Howdy and welcome back to Mech Overview! This week we are taking a look at the Nova Cat, a very chunky post-invasion Clan OmniMech with weird legs and weird everything, if we are being perfectly honest. The Nova Cat is an ungangly looking thing, and I know a lot of people are not super fond of how it looks, but I have always been a huge fan of the Nova Cat. Something about it just screams “Cool Utilitarian War Bot” and I am a sucker for cool utilitarian war bots.

Something about this mech looks really familiar from some other franchise but I can’t place it right now. Also a huge fan of the asymmetrical arms with weird clusters of gun barrels; such a rad design.

I mean also it has some stats and stuff I think.

Chassis

The Nova Cat is an OmniMech, meaning that all variants share the same base chassis and only change the guns and equipment. Fortunately, the Nova Cat is a fantastic base chassis. It weighs in at 70 tons, moves 4/6/0, and is literally only a single point away from maximum armor, with 216 out of 217 armor points. It does have a Clan XL engine, which is basically fine but does make it a bit less durable than a standard engine mech. You genuinely can’t make a 4/6/0 70 tonner that is better set up than the Nova Cat while maintaining a good amount of pod space. The most notable part of this mech is that pod space, with 38 tons worth of it.

That is an insane amount of pod space.

That is more than some Clan assault Mechs have, and is nearly 10 tons more than the notoriously overgunned Loki. The Nova Cat carries nearly an entire medium mech’s weight in guns, and that is genuinely something you can only get from one other Clan heavy in the entire game, the Loki MkII, and the Nova Cat is noticeably tougher. Somehow this mech is just as nuts as the Loki, but it has the decency to have some nice, thick, lovely armor to wrap itself in and hide away from all the demons that it sees in the corners of round rooms.

Another note is that, as the Nova Cat is 4/6/0, it pays less BV than the standard 5/8/0 Clan heavies for its guns, as it has less of a speed multiplier on its BV. While most Nova Cats are very expensive, they are still cheaper than some of the competition, and it has the armor to back up its firepower, unlike the Loki. There are a lot of variants here that would be around 300 BV more expensive on something like a Mad Cat, that slower speed goes a long way towards cheapening things up.

A quick note before we continue, those of you who regularly read this column may remember that a few weeks ago when talking about the Marauder, I strongly disliked it for being a firepower centric 4/6/0 heavy mech. Why do I like the Nova Cat, a mech built with more or less the same design philosophy, if I dislike most Marauders so strongly?

It mostly just comes down to the Clan technology. IS mechs are best built as brawlers and simply can’t fit as many heat sinks and as much long range damage as their Clan equivalents. While this usually makes them cheaper, it means that most IS mechs that are trying to be big Alpha-Strike mechs that take out opponents quickly with high firepower just can’t get there compared to their Clan opponents. IS mechs will consistently lack range, damage, armor, or heat management, while Clan mechs can reasonably easily have all 4. They are appropriately costed for that right, but honestly, if you are spending BV on IS mechs, it isn’t super worth trying to compete with the Clans at their own game unless you are using something with a gauss rifle, the only weapon with identical stats between each tech-base.

Most Marauders are trying to beat something like the Nova Cat at its own game, but simply cannot manage it without loading up with Clan technology or gauss rifles. It isn’t well set up to be an efficient brawler, the thing the IS tech base is good at, and ends up just not appealing to me as a result.

The Marauder and Loki are going to catch a lot of strays in this one.

Liberty: I, on the other hand, firmly believe the Nova Cat to be a monument to all of the Clan tech base’s sins. It packs on a gargantuan amount of firepower in each variant which makes them horrendously expensive while also not having the wherewithal and longevity to be the centerpiece of a force. As well, with all this gun and excess it’s still way more expensive than the ‘worse’ updated Marauders while being on average less, or equivalently protected, depending on the Marauder variant. Just about all these variants are absolutely horrifying and for that they pay. A LOT and that is something I often just don’t find to be worth it for my lists.

