Also, a Firestarter with 6 Small Lasers is the light shining in the darkness. I have a build that has 2 ML, 6 SL, and all of the Jump Jets, and I have it piloted by my Master Pilot guy. Usually, he gets to reserve to 1, run in and punch a 'Mech (shooting 6 small lasers in the process), then shoot the 'Mech next turn and run away. With that much firepower, all but Assaults or heavily armored Heavies take structural damage and crits.
EDIT: I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to make Small Lasers deal 80% of the damage of a Medium Laser AND fire when you punch things, but I dig it!
Ive noticed something in BATTLETECH with the mech lab. They charge for every little thing you do in experimenting the build. I looked at the receipt and that fucker Yang wanted to charge me for adding and removing the same med laser 3 times.
So...
Do you experimenting.
Write down the final build.
Revert the changes.
Then efficiently make the changes so you dont pay out the ass.
I’d like to see the game expanded, down the road, to include infantry, tanks and VTOLs (maybe aerotech in an abstract way).
I want to run a full blown mercenary company, not just mechs. I mean, don’t get me wrong I am happy with what I have but I’d like more.
Then have missions with tonnage restrictions or mech restrictions or something in order to have some missions where you have a full lance or more of mechs and some missions where maybe all you have is a locust a couple tanks and some PBI.
I’d also like to see a longer term contract system introduced where you can send off chunks of your mercenary team for long term uncontrolled assignments. Like a contract to guard a backwater planet for a couple of months. You decide how much to send and maybe that planet doesn’t get attacked at all and those forces see no action, or maybe they get pounded and half of your men come back. But all handled behind the scenes off camera.
Basically I want a mercenary army, not a lance.
Also I really just need to sit down and experiment with skirmish mode. Like, build mechs that have 1, 2, 3 and 4 jump jets to see exactly what the difference is. Stuff like that.
Classic Battletech has always suffered from trying to be scaled up. A lance on lance battle can be quite lengthy in the tabletop game. Which is where rules like forced retreat come in to try to speed it up even more. There have been at least 2 or 3 attempts that I know of to come up with new rulesets to scale up Battletech, the most recent of which was Alpha Strike. But to me, every attempt to scale up Battletech comes at the cost of what I love most. The raw, simulation feeling I get off all those crunchy details.
That said, I can still easily see how they could expand your mercenary outfit to an entire company (12 mechs), but keep the battles at the lance level. They could actually split larger company on company battles into tactical lance on lance chunks. Maybe have one lance trying to hold a position for as many turns as they can. Next battle comes up, happening theoretically simultaneously to the first. And you have as many turns as you held out in the first battle until enemy reinforcements show up in the second battle. So make those rounds count! Alternately, have maps where scouting actually matters! Give those light mechs something to actually do with mission objectives like just positively IDing an incoming Lance, with a follow up mission being to actually fight them.
If you ever read the tabletop scenario booklets, there are so many of these ideas already written down.
Alternately, allow you to actually call in reinforcements during a battle, to relieve a deployed units. Let mechs scramble to an evac zone and be replaced by mechs you had on standby.
One thing I'm definitely not a fan of conceptually is sending lances off to do other contracts. It's hard to pin down exactly why. But that feels too 4X-y, and I want to be role playing a Mercenary Captain. If there is one point repeatedly hammered home by the lore, it's that when a Mercenary company splits up, shit gets real. They can't communicate, the commander of the splintered lance might be a great pilot but untrustworthy, there could be a mutiny, the great powers you've pissed off might take the opportunity to try to devour you piecemeal.
If you are a mercenary commander and you want to have a bad time, split your command.
You know, clever things you could do like that to expand the scope of your operations, without absolutely ruining it's playability. Because like the tabletop game, I think 4 v 4 is about the limit of it's playability.
Using tabletop i’ve ran company on company fights with infantry, tank and aerotech support and had a great time!
But I’m also an insane person and the games took like three days so you have a point.
Part of the appeal of a PC game though is it can considerably speed up gameplay by handling all of the math.
Still, I’d like to see longer term contracts of a bigger scope. Go to a planet for a series of three linked missions. Big attacks where you have to assign three tasks forces even if you only control one lance, etc. I agree that the majority of missions should be about one lance in size but I’d love missions of both smaller and larger scope.
And now i have a griffin.
Or will after i throw away the LMR 10 in favor of 2x LMR5's and an extra heatsink.
Will try it out as replacement for vindicator.
