Congratulations to the Black Hawk NVA-Prime for winning best clan medium mech! Its large amount of energy hardpoints makes it a ferocious choice. Just keep the heat build up in mind.

It’s time to see which mechs are the best in Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries! Please follow the rules below, and the most upvoted comment will win.

- Mech must be in the base game or DLC’s
- Please name the specific mech variant in your comment
- Comment with the most upvotes at the end of the day wins. Results are final
- Please keep it respectful, and have fun!

Basically what's a mech that you feel is decent-pretty good on the tabletop setting but just is garbage in Mechwarrior 5?

Probably bug but a fun one, once they become allies, they will begin to hunt everything red.

I just got DFAed by the AI. A wrecked AI.

So, I'm stomping around in my HBK-GI like a badass, doing missions with my homies Meat Shield, Generic Person, and Some Guy. A Griffin gets up close and personal to me for a moment while getting walloped. The Griffin starts to jump, reaches around twice my head height, and gets obliterated, as is good and proper. I chuckle for a moment as it slows down in the air before I suddenly get a really bad feeling as I watch the wrecked corpse of this mech start to arch down directly at me. "No, it doesn't still have mass, does it? I mean, even if it does, it can't be THAAAAT much damage, right?"

Thunk. Boom. Third person view of Meat Shield's mech. That flying hunk of junk cored me from nearly full armor with that hit.

I was stunned and considered reloading the mission before I started laughing my ass off. I just finished the mission with three mechs and basked in the glory of what just happened.

Let that be a lesson: 55t is still 55t until it hits the ground.

Sure we had Nova Cat support but man they were never not units on radar. Two dropships, and many pods of battle armor. I guess the Bears don’t want to go the way of the Jaguars.

Finally starting a new run to do Chaos Reigns and Ashes and Ascension with a very normal non suspect `mech company

I like to destroy everything, but this...i never pass up the opportunity to wreck.

Communications? Check

Food? Check

Power? Check

- - - - - - -

Dear enemy,

God fuck yourselves.

Sincerely, me and my employer

Literally no weapons left. This Clan repulsion costs more to repair than to earn...

One achievement I have never done is the pacifist where you complete a raid without killing any enemy. A fast mech with a little firepower to destroy the raid targets seems like the choice so I’m thinking the frnris/ice ferret or the uac5 Cicada might be the choice here.

If you’ve done this achievement, what did you use?

Also thinking it should probably be done early in game for ease of accomplishment.

Is this just a better Black Hawk Prime?

More Armor, more free tonnage, two more energy slots.

Same speed. Integrated cooling for heat sinks.

All for just 10 tons more weight?

.... is there another downside I'm missing?

So I've played a ton of MW4 back in the day, and decided that it's finally time to return to the series.

I'd love to do it in coop though. So if I bring in a friend or two who are unfamiliar with the series, would you advice starting with Mercenaries or Clans?

I know that Clans is a more accessible, linear and newb-friendly, but I wonder if going to Mercs after it will feel like a downgrade for them in terms of visuals and general user experience due to complexity and feeling like an older title.

It's also important to note that they will likely be playing on controllers. I myself will be going with HOTAS and MAYBE VR - not sure how well it's integrated mod-wise.

Any advice appreciated!

In our most unanimous vote yet, the Puma ADR-S won our clan light mech vote! Understandable considering the ridiculous number of machine guns it carries.

It’s time to see which mechs are the best in Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries! Please follow the rules below, and the most upvoted comment will win.

- Mech must be in the base game or DLC’s
- Please name the specific mech variant in your comment
- Comment with the most upvotes at the end of the day wins. Results are final
- Please keep it respectful, and have fun!

Anyone got the database entry for this guy unlocked yet? Have been spamming multi-missions against the clans post 3060 and have yet to see one in the field.

Does MW5 support triples? Anyone notice a better situational awareness with the extra monitors?

Ive always been curious about it, just never went out to get the extra monitors.

Sim racers love them triples. Worth the investment?

Looking forward for the post DLC 9 release patch (patch notes here)

Improved pipe destruction vfx performance across the game.

Here's to hoping the lag finally gets fixed, the devs already fixed the smoky haze lagging the Solaris Jungle FFA map and sometimes I tend to shoot an explosive greebly on a procgen map and these tend to happen.

Only using a QoL playlist like UI and HUD mods for vanilla+ Mercs.

I'm finally biting the bullet and trying Merctech while the Yaml mods all catch up and was wanting to know what mods can play nice once I've gotten used to merctech.

One's I'm most wanting to know about are garrisons revamped, coyotes, mech delivery and qol mod.

You may have seen a couple of my posts over the summer highlighting the spray paint stencil art using mechs from Mechwarrior 5.

Two of those pieces are going up for auction later this week in support of the Desert Bus for Hope charity event which just started this week.

Silent Auction: BattleTech 'Mech Pop-Art Pack! | Desert Bus 2026

What is Desert Bus for Hope? It raises funds for Child's Play, which uses those funds to help kids in Children's Hospitals and domestic violence shelters have access to toys, games, and other support. Read more here: About Desert Bus | Desert Bus 2026

It's a great event and any support you can give them and, by proxy, me is great appreciated!

My light mech elite pilot got smoked by a catapult with arrow iv. Where can I find another elite with light mech specialty?

Just downloaded and started playing, ran my first none starter story mission fighting a few tanks and spiders and noticed my teammates weren't firing (they have mostly med lasers), had them on free fire and follow me. the little damage they did was from me ordering fire on my target near the end. i cant really find anything online about this and this is a huge issue.
have increased salvage per share and no tonnage limit for mods. pretty sure freeman was shooting fine during the mission i got him in.
EDIT- seems to have only been for the one mission.

Its Amazing what difference ten tons makes.

Hired this guy off Fatima at 50/56, AC-20 Master only. Dropped him off at Gunslinger, skipped the timeline ahead one year, and in under two minutes of resetting got speed demon.

Put him back in Gunslinger, got him halfway through the year, aborted his training, got AC-20 Expert in all of 4 resets.

Gave him another half year at Gunslinger, got me Bulwark on the 2nd reset.

Gave him one last full year at Gunslinger, didn't even have to reset for Trigger Discipline; got it first try.

Fastest I've ever been able to optimize a pilot. If you apply the above formula for making pilots for Weapon Specialist/Generic Elite Traits like Speed Demon, Bulwark, Sharpshooter, Eagle Eye, you can crank out an optimized pilot within 20-45 minutes of save scumming, even on console.

UPDATE: CERT uncovered a minor issue during testing. The patch is still expected to release next week, with the exact release date to be confirmed. We’ll share more details as soon as the deployment date is finalized.

https://mw5mercs.com/news/2026/10/204-ashes-and-ascension-patch-notes-preview

All patches need to release at the same time to maintain cross-play compatibility - Monday is still possible if the patch is approved.

https://x.com/MW5Mercs/status/2113398048332361853