I'll just sit in a forest and tank everything. The only weapon in the game I'm even remotely afraid of the AI using is the 1 in a million chance I get shot in the head with an AC/20.
Or if they decide to punch me in the face and get lucky.
Every so often you just have to accept it was that pilot's time when they get their head punched right the fuck off.
I'll just sit in a forest and tank everything. The only weapon in the game I'm even remotely afraid of the AI using is the 1 in a million chance I get shot in the head with an AC/20.
Or if they decide to punch me in the face and get lucky.
Every so often you just have to accept it was that pilot's time when they get their head punched right the fuck off.
Oh no, nothing gets close enough to punch
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
I'll just sit in a forest and tank everything. The only weapon in the game I'm even remotely afraid of the AI using is the 1 in a million chance I get shot in the head with an AC/20.
Or if they decide to punch me in the face and get lucky.
Every so often you just have to accept it was that pilot's time when they get their head punched right the fuck off.
Oh no, nothing gets close enough to punch
It usually happens when I've gotten cocky and greedy, so the only mechs that are shooting are those making a called shot to the head. So...I mean I pretty much deserve it at that point.
Sure footing generates one extra evasion pip, which is not very significant and the actions where you get the stability damage reduction are the ones that generate fewer evasion pips anyway. If only 4 out of 60 SRMs are hitting you are either jumping a light mech and/or are getting stupidly lucky. Besides you're clearly not taking both sure footing and bulwark on most pilots anyway
So if you don't have +++ weapons then you do 13% less damage than breaching dual ac20, and 28% less stability damage true, but if they only have 20% DR then you win on damage and are almost par on stability
If you do have +++ weapons then just the SRMs do raw 288 and 120 stability and the med lasers have so much +acc that they basically never miss so that's another guaranteed 100. Even at 40% DR this is a clear win, and the stab damage is concentrated which leads to easier knockdowns. I don't know about you but I was swimming in MLAS++ by the end of the game. SRM6+++ is rare sure, but I had more of those than AC20+++ and every SRM6 was at least ++
Breaching shot ac20 king crab is a great thing sure, but you're putting all your eggs in two baskets and assuming all opponents always have 40% DR to compete. DR can be removed, and not every enemy has 40% DR, in particular almost none will if you go first. The only real advantage is as you say, concentrated location damage, but I've found that it's easy enough to either do side attacks or knockdowns and that usually concentrates fire enough
If you use breaching shot with 2x PPC, you're paying 70 heat and 14 tons to get 100 damage and 40 stab damage, that seems a poor tradeoff IMO
I am jumping a Highlander and getting these evasion pips. +1 Evasion pip is -10% to hit. Which is HUGE. Lets say you normally generate 3 and have maxed piloting skill and a +3 gyro. This makes for -60% to hit. +1 evasion makes this -70% to hit. vs base gunnery this took to-hit from .15 to .05 a 66% reduction. Its "only" a 40% reduction on the next attack but its still very significant. By the third attack its "only" a 28.5% reduction. By the Fourth Attack its a 22.5% reduction. If the enemy has maxed gunnery skills then its still a 25% damage reduction on the first attack...Bulwark is a 25% damage reduction over not having it(33% if you don't shoot and are in the tree line). So its minimum value is almost as good as Bulwark.
If you can generate any other effective defense for any reason (long range/indirect fire as examples). +1 evasion pip is huge.
The mention of the Highlander is important because as mentioned earlier the crab is best case scenario for "not breaching shot". The Highlander has only 2 missile and 3 energy. Less than half the damage availability of the crab in missile and energy slots using SRM/MLAS. If you have the DLC then things get worse because you get access to UAC. A UAC/20 does 200 damage and 80 stability damage. It breaches to the level of an entire compliment of SRM+++ and 2 MLAS(+10 dmg).
By the end of the game i had 2(maybe 3?) +10 dmg MLAS and 4 SRM6+++ and 3 AC/20+++. If you have PPC++ (of which i had >3) you're paying 18 tonnes to get 150 damage and 150 stab damage. (ok and a boatload of heat). If you have LRM++ or +++ its 120 damage and 240 stability damage.
You're talking about knocking things down but you're doing 72 stability damage to one target while the LRM breacher is doing 80 stability damage to 3...
Edit: I had tonnes of MLAS++ but not the good MLAS++. Accuracy and Crit just isn't that valuable late game(especially on MLAS)
Yes if you stack the highest version of an absurdly rare component that I've never seen any version of in the game before with a maxed piloting pilot you can generate tons of evasion against an unskilled pilot but that is again cherry picking a best case scenario. I'm assuming (can't really find any details) that the rules for the AI shooting at you roughly mirrors the rules for shooting at them
Base hit rate is 75%
Gunnery gives you 2.5% / point for a maximum of 25%, fairly sure AI gets to use this. They won't all have max but a few will be high and they probably all have a couple points
Some weapon types and mountings automatically confer a bonus to hit. Everything has +5% because you're in an assault. Arm mounted weapons have another 5%. Lasers have another 5%. Being higher than you can add up to a further 10%
Your 70% evasion could be down to 30% before a shot is fired from max gunnery + an arm mounted PPC. "Just" a reduction to 50% (from 4 gunnery + either arm or laser) means you win only on the first shot. Just max gunnery as you say reduces the first shot bonus to be (a little less with the free +5%) the same as bulwark, but evasion bonus goes down from there and bulwark doesn't, and if you don't have the full gyro+skill on every mech+pilot they can just shoot the one with less evasion. I suppose vehicles won't get much of a bonus though so you can tank SRM carriers easily if they go first
Highlanders are probably the poster boys of the breaching shot world sure, but my other assaults have 7-8 weapons on them, it's not just crabs. Only the atlas would really be a good breaching candidate IMO as you can mount dual ac20 and a bunch of other stuff. Of course I suppose I've not bothered with a lot of mechs because they don't fit my more dakka playstyle. And I did say I could see taking it on a LRM boat, it's not a bad skill just not a critical one IMO
And we're talking about the base game here, that's in your original post. I haven't looked at DLC stuff at all
Assaults dont have a to-hit bonus iirc. Only lights have a to-hit penalty. That has been changed.
If you stick around and let enemies stack a bunch of bonuses on you you are indeed likely to get hit.... but like... dont do that? I had 3 +3 gryos by the end of the campaign theyre not terribly rare.
Hit them with a PPC? -10% to hit.
Long range? -20% to hit
Obstructed view? -10% to hit
And this ignores that the to-hit by raw calculation the down side of the swing is larger than shown because battletech cheats to make to-hit%s feel better. Once you get to 20% or so youre basically invulnerable
Going from "50% chance to be hit" to "40%" is a 35% reduction in incoming damage. Going from 40 to 30 is another 36%. 30 to 20 is 40.4%. 20 to 10, 53%.
The value of 1 evasion (-10% to hit) is absolutely huge.