Might throw out that extra heatsink and lighten some armor (maybe drop the 5th jumpjet) and get either a couple medium lasers or a 3rd LMR5
edit-
And after that i should probably do the 2nd story mission.
Looks nice, but i'm kinda on the market for a long range sniper/missile boat.
Already got a wolverine with Dekker running into melee constantly (it's basicly my scout and evasion remover), and Behemoth with her Shadow Hawk (still only the basic loadout, can't decide if i want to make it super long range or a close range brawler).
The Shadowhawk -2H and Centurion can both rock an AC/5 and LRMs. Shadowhawk is a good pick to me for a long range support/sniper.
And I like the Vindicator for a LL "boat" since that allows it to stay at relative distance but get out of harm's way easily enough.
That's what my shadowhawk and centurion have.
I kinda like having mostly long range weapons, because thanks to constantly fighting twice my number of light mechs, tanks and what have you, i really really don't have time to get to short range.
They feel more like an actual chunk of land as opposed to a video game battlefield.
That said sometimes the terrain just sucks, but hey that’s just a fact of life for military operations.
Though to be fair for military operations you typically survey the ground first, form a plan of action, and then select and appropriate force. That way you don’t send your lance of slow laser snipers into river mountain land.
I wish more games gave you intel to act on. Instead your best bet is to just slap jump jets on everything and flip the bird to terrain concerns.
They feel more like an actual chunk of land as opposed to a video game battlefield.
That said sometimes the terrain just sucks, but hey that’s just a fact of life for military operations.
Though to be fair for military operations you typically survey the ground first, form a plan of action, and then select and appropriate force. That way you don’t send your lance of slow laser snipers into river mountain land.
I wish more games gave you intel to act on. Instead your best bet is to just slap jump jets on everything and flip the bird to terrain concerns.
it tells you the type of battlefield your dropping on IE tundra, desert, rocky, etc.
you can kinda guesstimate how flat or jumbled its gonna be from there.
For missions, do you guys prioritize salvage or C-Bills? I was prioritizing C-Bills, but then I was like .... hmm.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I had a theory about MWO last night regarding the skill trees. Specifically Firepower. I think it's meant mostly, if not solely, for Assault class mechs.
Hear me out. Gonna talk about the other trees in the tag below (I'm only tagging to make the post not super-paragraph heavy), but Firepower is right below.
Sensors makes sense for just about anyone to take. How fleshed out it is can vary I suppose, but those bonuses are not minor. Both the range and target info speed go up by 35%. You can make arguments about target info not being that important, but I would argue it is quite important, especially to find out what part is most easily exploited by destroying, or figuring out what weapon loadout is going on and what to prioritize. Target Decay is also super important. If a mech doesn't have Radar Deprivation (which any player should have), it's an additional 3.5 seconds of a target remaining targeted even if they fall out of visual. That is a LOT of time. Count it out. That's time to launch missiles and track movement. If you have ECM, the tree provides a 45% bonus to that, and that's the same cooldown rate bonus for stealth armor. Not to mention advance zoom.
Operations is a weird tree. It provides some small bonuses, some big ones. I don't understand the point of Quick Ignition. Maybe it's for those players that shut down from overheating a lot, I dunno. But Improved Gyros, holy crap. Granted it only provides use if you're being hit, and hard. Speed Retention and Hill Climb I would argue are very important, the latter especially being important if you don't have Jump Jets because it'll let you get up some slopes (not all) you otherwise couldn't. I think the trick though is, all those combined with Heat Containment and Cool Run (more max heat, faster heat venting) make it a worthwhile tree.
Jump Jets I won't really cover, they've never really been my thing in any Mechwarrior game. Most of the bonuses aren't great when you look at them in a vacuum, but the point is that they synergize together quite directly and create crazy movement options.
Mobility is a great tree too. Ironically I don't think the bottom-most points for faster move speed amount to much, since it's just 7.5%, but everything else is pretty important. Being able to stop on a dime, or get a quick start on running (each having a 24.5% boost) can help a mech of any size. Same goes for Anchor Turn, 25% bonus to turn speed. If you're a little guy, you can do your dance around big mechs faster. If you're a big mech, you can track the little guy a little easier.
Survival is the other must-have tree in my view. Every mech gets hit, it just can't be helped. This tree does the one thing I wouldn't have expected in a game of this sort; straight up damage mitigation increase. Firepower doesn't have any straight-up "this weapon type does x% more damage." Survival however provides the other end of that typically-for-RPGs trait. I'm aware of all the arguments about what weight classes benefit most from increased structure vs increased armor, but the reality is all mechs benefit greatly. To me it seems like splitting hairs. The Armor Hardening trait is weird because, despite it saying it the increase is 15% max, my two mechs I own so far have had MANY points worth of armor increase that don't reflect a 15% increase at all. It's definitely more than that.
