MECHWARRIOR FOR RETARDS
STEP 1: JOIN THE FUCKING GAME
>press and hold tab key to see the scoreboard and the team with the fewest players
>press M key to open the spawn/map menu, you'll know what to do immediately if you played Battlefront
>if you didn't play Battlefront (we need to play that again) click the join team button for the team with the fewest players, then click a BLUE mech icon to spawn at a mechbay.
>You spawn in a BA (power armor, don't try to kill mechs with this unless you are good at the game) and can now buy assets.
>U is teamchat, Y is public chat. USE THEM.
STEP 2: THE GIANT ROBOT DEALERSHIP
>Press the COMMA key to open the buy menu. This opens a tabbed interface to buy shit. You buy shit with C-Bills, shown on the right-hand side of the screen. You can only afford "starter" assets when you first spawn. Leaf through the catalog here and pick something you like, though you should probably pick a mech to start: https://wiki.mechlivinglegends.net/index.php?title=Starter_Asset_Guide
>Click on whatever dingus you want and press COMMA to close the buy menu. You'll see two popups in the upper left corner: one "in progress" notification and the more important one telling you where your fucking mech is. The spawn area should have steps down labeled with the hangar numbers in that mechbay. Go downstairs, follow the number and you should be on a catwalk staring at your mech.
STEP 3: GET IN THE ROBOT, ANON
>Here's the fun part: you have to be roughly level with the robot's head and press F when the (enter vehicle) popup appears. There are no ladders in the grim darkness of the Clan Invasion, so you'll have to run off the catwalk and time it. If you miss, jumpjet up to the cockpit with SPACE and try again until you get it. Blame Crytek.
>You're in the white man's neighborhood now, city boy. Your mech will take a few seconds to start up, so take that time to examine the HUD (pic related) and figure out precisely what the fuck. If you played TIE Fighter (or MechWarrior) as a kid you should be at home here. Important things to notice:
<1: Reticle. Controlled with mouse. This is NOT a mouselook game. Picking out individual weapons/limbs for damage with this thing is an important skill. The meters figure is distance to whatever you're aiming at, important for weapons with a minimum range. Also remember that when you turn your "head" you are physically turning the entire top half of your mech. This is important because you can look away from someone who's railing you to spread out incoming damage across your mech's armor.
<2: Armor. Individual limbs take damage, just like in that Todd Howard game. Green is good, red is bad, black means it's dead, Jim. You die when the center torso (thing right in the middle) is gone.
<5: Throttle. Like an airplane. W for forward, S for reverse, X for instant zero-throttle. NUMPAD KEYS dial in a specific throttle percentage in multiples of 10. If this makes your brain hurt you can press K to turn W and S into gas pedal keys.
<12: C-Bills. You earn C-Bills by wrecking shit and capturing objectives. You can go back to a friendly mechbay, sell your current asset with J, then go back to the buy menu and get yourself something nice.
<8.1: Short-range sensors. The thin green line is forward. The thin brown line is where you're looking at the moment. THESE ARE NOT THE SAME THING. Red spots are bad guys. Blue spots are good guys. The view cone is your view cone.
<8.2: Long-range sensors. Your minimap, with grid location so you can tell people where the hell you are without opening the main map. The blue circle is the area covered by your short-range sensors.
>9.1: Heat meter. Energy weapons, jump jets and a few other things build heat. Let this get over the yellow line and you're in trouble. Get this into the red line and you'll either shut down or explode in a cloud of hilarious failure. If you shut down press P to restart after a few seconds, assuming you're not dead. If you need to lose heat fast press C, unless you're in lava in which case this is a fun way to kill yourself.
STEP 4: WHERE THE HELL IS MY ROCKETTO PUNCH
>Take a look at 3.1, the weapon group UI. Individual weapons are organized into groups that all fire together. That's what the numbers mean. You can press the NUMBER KEYS and E to fire groups, and groups 1-3 are mapped to the corresponding MOUSE BUTTONS.
>The default groupings are usually just a little bit retarded. Fix this now. UP ARROW and DOWN ARROW select weapons, LEFT ARROW and RIGHT ARROW select groups. RIGHT CTRL links or unlinks that weapon to that group.
<Pressed LEFT CTRL by accident? You crouched your mech like a retard. Press LEFT CTRL to uncrouch it before crying in chat about being stuck.
>After weapon groups from left to right is weapon name, cooldown/cyclic status, weapon range, and weapon ammo. Assign weapons in the same range to the same group. If you have 3+ energy weapons (PPC, laser) on your mech like this Osiris Prime, you should probably split them between two groups instead lest you explode in a cloud of hilarious failure. For starter assets you should comfortably fit everything into the three mouse button groups.
>If you run out of ammo for something you can run back to your mechbay and press PERIOD to autobuy ammo.
Those are the basics, now go forth and kill.
<OH SHIT THE HOSTFAG SHOT MY ARMS OFF THIS GAME SUCKS I'M GOING BACK TO FORTNITE
Calm down. You can either run back and sell your mech at the nearest mechbay or you can kill yourself (M > click "Suicide") and get a new mech from the dealership. Getting out and hoofing it back in a BA is usually a bad idea because if you get stepped on you'll cost your team tickets, then cost your team tickets again when your crippled mech is destroyed. Die in your cockpit or not at all, MechWarrior.