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Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries is the greatest Mechwarrior game ever
So I finished the Shadow of Kerensky DLC, and have been puttering around in the clan invasion corridor having fun. From the top, this campaign was their best campaign yet. From the first terrifying mission where you go from hunting pirates to running for your life, to the last. It didn't seem to have the difficulty spikes previous campaigns had, and which often had patches or hotfixes to adjust the difficulty. Some sections were on rails as prior DLC campaigns had been, but it actually went open world for a bit too giving you some freedom to harvest more Clan tech or rest and refit. That was new for them.
Clan tech feels amazing to play with. Sometimes it feels better retrofitted onto an Inner Sphere mech than it does on a Clan mech. I failed to appreciate just how much better Clan tech was. Their ER Small Lasers are better than Inner Sphere Medium Lasers in every facet. More damage, better range, less head, half the weight. After I started replacing my weapons with Clan variants, I ended up with more free weight than I knew how to fill on most my IS mechs.
Fighting the Clans is terrifying, though I'm still figuring out what the deal with some of the missions is. I think they all have 400T limits, and difficulty ratings ranging from 100 to 120? Sometimes I'll drop into a mission loaded for (ghost) bear, and only encounter a half dozen light mechs and a medium. Other times I drop in and a full star of assault mechs chews me up and spits me out. I think I'm not paying enough attention to the difficulty rating versus the drop tonnage.
The economy around Clan tech is absurdly tight. I've been conducting raids into the invasion corridor, and then fleeing back to industrial worlds to earn cash in Arena missions while my mechs get repaired. Clan tech is preposterously expensive, and a single Clan ER Large Laser is like 12 salvage shares. Your only shot at salvaging a clan assault chassis are having maxed out reputation and probably taking a multiple operation contract for the bonus it provides. So far I really struggle to trust the AI pilots with my good clan tech, but the enemy AI seems to prioritize the player, so they tend to generally take almost no damage while I limp back to the evac point.
Still, when you return to the Inner Sphere and take a Clam mech out on a normal mission, you are suddenly a god amongst mortals. Even taking an Adder out for a spin in a 35T free for all, equipped with 4 C-ER MLasers and a C-Gauss, it just chews up IS Lights like they are nothing, despite being fairly beefy itself.
This is the Mechwarrior game I've always wanted. It's also likely the best Mechwarrior game we are ever likely to get in my lifetime. Whenever Piranha loses the license, Microsoft is going to throw it into a vault guarded by rabid IP Lawyers, to be largely forgotten about. Won't even be worth MS's time to entertain request for the license, not without it being some cloud based, AI powered eldritch horror.
In the tabletop game it's equal damage, 2/3 the range, better heat, half the weight. Does the video game mess with game balance that strongly? Skimming forums it sounds like the answer may be "yes", because smaller lasers fire more frequently and all beam weapons hit the same target at the same time and the AI tries to close range rapidly regardless of loadout so you just want to spam builds with as many little lasers as possible ... but if it's the greatest Mechwarrior game ever (I haven't played since 3 but I loved 2) maybe they're exaggerating the severity?
I might have to double check my numbers.
So, by tabletop, IS MLasers have a range breakdown of 3/6/9, 1T, 3 heat, 5 damage. Clan ER Small lasers have 2/4/6, 0.5T, 2 heat, 5 damage. So yeah, same damage, 1/3rd less heat, 2/3rd the range.
Now in MW5 things get slightly confused by equipment qualities. So we have
MLaser Tier 0: 5 dmg, 324 range, 2.7 heat MLaser Tier 5: 6.5 dmg, 506 range, 1.688 heat C-ER SLaser: 6 dmg, 562.5 range, 1.312 heat
So yeah, it looks like the differences were exaggerated a bit. Compared to the lowest tier MLaser is 20% more damage, 50% more range, 50% less heat. To the highest tier MLaser it's actually less damage, but more range, and slightly less heat.
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