Sadly I think I'm done with Battletech. Please allow me to rant here because I really need to do it (I'm going to put it behind spoilers to not ruin the great fun people are having with this game).
I did so much with it and painted myself into a corner. I wanted to try and make my fun builds work, but it seems that you really have to do try hard or go home and that isn't fun for me. I over did my team builds and now have to rebuild them all. Think I'm going to dump my team back to mediums and refit them all to try hard builds to take out the 3 head or higher missions.
I figured that with my two Heavies, 1 Light and a Medium that I could actually pull things off against what always seems to be 2 waves of mechs. Granted one heavy is the Dragon which I just have to say sucks for what I do with it. The problem is that I either fight too long leaving my team somewhat beat up, or go for the mission and lose one or two mechs with a ton of repairs to get it done. I would have liked to actually have missions where you only fought one wave to make things fair, or at most lance of mechs plus some vehicles. But the overwhelming damage numbers against my team just isn't fun anymore. The only reason I ran the Dragon is I figured it could do some damage sponging and can melee the other team down while my other three mechs whittled away their numbers. But no, it is always "even" with the tonnage for the first lance against me then another lance or vehicles to ruin my day.
I'm just really upset right now that I feel like I wasted 1 hour today trying to redo two missions and couldn't complete one. It really feels like I wasted one hour of my time trying to have fun playing Battletech when I was anything but. I want to learn more about the story of this game, where everything goes, what the heck is up with the Argo, etc. I just wish they had an even easier mode where my mechs can do double damage or something while the enemy teams do standard damage or take twice as much damage, anything to just allow me to play the story and not feel like I have to play it in tryhard mode. I remember long ago someone complaining that if Battlemechs are so rare, why is it that every merc, bandit, etc. has so many of them? Hell, even factions have enough of them to waste two full lances against a merc crew! So yeah, thanks for letting me rant here.
I'll continue to have fun reading others adventures more than playing my own so please share your stories and adventures.
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
edited September 2020
I've seen some cheat mods--maybe try one of those if you're not having fun? The game definitely requires that you play well within its mechanics--so you need a decent load out on your mechs, you need to field decent mechs for the difficulty, and you need to use good tactics unless you're overpowering the enemies with tonnage/firepower/agility. Unfortunately there is no story mode difficulty.
If you're willing to start over (and I get it if you're done and don't want to do that), going to max salvage and money makes your life much easier.
There's also cheat mods like this unlimited tonnage mod that can make the game easier if you want to continue more or less where you're at right now. Or this get all the salvage mod, assuming it works with the current version.
Orca on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
The way Battletech handles enemies and reinforcements is a decided mark against the game. Virtually every map is going to have, at minimum, three groups of enemies. The harder the missions get, the more that those enemy groups are lances and not vehicles. Once mechs start sporting full armor, the difficulty gets grindier and grindier until you can reliably get headshots every turn. Heavy mechs being the average is the decided low point of the game design; it gets increasingly absurd for starving pirate groups to be sporting triple lances of heavies, plus heavies have enough armor for things to get REALLY grindy. By the time you hit assaults being the average, you're probably able to headshot one or two mechs a turn so the damage sponge issue is mitigated.
The game design does NOT encourage treating fights as "fair" and instead heavily, heavily encourages the player to be as conservative and safe as possible to avoid getting hit from behind or knocked down (since getting knocked down is ALWAYS much worse for the player side than the enemy side, due to enemy count).
The story difficulty can be trivialized by some grinding, but if you don't grind some it's also easy to end up underpowered and very frustrated.
I've seen some cheat mods--maybe try one of those if you're not having fun? The game definitely requires that you play well within its mechanics--so you need a decent load out on your mechs, you need to field decent mechs for the difficulty, and you need to use good tactics unless you're overpowering the enemies with tonnage/firepower/agility. Unfortunately there is no story mode difficulty.
If you're willing to start over (and I get it if you're done and don't want to do that), going to max salvage and money makes your life much easier.