If they have 7-8 weapons on them they're not SRM's and MLAS. At least not without the DLC. Which opens up UAC/20's. Here is a list of all the non-DLC assaults in the game with 100t equivalent or higher(65t free weight) in italics. (the 3s, and non SLDF highlanders are close at 63 and 60.5t respectively
Mech: B/E/M/S (Max SRM/MLAS DMG assuming all +max damage).
This is why the Crab is the best case for SRMs. Even if you don't breach on every target lets assume you have it and have one of these mechs. This lets you shoot your AC/20 or AC/10 at one of those 40% and then dump the rest of the damage into someone else. If you have a single AC/20+++ and a bunch of SRM/s this will increase your DPR by 60 to 80 or more over not having breaching shot. Simply by putting one of the AC/20 on a different target and the rest of the SRM's into the other. An AC/20 + 4 SRM 6 crab does 408 raw DPS. Which is 488 effective with breaching shot.
If any of y'alls are wanting a co-op partner (my current merc company is stalled due to the missions being too rough for my AI controlled lancemates...and even bringing in one human ringer isn't enough to offset the derpiness of the AI pilots), I'm thinking of signing up for a couple months of GamePass (mostly because of the two Ori games and Forza Horizon 4).
So, shorter version: I'm likely going to have both EGS and the GamePass version running concurrently.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
If any of y'alls are wanting a co-op partner (my current merc company is stalled due to the missions being too rough for my AI controlled lancemates...and even bringing in one human ringer isn't enough to offset the derpiness of the AI pilots), I'm thinking of signing up for a couple months of GamePass (mostly because of the two Ori games and Forza Horizon 4).
So, shorter version: I'm likely going to have both EGS and the GamePass version running concurrently.
Do the save files port between the two versions? I'm assuming the files would be identical.
If any of y'alls are wanting a co-op partner (my current merc company is stalled due to the missions being too rough for my AI controlled lancemates...and even bringing in one human ringer isn't enough to offset the derpiness of the AI pilots), I'm thinking of signing up for a couple months of GamePass (mostly because of the two Ori games and Forza Horizon 4).
So, shorter version: I'm likely going to have both EGS and the GamePass version running concurrently.
Do the save files port between the two versions? I'm assuming the files would be identical.
It's....actually even easier than importing. Because it looks like both versions pull from the same AppData folder (or wherever the save/config files are located), everything was available from the get go.
EDIT - to elaborate further: I was figuring I'd fire up the GamePass version to at least set up the resolution, FOV, and graphics quality settings and noticed that "Co-Op" was available at the main menu. Said "Huh..." and clicked on Single-Player "Continue" and saw all my EGS mechs sitting in my GamePass mechbay.
Erlkönig on
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
If any of y'alls are wanting a co-op partner (my current merc company is stalled due to the missions being too rough for my AI controlled lancemates...and even bringing in one human ringer isn't enough to offset the derpiness of the AI pilots), I'm thinking of signing up for a couple months of GamePass (mostly because of the two Ori games and Forza Horizon 4).
So, shorter version: I'm likely going to have both EGS and the GamePass version running concurrently.
Oh heck yeah! Now you gave me a reason to pick up GamePass.
Assaults dont have a to-hit bonus iirc. Only lights have a to-hit penalty. That has been changed.
If you stick around and let enemies stack a bunch of bonuses on you you are indeed likely to get hit.... but like... dont do that? I had 3 +3 gryos by the end of the campaign theyre not terribly rare.
Hit them with a PPC? -10% to hit.
Long range? -20% to hit
Obstructed view? -10% to hit
And this ignores that the to-hit by raw calculation the down side of the swing is larger than shown because battletech cheats to make to-hit%s feel better. Once you get to 20% or so youre basically invulnerable
Going from "50% chance to be hit" to "40%" is a 35% reduction in incoming damage. Going from 40 to 30 is another 36%. 30 to 20 is 40.4%. 20 to 10, 53%.
The value of 1 evasion (-10% to hit) is absolutely huge.
If you take 100 damage @ 50% true miss with 20% DR then you take 40 damage
If you take 100 damage @ 40% miss with 40% DR you take 36 damage
If you take 100 damage @ 60% miss with 20% DR then you take 32 damage
If you take 100 damage @ 50% miss with 40% DR you take 30 damage
If you take 100 damage @ 70% miss with 20% DR then you take 24 damage
If you take 100 damage @ 60% miss with 40% DR you take 24 damage
If you take 100 damage @ 80% miss with 20% DR then you take 16 damage
If you take 100 damage @ 70% miss with 40% DR you take 18 damage
Bulwark's damage taken is (1-x)*.6
+10% evasion is (0.9-x)*.8
You're winning only if you can reduce their hit rate to less than 40% without it
Yes I'm aware of their really dumb hit tables, but that also means that while you win more on the first shot you tank, your advantage fades fast too
You take 4 100 damage shots from a maximum gunnery opponent @-70% "hit chance" it's really 20.5 @-60% -> 32.5 @-50 -> 50 @-40 -> 67.7
You take 169 raw damage, but only 135 from being in cover
But the non-sure footing mech can do something similar @-60% -> 32.5 @-50 -> 50 @-40 -> 67.7 @-30 -> 79.5
You take 229 raw damage! But only 137 after DR
If you only took 3 shots its 82.4 vs 90.1 which is sliiightly better for sure footing but not by some crazy margin and is only the case for the extreme late game of +15% evasion gyros
Yes if you're not facing a pilot with 25% or more total bonus or you only take say one attack then you win big, but conversely if your enemy has more bonus (arm mounted PPCs say) and does properly focus you then you lose harder. If the latter attacks are higher damage you also lose more, conversely if the earlier attacks are higher damage you win more. If you get unlucky and you lose evasion from say a lucky ac20 shot making you unsteady then you lose big
If they have 7-8 weapons on them they're not SRM's and MLAS. At least not without the DLC. Which opens up UAC/20's. Here is a list of all the non-DLC assaults in the game with 100t equivalent or higher(65t free weight) in italics. (the 3s, and non SLDF highlanders are close at 63 and 60.5t respectively
Mech: B/E/M/S (Max SRM/MLAS DMG assuming all +max damage).
This is why the Crab is the best case for SRMs. Even if you don't breach on every target lets assume you have it and have one of these mechs. This lets you shoot your AC/20 or AC/10 at one of those 40% and then dump the rest of the damage into someone else. If you have a single AC/20+++ and a bunch of SRM/s this will increase your DPR by 60 to 80 or more over not having breaching shot. Simply by putting one of the AC/20 on a different target and the rest of the SRM's into the other. An AC/20 + 4 SRM 6 crab does 408 raw DPS. Which is 488 effective with breaching shot.
Build that AC20/SRM6 crab please.
