As for indie games, Phantom Brigade is still in development, but is looking like a neato turn based mech game.
Also Into the Breach has stompy robots vs bugs, and is very low spec.
McGibs on
+5
OctoberRavenPlays fighting games for the storySkyeline Hotel Apartment 4ARegistered Userregular
edited January 2019
MechCommander is basically abandonware right? That should work. Thanks.
Hopefully I can play BattleTech when I finally get a chance to upgrade. It's currently one of the few games my laptop can't run that I'm aware of but I'm sure Cyberpunk 2077 will end up on that list too.
Actually on the subject of alternatives, is there a good mech piloting game available that has a single player campaign? I like MechWarrior Online's gameplay... but I'm not too fond of the online-only part.
OctoberRaven on
Currently Most Hype For: VTMB2, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, Alan Wake 2 (Wake Harder)Currently Playin: Guilty Gear XX AC+R, Gat Out Of Hell
So, if you don't mind an older mech strategy game, there's also Metal Fatigue. Bonus points: you get to customize the mechs with mech limbs that you salvage (if I'm remembering it correctly).
As for single-player mech piloting games, there's Titanfall 2.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
So, if you don't mind an older mech strategy game, there's also Metal Fatigue. Bonus points: you get to customize the mechs with mech limbs that you salvage (if I'm remembering it correctly).
As for single-player mech piloting games, there's Titanfall 2.
You could salvage everything, so you could build a super shooty mech with a gun torso from one faction and arms from another, or a fully CC based one with katana/axe arms and a jump jet torso
0
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
How viable is using a Grasshopper like an oversized Firestarter?
Here's what I'm looking at right now:
60 heat damage should be enough to shut down any heavier mech that has fired its weapons once or twice in the last two turns, and 6 medium lasers + an SRM4 should let them know they've been nudged besides. Then everyone else can make called shots on the now-disabled mech without having to use resolve...or at least that's the hope.
Or go max armor and drop a medium laser and a pair of heatsinks.
I think someone used the flamers early on playing the game. They discovered that flamers only had like 3 shots or something like that. Not sure how that is now or if that matters any.
I think someone used the flamers early on playing the game. They discovered that flamers only had like 3 shots or something like that. Not sure how that is now or if that matters any.
They've got 4 shots. But if I can get mods working again, there's a 24 shot mod to flamers...
MechCommander is basically abandonware right? That should work. Thanks.
Hopefully I can play BattleTech when I finally get a chance to upgrade. It's currently one of the few games my laptop can't run that I'm aware of but I'm sure Cyberpunk 2077 will end up on that list too.
Actually on the subject of alternatives, is there a good mech piloting game available that has a single player campaign? I like MechWarrior Online's gameplay... but I'm not too fond of the online-only part.
If you want mech strategy, Into the Breach is fantastic. Though I suppose it feels more like a puzzle game at times, and it's more "mechs vs giant monsters" than pure mechs.
As for mech piloting, MW4: Mercs was released for free at some point in the past. Not sure what its status is now.
There's also MechCommander Omnitech, which is a standalone mod for MechCommander 2 that doesn't need the original game.
In my battletech experience, flamers were great for forcing big damage mechs to take a round or two off from alpha strikes. Could be valuable when punching up in difficulty, but most of the time I'd rather have the damage.
0
SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
Oooof. Trying out a WHM-6R for the first time. Gauss Rifles are satisfying but have a bit of a learning curve on them.
In the basic game I definitely used a Grasshopper like an oversized firestarter (and it was very viable all the way to the end game), but my build was medium lasers and 6 MGs.
Btw, you want to remove that headmounted SRM and replace it with a decent cockpit and more torso armor.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
What is everyone's opinion of Jarls' list? Or more generally how accurate do you think that match score is for determining someones contribution toward winning?
Oooof. Trying out a WHM-6R for the first time. Gauss Rifles are satisfying but have a bit of a learning curve on them.
Yeah, but once you get the spin up time dialed in, it gets a lot easier. I don't think I'll ever be the gauss surgeon Baradul is though.
Seriously. Baradul just has insane accuracy with anything he uses. How the hell he manages to be super accurate when his arms are unlocked AND he's using both one set of arm mounted and one set of torso mounted weapons....witchcraft.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I’d hesitate to use it in QP because it becomes easy to say “we lost because we had this person on the team” rather than looking at what your own mistakes might have been.
