[quote=@Krayzikk]
Truthfully, my familiarity with Mechwarrior is a little lacking so I couldn't answer that off the top of my head. How do they work?
[/quote]

JumpJets are intense short-burn thrusters that allow Battlemechs to "jump" through the air while inheriting horizontal momentum. sometimes they're able to vector thrust to aim for a landing spot, other times it's a blind leap and if you overshoot, that's it.

other uses are to slow falls to within safe(er) speeds, and to "poptart", or jump into the air to scout the surrounding area and/or to fire weapons from unexpected angles. the latter part is likely an unintended side-effect of making a glorified tank-combat game out of Battletech, but what can you do?