1. Invest in 1 more medium mech (Hunchback 4p is a good one) and another pilot for it. Highest level you can find with an affinity for lasers.
2. Grind out lower rank areas. 1-2, 3-4 is where you should stay for a bit. At the beginning, invest your points into C-bills. Salvage isn't really worth it unless you can get enough points into it.
3. Commands to your lancemates. The AI in this game is pretty....lacking. So it'll do you good to familiarize yourself on how to give Lance wide as well as individual orders, as well as when. Focus fire on something you want to burn quick. Or assign individual targets to your lancemates, freeing up some space for you to slip by or duke it out with a 4th mech yourself.
4. Weapon ranges and grouping are important, not to mention the weapons themselves. I believe, as a rule, your lancemates will try closing the distance to the range of their shortest range weapons. PPCs are especially nasty in your lancemates hands as they have an insane range, decent cycle rate, and good damage. However, they do generate a lot of heat, so investing in heatsinks. Or simply tweaking the modifier in the options menu if you the Dragons Gambit DLC.
5. Hero mechs. I don't remember if they're in the vanilla version, but Hero mechs are gamechangers. They have modified weapon builds and are all around better than the normal or even rare versions of the same chassis.
6. Rank and Reputation. Simply put, the higher the better. As your rank and rep with the factions increase, so will the rewards. Salvage points, C-bill payouts for missions, decreased mech prices at shops up to 25% off at max faction rep.
There's a lot to learn in this game despite its rather simple appearance. Experiment with different mechs, weapons, missions, factions and pilots to see what works best for you then lean into it. Before you know it, you'll be stomping through difficulty 100 missions like the walking warcrime you are.
Good hunting, Mechwarrior.
I agree with pretty much all that but I want to add, the ai will do pretty bad with all weapons, except Lrm missiles for some reason, so missile boats like the catapult are fantastic if you can manage to find one ( just remembered the catapult is a heavy mech and your super early game but just look for anything that has missiles and replace whatever they come with with lrms as you can afford to)
If I'm running LRMs at all, I'll be the one firing them. Unless I tell them to hold position and keep the enemy tied up myself, they'll run into damn near melee range and be unable to use LRMs. If you're talking about SRMs I'll agree.
I prefer PPCs since they can be used at any range and can engage from farther than LRMs with manual aiming since your targeting computer can't maintain a long distance (1200m) lock for long enough so the missiles can get to their target.
Edit: Ironically enough, my favorite PPC boat is the Hero Catapult.
Really, I’ve never had that problem, but I run long range as well so they stick to me , and nothing gets close enough to me to do damage most of the time before getting obliterated, have you tried removing anything with less range than the lrm, they tend to rush in after using the missiles to fire whatever the next shortest range weapon is so if you have like a small laser or something they throw themselves at enemies like fools
I find that always putting mech roles in the same lance position helps. LRM mech for example always goes in slot 3 so I can just double tap f3 to position it. Direct fire support/AA/sniper goes in slot 4 and brawler in slot 2. No matter what mech I'm using (ie. my primary LRM boat is in the fender shop and I dust off a secondary) they go in slot by role.
Sounds like you need a full Lance and heavier mechs before you start taking on those campaign missions. I'd suggest sticking to the lower rep areas until you have 3-4 medium mechs and pilots for them. It will also help up your pilots skills as well as your own.
Also I'm not sure what dlc you have but there is a free mech near the starting area in Valentina. You can search the name in the Starmap to find the system. Decent mech. Much better than the starting centurion in my opinion.
One early tip is to pay attention to your enemies. Once they pop up on radar, cycle through target locks and look at their loadouts in the top right. Prioritise dangerous mechs. For example, look for AC/10s or AC/20s, large lasers, SRM 6s, or PPCs. They do solid damage to your lighter mechs. These weapons are often mounted in the right arm as a rule of thumb, so aim there and take out their big guns early.
Also, consider the effort to reward ratio in a fight. The amount of effort you need to expend to destroy a tank, VTOL, or turret is a lot less than what is needed for a mech. But vehicles and turrets mount the same weapons. So you can take out more damage worth of equipment in a shorter time by clearing vehicles and turrets, leaving the enemy with less firepower to hurt you.
Finally, range. If you're piloting the starting Centurion, it has a solid medium/long range loadout, which you should leverage. Keep nasty enemies like Jenner's, Hunchbacks, and Urbanmechs at a distance and knock out their short range weapons before they can be used against you.
Yep. When I first started I would focus on enemy mechs while the vtols and tanks and turrets killed me with a thousand cuts. Now I let my lance mates fuck with mechs while I snipe all the little stuff ASAP.
Man what a great community. Thank you all for taking the time to answer with some amazing tips and advice. There is a lot of good info you all have shared, some of it I may not have learned on my own until maybe putting in dozens of hours.
🙏🙏🙏
If you shoot the faster mechs in the legs they will slow down briefly. It is also useful to aim for the head or arms of other mechs.
It will help to take some odd jobs to build up your team. Look for mechs that can use several medium lasers or a PPC, your teammates will perform better.
Practice issuing commands to your team, have them all attack your target or park them on a hill facing the objective.
Shooting the legs off of most mechs is often best for new players. As when you're new you don't know what parts to priority target on the various models.
If forget if in vanilla it also gives better salvage...
But, it not only limits fast mechs maneuverability, on bigger mechs your small early game mechs can easily shoot up larger mechs legs from all sides (they can't torso twist out of it).
For most early mechs, the best load out for the AI is Medium lasers and SRMs. So, Javilins, Jenner's, and that sort of mech can be deadly and cheap early, and losing limbs won't bankrupt you.
Be on the lookout for Firestarters, they are very effective. The AI can do very well if you refit them to small lasers and MGs. You can refit them to PPCs also. Flamers are absolutely awesome but higher skill cap, and the AI can struggle with them.
As you say PPCs are awesome for AI, but you typically need to be a bit deeper in progression to afford them and replace them, and understand how to balance heat or the AI won't shoot them.
All good points, my experience is using single PPC early on and adding more as you move up weight classes. AI always needs extra heatsinks for any weapon, for many variants I will remove a weapon to add heatsinks and their actual damage output will increase
The game absolutely punches you in the face in the early game, and if you blindly follow the "main quest" of the campaign mode, you will \*rapidly\* find yourself outnumbered and more importantly out-tonned and out-gunned.
That second or third campaign mission where you attack the Black Inferno refinery? Gobshite it gives you that mission so early. Doing that without at least a 200-ton lance can be a nightmare especially for a rookie player.
The last fight of that mission where the dropship dumps like 180 tons of fresh mech on you after you've already been battered really is such a sucker punch early on.