Variants

These ‘mechs have all been reviewed based on a standard F through S scale, which you can find described on our landing page here (along with all the other ‘mech reviews).

Prime

So I am bringing back the Insanity Rating for this one because holy fuck the Nova Cat Prime is an apeshit fucking mech.

Slinging around 38 tons of bad decisions the Prime costs 2,530 BV and I genuinely do not know what the person who made this was smoking. It carries 2 ER PPCs and 3 ER large lasers, with enough heat sinks to make heat math annoying. It sinks 50 heat and builds 68 with a running alpha strike, and has a few obvious firing patterns. You could shoot both ER PPCs and 2 of the ERLLs to build 4 heat standing still, or an ER PPC and all 3 ERLLs to build 3 at a run, or everything to spike up 18 heat, shut down, and die.

This is just far too much long range gun and it suffers from the same problem as the Warhawk Prime. It just can’t fit enough heat sinks to make a loadout like this work. This is a pretty good way to melt a pilot but I am way less offended by this than I usually am by high heat load mechs. Part of it is the thick armor, but another part is the lack of anything explosive. It also has flippable arms, which is always a fun time.

I mean, its nuts, there are too many guns here and it hurts me, but I am just less mad? I feel like I should be more mad about this, it has a lot of traits I dislike, but like… Eh? Its fine, not horrible, but also not great.

Peri’s Rating: D+? C-?

Insanity: C+. It is the most boring kind of nuts.

Liberty’s Rating: D+: This thing will rip shit and kill and then send the heat up so it can shutdown and get beaten to death by inferior machines. It will never functionally get everything on target because if it does it starts to have a good chance of shutting down or becoming a very big target for little bastards with Inferno bins.

A

So what if the Nova Cat wasn’t taking his meds and was also, like, really good?

The Nova Cat A is a strong argument for keeping mech designers from taking anti-psychotics because this thing is completely apeshit in the most boring way possible and I love it. For 2,629 BV you get a very simple variant that befuddles me in its surreal yet basic design. It adds jump jets to move 4/6/4, which is an appetizer. The main course is that this thing carries 4 ER large lasers with a targeting computer, and enough heat sinks to be neutral at a run. That targeting computer is nuts, slinging around 40 damage with a to-hit bonus is fantastic, and grouping it into 10 damage hits is even better.

Literally every single free crit on this mech is filled, there is zero empty space in here and it has so many fucking heat sinks about it. It still has flippable arms which is cool, but like, having 8 hex short range guns with a to-hit bonus from the targeting computer is incredibly good. This mech deals good damage out to a good range for a reasonable, if not good, price. 2600 BV is good assault mech BV but the Nova Cat A will put up a pretty great fight against any of those assault mechs.

This mech can use jump jets to get into a good firing position and realistically have range to fire on the entire map, while still having a thick armor belt for brawling with anything that closes in on it, the ability to break line of sight from anything that can kill it easily, and a to-hit bonus to shit-smack any light mechs that want to harass it. A lot of mechs in this category of mech, like the Awesome, tend to not really be able to deal with flanking light mechs, but the Nova Cat A is perfectly happy to just kill them if they try to fuck with it.

I need to take this thing more often, there are a couple other Nova Cats that I tend to take before this and, bluntly, I forgot this one existed. That was a mistake.

Peri’s Rating: B-, as much as I like it it is still 2600 BV in a world with insanely strong 1800 BV mechs in a similar role.

Insanity Rating: B+, whoever made this was on the good shit.

Liberty’s Rating: C+, this thing is very funny and yet horrendously expensive for what I feel amounts to a weird Awesome AWS-9Q that costs 800ish BV more. For all the movement and accuracy it still just kinda wants to trail along at the back of your gunline and dish its damage while not being near the front until later. There is something else that does a similar enough mission and does it cheaper that I really just don’t like taking this thing.

