Urbie Dodgeball

Urbie Dodgeball

MechWarrior is a GAME. Games are supposed to be fun. In fact, Dictionary.com shows the following for a definition.

1.	an amusement or pastime.

2.	the material or equipment used in playing certain games

3.	a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to a set of rules, usually for their own amusement or for that of spectators.

Webster’s says the following

A contest with rules to determine a winner

An amusement or pastime

The game equipment needed to play a game

As you can see, both definitions are very similar and both mention “an amusement or pastime”.

And what is ‘an amusement’?

Amusement

Noun

1. A feeling of delight at being entertained.

2. An activity that entertains.

So again we get back to the entertainment thing. Entertainment should be fun

Define fun? Ok

Fun

Adjective

1. Providing enjoyment; pleasantly entertaining; "an amusing speaker"; "a diverting story"; "a fun thing to do".

Noun

1. Activities that are enjoyable or amusing; "I do it for the fun of it"; "he is fun to have around"

MechWarrior is fun. I have spent countless hours in Sunder playing MechWarrior and trying different things.

Leagues are fun too. They are much more competitive than just playing in open servers like Sunder, but they are still fun. The Blood Pearls belong to MechCombat League and we are having some fun there.

Sometimes you just need a break. Sunder gets pretty competitive and any league will also get very competitive. Our society has always been such that the individual is pushed to be a winner, to have success, to be the best. This carries over in to our pastime, our amusement, our fun. When we get time to play the game, we jump in front of our computers and we build the meanest, toughest battlemech we can and we go online to find the best players around and we do our damn best to destroy them before they destroy us.

That’s all fine and it adds to the enjoyment, the fun for a lot of us most of the time. Every once in a while you just want to play to be playing and it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it only matters that you are having fun.

I present to you, Urbie Dodgeball. Just for fun. I gotta say, this stupid rendition of Solaris brings back the reason I love this game as much as I do. Urbie Dodgeball is nothing but pure fun. Sure it is competitive, but it is all in fun. What? What did you say? You never heard of it? Well sit back, get some popcorn, you favourite drink and let me explain Urbie Dodgeball to you.

What do I need to play Urbie Dodgeball and get in on all this fun, you might ask. Simple. You need MechWarrior4 Mercs installed and updated to MP3.02.b. Then you have to have an internet connection (if you are reading this, then chances are you have an internet connection and probably MW4 Mercs too).

Now the next thing you need is something more like something you need to do instead of something you need to have. Start up the game and go to the mech lab. Create a new mech, an Inner Sphere UrbanMech. Name it Dodgeball or something that will be easy or you to remember. Remove all your electronics except jump jets. Yes you will need these even if you are a die hard ground pounder. Go to the weapons sections and remove ALL the weapons. Then go to the Armour section and remove ALL the armour. Yes ALL of it. I SAID ALL of the armour! Go back to the Weapons tab and load your little Urbie with a Long Tom. Now go back to the Electronics tab and add a heat sink and ECM or 2 heat sinks. Your speed should be 52kph and you should have .1 ton left over. You can increase your speed using 1 of the heat sinks for speed upgrades, but DO NOT USE ANY LEFT OVER TONNAGE for ARMOUR!!! NO SIR, DON’T DO IT!

Don’t forget to apply your favourite camouflage, make your Urbie as purty as possible. This is very important.

Urbie Dodgeball, as you can see is played with IS Urban Mechs with Jump Jets, Long Toms and NO ARMOUR. Dodgeball is played in ‘arena’ maps, preferably small ones so that the action is contained to a small area. The Jungle or The Factory are perfect. OF course you have to play 2 or 3 rounds and you must finish by playing the last round in the Coliseum. The Object of the game is to get the most kills using your Long Tom or by using the DFA (Death from Above) Maneuver.

Want to talk about fun? This is hilarious. If you are not a Long Tom user, it takes a bit to get used to flinging Toms shells accurately enough to do damage to any other Urbie running about or shut down from over heating. Long Toms fire in an Arc and they have a lot of heat associated with them when you fire them (that’s why your use 1 or 2 heat sinks).

You look around the battlefield and see nothing but Urbies. That in itself is funny to see, but you see these Urbies running and jumping and firing Long Toms. You also see lots of explosions. It is not uncommon for a pilot to get 20 to 30 kills in a 30 minute bout as well as 20 deaths. One thing you really want to try to do is to get a twofer or a threefer. That would be to kill 2 or 3 at once.

You would also be surprised at how tough a no-armour Urbie is. They will take 3 or 4 Long Tom ‘hits’ before exploding. Except the ‘arm’ that contains the Long Tom, many times it gets blown off on the 1^st hit. The cool thing about Long Toms is that you don’t have to ‘hit’ the enemy, you just have to get close. They have a blast radius that affects everything in that radius with damage.

I couldn’t tell you how many times I have blown off my own arm shooting at an enemy only to hit a hill or wall in front of me. Doh! LOL! The IS Urbie has a 360 torso twist and 1 big arm, so it is the perfect mech for this action. You cant make one fast enough to avoid much fire (following the Dodgeball rules that is), so the targeting is relatively easy. That is also why you take jump jets. You cant run away from the blast zone, but you can jump high enough to avoid the damage. Again, it is very funny to see a bunch of jumping Urbies on ANY map.

Duncan Fischer had no idea Solaris could be so much fun. “now let me show you the sky” has a new meaning. “It’s Factory Time” does too. I would love to get George in Comms with us one time and let him ‘Duncan Fisher’ his way through an Urbie Dodgeball Match.

That’s another thing. Comms. Urbie Dodgeball is a lot of fun. It’s a literal blast. Joining in with all your combatants on Comms doubles the fun. Hearing each pilot as they try for kills and lose their weapons or score a twofer or land a perfect DFA, well, it just adds so much to what is going on. Hell, every once in while, I will break out into my best ‘Duncan Fischer’ voice and repeat some of his sayings from the solaris matches in the single player part of the game.

