I appreciate the vote of confidence of putting me in a Marauder!
We'll just have to say that your version of me is vastly more competent than the real-life version. 🙃
Unless he is in a light, then he's a god.
But one of the minor gods, lost in a vast pantheon of other more important deities. Y'know, the kind that are like the "God of Not Getting Papercuts" or something.
0
H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
Handsome CostanzaAsk me about 8bitdoRIP Iwata-sanRegistered Userregular
edited April 2020
Those Mechwarrior 5 multi-mission contracts are no joke. The first two destroyed or otherwise rendered ineffective every single heavy or medium mech I had and incapacitated all 3 of my pilots (killing one). Now I'm in a machine gun variant Locust by myself trying to solo this final defense mission XD.
Edit: that reminds me it'd be nice if there was an ability (perhaps make it a special character trait of some pilots) to force/allow them to pilot a mech while injured. To balance it out you could debuff their stats and make it practically a guarantee that they will be killed if they are incapacitated again.
Those Mechwarrior 5 multi-mission contracts are no joke. The first two destroyed or otherwise rendered ineffective every single heavy or medium mech I had and incapacitated all 3 of my pilots (killing one). Now I'm in a machine gun variant Locust by myself trying to solo this final defense mission XD.
Edit: that reminds me it'd be nice if there was an ability (perhaps make it a special character trait of some pilots) to force/allow them to pilot a mech while injured. To balance it out you could debuff their stats and make it practically a guarantee that they will be killed if they are incapacitated again.
Fun thing about those multi-mission contracts: depending on the extent of the damage done to the mechs in the first mission, you can have at least some of them repaired and available again for the third mission if you repair them at the end of that first mission.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
I appreciate the vote of confidence of putting me in a Marauder!
We'll just have to say that your version of me is vastly more competent than the real-life version. 🙃
Unless he is in a light, then he's a god.
But one of the minor gods, lost in a vast pantheon of other more important deities. Y'know, the kind that are like the "God of Not Getting Papercuts" or something.
So for Battlemech, is there a suggested rough loadout of mech types/sizes that you should be working towards? FWIW I'm in the campaign immediately after
The Ice moon base thing where we get some SLDF mechs
. I have a 55ton med (largest of med class) for my scout, 2 heavies (one SRM/ML loadout, the other is my LRM boat), and one Assault (as I have no others! It's a SRM/ML/MG tank). I'm thinking that I want to always keep the scout in a medium, but i'm not sure if I should be running multiple assaults with it, or multiple heavies and the one assault.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Battletech unfortunately is structured such that the optimal play is always to go for the maximum effective tonnage available to you at any particular moment, bar game-changers like the Marauder.
It is quite possible (and arguably more fun) to play suboptimally and run around in mediums in the heavy era, or heavies in the assault era.
IMO, go with what's working for you and don't worry about optimal play. If you're having trouble, then worry about more optimal loadouts and drop configurations.
So for Battlemech, is there a suggested rough loadout of mech types/sizes that you should be working towards? FWIW I'm in the campaign immediately after
The Ice moon base thing where we get some SLDF mechs
. I have a 55ton med (largest of med class) for my scout, 2 heavies (one SRM/ML loadout, the other is my LRM boat), and one Assault (as I have no others! It's a SRM/ML/MG tank). I'm thinking that I want to always keep the scout in a medium, but i'm not sure if I should be running multiple assaults with it, or multiple heavies and the one assault.
For the most part in BT, the heavier the better.
There are exceptions, like the target acquisition mission type which usually requires some speed or missions that gate availability behind minimum mech weights or a minimum lance type. Also mechs at the top of weight band are often better than ones at the bottom of the next band. I would almost always take a Shadowhawk or Wolverine over a Dragon in BT, for example.
And it's possible to run lighter mechs into the endgame (esp. if you are able to score some of the SLDF variants of those mechs with the insane 60 heat per turn for free.)
But generally, even after some balancing to try to make lights more viable into the late game, the path of least resistance is to run your heaviest mechs.
You can finish the campaign with 4 lights (though that's a bit of a hard mode) or 4 assaults or anything in between. I'd keep more than four mechs ready though, easier to test like that what works and what doesn't for you. Also different mechs are optimal for different terrain and missions so having more than four options is always good.
So for Battlemech, is there a suggested rough loadout of mech types/sizes that you should be working towards? FWIW I'm in the campaign immediately after
The Ice moon base thing where we get some SLDF mechs
. I have a 55ton med (largest of med class) for my scout, 2 heavies (one SRM/ML loadout, the other is my LRM boat), and one Assault (as I have no others! It's a SRM/ML/MG tank). I'm thinking that I want to always keep the scout in a medium, but i'm not sure if I should be running multiple assaults with it, or multiple heavies and the one assault.
For the most part in BT, the heavier the better.
There are exceptions, like the target acquisition mission type which usually requires some speed or missions that gate availability behind minimum mech weights or a minimum lance type. Also mechs at the top of weight band are often better than ones at the bottom of the next band. I would almost always take a Shadowhawk or Wolverine over a Dragon in BT, for example.
And it's possible to run lighter mechs into the endgame (esp. if you are able to score some of the SLDF variants of those mechs with the insane 60 heat per turn for free.)
But generally, even after some balancing to try to make lights more viable into the late game, the path of resistance is to run your heaviest mechs.
Interesting - I very much like having a fast scout who can spot targets so I can plan out attack routes early, as well as for sensor locking so my LRMS can soften them up before they ever see me.
And yeah, I actually stored an 80t asssault I got (I forget what) as my 65ton Catapult does more damage and isn't meant to be seen/hit until late in a skirmish anyway. That's why I was staying at 55t for the medium, trying to stay at that upper bound.
So asssuming you can field it, and no mission restrictions, your ideal lance is 4 assaults?
