I could feel the power increase when I got the Shadow Cat and again with the Storm Crow. Both even have good stock loadouts on their Prime variants. I replaced the Shadow Cat's active probe with armour and left the Storm Crow unchanged.
I ran the Nova in as many missions as I could in MW2 when I was a kid. I'm looking forward to making it my command mech while I'm still limited to light and medium mechs early in the campaign!
Nova is such a good mech. Crazy high cooling value. I replaced the 12 er mediums (lol inferno) with 5 er S and 5 er M in different arms. This gives it much more sustainability and even extra armor.
It was such a nice power spike unlocking the Stormcrow....Unfortunately the Nova is the same as always, all offense no defense. With huge arm hitboxes I was losing an arm in every match haha. But with the way heat works in this game and the skill trees you can actually massively boat lasers and PPCs pretty well, 2 x CERLPL 3 or 4 CERML was pretty cool in my Stormcrow as well as my old standby of 1 x Clan gauss 6 x CERML.
Excluding cheesebuilds, and sticking to canon configs like a trueborn warrior: Viper is basically an Assassin, but good. Prime is a little undergunned, but A packs a punch (and runs hot), B is a nice sniper, and D is good too. C is "I hate infantry", so not useful in this game. Shadow Cat Prime is a "good version" of Kit Fox A (same loadout + jump jets, better armor, and more speed) Nova Prime is an oven, but 12 ERML is monstrous. If you like riding the heat scale you can make it work. But the real star here is Nova S - 6 MPL and 4 MG plus AMS and BAP. A is not too shabby either, with 2 ERPPC. Storm Crow is a killer machine. A is deadly, but suffers from ammo shortage. B is half a Nova Prime with a turbo-hunchback in the other half, and I love it. C is good too.
Stormcrow is pretty fun but can't deny the ER-SL Nova to be the king of the medium class here. it punches way above it's weight class and got enough tonnage left to armor itself up to match the Heavy class.
I really like the viper C with a few modification. such as removing two of the three tons of machine gun ammo as it will never manage to consume that much then either changing the lasers/flamers to 4 flamers 1 er large laser to be nightmare up close, or 4 er medium lasers + armor to take pretty nasty pot shots, or change the 2 er mediums for pulse. The viper A is neat but it cannot handle all that heat.
I took the Nova as my favorite. But the 12 ER med felt like overkill. I ended up taking it down to 10 mediums with an extra double heat sink with half ton additional armor on each arm. Firing 5 lasers at a time more regularly felt like more consistent damage.
First fell in love with the Nova during a playthrough of Mechwarrior 2 (what feels like a thousand years ago). The Prime, H and S models are my favorite. After that, I have grown to love the Dragonfly 'I' variant. A 40-tonner with three Heavy Medium Lasers and an 8/12/8 move is death incarnate, especially since it has a targeting computer to compensate for those Heavies. I say 'Dragonfly' because there are three (yes three) Mechs called 'Viper' in Battletech, so using it as a moniker is a bit confusing.
Im loving the game. I do have issues that I've always had with clan mechs is that the weapon mounts are often times waaaaay to low on a mech. More than half your mech has to crest a hill to get a half decent firing line. The shadow cat which im meh about is the only mech that atleast has higher up mounts that work that arnt missiles.
Been using the Nova but took the m lasers down to 4 on each arm and replaced with more heat sinks. Feel like I can get a bit more out of them like that.
Try keeping one arm with 4 mediums so you have range. Then turn the other arm to smalls or a mix of smalls and m pulse 2/4 ratio. Have the pulses and the smalls on separate groups and use them primarily will give you rapid shots and stable heat for taking out the plethora of smaller targets. ER M for the farther range stuff or when you need that extra punch.
I haven't played MWO in a while but does MW5 Clans have "ghost heat"? Where having more than a certain number of a single type of weapon creates additional heat?
Not that I can see, I think they've tweaked heat, cycle, and damage values though. For example ER SLAS produce almost no heat compared to ER MLAS, however ER SLAS cycle much faster resulting in a slightly higher DPS.
Just wanted to add, omnimechs also have weapon/equipment hardpoints and spacing. So you might have a 2 spacing 1 energy hardpoint. You can only put one weapon that fits there (but can also fill it with general equipment like armour, heatsinks, or ammo, etc.). both the spacing and # of hardpoints in that block vary depending on the omnimech & variant.
