Okay, so there's this mod by a guy named Xeno that just... fixes basically all the performance problems. I can actually set stuff to high with it and still get reliable 60FPS. What the heck. That is some Dark Souls 1 level of fans fixing disaster code.
And while I was on mods I got one so that story pilots could be maxed out, and one to buy loot shares at end of mission because otherwise it felt really silly how all the early missions shoed you light mechs to get but it was physically impossible for you to actually get them because you could not get enough shares.
So, growing decently for now. Got myself a nice Phoenix Hawk and I ran into a rare Firestarter. I may not be much into battletech as a setting, but the HBS turn based game has made me fond of the little fire boy, I wonder if I can fly it without getting exploded.
I was playing a week or two ago was a bit disappointed that with basic raytracing enabled at 2160p, I wasn't really consistently hitting 60 FPS. "Oh well, it's PGI. My RTX 3080 TI is probably sweating as it is."
Then I checked the widgets on the Windows 10 game bar and saw that in combat, my GPU was at 30 to 40% usage, despite not quite hitting 60 FPS. "....What the fuck?"
I'll need to check that out, thanks. I'm still at the boring early game grind.
Update: Can I fly the firestarter while doing okay? Quite certainly.
Can I see where the fuck I'm aiming when I'm throwing out four flamers and three lasers? Absolutely not. This is very much not a mech to try to take out people's legs with precision - more of a "spray into the red box and hope" kind of thing. Hilarious, though.
Enemies seem to not have heat buildup problems, though. I don't think I could be shooting PPCs while under sustained fire from four flamers!
Keep in mind that flamers are implemented as hitscan weapons with a fixed maximum damage distance like a small laser. The flame animation is purely cosmetic and not indicative at all of what you are hitting.
Enemies do build up heat and will shut down or have ammo explode from it. It just depends on how many heatsinks they have and how good your aim with the flamer is.
Useful to know about the hitscan thing. With so little feedback it's hard to know when the flamer is hitting.
In further news, the difficulty score on missions feels like it might be even more of a crapshoot than it used to be, and it was already a mess.
One difficulty 15 mission that lets me use 200 tons, ends up basically being four urbanmechs, on in each demolition objective, that get immediately vaporized.
Another difficulty 15 mission the next system over, that requires 160 tons max(so average weight of my mechs is like 35), ends up with the assassination targets being a full lance of a hunchback, a shadow hawk, a blackjack, and a phoenix hawk, all together in a city block. Needless to say, that ended up in an absolute clusterfuck and one dead pilot.
Man. It feels like every now and then I get dropped into an absolute clusterfuck that doesn't feel winnable without getting at least one of my mechs totaled.
Like, you go into a difficulty 18 mission that lets you run 170 tons, so you go in with a couple mediums and a couple lights, normal stuff - and get dropped into a tiny city map with no room to maneuver with a phoenix and a wolverine literally on the screen as the load screen fades off (the lancemates called "Mech spotted" during the pan showing your mechs, before Ryana could say the usual start of mission stuff) and then a panther and two urbanmechs with AC10s coming in from the nearby alleys - and after you win that absolute mess with 9 mechs trying to not shoot into their own allies while knife fighting in a phone booth, with the inevitable damages and lost weaponry such a thing involves... the objective on the other side of the tiny city map still has some two or three more dudes fully fresh.
At least the lady I had in the Centurion managed to punch out so I didn't have to get a new pilot, but boy that was the entire pay of the mission in repairs.
I use a mod that removes the weight cap. If I want to take out 400 tons to stomp on a pair of locusts, that's my call.
Personally, I've found that I enjoy battletech stuff less the more it moves away from light and medium mechs. By the end of the turn based game where you were just dropping four assaults all the time and just walking at dudes while shooting maximum firepower instead of doing cool jukes with Firestarters, the game was losing me a bit. So I don't mind weight limits forcing me to not just field the heaviest shit I have all the time. I just would like the opposition to be proportional to the amount of weight I'm allowed.
In other questions: are Hero mechs generally worth grabbing? Because I found a hero Spider, A variant I think, but it's also seven million quid for a Spider.
I use a mod that removes the weight cap. If I want to take out 400 tons to stomp on a pair of locusts, that's my call.