B

My traditional favorite Nova Cat, the B is one of the funniest mechs in the game. At 2,492 BV the Nova Cat took note of all the people saying that Clan LRMs were overpowered, and simply took all of them. With 6 LRM-15s, this thing is slinging 90 tubes at anything that offends it at any range. It also has ER medium lasers if you care. It is fully heat neutral when firing those LRMs at a run too, because some Nova Cats actually manage heat pretty well. It also has a hilarious amount of ammo, with 10 tons in total, so thank god for CASE. This is a mech that really does not like being TAC’d to the side torsos, but fuck it, you are heat neutral and can indirect fire, simply shoot every single turn forever. You even have flippy arms, so you are ready to ball no matter where the enemy tried to hide.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the Nova Cat B is a long range fire support mech. Clan LRMs lack a minimum range, and this means that the B can simply walk at people and slam 90 points of potential damage into them every single turn. That is well within “Please God Stop” DPS and genuinely gives this thing the damage output of 3 fucking Catapults, which is genuinely unacceptable. It is even cheaper than just taking 3 Catapults, though you do lose durability by putting all your eggs in one basket like this.

The B has long range damage, short range damage, thick armor, adequate but not good movement, and enough ammo to load a single ton of Thunder LRMs and lay 8 fucking minefields without really hurting its endurance. The only problem with this mech is how vulnerable it is to ammo explosions, so just keep shooting until those bins are empty. I’d pair B off with some sort of cheap spotter dork, like a Spider or some Battle Armor.

Peri’s Rating: B+, expensive and vulnerable to crits, but capable of doing genuinely horrific damage if allowed.

Insanity Rating: A, Clan LRM boats are rare for a reason and this thing does not give a fuck.

Liberty’s Rating: B, expensive as hell and ready to explode into a catastrophic fireball is certainly a description but it will, at the very least, do the thing you want it to on the way in. Good god that’s gonna be a lot of rolls and hits to resolve.

C

The C is one of the budget Nova Cats, coming in at 1,944 BV, a truly peaceful amount of BV. The weapon load is super weird, with 2 UAC/5s, 2 LPLs, and an LBX 5. It has plenty of ammo for all of these, and plenty of heat sinks, only building 1 point of heat with a running alpha strike. It does lose the flippy arms that are traditional on the Nova Cat, but the LPLs can still point behind it with a torso twist so that isn’t a huge deal.

This is a swiss army knife mech. The LPLs and UAC/5s give it acceptable DPS on enemy mechs, and the LBX lets it fuck up helicopters and chip in for some crit seeking later on. It has good range, good damage, and an acceptable price. 45 points of long range damage is about on rate for a fire support mech at around 2000 BV, even if it is kinda unreliable for UAC reasons. I have no real complaints here, this is a very conventional mech that will be good basically whatever situation it ends up in, but it isn’t a show stealer the way the other Nova Cats we have looked at so far are.

Peri’s Rating: C+, adequate but unexciting.

Insanity Rating: D-, its pretty normal and sedate.

Liberty’s Rating: C, this machine is certainly a machine.

D

The D is the bad heavy laser one. Basically all Clan Omnis have a bad heavy laser one. Costing 2,084 BV, the D carries a deeply unfortunate set of weapons, with 3 large heavy lasers, an LBX 10, and a targeting computer. That is theoretically cool, but a running alpha strike with this thing puts it literally a single point of heat short of an ammo explosion check, and nothing with heavy lasers should ever have an ammo using weapon mounted to it. This thing is just asking for some dipshit to hit the big red button and cook off the mech, and the reward, while a lot of damage, isn’t worth it in my opinion.

It does have a heat neutral firing pattern of 2 large heavies and the LB 10, but that is slightly less damage potential than the C for more BV and it is coming out less consistently due to the shorter range bands and lack of pulse laser bonuses. Heavy Lasers just suck, no matter how much a specific subset of BattleTech player wants them to not suck.