No, with the skill tree and upgrades you can run much hotter builds in this vs MWO. The Adder with 2 PPCs is fine, the Warhawk's Default loadout with 4 x CERPPCs is DEADLY. No Ghost Heat and lower heat values and greater heat dissipation across the board, boat those lasers and PPCs to your heart's content!
Lore-wise and on tabletop? Stormcrow all the way, because *unlike* as-depicted in _MW5: Clans_ (most) Stormcrow configs *_keep their hand units_* . Because of this glaring omission, I reluctantly default to a Nova for MW5C, even with 5 tons less mass to work with (modders, plz fix once feasible!)
I notice that none of them have varient markings. is the game simply set so early in the timeline that variants didn't exist, or did they choose to not identify what variant these chassis are?
All the mechs have variants, 5 for each one. The first one you buy or unlock comes in prime, then you can change the omni pods to which ever one you want or change to a entirely different variant.
Technically its lore accurate, these are the only Omnimechs the Clans brought with them for the invasion, and non-Omnimechs were only used for second line purposes, garrisons and logistics work
Nova 8 ERS-Laser + 2ERM-Lasers... did work quite well for me... the all ERM-Laser are melting the mech to fast, sad there wasnt a medium mech with ECM for Liam
@@SEVENTHSIGHN sadly, you only have access to 16 clan mechs, 4 of each weight class. But if this game is supported just like Mercenaries was, I'm sure the roster will surely increase over time
No Clan mechwarrior would ever pilot an Inner Sphere mech. That's like asking a dude who drives a Bugatti Veyron to just use this nice 1960s VW Beetle instead because it's "just as good".
@@TTBprime okay I see. I was mainly asking because I love piloting the King Crab in Mercs. I love that mech, don't care if it's considered old and redundant tech in the clans setting, it's my favourite mech and I love it. But I guess it'd go against the lore if they did do that. Hopefully modders add it in I'd be happy.
I really like the nova with a retool as a close combat machine, well it still outranges inner sphere lasers, but close for the clan. Swapping the lasers to ER-Small x12 gives a massive tonnage savings, while actually improving rate of fire and cooling, the alpha damage sits at 60 (90 with heretical melee) and the DPS is somewhere around 25. Notably 25 DPS is insanely high in this game, as big boy weapons tend to be very slow, and against even assault mech armor it can core a target in 2 to 3 volleys while only achieving about 70% heat in the process. We then have enough tonnage left over to attach +2 tons of armor to arms, +1 ton to each torso for over 550 durability and prevention of "disable kills" from our arms being ripped off as the enemy numbers begin to scale to absurd levels. If we prefer, we can lose a few points of torso armor in exchange for AMS in either the CT or either RT/LT. Either way, we are a nimble, jump capable dps machine that can laugh at opponents in higher weight classes as we demolish assaults in 6 seconds. The primary downside of this setup is range, our lasers have a normal range of about 330 or so at this stage of the game, with a maximum tickle distance of 660. This can make some aerial opponents on the thicker side a bit challenging, and it makes dealing with far off LRM platforms a mild concern. Anything close than about 500 meters is hardcore wrecked though. As a fun point, I am reasonably certain the alpha damage over-matches any head armor in the game, so if you get the face, the pilot experiences what it's like to be a burrito left in the microwave for too long.
@Nodjia it was absolutely devastating running 5 novas primarily with 4-5 mediums, 2 medium pulses and then 4 er smalls. All with ams and some extra cooling. Still being able to reach out and touch those farther targets like you mentioned and just absolutely shred armor... lead your star to water and it gets disgusting.
@Sqwallbg yeah it is. Not sure how long the campaign will go but I'm assuming dlc will add a lot. I wonder if these can all be ported somehow to mercs. I should check on the clan mod as well
Nova's last words: I CAN'T COOL DOW- fucking explodes*
Yeah, but it just hits so damn hard...
Set it to chainfire, i friggin love the Nova
Pulse lasers 👍
I always wanted a chain fire per arm mode just because of the Nova.
@@haron5811 worth it.
I could feel the power increase when I got the Shadow Cat and again with the Storm Crow. Both even have good stock loadouts on their Prime variants. I replaced the Shadow Cat's active probe with armour and left the Storm Crow unchanged.
I ran the Nova in as many missions as I could in MW2 when I was a kid. I'm looking forward to making it my command mech while I'm still limited to light and medium mechs early in the campaign!
Piloting the standard Viper- I've had my right arm fall off more than the Skywalker family.
The first thing I did was bench it and buy something with teeth.
