Do NOT use hill climb nodes. While testing skill nodes for potential changes in July, Navid found that the nodes are reversed, in essence, they’re making your hill climb worse
It’s apparently been this way the entire time (praise Chris), but nobody ever noticed because it was so incremental and the mechs that could afford to take the nodes under the old tree already had terrible hill climb.
Do NOT use hill climb nodes. While testing skill nodes for potential changes in July, Navid found that the nodes are reversed, in essence, they’re making your hill climb worse
It’s apparently been this way the entire time (praise Chris), but nobody ever noticed because it was so incremental and the mechs that could afford to take the nodes under the old tree already had terrible hill climb.
"Inverse kinematics? What's that?'
"I dunno, some sort of foot thing?'
"Huh. Foot thing. Inverse. Well let's just do this. Fuck it"
In Battletech, how do you prefer to balance your Money/Salvage when negotiating contacts?
I've been going heavy on the Salvage (normally maxing it out), since it seems that assembling and pawning a single light mech will get me more cash than can be negotiated on any contract. But occasionally there'll be some secondary objectives that give a fat bonus payout on the mission.
I'm guessing (hoping) that money stops being a concern eventually, but since heavier and backup mechs means more maintenance fees, and better mech warriors means bigger paychecks; I'm guessing that I'm going to be watching the ol' account book fairly closely for most of the game.
Note: just playing Vanilla here. Don't have the DLCs or mod packs.
In Battletech, how do you prefer to balance your Money/Salvage when negotiating contacts?
I've been going heavy on the Salvage (normally maxing it out), since it seems that assembling and pawning a single light mech will get me more cash than can be negotiated on any contract. But occasionally there'll be some secondary objectives that give a fat bonus payout on the mission.
I'm guessing (hoping) that money stops being a concern eventually, but since heavier and backup mechs means more maintenance fees, and better mech warriors means bigger paychecks; I'm guessing that I'm going to be watching the ol' account book fairly closely for most of the game.
Note: just playing Vanilla here. Don't have the DLCs or mod packs.
Super early on, like half and one skull missions, I'll usually take 1 or 2 picks of salvage, but mostly pick up cash. Since your starting mechs always have at least two mediums, you are unlikely to pick up a good upgrade right away (esp. w/ cheap tanks padding the pool). I mean, sometimes you miss out on a Firestarter or something. But since your pilots can't reliable bring home three pieces of salvage early on, it's usually good to have some cash.
Mid game, like a lance with a 2-4 heavies and the rest mediums, unless I'm slumming it down in 2 skull or under missions, I'll usually take 3 salvage picks and the rest cash. Pilots tend to have tactics 6 and legging mechs with called shots to knock the pilot into a milk shake is a fairly reliable way (though not foolproof) to bring home mechs. Even if you aren't hitting a lance upgrade every time, you are often picking up a saleable mech or two.
Later, when you have a dedicated headshotting mech and a Tactics 9 pilot driving it, I usually max salvage. Getting 4-6 picks can often result in bringing home 2, 3 or even 4 mechs (depending on what bits you have lying around), and is generally going to generate you more c-bills than cash payout. (Plus you always are able to grab something juicy like a cockpit mod or +x to hit defense gyro.) The one thing you have to be careful about with that is faction rep. If you have been fighting Liao for example, and you are cruising around Liao space taking Pirate, Davion and Taurian missions against them, you may not have access to the stores because they hate you so much. So you have to be careful you don't accidentally bankrupt yourself when you can't sell any of your battalion of spare mechs you've been accumulating. They aren't liquid until you reach a planet with a store that will have you (which includes the black market if you've unlocked it.)
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
edited June 2022
As a follow up, these days I try to avoid tanking my reputation with any faction. I prefer to play both sides of the war, and go nuts against planetary governments, while never taking a mission for the planetary government. It’s probably not optimal, but getting locked out irritates me.
If you’re playing the campaign there is one exception which is totally safe to tank and a second one you’ll probably end up tanking as well, so don’t worry about it.
Don’t tank that pirate rep as tempting as it may be!
Ah hah ha haaaaaaa I totally had those nodes on some of my Lights back in the day.
Goddamn, PGI just proving past ineptitudes again and again.