Urbie Dodgeball with 15 other MechWarriors all on comms is just about as much pure fun for fun that can be had. Sure you want to get the most kills and have your name show up on top when the round ends, but even if you don’t, you had a bunch of pure fun. In these days of tight money, rising costs, personal pressures, job stress, family stress and on and on, just having some good old, plain, non pressure playing fun is really hard to beat. It only takes a few shots before you figure out how to use the Long Tom effectively and before you know it, you are placing the perfect round in the gaggle of Urbies 500 meters away that are ramming each other cause they have no weapons and you are trying for that elusive threefer or even a fourfer!!!!

Sit back, relax. Build A Dodgeball Special Urbie. Host your own game or next time the Blood Pearls are playing Dodgeball, join us and get on comms with us. After playing 2 or 3 rounds, whether you won or got killed a lot, you tell me you didn’t have fun. IF you don’t have fun playing Dodgeball, you just don’t know how to have simple fun or you don’t want to.

MechWarrior is a game and games should be for fun and amusement. Urbie Dodgeball is one of the most amusing, fun times that anyone can have with this game. Even ol’ Webster himself would give us a positive nod on this one. Join us next time, wont you?

The Cougar

The Cougar

Vettie’s Views bring you the Cougar. A Clan Light Class Mech with lots of fun included. Weighing in at a mere 35 tons, the Cougar can toss a bit of punch at you and it can be one of the better scout mechs in the game. Lets move in for a closer look.

The Clanners designed and built a rugged scout mech to counter the Ravens and Osiris they had encountered and its looks like they did a decent job of it. They managed to keep the weight down and still give the Cougar more firepower than its counterparts. That was the idea behind the Cougar. Do you think they succeeded? Maybe so.

From the Clan factories, the Cougar has BAP and Jump Jets at a top speed rating of 96kph. Additional electronics are offered such as LAMs, Enhanced Optics and Advanced Gyro. The Cougar has an interesting weapons load also. Each side torso comes with a CLRM10 pre-loaded. The right arm has an ERLL while the left arm has 2 ERML installed from the factory. The Cougar has an Endo-Steel frame loaded with 4.5 tons of ferro fibrous armour.

The speed range of the Cougar is quite varied from 76kph on the low end all the way up to 131kph on the upper end of the scale. The slots are also interesting. Each side torso has a 2 slot missile rack. The arms have a 2 slot omni rack and a 1 slot beam rack. This allows for some variations in the load out of the mech.

As a scout mech, you can install 4 ATM6Es in the mech and still have BAP and Jump Jets. Using BAP, Jump Jets, LAMs and AG, you can install 4 LRM10s. For close encounters, 4 or 5 CStrk4s are nice. IF you have to go into a brawl you can always trim the wings and load in 2 LBX10s or 5 ERMLs and 3 or 4 CStrk4s (add heat sinks to your liking). Either of these are very nice in close and not always expected from such a small mech.

For longer ranges other than missiles, an ERLPL in each arm is nasty. IF you prefer, you can add more speed, less heat sinks and replace the Pulse Lasers with an ERLL in each arm. Still need more range? Drop the ERLL and replace them with a Lt. PPC in each arm. I don’t really suggest trying to load the Cougar with ballistics in a puretech setting because it can only hold a couple of CUAC2s (for long range) and 2 just doesn’t seem to be enough. I recommend keeping the Cougar as a missile mech or an energy platform, at least for long range use.

During our time in NBT, the Blood Pearls rarely used a Cougar. Our main light mech was the Wolfhound. OF course, we were Inner Sphere Pirates so Wolfies were available to us, a lot more so than Cougars were. However, I remember using one on a drop on RoyalGuard Pro. I don’t exactly remember the team we were facing but I do remember I was the one driving the Cougar.

Our team had decided to go looking for the enemy team (we may have been facing the Hanseactic Rangers). We started back behind the palace and they started in the eastern city. The basic plan was to circle around the palace and head for the front gate. I was to head east and stay inside the wall and see if I could pick them up on radar using BAP or get a visual on them and report back to the team. I wasn’t much of a scout and other than Wolfhounds, I didn’t care much for light mechs, but it was a team effort and I knew I would do my best. I loaded the Cougar with reflective armour and 2 ERLLs along with BAP and Jumpies and off I went.

I made it to the east gate and did a jump to have a look. There they were, the whole damn team heading right for me. I let the jumpies re-charge and jumped again. The leader was in Raven and he was probably about 900 meters in front of the rest of his team, but they were all headed the same direction. I announced contact on comms and gave the general info. Of course the rest of the Pearls were as far away from the bad guys as possible at that moment. I jumped back up and turned slightly to the left and fired both ERLLs directly at the Raven. Before I shot, I was not sure if the Raven had seen me yet as I was passive and still some 700 to 750 meters from him. When I fired I made a direct hit. I did not see the damage I did until the next jump I made and went radar active to draw him and the rest of the Rangers my way so the Pearls could circle behind them and take them down by surprise.

I hit the jet gas and as I rose I flicked on my radar and saw the Raven now some 500 meters away and just standing there, not moving. I fired again and locked my radar on him to see that my 1^st shot had hudded him. He did return fire using a Large X-Pulse Laser but I am not sure if he hit me or not, as I mentioned I had reflective armour, because I showed no damage on my bars. I figured now was a good time to go passive and start running some because I did not see any of the other Rangers while I had my radar on.

I decided to jump again and fire before running to a new location and I did, this time breaching the armour of the Raven on his left torso. I took a gauss slug to my rear armour as I turned mid jump and it nearly took all my armour out on the rear. I ran up the east ramp of the palace and got behind the 2^nd wall announcing to my team that I was doing so and that I knew the Rangers were heading for the east gate and that at least 1 of them was only about 100 to 200 meters from the gate. I eased my little Cougar to the corner of the wall and waited for one of the bad guys to come around the corner of the gate.