@@Reoh0z Yeah, I benched it immediately and ran Arctic Cheetah with 6 x CERSL and Adder with 2 x CERPCC until I got the Nova and Stormcrow unlocked.
That’s fucking hilarious
First up is the VIPER, it's job is to be a speed bump until you get to something useful.
It's dangerous to underestimate a mech that can jump behind you from half a battlefield away.
Tell me you cant pilot without saying it...😂
8x ER S laser go brrrr
don't forget it's also a elemental delivery system
Nova is such a good mech. Crazy high cooling value. I replaced the 12 er mediums (lol inferno) with 5 er S and 5 er M in different arms. This gives it much more sustainability and even extra armor.
Loved my little Nova back in MWO days, looking forward to unlocking soon...
The Nova looks like a lot of fun. The massive small laser burns on the Twitch stream today were so satisfying!
In MWO the Stormcrow was one of the first Clan mechs released. It was insanely OP and had broken hitboxes
Oh! They change the design of the Nova/BlackHawk. It has torso twist now.
@@andrianto5994 Thank Kerensky for that. Piloting those things with no waist is absolute hell.
Yeah, that surprised me. The Blackhawk was always one of my favourite mediums, but the lack of torso traverse always threw me off.
Hey, the 12ermed nova has a great use! Standing IN WATER! Water actually works as cooling in Clans. Find some, you're nearly heat neutral.
Thank you for these break down videos, Stormcrow followed closely by the Nova for my favorite medium mechs.
Can't wait to get in and get my stormcrow going!!
It was such a nice power spike unlocking the Stormcrow....Unfortunately the Nova is the same as always, all offense no defense. With huge arm hitboxes I was losing an arm in every match haha. But with the way heat works in this game and the skill trees you can actually massively boat lasers and PPCs pretty well, 2 x CERLPL 3 or 4 CERML was pretty cool in my Stormcrow as well as my old standby of 1 x Clan gauss 6 x CERML.
Wow the Nova is a
Laser beast !
2:30 is the fist in the left hand functional? Can he punch? Can he engage in rock-paper-scissors fight? Can he give the finger at least?
He can give a thumbs up!
Excluding cheesebuilds, and sticking to canon configs like a trueborn warrior:
Viper is basically an Assassin, but good. Prime is a little undergunned, but A packs a punch (and runs hot), B is a nice sniper, and D is good too. C is "I hate infantry", so not useful in this game.
Shadow Cat Prime is a "good version" of Kit Fox A (same loadout + jump jets, better armor, and more speed)
Nova Prime is an oven, but 12 ERML is monstrous. If you like riding the heat scale you can make it work. But the real star here is Nova S - 6 MPL and 4 MG plus AMS and BAP. A is not too shabby either, with 2 ERPPC.
Storm Crow is a killer machine. A is deadly, but suffers from ammo shortage. B is half a Nova Prime with a turbo-hunchback in the other half, and I love it. C is good too.
You could also emulate the TC config.
Stormcrow is pretty fun but can't deny the ER-SL Nova to be the king of the medium class here. it punches way above it's weight class and got enough tonnage left to armor itself up to match the Heavy class.
man, Shadowcat, Vulture, Thor were like my jam in MW 4 Vengenance
Not bad options, but can't wait for the heavies!
Nova was my mech in 2. Lasers never run out of ammo. Can always count on it
I really like the viper C with a few modification. such as removing two of the three tons of machine gun ammo as it will never manage to consume that much then either changing the lasers/flamers to 4 flamers 1 er large laser to be nightmare up close, or 4 er medium lasers + armor to take pretty nasty pot shots, or change the 2 er mediums for pulse. The viper A is neat but it cannot handle all that heat.
I took the Nova as my favorite. But the 12 ER med felt like overkill. I ended up taking it down to 10 mediums with an extra double heat sink with half ton additional armor on each arm. Firing 5 lasers at a time more regularly felt like more consistent damage.
First fell in love with the Nova during a playthrough of Mechwarrior 2 (what feels like a thousand years ago). The Prime, H and S models are my favorite.
After that, I have grown to love the Dragonfly 'I' variant. A 40-tonner with three Heavy Medium Lasers and an 8/12/8 move is death incarnate, especially since it has a targeting computer to compensate for those Heavies. I say 'Dragonfly' because there are three (yes three) Mechs called 'Viper' in Battletech, so using it as a moniker is a bit confusing.
Remember Nova pilots: Every single puddle of water is your best friend and negates high ground advantage.
The Nova is still my main 'mech after I unlocked the Gargoyle. I'm always looking for water to stand in for ludicrous DPS.