I did my best to avoid those nodes anyways, it seems like you only slow down for a second or two going up the steepest climb able angles, or you just can't go up them at all. I never saw the point of spending a skill point to stay at 140KPH vs 137 for a 1.5 seconds? Or was it supposed to let you climb steeper walls?
From what I understood of the explanation, you get hit with deceleration depending on the weight of the mech and the grade of the hill you’re trying to climb where decel to 0 means you can’t climb it.
So yeah, lights would be somewhat questionable and the main beneficiaries would be assaults and hill peekers.
As a follow up, these days I try to avoid tanking my reputation with any faction. I prefer to play both sides of the war, and go nuts against planetary governments, while never taking a mission for the planetary government. It’s probably not optimal, but getting locked out irritates me.
If you’re playing the campaign there is one exception which is totally safe to tank and a second one you’ll probably end up tanking as well, so don’t worry about it.
Don’t tank that pirate rep as tempting as it may be!
Are there any RP elements for factions?
Based on my characters background I think he's gonna have a problem working for any government
Within the context of the HBS game or lore wise in general?
Like when you meet specific pirates is it in the setting of them like, slave trading versus stealing food?
It's just in the auto-generated missions. They need mercs so it's frequently things like being an enforcer for them (someone didn't pay their protection money, time to go show them why they should have), steal a convoy, etc. etc. etc.
So not really any RP elements aside from what you insert, say if you're a Davion loyalist or whatever.
In Battletech, how do you prefer to balance your Money/Salvage when negotiating contacts?
I've been going heavy on the Salvage (normally maxing it out), since it seems that assembling and pawning a single light mech will get me more cash than can be negotiated on any contract. But occasionally there'll be some secondary objectives that give a fat bonus payout on the mission.
I'm guessing (hoping) that money stops being a concern eventually, but since heavier and backup mechs means more maintenance fees, and better mech warriors means bigger paychecks; I'm guessing that I'm going to be watching the ol' account book fairly closely for most of the game.
Note: just playing Vanilla here. Don't have the DLCs or mod packs.
Depends on how good your crew is at generating salvage. If you’re making a lot take more salvage but if you don’t make a lot taxing extra salvage points isnt a huge advantage. You pick the top 1-3 things anyway and then don’t need more picks since you’ve got a decent chance to random the rest.
If you have access to the black market you’re probably want to be more money heavy in general because you can buy the best equipment and mechs there. If you do not have access to the black market then extra salvage means extra chances at high quality equipment.
Edit: iirc the mission description should tell you if you have bonus available so you should be able to read it ahead of time and add more dosh to the payout if it’s likely.
Pilots tend to have tactics 6 and legging mechs with called shots to knock the pilot into a milk shake is a fairly reliable way (though not foolproof) to bring home mechs. Even if you aren't hitting a lance upgrade every time, you are often picking up a saleable mech or two.
This is no longer a reliable way to generate salvage.
Pilots tend to have tactics 6 and legging mechs with called shots to knock the pilot into a milk shake is a fairly reliable way (though not foolproof) to bring home mechs. Even if you aren't hitting a lance upgrade every time, you are often picking up a saleable mech or two.
This is no longer a reliable way to generate salvage.
For mediums and heavies? Sure it is. Early on most OpFor pilots need their bell rung 3-4 times before they conk out. Two side torsos and a legging is three high confidence pilot pings. Sometimes you do have to get lucky with #4, that is true. And it's no Marauder scalpel. But it's a reasonably good way to take home an enemy mech you take a shine too. MegaMan001's Marauders just brought home an LRM JagerMech this way.
Pilots tend to have tactics 6 and legging mechs with called shots to knock the pilot into a milk shake is a fairly reliable way (though not foolproof) to bring home mechs. Even if you aren't hitting a lance upgrade every time, you are often picking up a saleable mech or two.
This is no longer a reliable way to generate salvage.
For mediums and heavies? Sure it is. Early on most OpFor pilots need their bell rung 3-4 times before they conk out. Two side torsos and a legging is three high confidence pilot pings. Sometimes you do have to get lucky with #4, that is true. And it's no Marauder scalpel. But it's a reasonably good way to take home an enemy mech you take a shine too. MegaMan001's just brought home an LRM JagerMech this way.