Semi-related, I'm trying to run med-long range (depending on what i can mount) scout mech, 2 shorter range mechs (one with med-short, one with at least one long range option), and then a straight long range missle boat with some support MLs if something gets close. Is there a more optimal lance setup?
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Other than Target Acquisition, my ideal is 4 assaults or 2 assaults and 2 marauders. For target acquisition, there are versions that aren’t doable unless you field mediums.
0
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
But again, don’t worry about optimal, because that gets boring quick unless you like roflstomps that all have the same sequencing and feel.
Yeah, with less than 100 days to go in my career, I'm happily on 3 assaults and a Marauder. I'd say that's generally ideal.
EDIT: I did lose a lunar ambush convoy mission with this loadout where even running flat out from turn one wasn't fast enough to even get line of sight/sensor lock on the convoy.
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Actually I guess that's true. There's one (Badlands biome?) convoy assault where you need to go to where the convoy will be in order to catch them in time. Sounds like there's similar for the Lunar biome.
Are urban environments from the DLC just for specific flashpoints or something? I've got 150 days left on this career and I haven't set foot in a single city.
0
Handsome CostanzaAsk me about 8bitdoRIP Iwata-sanRegistered Userregular
Those Mechwarrior 5 multi-mission contracts are no joke. The first two destroyed or otherwise rendered ineffective every single heavy or medium mech I had and incapacitated all 3 of my pilots (killing one). Now I'm in a machine gun variant Locust by myself trying to solo this final defense mission XD.
Edit: that reminds me it'd be nice if there was an ability (perhaps make it a special character trait of some pilots) to force/allow them to pilot a mech while injured. To balance it out you could debuff their stats and make it practically a guarantee that they will be killed if they are incapacitated again.
Fun thing about those multi-mission contracts: depending on the extent of the damage done to the mechs in the first mission, you can have at least some of them repaired and available again for the third mission if you repair them at the end of that first mission.
FML wish I had known tha... wait.. I can savescum! Hooray!
Edit2: although I've literally managed to take out 20 of the 22 attackers with my locust... problem is the last two are always dual assassins and by that point my torso is always in the red and 1 or 2 shots away from being cored... maybe I should just go back and redo it.
Are urban environments from the DLC just for specific flashpoints or something? I've got 150 days left on this career and I haven't set foot in a single city.
Filter the map by biome and select Urban to find planets with urban maps. Most are in the top quarter of the map. Though maps are still generated randomly within the biome set for the planet, so not every mission on an urban planet is guaranteed to have an urban map.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
+1
NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
You guys talking up there got me thinking about how the game trends once you get past the early game into the mid- and late-games, and...
Is there a mod that tries to tone down the fucking "Your Lance vs. Full Companies" situations that routinely start showing up after the early game? Basically, a mod that rebalances the game to Lance vs. Lance(+) regardless of the situation? I think we've all basically agreed that HBS opted to balance a bad-to-barely-competent AI with giving it more numbers as the game progresses, but I'd love to do that low-tech/no-supertech playthrough with missions that are pitting me against forces that are anywhere near a fair fight.
I'm surmising, but I feel like once I give up some of the supertech toys, I'mma have a rough time when my 3025-era lance starts going up against nominally-similar but much larger forces.
Stomping up a wooded hill to take some base somewhere, we come into sensor range to find a... Bullshark?! Yikes. It's standing on the highest point of land ready to rain down autocannon fire on us. It is perfectly positioned, and supported by heavy turrets. The folks in the base should feel preeeety comfy that they are well protected.
Until @SiliconStew jumps into a patch of woods and snipes the head out of the Bullshark before it even gets to fire a shot.
You guys talking up there got me thinking about how the game trends once you get past the early game into the mid- and late-games, and...
Is there a mod that tries to tone down the fucking "Your Lance vs. Full Companies" situations that routinely start showing up after the early game? Basically, a mod that rebalances the game to Lance vs. Lance(+) regardless of the situation? I think we've all basically agreed that HBS opted to balance a bad-to-barely-competent AI with giving it more numbers as the game progresses, but I'd love to do that low-tech/no-supertech playthrough with missions that are pitting me against forces that are anywhere near a fair fight.
I'm surmising, but I feel like once I give up some of the supertech toys, I'mma have a rough time when my 3025-era lance starts going up against nominally-similar but much larger forces.
Which supertech toys are you talking about? People did fine with 1:3 odds before Heavy Metal so if it is just the DLC guns those aren't required to win. Most lostech used to suck before they buffed them so those aren't needed either. If you mean refusing to use any +-gear whatsoever then it gets a bit trickier but it's still 100% doable as long as your mech loadouts are otherwise optimized and you have good pilots. Totally stock mechs vs a company of AI stock mechs would be a true challenge since even most of the fairly good stock builds lack exactly the sort of endurance in both armor and heat management that the player needs to fight those odds.
And no, I haven't heard of any mods that reduce enemy numbers down to ~lance since that'd be really hard to make a challenge for the player.
0
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
edited April 2020
Yeah, it would suck to be the opfor on the lategame player lances.
Three lances of assaults, backed by 4 turrets defending an installation. Even a Fortress-class Dropship would hesitate to engage that much firepower.
And then a lonely Leopard flits in nap-of-the-earth. A touch and go scout run? No, it drops 4 mechs on the field. Just a probe. Sensors suggests a single heavy lance--either a mix of heavies and assaults or a bunch of light assaults. No problem. Heavy for a probe, but if they want to lose 4 valuable mechs in a probe, that's their problem.
Then, they pop over the ridgeline within sensor range, but outside of engagement range and before you've had a chance to even reposition your defenders, your first King Crab crashes to the ground, its cockpit aflame from the heat of the projectile that vaporized the warrior within.