There's also cheat mods like this unlimited tonnage mod that can make the game easier if you want to continue more or less where you're at right now. Or this get all the salvage mod, assuming it works with the current version.
Sadly I'm annoyed with nexus mods since they require you to make an account to download the mod. I have no idea why they do it, but I just didn't feel like making another account I'll have to worry about to get them. I might take a look and bite the bullet to register. Thanks for the two mod ideas and yeah I've been tempted to restart the story again to do their skills "right" and build more efficient mechs. Thank you for the assistance and taking the time out of your day to help me try and have fun with the game since I really do want to have fun.
The way Battletech handles enemies and reinforcements is a decided mark against the game. Virtually every map is going to have, at minimum, three groups of enemies. The harder the missions get, the more that those enemy groups are lances and not vehicles. Once mechs start sporting full armor, the difficulty gets grindier and grindier until you can reliably get headshots every turn. Heavy mechs being the average is the decided low point of the game design; it gets increasingly absurd for starving pirate groups to be sporting triple lances of heavies, plus heavies have enough armor for things to get REALLY grindy. By the time you hit assaults being the average, you're probably able to headshot one or two mechs a turn so the damage sponge issue is mitigated.
The game design does NOT encourage treating fights as "fair" and instead heavily, heavily encourages the player to be as conservative and safe as possible to avoid getting hit from behind or knocked down (since getting knocked down is ALWAYS much worse for the player side than the enemy side, due to enemy count).
The story difficulty can be trivialized by some grinding, but if you don't grind some it's also easy to end up underpowered and very frustrated.
Yeah I have discovered exactly what you said about the game. The headshot part slightly annoys me because it feels even worse of forcing you to play only one way. Reading this I might actually redo my entire way of playing the game.
I've seen some cheat mods--maybe try one of those if you're not having fun? The game definitely requires that you play well within its mechanics--so you need a decent load out on your mechs, you need to field decent mechs for the difficulty, and you need to use good tactics unless you're overpowering the enemies with tonnage/firepower/agility. Unfortunately there is no story mode difficulty.
If you're willing to start over (and I get it if you're done and don't want to do that), going to max salvage and money makes your life much easier.
There's also cheat mods like this unlimited tonnage mod that can make the game easier if you want to continue more or less where you're at right now. Or this get all the salvage mod, assuming it works with the current version.
Even beyond that you can also get a save game editor and add money, add any item in any quantity in the game to your inventory, add mechs to your inventory, change pilot skills, and change faction rep. Just be sure to save a copy of the savegame in case a change causes it to no longer load. I use it so when I get ideas for component or mech mods I can just drop them into my in-progress game without needing to search the galaxy for a chance for it to drop in the stores.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Why didn't I think of that? I've used it a bunch for gimmick runs. A savegame editor is a FANTASTIC idea, because with unlimited money you don't need to worry about going bankrupt if a run means you need a month's work to get your mechs back in fighting shape. Seconding the savegame editor to recover your current run.
I've seen some cheat mods--maybe try one of those if you're not having fun? The game definitely requires that you play well within its mechanics--so you need a decent load out on your mechs, you need to field decent mechs for the difficulty, and you need to use good tactics unless you're overpowering the enemies with tonnage/firepower/agility. Unfortunately there is no story mode difficulty.
If you're willing to start over (and I get it if you're done and don't want to do that), going to max salvage and money makes your life much easier.
There's also cheat mods like this unlimited tonnage mod that can make the game easier if you want to continue more or less where you're at right now. Or this get all the salvage mod, assuming it works with the current version.
Even beyond that you can also get a save game editor and add money, add any item in any quantity in the game to your inventory, add mechs to your inventory, change pilot skills, and change faction rep. Just be sure to save a copy of the savegame in case a change causes it to no longer load. I use it so when I get ideas for component or mech mods I can just drop them into my in-progress game without needing to search the galaxy for a chance for it to drop in the stores.