Firepower is meant for sustained attacking, I think. Most weapons have cooldowns, and you attack in bursts. If you're smaller, you're poking out with your speed to get a shot and running until the shit clears. So chances are you aren't firing the exact moment your cooldowns have run out. If you're an assault mech, tanking the damage as it were, you need to be firing when you can. The cooldown bonus only adds up to -12%. I laid out the practical results of that already. All of the bonuses provided in this tree are small, with the exception of Range. It may be 15%, but that will turn a 540m optimal range into 620m, so practically speaking godDAMN that's big (and doesn't even cover the max-range implications). Heat gen drops 10.5%, and you can make arguments for that, especially if you couple it with the Operations tree. Part of the problem with Firepower though is that not all the points in it are universal. They benefit some of your weapons but not all. It looks especially weird on the ballistics side of things because the benefits aren't universal among the ballistic weapons. Missiles, for example, get spread reduction and more crit damage, regardless of missile being used. Laser duration (which is not all that important, I've found) benefits most of those weapon types, barring PPCs. But on ballistics, all of their exclusive-to-type points are further broken down to what kind of AC weapon you're using; LBX, UAC or RAC, and then there's one for Guass.
Sorry for the super wordy post but... yeah. I dunno. Honestly Missiles benefit the most from the Firepower tree because most of the points apply to them. Otherwise it depends on what weapons you're using within a given type.
Nothing says kill me right the fuck now like an SRM/LRM carrier.
That and Demolisher tanks.
Twin AC20s? No thanks!
are..are demolishers in the game?
If so..I need to radically reprioritize salvaging heavier mechs..
Yes, as well as Schreck PPC carriers.
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
I almost always max salvage and then make payroll through story missions and equipment sales. But I'm also sitting on three partially salvaged assault mechs, so I'm trying to make sure I'm able to get those when I see them.
For missions, do you guys prioritize salvage or C-Bills? I was prioritizing C-Bills, but then I was like .... hmm.
I usually do one all c bill mission at the start of each mission to cover my expenses for the month + any future repairs and then lean harder into salvage.
Secure my finances, then play the loot slot machine.
Also, a Firestarter with 6 Small Lasers is the light shining in the darkness. I have a build that has 2 ML, 6 SL, and all of the Jump Jets, and I have it piloted by my Master Pilot guy. Usually, he gets to reserve to 1, run in and punch a 'Mech (shooting 6 small lasers in the process), then shoot the 'Mech next turn and run away. With that much firepower, all but Assaults or heavily armored Heavies take structural damage and crits.
EDIT: I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to make Small Lasers deal 80% of the damage of a Medium Laser AND fire when you punch things, but I dig it!
80% of the damage for only 50% of the heat! It's madness! Wonderful for small jumpy mechs. Can't wait to try that Firestarter build out for myself.
I, hate, sprint.
Like, i never, ever, want to spring in combat, either jumpjets or walk.
But i keep accidentally using sprint instead of jumpjets.
And so i can't shoot this turn.
Yeah, the heat/damage scaling on a lot of the energy weapons just feels off. I think they valued range very highly so slapped huge heat penalties on those. But it’s pretty easy to close range in this game.
Also, why the hell does the Firestarter get 6 frickin' Support Hardpoints? THAT is madness. I think it also gets 6 Energy Hardpoints, which is also cray cray.
How much do Large Lasers do? I remember slapping one on my Vindi because I lost the PPC and didn't have a replacement yet and the damage seemed way less than it should've been from my tabletop / Crescent Hawks Inception memories.
SPEAKING OF....
Crescent Hawks makes this game feel wrong that errant laserfire doesn't set the forest on fire to raise heat.
XBL: Bizazedo
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
How much do Large Lasers do? I remember slapping one on my Vindi because I lost the PPC and didn't have a replacement yet and the damage seemed way less than it should've been from my tabletop / Crescent Hawks Inception memories.
SPEAKING OF....
Crescent Hawks makes this game feel wrong that errant laserfire doesn't set the forest on fire to raise heat.
in battletech large lasers do 40, i think ppcs do 50.
TLDR: A reluctant mech killing god pilots a Schreck PPC carrier. He becomes a minor celebrity. Each PPC is tied to a separate trigger. When you give the enemy "3 Fingers" it means you are firing all 3 PPCs at once. He brags that he only needs "1 Finger" to take down most mechs.
