Mechwarrior 4 is now free

Mech2 doesn’t work on Vista/7 and Mech3 takes some serious tweaks. The Mech3 expansion absolutely will not work on Vista/7, which sucks because it’s better than Mech3.

Found a feature list:

• 111 different mechs ranging from 20 to 100 tons.
• 9 Battle Armor
• 6 Infantry
• 32 Beam Weapons
• 43 Ballistic Weapons
• 44 Missile Weapons
• 7 Electronic Components
• 3 different types of armor
   
• Clan and IS Mech Pack mechs available in campaign
• Mektek mechs and weapons added to campaigns
• Zonematch has been replaced with MekMatch in all visible text and is the one and only mech-matching service
• 5 new MekMatch servers to host and play on! You can change servers whenever you like. Each server has a dedicated community to cater to (League Server, New Players, Australia, Europe, North America)
• “Connect” and “Host” default to the last server chosen
   
• New features for dedicated servers like the ability to add a fixed number of bots to a dedicated server upon launch chosen in setup! Bot Levels can also be set. Default game length has been changed to 30 minutes instead of original 10.
   
• Game loads much quicker and no longer requires a CD
• Original mechs, Clan and IS Mech Pack, and Mektek mechs arranged alphabetically in Mechlab list (no longer have special symbols in front of the mech name except for Battle Armors and Infantry).
• New Screenshot Folder for in-game screenshots (instead of the main Mercs installation folder where it was difficult to locate them).
   
• LTRI (Long Tom Range Indicator) added when a weapon with trajectory is installed on a mech! Torso pitch angle in degrees is also shown! Even height of mech has been calculated and accounted for in range.
• Mission and Computer Clock added as part of the UI. Mission Clock is a semi-transparent pie chart indicating how much time is left on a multiplayer map!
• Additional Chat state. Besides the in-game chat box’s normal and large size you have the option of completely turning off chat (disappears). Pressing the “y” or “u” key (general chat and team chat) causes the chat box to reappear!

I played on dialup for a year or so before I got broadband. I also had to use dialup my freshmen year at WCU due to packet filtering. It uses DirectX 8 netcode so even with a low ping you have to lead-shoot but theres very little difference in leading and shot registry between a 50ms ping and a 600ms ping due to the size of the object you’re shooting at.

On dialup you’ll get around 300-450ms to most servers which is fine for most multiplayer engagements. Only trouble you’ll have is hitting the fast, little mechs at long range but if you stay with the group you usually don’t have any problems with getting picked off by little buggers.

rainefardreamer said:

what is with purple mechs and *edited* takes FOREVER to die, oh well, i’ll get more used to it

There are over 40 “skins” to pick from and you can install or make customs if you want. When you’re customizing your mech in the mechlab the camouflage option is right under the mech selection bar.

If it takes too long to kill then use better guns. On the first campaign I don’t think it took more than 2 or 3 full volleys to kill anything. In fact, throughout the entire game it shouldn’t take more than 3-4 volleys to kill anything unless you’re seriously out-tonned.