You desperately reposition to meet the axis of this unexpected threat. They got lucky with their opening salvo, and you still have 11 mechs backed by turrets. They can't possibly stand up to that much firepower.
Except they do.
Every turn, 1 or 2 mechs die to heatshots at long range from one or both of the Marauders while the pair of Atlases stomp inexorably forward, soaking every alpha-strike you desperately pour into them. The Atlases don't even bother firing back, except for maybe one laser, just to let you know they haven't forgotten about you.
5 turns in, your second lance is face-first in the dirt with smoke pouring from the hole where an ace mechwarrior lived just moments ago. Both Marauders cease fire, heat shimmering from their chassis. A reprieve? Have they finally run out of ammunition?
Both Atlases cut loose with everything they have. Gauss rifles, ER Large Lases, and Medium Laser++ tear into your third lance of assaults, blowing off limbs and sending two more mechwarriors to Valhalla.
You scream "How are they doing this?!" as the Marauders lock their cannons onto your cockpit...
Using Marauders is basically cheating though. I have no idea what they were thinking when they released them with that chassis perk.
Even without Marauders, fit enough UAC/2++s and medium laser++ on anything, and you'll have better than even odds of decapitating anything within 270m. If you get an Atlas II, it's got enough heatsinking to just mount a metric assload of ER weapons and do as the Marauders do with only a slightly lower chance of success.
Stomping up a wooded hill to take some base somewhere, we come into sensor range to find a... Bullshark?! Yikes. It's standing on the highest point of land ready to rain down autocannon fire on us. It is perfectly positioned, and supported by heavy turrets. The folks in the base should feel preeeety comfy that they are well protected.
Until @SiliconStew jumps into a patch of woods and snipes the head out of the Bullshark before it even gets to fire a shot.
Unfair!
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Are urban environments from the DLC just for specific flashpoints or something? I've got 150 days left on this career and I haven't set foot in a single city.
I've seen them a lot. Might be which planets you go to?
Those Mechwarrior 5 multi-mission contracts are no joke. The first two destroyed or otherwise rendered ineffective every single heavy or medium mech I had and incapacitated all 3 of my pilots (killing one). Now I'm in a machine gun variant Locust by myself trying to solo this final defense mission XD.
Edit: that reminds me it'd be nice if there was an ability (perhaps make it a special character trait of some pilots) to force/allow them to pilot a mech while injured. To balance it out you could debuff their stats and make it practically a guarantee that they will be killed if they are incapacitated again.
In addition to the other advise already given* you can always bail on the third mission and not take a huge relative penalty. You still net positive reputation for the group you did the mission for (but not positive reputation in total)
*Specifically every mission has a "duration" and so you can make any repairs at or under the mission duration without being unable to start the next mission with that mech.
0
NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
edited April 2020
I guess here's my vague, notional thinking. I'd be trying to get to something like a "3025 Tabletop-Like Experience":
-"Canon" weapons only, but starting with LowTech so things like ER/Pulse/Streak/etc. are meaningfully rare and present an interesting choice/risk if you get one.
--Therefore No +, ++, or +++ Equipment
-No non-tabletop equipment. No Arm/Leg/Gyro/Cockpit/etc. mods. Again, starting with LowTech, so the discovery of a Double Heat Sink is now basically a Woo Hoo moment.
-No using 'Mechs with big/crazy Quirks (unless there's a way to mod them out, or mod in the 'Mechs without the quirks). Marauder, I'm looking at you.
-No game-breaking pilot skills? This is where things get weird, right? I know that AI pilots have skills, which evens it out, but it's clear to me that Bulwark is borderline must-have (I gave it to EVERY pilot on my last playthrough) and something like Coolant Vent is virtually always useful and Very Good. I don't know what to do about Sensor Lock. Multi-Target, Breaching Shot, Sure Footing, Ace Pilot, and Master Tactician seem fine and all relatively lower in power level.
-No command abilities? I feel like by the end of my last playthrough I was relying on Called Shots with Tactics 10 pilots to make up the numbers difference between me and the OpFors, and rather see the on-the-ground lineups be closer to balanced so I didn't feel like I needed that crutch. More than anything, if I take out all that stuff above, not balancing appropriately-sized OpFors against my force means I'd have to lean even more on command abilities/Called Shots, and that doesn't sound fun.
In the end, after doing this thought experiment...would this make the game any less fun? I don't think it would for me, because I reaaaaally like the baseline "moving 'Mechs on a map and shooting stuff" gameplay. I know I wouldn't miss things like the +/++/+++ gear, or any of the equipment mods, or the handful of really OP 'Mech quirks. But if in removing those things, I'm still thrown up against Company+ forces with no crutch...
Well, I'm not a masochist. I play for fun, and a little challenge. I don't want to have to agonize over Every. Single. Click. to make sure it's perfectly played just to survive.
Using Marauders is basically cheating though. I have no idea what they were thinking when they released them with that chassis perk.
Even without Marauders, fit enough UAC/2++s and medium laser++ on anything, and you'll have better than even odds of decapitating anything within 270m. If you get an Atlas II, it's got enough heatsinking to just mount a metric assload of ER weapons and do as the Marauders do with only a slightly lower chance of success.
That's true and getting an Atlas II is fairly trivial these days if you go with 3 mech pieces, but it still isn't quite as ridiculous as Marauder's perk (which gives +10% damage reduction too to add to the utter cheesiness of it all). That just shows how broken Tactics 9 bonus is in the first place, not that Marauders are somehow ok. If Tac9 gave you about 10% chance to hit the head and then Marauder would raise that to 15%, that'd be far more reasonable IMO.