Don't let Schrecks give you 3 fingers.
Also, it's one of my favorite short stories in Battletech.
Also, why the hell does the Firestarter get 6 frickin' Support Hardpoints? THAT is madness. I think it also gets 6 Energy Hardpoints, which is also cray cray.
Because canonically it's loaded with flamers, which are support weapons in HBS BT. Thus the name.
Also, why the hell does the Firestarter get 6 frickin' Support Hardpoints? THAT is madness. I think it also gets 6 Energy Hardpoints, which is also cray cray.
Because canonically it's loaded with flamers, which are support weapons in HBS BT. Thus the name.
I know canonically why (4 Flamers, 2 MG or SL, 2 ML). That was a rhetorical question. A flaming, burning rhetorical question full of fire and flames. I don't get why it has so many Energy Hardpoints as well, since it only mounts 2 ML.
I feel like my Battletech campaign has a firm before/after of "not regularly using Morale abilities" and "regularly using Morale abilities" that have made things a heck a lot easier.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that I have this wonderful bug where Behemoth and another mechwarrior have a permanent Inspired buff that reduces their cost for morale abilities to 10. I feel like I should put one of them in my Yen Lo Kneecapper, but I'm afraid of trivializing the game.
I had a theory about MWO last night regarding the skill trees. Specifically Firepower. I think it's meant mostly, if not solely, for Assault class mechs.
Hear me out. Gonna talk about the other trees in the tag below (I'm only tagging to make the post not super-paragraph heavy), but Firepower is right below.
Sensors makes sense for just about anyone to take. How fleshed out it is can vary I suppose, but those bonuses are not minor. Both the range and target info speed go up by 35%. You can make arguments about target info not being that important, but I would argue it is quite important, especially to find out what part is most easily exploited by destroying, or figuring out what weapon loadout is going on and what to prioritize. Target Decay is also super important. If a mech doesn't have Radar Deprivation (which any player should have), it's an additional 3.5 seconds of a target remaining targeted even if they fall out of visual. That is a LOT of time. Count it out. That's time to launch missiles and track movement. If you have ECM, the tree provides a 45% bonus to that, and that's the same cooldown rate bonus for stealth armor. Not to mention advance zoom.
Operations is a weird tree. It provides some small bonuses, some big ones. I don't understand the point of Quick Ignition. Maybe it's for those players that shut down from overheating a lot, I dunno. But Improved Gyros, holy crap. Granted it only provides use if you're being hit, and hard. Speed Retention and Hill Climb I would argue are very important, the latter especially being important if you don't have Jump Jets because it'll let you get up some slopes (not all) you otherwise couldn't. I think the trick though is, all those combined with Heat Containment and Cool Run (more max heat, faster heat venting) make it a worthwhile tree.
Jump Jets I won't really cover, they've never really been my thing in any Mechwarrior game. Most of the bonuses aren't great when you look at them in a vacuum, but the point is that they synergize together quite directly and create crazy movement options.
Mobility is a great tree too. Ironically I don't think the bottom-most points for faster move speed amount to much, since it's just 7.5%, but everything else is pretty important. Being able to stop on a dime, or get a quick start on running (each having a 24.5% boost) can help a mech of any size. Same goes for Anchor Turn, 25% bonus to turn speed. If you're a little guy, you can do your dance around big mechs faster. If you're a big mech, you can track the little guy a little easier.
Survival is the other must-have tree in my view. Every mech gets hit, it just can't be helped. This tree does the one thing I wouldn't have expected in a game of this sort; straight up damage mitigation increase. Firepower doesn't have any straight-up "this weapon type does x% more damage." Survival however provides the other end of that typically-for-RPGs trait. I'm aware of all the arguments about what weight classes benefit most from increased structure vs increased armor, but the reality is all mechs benefit greatly. To me it seems like splitting hairs. The Armor Hardening trait is weird because, despite it saying it the increase is 15% max, my two mechs I own so far have had MANY points worth of armor increase that don't reflect a 15% increase at all. It's definitely more than that.
