Purpose: The purpose of this document is to guild JF members in making quality custom mechs for MW3 thus ensuring victory under any circumstances. This is by no means a diffinative guild and all JF members are encouraged to add to it for the betterment of the clan.

Table of Contents

1.0 Weapon Placement

2.0 Heat Management

3.0 Jump Jets

4.0 Weapons
4.1 -General
4.2 -Lasers
4.3 -PPCs
4.4 -Autocannons
4.5 -Missles
4.6 -Flamer

5.0 Equipment and Engines

6.0 Lag Shooting

7.0 Bug Issues

8.0 Credits

Unlike MW2 or Mercs the placement of weapon systems can have an important impact on how your mech performs in battle. This is a result of two main factors:

1, Weapons will not fire underwater

2, Many mechs do not have Torso Twist

As a result where you place the weapons in your mech could be effected by these two factors. By placing your erMLas in the lower criticals of the torso you run the risk of this weapon being underwater and thus unable to fire, however, if you had placed it in the upper critical then you can stand in water to cool your mech and at the same time still be able to fire your weapon. Additionally if any critical of a multi-critical weapon is submerged the weapon will also not fire, thus for muti-critical weapons you should place them as high on the critical locations as possible to reduce this effect.

A more important consideration than water if the fact that of the 18 mechs in MW3 7 have no torso twist but all mechs except the IS Champion have Free Arm Swing. This presents a problem in that if you make your customs like you did in mechs with all the weapons in the torso you will have to fight head-on since you can not torso twist. However, since these non-torso twisting mech have Free Arm Swing you still have an appoximate 60 degree arm movement in both directions. As a result all primary weapons on non-torso twisting mechs should be placed in the arms thus giving you that 60 degree firing arc. Placing all your weapons in the torso of non-torso twisting mechs is ineffective as you have no firing arc to work with. Thankfully unlike MW2 and Mercs it is ALLOT more difficult to shoot off an arm and chances are you'll rarely lose an arm let alone both in battle (your a hell of a lot more likely to die from legging first).

A very insteresting weapon placement for those that have unique controls (such as torque joysticks or rudder paddles) is to setup your control config to take advantage of both torso twist and arm swing. For example you could use your mouse for torso twist and your rudder paddles for arm swing. The result on mechs with torso twist if you place your weapons in the arms is that you have about 90 degrees movement with the torso twist and another 60 degrees with the arm swing, therefore you can almost fire directly behind you while traveling forward, a very powerful and effect combat technique if you can do it.

It should also be noted that weapons will not fire if ourside their firing arc. What this means is if you have a weapon in the Right Arm and arm swing all the way to the left the right arm weapons will not fire (you'd end up shooting yourself if they did), therefore you should try to make your mech as symetrical as possible (ie. having 1 LB-10X in each arm rather than placing both in the same arm)

2.0 Heat Management

Heat can always be a problem, but it is my opinon that heat mamagement in MW3 is alot better than in Mercs. This is more a result of weapons being correct this time than anything else. Do take note however that PPC cuase considerable heat to your mech as do pulse lasers, thus if your making a pure C1 mech you will want all other criticals to have double heat sinks. Additionally Chain Firing many SRM or LRM ranks will build up heat very quickly, on the other hand projectile weapons have very little heat and the build in engine sinks are more than enough to deal with it. All in all i think you can be a bit more liberal with heat mamagement in MW3 than Mecs and on a pure C1 mech you can get away with less Heat Sinks than in Mercs (unless you have pulse lasers but why would ya)

Like many others i feel that the coolent flush system in lame, however, it's there so you might as well use it especially if you have a 3-4 PPC Mech, just remember you can only use it twice before it needs refilling at a MFB.

3.0 Jump Jets

Well no more floating and boating, however, Jets are still very good for getting out of enemy fire or for getting into position to attack an enemy. You should try to carry the maximum number of jets allowable on your mech, but on all mechs even 2 jets is very effective. You should also have relaxed jump Jets turn on in your control config as it gives you more manoverability (even though its not BTech accurate). Finally try to avoid using the Jump Jet Tramplone bug, its no where near as bad as the endless JJ fuel bug in mercs but none the less it will no doubt be fixed or banned (though personally i think its a useless bug to exploit since it does not really accomplish anything except looking cool)

4.0 Weapons

4.1 - General

A general statment can be said about the weapons in MW3 "they are completely the opposite of those in Mercs" were pulse lasers and missles ruled in Mercs they are pretty much useless in MW3. The king of weapons in MW3 are large groups of ER Lasers or the absolutley deadly Autocannons, thus barring any weapon restrictions (or use of Stocks) a balanced mech with ER Lasers and Autocannons is very effective. Also PPCs are an excellent weapon to use.