Personally, I've found that I enjoy battletech stuff less the more it moves away from light and medium mechs. By the end of the turn based game where you were just dropping four assaults all the time and just walking at dudes while shooting maximum firepower instead of doing cool jukes with Firestarters, the game was losing me a bit. So I don't mind weight limits forcing me to not just field the heaviest shit I have all the time. I just would like the opposition to be proportional to the amount of weight I'm allowed.
In other questions: are Hero mechs generally worth grabbing? Because I found a hero Spider, A variant I think, but it's also seven million quid for a Spider.
The Hero mechs often come with lostech equipment like XL engines, double heat sinks, pulse lasers, and the like. They can be a great source of these rare components, if you buy and strip them. Or you can run the mech like any other, and have a better performing chassis at the tonnage. The heroes often come with a unique weapon layout as well, so you can do builds on them you might not otherwise be able to do.
I see. Well, I did buy it anyway, and yeah, it comes with two antimissiles (not that I have any frame to put them in) and a double heatsink that should go excellently on my Firestarter.
Also, okay, question, how do things work in terms of difficulty areas in this campaign? Because I got a quest that says it's for rep 6, and it's in the ass end of the Kurita zone. Well, the Kurita hate my guts but I'm curious so I start heading there - and in an industrail stop in the way they're just, selling Assault mechs in the store (though while I could afford one or two, given I'm typicallly running 170-180 ton missions, 90 tonners seem hardly a plan, plus the Kurita are at -3 and the surcharge was noticeable). Heck, the place I stopped at at random had a Rare Battlemaster and a Rare, what's the name of that one that looks like a badly rendered Catapult with a suppository for a body, that one. So it seems like if I continue heading up there I'm probably going to get wrecked? Or are the center areas of the big empires just more prone to selling better stuff?
I reloaded and headed for the main story mission in the green zone first, anyway. Currently on my way there.
I see. Well, I did buy it anyway, and yeah, it comes with two antimissiles (not that I have any frame to put them in) and a double heatsink that should go excellently on my Firestarter.
Also, okay, question, how do things work in terms of difficulty areas in this campaign? Because I got a quest that says it's for rep 6, and it's in the ass end of the Kurita zone. Well, the Kurita hate my guts but I'm curious so I start heading there - and in an industrail stop in the way they're just, selling Assault mechs in the store (though while I could afford one or two, given I'm typicallly running 170-180 ton missions, 90 tonners seem hardly a plan, plus the Kurita are at -3 and the surcharge was noticeable). Heck, the place I stopped at at random had a Rare Battlemaster and a Rare, what's the name of that one that looks like a badly rendered Catapult with a suppository for a body, that one. So it seems like if I continue heading up there I'm probably going to get wrecked? Or are the center areas of the big empires just more prone to selling better stuff?
I reloaded and headed for the main story mission in the green zone first, anyway. Currently on my way there.
The suppository on legs is the Stalker.
Difficulty-wise, each conflict zone (group of stars with a border around them where you run actual missions) has a Reputation rating from 1-15. This gives you a general guide on which areas have appropriately difficult missions for you if your own Reputation level matches the conflict zone's rating. In Campaign mode, you start in the bottom right of the map and the campaign leads you counter-clockwise around the map through progressively more difficult areas until you get to the upper right of the map. In Career mode, difficulty is highest in the center of the map and gets easier at the edges.
Mission difficulty is different and ranges from 1-100. Each conflict zone will have missions with matching difficulties. So a Rep 1 zone might have level 1-5 missions. A Rep 15 zone might have level 90-100 missions, etc. As previously mentioned, there is a mostly hidden difficulty variance to make missions easier or harder than the stated rating. But if you see a mission that has an unusually high payout for it's difficulty, it's probably a harder mission.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
I see. Well, I did buy it anyway, and yeah, it comes with two antimissiles (not that I have any frame to put them in) and a double heatsink that should go excellently on my Firestarter.
Also, okay, question, how do things work in terms of difficulty areas in this campaign? Because I got a quest that says it's for rep 6, and it's in the ass end of the Kurita zone. Well, the Kurita hate my guts but I'm curious so I start heading there - and in an industrail stop in the way they're just, selling Assault mechs in the store (though while I could afford one or two, given I'm typicallly running 170-180 ton missions, 90 tonners seem hardly a plan, plus the Kurita are at -3 and the surcharge was noticeable). Heck, the place I stopped at at random had a Rare Battlemaster and a Rare, what's the name of that one that looks like a badly rendered Catapult with a suppository for a body, that one. So it seems like if I continue heading up there I'm probably going to get wrecked? Or are the center areas of the big empires just more prone to selling better stuff?
