Liking it so far…looking forward to the implementation of the whole interplanetary war aspect. The 8 on 8 mech bashes are good fun tho. Only down side to me is the environments are a little dull colored, I was expecting environment destruction like world of tanks (knocking down trees/buildings as you pass/fire) but have not seen any so far, perhaps thats down the line.
So I’m guessing the freebie mech is gonna be a 25 ton scout with a couple of standard machine guns and a single laser, maybe an SRM2.
If the freebie mechs are the current “trial mechs”, no, they top at the Awesome, an assault mech with 3 PPCs.
Commando
Centurion
Dragon
Awesome
Standard 3050 loadouts
The main differences between free and paid accounts will be rate of progress, faster pilot experience and monetary gains, possibly some mech variants that will only be available for IRL money. The game will be fully playable otherwise. Just puttering around with the trial mechs for a few days allowed me enough cash to purchase a Catapult-K2 that is what I am driving most of the time now.
I played in the simulators at virtual world in Walnut creek a long long time ago…it was tons of fun.
Well that Dragon do look like fun.
Eat Charged Particles Kurita Scum!
(my intended affilliation is Free Rasalhauge Republic 
)
one other observation from watching in observer mode after dying…
Heat management, Heat management, Heat management. Did I mention Heat management? Subdivide weapons groupings into logical sets for long range, short range, LRM’s etc.
On my Atlas I have 2 weapon groups on L and R mouse button
L: ER Large Laser, and Medium Laser
R: Medium Laser, 2 Medium Pulse Laser, SRM-6, LB-10-X Autocannon
IF I want to go blaze of glory and shut down, I can hit both mouse buttons, but in close, I can stand on that right mouse button and let everything fire as it cycles and it takes about 30 seconds of continuous fire to get close to overheat… Usually whatever I am shooting at is dead by then.
I see TONS of people just marching around firing everything at once, LRM’s without lock or inside minimum range, to make matters worse they barely aim. Its like they are trying to apply typical high twitch FPS methods to things that move one tenth speed and can take ten times the punishment.
Ahhhh, it’s a shame you can’t get maximum weapon selection along with the classic heat management. In the last big online Mechwarrior game back in the early 2000s, I loved to outfit a medium mech with like 10 flamers and maximum speed, by jinking all the way in I could usually shut down several mechs before someone got a good shot or two on me.
Until the guy with 6 Streak SRM 6’s Splattered you. Or the guy with 6 ER PPC’s vaporized you at 4x max flamer range. Or the the guy with 4 gauss rifles who does not seem to care about your silly flamers.
per contact with support, trial mech selection will rotate as well
cool little tidbit
Anti missle systems will target any enemy missle in range of the system, by having multiple AMS equipped mechs near each other they provide mutual anti missle coverage. Even mechs without AMS that are near an AMS equipped mech will enjoy some protection.
On the last page of this month’s PC Gamer, they give a code you can redeem at mwomercs.com/pcgamer for a red & black paint job for your mech, and a “coconut monkey” (which is the PCGamer mascot) bobblehead doll that appears in your cockpit view. (I think)
I’m thinking of getting this, but how do the controls work on the PC? Do I need to get a joystick or gamepad, or does it play pretty well with keyboard and mouse?
I am so freaking ready to play Mechwarrior Online!
I tried a couple matches tonite in a trial version of the Awesome class mech. Boy-howdy do I suck. (playing it with mouse/keyboard)
I keep getting my torso all jacked around, because moving the mouse rotates torso, and I am grabbing the mouse while under stress to move like I would in my MMROG setups. This means I keep walking into buildings and stuff.
It’s just 8 v. 8 head to head matches, no back story/campaign stuff right now.
I was doing the same thing when I first started, am slowly getting better at it. I thought I would have a signficant advantage in that combat in SL Gor involves the same sort of thing … movement with keyboard keys, independent fire control with the mouse. But with Mechwarrior the movement keys are WASD, whereas with SL Gor I used the arrow keys (works nicely for me, as I am a lefty). That left me blundering all over the place, as my fingers have no “feel” for the WASD setup, whereas the arrow keys are instinctual. I quickly discovered that the “Setting” button lets you remap the keyboard to your preferences, so I set up movement on the arrow keys and am doing much better now.
Except that in SL Gor combat, taking your hand off the forward (throttle up) key has the same effect as hitting X in Mechwarrior, it stops you cold, whereas in Mechwarrior you keep right on moving, or in my case, blundering.
I am however getting to the point where my mistakes are mostly tactical. Like the recent outing where I I walked up to a ridge and found four enemy mechs waiting for me with their missiles locked on me. By the time I got back behind the ridge, I was flat of my back with smoke streaming out of me.
I have however learned a lot from watching in Spectator mode after being downed. Like, don’t get in the river with an experienced Jenner opponent.
Yeah, the first thing I did was to remap the controls to be as much like the setup I have for WoW/LoTRO/STO/Rift/KOTOR. 
But like you said, in the other games, when you stop depressing the forward key in those games, your movement stops, but not in Mechwarrior Online.
In my second fight, I got ganged up on by three Jenners in River City. I thought I got some hits in on one of them, but the match scorecard said I scored zero damage. Bah. Those things are like a little pack of Pirahnas. They must have been snickering at my clumsy movement.
Despite having LRMs on the Awesome[Trial Variant], I still havent fired them yet. By the time I see enemies, they are too close for that.
Maybe I should move down to either the Dragon or the Centurion, see if I do any better. (So far, it appears that there is no cost/fee for repairing the trial mechs.) But with almost double the top speed of the assault mech, I am afraid that I will be too busy trying to unfuck my piloting/movement errors to get off any shots at the enemy. 
I’ve been playing for the last month, but I don’t think I’ll continue much longer, it’s a typical F2P/Pay2Win grindfest so far. In-game purchases are made with either Credits (the real money option) or Cbills (awarded after each game).For a starting player a win gets you a little over 100K in Cbills, a loss gets you around 70K, depending on the damage and kills you cause. If you sub you get a bonus multiplier to these values.
The Trial mechs that are free to use have frankly meh weapon set-ups. All a mix of some long/some short armaments. To get a half decent starter mech costs around 4-5 million Cbills (there are cheaper mechs, but they are more suited for experienced pilots). So unless you are paying, you’re gonna need at least 40 matches under your belt before you can create a custom mech.
This is then compunded by two more limitations, garage slots and experience. You can (currently) only own 4 mechs at a time without paying real money, and there is no way to sell a mech you own to free up space or credits for a new purchase. Experience falls into 2 types, Mech XP and Pilot XP. Mech XP can be used to enhance certain features of your ride, eg turn rate and heat build-up. To get anything other than the basic levels requires you to own at least 3 different versions of the same mech. So a F2Player will only be able to specialize in one model of Mech.