Patience paid off and the Raven stuck his mech just around the corner of the gate and I opened fire with both ERLLs nailing him right in the busted torso. Boom! His Raven exploded with enough splash to shut down a Hunchback that had made the run with him. My weapons recharged and I fired at the Hunchie as it was coming out of the heat arrest. I hit him searing off an arm but he found me and popped me with a heavy gauss. That damn thing knocked my mech over and took out my right torso. As I was trying to get up, the Hunchie ran up the ramp to get a secondary shot on me. Luckily for me, he ran right in front of my fallen mech and I was able to fire while trying to right my mech. The dual ERs were enough to blow out his heavy gauss rifle. He did fire some medium lasers at me but they had little or no effect.

I got my Cougar to its feet and started to run. I decided to turn and fire. I don’t know why. I thought I had the Hunchie damaged enough where I could take him out and I did, but I had not planned on the Marauder and the Loki that were now topping the ramp where the Hunchback was standing and smoking away. I turned and jumped heading right at the Hunchback and as my lasers recharged I let them loose on the poor Hunchback.

Now let me say that a Cougar is relatively tough and sometimes can be hard to hit because of its speed and small size. However, if you present the front of the Cougar, with a blown out torso, and you are airborn, the combined firepower of a fresh Loki and Marauder are more than enough to send your escape pod all the way back to the drop ship.

You know how playing on line sometimes when you kill a mech and another mech kills you at the same time, the one that killed you gets credit for killing its team mate, even tho you did it? Well, that’s what happened here. My shot was enough to kill the Hunchback, but the Loki must have fired his lasers and gauss rifles at the same time because he got credit for killing me and the (team mate) Hunchback. I will say that the site of a cougar blowing up in flight is pretty cool to look at…

Anyway, The rest of the Pearls managed to close on the Rangers and take them down without losing any more mechs. I ‘registered’ one kill in the Cougar although I know I got two. Most important? I had fun.

That’s what this is supposed to be about, having fun. The Cougar was fun to drive and I enjoyed it. Today’s Cougar is not much different. Its fun to drive, it has speed, it can carry decent weaponry to the fight and it can take a lick or two before going boom!

It climbs, it jumps, it makes milkshakes and margaritas and it hits big mech from a long way away. Its easy to drive and it gets great mileage on a tank of nuclear fuel. In fact, the fuel mech will probably be blown up long before you have to refuel the reactor.

Why not pile in one today? Rate the Cougar at 2 to 2 ½ minutes. Not too bad for a light mech. The arms get blown off too easily and that’s where the big guns are unless you use missiles. It gets knocked down too easily too. Other than that, or if you use AG, it’s a decent light class mech. Run Passive and use your BAP. Tell your team mates where the bad guys are and then run from them!

The Owens

The Owens

An Inner Sphere Light class mech weighing in at 35 tons is known as the Owens. This interesting little pest looks like an attempt by the Inner Sphere to create their own version of the Jenner. IT has speed, electronics and a very small profile making the Owens a difficult target that can pack a decent weaponry load.

Lets take a look at what makes up an Owens. From the factory floor, the Owens comes with ECM, LAMs and IFF Jammer and a top speed rating of 102kph. BAP and Advanced Gyro are offered while the top speed ranges from 90 to 126kph. The stock weapons loadout consists of 2 Medium Lasers in the center torso 2 slot omni rack while each arm is packed with a LRM15 in the 3 slot missile racks. The arms also house a 1 slot beam rack that are not used in the stock configuration. The Armour is 7 tons of Ferro Fibrous on a standard frame.

IF you drop the LAMs and add BAP and AG while stripping the weapons, you have 14 tons to work with at stock speed settings and armour levels. With some creative3 armour shaving, you can mount up to 3 ALRM10s on this little troublemaker and you have a damn nice little missile boat. The problem with ALRM10s is that, even tho you get 24 rounds per rack, it doesn’t seem to be enough to kill much so you really need double the ammo and that really hard to manage with the Owens.

Again, getting creative with armour or speed, you can load up to 6 LRM5s or 2 MRM20s or 4 SRM4s and if you get real creative you can load up a couple of heavy rocket launchers. IF you want to brawl without missiles, you can load an LBX10 or AC10 and a couple of medium lasers. For real rip ‘em up action, put in a RAC5 with extra ammo and a couple of medium lasers or better, a couple of medium pulse lasers. For sniping fun you can put in a Lt Gauss Rifle or even a Mini Gauss Rifle. One of the better configs, other than missiles, I have found is to load a Large X-Pulse and 2 Medium X-Pulse lasers with a few heat sinks.

The Owens is versatile, but it simply cant pack a big punch. It is probably best used as a missile platform / scout mech.

In these days of Assault Mechs, the Owens doesn’t last very long once it has been hit. The Arms only hold .6 tons of FF armour (18 damage points) and the legs are double that. The majority of fire power for this mech is located in either the arms or the CT (33 damage points). It has speed and stealth on its side, but again, a well placed shot from a heavy or assault mech and the Owens is in trouble.

A player that goes by the name of Howling Chiken (yes, I believe that is how they spell their name) is probably one of the best Owens driver I have run across. I am not sure, but I think he runs the 3 ALRM10 version and he does a damn good job of it. He knows how to twist and turn to make damage spread on this mech and he seems to make it last much longer than others I have seen. Howling spends a lot of time in the cockpit of an Owens and he knows just where the little mech can go on a map and fire with minimum exposure. He has the old ‘shoot and move’ tactic down pretty good and he doesn’t spend a lot of time in one place. He makes the Owens a worthy adversary.

In weight restricted league play you see more Owens than you do in the open servers. At 35 tons, they can play an important role to your team. Offering BAP and ECM, the Owens can be a very effective scout. It offers enough speed to go out and seek the enemy, and if equipped properly, can even inflict some damage on them before making it back to the safety of the pack. They are versatile enough that they don’t have to be missile boats, other weapons fit and work.

