That 120mm rifle looking way better than it has any right to.

Burst fire have a slightly higher recycle rate because they take a little bit more time to fire off their burst. Recycle doesn't start counting down until it's done shooting. The higher damage is potentially offset by the spread and delay between shots.

Whether or not BF or single shot is better is pretty much personal preference. The AC5-BF and single shot are interchangeable as far as I'm concerned, both have approximately the same performance. AC10-BFs are my preference in that class. I feel like I'm able to squeeze better range out of the burst fire AC10 and at least get some damage while I miss like 75% of my shots with the single shot AC10.

However, with the AC20s, the single shot has two advantages that don't appear in the numerical stats that make it vastly superior. First, is damage concentration and the second is ballistic trajectory. You can lob AC20 slugs out to 600 or 700 meters and drop enemy mechs with headshots. That is something the burst fire AC20s are simply incapable of. The spread and recoil will ensure that you miss with most of the burst at 400+ meters. If your plan is to play as a knife-fighter at point blank range, the AC20-BF will probably give you overall better DPS, but if you're planning on efficiently killing enemies with precision strikes, the single shot version will be better.

I'd use a single shot medium rifle. It's an AC10 for the tonnage of an AC2. The burst-fire rifles have such atrocious spread paired with recoil I can't see any reason to use them.

"Even in a real fight, if you have orbital superiority there's jack shit anyone dirtside can do; you can knock out spaceports, grounded ships, and most anti-orbital defenses with conventional munitions, hit hardened bunkers with 1-5kt nukes, and provide constant overhead reconnaissance to your ground troops mopping up."

This part, before you even mentioned the gloves coming off.

This is a hard one because there are so many that I think are cool-looking.

I'm gonna pick the Linebacker (the new artwork), though. Like, it's not objectively bad, it's just not as good as the mech it's supposed to replace, but it's aesthetically much more aggressive-looking IMO.

The Griffin and the Scorpion.

If your first response is to nuke ground targets from orbit, you're going to learn about guerilla campaigns very quickly. Nobody with two functional braincells is going to take the honorable route and get nuked. They'll mix in with the civilians and make your occupation hell, unless you're totally cool with genociding the civilian population as well.

We also must raise our daughters to not grow up to become internet prostitutes. This is a two way street.

There are two rule sets or Battletech, Classic and Alpha Strike. The starter rules for both are available for free download here.

Classic is the original rule set, it uses hex maps and is much "crunchier". You'll be keeping track of individual weapons, hit locations, and armor levels/structure/equipment on those locations.

Alpha Strike is more streamlined/abstracted and is intended for battles with larger unit counts than Classic. It uses 3D terrain, but there are simple conversion rules to use it on hex maps instead. Weapons have been abstracted and simplified into total damage potential at three different range brackets and critical hits and equipment destruction is more randomized on account of not tracking hit locations.

I personally prefer Alpha Strike, but both systems have their advantages and drawbacks. Take a look at both rule sets and pick the one you prefer. Additionally, both systems have an absurd amount of optional rules that you can bolt onto the core rules to tune the gameplay to your preference.

As far as army/lance composition, it can literally just be as simple as picking a few mechs you personally think are cool-looking. Very few mechs are truly faction exclusive so if you compose your force as an IlClan Era (the current timeline) force, you can literally use anything.

Your BV2/PV force limits are something that you'll want to establish with your opponent ahead of time. With a higher total value, you can take either more expensive units with fancier tech, or you can take a greater quantity of cheaper units. I'd start by playing out some of the training scenarios in the quickstart rules to get a sense of how battle value and unit quantity interact with the length of gameplay. The more units in play, the longer your games will go.

As far as scenarios, there are a bunch of official and unofficial resources, but I haven't really started diving into the guts of how any of them work yet, so I can't make a recommendation at this point. But yes, playing a campaign and having a persistent force that needs repairs and upgrades is 100% supported. I do recommend playing objective based scenarios instead of just deathmatches for one-off games, as it helps streamline the win/lose condition of the battle rather than trying to kill the enemy force to the last unit and also keeps less optimized units relevant.

I main bow, but I keep SnS as backup. I was having trouble with Balahara vomiting water on my hunter, so I swapped to melee.

