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MechWarrior
Online is one of those titles that’s very
easy to hop in and start playing right away, but requires a ton of
learning to
be effective in combat and an asset to your team. One of the first
skills that need
to be mastered right alongside that of piloting mastery is the
management of
your mech’s heating system.

 

In
the old Battle Tech pods, you had buttons that would
allow you to flush coolant through your weapon systems. This allowed
you to
fire a couple more times before you risked overheating. On more than
one
occasion, it made the difference between victory and defeat in the
hands of a
skilled mech pilot. It’s also one of those things that I wish
would be
implemented in MechWarrior Online, but sadly, this is not the case (at
least
not yet). The developers are constantly adding new features and
upgrades to the
game every month though, so fingers crossed we see coolant flushing in
the
future. [UPDATE - Coolant flushes are now available in the form of purchasable consumables called Cool Shot]

 

In
the meantime, we’re just going to have to go about
managing the heat of our mech the old fashioned way. The simplest
method is to
stick with the weapon configuration your mech starts out with and fire
very
slowly, all the while watching the rising heat gauge. When it gets too
high,
quit firing and try to get out of dodge while you wait for the
temperature of
your mech to get back into safe limits. This is technically one way you
could
go about it, but you’re begging to lose if you do.

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The
second option you can use to drastically counter the
heat-building super powers of your mech is to configure your weapons
smartly. There
are a ton of different configurations you could go with and each of
those depends
on what weapon load-out your mech has. The basic rule of thumb though
is split
up your weapon groups. If you have four medium lasers, split them into
two
groups of two and alternate firing with them. If you have two missile
launchers, split them into two groups of one and alternate fire. With a
one
second pause between the firing of each missile salvo, this will allow
you to
fire them indefinitely without ever overheating. The list of examples
could go
on and on, but you get the point. Split your groups up!

 

The
third option involves a lot of risk and
experimentation, but it’s also one of the most rewarding
methods. Customize
your mech’s weapon load out. Unless you’re using a
trial mech, you don’t have
to leave it configured the way it came. In fact, I will always
encourage you
*not* to leave it the way you found it. As you play matches and earn
experience
and cash, spend some of it on new modules, swap out weapons, and play
around
with your armor configurations. I guarantee the top players in the game
right
now have all of your mech’s default panel armor values
memorized and know where
your weak spots are. Shake things up a bit and boost the armor in those
areas
while stripping down a bit in other areas to allow yourself some more
weight
tolerance to increase your firepower.

 

When
rearranging the weapon load out of your mech, it’s
important to keep a few factors in mind. Specifically, what’s
the heat
generation of each of them? That Large Laser and PPC combination looks
pretty
sweet, but unless you upgrade your standard heatsinks,
they’re going to be a
problem if that’s all you’ve got. Projectile
weapons on the other hand create
very little heat (or in the case of machine guns, none). The downside
here
though is some of them have fairly long reload cycle times and some
hard firing
systems. For example, the Gauss Rifle, doesn’t create much
heat, but along with
a long reload time, it also has a strange firing system in which you
need to
hold the button until it’s charged and then let go to fire
it. Hold it too long
and it cycles back to its starting phase so getting the timing down in
the heat
of combat can be a little tricky. The payoff though is that it does
some pretty
nice damage.

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As
one final tip, the map you play on can make a big
difference in terms of the amount of heat your mech has to cool. For
example,
when you’re playing in an arctic-style map, your mech will
cool off faster.
This is also true if you’re in water, so don’t be
afraid to hop in the river.
It’s your friend!

 

If
you still have questions about heat
management or weapon configurations, using the spectator mode after
your mech
has been obliterated on the battlefield is a great way to learn as
well.
Watching how other players manage their weapons and heat is a great
learning
tool. You’ll also pick up a few maneuvering tips as well, so
get in there and
start playing.

 


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our MechWarrior Online Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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