Peri’s Rating: D ish. It does do a decent clip of damage but there are better options.

Insanity Rating: B, certified glue sniffer but it mostly just makes me mad.

Liberty’s Rating: C-, I have a problem and deeply love heavy lasers and want so desperately to love this thing but like… stop sticking ammo into things that want to build this much heat. That gun could’ve been a lot of heat sinks and I’m disappointed it’s not.

E

Hey kid do you want to do 118 points of damage to someone at close range while doing a fat line of clan grade whole grain cocaine?

The E costs 2,191 BV and is honestly a better version of the A while coming in at a lower price. For guns, it carries a large pulse laser and 4 ATM-9s. ATMs are fantastic weapons, and this thing does genuinely unacceptable damage firing HE missiles. You have 8 tons of ammo here, so you can just go with an even split between HE and Standard and simply dump huge amounts of damage into anyone who pisses you off. 4/6/0 movement will make it hard to get into range to fire HE, but if you are allowed to get there they are going to regret it. The mech does build 6 heat with a running alpha, which is a bit annoying, but you can afford to drop one of the ATM-9s when you are at skirmish range to fire the LPL,

ATM configs with high tube counts are always goofy when it comes to the damage they can output, and the E is tough enough to get stuck in and high damage enough to cripple anything that tries to fight back. This is Hunchback IIC levels of point blank DPS, we are well past the “Please God Stop” threshold of damage here. It even has the ATMs in flippy arms, so while you don’t get an accuracy bonus, most light mechs are not going to be willing to risk taking 108 points of damage by landing behind you.

Love this fucking thing. The A is a bit more reliable, consistent, better at longer ranges, and a lot of other things, but the E is a screaming one man missile massacre and is 400 BV cheaper. I would take the A if you had the BV for it, but the E is a budget brand version of it with less restraint and high explosives crammed up to its fucking eyeballs.

Peri’s Rating: A-, goofy fucking damage on a tough frame

Insanity Rating: A, currently trying to teach the local racoons how to smoke crack behind the Clan equivalent to a cracker barrel.

Liberty’s Rating: A-, I don’t want this thing anywhere near me, my mechs or my postal code. Stay away from me.

F

Oof ouch owie my bones that is a lot of BV. For 2,706 BV the F is extremely funny. It carries improved jump jets to send it forwards at 4/6/6 movement, far and away the most mobile out of the Nova Cats we have looked at, and has an acceptable weapon load with 2 LPLs, 3 MPLs, an ECM suite because fuck that guy in your local who likes C3, and a targeting computer.

Put simply a jump 6 mech with Clan pulse plus a TCOMP is unacceptably good, and it costs 2,700 for a damn good reason. It will overheat if it fires everything, so you are going to want to fire just the LPLs at long range and drop one of them for the MPLs up close, but that -3 to hit bonus completely negates the penalty from jumping and this will inflict unholy fucking murder on any enemy fast movers that dare to enter your line of sight. There is so much fucking armor on this thing for how much TMM it can generate and how well it can reposition, and it is going to take ages for your opponent to kill it. Most things that are good at hunting 3+ TMM targets simply don’t have the damage output to chew through 35 points of front CT armor, and all of this things guns are in the arms and can flip so there is literally not a single safe position for something like a VSP spider to squirm into.

Even if your opponent doesn’t have jumpy light mechs for it to hunt, the Nova Cat F can just go be a jumpy light mech equivalent and fuck up some slow moving heavy mechs really, really badly with that accuracy bonus. It doesn’t have the knockdown fuck you damage of the other Nova Cats, and it costs an arm and a leg, but I genuinely think this mech is worth it and is completely disgusting. If you have never played against this sort of mech, or used this sort of mech, you should give it a try. This thing has the mobility to outjump anything it can’t outshoot, and it outshoots the fuck out of anything that outjumps it. If you are having trouble with Wraiths, 3PL Phoenix Hawks, VSP Spiders, or Gunsmiths, take one of these and body slam them into the fucking concrete.