I have tried using them and I am simply not talented enough to be effective. I still have that stupid tendency to stick my CT out like a proud ape or something and the pilots playing the game today have no problem hitting that CT, even if it is very small, from 900+ meters. I am just to dumb to fold it up and turn away. Much the same reason I don’t drive BKs very often…

The Owens is an interesting light mech. IT handles pretty good although I have noticed the turning on it is not so great for such a small mech and the twist ratio is only 90 degrees. IT does climb well and it has that ‘bobble run’ making it a bit difficult to hit as it runs.

I have to tell you that I am not a big fan of the Owens. Maybe its because I don’t drive one very well or maybe it’s the way they look. I don’t know, but I just don’t like them very much. As a light mech, it is decent and in the hands of someone that can drive one, they are actually a pretty good little mech. Low to the ground, good electronics and enough speed makes the Owens one of the better light mechs. I rate the Owens at 2 ½ minutes. Fair. Give it a run and see what you can do.

The Commando

The Commando

Weighing in at just 25 tons, the Inner Sphere Commando is up for a run thru today. A great looking little mech, reminds me of a Storm Trooper from Star Wars. This mech is about speed and agility. This particular mech is one of my favourite of the light mechs.

Before I get into the specifics of the Commando, I would like to talk a little about Mission Play. The NBT Sunder Server is a Puretech No Respawn Mission Play server set up for waves. There are 2 teams and one team has to defend an ‘objective’ like a Head Quarters building and a Communications Array (usually). The other team has to attack the objectives. One of the all time favourite mission play maps is named Royal Guard. Sunder is run so that the weather and radar are random as well as the maps.

One thing I just don’t like about Sunder, or rather, the play in Sunder, is when a no radar map comes up with some level of fog AND the attacking team takes ‘base rapers’. Sure it’s a mission play server and part of this type of play is based on killing the objectives. I know this and I accept this. What I don’t like is for a team to take 2 to 4 Tenchi’s or a couple of Avatars loaded with arty strikes or even Hellspawns loaded with Heavy Rocket Launchers or Arty Strikes and head out without attempting to fight anyone right for the objectives. Most of these mission play maps were made before some of these mechs and weapons were introduced and they simply aren’t set up for this type of attack. The round will be over before many, if any kills are registered. Nothing ruins it for me more than to be in the middle of a good fire fight with an enemy mech (regardless if I am defending or attacking) and the round end because some one (or more) took a fast base raper and destroyed the objectives.

IF you want to do that, that is fine. Do it when the radar is on or do it with light to no fog level in the day time. The Blood Pearls have a little fun every now and then on mission play maps. We have done it on Broken Sky, Griffon Base, Arctic Wasteland and Royal Guard. We ALWAYS do it in day time scenarios with the radar on and default visibility or clear visibility. We will use 2 to 3 Commandos loaded with speed and regular rocket launchers. The Commando is easy to kill and regular Rocket launchers take many shots to kill the objectives and they heat up the little Commando very quickly. We have been successful using these and killing objectives, but we have also been killed many times too. Its fun and the enemy team has a very good shot at killing us before we even reach the objectives. A BAP / ECM loaded defender can pick us up at 600 meters even if we are passive and a Commando will die fast form 1 or 2 good alphas.

So on with the Commando. IT comes loaded with only IFF and a speed of 121kph. The Commando offers Jump Jets, LAMs, IFF and Advanced Gyro. The Speed range is from 90 to 129kph. The weapons load out is 1 Large Laser, 1 Medium Laser, 2 Small Lasers and a Rocket Launcher. The Armour is Ferro Fibrous, a full 6 tons is packed on a standard frame.

In the Right and Left Torso are 2-slot Missile Racks. The Head houses a 1 slot Beam Rack and each Arm holds a 2 slot Heat Generating Rack. This type of slot holds either beam weapons or missiles.

Let me tell you if you add Jump Jets and Advanced Gyro while leaving the speed at 121kph you will only have 6 tons left to work with for weaponry. That’s not very much. You could load up 3 SRM2s or 2 SRM4s or a NARC with extra ammo or an Arty Beacon with extra ammo or a couple of Rocket Launchers. IT will also hold 5 medium lasers or a couple of medium pulse lasers or medium x-pulse lasers or a few small lasers or small pulse lasers. You can get creative and lower the speed and armour and load up 2 large lasers or 2 large beam lasers even. But, one thing for certain, this mech is no offensive power house.

Then again, it was not meant to be a power house. The basic job of a commando is that of a scout or harasser or objective killer. The mech is weak and goes down fast under any type of real firepower and it doesn’t have ECM so regardless of its size, it has a big radar signature unless it runs passive.

I told you I like this mech. I like the way it looks and I like the way it handles. No other mech in the game will start or stop as fast. No other mech will turn as quickly, it handles almost too well. It has a great twist ability and a decent heat capacity. The Commando climbs like a mountain goat and has jump jets for those places it cant climb too. It has speed and agility. You do have to keep moving once in range of the enemy or you wont be in the battle long.

I don’t often suggest that anyone NOT take LAMs, but this is one mech where you really don’t need them. If you keep moving and darting about like a drunk on a bicycle, you can avoid most missiles fired from range. It is possible to rack ups some kills of larger mechs if you move quickly and get in behind them. Missiles, Rockets or firing of lasers will eat away at their armour until you eventually kill them. You just have to keep from being legged or taking heavy alphas. Keep moving so that they do not get a good shot on you.

In a weight restricted environment, the Commando can be a useful mech. It can carry some nice laser loads or even some missiles. It is fast enough to find the enemy and run away from them. If Camos are used on the map, using the IFF and running passive makes this mech very hard to see at a distance because it is so small. Against other lights and most mediums, the Commando can actually hold its own ground for a little bit.

Well its time to put a rating on the Commando. I like the mech and I like the way it handles. I don’t like the lack of ECM or BAP, but it makes up for some of that with speed. The Command is a good scout mech and a fun objective killer. Its not much more than that. It doesn’t pack much armour and its offensive prowess is not very much. IT has to go fast to live. I rate the Commando 2 to 2 ½ minutes. Weak. It’s a fun mech to drive and play with but its really not a very serious threat.