Viper and Stormcrow are my favorites.
Im loving the game. I do have issues that I've always had with clan mechs is that the weapon mounts are often times waaaaay to low on a mech. More than half your mech has to crest a hill to get a half decent firing line. The shadow cat which im meh about is the only mech that atleast has higher up mounts that work that arnt missiles.
I love all the medsomni, but my fav based on design is Nova the stature scream "little tough guy"
Been using the Nova but took the m lasers down to 4 on each arm and replaced with more heat sinks. Feel like I can get a bit more out of them like that.
I did that but cooling still seems a bit lacking, maybe if i removed the Active Probe and use another heatsink it might help with it's endurance.
Try keeping one arm with 4 mediums so you have range. Then turn the other arm to smalls or a mix of smalls and m pulse 2/4 ratio. Have the pulses and the smalls on separate groups and use them primarily will give you rapid shots and stable heat for taking out the plethora of smaller targets. ER M for the farther range stuff or when you need that extra punch.
Storm Crow B is gonna make me so happy.
The Nova is Medium of choice. in your Red Death Light Configuration
Nova! Nova! Nova!
Bought this game on steam using your link. Looking forward to co-op with the crew here
... great-video. Awesome look at these mech's...
Shadow cat is my medium of choice
look fwd to see you play
I haven't played MWO in a while but does MW5 Clans have "ghost heat"? Where having more than a certain number of a single type of weapon creates additional heat?
@@MidKnight2142 not AFAIK
Not that I can see, I think they've tweaked heat, cycle, and damage values though. For example ER SLAS produce almost no heat compared to ER MLAS, however ER SLAS cycle much faster resulting in a slightly higher DPS.
Just wanted to add, omnimechs also have weapon/equipment hardpoints and spacing. So you might have a 2 spacing 1 energy hardpoint. You can only put one weapon that fits there (but can also fill it with general equipment like armour, heatsinks, or ammo, etc.). both the spacing and # of hardpoints in that block vary depending on the omnimech & variant.
No, with the skill tree and upgrades you can run much hotter builds in this vs MWO. The Adder with 2 PPCs is fine, the Warhawk's Default loadout with 4 x CERPPCs is DEADLY. No Ghost Heat and lower heat values and greater heat dissipation across the board, boat those lasers and PPCs to your heart's content!
Lore-wise and on tabletop? Stormcrow all the way, because *unlike* as-depicted in _MW5: Clans_ (most) Stormcrow configs *_keep their hand units_* .
Because of this glaring omission, I reluctantly default to a Nova for MW5C, even with 5 tons less mass to work with (modders, plz fix once feasible!)
Was hoping for a hunchback
My fav medium mech in Clans is Madcat 🙂
I assume mad Cat III, or you are being sarcastic with it being a medium mech lol
I notice that none of them have varient markings. is the game simply set so early in the timeline that variants didn't exist, or did they choose to not identify what variant these chassis are?
All the mechs have variants, 5 for each one. The first one you buy or unlock comes in prime, then you can change the omni pods to which ever one you want or change to a entirely different variant.
they are all prime varients you unlock the omni pods to make them the other variants
I am bummed that there are only 4 mechs per weight class. I love the storm crow, but the huntsman is boss. As well as the hunchie iic and many others.
Look on the bright side, that's one more mech that Mechwarrior 2 had initially.
@kevinhuening5274 I never played MW2, are you saying that MW2 only had 3 mechs per weight class?
@7MBoosted 3 lights, two mediums, 5 heavies and 5 assaults.
@@kevinhuening5274 ah 15 instead of 16. That was my first guess, but I second guessed myself.
Technically its lore accurate, these are the only Omnimechs the Clans brought with them for the invasion, and non-Omnimechs were only used for second line purposes, garrisons and logistics work
To make the Nova viable, remove 1 ER Medium from each arm and add a targeting computer...
At least one Shadow Cat for ECM, and one Stormcrow for long range.
I prefere speed on raw firepower, so probably no Novas.
But does "ANY" mech in the game use the max armor?
Nova 8 ERS-Laser + 2ERM-Lasers... did work quite well for me... the all ERM-Laser are melting the mech to fast, sad there wasnt a medium mech with ECM for Liam
The Shadow Cat has an ECM variant (two LRM 15s as the main weapons)
@@thecommuterzombie nice... maybe 4:00am was a bit to late to see the tiny E on this mech.. good find m8
1:46 Best in depth reviewer out there. Let’s drop sometime. ❤
Just wanted to ask in the game can you also use Inner Sphere Mechs or are you just limited to Clan Mechs?