It's a moddable single-player sandbox game with very modular difficulty sliders though, so anybody who hates the vanilla balance can switch to a modpack or choose to challenge themselves in some other way (like a light mechs only run). I'm just a little sad that any tactics discussions here and in r/battletechgame are basically "get a Marauder, headshot everything - or get an Annihilator, UAC salvo one-shot enemy mechs" etc.
You guys talking up there got me thinking about how the game trends once you get past the early game into the mid- and late-games, and...
Is there a mod that tries to tone down the fucking "Your Lance vs. Full Companies" situations that routinely start showing up after the early game? Basically, a mod that rebalances the game to Lance vs. Lance(+) regardless of the situation? I think we've all basically agreed that HBS opted to balance a bad-to-barely-competent AI with giving it more numbers as the game progresses, but I'd love to do that low-tech/no-supertech playthrough with missions that are pitting me against forces that are anywhere near a fair fight.
I'm surmising, but I feel like once I give up some of the supertech toys, I'mma have a rough time when my 3025-era lance starts going up against nominally-similar but much larger forces.
Which supertech toys are you talking about? People did fine with 1:3 odds before Heavy Metal so if it is just the DLC guns those aren't required to win. Most lostech used to suck before they buffed them so those aren't needed either. If you mean refusing to use any +-gear whatsoever then it gets a bit trickier but it's still 100% doable as long as your mech loadouts are otherwise optimized and you have good pilots. Totally stock mechs vs a company of AI stock mechs would be a true challenge since even most of the fairly good stock builds lack exactly the sort of endurance in both armor and heat management that the player needs to fight those odds.
And no, I haven't heard of any mods that reduce enemy numbers down to ~lance since that'd be really hard to make a challenge for the player.
I think the AI is decent. It's stock mech loadouts that put it at a disadvantage vs. the player. The canonical configurations of a lot of mechs are mostly boneheaded and/or underpowered. Player lances just pack a lot more effective firepower.
I guess here's my vague, notional thinking. I'd be trying to get to something like a "3025 Tabletop-Like Experience":
-"Canon" weapons only, but starting with LowTech so things like ER/Pulse/Streak/etc. are meaningfully rare and present an interesting choice/risk if you get one.
--Therefore No +, ++, or +++ Equipment
-No non-tabletop equipment. No Arm/Leg/Gyro/Cockpit/etc. mods. Again, starting with LowTech, so the discovery of a Double Heat Sink is now basically a Woo Hoo moment.
-No using 'Mechs with big/crazy Quirks (unless there's a way to mod them out, or mod in the 'Mechs without the quirks). Marauder, I'm looking at you.
-No game-breaking pilot skills? This is where things get weird, right? I know that AI pilots have skills, which evens it out, but it's clear to me that Bulwark is borderline must-have (I gave it to EVERY pilot on my last playthrough) and something like Coolant Vent is virtually always useful and Very Good. I don't know what to do about Sensor Lock. Multi-Target, Breaching Shot, Sure Footing, Ace Pilot, and Master Tactician seem fine and all relatively lower in power level.
-No command abilities? I feel like by the end of my last playthrough I was relying on Called Shots with Tactics 10 pilots to make up the numbers difference between me and the OpFors, and rather see the on-the-ground lineups be closer to balanced so I didn't feel like I needed that crutch. More than anything, if I take out all that stuff above, not balancing appropriately-sized OpFors against my force means I'd have to lean even more on command abilities/Called Shots, and that doesn't sound fun.
In the end, after doing this thought experiment...would this make the game any less fun? I don't think it would for me, because I reaaaaally like the baseline "moving 'Mechs on a map and shooting stuff" gameplay. I know I wouldn't miss things like the +/++/+++ gear, or any of the equipment mods, or the handful of really OP 'Mech quirks. But if in removing those things, I'm still thrown up against Company+ forces with no crutch...
Well, I'm not a masochist. I play for fun, and a little challenge. I don't want to have to agonize over Every. Single. Click. to make sure it's perfectly played just to survive.
The ++ weapon and equipment mod stuff doesn't really need a mod, just don't use it and sell any you get from salvage. On my stock-only weapon run I wound up with significantly more money because of it.
Removing the quirks is an easy mod. Just remove the fixed equipment from the chassisdef files. Can even be altered mid game if you just put your mechs in storage and take them back out.
Skills are a tough thing to balance, so I don't have much suggestion there for alternatives. However, for closer to TT experience I think the pilot skills that remove minimum range penalties and increase heat tolerance should be removed entirely.
Rather than removing called shot, remove the ability from pilot progression, but add it to existing or a new TTS module. That way it's similar to the TT rules for called shots that require the mech to have a targeting computer installed to do it. Alternatively, you can tweak the morale stats in the combatgameconstants file to reduce morale gain so those abilities are used less. There are a large number of events that change morale and most are unused. For example, you could reduce the per round morale gain or change it to lose morale if you fail an objective or lose a torso section, but in the base game that's set to 0.
But the real hard work is limiting opfor size. Because the game generates those lances dynamically, you'd be doing a lot of manual work for what the "Enemy Force Strength" game setting kind of already does. It'd be really easy to add new, easier options to that pulldown in CareerDifficultySettings. But that probably won't give you the desired effect either. That is, rather than turning 2 lances of assaults into a single lance of assaults, you might wind up with 2 lances of heavies. To more accurately cut the number of lances without necessarily cutting the difficulty of those lances, you'd have to rework all the contracts or alternatively all the lancedefs in the game to do that.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
You guys talking up there got me thinking about how the game trends once you get past the early game into the mid- and late-games, and...
Is there a mod that tries to tone down the fucking "Your Lance vs. Full Companies" situations that routinely start showing up after the early game? Basically, a mod that rebalances the game to Lance vs. Lance(+) regardless of the situation? I think we've all basically agreed that HBS opted to balance a bad-to-barely-competent AI with giving it more numbers as the game progresses, but I'd love to do that low-tech/no-supertech playthrough with missions that are pitting me against forces that are anywhere near a fair fight.
