Dogs of MechWar

MechWarrior 2 Fighting Tips

Don't miss the walk-throughs for Jade Falcon, Wolf Clan, Ghost Bear, and Mercenaries missions. All comments here and in the Mission Walkthroughs assume:

• HARD difficulty (except Mercenaries)
• HEAT TRACKING on
• No cheating

Some of these hints won't make sense, or won't be necessary, on Easy or with Heat Tracking off. The difficulty level (easy / medium / hard) and heat tracking (whether you heat up) do not affect your ability to advance. Hard multiplies your mission score by 1.3, Easy by 0.8, with Heat Tracking off you get no points at all.

As you will soon realize (if you haven't already), Ghost Bear is harder than the original version, and Mercenaries is even harder than Ghost Bear. I have beaten all the Jade Falcon Clan and Wolf Clan missions and all but the very last Ghost Bear mission on hard, but I can hardly beat any Mercenaries missions on anything but Easy.

Tactics Tips

• If you come to a level with enemies you can't defeat, turn Heat Tracking off, then use as many lasers as you can hold. You will receive zero points, but will progress to the next level. Maybe after you've become Khan of both clans (or recovered the genetic material, or saved us all from the Inner Sphere), you can play it all over again with honor.
• When a nearby enemy blows up, jerk away using jump jets to avoid frag damage. Avoid walking into the still-exploding debris from fresh kills.
• To move with one leg remaining and no jump jets: press the left and right keys or move the joystick left and right rapidly. I guess you're wiggling on your toes. You'll move slowly, so watch your mission time limit.
• Try clicking on the periods after the numbers in the archives for each clan. Some of them do something...
• How to kill an enemy Rifleman: Walk right up into his face, and start shooting with forehead and chest-mounted lasers. Their arms are so widely placed you can get between, and they're dumb, so they just keep trying to walk into you.
• Shut down your starmates (hit B45B), run off with the enemy mechs chasing you, then startup your star and have them shoot the enemy mechs quite literally in the back!
• Aim for your enemy's legs and back; they have less armor than the front torso. Mechs without jumpjets can be disabled by shooting off one leg (you can then safely run around behind them to shoot them at your leisure). In Original and Ghostbear, they stay standing on one leg; in Mercenaries, they fall over on their side. In all cases, they can still shoot, and if they have jumpjets (e.g. Novas & Summoners), they can still move and turn.
• Death from Above, or DFA, occurs when a mech jumps on the head of another mech, usually by using jumpjets. The theory is that leg armor is tougher than head armor, so you crush your enemy's head ("... kill the meat, save the mech.")

More Tips

• To end a successful mission hit 1 (one). Hitting space will fire your weapons.
• Some quick tips for starmate control:
• B21B starmate #1: attack my target (target something first using E, R, T, Q or joystick)
• EB41B both starmates: attack my nearest enemy
• B43B both starmates: return to formation (stop attacking)
• B15B change formation to V form (starmates in front, now walk slowly to let them get into position)
• To control jumpjets, use the 6-key keypad and J. Unless you have a joystick with hat control, you must momentarily let go of either the joystick or mouse to do this. Look at the 6-keypad layout and you'll see that the sliding keys make a T, with the lower corners for turning.
• The Targeting Reticle indicates the following during play:
• Yellow: weapon is recharging
• Red: within range, on target (square=straight-fire weapon, circle=guided)
• Green: out of range or no target (square=straight-fire, circle=guided)
• The HTAL graph (hit F6) displays detailed damage for your mech's 11 sections:  Head, Torso (Left Front, Left Rear, Center Front, Center Rear, Right Front and Right Rear), Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, and Right Leg. As you can see from the display, the front sections have more armor than the rear, and the torso has more armor than the arms & legs.
• It's not clear what happens to Endo-Steel Internals or Ferro-Fibrous Armor lost in destroyed limbs. I assume there is no disadvantage - the equipment is fully functional during the mission, and is fully repaired upon repair. If this is true, then you should always put this equipment in your arms.
• The NAV Points (Greek alphabet) are: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, Nu, Xi, Omicron, Pi, Rho, Sigma, Tau, Upsilon, Phi, Chi, Psi, Omega.