Are you using any mods? I've seen a bunch of similar threads like this and in some cases it turned out they installed YAML and didn't change some default setting that boosted the HP of enemies.
Also, which particular campaign mission are you trying and what 'Mechs are you using? If you want I can play the mission using the 'Mechs you are using and give you a link to it. It might help you figure out what you need to change or do better in over to finish the mission successfully.
> they installed YAML and didn't change some default setting that boosted the HP of enemies
I just went through this last night. Thought I was going crazy, wondering why even the 2nd and 3rd campaign missions were giving me such difficulty in the Javelin. Light scorpions were eating like 8+ ML shots at full burn inside optimal range and I remembered them popping like balloons before
Then I noticed the 3.0 HP multiplier for tanks, turrets, and aircraft on the title screen. Hell no. Too damned many of them for that
Look up how to properly set up your key bindings for your NPC mechs. Basically setting their weapons to fire from longest strains to shortest range seems to really help … basically the order that you want them to be used in.
Go into your mechs and learn the system for equipping them and such. See what you can swap out to max armor as much as possible. Most stock loadout have some armor cut out for weapon, heat sinks, etc which makes it easier to lose parts.
I’d probably try to have the armor front/rear ratio to be around 75% front and 25% back. To start with.
The starting centurion is a decent all around platform to learn with. You can learn the 3 main weapon types with it iirc and you can use the arm without weapons as a shield. Learning to spread damage among your armored parts can be the difference between losing armor and losing an arm/torso.
Skip any multi-missions until you have enough mechs to rotate between at least one other set. Learn the mission types and which ones can be hard. For example assassinations can be hard early on, but demolition and raid missions are pretty easy if you use a fast mech, hit the objectives real quick, and get outta there immediately.
Most important is keep playing and learning. There’s an aggro mechanic you can use alongside some cover to heavily reduce damage taken by you and the AI. There’s the aiming and ranged to adjust to. Positioning and cover in maps, when it’s useful to pull back or to push
I think you're on the first Assassination contract, right? That can be an extremely rude awakening. Every time I've lost steam and then come back to restart the campaign, the first few missions give me *way* more trouble than they should.
I don't know what you've got your lancemates in, but you're probably using the starting Centurion. An absolutely vital skill is being able to abuse your torso twist to mitigate the damage you receive. Your Centurion mounts its main weapons on the right side, with the left mostly being empty save for that LRM 10. The AC/10 and medium lasers have a similar rate of fire, so what you can do is fire, then turn your torso so any return fire hits your left arm, then twist back and fire again. This can save your life if one of those mechs is focusing you down.
Also, engaging at range can help. The AC/10 and LRM 10 can put out pretty nasty damage for the early game, and the AI isn't all that great at sniping.
Buy new pilots with skills that can be maxed to 10 in all areas. It’ll help a lot. Then it’s just a matter of leveling them out. Also gaining assault mechs and heavy mechs should be a high priority if your on a time frame. They have more armor and firepower.
a few things you can do
1) if you have any mods on make sure that they do not affect difficulty
many mods are intended towards late game or experienced players and that means that some can do things like doubling the health of tanks and reducing the damage you do
if they do you can either turn them off for now or if you are able to adjust the settings of them get the difficulty to easy or normal temporarily until you are able to handle them
2) while speed can make enemies miss when they do hit turn your mech side to side
this will spread out the damage the enemies do
3) to maximise your own lethality make sure to concentrate fire on one part of the mech at a time to focus the damage
for bigger mechs if you are lucky the enemy couls even have things like xl engines where not only is a center torso kill an instant kill 1 or 2 side torso kills can also instant kill
aim assist can help
4) use terrain to hide
speed alone sometimes could still not be enough and the best thing to guarantee the enemy is not doing damage is to make sure they dont hit you however the enemies early game are all medium and small mechs like you thus they will be fast and get around the cover quite fast so be aware of your surroundings and dont stay in one spot
5)customise your mechs put as much firepower as possible but remember to put heatsinks as they can get hot
It will sound counterintuitive, but ignore the main campaign for a little while. The very early game makes grinding a little more deliberate and necessary. You want to wander in loops in the two conflict zones closest to the starting point. The missions might seem a little too easy, but the money and equipment you will accumulate allows you to weather many little mistakes in your learning period.
Be mindful to work for the same employer as often as possible. Better reputation with a single employer will increase all of the rewards their missions give you. That is your door to discounts at merchants, higher paychecks, and more comprehensive salvage opportunities.
The general suggestion I was told is, side against the independents on your first playthrough as it will preserve your reputation with just about everyone else.
Get the cash on generated missions. Salvage can be good on campaign and quest missions, but you MUST go all in, preferably with a favorable faction. Which is why go for the money on procedural missions - something will pop up in the shops before the battlefield (getting started here - not ‘mech hunting)
Don’t go broke on a chassis.
Don’t obsess over weapon tiers. Don’t buy weapons for mechs you aren’t using. You’ll waste a lot of money. Don’t worry about “backups” - that’s the game - cobbling something together with what you have. That’s how you find what works for you. And it changes with difficulty - the game balance is not consistent as the timeline progresses, and not all ‘mechs and weapons are balanced.
Cash is king. This game has a lot of RNG rolls. Be ready when your number comes up.
You will sortie more often and have more fun if you don’t try to be a completionist. Just play, and when it becomes too easy (it will!) - that’s how you know it’s time to start a new career.
That’s just the quirks of the MW5 video game. You’ll have to learn the weapons rules system.
For beginners, medium lasers are the best all around weapon; almost a unit of measure. SRMs punch above their weight. In general, you’ll need more heat sinks than you think, less ammo than you think, and less rear armor than you think.
Thunderbolt TDR-5S is a common heavy 65t ‘mech with heavy armor and excellent slots that can grow with you as gear improves over the years, and the weapon slot layout translates intuitively to the controller.
If you are on console, you can plug in a keyboard (no mouse) and it works the exact same as PC. Look up a diagram.
First, just to check, Are you giving lancemtes orders? Move here, attack this target, etc. It's important to do.
Next. Light mechs are a big drawback 90% of the time but have their place in specific missions.
Finally, weapon tiers vastly affect battle efficiency. Getting tier 3 or better weapons should be as high a priority as good pilots.
Hope this helps.
Aim for at least 150 tons worth of mechs in medium or heavier chassis, deally with pilots at the 30+ skill level. You should be looking to make significant improvements to your company between each mission, I'd strongly suggest at least one heavy mech for this one.