The Raven

The Raven

Often over looked, especially for use in Sunder, but even in many league games, is the Raven. A Light Class Inner Sphere battlemech weighing in at 35tons, just doesn’t see much use. Personally, I like the Raven. It offers a lot of features with the possible exception being firepower. Just take a closer look and you can decide for yourself.

When we go look at a stock Raven, we see that it has ECM, BAP, IFF, AG and a max speed of 100kph. LAMs are also offered rounding out an excellent Electronics package. More on this later. The Raven has 7 tons of Ferro Fibrous armour (.1 ton from being fully armoured) on a standard frame. The weapons include a Small Laser, 2 Small Pulse Lasers, a LRM15 with double ammo and a NARC Beacon. The weapons slots are decent for a Light Class, the Right arm has 2 single slot beam racks and the Left Arm has a single slot missile rack. The Right Torso houses a 2 slot missile rack while the Left torso houses a 2 slot beam rack. The max speed ranges from 90kph to 120kph. Adding LAMs and leaving the speed and armour settings gives you 12tons for weapons. This must be the problem. Only 12 tons to work with. Well if you drop the LAMs, you have 13.5 tons, so you make the call.

I would like to talk about the NARC Beacon for a minute before we move on to possible load outs for the Raven. I have tried NARCs and they do work. A common misconception is that IS NARCs do not work with CLAN Missiles and vice versa. Let me say that as far as I know, NARCs are TEAM based weapons. That is, whatever missile types are being used by your TEAM, will work with A (singular) NARC Beacon.

Another thing about NARCs is that the mechs using missiles MUST be in range of the Narced target. IF you are using 1200 meter missiles and the Narced target is 1500 meters away, your missiles will not work with the NARC. You have to be with your normal missile range.

IF you are piloting a missile boat, or any mech that contains missiles, you CAN NOT obtain a lock on one target and expect that your missiles go to the NARCED target. They wont. They will go to your locked target.

NARCs work best for teams with good team work and comms. IF you load NARCs on a mech, say a RAVEN for example, then any mech using missiles should go passive and stay within support range of the Raven. When the Raven pilot ‘hits’ a target with a NARC, he should say NARC ON or something like that. A beeping noise will then start in PASSIVE mechs. They can then fire their missiles and the NARC will call the missiles to it.

An IS NARC has a 700 meter range while the Clan Version has an 800 meter range. This is the flight range of the NARC, NOT the effect range of the beacon. Remember that NARCs, once placed have a limited time of operation and if they get knocked off or destroyed (from the hail of incoming missiles) that they will cease to work and another must be placed. DO NOT CONFUSE the missiles by placing more than 1 NARC in play at any given time of they will simply be ineffective as the missiles being fired will simply go to the closest beacon. IF you MISS when trying to place a NARC, the NARC is still active if it hits another object like a tree or a building or the ground. Either destroy it by stepping on it or wait 10 to 15 seconds for the beacon to expire, otherwise all the missiles will fly to that beacon and hit the building or the ground. Also remember that a NARC Beacon is not magic, it will not alter normal missile behaviour. Missiles will still fly their normal abilities, but they wont avoid objects or hills that they normally would not avoid.

Ok, back to the Raven. The reason I went over that is because the Raven is the 1^st mech I have reviewed that has a NARC as standard equipment to the best of my memory. The NARC is a good option for the Raven as the Raven is small and stealthy and reasonably fast. NARCs do take a little practice to be able to place them in critical locations, so keep that in mind. A good missile option is to load an ALRM10 plus an extra ton of ammo. Using BAP and the Artemis option missiles, a pilot can achieve near insta-lock on a target. Just for fun add a Large Laser, a Large BEAM Laser or a Large X-Pulse on the Raven and have some fun. You can bump the speed to 105kph, load up an ALRM10, a Large Laser and 2 Medium Lasers and you are all set. The ALRM10s will annoy targets a long range or even kill a ‘cored’ target, while the large laser will add a bit of punch at 650 in. The mediums offer solid protection when the bad guys get close.

The best defense weapon of this mech is its stealth, speed and handling. The Raven ‘bobs’ from side to side when it runs and it has a 360 torso allowing the pilot to keep fighting while adding distance to the (usually) unequal equation. More so, the Raven turns very easily and climbs hills almost like it has jump jets. A good pilot can drive this thing around like a spider on LSD and never take a solid hit. The torso has the same shape (albeit much smaller) as the Ares and Bushwacker, that long curved, sloping nose. The arms do tend to be destroyed, but the main slots are in the torsos and they are much harder to take out. Drive a Raven like a woman shopping and you will last a long time.

A raven is not going to rack up major amounts of kills, especially in Sunder and you don’t want to be surprised by any mech, especially an assault, but it is a decent mech. They are hard to target and they offer a great electronics package. IF you get legged, you are toast so keep moving. Shoot at targets, don’t be the target.

The Raven makes for a very good scout mech. The speed ability of up to 120kph, ECM, BAP and IFF make it near invisible except to other BAP equipped mechs but by the time they see you, you have seen the, too. In FOG situations, the Raven is even better using the electronics package I already listed. The thing is small enough that even if picked up on radar, with IFF , it may not actually be SEEN.

Well, the Raven is not a offensive powerhouse by any means, but it offers a different type of offense, the I found them first type. That is a big advantage in fighting battlemechs, especially in league play. A good Raven pilot can move in, find the enemy, report the location and heading and even keep them distracted while your team moves into position to put them away. The Raven is tough enough and fast enough to keep them busy or even finish off a few. You just gotta stay out of direct fire range of any heavy weapons.

In our NBT days, we were privateers for a major house team. We had a decent arrangement that allowed us a lot of passage throughout the inner sphere as well as jump station usage without too much fear of being discovered or attacked. In exchange, we would often help our hosts with battles or even fight some for them. During that time, one of the neighboring teams launched a Planetary assault on our allies.

