Mechwarrior 5 by itself is not a great game. But that hasn’t stopped modders from doing their best to make it a bit better, with one clever Mech fan going as far to transform the whole game into an RTS.
Mechwarrior Mercenaries is a new mod that transforms Mechwarrior 5‘s gameplay — not the management aspects — into a 3D RTS. “Select and issue orders to your lance and other friendly units throughout Mechwarrior 5’s campaign mode,” the mod description says.
The mod so far works with “most” of Mechwarrior 5‘s story missions, as well as the procedurally generated levels that pop up in the campaign. It doesn’t support co-op yet, or Instant Action, but what’s in there so far is pretty good.
For one, the RTS angle adds a tactical element that immediately makes Mechwarrior’s wave-based missions a hell of a lot more interesting. It’s easier to plan around angles and cover when you can, well, see everything. You’re not restricted to a particular view, though: Hitting F6 will swap between cockpit and RTS controls, which is a nice touch.
The creator has posted some other videos before of Mechwarrior 5 with a cinematic camera, which gives the whole game a feel very reminiscent of BattleTech, which is still a supremely good game worth checking out.
The creator posted this week that co-op will eventually be supported, with players able to issue markers to others so you can co-ordinate as a team.
Interestingly, the creator posted that the Mechwarrior 5 developers asked them to “put it out early” on the Epic Games Store. That could mean that support for mods on Epic’s storefront is coming very soon, which could be fun for a raft of games still exclusive to the EGS. (What does Tetris Effect look like with mods, for instance.)
To check out the Mechcommander Mercenaries mod, head to the official Nexus Mods listing. Installation is as simple as extracting the files into Mechwarrior 5‘s mod folder, and there’s a full description of the controls here.
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