@@SEVENTHSIGHN sadly, you only have access to 16 clan mechs, 4 of each weight class. But if this game is supported just like Mercenaries was, I'm sure the roster will surely increase over time
@@SEVENTHSIGHN only clans mechs
No Clan mechwarrior would ever pilot an Inner Sphere mech. That's like asking a dude who drives a Bugatti Veyron to just use this nice 1960s VW Beetle instead because it's "just as good".
@@TTBprime okay I see. I was mainly asking because I love piloting the King Crab in Mercs. I love that mech, don't care if it's considered old and redundant tech in the clans setting, it's my favourite mech and I love it. But I guess it'd go against the lore if they did do that. Hopefully modders add it in I'd be happy.
@@mathieuroberts4879 okay thanks for answering my question 👍
really wish the game had more mechs to pilot than it does
Knowing PGI every DLC will add a ton of mechs. Only this time we'll also get a kickass story campaign with them. Fingers crossed :)
I don't like the Viper or Shadowcat so I went straight to the Nova and then to Stormcrow.
No hunchback 2c?? 😭
Wish I could play this game. Sound is not in sync with the cutscenes and game studders every few seconds
Thumbs up, but im not gonna watch. no spoilers till my birthday.😂
Man, the SLDF had some fantastic looking mechs. How the mighty have fallen.
The clans do have some nice looking mechs, but these 4 sure ain't it.
Dropped a laser from each arm of the Nova and threw on some extra armor to protect the arms, works beautifully.
Exactly what I did. Its already an upgunned hunchback 4h. 12 whole mlasers generate so much heat its a bit unmanageable. 10 can still shred assaults
I really like the nova with a retool as a close combat machine, well it still outranges inner sphere lasers, but close for the clan.
Swapping the lasers to ER-Small x12 gives a massive tonnage savings, while actually improving rate of fire and cooling, the alpha damage sits at 60 (90 with heretical melee) and the DPS is somewhere around 25. Notably 25 DPS is insanely high in this game, as big boy weapons tend to be very slow, and against even assault mech armor it can core a target in 2 to 3 volleys while only achieving about 70% heat in the process.
We then have enough tonnage left over to attach +2 tons of armor to arms, +1 ton to each torso for over 550 durability and prevention of "disable kills" from our arms being ripped off as the enemy numbers begin to scale to absurd levels. If we prefer, we can lose a few points of torso armor in exchange for AMS in either the CT or either RT/LT. Either way, we are a nimble, jump capable dps machine that can laugh at opponents in higher weight classes as we demolish assaults in 6 seconds.
The primary downside of this setup is range, our lasers have a normal range of about 330 or so at this stage of the game, with a maximum tickle distance of 660. This can make some aerial opponents on the thicker side a bit challenging, and it makes dealing with far off LRM platforms a mild concern. Anything close than about 500 meters is hardcore wrecked though. As a fun point, I am reasonably certain the alpha damage over-matches any head armor in the game, so if you get the face, the pilot experiences what it's like to be a burrito left in the microwave for too long.
@Nodjia it was absolutely devastating running 5 novas primarily with 4-5 mediums, 2 medium pulses and then 4 er smalls. All with ams and some extra cooling. Still being able to reach out and touch those farther targets like you mentioned and just absolutely shred armor... lead your star to water and it gets disgusting.
No Dasher…😐
No Fenris…🤨
Game is fun until you encounter the absolute monster that is the sokol vtol , a true menance to all mechs with armor beyond your comprehension.
Yeah, that mission is broken.
My only gripe is that this game could use more mechs.
I was expecting at the very least the full TRO 3050 roster. Oh well, we got the important ones.
Oh wow...only 4 mediums...that's...little. Can't imagine other classes having much more... So what this game has like 16-20 mechs to work with?
I think its specifically the 16 that showed up during the initial clan invasion.
@@Weltallgaia that's little in deed. Coming from MW5 Mercs it's very little.
@Sqwallbg yeah it is. Not sure how long the campaign will go but I'm assuming dlc will add a lot. I wonder if these can all be ported somehow to mercs. I should check on the clan mod as well
@@Weltallgaia i myself am not doing mods so it won't matter to me.
Now all they have to do is port over all the content from MW5 Mercs and I'll buy it!
Most clan mechs just don´t look as good as the unseen forefathers.
Mech design in this game is so bad😅, I still prefer mercenaries