SRM6 x4 -> 12 t
Full cooling -> 16 t
3 SRM ammo -> 3 t
AC20 -> 14 t
Full cooling -> 8 t
3 AC20 ammo -> 3 t
Natural cooling -> -10 t
So we have 46 t used, but if you max frontal armor and have middling rear armor you'll get something like 43t available, and you don't even have jumpjets yet
The jumpless build sinks 63 and generates 72 heat. A 3x jump build sinks 45 of 72 which is useless, you're not even properly sinking the SRMs
The 4x MLAS 3x jump build sinks 84/96, but since the equivalent jump build is really non-viable we can take the JJ off, put 4x MG and a MG ammo for an extra 60 close range damage and sink 93/96 heat
So the equivalent MLAS++ / MG mech does 195, which is 117 even into a bulwarked opponent, and generates less net heat. You will do less stability damage either way than the AC20 one, but you simply can't build it without either stripping plenty of armor or jump jets
Build that AC20/SRM6 crab please.
SRM6 x4 -> 12 t
Full cooling -> 16 t
3 SRM ammo -> 3 t
AC20 -> 14 t
Full cooling -> 8 t
3 AC20 ammo -> 3 t
Natural cooling -> -10 t
So we have 46 t used, but if you max frontal armor and have middling rear armor you'll get something like 43t available, and you don't even have jumpjets yet
The jumpless build sinks 63 and generates 72 heat. A 3x jump build sinks 45 of 72 which is useless, you're not even properly sinking the SRMs
The 4x MLAS 3x jump build sinks 84/96, but since the equivalent jump build is really non-viable we can take the JJ off, put 4x MG and a MG ammo for an extra 60 close range damage and sink 93/96 heat
So the equivalent MLAS++ / MG mech does 195, which is 117 even into a bulwarked opponent, and generates less net heat. You will do less stability damage either way than the AC20 one, but you simply can't build it without either stripping plenty of armor or jump jets
548 damage, 45/96 heat, 1760 armour. Cool enough to alpha strike twice then coolant vent for a 3rd. I have a bunch of double heat sinks I could have used but they're on other mechs at the moment, also could have put in a UAC/20 for more alpha damage but wouldn't be able to alpha as often.
I dont see you not proving my point. +1 init is not very good because sure footed is as good or better than bulwark. In order to get +1 init you habe to give up either sure footed or bulwark and either ace pilot or coolant vent. Ace pilot lets you do things like shoot and the end your turn outside of LOS. And well. You should very rarely be taking attacks when youre not full (or close) evasion unless the enemy has a lot more enemies than you (or theyre all at higher init) because initiative is staggered and so you can often refresh evasion after you are shot at.
And youre mistaken. Youre winning if you can reduce their hit rate to 50% without it. Because .325/.5 < .75.
@coblt60. You should drop the 4 lasers and 2 sinks for jumps. Juuumps!
If any of y'alls are wanting a co-op partner (my current merc company is stalled due to the missions being too rough for my AI controlled lancemates...and even bringing in one human ringer isn't enough to offset the derpiness of the AI pilots), I'm thinking of signing up for a couple months of GamePass (mostly because of the two Ori games and Forza Horizon 4).
So, shorter version: I'm likely going to have both EGS and the GamePass version running concurrently.
I'm in, and in turn I would also like help with a mission I'm stuck on.
MW5 is a lot of fun. It's pretty janky in places. Inventory management and mech management is a little clunky. On one screen there's a helpful indicator if a mech has weapon systems busted or missing, but not in every place - like where you are picking mechs for a mission! Also while I understand it as a gameplay mechanism, I really don't like that most missions have a drop weight limit. Let me overcome my deficiencies as a pilot by excelling at salvage and field a team 100 tons overweight for the mission! (Ideally, I could turn that off in settings as a difficulty modifier?)
I really wish there was some way to tell an NPC pilot to hold off at range (aside from manually ordering them to reposition over and over with F3). I ended up putting my Archer in cold storage and then selling it because I couldn't keep NPCs from charging into the fray with it.
I've been watching a bunch of Baradul playing, and that's helped me. Even though it's got its weapons in the arms, I built a Jagermech like he had done - two AC5/BF's and way too much ammo - and I've been able to get in a pretty solid rhythm with it out in the field. I am certainly the bane of VTOLs in this thing.
MW5 is a lot of fun. It's pretty janky in places. Inventory management and mech management is a little clunky. On one screen there's a helpful indicator if a mech has weapon systems busted or missing, but not in every place - like where you are picking mechs for a mission! Also while I understand it as a gameplay mechanism, I really don't like that most missions have a drop weight limit. Let me overcome my deficiencies as a pilot by excelling at salvage and field a team 100 tons overweight for the mission! (Ideally, I could turn that off in settings as a difficulty modifier?)
I really wish there was some way to tell an NPC pilot to hold off at range (aside from manually ordering them to reposition over and over with F3). I ended up putting my Archer in cold storage and then selling it because I couldn't keep NPCs from charging into the fray with it.
I've been watching a bunch of Baradul playing, and that's helped me. Even though it's got its weapons in the arms, I built a Jagermech like he had done - two AC5/BF's and way too much ammo - and I've been able to get in a pretty solid rhythm with it out in the field. I am certainly the bane of VTOLs in this thing.
Modding MW5 makes it much more playable.
The ones I recommend are:
1. Better Spawns - Basically makes everything spawn away from you or in more opportune areas and reduces the amount of "LOL assault in your face suddenly" bullshit from the original game.
2. Increased Loadout Options - Removes the weapon size limit of weapon slots, making them just type restricted. I wish I could actually just build mechs like in Mechwarrior 2 or TT Battletech...
3. MW5 Mercs Casual Mode - Basically allows you to set a difficulty level based on which file you use. I found just using the 10% reduction in combination with these other two mods made the game way more playable.
There are a whole bunch of other ones on nexus mods. But I was only looking to get rid of the loadout limitations and make the enemy spawns/difficulty a little less.
MW5 question: So my active mech hangar size is 12. I really want to pick up some more mechs so I can regularly mix and match and get closer to drop weight. If I have 12 mechs in the hangar and I take a mech or two in salvage, do I still get the mech? Maybe it pops into cold storage? Or do I lost out because I have a full hangar?
My Googling on this issue has failed to provide an answer.
EDIT: Also what does Art IV (Artemis IV) on missile systems do? MW5 seems unwilling to tell me.
MW5 question: So my active mech hangar size is 12. I really want to pick up some more mechs so I can regularly mix and match and get closer to drop weight. If I have 12 mechs in the hangar and I take a mech or two in salvage, do I still get the mech? Maybe it pops into cold storage? Or do I lost out because I have a full hangar?
My Googling on this issue has failed to provide an answer.
EDIT: Also what does Art IV (Artemis IV) on missile systems do? MW5 seems unwilling to tell me.
Artemis helps the missiles clump together rather than going Macross all over the place. Although this is MWO, but assuming they did the same thing in MW5.
Better spawns is shit. It drops things through terrain and rebalances tonnage that totally fucks certain types of missions. The thing that it was designed to fix “enemies spawning in vision of your rear” has been fixed for four months anyway
The archer has 4x ML on it by default. These have a max range of 270m and an optimal range of 180m. This means that your archer will attempt to move to 180 range.