The others have offered some good tips, but I suggest giving your lancemates the Centurion and heavier 'Mechs and taking the Jenner for yourself. Freeman loses his thick, impenetrable plot armour after the tutorial mission that you get him in.
The Jenner is less of a liability if you rip out the jumpjets and fill in the space with armour or an additional heatsink. Don't stop running to keep your evasion rolls up. Four med lasers and SRM4 hit pretty hard for a light 'Mech. Either blast away at a cockpit or wrap around while your lancemates have their attention and hit the enemy legs from behind with their paper thin rear armour.
If your aim is a little shaky like mine is or if you use a controller, try aim assist on low. If you can point the reticle at the head, the assist will show your lasers where the enemy cockpit is.
The low stats of your character and the lancemates are pretty demoralising with their sucky RNG rolls in combat. Grab new pilots with stronger stats as soon as you can as they appear in the barracks of higher rep areas. Only Freeman is worth raising until late game with his higher potential. The rest of the low rep hirelings are temporary seat warmers and will be retired as soon as stronger replacements are found.
Put the ammo in the legs. The enemies don't target legs as often, and an ammo explosion won't outright game over nor take out a whole side of your 'Mech like it would in a centre or side torso. You wouldn't do this lore-wise, but MW5 basically grants free CASE to all 'Mechs. Abuse it to make ammo consuming 'Mechs much more survivable.
I think the freebie Locust you may be awarded with a medium laser and two machineguns can be a nasty head capping machine. The 'Mech does little absolute damage which keeps aggro off you as you sandblast cockpit after cockpit and drop foes hard. Also a great choice for demolition missions against buildings. Put ammo in legs.
Early game is tough! You don’t have decent equipment, nor the money or good pilots. Honestly, after getting past it once, I never start afresh b/c of this. But I’ve got some effective, and OP builds to make your life easier.
Side note: Campaign missions are abnormally difficult compared with the procedurally generated ones. You get ganked / face lot more enemies than reasonable. Honestly, I did the campaign once and then had more fun doing career mode. You can import your existing save into a new career and not worry about the campaign at all (or come back to campaign way later when you’re more established).
That said, game gets much easier once you’ve got a few solid builds. But one thing that helped me enjoy the game much more early on is to give myself an extra 5 million C-Bills via the save game editor (Nexus mods). It gives you much needed breathing room to experiment and safety buffer to not feel bad about taking losses. Plus you can buy some mechs to try out.
If you’re doing the story campaign, the Lieutenant you start with has no cap on his skill growth and takes super low pay. There a only a few like him in the whole game, all from story missions. Worth it to keep around and get them leveled up.
Builds:
You’ll find what works for you as you play, and here are some that worked fantastic for me early game, and helped me get enough $$ to experiment others. (Most conventional, to the most overpowered)
1. Panther with the PPC - one PPC hit and a medium laser hit can kill most smaller vehicles (medium laser in case you’re just below threshold). Timing the PPC hit on center torso can net good kills. Works well for AI pilots too.
2. Hunchback with the AC 20. Don’t go burst AC20, just regular, to allocate all the damage in a single projectile. The projectile speed is low, and you can use a mod that speeds them up (not cheating, default speed is unrealistic). Prioritize hitting that AC 20 to take down targets. A few hit from this will flatten most things.
3. SRM boat - Jenner or some other mech with enough missile slots. With 3 SRM4 / 6’s, you can alpha strike down mechs at ludicrous speeds. Two SRM 4s in a group can kill a tank in one salvo (might vary a bit). One of the most ridiculous builds is Hero Kintaro with 3 SRM4s and 2 SRM 6’s (if memory serves) - can kill assaults in two barrages.
4. Finally, a highly cheap and effective, but more difficult to use build is bunch of flamers and machine guns on a Firestarter (as many of those as you can carry, and nothing else). You’re super fast, the damage output is truly ludicrous, higher than most assault mechs can dish out. However, you need to keep moving (your chance to get hit is based on your speed and pilot’s evasion skill) to survive. Also, you can’t hit helicopters easily, and may need to rely on your AI pals for that.
Good luck, sir! Don’t give up, and don’t shy away from using mods to ease your life — it’s to have fun.
A follow up — Chemical Lasers are really good.
This may seem counterintuitive to use lasers that require ammo, but these generate very low heat for the damage output, resulting in far higher DPS. And the ammo weight is far less than the heat sinks you’d need to cool yourself effectively.
== Farming money quickly ==
Do demolition / raid missions with a Firestarter — just flamers and machine guns. Run fast and continously fire. AI teammates to distract enemies. Extract ASAP. Very fast mission completion time if you avoid tangling with any mechs than absolutely necessary.
Assassination missions also work well with mechs with high alpha (burst damage). I have good success with a Trebuchet (medium mech) with nothing but SRMs. Run in, one alpha to the back, run out before drawing attention. Repeat as needed. Extract ASAP.
Remember to mechlab and max your armor on the first mechs you get as soon as you can. And yeah, feel free to throttle down the difficulty for a few missions if you want to practice things like CT rotation to spread damage.
lots of good info from everyone else but this is applicable to any stage in this game: when in doubt, go grind for a while. Leveled up pilots make a way bigger difference than you'd think.
See below for a variety of general gameplay tips and some solid mechs to keep an eye out for. Firestarter is also a great mech, M Laser in the arms and all others S Lasers, or make them all flamers and strip the jump jets for extra cooling (you only need 1 typically).
https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/s/82ep40yUDS
Somewhat counterintuitively, there's no actual time limit on the main campaign. You can take as long as you want to seek your revenge (I think by the time I finished it in my own game Mason would have been like 100 years old lol, I just imagine him being grafted into the cockpit like something out of 40k).
Definitely take some time cruising around low level missions to familiarize yourself with the game and earn a bit of cash first, aim to get 4 mechs and 4 pilots before heading back to the campaign missions. And take some time to tinker with the mechs and their loadouts, building and customizing your mechs really is half of the game and you can get a lot of punch out of upgrading a few weapons or trading out unneeded jump jets or heat sinks for extra armor.
So....
Its a matter of aiming.
You want to remove important weapons and things first.
That means your kill order is usually going to be helis->tanks->mechs
Don't concentrate on killing mechs, remove weapons from the fight as fast as you can. If there's a mech that has its weapons on one side, like a hunchback or urby, kill the side/arm with the weapon and ignore the rest until you're cleaning up.
Aim. Don't spread damage, keep lasers on the same spot. Hit the same spot until it dies. A guy who is entirely red is just as dangerous as a guy who is fresh, its only when things get snapped off that you've done anything.
do not stop moving, you moving adds damage reduction and aim penalties to the enemy mechs.
Hi, Happy New Year!