4.2 - Lasers

Pulse Lasers are very ineffective, however, in large number they can be effective unfortunatly the heat generated is very high. A much better use of lasers is to use groups of ER MLasers. 10 ERMLas in the hands of a good lag shooter is deadly, however, even 4-5 grouped is very effective and will take down any mech in short order. So botom line is if you have a choice between Pulse Lasers and normal lasers...take the normal ones

4.3 - PPCs

PPCs are very effective in battle, they do massive damage and also generate allot of heat on an enemy mech when they hit. A mech with 2-3 PPCs can be very deadly, the only drawback is that PPCs generate allot of heat for you also, however a 3-4 PPC assult mech with all Heat Sinks is a formidable mech.

4.4 - Autocannons

Bottom line Autocannons RULE, however not all autocannons are created equal. The most effective ACs are the LB-X cannons, this is becuase their fire is more concentrated and as a result you have a greater chance of knocking a mech over than with Ultra-ACs (some people say this is a bug and that it will be fixed but personally it seems logical that a large ballistic weapon could knock a mech over). As with all balistic weapons, running out of ammo is a concern, however on an Assault mech you can carry plently of ammo since you dont need any additional heat sinks. My primary suggestion is to go with LB-10X's as your main autocannon. The LB-20X take up allot of tons and criticals and does not seem to be more advantagious to take over the 10X's. You should also try and fit at least 1 LB-5X on your light mechs as this can make them deadly.

Testing with the Gauss Rifle proved to be disappointing, its does not seem to do nearly as much damage as it should and uses up a hell of allot of ammo. It is however very effective at knocking a mech around and completey screwing up your oppoinants aim. I would however not recomment the use of the Gauss.

4.5 - Missles

The days of effective boating are over, LRMs are every ineffective while SRMs are more effective but still only a hinderance to the enemy rather than a threat. In testing 4 AMS ranks could not be used up by 6 SSRM 6's with 10 tons of ammo, and unfortuatly Missles are only effective once AMS runs out, if the enemy has AMS missles are bacially useless. Thus my recommendation is unless its a stock mech battle dont use missles at all.

4.6 - Flamer

Flamers are good if used in groups of 3-4, 1 is pretty ineffective on the bright side though unlike Mercs you actually get credit for flamer kills :)

5.0 - Equipment and Engines

Most equipement has a purpose though many of them prove somewhat useless in multiplayer. At least 2 AMS ranks is good on most mechs. Case must be added (even to clan mechs) if your carring ammo. Other equipement such as Atremis, Beagal Active Probe, ECM Suite, MASC, TAG, are pretty much useless in multiplayer, they do their job but most deal with missles and since missles are ineffective theres not much point in the first place.

The special targeting computers are also useless in Multiplayer. You have to lag shoot in MW3 so having a computer that does not take this into account is pretty irrelavent, after all whats the point of having a Targeting Computer that provides a leading reticle but that you have to lead ahead of the reticle anyways to account for lag.

Engines....faster the better enough said :)

6.0 - Lag Shooting

Not really a design aspect, but none the less very important. If you have played Mercs (which ya all have right) you know that in order to truely be hitting the enemy mech you had to lead anywhere from 1/2 - 3 mech lenghs depending on lag. Well in MW3 its exactly the same, you must fire in front of the enemy mech to hit it. A good rule of thumb that i have found is to fire just in front of the bottom point of the targeting triangle. Using this as a lead starting point and watching your HTAL display you should be legging mechs inside of 5 min.

7.0 - Bug Issues

I am only dealling with Multiplayer bugs here:

1, Jump Jet Trampoline - This bug happened when you jump in the air, if you have JJ fuel left and hit the Jump Jets again just before you hit the ground you will bounce high up in the air like on a trampoline. This will most likely be fixed or banned though it has no really advantage to doing it

2, Chat Crash Bug - This is a random bug that occurs when you type a chat message in multiplayer, if the bug happens your mech will freeze and you can not move (basically your keyboad control dies). This will be fixed in a patch, until then keep chat to an absolute min unless ya wanna crash.

8.0 - Credits

Thanks to Nightmare for all the deaths at my hands that lead me to many of the conclusions here :) and to all of JF for their continued support of the clan over the 3 years we have been together. If you have anything to add to this document please send them or an updated copy to me at dwb@idirect.com

Khan Lordface Hazen
Clan Jade Falcon
June 6th, 1999