull it off. So when in doubt, shooting their legs off will make them an easy target as long as you remember that they can still fire back at you. Another thing getting to know mechs will teach you is to be wary of some more than others: the Urbanmech UM, for one, may not look like much. And that's because it's not much. But, it carries a huge gun that mechs of its size and even one size larger can't ever hope to equip, and it can do a ton of damage if left unsupervised for too long. But, regardless of if you familiarize yourself with mechs pre-campaign, keep in mind some of the undisputed MVPs of the battlefield, both so you can get them yourself to drive or give to squadmates or so you can be prepared against them in the battlefield: mechs like the Hunchback HBK and the Marauder MAD, which can dish out and soak up tons of damage, yet still remain in fighting shape and can punch way above their tonnage with the right equipment. Worth remembering that not all mechs are created equal, and that goes for different variants of the same chassis: some are stupidly powerful and others just stupid. Learning the difference will save you a lot of stress later on. Last, use your squad. The way AI works in this game is that they will aggressively target whatever mech is doing the most damage, and most of the time, that'll be you. You can switch mechs, but if you go down, the mission is over; so command your squad to not just follow you, but target enemy mechs and defend chokepoints so you can stay alive for longer.
The DLC that are "must haves" are Heroes of the Inner Sphere and Solaris Showdown, while Kestrel Lancers/Rise of Rasalhague add more story content and Call to Arms adds more melee-focused mechs- so all three are well worth it if you enjoy those aspects. The remaining DLC, Dragon's Gambit, is the least impressive but it's also very cheap so if you enjoy everything else then don't feel bad for getting it too. As for difficulty, I find it best to turn down enemy accuracy and lethality to 90 or 95. Otherwise every enemy is a literal sniper. Repair times are also a bit excessive when combined with some tight timelines on multi-mission contracts/campaigns, so I turn that down to 85-90 as well while turning up repair costs to 115, and mech storage costs to 110. Just my personal preferences after playing awhile, time to money felt imbalanced and my reasoning is that paying more to repair and store mechs so they are battle-ready more often makes sense. I think some mods are really good for enhancing vanilla gameplay. **Delayed Deadlines** is okay if you want to explore all the storylines without worrying about the few campaign missions with deadlines. **Faction Standing Tweaks** goes well with it, making reputation gain more even (and balanced with losses so you don't end up punished for doing lower difficulty missions than your reputation). **See All Loot** just increases the range to see in-mission loot boxes, which given their scarcity, huge map size, and meager loot rewards, this one feels necessary to prevent unnecessary frustration. **Better Lance Mate Status** gives your lance mates a paper doll on your UI, simple but important. Before I lowered accuracy/lethality and got this mod, I would have lance mates dying despite appearing safe at 90% health, all because the enemies cored them with sniper accuracy. **Pilot Promotion** just allows you to continue advancing your pilots instead of them becoming obsolete compared to the randoms you can hire at any point. You still need to ensure you train them to their potential before you can advance further, so it's very balanced compared to the minimal cash drain that hiring new pilots has. **Marketplace QOL,** just for sorting/bulk selling in the marketplace. Then **Unofficial MW5 patch**, does it do anything? IDK but I know developers have left bugs in games before so I figure it's not harmful. Lastly, after I got good at the game and wanted more challenge (without every enemy being a sniper) I downloaded **AdjustableBattleValue** which allows you to modify enemy spawns, I did run into an issue with Infiltration missions with this one, so I don't recommend increasing the number of turret enemies. Instead I increased enemy light mechs 20%, medium mechs 15%, ground vehicles 35%, and air vehicles 35%. This helped the missions/enemies feel more like an actual battlefield and resulted in some crazy fights with lasers and missiles all over the place. It also helped with completing operations from the cantina to kill X of a certain enemy. It just didn't make sense that an enemy stronghold would have like 7 tanks, 4 mechs, and 5 helicopters. At least adding a couple more of each felt reasonable.
Value mobility above all, if you lack that focus firepower. Up armor as much as you can. Learn your 'Mechs, so you can better take them apart and what your strengths and weaknesses can exploit or use. Buy the DLC, they add another 200 hours' worth of gameplay. Take care of your AI. They are a little lobotomized. Or get friends, though take care, the difficulty jumps for every player. For difficulty, you can switch it to custom and make it as easy or hard as you want. Easy is like a preschool art class while hard is like Dark Souls on steroids. Learn to lose. Sometimes you get screwed, but outside of story missions, if you lose, it's no big deal sometimes.