Firepower is meant for sustained attacking, I think. Most weapons have cooldowns, and you attack in bursts. If you're smaller, you're poking out with your speed to get a shot and running until the shit clears. So chances are you aren't firing the exact moment your cooldowns have run out. If you're an assault mech, tanking the damage as it were, you need to be firing when you can. The cooldown bonus only adds up to -12%. I laid out the practical results of that already. All of the bonuses provided in this tree are small, with the exception of Range. It may be 15%, but that will turn a 540m optimal range into 620m, so practically speaking godDAMN that's big (and doesn't even cover the max-range implications). Heat gen drops 10.5%, and you can make arguments for that, especially if you couple it with the Operations tree. Part of the problem with Firepower though is that not all the points in it are universal. They benefit some of your weapons but not all. It looks especially weird on the ballistics side of things because the benefits aren't universal among the ballistic weapons. Missiles, for example, get spread reduction and more crit damage, regardless of missile being used. Laser duration (which is not all that important, I've found) benefits most of those weapon types, barring PPCs. But on ballistics, all of their exclusive-to-type points are further broken down to what kind of AC weapon you're using; LBX, UAC or RAC, and then there's one for Guass.
Sorry for the super wordy post but... yeah. I dunno. Honestly Missiles benefit the most from the Firepower tree because most of the points apply to them. Otherwise it depends on what weapons you're using within a given type.
Yep, you pretty much nailed the purpose of each tree really well.
The bigger problem is that the lower ranks you are, Sensors are useful. But it seems that the higher you go (T2/T1) you tend to not need the scouting portion. A good light scout usually brings a UAV and sets it up in front or near the enemy blob. That takes care of the needs of sensors. I notice also that fights tend to need the cooldown since you are actually staying in the fight and moving around. Mobility is useful over armor for the speedier lights, while the tankier lights I usually take more armor. Most lights that do the snipe, duck and cool off type fights tend to be Ravens or other sniping type ones (and tend to be the ones with ECM and playing the hide and seek game at the end). Most I see at my ranks are more brawly annoying builds, since they are the ones coming out heavies and assaults during the furball.
But I do agree with everything you wrote out about the skill trees except that the firepower tree is helpful for the heat nodes. They compliment the Operations tree.
I feel like my Battletech campaign has a firm before/after of "not regularly using Morale abilities" and "regularly using Morale abilities" that have made things a heck a lot easier.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that I have this wonderful bug where Behemoth and another mechwarrior have a permanent Inspired buff that reduces their cost for morale abilities to 10. I feel like I should put one of them in my Yen Lo Kneecapper, but I'm afraid of trivializing the game.
I've got that too! It's Behemoth and Glitch for me.
I dont know who the fuck came up with the idea of balance for this game.
but dropping my team of medium mechs, against a lance of heavies, with beyond LoS support fire coming from a lance of PPC wielding light mechs, is not my idea of fun.
Cant take out the lights without dealing with/getting past the heavies.
Cant deal with the heavies cause the lights keep blowing components off me every round.
I dont know who the fuck came up with the idea of balance for this game.
but dropping my team of medium mechs, against a lance of heavies, with beyond LoS support fire coming from a lance of PPC wielding light mechs, is not my idea of fun.
Cant take out the lights without dealing with/getting past the heavies.
Cant deal with the heavies cause the lights keep blowing components off me every round.
Does the map have enough room for you to run away? You should be able to leave the heavies in the dust. When the lights follow you, they'll be without their support, and you can turn and annihilate them once they are drawn away.
It could even be worth putting your sprinting to good work, putting extra distance between you and the heavies, and keeping your evasion high until the lights have been drawn far enough away.
Alternately, if there are any mountains on the map, you can jumpjet up and over them way faster than the heavies will move around it.
In my experience, the AI is not smart enough to avoid splitting their forces like this.
I dont know who the fuck came up with the idea of balance for this game.
but dropping my team of medium mechs, against a lance of heavies, with beyond LoS support fire coming from a lance of PPC wielding light mechs, is not my idea of fun.
Cant take out the lights without dealing with/getting past the heavies.
Cant deal with the heavies cause the lights keep blowing components off me every round.
You might be in the position I was in. Advanced the story (and the opposition) too far before getting the heavy mechs you need to deal with it.
I might have been able to recover, but I had played enough to see where I had gone wrong with my skill choices, so wanted to restart for that reason as well.
I dont know who the fuck came up with the idea of balance for this game.
but dropping my team of medium mechs, against a lance of heavies, with beyond LoS support fire coming from a lance of PPC wielding light mechs, is not my idea of fun.
Cant take out the lights without dealing with/getting past the heavies.
Cant deal with the heavies cause the lights keep blowing components off me every round.
Does the map have enough room for you to run away? You should be able to leave the heavies in the dust. When the lights follow you, they'll be without their support, and you can turn and annihilate them once they are drawn away.