Nice! Now THIS is what I just might do if I get to the end of my rope. Now to think up an account for their site.
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited September 2020
Campaign's forced universal difficulty increase became very unenjoyable by the end of the campaign and I have no real interest in continuing past that which I might otherwise have done. Career is more interesting since it doesn't have that forced increase in difficulty to all missions. You can still get 1 stars! No matter what! Just go to the right place.
I don't really know why they forced that in the campaign. Or at the very least why they didn't turn it off at the end.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Campaign's forced universal difficulty increase became very unenjoyable by the end of the campaign and I have no real interest in continuing past that which I might otherwise have done. Career is more interesting since it doesn't have that forced increase in difficulty to all missions. You can still get 1 stars! No matter what! Just go to the right place.
I don't really know why they forced that in the campaign. Or at the very least why they didn't turn it off at the end.
Yeah. I mean, it makes sense that they wanted a regular ratchet of difficulty (and for you not to get too far in over your head in the campaign), but agreed that they should have turned that off once the campaign was over and the entire map opened up.
Went and dumped the Dragon and the Awesome. Pulled a Shadowhawk and Firestarter out of storage along with my old Centurion. Changed up my Catapult from the SplatCat (4SRM6s) to 2LRM10++ and 2LRM5s plus a boatload of ammo. Equipped an AC20 on the Shadow Hawk and 2t of ammo (feels good doing precision strikes to the back CT). Full armored the Firestarter and equipped it with 6SL, 5JJ and 2HS to make it my scout and backstabber. Cent is 2SRM4, 1SRM6, 1ML Zombie machine (sort of how I run 3SRM4s and 2ML in MWO, but gave it more missiles for BT).
Redid my first mission I failed at earlier today. Ran the Catapult, Shadowhawk, Kintaro (4SRM4s, 2ML), and Firestarter. Firestarter was the sprinting scout and the enemy lance chased the squirrel. I melted the entire team by focusing on legs and taking out backs. Oh and surprise, surprise the entire enemy first lance was a Cicada and 3 other mediums (Phoenix Hawk, Griffin, and Shadow Hawk). Took them all out with somewhat ease, although I did lose the Shadow Hawk's leg. Set my team up to ambush the reinforcements, but I had to eject my Shadow Hawk after a lucky hit to the AC20. Took out the remaining team with ease with lots of Precision Strikes to legs and rear CTs. Yeah, I did win and it is much easier with the team build I have now. Sad since I would love to run the fun other builds but they just don't do enough damage to the equal teams.
Edit: I actually am tempted to run the save game editor, but we'll see if I can push through my game to get the cheesy Marauders.
Campaign's forced universal difficulty increase became very unenjoyable by the end of the campaign and I have no real interest in continuing past that which I might otherwise have done. Career is more interesting since it doesn't have that forced increase in difficulty to all missions. You can still get 1 stars! No matter what! Just go to the right place.
I don't really know why they forced that in the campaign. Or at the very least why they didn't turn it off at the end.
Yeah. I mean, it makes sense that they wanted a regular ratchet of difficulty (and for you not to get too far in over your head in the campaign), but agreed that they should have turned that off once the campaign was over and the entire map opened up.
Agreed. Another downside of this in the campaign is you can get black market access when the pirates hate you for 2.5 million chills. But everything costs a mint. I paid 6 million for a ER medium laser!
With no half and one skull planets, there's no way to get back in the pirates' good graces!
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
edited September 2020
The main problem I'm running into with the game (and I have yet to field any Assault mechs so take with a heavy bag of salt) is that maps are fundamentally too small and fights are fundamentally too short. My limited (video-game only) experience with this entire franchise in the past is that fights are generally slogfests that reward small, long-term gains and good fundamental positioning/tactics over one-round blow-up engagements which heavily prioritize first-shooter initiative (note I said first shooter, not first mover). The one-shot/one-round kill is actually rare unless you are heavily outmatched from the outset.