I reloaded and headed for the main story mission in the green zone first, anyway. Currently on my way there.
The suppository on legs is the Stalker.
Difficulty-wise, each conflict zone (group of stars with a border around them where you run actual missions) has a Reputation rating from 1-15. This gives you a general guide on which areas have appropriately difficult missions for you if your own Reputation level matches the conflict zone's rating. In Campaign mode, you start in the bottom right of the map and the campaign leads you counter-clockwise around the map through progressively more difficult areas until you get to the upper right of the map. In Career mode, difficulty is highest in the center of the map and gets easier at the edges.
Mission difficulty is different and ranges from 1-100. Each conflict zone will have missions with matching difficulties. So a Rep 1 zone might have level 1-5 missions. A Rep 15 zone might have level 90-100 missions, etc. As previously mentioned, there is a mostly hidden difficulty variance to make missions easier or harder than the stated rating. But if you see a mission that has an unusually high payout for it's difficulty, it's probably a harder mission.
The tonnage of the mechs available for sale is based on the Reputation Level of the surrounding conflict zones as well as the tech level of the system. So if you're near high rep level zones and shopping, you're much more likely to find heavies and assaults available. Rares are typically just baseline mechs that are fully repaired, so will cost the most but will come ready to use. Other mechs are salvage sales, and require some investment (replacing broken systems, missing weapons, etc) to get them up to speed.
Pilot skills and cap are random, but are influenced both by your reputation level, and the rep level of nearby conflict zones. You won't start seeing many near 60 skill cap pilots for hire until you're past Rep 10, and you're less likely to find them near easier conflict areas.
I see. Well, I did buy it anyway, and yeah, it comes with two antimissiles (not that I have any frame to put them in) and a double heatsink that should go excellently on my Firestarter.
Also, okay, question, how do things work in terms of difficulty areas in this campaign? Because I got a quest that says it's for rep 6, and it's in the ass end of the Kurita zone. Well, the Kurita hate my guts but I'm curious so I start heading there - and in an industrail stop in the way they're just, selling Assault mechs in the store (though while I could afford one or two, given I'm typicallly running 170-180 ton missions, 90 tonners seem hardly a plan, plus the Kurita are at -3 and the surcharge was noticeable). Heck, the place I stopped at at random had a Rare Battlemaster and a Rare, what's the name of that one that looks like a badly rendered Catapult with a suppository for a body, that one. So it seems like if I continue heading up there I'm probably going to get wrecked? Or are the center areas of the big empires just more prone to selling better stuff?
I reloaded and headed for the main story mission in the green zone first, anyway. Currently on my way there.
The suppository on legs is the Stalker.
Difficulty-wise, each conflict zone (group of stars with a border around them where you run actual missions) has a Reputation rating from 1-15. This gives you a general guide on which areas have appropriately difficult missions for you if your own Reputation level matches the conflict zone's rating. In Campaign mode, you start in the bottom right of the map and the campaign leads you counter-clockwise around the map through progressively more difficult areas until you get to the upper right of the map. In Career mode, difficulty is highest in the center of the map and gets easier at the edges.
Mission difficulty is different and ranges from 1-100. Each conflict zone will have missions with matching difficulties. So a Rep 1 zone might have level 1-5 missions. A Rep 15 zone might have level 90-100 missions, etc. As previously mentioned, there is a mostly hidden difficulty variance to make missions easier or harder than the stated rating. But if you see a mission that has an unusually high payout for it's difficulty, it's probably a harder mission.
Huh. Weird how a quest wanted to send me to the upper center-rightish then while having Rep 6. That would explain why shops had fucking Assaults around there, and me getting the heck out of dodge was probably a good idea.
It does present the future problem that I'll be then getting to that top right at the end with a bunch of expensive mechs, and when I end up there having to do missions for the Kurita guys I'm going to get paid peanuts. With the fact that it seems every contract in the starter areas is -8 rep to Kurita specifically, and when there's a special mission with them they're like "hey, guy, go assassinate these refugees seeking asylum that deserted our lines for sucking" and so I don't take them, they hate my guts.