It could even be worth putting your sprinting to good work, putting extra distance between you and the heavies, and keeping your evasion high until the lights have been drawn far enough away.
Alternately, if there are any mountains on the map, you can jumpjet up and over them way faster than the heavies will move around it.
In my experience, the AI is not smart enough to avoid splitting their forces like this.
Was no real way to get away and out of their arc of fire. I just rage quit instead of letting the bullshit play out further.
Also I really just need to sit down and experiment with skirmish mode. Like, build mechs that have 1, 2, 3 and 4 jump jets to see exactly what the difference is. Stuff like that.
That reminds me, something I heard mentioned was that you want jump jets in even numbers. Not sure how true that is.
Mech walk movement is proportional to the max number of jumpjets you can fit. Adding odd numbers of jump jets works just fine but is not "optimal" because the 1 odd jet only adds 1 hex of movement, 2 jets add 2.5 hexes so you're getting a little bonus for a pair.
I dont know who the fuck came up with the idea of balance for this game.
but dropping my team of medium mechs, against a lance of heavies, with beyond LoS support fire coming from a lance of PPC wielding light mechs, is not my idea of fun.
Cant take out the lights without dealing with/getting past the heavies.
Cant deal with the heavies cause the lights keep blowing components off me every round.
Does the map have enough room for you to run away? You should be able to leave the heavies in the dust. When the lights follow you, they'll be without their support, and you can turn and annihilate them once they are drawn away.
It could even be worth putting your sprinting to good work, putting extra distance between you and the heavies, and keeping your evasion high until the lights have been drawn far enough away.
Alternately, if there are any mountains on the map, you can jumpjet up and over them way faster than the heavies will move around it.
In my experience, the AI is not smart enough to avoid splitting their forces like this.
Was no real way to get away and out of their arc of fire. I just rage quit instead of letting the bullshit play out further.
A sure fire way to learn the solution to difficult situations.
I dont know who the fuck came up with the idea of balance for this game.
but dropping my team of medium mechs, against a lance of heavies, with beyond LoS support fire coming from a lance of PPC wielding light mechs, is not my idea of fun.
Cant take out the lights without dealing with/getting past the heavies.
Cant deal with the heavies cause the lights keep blowing components off me every round.
Does the map have enough room for you to run away? You should be able to leave the heavies in the dust. When the lights follow you, they'll be without their support, and you can turn and annihilate them once they are drawn away.
It could even be worth putting your sprinting to good work, putting extra distance between you and the heavies, and keeping your evasion high until the lights have been drawn far enough away.
Alternately, if there are any mountains on the map, you can jumpjet up and over them way faster than the heavies will move around it.
In my experience, the AI is not smart enough to avoid splitting their forces like this.
Was no real way to get away and out of their arc of fire. I just rage quit instead of letting the bullshit play out further.
A sure fire way to learn the solution to difficult situations.
The shitty thing is, alot of this stupid difficulty would simply be an amusing challenge if we werent limited to one lance.
Unlock lances at specific Merc Ratings or story points or something, so we cant just drop in 3 asap if you must, but jesus christ.. this is getting downright stupid.
I think you are supposed to withdraw if it turns out the ground conditions are vastly different than expected. Craziest mission I had was a base defense where a lance of light mechs ran past me to attack the base while another lance dropped behind on the other side and also ran straight for the base. I lost after taking out two mechs and taking basically no damage.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Well Glitch is KIA.
And she was my favorite too!
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
I dont know who the fuck came up with the idea of balance for this game.
but dropping my team of medium mechs, against a lance of heavies, with beyond LoS support fire coming from a lance of PPC wielding light mechs, is not my idea of fun.
Cant take out the lights without dealing with/getting past the heavies.
Cant deal with the heavies cause the lights keep blowing components off me every round.
Does the map have enough room for you to run away? You should be able to leave the heavies in the dust. When the lights follow you, they'll be without their support, and you can turn and annihilate them once they are drawn away.
It could even be worth putting your sprinting to good work, putting extra distance between you and the heavies, and keeping your evasion high until the lights have been drawn far enough away.
Alternately, if there are any mountains on the map, you can jumpjet up and over them way faster than the heavies will move around it.
In my experience, the AI is not smart enough to avoid splitting their forces like this.
Was no real way to get away and out of their arc of fire. I just rage quit instead of letting the bullshit play out further.
A sure fire way to learn the solution to difficult situations.
The shitty thing is, alot of this stupid difficulty would simply be an amusing challenge if we werent limited to one lance.