I'm very pleased to know that my mechwarrior avatar is kicking ass for you, Iolo.
My own personal mechwarrior is still figuring out how to make sure he lands facing the enemy after moving!
YAML, Yet Another Weapon, and Yet Another Weapon Clan appear to have been fixed.
Lore-based Mech Variants - YAML-Edition is apparently still broken (and appears to be the thing that crashed the game upon startup after the completion of the last splash screen?)
Restore Traits... maybe? I did have a game crash seemingly because I dumped a mech to cold storage, brought it out, stripped the engine and tried to sell it. However when I restarted the game, brought it out of cold storage, and then sold it everything was fine so... iunno.
But I've run at least a dozen missions with just YAML, Yet Another Weapon, and Yet Another Weapon Clan enabled with no crashes or glitches.
Ha so I screwed around the first two months by changing my mechs like crazy and am now facing bankruptcy. Going to try and pull out of this downward financial spiral and get some contracts together in the third.
Oh, is there anyway to eyeball attack distance on the map? Like so many movement dots to short, medium, long? I'm trying to figure out how to line up more accurate shots with my various mechs, but clearly "get closer to enemy" isn't the way to do it like in xcom.
MegaMan001 on
I am in the business of saving lives.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Ha so I screwed around the first two months by changing my mechs like crazy and am now facing bankruptcy. Going to try and pull out of this downward financial spiral and get some contracts together in the third.
Oh, is there anyway to eyeball attack distance on the map? Like so many movement dots to short, medium, long? I'm trying to figure out how to line up more accurate shots with my various mechs, but clearly "get closer to enemy" isn't the way to do it like in xcom.
It's recommended to limit your changes in the first few months to those that are strictly necessary. Personally, moving ammunition is all I would recommend at first other than when moving between worlds. Removing an item costs zero time, changing your armor costs zero time. Adding or moving an item costs time proportional to (I believe) the number of slots or maybe the tonnage. Not sure. You have very crude capabilities at the beginning so it takes a very long time to repair or update your mechs.
The sight cones show you minimum, optimal, and maximum ranges for your weapons. If you need to figure it out for one weapon exactly, you can disable your other weapons (click the weapon) and it will show you and you can move to put that weapon in its optimal range. Just make sure to re-enable your other weapons when you move.
You probably could figure out the dots per range category but I honestly have never bothered other than eyeballing my likely range for the next turn.
You can get a dot display by holding the alt key while you mouse around the map.
Orca on
+4
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Yes one of the problems with battletech is you can't just go nuts. Upping your armor by stripping off a weapon or two is fine, but then you gotta stick with it for several missions and rake in the cash. And you can't just swap stuff around all the time.
I get it, but it's also really frustrating.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
All that aside, if you're comfortable at all with editing a script file (not even full in code, really), you can at least mostly skip over at least most of the parts you don't like.
For me it was the ship. I can absolutely imagine some folks enjoying the challenge added by needing to manage a dropship, including repairs and upgrades. That just wasn't for me. So I edited the json file where that info was to make every ship upgrade take 1 day and cost 1 cbill. Boom. Done. Hang out for a bit in-system and I'm good to go with my shiny new Cadillac.
This game is faithful enough to the original TT games and fiction that there was bound to be mechanics that some found to be just annoyances in an otherwise great game. I think that's valid, and I think it's actually worth the small amount of work to just get rid of the annoyance, 9/10 times.
All that aside, if you're comfortable at all with editing a script file (not even full in code, really), you can at least mostly skip over at least most of the parts you don't like.
For me it was the ship. I can absolutely imagine some folks enjoying the challenge added by needing to manage a dropship, including repairs and upgrades. That just wasn't for me. So I edited the json file where that info was to make every ship upgrade take 1 day and cost 1 cbill. Boom. Done. Hang out for a bit in-system and I'm good to go with my shiny new Cadillac.
This game is faithful enough to the original TT games and fiction that there was bound to be mechanics that some found to be just annoyances in an otherwise great game. I think that's valid, and I think it's actually worth the small amount of work to just get rid of the annoyance, 9/10 times.
Oh I could never do this. The whole economy and crew management is the sweet sweet delicious frosting on a nice cake. I live for little management games like that.
How do the vision cones show range by the way? It just looks all white / gray? Also I'm colorblind so I'm hoping it's not a color thing.