Probably shouldn't be me that makes a new thread, since I know fuck all about Battletech, but it would be a good idea, yeah.
Anyway, stuff I came to ask:
So I got a... Charger 1A1 by spending all my shares plus a bunch of my own money after a mission and... am I missing something or is this thing just terrible?
It's an Assault mech, that has a large energy mount, but it has so little tonnage left for weapons that it comes filled to max capacity with... 5 small lasers and no heat sinks. A Firestarter can have 5 lasers! 2.5 tons for weaponry and heatsinks! Why do the stats say it has nearly double the firepower as my Champion that has two small lasers, two medium lasers, an SRM6, AND an AC 10? Does it have some kind of special ability that I'm not seeing, like the Cyclops in the turn-based game?
Yeah the Charger 1A1 doesn’t have much going for it unmodded. It has an absolutely massive engine that’s taking up all of the tonnage (similar to the issue with the Cicada)
What it does have going for it is high speed for its size and it has a meaty melee attack.
You’ll need to aggressively strip armor to fit anything on it
Yeah the Charger 1A1 doesn’t have much going for it unmodded. It has an absolutely massive engine that’s taking up all of the tonnage (similar to the issue with the Cicada)
What it does have going for it is high speed for its size and it has a meaty melee attack.
You’ll need to aggressively strip armor to fit anything on it
That's what I thought. And at the point I'm stripping enough armor to let it exist, well, might as well run a Quickdraw or something, it feels like. Takes less tonnage from the mission and ends up having more gun and the same armor.
Posts
I was playing a week or two ago was a bit disappointed that with basic raytracing enabled at 2160p, I wasn't really consistently hitting 60 FPS. "Oh well, it's PGI. My RTX 3080 TI is probably sweating as it is."
Then I checked the widgets on the Windows 10 game bar and saw that in combat, my GPU was at 30 to 40% usage, despite not quite hitting 60 FPS. "....What the fuck?"
I'll need to check that out, thanks. I'm still at the boring early game grind.
Useful to know about the hitscan thing. With so little feedback it's hard to know when the flamer is hitting.
In further news, the difficulty score on missions feels like it might be even more of a crapshoot than it used to be, and it was already a mess.
One difficulty 15 mission that lets me use 200 tons, ends up basically being four urbanmechs, on in each demolition objective, that get immediately vaporized.
Another difficulty 15 mission the next system over, that requires 160 tons max(so average weight of my mechs is like 35), ends up with the assassination targets being a full lance of a hunchback, a shadow hawk, a blackjack, and a phoenix hawk, all together in a city block. Needless to say, that ended up in an absolute clusterfuck and one dead pilot.
Roll that gacha and see what you get!
Steam: betsuni7
Like, you go into a difficulty 18 mission that lets you run 170 tons, so you go in with a couple mediums and a couple lights, normal stuff - and get dropped into a tiny city map with no room to maneuver with a phoenix and a wolverine literally on the screen as the load screen fades off (the lancemates called "Mech spotted" during the pan showing your mechs, before Ryana could say the usual start of mission stuff) and then a panther and two urbanmechs with AC10s coming in from the nearby alleys - and after you win that absolute mess with 9 mechs trying to not shoot into their own allies while knife fighting in a phone booth, with the inevitable damages and lost weaponry such a thing involves... the objective on the other side of the tiny city map still has some two or three more dudes fully fresh.
At least the lady I had in the Centurion managed to punch out so I didn't have to get a new pilot, but boy that was the entire pay of the mission in repairs.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Personally, I've found that I enjoy battletech stuff less the more it moves away from light and medium mechs. By the end of the turn based game where you were just dropping four assaults all the time and just walking at dudes while shooting maximum firepower instead of doing cool jukes with Firestarters, the game was losing me a bit. So I don't mind weight limits forcing me to not just field the heaviest shit I have all the time. I just would like the opposition to be proportional to the amount of weight I'm allowed.
In other questions: are Hero mechs generally worth grabbing? Because I found a hero Spider, A variant I think, but it's also seven million quid for a Spider.
That being said, some heroes can be a decently priced way to get early DHS
The Hero mechs often come with lostech equipment like XL engines, double heat sinks, pulse lasers, and the like. They can be a great source of these rare components, if you buy and strip them. Or you can run the mech like any other, and have a better performing chassis at the tonnage. The heroes often come with a unique weapon layout as well, so you can do builds on them you might not otherwise be able to do.