Unlock lances at specific Merc Ratings or story points or something, so we cant just drop in 3 asap if you must, but jesus christ.. this is getting downright stupid.
I am deeply curious about how they'll tweak the balance of this game over time. I suspect after 2 or 3 major patches, we'll be playing a very different game. The key complaints I keep seeing are
Getting 3 Mech Salvage Parts shouldn't produce a fully equiped mech with weapons and equipment
Pilots take hits at a comparable rate as the TT game, but die far easier
Reinforcements show up way too earlier in ambush missions, to the point where 90% of the time you are outgunned 2 to 1.
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EDIT: I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to make Small Lasers deal 80% of the damage of a Medium Laser AND fire when you punch things, but I dig it!
So...
Do you experimenting.
Write down the final build.
Revert the changes.
Then efficiently make the changes so you dont pay out the ass.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Using tabletop i’ve ran company on company fights with infantry, tank and aerotech support and had a great time!
But I’m also an insane person and the games took like three days so you have a point.
Part of the appeal of a PC game though is it can considerably speed up gameplay by handling all of the math.
Still, I’d like to see longer term contracts of a bigger scope. Go to a planet for a series of three linked missions. Big attacks where you have to assign three tasks forces even if you only control one lance, etc. I agree that the majority of missions should be about one lance in size but I’d love missions of both smaller and larger scope.
are..are demolishers in the game?
If so..I need to radically reprioritize salvaging heavier mechs..
That's what my shadowhawk and centurion have.
I kinda like having mostly long range weapons, because thanks to constantly fighting twice my number of light mechs, tanks and what have you, i really really don't have time to get to short range.
Though to be fair for military operations you typically survey the ground first, form a plan of action, and then select and appropriate force. That way you don’t send your lance of slow laser snipers into river mountain land.
I wish more games gave you intel to act on. Instead your best bet is to just slap jump jets on everything and flip the bird to terrain concerns.
it tells you the type of battlefield your dropping on IE tundra, desert, rocky, etc.
you can kinda guesstimate how flat or jumbled its gonna be from there.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
Hear me out. Gonna talk about the other trees in the tag below (I'm only tagging to make the post not super-paragraph heavy), but Firepower is right below.
Operations is a weird tree. It provides some small bonuses, some big ones. I don't understand the point of Quick Ignition. Maybe it's for those players that shut down from overheating a lot, I dunno. But Improved Gyros, holy crap. Granted it only provides use if you're being hit, and hard. Speed Retention and Hill Climb I would argue are very important, the latter especially being important if you don't have Jump Jets because it'll let you get up some slopes (not all) you otherwise couldn't. I think the trick though is, all those combined with Heat Containment and Cool Run (more max heat, faster heat venting) make it a worthwhile tree.
Jump Jets I won't really cover, they've never really been my thing in any Mechwarrior game. Most of the bonuses aren't great when you look at them in a vacuum, but the point is that they synergize together quite directly and create crazy movement options.
Mobility is a great tree too. Ironically I don't think the bottom-most points for faster move speed amount to much, since it's just 7.5%, but everything else is pretty important. Being able to stop on a dime, or get a quick start on running (each having a 24.5% boost) can help a mech of any size. Same goes for Anchor Turn, 25% bonus to turn speed. If you're a little guy, you can do your dance around big mechs faster. If you're a big mech, you can track the little guy a little easier.
Survival is the other must-have tree in my view. Every mech gets hit, it just can't be helped. This tree does the one thing I wouldn't have expected in a game of this sort; straight up damage mitigation increase. Firepower doesn't have any straight-up "this weapon type does x% more damage." Survival however provides the other end of that typically-for-RPGs trait. I'm aware of all the arguments about what weight classes benefit most from increased structure vs increased armor, but the reality is all mechs benefit greatly. To me it seems like splitting hairs. The Armor Hardening trait is weird because, despite it saying it the increase is 15% max, my two mechs I own so far have had MANY points worth of armor increase that don't reflect a 15% increase at all. It's definitely more than that.
Sorry for the super wordy post but... yeah. I dunno. Honestly Missiles benefit the most from the Firepower tree because most of the points apply to them. Otherwise it depends on what weapons you're using within a given type.
If the description talks of big mechs, i tend to prioritize mechs, for rest i prioritize money.
i try to always get at least 2 priority salvage, three where possible.
one time I went for money over salvage I missed out on one of my favorite mechs ever.
Yes, as well as Schreck PPC carriers.
This game really is Pokemon, isn't it...