Take the ML off and replace with more ammo and so long as you dont run in he will not run in.
Better spawns is shit. It drops things through terrain and rebalances tonnage that totally fucks certain types of missions. The thing that it was designed to fix “enemies spawning in vision of your rear” has been fixed for four months anyway
The archer has 4x ML on it by default. These have a max range of 270m and an optimal range of 180m. This means that your archer will attempt to move to 180 range.
Take the ML off and replace with more ammo and so long as you dont run in he will not run in.
Ha, well I did take the SLs and MGs off my Warhammer, if that makes you feel better.
Better spawns is shit. It drops things through terrain and rebalances tonnage that totally fucks certain types of missions. The thing that it was designed to fix “enemies spawning in vision of your rear” has been fixed for four months anyway
Re: the archer. Iolo
You didnt follow the AI fitting advice!
The archer has 4x ML on it by default. These have a max range of 270m and an optimal range of 180m. This means that your archer will attempt to move to 180 range.
Take the ML off and replace with more ammo and so long as you dont run in he will not run in.
Correction:
At least with MW5, tier 0 medium lasers have an optimal range of 216m and a max of 324...which still seems awfully short range for medium lasers (but that could just be my Clan brain talking). But yeah, I've generally found AI pilots to be pretty suicidal and are not to be trusted with good/semi-good equipment.
Also, on the topic of mods: the folks just now getting around to playing the game are playing the Xbox GamePass version. Y'know...the version that doesn't have mod support for the time being.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
Better spawns is shit. It drops things through terrain and rebalances tonnage that totally fucks certain types of missions. The thing that it was designed to fix “enemies spawning in vision of your rear” has been fixed for four months anyway
I have no issues with better spawns doing anything like that and have noticed no issues on any missions. Guess I was just lucky. Additionally, I was still having issues with how mechs spawned in two months ago and better spawns fixed that, seemingly by increasing spawn range and reducing the amount of sudden swarming.
MW5 question: So my active mech hangar size is 12. I really want to pick up some more mechs so I can regularly mix and match and get closer to drop weight. If I have 12 mechs in the hangar and I take a mech or two in salvage, do I still get the mech? Maybe it pops into cold storage? Or do I lost out because I have a full hangar?
My Googling on this issue has failed to provide an answer.
EDIT: Also what does Art IV (Artemis IV) on missile systems do? MW5 seems unwilling to tell me.
Artemis helps the missiles clump together rather than going Macross all over the place. Although this is MWO, but assuming they did the same thing in MW5.
Yup, that's pretty much what they did in MW5 as well. SRM cluster is noticeably improved. And I think the LRMs also have a tighter spread (even with the Streaming LRM launchers), resulting in more missiles actually hitting the intended target instead of peppering the ground around the target.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
Does anyone know about the hangar size thing in MW5? I really need to pick up a couple more 50 tonners, but I live in abject fear that I won't bring home that Cicada carcass I spent all those salvage points on.
Does anyone know about the hangar size thing in MW5? I really need to pick up a couple more 50 tonners, but I live in abject fear that I won't bring home that Cicada carcass I spent all those salvage points on.
Give me a little bit and I'll test it!
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
Does anyone know about the hangar size thing in MW5? I really need to pick up a couple more 50 tonners, but I live in abject fear that I won't bring home that Cicada carcass I spent all those salvage points on.
Anything you salvage should pop into your cold storage if your active mechbays are full IIRC
Does anyone know about the hangar size thing in MW5? I really need to pick up a couple more 50 tonners, but I live in abject fear that I won't bring home that Cicada carcass I spent all those salvage points on.
Anything you salvage should pop into your cold storage if your active mechbays are full IIRC
Okay, so here it is:
If your active mechbays are full, any salvaged/rewarded mechs will be shunted into cold storage.
However!!
There is a cap on cold storage of 50 mechs. If you already have 50 mechs in cold storage and your active mechbays are full, any salvaged/rewarded mechs are thrown into the ether.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
MW5 question: So my active mech hangar size is 12. I really want to pick up some more mechs so I can regularly mix and match and get closer to drop weight. If I have 12 mechs in the hangar and I take a mech or two in salvage, do I still get the mech? Maybe it pops into cold storage? Or do I lost out because I have a full hangar?
My Googling on this issue has failed to provide an answer.
EDIT: Also what does Art IV (Artemis IV) on missile systems do? MW5 seems unwilling to tell me.
Artemis helps the missiles clump together rather than going Macross all over the place. Although this is MWO, but assuming they did the same thing in MW5.
Yup, that's pretty much what they did in MW5 as well. SRM cluster is noticeably improved. And I think the LRMs also have a tighter spread (even with the Streaming LRM launchers), resulting in more missiles actually hitting the intended target instead of peppering the ground around the target.
Though there MIGHT still be a bug that maybe causes Artemis SRM/LRM to not benefit from missile skill damage boosts. (the bug definitely caused them to not increase missile skills)
Thanks, @Erlkönig! I only have seven mechs in cold storage right now, so I've got some room to run!
I tried a few of the multi-mission missions. Pretty fun, but wow you need to play mech tetris under the weight cap ahead of time to make sure you don't wind up on that third mission 50 tons underweight!
I like the Warzone contracts the best. The enemies come in fairly discrete waves, and there's no penalty for accidental building destruction. I like the defense ones too (more than I thought I would) because you get those waves. There you do have to be careful about knocking things over or overmuch missed autocannon fire. (I did recently decide that for defending walled compounds I was just going to take the % destroyed hit and punch a few holes in the outer walls when needed rather than running around all creation to get to the OpFor.
I was avoiding Demolition out of the gate, because I felt like the spawns were infinite. But since there's only one site, I usually just rush it, let my lancemates tie up the bad guys, and focus on knocking down buildings as fast as possible. Raids are my least favorite since you have to go to every location and the enemies just keep spawning. I was thinking it might make sense to reconfigure the lance for speed and just run from site to site. But no credible lance is going to outrun the 4-6 Locusts you'll often face at one time on Raids, so maybe not. Assassination is similar but (a) sometimes you'll get lucky and go to the right site first and not have to visit them all, and (b) you know there will be at least a few interesting mechs to try to salvage.
The main problem with locust raids is that you still need to shoot down VTOL's. Which are fast enough to follow you around. A fast medium or high tonnage light works better imo
MW5 question: So my active mech hangar size is 12. I really want to pick up some more mechs so I can regularly mix and match and get closer to drop weight. If I have 12 mechs in the hangar and I take a mech or two in salvage, do I still get the mech? Maybe it pops into cold storage? Or do I lost out because I have a full hangar?
My Googling on this issue has failed to provide an answer.
EDIT: Also what does Art IV (Artemis IV) on missile systems do? MW5 seems unwilling to tell me.
