As part of my ongoing programme to get a bit better at this game, I've decided that it's time to learn a few new skills. Chief among these is becoming at least proficient with the hated 3rd person view and being able to say at some point in the future something like "Oh yes, I love Gauss, PPC and ER Large and I'm not lying through my teeth." All of this I am going to have to sort for myself. However, chain fire, I keep getting on the end of it and it looks useful but I'm shot if I can do it in another way than having a load of mixed recycle weapons set to the same trigger. Is there some way I can set up my joystick (Saitek Cyborg Evo) to do it or does it involve being able to press my buttons in the right rhythm (pun partially intended Narson) ?

Thanks a lot.

Shift + C sets your currently selected group (the one selected in blue) to chain fire mode.

Ahh...ye olde blessed Chaine Fyre!

The Best Way to chainfire is to set all of your weapons to Group One in the 'Lab, go into Mercs' control options and change Trigger 1 from the default (Fire Current Weapon?) to Fire Group One, then, when you're out of the DropShip and ready to blast some fool, hit Shift-C to turn on "Chainfire Within Group." This will make it so that whenever you hit your main trigger (which, again, we've rebound to Fire Group One) only one of the weapons in that group will fire. Press it again (before that weapon recycles) and the next weapon in that group will fire...ad infinitum. Something to bear in mind is that, for whatever @#$*ing reason, Mercs uses an older code-base than Black Knight used, so that each time you spawn you have to re-turn on Chainfire Within Group (Shift-C!) for each weapon group. Cyberlore fixed that bug in the BK Point Release, but not in the Mercs initial release or PR. /= Lazy bastards!

You can set as many Firing Groups as you want to Chainfire Within Group; most of my unboat variants have their weapons groups setup so that Groups 1-3 can be set to Chainfire Within Group (generally 1=Heavy Hitters, 2=Lasers, 3=Missiles), and groups 4-6 are set to alpha the same weapon types. Use [ and ] to cycle backwards and forwards through active groups. The bestest, of course, is taking a 6ERLL Mad Cat and chaining someone to death non-stop so that they never get an effective shot back at you.

Ok, cheers guys, I'll give that a go.

It would be nice if groups could be set to chain fire. As in every pull of the trigger fires the next group, but I don't think that's possible.

If you've got a two-stage trigger on your joystick, you can get a similar effect. Bind the first trigger to "fire selected group" and the second to "next weapon group" so that whenever you pull the trigger all the way, it cycles groups. That way, you can also opt to not use the function by simply not pulling the trigger as hard.

Or, you could set the weapons so the group doesn't matter at all and use the key that switches all your weapons to fire one at a time while the blue bar thingy moves down the list.

As far as I know, the original key is ( \ ).

I do it all the time with AC5's on an Argus XT.

Chainfire is the best method to use when you want to discourage somebody from shooting back.

Im an expert at chaining LRMs, nothing does as good a job as those, it forces the target to find some cover and once behind cover they cannot exactly shoot through walls. Unfortuately a lot of people get angry when its used this way so it doesnt promote a friendly game.

Personally I think they are just whingers that like to have it all their own way and have not figured out that light mechs are the solution to it. Which is not my problem if they decide to take a big mech in every game and i can lock on to those mechs faster than lights.

Chaining LRMs does not cause a lot of damage to any one area if a mech but it racks up the points in TA and TB games and it does allow your team makes to get into a good position whilst you cover them. Having said that, chaining firing for its own sake is pointless. Its just a tactic that needs to be used at the right time for the right reasons.

Covering fire or supressive fire are to me, good uses for it, even though they are sometimes the same thing.

Giskard

Getting chain fired by a missile boat is extremely annoying when you are on the recieving end. Pretty much makes aiming at anything impossible. Like Gisk said though, it really isn't an effective way to get quick kills because the damage is spread all over the place.

Chain Firing from a bralwers point of view:

I'd say the two most important things with chain firing in a close fight would be precision and timing. Just hiting the opponent all over the place everytime a weapon is ready to fire just spreads the damage all over and is predictible. Waiting to hit a particular spot, or shooting when they are in a position to shoot back are the only times I fire. No point wasting ammo to spread damage over the guys back if he isn't facing you and cant shoot back --- unless the back is heavily damaged

I'm playing this game for two ears and nobody told me ?????

Maybe that's the problem, you can't really hear without ears.

hmm I always thought it was in the directions....

Pfffff...

Okay, good one.

The easiest chain fire mech to use ever:

Ares
1 clan LBX 10
1 clan LBX 5
1 clan UAC 5

This thing is evil, and so ez to use, just hold down the triger, and the weapon stagger them selves. Making chain firing as ez as putting an enemy under your redicul and shotting at it.

O yah this thing will kill almost anything, and annoy the piss out of pple if you use it right.

False.

The best chain firing mech ever made is :

Thanny XT
Hyper Velocity AC5 x3
Large X-Pulse

Hmmm... don't think you can make one of those in HC. Have to check though. but I believe a HVAC 5 takes up five ballistic slots, and the thany xt only has 15 (12 in the left, and 3 in the right). An in the arm that only has three ballistic slot it has 12 energy slots YAY! (not really (by HC) anyways.

I'm talking about the thanny Xtended, you know.

o I forgot to put "xt" on thanny. sry, but that is the mech I was talking about.

O and the regular thanny in HC can't carry "any" large ballistics what so ever, instead u get a fat azz (12) energy slot in your left arm.