I'm surmising, but I feel like once I give up some of the supertech toys, I'mma have a rough time when my 3025-era lance starts going up against nominally-similar but much larger forces.
Which supertech toys are you talking about? People did fine with 1:3 odds before Heavy Metal so if it is just the DLC guns those aren't required to win. Most lostech used to suck before they buffed them so those aren't needed either. If you mean refusing to use any +-gear whatsoever then it gets a bit trickier but it's still 100% doable as long as your mech loadouts are otherwise optimized and you have good pilots. Totally stock mechs vs a company of AI stock mechs would be a true challenge since even most of the fairly good stock builds lack exactly the sort of endurance in both armor and heat management that the player needs to fight those odds.
And no, I haven't heard of any mods that reduce enemy numbers down to ~lance since that'd be really hard to make a challenge for the player.
I think the AI is decent. It's stock mech loadouts that put it at a disadvantage vs. the player. The canonical configurations of a lot of mechs are mostly boneheaded and/or underpowered. Player lances just pack a lot more effective firepower.
Most stock loadouts aren't really boneheaded. There are a few odd loadouts that are more about lore than gameplay, but TT also had infantry and aerospace to deal with that needed a more varied weapon mix to deal with. And TT is also far more restrictive on heat tolerance than this game, so it made sense to have a spread of weapons that worked in different range bands but went unused in others because you had the tonnage but not the heatsinking. If you tried to fire as many weapons in TT as you constantly can in this game, you'd be a nearly immobile turret that couldn't hit the broad side of a barn and at constant risk of blowing yourself up.
SiliconStew on
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
+2
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Using Marauders is basically cheating though. I have no idea what they were thinking when they released them with that chassis perk.
Even without Marauders, fit enough UAC/2++s and medium laser++ on anything, and you'll have better than even odds of decapitating anything within 270m. If you get an Atlas II, it's got enough heatsinking to just mount a metric assload of ER weapons and do as the Marauders do with only a slightly lower chance of success.
That's true and getting an Atlas II is fairly trivial these days if you go with 3 mech pieces, but it still isn't quite as ridiculous as Marauder's perk (which gives +10% damage reduction too to add to the utter cheesiness of it all). That just shows how broken Tactics 9 bonus is in the first place, not that Marauders are somehow ok. If Tac9 gave you about 10% chance to hit the head and then Marauder would raise that to 15%, that'd be far more reasonable IMO.
It's a moddable single-player sandbox game with very modular difficulty sliders though, so anybody who hates the vanilla balance can switch to a modpack or choose to challenge themselves in some other way (like a light mechs only run). I'm just a little sad that any tactics discussions here and in r/battletechgame are basically "get a Marauder, headshot everything - or get an Annihilator, UAC salvo one-shot enemy mechs" etc.
That's totally fair, but that's where the meta is. Tactics get more interesting once you're not concerned with optimal play. I think I might have said something about that. Oh right:
But again, don’t worry about optimal, because that gets boring quick unless you like roflstomps that all have the same sequencing and feel.
So the discussion isn't really interesting unless we're deliberately handicapping ourselves or are in the earlier parts of the game before access to assaults, Marauders, and +++ weapons is a normal thing.
0
Handsome CostanzaAsk me about 8bitdoRIP Iwata-sanRegistered Userregular
Those Mechwarrior 5 multi-mission contracts are no joke. The first two destroyed or otherwise rendered ineffective every single heavy or medium mech I had and incapacitated all 3 of my pilots (killing one). Now I'm in a machine gun variant Locust by myself trying to solo this final defense mission XD.
Edit: that reminds me it'd be nice if there was an ability (perhaps make it a special character trait of some pilots) to force/allow them to pilot a mech while injured. To balance it out you could debuff their stats and make it practically a guarantee that they will be killed if they are incapacitated again.
Hahaaaa I did it! It took me about a thousand tries but I did it! 22 enemies, about 8 to 10 of those mechs (most of which were medium mechs) I haven't felt a sense of accomplishment like this since beating the first shrine guardian with 3 hearts in BotW.
I did it mostly by doing strafing runs, leaving the area before they could turn to shoot at me. I had 1 yellow leg left and a dark red torso at the end.
You guys talking up there got me thinking about how the game trends once you get past the early game into the mid- and late-games, and...
Is there a mod that tries to tone down the fucking "Your Lance vs. Full Companies" situations that routinely start showing up after the early game? Basically, a mod that rebalances the game to Lance vs. Lance(+) regardless of the situation? I think we've all basically agreed that HBS opted to balance a bad-to-barely-competent AI with giving it more numbers as the game progresses, but I'd love to do that low-tech/no-supertech playthrough with missions that are pitting me against forces that are anywhere near a fair fight.
I'm surmising, but I feel like once I give up some of the supertech toys, I'mma have a rough time when my 3025-era lance starts going up against nominally-similar but much larger forces.
Which supertech toys are you talking about? People did fine with 1:3 odds before Heavy Metal so if it is just the DLC guns those aren't required to win. Most lostech used to suck before they buffed them so those aren't needed either. If you mean refusing to use any +-gear whatsoever then it gets a bit trickier but it's still 100% doable as long as your mech loadouts are otherwise optimized and you have good pilots. Totally stock mechs vs a company of AI stock mechs would be a true challenge since even most of the fairly good stock builds lack exactly the sort of endurance in both armor and heat management that the player needs to fight those odds.
And no, I haven't heard of any mods that reduce enemy numbers down to ~lance since that'd be really hard to make a challenge for the player.
I think the AI is decent. It's stock mech loadouts that put it at a disadvantage vs. the player. The canonical configurations of a lot of mechs are mostly boneheaded and/or underpowered. Player lances just pack a lot more effective firepower.