Strap in for the rest of your life.
Always or never put ammo in your legs, depending on who you talk to.
Start using square trashcans, you may develop an irrational fear of round ones.
yeah boot the game up and play
This game is going to be slow, and you are going to get hit, and you can't avoid it. The tricks are taking the hits where you have the most armor, using trees and buildings as cover, avoiding aggro and flanking. Focus first on making money, in early zones the repair penalties are low so just order the repairs and jump to the next star. The goal is to get 2 squads of light and medium mechs so you can run multi-mission operations. Once you can run those, you'll get a lot of money for them. Take that big sack of money and sail north into the red seas (Kurita territory) and you can buy a big ass assault mech. I recommend saving up 20 mil before you jump up there. Try to take missions where you help the red team and your mechs will be cheaper.
Spend some time looking at mechs and memorizing where the cockpit is, headshots can be a bitch to pull off in the heat of battle but they'll kill a mech right away, and headshotted mechs show up on post-mission salvage more frequently I say memorize where they are because I have to remember that Thunderbolt cockpits aren't dead center, and Crabs look like they'd have a Mad Cat style cockpit, but it's actually above the giant Barbara Streisand nose There's no shame in restarting missions if things go completely tits up, and I'd actually recommend it on a few to figure out a more efficient way forward - there's a number of missions where I've taken way less losses by running ahead, popping objectives and scurrying to the extraction zone while my ~~cannon fodder goons~~ loyal lancemates distract all those angry red triangles that would've done more damage to my lance if I hadn't rushed past them
You'll get a free Wolverine Mech when you fly to Valentina system
Mods help, specifically YAML because it'll let you change out weapons and weapon sizes. Also torso twisting. Learn the timing of weapons and learn when to turn to spread damage. Things like Lasers, missiles, burst fire ACs or LBX weapons, If you are turning as you are hit, you can spread the damage over multiple components, OR if you are in a mech with a valuable part like a hunchy and their hunch, you use your off side to act like a shield to soak damage. Understand that losing parts and mechs is part of the process. It's what can lead you to experiment and come up with some unique builds and unique lances. Bigger also isn't always better. The fast you move the harder time the AI has trying to hit you. Also don't underestimate vehicles or turrets. They are quick to kill but can still dish out some nasty damage. Don't be afraid to use cover to your advantage. Also FEAR THE URBIE. Urbies are very common on low to mid level missions but they tend to pack AC10s and AC20s which will WRECK light and medium mechs. Focus those heavy auto cannons. (Their right, your left. Same with Atlas's) Finally, don't feel like you HAVE to clear the map. On some missions it's worth far more to just do the OBJ and leave. Sometimes the salvage isn't worth the repair cost.
only put low quality weapons on your arms so you don't feel like you got to restart the mission every time you lose one. if you have a rare weapon you can't find more of, put it in a torso.
See Urbanmech - RUN!
never underestimate the urbanmech
Torso twist- turn away from the enemy as they shoot so you spread out the damage. Also don’t mount expensive or super rare stuff like UAC into the arms for the same reason. Arms are expendable. Took me a while since playing fps got me to turn towards enemy. Also always have a long range fire support mech with good arm swing and arc for those pesky pesky fliers/ turrets. Igor heavy Vtol will bring the pain.
Run the campaign before you run your career and make sure you at least have the core storyline missions complete before your career
Strip mech, max armor then build. Can reduce back armor a bit on your mech but AI team needs full armor
You can force an AI to eject their mech if you destroy all their weapons. This is really easy for mechs that have all their weapons in their arms, such as the Phoenix Hawk.
Just started recently and things that helped: Unlike mw2 Mercs, you don’t pay for ammo used. So don’t worry about needing to horde that stuff or sending missles down range. Spend a while in instant action playing with different control setups and options.
As soon as you can afford new mechs find a hunchback that has the 6 medium lasers. It'll dead stop a light and they're great in the medium 1vs1 or 2vs2. Solaris will help you gain mechs fast. Most mechs carry weapons in the right sides, so aim for the left and take off that arm.