I usually do one all c bill mission at the start of each mission to cover my expenses for the month + any future repairs and then lean harder into salvage.
Secure my finances, then play the loot slot machine.
80% of the damage for only 50% of the heat! It's madness! Wonderful for small jumpy mechs. Can't wait to try that Firestarter build out for myself.
Like, i never, ever, want to spring in combat, either jumpjets or walk.
But i keep accidentally using sprint instead of jumpjets.
And so i can't shoot this turn.
WHY WOULD THEY INCLUDE THOSE IN A GAME WHERE YOU CAN ONLY DROP A LANCE.
SPEAKING OF....
Crescent Hawks makes this game feel wrong that errant laserfire doesn't set the forest on fire to raise heat.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
in battletech large lasers do 40, i think ppcs do 50.
Maybe they are a fan of the short story Sniper?
TLDR: A reluctant mech killing god pilots a Schreck PPC carrier. He becomes a minor celebrity. Each PPC is tied to a separate trigger. When you give the enemy "3 Fingers" it means you are firing all 3 PPCs at once. He brags that he only needs "1 Finger" to take down most mechs.
Don't let Schrecks give you 3 fingers.
Also, it's one of my favorite short stories in Battletech.
Because canonically it's loaded with flamers, which are support weapons in HBS BT. Thus the name.
For 5 heat, 10 heat, 30 heat and 40 heat respectively.
Or a ratio of 4x, 2.5x, 1.33x or 1.25 respectively.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Of course, it doesn't hurt that I have this wonderful bug where Behemoth and another mechwarrior have a permanent Inspired buff that reduces their cost for morale abilities to 10. I feel like I should put one of them in my Yen Lo Kneecapper, but I'm afraid of trivializing the game.
Yep, you pretty much nailed the purpose of each tree really well.
The bigger problem is that the lower ranks you are, Sensors are useful. But it seems that the higher you go (T2/T1) you tend to not need the scouting portion. A good light scout usually brings a UAV and sets it up in front or near the enemy blob. That takes care of the needs of sensors. I notice also that fights tend to need the cooldown since you are actually staying in the fight and moving around. Mobility is useful over armor for the speedier lights, while the tankier lights I usually take more armor. Most lights that do the snipe, duck and cool off type fights tend to be Ravens or other sniping type ones (and tend to be the ones with ECM and playing the hide and seek game at the end). Most I see at my ranks are more brawly annoying builds, since they are the ones coming out heavies and assaults during the furball.
But I do agree with everything you wrote out about the skill trees except that the firepower tree is helpful for the heat nodes. They compliment the Operations tree.
Steam: betsuni7
I've got that too! It's Behemoth and Glitch for me.
but dropping my team of medium mechs, against a lance of heavies, with beyond LoS support fire coming from a lance of PPC wielding light mechs, is not my idea of fun.
Cant take out the lights without dealing with/getting past the heavies.
Cant deal with the heavies cause the lights keep blowing components off me every round.
Does the map have enough room for you to run away? You should be able to leave the heavies in the dust. When the lights follow you, they'll be without their support, and you can turn and annihilate them once they are drawn away.
It could even be worth putting your sprinting to good work, putting extra distance between you and the heavies, and keeping your evasion high until the lights have been drawn far enough away.
Alternately, if there are any mountains on the map, you can jumpjet up and over them way faster than the heavies will move around it.
In my experience, the AI is not smart enough to avoid splitting their forces like this.
You might be in the position I was in. Advanced the story (and the opposition) too far before getting the heavy mechs you need to deal with it.
I might have been able to recover, but I had played enough to see where I had gone wrong with my skill choices, so wanted to restart for that reason as well.
Was no real way to get away and out of their arc of fire. I just rage quit instead of letting the bullshit play out further.
Mech walk movement is proportional to the max number of jumpjets you can fit. Adding odd numbers of jump jets works just fine but is not "optimal" because the 1 odd jet only adds 1 hex of movement, 2 jets add 2.5 hexes so you're getting a little bonus for a pair.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/jump-jet-numbers-from-the-beta.1086295/
A sure fire way to learn the solution to difficult situations.
The shitty thing is, alot of this stupid difficulty would simply be an amusing challenge if we werent limited to one lance.
Unlock lances at specific Merc Ratings or story points or something, so we cant just drop in 3 asap if you must, but jesus christ.. this is getting downright stupid.
And she was my favorite too!
I am deeply curious about how they'll tweak the balance of this game over time. I suspect after 2 or 3 major patches, we'll be playing a very different game. The key complaints I keep seeing are