Afternoon, #MechWarrior Mastodon! It's almost a week after #MechWarriorOnline patch day, and that means the release of an early Christmas gift (well, kind of; the pre-order was the gift) that introduces a new fixed-to-chassis weapon to the game. I am of course referring to the Naga, an 80-ton Arrow IV Artillery ’Mech that made its PGI-era debut in MechWarrior 5: Clans's "Wolves of Tukayyid" DLC, having been otherwise absent from the series since MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries.
Bundled in this Clan ’Mech pack is the Naga II, a Battle of Tukayyid field refit that drops the Arrow IV missiles in favor of more conventional ’Mech weaponry. These two ’Mechs share OmniPod compatibility, so you can put an Arrow IV on your Naga II or swap one out from your Naga to mount something else if you so choose.
So what is a Naga, anyway? Well, as stated, it's an Arrow IV Artillery missile platform. It mounts two of those monstrosities, and while the tabletop version's range is measured in map sheets, the MWO version is reined in at a respectable 1500 meters baseline. After skill nodes are applied, this can go up to a 1725 meter range. You're probably not going to be able to use all that range the vast majority of the time, especially considering this missile is exceptionally slow and the target will probably have found cover or otherwise long broken the lock by the time it gets there, but maybe that will change in the future. The general sentiment I'm seeing is that these missiles are rather underpowered in their current state, surprisingly enough, citing lackluster kill power and ammo starvation. I find them a lot of fun to slap the shit out of people with nonetheless! It functions as a sort of hybrid of LRMs and Thunderbolt missiles. While some are tempted to think of them as "Clan Thunderbolts", they're coming to select Inner Sphere chassis as well in the future.
Coming back to the Naga, the Naga Prime possesses 3 ER small lasers in addition to its Arrow IV Artillery launchers as its only armament for dealing with close-range threats. For everything else, there's the Arrow IV.
This and the next one will typically be run by optimizing players by removing everything, maxing armor, and putting the rest of the tonnage into ammo. At least in my experience. Since I play stock, I keep everything as is, and still manage to have a good time. Your mileage may vary.
#BattleTech #BattleMech #VideoGames