A Planetary Assault, in NBT, COULD go on for weeks and weeks depending on how many mechs were loaded on whatever number of drop ships the attacker brought to bear and depending on what was on planet of the defending team.

After several weeks o f battling, Cap Con had made major strides against a garrison planet of the Federated Suns. A Garrison was like a mech holding area, except it was a planet loaded with mechs. Mostly 2^nd tier mechs, but lots of them. FS had asked us to take over the fight as Cap Con had worn them pretty thin.

We when took over the fight, most of the larger, heavy duty mechs were either already destroyed or captured. We lost 2 very heavy tonnage rounds (650 tons limit per team for 8 players) and we struggled to make weight. On the third round, again a very heavy round of 500 tons, we ended up using 4 Ravens, 2 Uziels and 2 Chimeras. As you can see we were not where close to drop weight but we fought on. We did kill 4 of the attackers including a Blood Asp and a Marauder. The Next round we could only field 6 Ravens against 8 of the Cap Con attackers. We lost that match and the Planet. Cap Con made a post that they had gained a new respect for the Blood Pearls who were willing to fight to the last mech against such weight differences. The 6 little Ravens again racked up 3 or 4 kills but still fell to the odds. I gained respect for the Raven.

I like the Raven and I would like to see them used more. Against the big boys, they just don’t last long. If used correctly and by a good pilot who understands the mech, a Raven will last awhile.

Time for a rating. The Raven is basically unchanged since those Cap Con days. Yes maybe some minor changes, but overall it is the same mech. Its quick, its agile, its stealthy, but it lacks serious punch. I give the Raven 3 minutes. Decent for a light.

The Chimera

The Chimera

In Greek mythology, the Chimera is a monster, depicted as an animal with the head of a lion, the body of a she-goat, and the tail of a dragon. In MechWarrior 4, the Chimera is an Inner Sphere Medium Class battlemech weighing in at 40 tons.

While it may have a lion’s spirit and it seems to have lost its tail, this battlemech leaves me wanting. It is obviously an older design with a only a minor touch-up change from MekTek’s MekPak 3.

Over the years, I have tried very hard to like this mech and to make good use of it, but it or me have always come up short when paired together. Maybe after taking a closer look, I can give you a good reason. Ready? Ok then. Lets go look at the Chimera.

As I mentioned, the Chimera is a 40 tonner. This is good weight for league play where often the weight is limited. The stock config has jump jets and a speed set at 102kph. Fast and jump capable, both are things I like. The pre-loaded weapons consist of a standard Inner Sphere machine gun, a MRM20, a Medium Laser and a Large Laser. The Endo Steel frame is loaded with 10.5 tons of reflective armour.

The Speed range is from 82 to 112kph. Pre-set is 102 and this is a good speed for the Chimera. 92 or 97kph are still ok if you need the extra tonnage for that one weapon you just have to have but cant get it installed without the tonnage. LAMs are an option as well as Advanced Gyro. Ol’ Vettie suggests the LAMs especially if ol’ Lion Head is heading into missile friendly ground.

If you max out the armour, the Chimera holds 12 tons of Reflective or Reactive Armour or 8.1 tons of Ferro. Here is part of the problem, at least for me. The Chimera has proven to be a rather weak mech. Using Spec Armour improves the durability and life span but reduces the amount of free tonnage available for weapons. If you load Ferro, you have 16.9 tons and if you max either of the Spec Armours you are left with only 13 tons for weapons. There are folks that do well in a Chimera and if you are one of those, Ferro Armour is probably fine for you. For me? Well, I have to use the spec amour and hope I pick the correct one.

Let’s go with a Ferro version and a speed setting of 102kph with jump jets for now. The Chimera can make a very good jump sniper if you load a CapPPC and a Mini Gauss Rifle. You would need to shave .1 ton of armour from somewhere, but this gives a good punch from 850 meters. Whats that? You say you like the close up game better? Ok, then drop the jumpies and lower the speed to 82kph. Install a Heavy Gauss Rifle and 3 Light Machine Guns. Nasticus. Or, if prefer, load an Assault Laser and an AC20 or LBX20. Ouchies. Then there is the 4 Medium Laser, 3 Heavy Machine Gun (double ammo) SRM6 version I call the lil’ stripper. If want a little more range, you can load up 2 LAC2s and 2 Large Lasers with jump jets.

The Chimera looks to me to be an old design. When I say old design, I mean that all the weapons types are/were separated distinctly to different parts of the mech. One arm had 1 type of weapon, the torso had 1 type, but different for the arm and the other arm had yet a different type. Up until MP3, it had a 3-slot ballistic arm, a 3-slot missile rack in the center torso and a 4-slot beam rack in the other arm. After MP3, the only change to the slots was that the 4-slot beam rack was changed to a ‘D-Slot’ or direct fire slot that could hold either beam weapons or ballistic weapons. I think this was a good change in that allowed the Chimmy to carry ballistics on either or both sides of the mech.

The Chimera is a fairly agile mech. Considering it has jump jets, it climbs well even if you leave the jumpies off. The turn radius is good and relatively fast. The decel / reverse speed is very responsive. The accel rate leaves a bit to be desired, especially for a 40 ton mech. Otherwise the Chimera handles good and is easy to drive.

The problem is the body of the mech. The Arms hold the majority of the punch in most configs and they are very weak. A mere 18 points of damage takes then away. The CT and side torsos aren’t much stronger. In fact, if you don’t run spec armour, this mech dies very fast unless you completely avoid enemy fire. The Chimera is easy to strip and easy to leg. Running passive in lots of cover is its best friend. It doesn’t hold up well against its own weight class. Heavier Class mechs use the Chimera for target practice and don’t even heat up.

For me at least, the best use is as a door stop or paper weight, uh, I mean as a jump sniper. Stay away from the enemy and peck away at them choosing your shots and targets with care, Be very patient and run passive. Remember, BAP capable mechs can pick you up passive at 600 meters so stay outside of that range and zap your opponents, get closer and, well, it may be a short battle for you, it almost always is for me.