You say that, but I regularly watch the AI stand in place and fire at me, when simply moving and firing would have produced a similar result and would have granted them some level of cover or evasion. I also have watched it push a nearly dead light directly up into melee range and then just brace, only to unsuprisingly get mashed on the next round. It's not awful, but it definitely is operating suboptimally.
Also thanks everyone for the feedback, rocking a 3 heavy 1 assault lance right now (my only other assault is an 85 tonner that I cannot get a better layout with than my 70-75ton heavies), and we're mopping up 3 skull missions with ease and doing quite well at the 4's.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
The more I think about it, the more I agree: it's called shots that are broken. Removing them entirely would put the player more on par with the AI, but might be a bit much. Increase the cost to 70 or 100 resolve and that would tone down how abusive they are without removing them entirely. Change Marauder to remove that headshot bonus, or drop it to something more reasonable like 5% (which is still huge!). Rework the mechs to at minimum put ammunition in the legs. Without changing the total armor, move it so that the armor amounts make sense (almost all the default mechs have less armor in their side torso than they do in the arm, which is dumb as fuck; many have way too much back armor).
That leaves Bulwark. Maybe only have it give its effect if you're braced? The passive extra 20% is why I use it 90% of the time, so that would make it much less of a gimme and more of a situational ability.
Would that game be more fun? Dunno! But it feels like it would be less unfair to the AI without completely removing mechanics and with some fairly targeted changes.
Career complete! I definitely wasn't doing a score run - didn't even finish one of the four collect-em-all weight bands, didn't sell off everything other than one of each mech the day before the reckoning, didn't max missions at the end, didn't min/max faction rep for top points, didn't add a bunch of $20k pilots to max experience from the level 3 mech simulator, etc. I spent about half the game grinding up pirate rep from zero, which takes forever because you have to ping around the the tiny handful of half and one skull planets. After that I secured max rep with Pirates, Taurians and Kurita and then bopped around Liao space taking missions that didn't upset my friends and visiting Black Markets for ER Medium Lasers and exotic autocannons.
Fun!
Right before the end I allied with Kurita and the Taurians to grab the achievements, even though it meant my friends the pirates would not like me any more than zero. So it goes.
Sorry to @Fishman for killing you off, esp. so early in the game. Everyone else survived and most of you ended up on max skills - @Betsuni, @Bullhead, @Dark_Side, @Elvenshae, @H3Knuckles, @Mirkel, @Ninja Snarl P, @SiliconStew, @Steelhawk and @Nips. @McGibs, @DaMoonRulz and @Orca, you all joined the team about 300 days out when I thought I might try to get above veteran and wanted more pilots to soak up point-getting exp. But then I decided to content myself with the two ally cheevos. So you never saw the inside of a mech cockpit. Sorry. You were considerably safer than the other pilots, though, since by the time I had so many max skill pilots I started pulling injury prevention cockpit mods and replacing them with +morale instead. No hard feelings, you all, right?
So there it is, another career in the books and I move the BATTLETECH monkey from my back to it's well appointed cage.
Right?
Not going to do another speed run to see how fast I can ally with Steiner.
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Unless he is in a light, then he's a god.
Steam: betsuni7
But one of the minor gods, lost in a vast pantheon of other more important deities. Y'know, the kind that are like the "God of Not Getting Papercuts" or something.
Edit: that reminds me it'd be nice if there was an ability (perhaps make it a special character trait of some pilots) to force/allow them to pilot a mech while injured. To balance it out you could debuff their stats and make it practically a guarantee that they will be killed if they are incapacitated again.
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
Fun thing about those multi-mission contracts: depending on the extent of the damage done to the mechs in the first mission, you can have at least some of them repaired and available again for the third mission if you repair them at the end of that first mission.
Anoia, the Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
It is quite possible (and arguably more fun) to play suboptimally and run around in mediums in the heavy era, or heavies in the assault era.
IMO, go with what's working for you and don't worry about optimal play. If you're having trouble, then worry about more optimal loadouts and drop configurations.
For the most part in BT, the heavier the better.
There are exceptions, like the target acquisition mission type which usually requires some speed or missions that gate availability behind minimum mech weights or a minimum lance type. Also mechs at the top of weight band are often better than ones at the bottom of the next band. I would almost always take a Shadowhawk or Wolverine over a Dragon in BT, for example.
And it's possible to run lighter mechs into the endgame (esp. if you are able to score some of the SLDF variants of those mechs with the insane 60 heat per turn for free.)
But generally, even after some balancing to try to make lights more viable into the late game, the path of least resistance is to run your heaviest mechs.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Interesting - I very much like having a fast scout who can spot targets so I can plan out attack routes early, as well as for sensor locking so my LRMS can soften them up before they ever see me.
And yeah, I actually stored an 80t asssault I got (I forget what) as my 65ton Catapult does more damage and isn't meant to be seen/hit until late in a skirmish anyway. That's why I was staying at 55t for the medium, trying to stay at that upper bound.
So asssuming you can field it, and no mission restrictions, your ideal lance is 4 assaults?
Semi-related, I'm trying to run med-long range (depending on what i can mount) scout mech, 2 shorter range mechs (one with med-short, one with at least one long range option), and then a straight long range missle boat with some support MLs if something gets close. Is there a more optimal lance setup?
EDIT: I did lose a lunar ambush convoy mission with this loadout where even running flat out from turn one wasn't fast enough to even get line of sight/sensor lock on the convoy.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
FML wish I had known tha... wait.. I can savescum! Hooray!
Edit2: although I've literally managed to take out 20 of the 22 attackers with my locust... problem is the last two are always dual assassins and by that point my torso is always in the red and 1 or 2 shots away from being cored... maybe I should just go back and redo it.