Oooof. Trying out a WHM-6R for the first time. Gauss Rifles are satisfying but have a bit of a learning curve on them.
Yeah, but once you get the spin up time dialed in, it gets a lot easier. I don't think I'll ever be the gauss surgeon Baradul is though.
Seriously. Baradul just has insane accuracy with anything he uses. How the hell he manages to be super accurate when his arms are unlocked AND he's using both one set of arm mounted and one set of torso mounted weapons....witchcraft.
When accuracy is needed, he'll hold the arm-lock key.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
Oooof. Trying out a WHM-6R for the first time. Gauss Rifles are satisfying but have a bit of a learning curve on them.
Yeah, but once you get the spin up time dialed in, it gets a lot easier. I don't think I'll ever be the gauss surgeon Baradul is though.
Seriously. Baradul just has insane accuracy with anything he uses. How the hell he manages to be super accurate when his arms are unlocked AND he's using both one set of arm mounted and one set of torso mounted weapons....witchcraft.
I watch him a lot and am regularly astounded at the damage numbers he can put out, even in light mechs he seems to average 700-800 damage per game. Watching him fire a perfectly timed MRM salvo while dropping behind cover will never cease to amaze me. His position and heat management skills are top flight stuff.
Also. Matchscore measures how active someone is, not how much they helped the team to win. Sometimes I've seen someone turn the game and get 200 points....and sometimes someone manages to get a great score, rack up 800 damage but they're also the reason our team lost since they didn't participate in the team tactic instead of focusing on surviving as long as possible and racking up as much damage as possible.
It's worst with lights and assaults, because it only gives minimal credits towards cohesion and none for armor sharing, and it doesn't measure (or desperately undervalue) scouting, disruption and breaking up enemy cohesion.
The Pirahna is frequently less valuable in the field than the Raven or Arctic Cheetah, but do you see that in the match score?
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Yeah as an almost exclusive light player, there's been many a time I took my spider on a scenic tour of the enemy firing line, harassed the shit out of their LRM boats, and pulled almost the entire team's attention long enough for my team to lay waste to their line. End score---> 50 dmg, miserable points, little cash and moderate XP.
But then you watch Baradul and he can do those things and still put out solid to great damage, though on lights a lot of that seems to be solid artillery strikes.
Baradul might be a useful example, because he's in the top 100 of Jarls' list?
My first interpretation is that on individual games it doesn't tell you a whole lot, but used as an average across many games it probably gives a pretty fair assessment of the quality of a player. I feel pretty confident that someone whose average match score puts them in the top 80th percentile is going to be noticeably better than someone who shows up in the bottom 20th.
Jarl’s does weight ranks by weight class, to attempt to compensate for lights and mediums scoring a bit lower
Overall it’s a little silly, because match score is only relatively loosely correlated with “things that help the team win.” There are definitely ways to game it, and I actually do think that jarls and the number of match score related event rewards have warped the in game meta a bit. Like LRMs still aren’t really very good (for example), but you can farm a lot of damage and therefore match score with them
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
If you only play solo-queque the most accurate measurement of your skill is your W/L ratio. Over a sufficient average of games the quality of your teammates will average out and the deciding factor will be your ability to leverage matches.
Of course here Jarl's list is still useless since the reason why [Emp] and [228] top the lists is because they always play with a group of above average players.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I usually play my Medium mechs at the edges of the skirmish, looking for angles to approach/disrupt. Sometimes I end up locked/NARC'd and evaporated by LRMs before I get to see anyone.
Other times I run across 2-4 enemies and turn to notice my whole team has gone the other direction.
But it works out well just often enough that I never learn.
MechCommander is basically abandonware right? That should work. Thanks.
Hopefully I can play BattleTech when I finally get a chance to upgrade. It's currently one of the few games my laptop can't run that I'm aware of but I'm sure Cyberpunk 2077 will end up on that list too.
Actually on the subject of alternatives, is there a good mech piloting game available that has a single player campaign? I like MechWarrior Online's gameplay... but I'm not too fond of the online-only part.
If you want mech strategy, Into the Breach is fantastic. Though I suppose it feels more like a puzzle game at times, and it's more "mechs vs giant monsters" than pure mechs.
As for mech piloting, MW4: Mercs was released for free at some point in the past. Not sure what its status is now.