I like Panthers in the early game. They're slower than average, but they pack excellent firepower.

Firestarter also is worth mentioning, as it's one of the best mechs for demolition missions. I retire mine when I find the BJ-A though. The FS9-S is arguably the best chassis for completing solo infiltration missions. That one I keep in the late game for that reason.

The Wolfhound is also a great light mech, but it doesn't show up until later in the timeline, so it usually doesn't see much use unless you bring one with you into a NG+ career.

The Solaris DLC helps to keep light mechs relevant in the late game, but outside of arena missions, you'll eventually need the armor and firepower of heavier mechs.

You could put the raised viewing galleries elsewhere in the park to get visibility.

I guess what I really mean is that the concept is decent, even if what you built here is cursed. Lol

Okay, but the Line is actually not that horrible. Put a lot of viewing galleries along it and it's an efficient use of space that'll drive up demand for amenities and therefore park rating.

There are a couple reasons for it. The tabletop game has never been particularly well-balanced, and that's where the canonical loadouts all come from.

Some of the original mechs were designed to match existing artwork, and I think a lot of them were just poorly-designed on purpose because it's more fun to play with your friends using crappy units than ultra-optimized friendship-enders.

Additionally, tabletop features combined arms, where infantry pose a reasonable threat to mechs and conventional vehicles aren't pushover designed for the player to simply step on. Probably the two biggest differentiations between mechs and CVs is that mechs can traverse more terrain types, and they can mount more weaponry than they have heat sinks for. Because of these things, mechs tend to feature over-gunned generalist loadouts. A mech like the Crusader is intended to act as fire support early in an engagement, and then close in and act as a brawler once it's out of LRM ammo. It was never really intended to bring its entire loadout to bear all at once. You find random machine guns and flamers on a lot of mechs to deal with any infantry they may come across.

In Mechwarrior 5, the only enemy types you encounter are heavily nerfed vehicles and other mechs, so the best mechs are those that are optimized for direct engagements against enemy armor.

I timed out of my first Rathalos hunt because I spent the entire time chasing him around the map.

I was also using LBG, which is like the worst DPS weapon in World, but I don't think even that would have made a difference. Low rank Rathalos makes you learn the map and use fast travel the first time you fight him.

Yeah, this is the only AU that I'd be interested in.

Viper Kadachi is my dear sweet boi.

You fight him as part of the story and he's absolutely a menace, but he's non-hostile in every other situation.

3 intakes for 2 engines?

Rule of cool is an acceptable answer, but am I missing something?

I thought this was gonna be a deep fryer, not an eel farm.

I'm aware the CGL contracts out to Liya Intl. or whatever they're called. That doesn't change the upfront costs of having a mold manufactured and that the rate of production is limited by how many molds you have running simultaneously. I'm sure Chinese molds are cheaper than what we used, but it was easily $10k for a single mold when I was working in an industry that utilized injection molding, whether we contracted out or manufactured in-house.

You bring up a good point though, Catalyst obviously thinks that there's high enough demand to invest in manufacturing for a 40k box set, so I guess we'll see if they're right or delusional.

On the flip side, he can just as easily blame shift that it was Aces that took all the resources in order to save face, which is only 50% true. The other 50% is that it was this.

That's just the nature of injection mold manufacturing and opportunity costs.

For what it's worth, I believe you, but the overwhelming majority of comments both here on reddit as well as on other social platforms are folks who either love it or folks who are pissed about CGL's prioritization of resources.

Yeah, it wasn't a horrible design, it just didn't feel like a Marauder. Could very easily have been marketed as a Caesar or Cataphract or something along those lines.

I've seen literally no comlaints about the mini designs themselves, and a hell of a lot of complaints about why CGL is prioritizing resources to release grimdark AUs instead of fulfilling their kickstarter obligations or sticking to their roadmap for upcoming forcepacks.

Some of those defense missions can be brutal.

Had one at one point where it just kept dropping lances of Thunderbolts on me. Ended up having to recall everyone to increase focused firepower. At that point the defense was secondary, I was just trying to keep my lance operational.

The high tonnage ones on huge maps with active artillery suck ass too.