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
Filter the map by biome and select Urban to find planets with urban maps. Most are in the top quarter of the map. Though maps are still generated randomly within the biome set for the planet, so not every mission on an urban planet is guaranteed to have an urban map.
I'm surmising, but I feel like once I give up some of the supertech toys, I'mma have a rough time when my 3025-era lance starts going up against nominally-similar but much larger forces.
Stomping up a wooded hill to take some base somewhere, we come into sensor range to find a... Bullshark?! Yikes. It's standing on the highest point of land ready to rain down autocannon fire on us. It is perfectly positioned, and supported by heavy turrets. The folks in the base should feel preeeety comfy that they are well protected.
Until @SiliconStew jumps into a patch of woods and snipes the head out of the Bullshark before it even gets to fire a shot.
Unfair!
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Which supertech toys are you talking about? People did fine with 1:3 odds before Heavy Metal so if it is just the DLC guns those aren't required to win. Most lostech used to suck before they buffed them so those aren't needed either. If you mean refusing to use any +-gear whatsoever then it gets a bit trickier but it's still 100% doable as long as your mech loadouts are otherwise optimized and you have good pilots. Totally stock mechs vs a company of AI stock mechs would be a true challenge since even most of the fairly good stock builds lack exactly the sort of endurance in both armor and heat management that the player needs to fight those odds.
And no, I haven't heard of any mods that reduce enemy numbers down to ~lance since that'd be really hard to make a challenge for the player.
Three lances of assaults, backed by 4 turrets defending an installation. Even a Fortress-class Dropship would hesitate to engage that much firepower.
And then a lonely Leopard flits in nap-of-the-earth. A touch and go scout run? No, it drops 4 mechs on the field. Just a probe. Sensors suggests a single heavy lance--either a mix of heavies and assaults or a bunch of light assaults. No problem. Heavy for a probe, but if they want to lose 4 valuable mechs in a probe, that's their problem.
Then, they pop over the ridgeline within sensor range, but outside of engagement range and before you've had a chance to even reposition your defenders, your first King Crab crashes to the ground, its cockpit aflame from the heat of the projectile that vaporized the warrior within.
You desperately reposition to meet the axis of this unexpected threat. They got lucky with their opening salvo, and you still have 11 mechs backed by turrets. They can't possibly stand up to that much firepower.
Except they do.
Every turn, 1 or 2 mechs die to heatshots at long range from one or both of the Marauders while the pair of Atlases stomp inexorably forward, soaking every alpha-strike you desperately pour into them. The Atlases don't even bother firing back, except for maybe one laser, just to let you know they haven't forgotten about you.
5 turns in, your second lance is face-first in the dirt with smoke pouring from the hole where an ace mechwarrior lived just moments ago. Both Marauders cease fire, heat shimmering from their chassis. A reprieve? Have they finally run out of ammunition?
Both Atlases cut loose with everything they have. Gauss rifles, ER Large Lases, and Medium Laser++ tear into your third lance of assaults, blowing off limbs and sending two more mechwarriors to Valhalla.
You scream "How are they doing this?!" as the Marauders lock their cannons onto your cockpit...
Even without Marauders, fit enough UAC/2++s and medium laser++ on anything, and you'll have better than even odds of decapitating anything within 270m. If you get an Atlas II, it's got enough heatsinking to just mount a metric assload of ER weapons and do as the Marauders do with only a slightly lower chance of success.
I've seen them a lot. Might be which planets you go to?
In addition to the other advise already given* you can always bail on the third mission and not take a huge relative penalty. You still net positive reputation for the group you did the mission for (but not positive reputation in total)
*Specifically every mission has a "duration" and so you can make any repairs at or under the mission duration without being unable to start the next mission with that mech.
-"Canon" weapons only, but starting with LowTech so things like ER/Pulse/Streak/etc. are meaningfully rare and present an interesting choice/risk if you get one.
--Therefore No +, ++, or +++ Equipment
-No non-tabletop equipment. No Arm/Leg/Gyro/Cockpit/etc. mods. Again, starting with LowTech, so the discovery of a Double Heat Sink is now basically a Woo Hoo moment.
-No using 'Mechs with big/crazy Quirks (unless there's a way to mod them out, or mod in the 'Mechs without the quirks). Marauder, I'm looking at you.
-No game-breaking pilot skills? This is where things get weird, right? I know that AI pilots have skills, which evens it out, but it's clear to me that Bulwark is borderline must-have (I gave it to EVERY pilot on my last playthrough) and something like Coolant Vent is virtually always useful and Very Good. I don't know what to do about Sensor Lock. Multi-Target, Breaching Shot, Sure Footing, Ace Pilot, and Master Tactician seem fine and all relatively lower in power level.
-No command abilities? I feel like by the end of my last playthrough I was relying on Called Shots with Tactics 10 pilots to make up the numbers difference between me and the OpFors, and rather see the on-the-ground lineups be closer to balanced so I didn't feel like I needed that crutch. More than anything, if I take out all that stuff above, not balancing appropriately-sized OpFors against my force means I'd have to lean even more on command abilities/Called Shots, and that doesn't sound fun.
In the end, after doing this thought experiment...would this make the game any less fun? I don't think it would for me, because I reaaaaally like the baseline "moving 'Mechs on a map and shooting stuff" gameplay. I know I wouldn't miss things like the +/++/+++ gear, or any of the equipment mods, or the handful of really OP 'Mech quirks. But if in removing those things, I'm still thrown up against Company+ forces with no crutch...
Well, I'm not a masochist. I play for fun, and a little challenge. I don't want to have to agonize over Every. Single. Click. to make sure it's perfectly played just to survive.