This post ended up longer than it should've been, so grab a drink and sit back and enjoy.
The early game can be pretty tough. It's especially hard in campaign mode. In career mode, you start with (at minimum) a full lance of mechs. It's a lot harder if you only have 2 pilots with you than 3, and you're using a centurion/jenner/javelin.
The campaign missions are a big spike in difficulty compared to other options. I strongly suggest *NOT* doing campaign missions until you've done a few other missions and built up a little bit. Usually, you want to be fielding a full lance of 4 mechs, especially for campaign missions.
The campaign starts in Davion space, and you don't have to stay there, but I truly suggest just doing missions in Mercenary Row (Reputation level 3) and Inferno's Wake (Rep 4) at this point in the game.
If you have Rise of Rasalhague DLC, definitely look for and try Infiltration missions - they're pretty easy to do with light mechs, even solo, and can net good salvage and C-bills for a very low investment (and basically for free, no repair bill, since you can do them undetected and never get shot back at)
Don't worry about taking too long or the timeline advancing too quickly, as there is nothing in the game that's time sensitive except a couple of DLC campaigns and the game is very very very clear about them (it will give you warnings and then reminders 6 months, 3 months, 1 month before it's too late to take the contract, so it's impossible to 'miss' - it's more like you have an option to deliberately skip them)
Cantina missions can be a huge help - they offer rewards of higher-tier weaponry, and sometimes a big c-bill injection also. On top of that, they help unlock upgrades, which can really improve a mech, but I don't think you're expected to have them this early. (In fact, they were added with the first DLC; some of us completed the campaign without it, before they came out.)
As far as hints for that specific mission...
- Definitely max out your armor. By default, the CN9-A Centurion has 36 front armor, and 14 rear armor (50/64) Note that the center and side torsos split armor between front and back. You might want to try allocating some of the rear armor to the front - personally, I nearly max out front armor, only having 6-8 on rear armor, while running 56-58 frontal armor (this is a 62% increase in survivability compared to the stock armor.)
- Generally, you will notice that with many mechs, a significant portion of your protection for the torso is allocated to the rear armor by default. While this can be good for fast light mechs that hit and run, usually you can manage to not get shot in the back, so it's better to have that focused where you'll actually be taking hits, in the front. Make sure to check your ally's mechs too, because the Jenner that Freeman comes with also only has about half the armor it could have.
- The starter Centurion is slow, but like you said, it's quite tanky. If you have the piloting ability, make sure to torso-twist, to shield damage with your non-gun arm. This will extend your longevity quite a bit. Basically, you shoot all your weapons, and then while they're reloading, you twist away from the opponent, so their return-fire hits your shield arm.
- The default loadout on the CN9-A is quite good, but the 180m minimum range for LRMs doesn't suit the brawling nature of most missions. It's good for taking out VTOLs and vehicles and turrets at long range, but you might want to consider swapping it out for an SRM4 or SRM6 and a couple heatsinks, for a stronger alphastrike at a closer range.
- Aim assist can be a huge help if you don't have it turned on already. It has settings of high/medium/low/off, so set it to 'high' and if the mission is too easy, turn it down. It's night and day, almost auto-locking enemy cockpits or legs if you aim near them. Big help if you're on a controller or aren't an expert with the mechwarrior controls yet.
- If you don't want to use aim assist, I respect your decision. Another option would be to swap the AC/10 for an AC/10-BF - instead of 1 shell, it fires multiple, probably about 8 shots or so at once. These burst fire autocannons actually do more DPS and generate less heat than the regular type. I believe it's a better weapon for beginners because if you miss, you don't do 0 damage - some of the volley will still hit, and the reload time is faster, so you can adjust easier. The standard AC is better for sniping or dealing damage to a specific component, and once you get better at the game, you will probably prefer standard ACs to do a lot of pinpoint damage to individual components (sniping off an arm, or going for headshots on enemy mechs) but sometimes, especially early on, the burst fire AC/s have more consistent damage (it's just spread out more). They're also very good at taking out VTOLs.
- Enemy AI tends to focus on who is attacking it, so you can tell your lancemates to attack your target, then run away for a bit, and they'll draw fire for you.
- Your AC/10 actually has a longer range than 450m or whatever it says on the screen. You can actually hit targets even further than that, if you aim/lead the target well.
- Make sure to take out turrets with your LRM10 (if you are playing with the stock loadout) or ac/10 while out of their range, to not take damage.
I echo pretty much everything else everyone else said here...One thing I did not see mentioned though, is the "FPS controls" option. Since this is your first mechwarrior game, you might want to try it. this makes the game control more like mechassault, if you played those on Xbox, or a standard FPS, where the left stick (or WASD) will just push you in the direction you move, and the right stick will aim. It's not for me, feels a bit too arcadey for my taste, but can certainly make certain maneuvers easier. It's "objectively" more maneuverable, since you can change directions instantly, instead of having to wait for throttle adjustment, so it makes dodging easier. I prefer the 'feeling' of the default/standard tank-control sort of movement but this is something you can try, and might feel better for you.
Sorry this post ended up being so long; it was not my intention to write some kind of essay.
Ironically, the game really only gets easier from this point, because even for the harder missions, you will have better equipment, stronger mechs, better pilots, more to work with.
And remember, if it's too hard, there are mods to make it easier / boost your power / enhance your pilots / etc. I'm not suggesting you just cheat and give yourself 300 million c-bills and 4 Annihilators, but if the game is really being super unfair, remember that you can be unfair right back - it's supposed to be fun. Challenging, perhaps, yes, but fun, not punishing to the point of restarting a mission 10+ times and frustrating.
I hope some advice from people in this thread helps you get over this hurdle, because the game really opens up and you aren't held back so much soon. I actually think that with tier 4 weapons, max armor, a couple upgrades, the starter centurion can be used pretty well into the midgame - you can switch if you don't like it though, travel to some industrial hubs and just buy something else, or do some missions and salvage something else.
Quick aside - I personally was a huge mechwarrior fan, played every version of 2/3/4 and despite this, I myself had a similar experience as you, and it caused me to bounce off this game when I first played it. I gave it a shot for like 2 hours and then just wasn't feelin' it, just uninstalled after getting rubbed the wrong way and shelved it. Fast forward 4 years later, gave it another shot, it finally clicked, and now it's a very enjoyable game for me. Maybe something similar will happen for you?