Peri’s Rating: A, but I could see an argument for anything up to S+. Genuinely a disgustingly powerful mech to the point that the price barely matters.

Insanity Rating: B+. Its nuts but also if you have ever been around custom mech circles this is a common pattern for what busted strong Clan mechs look like. It would probably have a partial wing if it was a custom, and thank god it doesn’t.

Liberty’s Rating: A-. This thing is horrifying, as all mechs with large concentrations of clan pulse that can jump 5+ hexes are

G

Jesus Christ where do I start.

Coming in at 2,522 BV this is probably the most Loki-like of the Nova Cats. For that BV you get 3 LRM-20s with Artemis IV, an ER large laser, 8 AP gauss rifles because Infantry Guy has returned, and a targeting computer. There are so many fucking explosive crits in this thing, with 13 of its crits being explosive, mostly in the side torsos but also in the left arm because they ran out of fucking room in the torsos. This has pretty good damage output up close, pretty good damage output at long range, and as mentioned Clan LRMs are good every-range weapons.

Every time I have seen one of these locally though it doesn’t do well. This mech looks a lot scarier than it is. It doesn’t have the knock-down DPS at brawling range that a lot of other variants have and only really turns on at point blank, and while the crit hunting is great the main thing AP gauss rifles are good at is killing the pilot of whatever is carrying them, as each of them inflicts 2 pilot hits when they are critted and mass APGRs love to chain react and instantly turn their pilot into soup. It’ll do really bad things to conventional infantry and it is by no means non-functional, but it is also really good at getting itself killed without having the insane DPS of a B or E.

Peri’s Rating: C. Not great, not terrible.

Insanity Rating: A-. Who the fuck did this? Were they traumatized by an infantryman and wake up in a cold sweat wishing they were turning PBI into jerk jerky?

Liberty’s Rating: C-. Having fought this thing a few times I’m not a fan. If you want a shit load of AP Gauss and something more mobile take a Crossbow E then start Crit-huntingorkillingyourpilotswithconcussions to your little heart’s content. If you want a fist full of LRM-20 Art. IVs and some back up weapons grab an Archer C2 or just take the B and drown them in rolls and missiles, not like it matters if they get close. There are options to do both of these mission profiles for cheaper or better.

H

Hey look another heavy laser one. At 2,452, the H carries a supercharger to send it 4/6(8)/0, which is not great for BV, and carries a pretty funny mix of weapons and equipment. It has an LBX 20, 2 large improved heavy lasers, and a medium pulse laser for fun. It only builds movement heat firing the improved heavies, and it carries 3 coolant pods to help it shunt off heat in an emergency and let it slam all of its guns into something if it really needs to. Note that I didn’t say this was a bad heavy laser one, those coolant pods go a long way towards making this thing functional and if it can get into the ranges it wants it can do some pretty great damage, and the supercharger will help it get there when it really needs to.

Overall this is one of the better heavy laser mechs in the game, and while it lacks the big DPS numbers, it is slinging out its 59 point alpha with 3 headchopper groups in it, which is worth a lot in this game sometimes.

Peri’s Rating: B- ish. It is a very cool mech and one of the better uses of heavy lasers in the game, but its still a heavy laser mech.

Insanity Rating: B. The coolant pods are genuinely inspired but the mech is otherwise just a pile of big damage guns.

Liberty’s Rating: C+. I like Heavy Lasers but I really don’t like investing this much into heavy lasers on machines with barely enough heat sinks and a very grand desire to explode.

I

Do I have to talk about this one?

Fine.

At 2,918 the I is the most expensive Nova Cat by a few hundred BV, and it wastes that BV. It carries 2 improved heavy lasers, 4 medium pulse lasers, and 2 TSEMP cannons. TSEMPs are weird support weapons that have a small chance to shut someone down, are insanely expensive, unreliable, and not good for the purpose. This mech has heat issues, spends a ton of BV on deeply unreliable weapons, and just doesn’t excite me for 2,900 BV. I’d rather have a mech that was just always good for this price, rather than the gambling machine where you pray that you get a 10+ roll to shut someone down every turn.