That's true and getting an Atlas II is fairly trivial these days if you go with 3 mech pieces, but it still isn't quite as ridiculous as Marauder's perk (which gives +10% damage reduction too to add to the utter cheesiness of it all). That just shows how broken Tactics 9 bonus is in the first place, not that Marauders are somehow ok. If Tac9 gave you about 10% chance to hit the head and then Marauder would raise that to 15%, that'd be far more reasonable IMO.
It's a moddable single-player sandbox game with very modular difficulty sliders though, so anybody who hates the vanilla balance can switch to a modpack or choose to challenge themselves in some other way (like a light mechs only run). I'm just a little sad that any tactics discussions here and in r/battletechgame are basically "get a Marauder, headshot everything - or get an Annihilator, UAC salvo one-shot enemy mechs" etc.
BTA 3062 has MRMs, and if it does, then RogueTech does, too.
I've never seen mod with just MRMs, though.
I think the AI is decent. It's stock mech loadouts that put it at a disadvantage vs. the player. The canonical configurations of a lot of mechs are mostly boneheaded and/or underpowered. Player lances just pack a lot more effective firepower.
The ++ weapon and equipment mod stuff doesn't really need a mod, just don't use it and sell any you get from salvage. On my stock-only weapon run I wound up with significantly more money because of it.
Removing the quirks is an easy mod. Just remove the fixed equipment from the chassisdef files. Can even be altered mid game if you just put your mechs in storage and take them back out.
Skills are a tough thing to balance, so I don't have much suggestion there for alternatives. However, for closer to TT experience I think the pilot skills that remove minimum range penalties and increase heat tolerance should be removed entirely.
Rather than removing called shot, remove the ability from pilot progression, but add it to existing or a new TTS module. That way it's similar to the TT rules for called shots that require the mech to have a targeting computer installed to do it. Alternatively, you can tweak the morale stats in the combatgameconstants file to reduce morale gain so those abilities are used less. There are a large number of events that change morale and most are unused. For example, you could reduce the per round morale gain or change it to lose morale if you fail an objective or lose a torso section, but in the base game that's set to 0.
But the real hard work is limiting opfor size. Because the game generates those lances dynamically, you'd be doing a lot of manual work for what the "Enemy Force Strength" game setting kind of already does. It'd be really easy to add new, easier options to that pulldown in CareerDifficultySettings. But that probably won't give you the desired effect either. That is, rather than turning 2 lances of assaults into a single lance of assaults, you might wind up with 2 lances of heavies. To more accurately cut the number of lances without necessarily cutting the difficulty of those lances, you'd have to rework all the contracts or alternatively all the lancedefs in the game to do that.
Most stock loadouts aren't really boneheaded. There are a few odd loadouts that are more about lore than gameplay, but TT also had infantry and aerospace to deal with that needed a more varied weapon mix to deal with. And TT is also far more restrictive on heat tolerance than this game, so it made sense to have a spread of weapons that worked in different range bands but went unused in others because you had the tonnage but not the heatsinking. If you tried to fire as many weapons in TT as you constantly can in this game, you'd be a nearly immobile turret that couldn't hit the broad side of a barn and at constant risk of blowing yourself up.
That's totally fair, but that's where the meta is. Tactics get more interesting once you're not concerned with optimal play. I think I might have said something about that. Oh right:
So the discussion isn't really interesting unless we're deliberately handicapping ourselves or are in the earlier parts of the game before access to assaults, Marauders, and +++ weapons is a normal thing.
Hahaaaa I did it! It took me about a thousand tries but I did it! 22 enemies, about 8 to 10 of those mechs (most of which were medium mechs) I haven't felt a sense of accomplishment like this since beating the first shrine guardian with 3 hearts in BotW.
I did it mostly by doing strafing runs, leaving the area before they could turn to shoot at me. I had 1 yellow leg left and a dark red torso at the end.
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
You say that, but I regularly watch the AI stand in place and fire at me, when simply moving and firing would have produced a similar result and would have granted them some level of cover or evasion. I also have watched it push a nearly dead light directly up into melee range and then just brace, only to unsuprisingly get mashed on the next round. It's not awful, but it definitely is operating suboptimally.
Also thanks everyone for the feedback, rocking a 3 heavy 1 assault lance right now (my only other assault is an 85 tonner that I cannot get a better layout with than my 70-75ton heavies), and we're mopping up 3 skull missions with ease and doing quite well at the 4's.
That leaves Bulwark. Maybe only have it give its effect if you're braced? The passive extra 20% is why I use it 90% of the time, so that would make it much less of a gimme and more of a situational ability.
Would that game be more fun? Dunno! But it feels like it would be less unfair to the AI without completely removing mechanics and with some fairly targeted changes.
Fun!
Right before the end I allied with Kurita and the Taurians to grab the achievements, even though it meant my friends the pirates would not like me any more than zero. So it goes.
Sorry to @Fishman for killing you off, esp. so early in the game. Everyone else survived and most of you ended up on max skills - @Betsuni, @Bullhead, @Dark_Side, @Elvenshae, @H3Knuckles, @Mirkel, @Ninja Snarl P, @SiliconStew, @Steelhawk and @Nips. @McGibs, @DaMoonRulz and @Orca, you all joined the team about 300 days out when I thought I might try to get above veteran and wanted more pilots to soak up point-getting exp. But then I decided to content myself with the two ally cheevos. So you never saw the inside of a mech cockpit. Sorry. You were considerably safer than the other pilots, though, since by the time I had so many max skill pilots I started pulling injury prevention cockpit mods and replacing them with +morale instead. No hard feelings, you all, right?
So there it is, another career in the books and I move the BATTLETECH monkey from my back to it's well appointed cage.
Right?
Not going to do another speed run to see how fast I can ally with Steiner.
Right?
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Steam: betsuni7