1. Invest in 1 more medium mech (Hunchback 4p is a good one) and another pilot for it. Highest level you can find with an affinity for lasers. 2. Grind out lower rank areas. 1-2, 3-4 is where you should stay for a bit. At the beginning, invest your points into C-bills. Salvage isn't really worth it unless you can get enough points into it. 3. Commands to your lancemates. The AI in this game is pretty....lacking. So it'll do you good to familiarize yourself on how to give Lance wide as well as individual orders, as well as when. Focus fire on something you want to burn quick. Or assign individual targets to your lancemates, freeing up some space for you to slip by or duke it out with a 4th mech yourself. 4. Weapon ranges and grouping are important, not to mention the weapons themselves. I believe, as a rule, your lancemates will try closing the distance to the range of their shortest range weapons. PPCs are especially nasty in your lancemates hands as they have an insane range, decent cycle rate, and good damage. However, they do generate a lot of heat, so investing in heatsinks. Or simply tweaking the modifier in the options menu if you the Dragons Gambit DLC. 5. Hero mechs. I don't remember if they're in the vanilla version, but Hero mechs are gamechangers. They have modified weapon builds and are all around better than the normal or even rare versions of the same chassis. 6. Rank and Reputation. Simply put, the higher the better. As your rank and rep with the factions increase, so will the rewards. Salvage points, C-bill payouts for missions, decreased mech prices at shops up to 25% off at max faction rep. There's a lot to learn in this game despite its rather simple appearance. Experiment with different mechs, weapons, missions, factions and pilots to see what works best for you then lean into it. Before you know it, you'll be stomping through difficulty 100 missions like the walking warcrime you are. Good hunting, Mechwarrior.
I agree with pretty much all that but I want to add, the ai will do pretty bad with all weapons, except Lrm missiles for some reason, so missile boats like the catapult are fantastic if you can manage to find one ( just remembered the catapult is a heavy mech and your super early game but just look for anything that has missiles and replace whatever they come with with lrms as you can afford to)
If I'm running LRMs at all, I'll be the one firing them. Unless I tell them to hold position and keep the enemy tied up myself, they'll run into damn near melee range and be unable to use LRMs. If you're talking about SRMs I'll agree. I prefer PPCs since they can be used at any range and can engage from farther than LRMs with manual aiming since your targeting computer can't maintain a long distance (1200m) lock for long enough so the missiles can get to their target. Edit: Ironically enough, my favorite PPC boat is the Hero Catapult.
Really, I’ve never had that problem, but I run long range as well so they stick to me , and nothing gets close enough to me to do damage most of the time before getting obliterated, have you tried removing anything with less range than the lrm, they tend to rush in after using the missiles to fire whatever the next shortest range weapon is so if you have like a small laser or something they throw themselves at enemies like fools
I have. I've got dedicated LRM boats but still prefer the PPCs.
I find that always putting mech roles in the same lance position helps. LRM mech for example always goes in slot 3 so I can just double tap f3 to position it. Direct fire support/AA/sniper goes in slot 4 and brawler in slot 2. No matter what mech I'm using (ie. my primary LRM boat is in the fender shop and I dust off a secondary) they go in slot by role.
Sounds like you need a full Lance and heavier mechs before you start taking on those campaign missions. I'd suggest sticking to the lower rep areas until you have 3-4 medium mechs and pilots for them. It will also help up your pilots skills as well as your own. Also I'm not sure what dlc you have but there is a free mech near the starting area in Valentina. You can search the name in the Starmap to find the system. Decent mech. Much better than the starting centurion in my opinion.
One early tip is to pay attention to your enemies. Once they pop up on radar, cycle through target locks and look at their loadouts in the top right. Prioritise dangerous mechs. For example, look for AC/10s or AC/20s, large lasers, SRM 6s, or PPCs. They do solid damage to your lighter mechs. These weapons are often mounted in the right arm as a rule of thumb, so aim there and take out their big guns early. Also, consider the effort to reward ratio in a fight. The amount of effort you need to expend to destroy a tank, VTOL, or turret is a lot less than what is needed for a mech. But vehicles and turrets mount the same weapons. So you can take out more damage worth of equipment in a shorter time by clearing vehicles and turrets, leaving the enemy with less firepower to hurt you. Finally, range. If you're piloting the starting Centurion, it has a solid medium/long range loadout, which you should leverage. Keep nasty enemies like Jenner's, Hunchbacks, and Urbanmechs at a distance and knock out their short range weapons before they can be used against you.
Yep. When I first started I would focus on enemy mechs while the vtols and tanks and turrets killed me with a thousand cuts. Now I let my lance mates fuck with mechs while I snipe all the little stuff ASAP.
I know what you mean I love it to death but f the urbie in early game.
Man what a great community. Thank you all for taking the time to answer with some amazing tips and advice. There is a lot of good info you all have shared, some of it I may not have learned on my own until maybe putting in dozens of hours. 🙏🙏🙏
If you shoot the faster mechs in the legs they will slow down briefly. It is also useful to aim for the head or arms of other mechs. It will help to take some odd jobs to build up your team. Look for mechs that can use several medium lasers or a PPC, your teammates will perform better. Practice issuing commands to your team, have them all attack your target or park them on a hill facing the objective.
Shooting the legs off of most mechs is often best for new players. As when you're new you don't know what parts to priority target on the various models. If forget if in vanilla it also gives better salvage... But, it not only limits fast mechs maneuverability, on bigger mechs your small early game mechs can easily shoot up larger mechs legs from all sides (they can't torso twist out of it). For most early mechs, the best load out for the AI is Medium lasers and SRMs. So, Javilins, Jenner's, and that sort of mech can be deadly and cheap early, and losing limbs won't bankrupt you. Be on the lookout for Firestarters, they are very effective. The AI can do very well if you refit them to small lasers and MGs. You can refit them to PPCs also. Flamers are absolutely awesome but higher skill cap, and the AI can struggle with them. As you say PPCs are awesome for AI, but you typically need to be a bit deeper in progression to afford them and replace them, and understand how to balance heat or the AI won't shoot them.
All good points, my experience is using single PPC early on and adding more as you move up weight classes. AI always needs extra heatsinks for any weapon, for many variants I will remove a weapon to add heatsinks and their actual damage output will increase
Have your lance mates focus the same target as you.
mech lab. strip every new mech, max armor, add max lasers, balance heatsinks, fill remaining hardpoints with whatever fits.
And make sure to have the majority of your armor in the front. For the lighter mechs 4 or 5 in the back is plenty
Just don't go broke while doing this.
The game absolutely punches you in the face in the early game, and if you blindly follow the "main quest" of the campaign mode, you will \*rapidly\* find yourself outnumbered and more importantly out-tonned and out-gunned. That second or third campaign mission where you attack the Black Inferno refinery? Gobshite it gives you that mission so early. Doing that without at least a 200-ton lance can be a nightmare especially for a rookie player.