There's also MechCommander Omnitech, which is a standalone mod for MechCommander 2 that doesn't need the original game.
@OctoberRaven, there is also Bionic Dues. It is super homely, but under the hood is a fantastic mech game/roguelite mashup. You have four mechs and the ability to configure them as you will between missions. On missions, you are a lone pilot but you can switch to another one of your mechs at the cost of one turn (or if you die).
Configuration is super deep. When I first played I got a rare drop grenade launcher and I started modifying it to up the blast radius. I accidentally shipped out into a mission where I could not fire it far enough not to be in the blast radius and ended up killing myself. Lots of flexibility, and lots of interesting trade offs. The story arc (blunting the tip of a robot invasion building up to a final epic battle to save one human city) is interesting, and the mission selection forces hard choices about what strategy to pursue.
It doesn't have heat management or facing or fielding more than one mech at a time. So it's certainly no one-for-one substitute for BATTLETECH. But it's a terrific game with a lot of tight, interlocking gameplay loops, and it's easy to overlook because the graphics are kind of unappealing.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Into the Breach really didn't scratch the "giant robot game" itch for me. The tactical side is pretty thin and the customization is meh, and the game is mostly just about figuring out how to exploit status effects over anything else.
It's not bad, it's just not like, say, the better Front Mission games or anything like that.
Into the Breach is wonderful, but yeah. It plays more like a puzzle game on the harder levels because with 100% information and no RNG you really have to sequence everything just right to get the best outcome. And with energy to power up skills/abilities so limited, that aspect of the game felt more like a stingy RPG than a full mech game. Still wonderful, though.
Also. Matchscore measures how active someone is, not how much they helped the team to win.
Match score is interesting because in stomps that favored your team, conservative players who can clutch out longer matches may have less score accrued in the time it took for the match to finish because they're favoring safer shots and setting up windows and peeking over just yoloing and joining a nascar overrun or the like.
After watching TTB's latest video with the Annihilator, I felt somewhat inspired to do something similar with the Mauler.
Enter the MAL-MX90. One less LB-5X but a couple of medium lasers keep me in the fight for longer. Haven't gotten it on the field yet but it was silly on the testing grounds.
Into the Breach really didn't scratch the "giant robot game" itch for me. The tactical side is pretty thin and the customization is meh, and the game is mostly just about figuring out how to exploit status effects over anything else.
It's not bad, it's just not like, say, the better Front Mission games or anything like that.
Every time someone brings up front mission I have flashback to how hard 4 was took me forever to beat it
After watching TTB's latest video with the Annihilator, I felt somewhat inspired to do something similar with the Mauler.
Enter the MAL-MX90. One less LB-5X but a couple of medium lasers keep me in the fight for longer. Haven't gotten it on the field yet but it was silly on the testing grounds.
Ended up not working out, overall damage was too low so people would just tank it and try to shoot out torsos, which since I didn't have ANH level armor didn't last long enough. Ended up swapping to the TTB version of the AC/2+RAC/2 build and did a lot better.
But holy shit, the people abusing the RAC macro tonight.
TL;DW version is that it's possible to set up a macro to fire RACs super efficiently. You'll kill targets in less time with less heat and jam build up.
Posts
If that doesnt run on a potato, I don't know what will.
As for indie games, Phantom Brigade is still in development, but is looking like a neato turn based mech game.
Also Into the Breach has stompy robots vs bugs, and is very low spec.
Hopefully I can play BattleTech when I finally get a chance to upgrade. It's currently one of the few games my laptop can't run that I'm aware of but I'm sure Cyberpunk 2077 will end up on that list too.
Actually on the subject of alternatives, is there a good mech piloting game available that has a single player campaign? I like MechWarrior Online's gameplay... but I'm not too fond of the online-only part.
As for single-player mech piloting games, there's Titanfall 2.
You could salvage everything, so you could build a super shooty mech with a gun torso from one faction and arms from another, or a fully CC based one with katana/axe arms and a jump jet torso
Here's what I'm looking at right now:
60 heat damage should be enough to shut down any heavier mech that has fired its weapons once or twice in the last two turns, and 6 medium lasers + an SRM4 should let them know they've been nudged besides. Then everyone else can make called shots on the now-disabled mech without having to use resolve...or at least that's the hope.