Peri’s Rating: D+, fucking expensive but it does have real guns.

Insanity Rating: B+. Stop trying to make TSEMPs good, none of the mechs that carry them are good. Really needs a BV cut.

Liberty’s Rating: D, Holy shit that’s expensive and TSEMPs are both dumb and anti-fun… just don’t. For you, and your opponents, enjoyment of the game grab something else.

M

Oh god oh fuck it’s got a gun.

At 2,024 BV the Nova Cat M is very simple and very stupid. It carries 2 LBX 20s, a large pulse laser, and a Streak SRM-6 that it doesn’t need. Double AC/20s is always entertaining, and you could fire cluster if you wanted to roll 40 hit locations and make your opponent unhappy. The issue is that the Nova Cat isn’t particularly fast or manueverable at base, and the M stays 4/6/0 without any of the shenanigans that some other variants have.

It is extremely funny to shoot someone with a pair of AC/20s, and it is pretty cheap, but it just doesn’t excite me the way some of the other Nova Cats do. Which really should just say something about how much fucking damage most Nova Cats cram in to this frame. It is a good mech, don’t get me wrong, and if you want to put a pair of 20 damage hits into something it is not a terrible option, but I really wish they had just full sent it with a pair of UAC/20s. Let me go to Jam City and knock people the fuck over with 4 20 point clusters, I can be trusted with that.

Peri’s Rating: B. Good but it just doesn’t wow me compared to the other ones.

Insanity Rating: B-. Loses points for not sending it with UACs and being too simple.

Liberty’s Rating: B-, UACs would be way funnier but if you’ve got a guy in your local area that loves bringing out their helos or aero assets this thing will probably make them regret doing that.

T

Finally at the end here, and the T is boring as fuck. It costs 2,855 BV, a fuck ton of BV, and carries 2 ER PPCs, 3 LPLs, and enough heat sinks to fire either set of guns. It also has a supercharger so it moves 4/6(8)/0. This is a very easy to understand mech. You shoot the ER PPCs on easy shots, and the LPLs on hard shots. It does acceptable damage but god damn is this thing boring compared to the other Nova Cats. It is a strict upgrade on the prime, and if you are a fan of having 5 of the best guns in the game crammed on to one mech that gets to pick which set of game breakers it fires at a time, it certainly does do that.

But FUCK is it boring. This is the obvious thing to do with the chassis, and is transparently the platonic ideal of a Nova Cat, but we had the variant with 90 missile tubes, or the one with a ton of anti-infantry guns for some reason. This just bores me to tears with how good it is. It is more or less worth the BV and is very consistent if this sounds interesting to you, but I wish it was more exciting.

Peri’s Rating: B is for Boring. It is also honestly insanely expensive, but I can’t give it a C in good faith because it genuinely can fight and win against a lot of the other mechs in this price range.

Insanity Rating: F, boring as fuck, insanely optimized, and probably one of the best 70 tonners in the game from a pure tonnage optimization standpoint.

Liberty’s Rating: C+: Boring, expensive and with annoyingly lined up ranges I’m not a big fan. ER PPCs and cLPLs have somewhat similar range brackets and you’re almost always going to have a better shot on the LPLs with the same overall damage. As well, putting superchargers or MASCs on 4/6 mechs is still very dumb and very expensive, stop doing it.

Conclusion

The Nova Cat is a good Loki. If you like the idea of a firepower centric mech that goes as hard as possible into being a durable weapon platform that slings insane amounts of gun out, you probably can’t do better. So many variants are completely nuts but the majority of them are actually functional and this mech can easily shit-slam nearly everything else in the game in a 1v1 brawl. I love him and I need to get more of them.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.