I am in the business of saving lives.
+1
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
It’s intensity of grey. No grey==you can’t shoot here. The more grey, the better the range is for your weapon (if selecting one weapon) or the better the range is for the weapons you have selected (if you have selected multiple weapons).
If you put your mouse over an enemy target before committing to a move it will also show you hit percentages for your selected weapons assuming they are in range.
+3
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
I did not know that last one!
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
MWO rocket launchers are getting a change, damage is getting reduced, they’re getting a flat 10 shots per launcher, and a 90s cooldown.
Mostly because they were just a pure troll weapon and utter hell in event queue when infinite ammo was enabled. Strong possibility they’re going to 60s cooldown in the following patch.
MWO rocket launchers are getting a change, damage is getting reduced, they’re getting a flat 10 shots per launcher, and a 90s cooldown.
Mostly because they were just a pure troll weapon and utter hell in event queue when infinite ammo was enabled. Strong possibility they’re going to 60s cooldown in the following patch.
So... nerfing an already totally useless weapon, because of a goofball mode?
MWO rocket launchers are getting a change, damage is getting reduced, they’re getting a flat 10 shots per launcher, and a 90s cooldown.
Mostly because they were just a pure troll weapon and utter hell in event queue when infinite ammo was enabled. Strong possibility they’re going to 60s cooldown in the following patch.
So... nerfing an already totally useless weapon, because of a goofball mode?
That and even in normal queue it exists almost purely to troll people with a one and done suicide light.
(The exception is mechs that use them to gain the benefit of missile door damage reduction)
The Wolf Phoenix, missile boat variant from MWO that’s brought in via the YAML mod
Yup it comes with 2xSRM6 ART IV, 2x SRM4-ST ART IV, 2x L Lasers, 2x MP Lasers, a ridiculous amount of ammo for the SRMs, and unfortunately an engine that is total garbage.
I stripped out some SRMs, swapped to ER L Laser-SBs and put in an engine that at least lets it break 60kph
There's a lot more to improve but it'll be quite awhile before I'm swimming in the clan tech to do it.
So saw that YAML was updated and I figured I'd force the update for the mods via steam and give it a try on my current save.
I dunno if for some reason the mod never updated previously, but I started seeing the super resilient tanks that were mentioned earlier.
Like, 3 tier 4 PPCs to kill a Scorpion level. Partisans were a whole new level of hell to kill.
If you have the Scary Tanks mod installed (which boots their HP by 500% iirc) YAML defers to that and does nothing.
If you don't have Scary Tanks installed it defaults the HP of all ground and air vehicles to 300%.
Which is annoying as hell in my opinion but no one asked me (and I mean for good reason, the hell do I know)
Thankfully this is relatively easily rectified. You can either edit the .ini file (which I never found but I didn't look very hard either) or just do what I did and install the mod Mod Options which lets you just set them back to 100% base health via a menu in the Options Menu in game (along with a bunch of other things you can tweak as well).
On Sarna, rescuing the other mercs from the battleship wreckage.
Having a problem with too much tonnage makes these missions a lot easier.
While I remain confident that final Sarna mission will still be a giant pain in the ass maybe I'll actually beat it without multiple attempts this time
Posts
Do NOT use hill climb nodes. While testing skill nodes for potential changes in July, Navid found that the nodes are reversed, in essence, they’re making your hill climb worse
It’s apparently been this way the entire time (praise Chris), but nobody ever noticed because it was so incremental and the mechs that could afford to take the nodes under the old tree already had terrible hill climb.
"Inverse kinematics? What's that?'
"I dunno, some sort of foot thing?'
"Huh. Foot thing. Inverse. Well let's just do this. Fuck it"
Goddamn, PGI just proving past ineptitudes again and again.
I've been going heavy on the Salvage (normally maxing it out), since it seems that assembling and pawning a single light mech will get me more cash than can be negotiated on any contract. But occasionally there'll be some secondary objectives that give a fat bonus payout on the mission.
I'm guessing (hoping) that money stops being a concern eventually, but since heavier and backup mechs means more maintenance fees, and better mech warriors means bigger paychecks; I'm guessing that I'm going to be watching the ol' account book fairly closely for most of the game.