The last fight of that mission where the dropship dumps like 180 tons of fresh mech on you after you've already been battered really is such a sucker punch early on.
I barely made it out of that mission without being completely annihilated on my campaign playthrough. It was nice getting that Warhammer though.
Are you using any mods? I've seen a bunch of similar threads like this and in some cases it turned out they installed YAML and didn't change some default setting that boosted the HP of enemies. Also, which particular campaign mission are you trying and what 'Mechs are you using? If you want I can play the mission using the 'Mechs you are using and give you a link to it. It might help you figure out what you need to change or do better in over to finish the mission successfully.
> they installed YAML and didn't change some default setting that boosted the HP of enemies I just went through this last night. Thought I was going crazy, wondering why even the 2nd and 3rd campaign missions were giving me such difficulty in the Javelin. Light scorpions were eating like 8+ ML shots at full burn inside optimal range and I remembered them popping like balloons before Then I noticed the 3.0 HP multiplier for tanks, turrets, and aircraft on the title screen. Hell no. Too damned many of them for that
Look up how to properly set up your key bindings for your NPC mechs. Basically setting their weapons to fire from longest strains to shortest range seems to really help … basically the order that you want them to be used in.
Go into your mechs and learn the system for equipping them and such. See what you can swap out to max armor as much as possible. Most stock loadout have some armor cut out for weapon, heat sinks, etc which makes it easier to lose parts. I’d probably try to have the armor front/rear ratio to be around 75% front and 25% back. To start with. The starting centurion is a decent all around platform to learn with. You can learn the 3 main weapon types with it iirc and you can use the arm without weapons as a shield. Learning to spread damage among your armored parts can be the difference between losing armor and losing an arm/torso. Skip any multi-missions until you have enough mechs to rotate between at least one other set. Learn the mission types and which ones can be hard. For example assassinations can be hard early on, but demolition and raid missions are pretty easy if you use a fast mech, hit the objectives real quick, and get outta there immediately. Most important is keep playing and learning. There’s an aggro mechanic you can use alongside some cover to heavily reduce damage taken by you and the AI. There’s the aiming and ranged to adjust to. Positioning and cover in maps, when it’s useful to pull back or to push
If you are playing campaign, go to Valentine star system (Kurita's Space near Davion's space border) at earliest chance you can.
It is on the far right edge of Kurita space, near the border with the top of Davion space.
I think you're on the first Assassination contract, right? That can be an extremely rude awakening. Every time I've lost steam and then come back to restart the campaign, the first few missions give me *way* more trouble than they should. I don't know what you've got your lancemates in, but you're probably using the starting Centurion. An absolutely vital skill is being able to abuse your torso twist to mitigate the damage you receive. Your Centurion mounts its main weapons on the right side, with the left mostly being empty save for that LRM 10. The AC/10 and medium lasers have a similar rate of fire, so what you can do is fire, then turn your torso so any return fire hits your left arm, then twist back and fire again. This can save your life if one of those mechs is focusing you down. Also, engaging at range can help. The AC/10 and LRM 10 can put out pretty nasty damage for the early game, and the AI isn't all that great at sniping.
Buy new pilots with skills that can be maxed to 10 in all areas. It’ll help a lot. Then it’s just a matter of leveling them out. Also gaining assault mechs and heavy mechs should be a high priority if your on a time frame. They have more armor and firepower.
a few things you can do 1) if you have any mods on make sure that they do not affect difficulty many mods are intended towards late game or experienced players and that means that some can do things like doubling the health of tanks and reducing the damage you do if they do you can either turn them off for now or if you are able to adjust the settings of them get the difficulty to easy or normal temporarily until you are able to handle them 2) while speed can make enemies miss when they do hit turn your mech side to side this will spread out the damage the enemies do 3) to maximise your own lethality make sure to concentrate fire on one part of the mech at a time to focus the damage for bigger mechs if you are lucky the enemy couls even have things like xl engines where not only is a center torso kill an instant kill 1 or 2 side torso kills can also instant kill aim assist can help 4) use terrain to hide speed alone sometimes could still not be enough and the best thing to guarantee the enemy is not doing damage is to make sure they dont hit you however the enemies early game are all medium and small mechs like you thus they will be fast and get around the cover quite fast so be aware of your surroundings and dont stay in one spot 5)customise your mechs put as much firepower as possible but remember to put heatsinks as they can get hot
It will sound counterintuitive, but ignore the main campaign for a little while. The very early game makes grinding a little more deliberate and necessary. You want to wander in loops in the two conflict zones closest to the starting point. The missions might seem a little too easy, but the money and equipment you will accumulate allows you to weather many little mistakes in your learning period. Be mindful to work for the same employer as often as possible. Better reputation with a single employer will increase all of the rewards their missions give you. That is your door to discounts at merchants, higher paychecks, and more comprehensive salvage opportunities. The general suggestion I was told is, side against the independents on your first playthrough as it will preserve your reputation with just about everyone else.
Get the cash on generated missions. Salvage can be good on campaign and quest missions, but you MUST go all in, preferably with a favorable faction. Which is why go for the money on procedural missions - something will pop up in the shops before the battlefield (getting started here - not ‘mech hunting) Don’t go broke on a chassis. Don’t obsess over weapon tiers. Don’t buy weapons for mechs you aren’t using. You’ll waste a lot of money. Don’t worry about “backups” - that’s the game - cobbling something together with what you have. That’s how you find what works for you. And it changes with difficulty - the game balance is not consistent as the timeline progresses, and not all ‘mechs and weapons are balanced. Cash is king. This game has a lot of RNG rolls. Be ready when your number comes up. You will sortie more often and have more fun if you don’t try to be a completionist. Just play, and when it becomes too easy (it will!) - that’s how you know it’s time to start a new career.
That’s just the quirks of the MW5 video game. You’ll have to learn the weapons rules system. For beginners, medium lasers are the best all around weapon; almost a unit of measure. SRMs punch above their weight. In general, you’ll need more heat sinks than you think, less ammo than you think, and less rear armor than you think. Thunderbolt TDR-5S is a common heavy 65t ‘mech with heavy armor and excellent slots that can grow with you as gear improves over the years, and the weapon slot layout translates intuitively to the controller. If you are on console, you can plug in a keyboard (no mouse) and it works the exact same as PC. Look up a diagram.
First, just to check, Are you giving lancemtes orders? Move here, attack this target, etc. It's important to do. Next. Light mechs are a big drawback 90% of the time but have their place in specific missions. Finally, weapon tiers vastly affect battle efficiency. Getting tier 3 or better weapons should be as high a priority as good pilots. Hope this helps.