Artemis helps the missiles clump together rather than going Macross all over the place. Although this is MWO, but assuming they did the same thing in MW5.
Yup, that's pretty much what they did in MW5 as well. SRM cluster is noticeably improved. And I think the LRMs also have a tighter spread (even with the Streaming LRM launchers), resulting in more missiles actually hitting the intended target instead of peppering the ground around the target.
Though there MIGHT still be a bug that maybe causes Artemis SRM/LRM to not benefit from missile skill damage boosts. (the bug definitely caused them to not increase missile skills)
Due to my above-mention of not trusting AI pilots with good equipment (and Artemis-equipped launchers fall under that category), that would explain why I hadn't seen the damage bug.
However, it would for sure explain why my main character's missile skill stopped improving.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
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Handsome CostanzaAsk me about 8bitdoRIP Iwata-sanRegistered Userregular
If any of y'alls are wanting a co-op partner (my current merc company is stalled due to the missions being too rough for my AI controlled lancemates...and even bringing in one human ringer isn't enough to offset the derpiness of the AI pilots), I'm thinking of signing up for a couple months of GamePass (mostly because of the two Ori games and Forza Horizon 4).
So, shorter version: I'm likely going to have both EGS and the GamePass version running concurrently.
I'm in, and in turn I would also like help with a mission I'm stuck on.
My callsign/epic handle/whatever is HandsomeCostanza, add me!
MW5 Question. Do I have to play some "tutorial" missions before I can get access to the Multiplayer? I thought that I remembered someone saying this when it first went live, but not sure if this memory is correct.
MW5 Question. Do I have to play some "tutorial" missions before I can get access to the Multiplayer? I thought that I remembered someone saying this when it first went live, but not sure if this memory is correct.
Yeah...it's about 4-5 missions in.
Also, you mentioned the other day about wondering if your MWO practice would transfer over to MW5. I've found the hardest habit to break is to actually put more than single-digit armor values on my rear. The spawns are so wonky, and you're guaranteed to get flanked, that you're absolutely going to want double-digit armor covering your butt.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
MW5 Question. Do I have to play some "tutorial" missions before I can get access to the Multiplayer? I thought that I remembered someone saying this when it first went live, but not sure if this memory is correct.
Yeah...it's about 4-5 missions in.
Also, you mentioned the other day about wondering if your MWO practice would transfer over to MW5. I've found the hardest habit to break is to actually put more than single-digit armor values on my rear. The spawns are so wonky, and you're guaranteed to get flanked, that you're absolutely going to want double-digit armor covering your butt.
Ah ok, I might have to figure out some time to play before Oosik Night then.
Oddly before I started to do try hard I would always run 10 in the sides and 12 in the center for those annoying lights who would always find my back. After I got better I would run less since face tanking was where it is at.
I dont see you not proving my point. +1 init is not very good because sure footed is as good or better than bulwark. In order to get +1 init you habe to give up either sure footed or bulwark and either ace pilot or coolant vent. Ace pilot lets you do things like shoot and the end your turn outside of LOS. And well. You should very rarely be taking attacks when youre not full (or close) evasion unless the enemy has a lot more enemies than you (or theyre all at higher init) because initiative is staggered and so you can often refresh evasion after you are shot at.
And youre mistaken. Youre winning if you can reduce their hit rate to 50% without it. Because .325/.5 < .75.
coblt60. You should drop the 4 lasers and 2 sinks for jumps. Juuumps!
That's true but only if only take one or two shots. Take 3 from there and bulwark is overall better. Yes you can move after being shot at, but what if they just keep shooting at that mech? Plus you're quite often outnumbered in the campaign
+1 init lets you go first in every round. You can probably get at least a knockdown of the most threatening mech before it can move, if not a kill. There's no response. They can't generate evasion, can't guard, can't attack, can't get out of los. This allows you to reduce the incoming damage in each combat round because you can focus fire one target before it can act and kill it or remove weapons. Plus evasion stripping isn't dependent on turn order, since you can't effectively strip evasion from something that can just move right after your turn
Until you actually start removing limbs it doesn't matter how much raw damage you can do. It absolutely doesn't matter if you can kill all 4 mechs on turn 3 with breaching shot, but if you can focus fire one mech per turn and not touch the others while going first - taking 4 turns to win - you take only 6 mech activations worth of damage, vs ~10, despite doing less effective damage with +1 initiative you end up healthier at the end
Ace pilot popping in and out of los doesn't seem to work that amazingly. So long as there is a target to shoot at they will shoot. Jumping in and out of los you would seem to maybe burn some AI activations if they have more mechs? If you can activate first from being lighter then you can only get shot at every other round, sure. I suppose you could build stupidly hot mechs, jump in, shoot, shoot, jump out and wait to cool off. If you just jump one mech in to sight for LRM/PPC/Gauss you will still get focused and can only jump out as the last action no? Plus if you are out of los and waiting they will definitely all have max evasion/guard
Honestly I think the primary difference is tolerance of variance. Breaching shot, +1 evasion, big ballistic weapons, headshots, these are all high variance plays. When they work they're awesome, but they're very all or nothing
Bulwark, +1 initiative and more dakka are low variance plays. Firing lots of lasers and rockets means that you're going to get a pretty average result almost all of the time. Bulwark is just flat reduction, more things will hit you, but they hit you less hard. You'll never get a 120 damage breach, but you'll never shoot and do nothing either
Build that AC20/SRM6 crab please.
SRM6 x4 -> 12 t
Full cooling -> 16 t
3 SRM ammo -> 3 t
AC20 -> 14 t
Full cooling -> 8 t
3 AC20 ammo -> 3 t
Natural cooling -> -10 t
So we have 46 t used, but if you max frontal armor and have middling rear armor you'll get something like 43t available, and you don't even have jumpjets yet
The jumpless build sinks 63 and generates 72 heat. A 3x jump build sinks 45 of 72 which is useless, you're not even properly sinking the SRMs
The 4x MLAS 3x jump build sinks 84/96, but since the equivalent jump build is really non-viable we can take the JJ off, put 4x MG and a MG ammo for an extra 60 close range damage and sink 93/96 heat
So the equivalent MLAS++ / MG mech does 195, which is 117 even into a bulwarked opponent, and generates less net heat. You will do less stability damage either way than the AC20 one, but you simply can't build it without either stripping plenty of armor or jump jets
548 damage, 45/96 heat, 1760 armour. Cool enough to alpha strike twice then coolant vent for a 3rd. I have a bunch of double heat sinks I could have used but they're on other mechs at the moment, also could have put in a UAC/20 for more alpha damage but wouldn't be able to alpha as often.
Pales in comparison to Annihilators though.
Ate heat exchangers in the base game? I don't think I've seen those before. And yeah it works with double heat sinks (I think) but those aren't exactly dropping from the sky in base
That's true but only if only take one or two shots. Take 3 from there and bulwark is overall better. Yes you can move after being shot at, but what if they just keep shooting at that mech? Plus you're quite often outnumbered in the campaign
If they keep shooting at the mech you have refreshed your evasion pips... and so you're back in the good quality zone...