Note: just playing Vanilla here. Don't have the DLCs or mod packs.
Just the preselected patterns, I'm afraid.
Super early on, like half and one skull missions, I'll usually take 1 or 2 picks of salvage, but mostly pick up cash. Since your starting mechs always have at least two mediums, you are unlikely to pick up a good upgrade right away (esp. w/ cheap tanks padding the pool). I mean, sometimes you miss out on a Firestarter or something. But since your pilots can't reliable bring home three pieces of salvage early on, it's usually good to have some cash.
Mid game, like a lance with a 2-4 heavies and the rest mediums, unless I'm slumming it down in 2 skull or under missions, I'll usually take 3 salvage picks and the rest cash. Pilots tend to have tactics 6 and legging mechs with called shots to knock the pilot into a milk shake is a fairly reliable way (though not foolproof) to bring home mechs. Even if you aren't hitting a lance upgrade every time, you are often picking up a saleable mech or two.
Later, when you have a dedicated headshotting mech and a Tactics 9 pilot driving it, I usually max salvage. Getting 4-6 picks can often result in bringing home 2, 3 or even 4 mechs (depending on what bits you have lying around), and is generally going to generate you more c-bills than cash payout. (Plus you always are able to grab something juicy like a cockpit mod or +x to hit defense gyro.) The one thing you have to be careful about with that is faction rep. If you have been fighting Liao for example, and you are cruising around Liao space taking Pirate, Davion and Taurian missions against them, you may not have access to the stores because they hate you so much. So you have to be careful you don't accidentally bankrupt yourself when you can't sell any of your battalion of spare mechs you've been accumulating. They aren't liquid until you reach a planet with a store that will have you (which includes the black market if you've unlocked it.)
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
If you’re playing the campaign there is one exception which is totally safe to tank and a second one you’ll probably end up tanking as well, so don’t worry about it.
Don’t tank that pirate rep as tempting as it may be!
I did my best to avoid those nodes anyways, it seems like you only slow down for a second or two going up the steepest climb able angles, or you just can't go up them at all. I never saw the point of spending a skill point to stay at 140KPH vs 137 for a 1.5 seconds? Or was it supposed to let you climb steeper walls?
So yeah, lights would be somewhat questionable and the main beneficiaries would be assaults and hill peekers.
Are there any RP elements for factions?
Based on my characters background I think he's gonna have a problem working for any government
Like when you meet specific pirates is it in the setting of them like, slave trading versus stealing food?
It's just in the auto-generated missions. They need mercs so it's frequently things like being an enforcer for them (someone didn't pay their protection money, time to go show them why they should have), steal a convoy, etc. etc. etc.
So not really any RP elements aside from what you insert, say if you're a Davion loyalist or whatever.
Depends on how good your crew is at generating salvage. If you’re making a lot take more salvage but if you don’t make a lot taxing extra salvage points isnt a huge advantage. You pick the top 1-3 things anyway and then don’t need more picks since you’ve got a decent chance to random the rest.
If you have access to the black market you’re probably want to be more money heavy in general because you can buy the best equipment and mechs there. If you do not have access to the black market then extra salvage means extra chances at high quality equipment.
Edit: iirc the mission description should tell you if you have bonus available so you should be able to read it ahead of time and add more dosh to the payout if it’s likely.
This is no longer a reliable way to generate salvage.
For mediums and heavies? Sure it is. Early on most OpFor pilots need their bell rung 3-4 times before they conk out. Two side torsos and a legging is three high confidence pilot pings. Sometimes you do have to get lucky with #4, that is true. And it's no Marauder scalpel. But it's a reasonably good way to take home an enemy mech you take a shine too. MegaMan001's Marauders just brought home an LRM JagerMech this way.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
I'm very pleased to know that my mechwarrior avatar is kicking ass for you, Iolo.
My own personal mechwarrior is still figuring out how to make sure he lands facing the enemy after moving!
Lore-based Mech Variants - YAML-Edition is apparently still broken (and appears to be the thing that crashed the game upon startup after the completion of the last splash screen?)
Restore Traits... maybe? I did have a game crash seemingly because I dumped a mech to cold storage, brought it out, stripped the engine and tried to sell it. However when I restarted the game, brought it out of cold storage, and then sold it everything was fine so... iunno.