You can probably tell that Ol’ Vettie is not a big fan of the Chimera. There are players that like them and that is great. There are some folks that play well in a Chimmy and that is great too. Whether or not I like a mech ahs nothing to do with how I arrive at the rating. Remember, this is my ‘view’ on a mech. I give it a good run and I put it through lots of paces and lots of different types of fighting. I even try some of them (most) against live opponents to see how they perform and what I can do with it. This is one mech I cant do much with. Jump Sniping seemed to be the best thing I could do with it.

Rating time. As mentioned, I am not a big fan of the slots or the slot layout for the Chimmy. The best weapons would be loaded in the arms and the arms are very, very weak. If you cant protect them then you wont have any offensive firepower outbound. I don’t like this one as a missile mech because it doesn’t have BAP and it really only has 1 3-slot rack. Up close, you can put some smack on it but it cant take the return fire. Its too easy to strip and the profile, although not very tall is too wide. I rate the Chimera at 2 minutes. Poor for any mech.

The Rifleman

I have been wanting to do this review for some time. I have liked this mech since way back in the MW2 days. If I recall, back then, you could put on jump jets? I also seem to remember being able to load 4 ERPPCs. Maybe not, its been a long time since MW2, and a lot of water has passed under my bridge.

Let me start by saying that I am not one to knock the work of another, especially if I am not able to do better (and prove that I can do so). I do not have the knowledge (yet) on how to ‘draw’ or model mechs in a way similar to what we will use in our game. The artist of MekTek and others are very talented folks and they do a damn good job. Each generation of mekpaks brings us more details and beautifully ‘done’ models.

When I first saw the MW4 incarnation of todays mech, I had some mixed feelings. My apologies up front, but Ol’ Vettie simply shoot straight and lets you know his thoughts on the topic. You don’t have to agree and I don’t expect anyone to, I am just giving you ‘Vettie’s Views’ on things. Now where was I? Oh yeah, when I first saw the MW4 version of the Rifleman I thought it looked stupid. The Artist that created it did a damn good job and the details on this mech are spectacular, but I just thought it looked dumb. I did not care for the way the radar array was tilted overhead, nor did I care for the look of the array. I thought the arms stuck out to far from the body and that the weapons barrels on each arm were way too long. I also didn’t care for the animation. When the mech walks or runs, it looks like it is leaning back, way back, almost to the point of falling backward. Again, this is just Ol Vettie’s opinion on the ‘looks’ of the mech. It has nothing much to do with the performance.

Stepping into the wayback machine for a moment, I believe the Rifleman was created to counter air strikes and turrets mounted very high on buildings or mountain sides or even on the plateaus of mesas. Out of the wayback and back into current day, MekTek did a great job of recreating this ability. The Rifleman can shoot almost straight up and it has a 360 degree torso twist. Very nice.

Lets take a quit walk over to the Mech Lab. I think the techs have a Rifleman in there right now and they would be willing to show us what one of these is made of. Careful, watch your step, those crates contain live ammo, we don’t want any accidents in the lab. Ok, here we are, come on in, don’t by shy. You can learn a lot in the mech alb and these techs? Well they are professionals.

Wow, standing beside of one of these things really gives you a feel for how big they are. Maybe we should go into the control room where the configurations are laid out on the computer. These parts are big and I would hate if one fell of and ewww, I don’t even want to think about what would happen if a piece fell on you. It would take the clean up crew quite a while to get the stain off the floor, so follow me.

All right, here we are in the comfort and safety of the control room. You can still see the mech from here and you can customize the load out and equipment all from here. I’ll show you how all that works in a moment, but first lets see what a Rifleman comes with. Here, click that tab on the screen and it brings up a picture of the mech and tells you some info. See how easy that was? Ok then, well it shows here that the Rifleman is an Inner Sphere Heavy Class Battlemech weighing in at 60 tons. From the factory, the standard equipment includes ECM and LAMs, with 2 heat sinks and top speed of 79kph. If you click that center tab, the one called weapons, it shows you the current weapons load. This one has a Large Laser in each arm as well as an AC5 in each. The Chin Rack is pre-loaded with 2 Medium Pulse Lasers. Finally, by clicking on the Armor (they spelled it wrong) Tab you can see that the Rifleman is loaded with 10 tons of Ferro Fibrous Armour on an Endo Steel Frame.

Lets strip the weapons (its simple to do, just click the ‘strip’ button) and lets max out the armour (also simple, just click the mis-spelled max armor button). This gives us 11.9 tons of armour. The Rifleman is capable of carrying one of the best suite of electronics in the game. ECM, BAP, LAMs and IFF are all offered. Excellent. Maxing the armour and taking all the electronics offered, gives you 28.1 tons to use on weapons without any engine upgrades. The speed ranges are from 64kph to 104kph. Pretty nice overall.

Moving on to the weapons load out, I was somewhat disappointed in the last set of changes MekTek made to this mech. Looking at the slots available in todays Rifleman, we can see each arm has a 3-slot beam rack and a 2-slot Direct Fire rack. The D-Racks house either ballistics or energy weapons only. The Chin Rack has 2 single beam racks. I could be wrong, but I seem to remember the arm slots being different prior to MP302b.

Seeing these slots, the 1^st thought that comes to mind is that the Rifleman is set up to be an energy based platform. In our puretech world, this mech can hold 2 PPCs and 2 Large Lasers with 4 heat sinks. Problem is that the Rifleman is not the most heat efficient mech. With a heat capacity rating of only 42, it just doesn’t do well with lots of heat weapons. Those PPCs generate 11 pts of heat (in a spike) each every time you fire one. It doesn’t take long for the Rifleman to shut down from heat problems if you don’t choose your shots carefully and your coolant flushes too.

A nice config is to load up 4 Large lasers, 4 heat sinks (or 2 and use the other 2 tons for a speed upgrade) and to load up 2 small coolant pods. This gives you a nice blast and the 2 coolant pods can be used to remove 10pts of heat each time you use 1 of them. They take a bit to recycle, so if you heat up before recycle use the mechs coolant flush or just slow down on your alphas.