I suppose the irony here is that by taking +1 initiative (and using it instead of just gaining stability) you've negated your ability to refresh your evasion pips in the middle of an enemy turn and have significantly decreased your ability to absorb hits. You've got an entire set of pilots whose skills make it easier for them to be killed. If 10 mech activation are doing 50% less damage then that is 5 mech activations worth of damage.
In general a lance for me is going to be
1-2: Pilot/Guts
1-2: Breaching/Sure Footed
1: Ace Pilot/Sensor Lock (usually in a lighter mech)
Its not all breaching shot like your "entire lance of +1 init". Its just that breaching shot is very useful on the 1-2 guys that have it compared to the other options on the guys that don't.
This is, quite literally, super low variance. Like, hilariously low variance. You don't even usually take 6 mech activations worth of damage to kill four mechs and when you do you usually take it into a high evasion high DR unit. The breaching shot guys get to be a bit further back so as to take less attacks. They also will tend to have higher range weapons so as a bonus they can head hunt if they don't get a good multi-breach.
Ace pilot popping in and out of los doesn't seem to work that amazingly. So long as there is a target to shoot at they will shoot. Jumping in and out of los you would seem to maybe burn some AI activations if they have more mechs? If you can activate first from being lighter then you can only get shot at every other round, sure. I suppose you could build stupidly hot mechs, jump in, shoot, shoot, jump out and wait to cool off. If you just jump one mech in to sight for LRM/PPC/Gauss you will still get focused and can only jump out as the last action no? Plus if you are out of los and waiting they will definitely all have max evasion/guard
battlefields tend not to be featureless planes. But as an example of how a lighter mech takes ZERO attacks with ace pilot.
Turn 1. Mechs are hidden from view and/or out of range. Player moves into view of one mech and shoots. That mech goes and shoots. Player moves mech 2 into view of the mech that just went and shoots. Positioning so that he is closer to the next likely activation. AI mech 2 goes. repeat till AI mech 3. Now the LIGHTER mech goes and moves to a position where it cannot easily be engaged by AI MECH 4. (or if it has enough evasion pips it might not even care). It shoots. AI Mech 4 shoots one of the other three mechs. Lighter mech goes, shoots, and then jumps away.
if you go SECOND then this is guaranteed. You get the last activation on the first turn(because you went second) and the first activation on the next turn.(because you're faster)
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Or if they decide to punch me in the face and get lucky.
Every so often you just have to accept it was that pilot's time when they get their head punched right the fuck off.
Oh no, nothing gets close enough to punch
It usually happens when I've gotten cocky and greedy, so the only mechs that are shooting are those making a called shot to the head. So...I mean I pretty much deserve it at that point.
Yes if you stack the highest version of an absurdly rare component that I've never seen any version of in the game before with a maxed piloting pilot you can generate tons of evasion against an unskilled pilot but that is again cherry picking a best case scenario. I'm assuming (can't really find any details) that the rules for the AI shooting at you roughly mirrors the rules for shooting at them
Base hit rate is 75%
Gunnery gives you 2.5% / point for a maximum of 25%, fairly sure AI gets to use this. They won't all have max but a few will be high and they probably all have a couple points
Some weapon types and mountings automatically confer a bonus to hit. Everything has +5% because you're in an assault. Arm mounted weapons have another 5%. Lasers have another 5%. Being higher than you can add up to a further 10%
Your 70% evasion could be down to 30% before a shot is fired from max gunnery + an arm mounted PPC. "Just" a reduction to 50% (from 4 gunnery + either arm or laser) means you win only on the first shot. Just max gunnery as you say reduces the first shot bonus to be (a little less with the free +5%) the same as bulwark, but evasion bonus goes down from there and bulwark doesn't, and if you don't have the full gyro+skill on every mech+pilot they can just shoot the one with less evasion. I suppose vehicles won't get much of a bonus though so you can tank SRM carriers easily if they go first
Highlanders are probably the poster boys of the breaching shot world sure, but my other assaults have 7-8 weapons on them, it's not just crabs. Only the atlas would really be a good breaching candidate IMO as you can mount dual ac20 and a bunch of other stuff. Of course I suppose I've not bothered with a lot of mechs because they don't fit my more dakka playstyle. And I did say I could see taking it on a LRM boat, it's not a bad skill just not a critical one IMO
And we're talking about the base game here, that's in your original post. I haven't looked at DLC stuff at all
If you stick around and let enemies stack a bunch of bonuses on you you are indeed likely to get hit.... but like... dont do that? I had 3 +3 gryos by the end of the campaign theyre not terribly rare.
Hit them with a PPC? -10% to hit.
Long range? -20% to hit
Obstructed view? -10% to hit
And this ignores that the to-hit by raw calculation the down side of the swing is larger than shown because battletech cheats to make to-hit%s feel better. Once you get to 20% or so youre basically invulnerable
edit: From here https://imgur.com/a/VVKrNPc
Going from "50% chance to be hit" to "40%" is a 35% reduction in incoming damage. Going from 40 to 30 is another 36%. 30 to 20 is 40.4%. 20 to 10, 53%.
The value of 1 evasion (-10% to hit) is absolutely huge.
If they have 7-8 weapons on them they're not SRM's and MLAS. At least not without the DLC. Which opens up UAC/20's. Here is a list of all the non-DLC assaults in the game with 100t equivalent or higher(65t free weight) in italics. (the 3s, and non SLDF highlanders are close at 63 and 60.5t respectively
Mech: B/E/M/S (Max SRM/MLAS DMG assuming all +max damage).
Atlas: 2/4/2/2 (284)
Atlas 2: 2/6/2/2 (354)
Banshee 3s: 1/6/1/2 (282)
Banshee 3m: 0/8/0/6 (280)
Banshee 3e: 1/2/0/4 (70)
Highlander 733P : 0/4/3/3 (356)
Highlander 733 : 1/2/4/1 (358)
Highlander 732B: 2/3/2/3 (249)
Stalker: 0/6/4/0 (498) (but cannot actually run those due to heat and weight)
Battlemaster: 2/7/1/2 (282)
Zeus: 2/4/1/1 (212)
Victor 9s : 2/2/3/1 (286)
Victor 9b : 3/2/2/1 (214)
Awesome 8t: 0/5/2/3 (319)
Awesome 8q: 0/7/0/1 (245)
Crab 2/4/4/4 (428)
This is why the Crab is the best case for SRMs. Even if you don't breach on every target lets assume you have it and have one of these mechs. This lets you shoot your AC/20 or AC/10 at one of those 40% and then dump the rest of the damage into someone else. If you have a single AC/20+++ and a bunch of SRM/s this will increase your DPR by 60 to 80 or more over not having breaching shot. Simply by putting one of the AC/20 on a different target and the rest of the SRM's into the other. An AC/20 + 4 SRM 6 crab does 408 raw DPS. Which is 488 effective with breaching shot.
