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Usually you group your weapons before you start a mission, though you can change your groups while in the game as well. After your weapons are grouped, you can determine on the fly whether to fire only a single weapon, chain your weapons together so that they fire one at a time in sequence, or fire all your weapons at once.
The last thing you do when you are in the "'Mech Lab" is go into the "Weapons Grouping" Screen. You'll notice five rows on the left labeled Weapon Group 1 through 5 and to the right the Ungrouped weapons column.
Weapons in the Ungrouped column can be moved into any of the Weapon Groups on the right by first selecting the Weapons Group with the left mouse button. The selected Weapons Group will highlight to indicate that it is ready to take weapons. Double left-click on any weapon in the Ungrouped weapons column to move it into the chosen Weapons Group.
To move weapons out of a Weapons group and into the Ungrouped weapons column, simply double left-click on the weapon you want to move. You do not have to select a Weapon Group first to remove a weapon from the group.
Note that grouping and ungrouping weapons does not remove or add them to your 'Mech. You're only providing fire groups for the weapons you have previously chosen.
In the game itself, groups can be selected in many ways. On the keyboard, you can go directly to a group by pressing SHIFT+F1 through SHIFT+F5. You can also page through the groups via the LEFT and RIGHT BRACKET keys ("[" and "]"). On the joystick, button 3 will page through your weapon groups.
Use the BACKSLASH (\) key to toggle among single fire, chain fire, and group fire link settings. Your 'Mech computer will tell you which setting you are in.
In the upper right corner of your HUD is the Weapons Display panel. The grouping and linking information is displayed to the right of this panel. Groups are indicated by yellow brackets. Group 1 is at the top, Group 2 is next, and so on. The currently selected group is indicated by one or more red triangles that point to the weapons in the current group.
Your linking status is indicated by red triangles. In single-fire mode, only one red triangle shows, and points to the weapon that you are going to fire. In chain-fire mode, there will be one filled-in triangle in the group, indicating the currently selected weapon, and the rest will be outlined. Every time you pull the trigger, the next weapon in the list will become the selected weapon. When the last weapon has fired, the first weapon in the group is automatically selected again. If all triangles are filled, then every weapon in the group will fire when you pull the trigger.
Finally, you can fire every weapon on your 'Mech at once, regardless of groups, by pressing the keypad ENTER key. This is called an Alpha strike.
Be careful with Alpha strikes or group-firing of weapons. If you are using a lot of energy weapons like lasers or PPCs, you could spike your heat beyond the capacity of your heatsinks to dissipate. This is usually quite disastrous.
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