IF you slow it down a little, you can load up 2 PPCs and 2 Mini Gauss Rifles. With all the electronics, this mech makes for a very nice sniper. 2 Light Gauss and a PPC is another good one but it does require very slow speed or careful shaving of armour. Another one I like is 2 HVAC 5s with double ammo and 2 large lasers. If you like to experiment, 3 Large X-Pulse lasers and a coolant pod with a crap load of heat sinks is also a nasty that can apply some pain to your enemy. IF you don’t mind getting a little closer to your opponents, 4 LAC5s and 2 medium lasers will keep them rocking. IF you like to ping them from long distances, then drop the LAC5s and load up 4 HVAC2s. Keep the 2 medium lasers in case somebody gets close to you. The HVAC2s have a 1200 meter range and the BAP will allow you to ‘see’ some targets at that range. The Rifleman can also carry 4 Large Continuous Beam Lasers to chew through some armour. There are lots of offensive options for this mech and they all don’t have to be centered around beam weapons.

The Rifleman is a very mobile mech. It climbs very well, not as good as some, but it will get you where you need to go. I already mentioned that you can fire straight up and the 360 torso twist, both big pluses when it comes to combat. What I didn’t mention was that this battlemech had one of, if not THE fastest torso twist in the game. For me this is a plus and a minus. The mouse I use to play this game is very sensitive and if I give it a slight twist either way the mech responds and the torso twists quickly to the where ever I am pointing. This is also bad when fighting an opponent that has weapons with heavy knock as your torso gets knocked to the side easily.

The accel and decel rates for the Rifleman are also good. It hill humps with ease. The most important par of this is the decel rate. This allows you to reverse direction quickly. You can move up to a hill or the edge of a cliff and fire and back off with out taking return fire (if you are fast enough). For me, using a Nostromo, its just the push of a button, and I am going forward or backward, push it again and I am going the opposite. The Rifleman handles this smoothly.

Defensively the Rifleman is surprisingly tough for a 60 ton mech. It is fairly small in stature and the electronics package including IFF make it a hard target to pick up on radar or through any type of fog or ground cover. The “head” or radar array on the top of the mech tend to get blown of quickly and I personally would just prefer that ‘box’ not be up there, but I understand the reasoning and the function. I mentioned earlier that the arms ‘stuck’ out a bit far making the Rifleman a wide target. The arms are obvious targets because of this and the fact that they hold the weapons load out. The arms hold up surprisingly well considering that they only hold 1.4 tons of Ferro Armour.

While in the control room of the mech lab, I mentioned to you that the Rifleman was built on an Endo Steel frame. Over the years of playing this game and slapping some vicious alphas on enemy mechs I have learned at least one thing. Let me give you a bit of insight to what I do know about the frames types before I go on here.

As we know it, there are basically 2 types of frames used in MW4 Mercs. Standard and Endo Steel. There are some significant differences between them and it DOES matter. I may be way off on this but I will tell you what I THINK. Standard chassis have standard internals and they are much ‘tougher’ to blow out once the outer shell of armour has been destroyed. The Standard internals are also easier to allow for engine upgrades (lower tonnage cost to speed up your mech). The Endo Steel Chassis types take more room inside and they spread damage much faster inside the mech once a panel or arm is blown out. It also cost more tonnage to upgrade the engine (go faster) overall. At least, that is what I think. I hope that if this is wrong that someone will post a comment and correct me.

Now back to what I was getting at. Maybe its just me, but in playing this game as often as I do I have noticed that mechs with endo steel frames seem to be harder to register initial damage. Once you actually blow out a panel or destroy an arm, if you keep hitting that spot you see the mech begin to take damage elsewhere pretty quickly, but it seems to take forever to get that initial damage on them (unless of course you hit them with an outrageous alpha). I have noticed this on the Shadow Cat, the Canis, the Rifleman and others. Compare them to same weight mechs that have standard frames and you will see what I mean.

Back to the Rifleman and apologies for the ramble. It just seemed applicable. The Rifleman can take some punishment. The right and left torsos seem to be the weak spots, but more or less that is ok as those spots contain no armaments.

This concludes our visit of the Mech Lab and the control room. Did you notice how neat and clean everything was? I told you, those techs are pros and they do a good job. I forgot to mention, if you have decide on a config, in the control room, on the chassis tab, click that little button on the lower right that is named ‘Save’. That sends a printout to the techs and they will configure your mech to order. Nice huh? Follow me folks.

Here we are in my office. This is where I review all the mechs. This is also where I play a few games online. Yes, there are many computers in this room. That one? Yes it is running Microsoft Vista (trouble free I might add) and yes it is the server where The Blood Pearls practice their trade. This one? Well, this one is my gamer and review machine. The others? One of them is used by my kids to do homework (yeah right) and the other is one I am working on and trying to decide whether to make it a Windows 98 machine so I can play around with all the MW2 stuff and get the MW3 stuff or whether to rebuild it as my next gamer. Oh don’t touch that, that’s the wifeys laptop. She left it down here for me to run the weekly upgrades / updates and defrag / virus checks on it for her.

Ok, well this is the part of the review where I actually rate the mech. I like the Rifleman. It has some really nice features and it holds up well under fire. There are a couple of things I don’t like. The Rifleman doesn’t do heat well (kinda tough for an energy based mech) and its hard to get a big alpha on it. The Rifleman is one of those mechs that you need some patience to drive it and to do a good job offensively. IT doesn’t need spec armour and if you did fill it with spec armour, you would be even more pressed to get a good weapons load on it. The mech holds up well and maybe that is because it is not the obvious target because of the electronics or because of the lack of devastating alpha. The Rifleman CAN hurt you. Patience is the key. Vettie’s View of the Rifleman? I rate this mech a 4. Its solid and it can get the job done. As with all mechs, learn to use it. Find a load you are comfortable with and practice with it. It’s a nice ride.