If any of y'alls are wanting a co-op partner (my current merc company is stalled due to the missions being too rough for my AI controlled lancemates...and even bringing in one human ringer isn't enough to offset the derpiness of the AI pilots), I'm thinking of signing up for a couple months of GamePass (mostly because of the two Ori games and Forza Horizon 4).
So, shorter version: I'm likely going to have both EGS and the GamePass version running concurrently.
Do the save files port between the two versions? I'm assuming the files would be identical.
It's....actually even easier than importing. Because it looks like both versions pull from the same AppData folder (or wherever the save/config files are located), everything was available from the get go.
EDIT - to elaborate further: I was figuring I'd fire up the GamePass version to at least set up the resolution, FOV, and graphics quality settings and noticed that "Co-Op" was available at the main menu. Said "Huh..." and clicked on Single-Player "Continue" and saw all my EGS mechs sitting in my GamePass mechbay.
Oh heck yeah! Now you gave me a reason to pick up GamePass.
Steam: betsuni7
If you take 100 damage @ 50% true miss with 20% DR then you take 40 damage
If you take 100 damage @ 40% miss with 40% DR you take 36 damage
If you take 100 damage @ 60% miss with 20% DR then you take 32 damage
If you take 100 damage @ 50% miss with 40% DR you take 30 damage
If you take 100 damage @ 70% miss with 20% DR then you take 24 damage
If you take 100 damage @ 60% miss with 40% DR you take 24 damage
If you take 100 damage @ 80% miss with 20% DR then you take 16 damage
If you take 100 damage @ 70% miss with 40% DR you take 18 damage
Bulwark's damage taken is (1-x)*.6
+10% evasion is (0.9-x)*.8
You're winning only if you can reduce their hit rate to less than 40% without it
Yes I'm aware of their really dumb hit tables, but that also means that while you win more on the first shot you tank, your advantage fades fast too
You take 4 100 damage shots from a maximum gunnery opponent
@-70% "hit chance" it's really 20.5
@-60% -> 32.5
@-50 -> 50
@-40 -> 67.7
You take 169 raw damage, but only 135 from being in cover
But the non-sure footing mech can do something similar
@-60% -> 32.5
@-50 -> 50
@-40 -> 67.7
@-30 -> 79.5
You take 229 raw damage! But only 137 after DR
If you only took 3 shots its 82.4 vs 90.1 which is sliiightly better for sure footing but not by some crazy margin and is only the case for the extreme late game of +15% evasion gyros
Yes if you're not facing a pilot with 25% or more total bonus or you only take say one attack then you win big, but conversely if your enemy has more bonus (arm mounted PPCs say) and does properly focus you then you lose harder. If the latter attacks are higher damage you also lose more, conversely if the earlier attacks are higher damage you win more. If you get unlucky and you lose evasion from say a lucky ac20 shot making you unsteady then you lose big
Build that AC20/SRM6 crab please.
SRM6 x4 -> 12 t
Full cooling -> 16 t
3 SRM ammo -> 3 t
AC20 -> 14 t
Full cooling -> 8 t
3 AC20 ammo -> 3 t
Natural cooling -> -10 t
So we have 46 t used, but if you max frontal armor and have middling rear armor you'll get something like 43t available, and you don't even have jumpjets yet
The jumpless build sinks 63 and generates 72 heat. A 3x jump build sinks 45 of 72 which is useless, you're not even properly sinking the SRMs
The 4x MLAS 3x jump build sinks 84/96, but since the equivalent jump build is really non-viable we can take the JJ off, put 4x MG and a MG ammo for an extra 60 close range damage and sink 93/96 heat
So the equivalent MLAS++ / MG mech does 195, which is 117 even into a bulwarked opponent, and generates less net heat. You will do less stability damage either way than the AC20 one, but you simply can't build it without either stripping plenty of armor or jump jets
548 damage, 45/96 heat, 1760 armour. Cool enough to alpha strike twice then coolant vent for a 3rd. I have a bunch of double heat sinks I could have used but they're on other mechs at the moment, also could have put in a UAC/20 for more alpha damage but wouldn't be able to alpha as often.
Pales in comparison to Annihilators though.
And youre mistaken. Youre winning if you can reduce their hit rate to 50% without it. Because .325/.5 < .75.
@coblt60. You should drop the 4 lasers and 2 sinks for jumps. Juuumps!
I'm in, and in turn I would also like help with a mission I'm stuck on.
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
I really wish there was some way to tell an NPC pilot to hold off at range (aside from manually ordering them to reposition over and over with F3). I ended up putting my Archer in cold storage and then selling it because I couldn't keep NPCs from charging into the fray with it.
I've been watching a bunch of Baradul playing, and that's helped me. Even though it's got its weapons in the arms, I built a Jagermech like he had done - two AC5/BF's and way too much ammo - and I've been able to get in a pretty solid rhythm with it out in the field. I am certainly the bane of VTOLs in this thing.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Modding MW5 makes it much more playable.
The ones I recommend are:
1. Better Spawns - Basically makes everything spawn away from you or in more opportune areas and reduces the amount of "LOL assault in your face suddenly" bullshit from the original game.
2. Increased Loadout Options - Removes the weapon size limit of weapon slots, making them just type restricted. I wish I could actually just build mechs like in Mechwarrior 2 or TT Battletech...
3. MW5 Mercs Casual Mode - Basically allows you to set a difficulty level based on which file you use. I found just using the 10% reduction in combination with these other two mods made the game way more playable.
There are a whole bunch of other ones on nexus mods. But I was only looking to get rid of the loadout limitations and make the enemy spawns/difficulty a little less.
My Googling on this issue has failed to provide an answer.
EDIT: Also what does Art IV (Artemis IV) on missile systems do? MW5 seems unwilling to tell me.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Artemis helps the missiles clump together rather than going Macross all over the place. Although this is MWO, but assuming they did the same thing in MW5.
Steam: betsuni7
Re: the archer. @Iolo
You didnt follow the AI fitting advice!
The archer has 4x ML on it by default. These have a max range of 270m and an optimal range of 180m. This means that your archer will attempt to move to 180 range.
Take the ML off and replace with more ammo and so long as you dont run in he will not run in.
Ha, well I did take the SLs and MGs off my Warhammer, if that makes you feel better.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Correction:
At least with MW5, tier 0 medium lasers have an optimal range of 216m and a max of 324...which still seems awfully short range for medium lasers (but that could just be my Clan brain talking). But yeah, I've generally found AI pilots to be pretty suicidal and are not to be trusted with good/semi-good equipment.
Also, on the topic of mods: the folks just now getting around to playing the game are playing the Xbox GamePass version. Y'know...the version that doesn't have mod support for the time being.