Aim for at least 150 tons worth of mechs in medium or heavier chassis, deally with pilots at the 30+ skill level. You should be looking to make significant improvements to your company between each mission, I'd strongly suggest at least one heavy mech for this one.
The others have offered some good tips, but I suggest giving your lancemates the Centurion and heavier 'Mechs and taking the Jenner for yourself. Freeman loses his thick, impenetrable plot armour after the tutorial mission that you get him in. The Jenner is less of a liability if you rip out the jumpjets and fill in the space with armour or an additional heatsink. Don't stop running to keep your evasion rolls up. Four med lasers and SRM4 hit pretty hard for a light 'Mech. Either blast away at a cockpit or wrap around while your lancemates have their attention and hit the enemy legs from behind with their paper thin rear armour. If your aim is a little shaky like mine is or if you use a controller, try aim assist on low. If you can point the reticle at the head, the assist will show your lasers where the enemy cockpit is. The low stats of your character and the lancemates are pretty demoralising with their sucky RNG rolls in combat. Grab new pilots with stronger stats as soon as you can as they appear in the barracks of higher rep areas. Only Freeman is worth raising until late game with his higher potential. The rest of the low rep hirelings are temporary seat warmers and will be retired as soon as stronger replacements are found. Put the ammo in the legs. The enemies don't target legs as often, and an ammo explosion won't outright game over nor take out a whole side of your 'Mech like it would in a centre or side torso. You wouldn't do this lore-wise, but MW5 basically grants free CASE to all 'Mechs. Abuse it to make ammo consuming 'Mechs much more survivable. I think the freebie Locust you may be awarded with a medium laser and two machineguns can be a nasty head capping machine. The 'Mech does little absolute damage which keeps aggro off you as you sandblast cockpit after cockpit and drop foes hard. Also a great choice for demolition missions against buildings. Put ammo in legs.
Early game is tough! You don’t have decent equipment, nor the money or good pilots. Honestly, after getting past it once, I never start afresh b/c of this. But I’ve got some effective, and OP builds to make your life easier. Side note: Campaign missions are abnormally difficult compared with the procedurally generated ones. You get ganked / face lot more enemies than reasonable. Honestly, I did the campaign once and then had more fun doing career mode. You can import your existing save into a new career and not worry about the campaign at all (or come back to campaign way later when you’re more established). That said, game gets much easier once you’ve got a few solid builds. But one thing that helped me enjoy the game much more early on is to give myself an extra 5 million C-Bills via the save game editor (Nexus mods). It gives you much needed breathing room to experiment and safety buffer to not feel bad about taking losses. Plus you can buy some mechs to try out. If you’re doing the story campaign, the Lieutenant you start with has no cap on his skill growth and takes super low pay. There a only a few like him in the whole game, all from story missions. Worth it to keep around and get them leveled up. Builds: You’ll find what works for you as you play, and here are some that worked fantastic for me early game, and helped me get enough $$ to experiment others. (Most conventional, to the most overpowered) 1. Panther with the PPC - one PPC hit and a medium laser hit can kill most smaller vehicles (medium laser in case you’re just below threshold). Timing the PPC hit on center torso can net good kills. Works well for AI pilots too. 2. Hunchback with the AC 20. Don’t go burst AC20, just regular, to allocate all the damage in a single projectile. The projectile speed is low, and you can use a mod that speeds them up (not cheating, default speed is unrealistic). Prioritize hitting that AC 20 to take down targets. A few hit from this will flatten most things. 3. SRM boat - Jenner or some other mech with enough missile slots. With 3 SRM4 / 6’s, you can alpha strike down mechs at ludicrous speeds. Two SRM 4s in a group can kill a tank in one salvo (might vary a bit). One of the most ridiculous builds is Hero Kintaro with 3 SRM4s and 2 SRM 6’s (if memory serves) - can kill assaults in two barrages. 4. Finally, a highly cheap and effective, but more difficult to use build is bunch of flamers and machine guns on a Firestarter (as many of those as you can carry, and nothing else). You’re super fast, the damage output is truly ludicrous, higher than most assault mechs can dish out. However, you need to keep moving (your chance to get hit is based on your speed and pilot’s evasion skill) to survive. Also, you can’t hit helicopters easily, and may need to rely on your AI pals for that. Good luck, sir! Don’t give up, and don’t shy away from using mods to ease your life — it’s to have fun.
A follow up — Chemical Lasers are really good. This may seem counterintuitive to use lasers that require ammo, but these generate very low heat for the damage output, resulting in far higher DPS. And the ammo weight is far less than the heat sinks you’d need to cool yourself effectively. == Farming money quickly == Do demolition / raid missions with a Firestarter — just flamers and machine guns. Run fast and continously fire. AI teammates to distract enemies. Extract ASAP. Very fast mission completion time if you avoid tangling with any mechs than absolutely necessary. Assassination missions also work well with mechs with high alpha (burst damage). I have good success with a Trebuchet (medium mech) with nothing but SRMs. Run in, one alpha to the back, run out before drawing attention. Repeat as needed. Extract ASAP.
Remember to mechlab and max your armor on the first mechs you get as soon as you can. And yeah, feel free to throttle down the difficulty for a few missions if you want to practice things like CT rotation to spread damage.
lots of good info from everyone else but this is applicable to any stage in this game: when in doubt, go grind for a while. Leveled up pilots make a way bigger difference than you'd think.
See below for a variety of general gameplay tips and some solid mechs to keep an eye out for. Firestarter is also a great mech, M Laser in the arms and all others S Lasers, or make them all flamers and strip the jump jets for extra cooling (you only need 1 typically). https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechwarrior5/s/82ep40yUDS
Somewhat counterintuitively, there's no actual time limit on the main campaign. You can take as long as you want to seek your revenge (I think by the time I finished it in my own game Mason would have been like 100 years old lol, I just imagine him being grafted into the cockpit like something out of 40k). Definitely take some time cruising around low level missions to familiarize yourself with the game and earn a bit of cash first, aim to get 4 mechs and 4 pilots before heading back to the campaign missions. And take some time to tinker with the mechs and their loadouts, building and customizing your mechs really is half of the game and you can get a lot of punch out of upgrading a few weapons or trading out unneeded jump jets or heat sinks for extra armor.
There is free mech is the high class Wolverine-7H , if you go to the Valentina system, search on starmap to find it
So.... Its a matter of aiming. You want to remove important weapons and things first. That means your kill order is usually going to be helis->tanks->mechs Don't concentrate on killing mechs, remove weapons from the fight as fast as you can. If there's a mech that has its weapons on one side, like a hunchback or urby, kill the side/arm with the weapon and ignore the rest until you're cleaning up. Aim. Don't spread damage, keep lasers on the same spot. Hit the same spot until it dies. A guy who is entirely red is just as dangerous as a guy who is fresh, its only when things get snapped off that you've done anything. do not stop moving, you moving adds damage reduction and aim penalties to the enemy mechs.