But I've run at least a dozen missions with just YAML, Yet Another Weapon, and Yet Another Weapon Clan enabled with no crashes or glitches.
Oh, is there anyway to eyeball attack distance on the map? Like so many movement dots to short, medium, long? I'm trying to figure out how to line up more accurate shots with my various mechs, but clearly "get closer to enemy" isn't the way to do it like in xcom.
It's recommended to limit your changes in the first few months to those that are strictly necessary. Personally, moving ammunition is all I would recommend at first other than when moving between worlds. Removing an item costs zero time, changing your armor costs zero time. Adding or moving an item costs time proportional to (I believe) the number of slots or maybe the tonnage. Not sure. You have very crude capabilities at the beginning so it takes a very long time to repair or update your mechs.
The sight cones show you minimum, optimal, and maximum ranges for your weapons. If you need to figure it out for one weapon exactly, you can disable your other weapons (click the weapon) and it will show you and you can move to put that weapon in its optimal range. Just make sure to re-enable your other weapons when you move.
You probably could figure out the dots per range category but I honestly have never bothered other than eyeballing my likely range for the next turn.
You can get a dot display by holding the alt key while you mouse around the map.
I get it, but it's also really frustrating.
For me it was the ship. I can absolutely imagine some folks enjoying the challenge added by needing to manage a dropship, including repairs and upgrades. That just wasn't for me. So I edited the json file where that info was to make every ship upgrade take 1 day and cost 1 cbill. Boom. Done. Hang out for a bit in-system and I'm good to go with my shiny new Cadillac.
This game is faithful enough to the original TT games and fiction that there was bound to be mechanics that some found to be just annoyances in an otherwise great game. I think that's valid, and I think it's actually worth the small amount of work to just get rid of the annoyance, 9/10 times.
L
Oh I could never do this. The whole economy and crew management is the sweet sweet delicious frosting on a nice cake. I live for little management games like that.
How do the vision cones show range by the way? It just looks all white / gray? Also I'm colorblind so I'm hoping it's not a color thing.
If you put your mouse over an enemy target before committing to a move it will also show you hit percentages for your selected weapons assuming they are in range.
Mostly because they were just a pure troll weapon and utter hell in event queue when infinite ammo was enabled. Strong possibility they’re going to 60s cooldown in the following patch.
So... nerfing an already totally useless weapon, because of a goofball mode?
That and even in normal queue it exists almost purely to troll people with a one and done suicide light.
(The exception is mechs that use them to gain the benefit of missile door damage reduction)
It was 20 million C-Bills because they absolutely loath me but, still, *yoink*
The Wolf Phoenix, missile boat variant from MWO that’s brought in via the YAML mod
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Yup it comes with 2xSRM6 ART IV, 2x SRM4-ST ART IV, 2x L Lasers, 2x MP Lasers, a ridiculous amount of ammo for the SRMs, and unfortunately an engine that is total garbage.
I stripped out some SRMs, swapped to ER L Laser-SBs and put in an engine that at least lets it break 60kph
There's a lot more to improve but it'll be quite awhile before I'm swimming in the clan tech to do it.
That's what it'll probably end up as since an LRM boat is handy even without me piloting it.
For now it's my biggest stompy bot so it's gonna be my workhorse when I can use it.
I dunno if for some reason the mod never updated previously, but I started seeing the super resilient tanks that were mentioned earlier.
Like, 3 tier 4 PPCs to kill a Scorpion level. Partisans were a whole new level of hell to kill.
If you have the Scary Tanks mod installed (which boots their HP by 500% iirc) YAML defers to that and does nothing.
If you don't have Scary Tanks installed it defaults the HP of all ground and air vehicles to 300%.
Which is annoying as hell in my opinion but no one asked me (and I mean for good reason, the hell do I know)
Thankfully this is relatively easily rectified. You can either edit the .ini file (which I never found but I didn't look very hard either) or just do what I did and install the mod Mod Options which lets you just set them back to 100% base health via a menu in the Options Menu in game (along with a bunch of other things you can tweak as well).
Having a problem with too much tonnage makes these missions a lot easier.
While I remain confident that final Sarna mission will still be a giant pain in the ass maybe I'll actually beat it without multiple attempts this time