I have no issues with better spawns doing anything like that and have noticed no issues on any missions. Guess I was just lucky. Additionally, I was still having issues with how mechs spawned in two months ago and better spawns fixed that, seemingly by increasing spawn range and reducing the amount of sudden swarming.
Maybe I just got lucky.
Yup, that's pretty much what they did in MW5 as well. SRM cluster is noticeably improved. And I think the LRMs also have a tighter spread (even with the Streaming LRM launchers), resulting in more missiles actually hitting the intended target instead of peppering the ground around the target.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Give me a little bit and I'll test it!
Anything you salvage should pop into your cold storage if your active mechbays are full IIRC
Okay, so here it is:
If your active mechbays are full, any salvaged/rewarded mechs will be shunted into cold storage.
However!!
There is a cap on cold storage of 50 mechs. If you already have 50 mechs in cold storage and your active mechbays are full, any salvaged/rewarded mechs are thrown into the ether.
Though there MIGHT still be a bug that maybe causes Artemis SRM/LRM to not benefit from missile skill damage boosts. (the bug definitely caused them to not increase missile skills)
I tried a few of the multi-mission missions. Pretty fun, but wow you need to play mech tetris under the weight cap ahead of time to make sure you don't wind up on that third mission 50 tons underweight!
I like the Warzone contracts the best. The enemies come in fairly discrete waves, and there's no penalty for accidental building destruction. I like the defense ones too (more than I thought I would) because you get those waves. There you do have to be careful about knocking things over or overmuch missed autocannon fire.
I was avoiding Demolition out of the gate, because I felt like the spawns were infinite. But since there's only one site, I usually just rush it, let my lancemates tie up the bad guys, and focus on knocking down buildings as fast as possible. Raids are my least favorite since you have to go to every location and the enemies just keep spawning. I was thinking it might make sense to reconfigure the lance for speed and just run from site to site. But no credible lance is going to outrun the 4-6 Locusts you'll often face at one time on Raids, so maybe not. Assassination is similar but (a) sometimes you'll get lucky and go to the right site first and not have to visit them all, and (b) you know there will be at least a few interesting mechs to try to salvage.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Due to my above-mention of not trusting AI pilots with good equipment (and Artemis-equipped launchers fall under that category), that would explain why I hadn't seen the damage bug.
However, it would for sure explain why my main character's missile skill stopped improving.
My callsign/epic handle/whatever is HandsomeCostanza, add me!
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
Steam: betsuni7
Yeah...it's about 4-5 missions in.
Also, you mentioned the other day about wondering if your MWO practice would transfer over to MW5. I've found the hardest habit to break is to actually put more than single-digit armor values on my rear. The spawns are so wonky, and you're guaranteed to get flanked, that you're absolutely going to want double-digit armor covering your butt.
Ah ok, I might have to figure out some time to play before Oosik Night then.
Oddly before I started to do try hard I would always run 10 in the sides and 12 in the center for those annoying lights who would always find my back. After I got better I would run less since face tanking was where it is at.
Steam: betsuni7
That's true but only if only take one or two shots. Take 3 from there and bulwark is overall better. Yes you can move after being shot at, but what if they just keep shooting at that mech? Plus you're quite often outnumbered in the campaign
+1 init lets you go first in every round. You can probably get at least a knockdown of the most threatening mech before it can move, if not a kill. There's no response. They can't generate evasion, can't guard, can't attack, can't get out of los. This allows you to reduce the incoming damage in each combat round because you can focus fire one target before it can act and kill it or remove weapons. Plus evasion stripping isn't dependent on turn order, since you can't effectively strip evasion from something that can just move right after your turn
Until you actually start removing limbs it doesn't matter how much raw damage you can do. It absolutely doesn't matter if you can kill all 4 mechs on turn 3 with breaching shot, but if you can focus fire one mech per turn and not touch the others while going first - taking 4 turns to win - you take only 6 mech activations worth of damage, vs ~10, despite doing less effective damage with +1 initiative you end up healthier at the end
Ace pilot popping in and out of los doesn't seem to work that amazingly. So long as there is a target to shoot at they will shoot. Jumping in and out of los you would seem to maybe burn some AI activations if they have more mechs? If you can activate first from being lighter then you can only get shot at every other round, sure. I suppose you could build stupidly hot mechs, jump in, shoot, shoot, jump out and wait to cool off. If you just jump one mech in to sight for LRM/PPC/Gauss you will still get focused and can only jump out as the last action no? Plus if you are out of los and waiting they will definitely all have max evasion/guard
Honestly I think the primary difference is tolerance of variance. Breaching shot, +1 evasion, big ballistic weapons, headshots, these are all high variance plays. When they work they're awesome, but they're very all or nothing
Bulwark, +1 initiative and more dakka are low variance plays. Firing lots of lasers and rockets means that you're going to get a pretty average result almost all of the time. Bulwark is just flat reduction, more things will hit you, but they hit you less hard. You'll never get a 120 damage breach, but you'll never shoot and do nothing either
Ate heat exchangers in the base game? I don't think I've seen those before. And yeah it works with double heat sinks (I think) but those aren't exactly dropping from the sky in base
If they keep shooting at the mech you have refreshed your evasion pips... and so you're back in the good quality zone...
I suppose the irony here is that by taking +1 initiative (and using it instead of just gaining stability) you've negated your ability to refresh your evasion pips in the middle of an enemy turn and have significantly decreased your ability to absorb hits. You've got an entire set of pilots whose skills make it easier for them to be killed. If 10 mech activation are doing 50% less damage then that is 5 mech activations worth of damage.
In general a lance for me is going to be
1-2: Pilot/Guts
1-2: Breaching/Sure Footed
1: Ace Pilot/Sensor Lock (usually in a lighter mech)
Its not all breaching shot like your "entire lance of +1 init". Its just that breaching shot is very useful on the 1-2 guys that have it compared to the other options on the guys that don't.
This is, quite literally, super low variance. Like, hilariously low variance. You don't even usually take 6 mech activations worth of damage to kill four mechs and when you do you usually take it into a high evasion high DR unit. The breaching shot guys get to be a bit further back so as to take less attacks. They also will tend to have higher range weapons so as a bonus they can head hunt if they don't get a good multi-breach.
battlefields tend not to be featureless planes. But as an example of how a lighter mech takes ZERO attacks with ace pilot.
Turn 1. Mechs are hidden from view and/or out of range. Player moves into view of one mech and shoots. That mech goes and shoots. Player moves mech 2 into view of the mech that just went and shoots. Positioning so that he is closer to the next likely activation. AI mech 2 goes. repeat till AI mech 3. Now the LIGHTER mech goes and moves to a position where it cannot easily be engaged by AI MECH 4. (or if it has enough evasion pips it might not even care). It shoots. AI Mech 4 shoots one of the other three mechs. Lighter mech goes, shoots, and then jumps away.
if you go SECOND then this is guaranteed. You get the last activation on the first turn(because you went second) and the first activation on the next turn.(because you're faster)
edit: Heat exchangers are in the base game yes.