Some of this you may have already done, so bear with me. This is the general list of advice I accumulated. It helped me and hopefully it will help you. Unless you have a reason, don't keep more than 4 Mechs outside of cold storage. More Mechs outside of cold storage raises your upkeep fee, which you pay every cycle and cycles pass as you travel long distances. Same for pilots. If you hire a lot of pilots, their salaries cannot be avoided so that drives up per cycle costs too. At first, hire no more pilots than you have Mechs, with an allowance for one extra pilot in case someone dies or is injured. To elaborate on the previous statement, multi mission contracts are the exception and it is recommended to equip everything ahead of the first mission. Time passes during missions but not long enough to fully overhaul/re-equip a mech. In a multi mission, assume you will have to replace all 4 Mechs after each mission due to repairs, especially in the Dragon's Gambit. You most likely won't suffer such severe losses but being cautious and stowing the untouched Mechs after the final mission is easier than hitting an impasse on the final mission because you reused a broken down Mech from earlier in the mission series. Everyone has their own prideful opinions when it comes to restarting a mission, but if I lose any mech that is unique or expensive, I restart the mission. Too risky to have an auto save at the end of a mission, to find out a valuable pilot or mech is lost for good. This goes for heavy damage as well. A side note here that should not be overlooked. You CAN restart any mission without taking a reputation penalty, but you CANNOT "Abort" a mission or campaign without taking a penalty to your reputation with the employer. Always have cantina missions equipped. They don't appear at very low levels. Keep checking your transmissions and you will get an email in game that tells you "Fixer Cantinas Available" when you first reach the minimum level. Look for a green circular emblem on the star map after that. Be careful not punch too far above your weight class. Assault Mechs and the missions they appear in bring expensive repairs you can't always afford to fix. There is a numerical difficulty rating assigned to every conflict zone and individual mission. Be mindful of that. The difficulty increases as you travel clockwise around the starmap. Be mindful to not go on unnecessary road trips, that long travel costs a lot. If the repairs are not expensive, start them immediately after the mission ends, prior to traveling. If they are expensive (more than half a million per unit) travel to the nearest industrial hub (stars connected by a line) then start repairs at the hub. Watch out for the zones that are hostile or neutral to you. The repair cost and duration gets multiplied by 1.5x 2x and 3x depending on how much the owner of the zone dislikes you. Grinding for resources and reputation is completely acceptable. The game does not expect you to travel straight through the campaign prior to exploring. A lot of people miss the DLC events on their first playthrough, don't sweat it. Get established and load your save into a career later. A suggestion from my own experience. I bought the game at launch and got my butt whooped so many times I put the game on a shelf for several years. Mistakes can be discouraging but perseverance is rewarded. Try to avoid constant, close quarters combat where you're standing still. Constantly walking perpendicular to your line of sight will spare you from getting saturated with rockets from various sources. Turn aim assist to the highest setting and turn difficulty to the lowest setting in the main menu options. After you feel comfortable with more challenge, gradually scale back the aim assist to medium then the difficulty to normal. If you still more challenge, turn down aim assist then up difficulty, in that pattern. In heavier (tonnage) missions and as you get more involved in the game world, the game can subtly keep increasing the volume of enemies you face. You will find the enemies still send tanks, vehicle based missile launchers, and agile but fragile Mechs alongside the enemies of your weight class. Some people prefer to decrease aim assist no lower than medium due to the volume of small units that need to be quickly dispatched at range, in the dark, to focus on heavier Mechs that are closing distance. And go to planet Valentina then check your transmissions. It is in the bottom far right edge of the Davion/Kurita border. A message/transmission shows up mentioning a Wolverine. You can collect the Mech without fighting a mission.
Get mods
It’s entirely possible to play without mods, i’ve had problems with the game in the past which stopped the game from being playable but all you need to do is research the problem and fix it yourself.
Is it entirely possible? Absolutely. Is it entirely inferior to the modded experience? Also yes, absolutely.
Not everyone wants to play a modded game or get onto modding, let people discover mods by themselves. It’s not “inferior”, it’s a decently common preference to not play games modded. It’s best to let a beginner play a game unmodded first so they can get the chance to fully understand the game before possibly causing problems and mod overlaps.
Look into mods, they make the game 2x awesome