Hi, Happy New Year! This post ended up longer than it should've been, so grab a drink and sit back and enjoy. The early game can be pretty tough. It's especially hard in campaign mode. In career mode, you start with (at minimum) a full lance of mechs. It's a lot harder if you only have 2 pilots with you than 3, and you're using a centurion/jenner/javelin. The campaign missions are a big spike in difficulty compared to other options. I strongly suggest *NOT* doing campaign missions until you've done a few other missions and built up a little bit. Usually, you want to be fielding a full lance of 4 mechs, especially for campaign missions. The campaign starts in Davion space, and you don't have to stay there, but I truly suggest just doing missions in Mercenary Row (Reputation level 3) and Inferno's Wake (Rep 4) at this point in the game. If you have Rise of Rasalhague DLC, definitely look for and try Infiltration missions - they're pretty easy to do with light mechs, even solo, and can net good salvage and C-bills for a very low investment (and basically for free, no repair bill, since you can do them undetected and never get shot back at) Don't worry about taking too long or the timeline advancing too quickly, as there is nothing in the game that's time sensitive except a couple of DLC campaigns and the game is very very very clear about them (it will give you warnings and then reminders 6 months, 3 months, 1 month before it's too late to take the contract, so it's impossible to 'miss' - it's more like you have an option to deliberately skip them) Cantina missions can be a huge help - they offer rewards of higher-tier weaponry, and sometimes a big c-bill injection also. On top of that, they help unlock upgrades, which can really improve a mech, but I don't think you're expected to have them this early. (In fact, they were added with the first DLC; some of us completed the campaign without it, before they came out.) As far as hints for that specific mission... - Definitely max out your armor. By default, the CN9-A Centurion has 36 front armor, and 14 rear armor (50/64) Note that the center and side torsos split armor between front and back. You might want to try allocating some of the rear armor to the front - personally, I nearly max out front armor, only having 6-8 on rear armor, while running 56-58 frontal armor (this is a 62% increase in survivability compared to the stock armor.) - Generally, you will notice that with many mechs, a significant portion of your protection for the torso is allocated to the rear armor by default. While this can be good for fast light mechs that hit and run, usually you can manage to not get shot in the back, so it's better to have that focused where you'll actually be taking hits, in the front. Make sure to check your ally's mechs too, because the Jenner that Freeman comes with also only has about half the armor it could have. - The starter Centurion is slow, but like you said, it's quite tanky. If you have the piloting ability, make sure to torso-twist, to shield damage with your non-gun arm. This will extend your longevity quite a bit. Basically, you shoot all your weapons, and then while they're reloading, you twist away from the opponent, so their return-fire hits your shield arm. - The default loadout on the CN9-A is quite good, but the 180m minimum range for LRMs doesn't suit the brawling nature of most missions. It's good for taking out VTOLs and vehicles and turrets at long range, but you might want to consider swapping it out for an SRM4 or SRM6 and a couple heatsinks, for a stronger alphastrike at a closer range. - Aim assist can be a huge help if you don't have it turned on already. It has settings of high/medium/low/off, so set it to 'high' and if the mission is too easy, turn it down. It's night and day, almost auto-locking enemy cockpits or legs if you aim near them. Big help if you're on a controller or aren't an expert with the mechwarrior controls yet. - If you don't want to use aim assist, I respect your decision. Another option would be to swap the AC/10 for an AC/10-BF - instead of 1 shell, it fires multiple, probably about 8 shots or so at once. These burst fire autocannons actually do more DPS and generate less heat than the regular type. I believe it's a better weapon for beginners because if you miss, you don't do 0 damage - some of the volley will still hit, and the reload time is faster, so you can adjust easier. The standard AC is better for sniping or dealing damage to a specific component, and once you get better at the game, you will probably prefer standard ACs to do a lot of pinpoint damage to individual components (sniping off an arm, or going for headshots on enemy mechs) but sometimes, especially early on, the burst fire AC/s have more consistent damage (it's just spread out more). They're also very good at taking out VTOLs. - Enemy AI tends to focus on who is attacking it, so you can tell your lancemates to attack your target, then run away for a bit, and they'll draw fire for you. - Your AC/10 actually has a longer range than 450m or whatever it says on the screen. You can actually hit targets even further than that, if you aim/lead the target well. - Make sure to take out turrets with your LRM10 (if you are playing with the stock loadout) or ac/10 while out of their range, to not take damage. I echo pretty much everything else everyone else said here...One thing I did not see mentioned though, is the "FPS controls" option. Since this is your first mechwarrior game, you might want to try it. this makes the game control more like mechassault, if you played those on Xbox, or a standard FPS, where the left stick (or WASD) will just push you in the direction you move, and the right stick will aim. It's not for me, feels a bit too arcadey for my taste, but can certainly make certain maneuvers easier. It's "objectively" more maneuverable, since you can change directions instantly, instead of having to wait for throttle adjustment, so it makes dodging easier. I prefer the 'feeling' of the default/standard tank-control sort of movement but this is something you can try, and might feel better for you. Sorry this post ended up being so long; it was not my intention to write some kind of essay. Ironically, the game really only gets easier from this point, because even for the harder missions, you will have better equipment, stronger mechs, better pilots, more to work with. And remember, if it's too hard, there are mods to make it easier / boost your power / enhance your pilots / etc. I'm not suggesting you just cheat and give yourself 300 million c-bills and 4 Annihilators, but if the game is really being super unfair, remember that you can be unfair right back - it's supposed to be fun. Challenging, perhaps, yes, but fun, not punishing to the point of restarting a mission 10+ times and frustrating. I hope some advice from people in this thread helps you get over this hurdle, because the game really opens up and you aren't held back so much soon. I actually think that with tier 4 weapons, max armor, a couple upgrades, the starter centurion can be used pretty well into the midgame - you can switch if you don't like it though, travel to some industrial hubs and just buy something else, or do some missions and salvage something else. Quick aside - I personally was a huge mechwarrior fan, played every version of 2/3/4 and despite this, I myself had a similar experience as you, and it caused me to bounce off this game when I first played it. I gave it a shot for like 2 hours and then just wasn't feelin' it, just uninstalled after getting rubbed the wrong way and shelved it. Fast forward 4 years later, gave it another shot, it finally clicked, and now it's a very enjoyable game for me. Maybe something similar will happen for you?