Or go max armor and drop a medium laser and a pair of heatsinks.
Steam: betsuni7
They've got 4 shots. But if I can get mods working again, there's a 24 shot mod to flamers...
If you want mech strategy, Into the Breach is fantastic. Though I suppose it feels more like a puzzle game at times, and it's more "mechs vs giant monsters" than pure mechs.
As for mech piloting, MW4: Mercs was released for free at some point in the past. Not sure what its status is now.
There's also MechCommander Omnitech, which is a standalone mod for MechCommander 2 that doesn't need the original game.
Btw, you want to remove that headmounted SRM and replace it with a decent cockpit and more torso armor.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Yeah, but once you get the spin up time dialed in, it gets a lot easier. I don't think I'll ever be the gauss surgeon Baradul is though.
It’s amazing the shots you can hit once you’ve legged a few Piranhas.
Seriously. Baradul just has insane accuracy with anything he uses. How the hell he manages to be super accurate when his arms are unlocked AND he's using both one set of arm mounted and one set of torso mounted weapons....witchcraft.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
When accuracy is needed, he'll hold the arm-lock key.
I watch him a lot and am regularly astounded at the damage numbers he can put out, even in light mechs he seems to average 700-800 damage per game. Watching him fire a perfectly timed MRM salvo while dropping behind cover will never cease to amaze me. His position and heat management skills are top flight stuff.
It's worst with lights and assaults, because it only gives minimal credits towards cohesion and none for armor sharing, and it doesn't measure (or desperately undervalue) scouting, disruption and breaking up enemy cohesion.
The Pirahna is frequently less valuable in the field than the Raven or Arctic Cheetah, but do you see that in the match score?
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
But then you watch Baradul and he can do those things and still put out solid to great damage, though on lights a lot of that seems to be solid artillery strikes.
My first interpretation is that on individual games it doesn't tell you a whole lot, but used as an average across many games it probably gives a pretty fair assessment of the quality of a player. I feel pretty confident that someone whose average match score puts them in the top 80th percentile is going to be noticeably better than someone who shows up in the bottom 20th.
Overall it’s a little silly, because match score is only relatively loosely correlated with “things that help the team win.” There are definitely ways to game it, and I actually do think that jarls and the number of match score related event rewards have warped the in game meta a bit. Like LRMs still aren’t really very good (for example), but you can farm a lot of damage and therefore match score with them
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Of course here Jarl's list is still useless since the reason why [Emp] and [228] top the lists is because they always play with a group of above average players.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Other times I run across 2-4 enemies and turn to notice my whole team has gone the other direction.
But it works out well just often enough that I never learn.
KDR: .99
I don't think I could be any more dead center if I tried.
@OctoberRaven, there is also Bionic Dues. It is super homely, but under the hood is a fantastic mech game/roguelite mashup. You have four mechs and the ability to configure them as you will between missions. On missions, you are a lone pilot but you can switch to another one of your mechs at the cost of one turn (or if you die).
Configuration is super deep. When I first played I got a rare drop grenade launcher and I started modifying it to up the blast radius. I accidentally shipped out into a mission where I could not fire it far enough not to be in the blast radius and ended up killing myself.
It doesn't have heat management or facing or fielding more than one mech at a time. So it's certainly no one-for-one substitute for BATTLETECH. But it's a terrific game with a lot of tight, interlocking gameplay loops, and it's easy to overlook because the graphics are kind of unappealing.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
It's not bad, it's just not like, say, the better Front Mission games or anything like that.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
I get the bug that I click on fire, and nothing ever happens, all the time now.
Any Idea why?
Enter the MAL-MX90. One less LB-5X but a couple of medium lasers keep me in the fight for longer. Haven't gotten it on the field yet but it was silly on the testing grounds.
Every time someone brings up front mission I have flashback to how hard 4 was took me forever to beat it
Pretty sure this is the best month I've had in KDR. My W/L ratio may be the worst I've ever had.
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
Ended up not working out, overall damage was too low so people would just tank it and try to shoot out torsos, which since I didn't have ANH level armor didn't last long enough. Ended up swapping to the TTB version of the AC/2+RAC/2 build and did a lot better.
But holy shit, the people abusing the RAC macro tonight.
TL;DW version is that it's possible to set up a macro to fire RACs super efficiently. You'll kill targets in less time with less heat and jam build up.