But it relies on hardpoints in its arms. Not a good purchase if you want to add a mech to your stable.
Also, okay, question, how do things work in terms of difficulty areas in this campaign? Because I got a quest that says it's for rep 6, and it's in the ass end of the Kurita zone. Well, the Kurita hate my guts but I'm curious so I start heading there - and in an industrail stop in the way they're just, selling Assault mechs in the store (though while I could afford one or two, given I'm typicallly running 170-180 ton missions, 90 tonners seem hardly a plan, plus the Kurita are at -3 and the surcharge was noticeable). Heck, the place I stopped at at random had a Rare Battlemaster and a Rare, what's the name of that one that looks like a badly rendered Catapult with a suppository for a body, that one. So it seems like if I continue heading up there I'm probably going to get wrecked? Or are the center areas of the big empires just more prone to selling better stuff?
I reloaded and headed for the main story mission in the green zone first, anyway. Currently on my way there.
The suppository on legs is the Stalker.
Difficulty-wise, each conflict zone (group of stars with a border around them where you run actual missions) has a Reputation rating from 1-15. This gives you a general guide on which areas have appropriately difficult missions for you if your own Reputation level matches the conflict zone's rating. In Campaign mode, you start in the bottom right of the map and the campaign leads you counter-clockwise around the map through progressively more difficult areas until you get to the upper right of the map. In Career mode, difficulty is highest in the center of the map and gets easier at the edges.
Mission difficulty is different and ranges from 1-100. Each conflict zone will have missions with matching difficulties. So a Rep 1 zone might have level 1-5 missions. A Rep 15 zone might have level 90-100 missions, etc. As previously mentioned, there is a mostly hidden difficulty variance to make missions easier or harder than the stated rating. But if you see a mission that has an unusually high payout for it's difficulty, it's probably a harder mission.
Set course for Kaetetôã!
The tonnage of the mechs available for sale is based on the Reputation Level of the surrounding conflict zones as well as the tech level of the system. So if you're near high rep level zones and shopping, you're much more likely to find heavies and assaults available. Rares are typically just baseline mechs that are fully repaired, so will cost the most but will come ready to use. Other mechs are salvage sales, and require some investment (replacing broken systems, missing weapons, etc) to get them up to speed.
Pilot skills and cap are random, but are influenced both by your reputation level, and the rep level of nearby conflict zones. You won't start seeing many near 60 skill cap pilots for hire until you're past Rep 10, and you're less likely to find them near easier conflict areas.
Huh. Weird how a quest wanted to send me to the upper center-rightish then while having Rep 6. That would explain why shops had fucking Assaults around there, and me getting the heck out of dodge was probably a good idea.
It does present the future problem that I'll be then getting to that top right at the end with a bunch of expensive mechs, and when I end up there having to do missions for the Kurita guys I'm going to get paid peanuts. With the fact that it seems every contract in the starter areas is -8 rep to Kurita specifically, and when there's a special mission with them they're like "hey, guy, go assassinate these refugees seeking asylum that deserted our lines for sucking" and so I don't take them, they hate my guts.
Well, problems for the future!
Anyway, stuff I came to ask:
So I got a... Charger 1A1 by spending all my shares plus a bunch of my own money after a mission and... am I missing something or is this thing just terrible?
It's an Assault mech, that has a large energy mount, but it has so little tonnage left for weapons that it comes filled to max capacity with... 5 small lasers and no heat sinks. A Firestarter can have 5 lasers! 2.5 tons for weaponry and heatsinks! Why do the stats say it has nearly double the firepower as my Champion that has two small lasers, two medium lasers, an SRM6, AND an AC 10? Does it have some kind of special ability that I'm not seeing, like the Cyclops in the turn-based game?
What it does have going for it is high speed for its size and it has a meaty melee attack.
You’ll need to aggressively strip armor to fit anything on it
That's what I thought. And at the point I'm stripping enough armor to let it exist, well, might as well run a Quickdraw or something, it feels like. Takes less tonnage from the mission and ends up having more gun and the same armor.
Well, to the shop it goes.
PAPERWORK MODE ENGAGED.
PAPERWORK MODE DISENGAGED. Entering Cooldown Period...ETA to next Salvo: {incalculable]
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