And yet in this game I feel like I'm constantly forced into getting the heaviest mechs possible with the most available free tonnage so that I can just run headfirst into the enemy lance and kill something ASAP. Usually this involves abusing Jump Jets or LOS until I get the enemy AI to walk into a blatant ambush and just killing them from the flank or behind with stored-up Precision Shots. There's no real maneuvering or repositioning beyond that point.
I understand when people say "eventually you can run Firestarters with heavy Evasion/Initiative" or "once you pick up these DLC weapons then X becomes viable" but I feel like that's something of an indictment against the basic design of the game that they have to add entirely new mechanics to balance the ones that already exist.
In addition to the above, I wish they adjusted the information economy in this game in the sense that they actually added one, rather than following the roguelike pattern of forcing you to memorize scenarios or just look them up beforehand (this is one thing I really, really hate about more recent game design, btw - artificially gating difficulty behind memorization and/or your ability to look up information on a wiki). More randomization in scenarios, paying for scouting information beforehand, removing some or all of the Refit penalty so that you can take advantage of said information, etc. would make the setup phase less onerous, feel less penalizing, and would actively reward you for planning within the game itself. Imagine if instead of waiting 10 days to refit everything you just paid money/salvage to do so, and the scouting took 1-2 days and the refit took 1-2 days. Or if you wanted to YOLO it in you could do so with a 25% payment bonus instead.
Anyway, I'm rapidly reaching the mid-game point where I'm starting to wonder if there's any strategy at all or if I'm just going to spend the next 10-20 hours just grinding through the motions until I get to the end...
This is definitely a game where you need to self impose some limitations. Building the perfectly optimal lance just sucks 100% of the challenge and (for me) the fun out of the game.
A few months ago I finished a Kerensky campaign and haven't picked up a new career game since because I am so burned out from doing ~200 contracts in the most optimal way.
I've done a few skirmish mode games here and there and they are a lot more fun because A) you have to work within the constraints of the points system, you don't get piles of +++ equipment (you don't get any LosTech), and C) you don't get 4x all-10's pilots. So you get to build these sub-optimal lances and actually have to work at getting a victory.
Fourth mission in a new career (with opposing forces set to HARD), I may have pushed a one skull battle mission just a liiiiiitle too far:
It was one of those battle missions where you take on one one lance, but then a second lance drops and everybody is kung fu fighting. Normally these missions are great, because the tonnage is higher than you would expect and there's great salvage opportunity. You can just get out of the way and let the two lances beat each other up and them come mop up the scraps.
In this case, though, the enemies dropped right next to the patch of woods my team was in, so there was limited opportunity to foist them off on one another.
Still, we were clearing folks out pretty efficiently, and damage was minimal. There was a Shadowhawk on one side and a Wolverine on the other, either of which would be a great acquisition to our still opening line up of stock Centurion x2, stock LL Commando x2.
Then, from around a hillock, the fourth mech of the original lance walks into sight - a Marauder. It alphas Jasconius' Commando, destroying it outright and killing the pilot in the process.
Then I get a little greedy. Wouldn't it be great to take that Marauder home? We take a lot of damage whittling down the other forces. It's not going too badly until an armless Jenner punches my PC in the head, destroying the Centurion (not forever - fortunately) and putting her in Medbay for 120 days!
Eventually it's down to a one armed Commando and Chili's Centurion on our side, and a one-armed, one-legged Marauder on the other. I think we're one head hit away from knocking the pilot out. Unfortunately, positioning is a bear with no jump capable mechs. Even pulling punches to try to take out that second side torso, Chili accidentally overshoots and takes out the CT.
So for the cost of a pilot, a Commando, two pilots in medbay, and over 47 days of repairs we take home... one piece of Marauder and a complete Jenner. Which is to be fair an upgrade over a Commando. Just not what I'd been aiming for. :razz:
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Getting too greedy early is such a mistake...and yet invariably every new career I end up doing it because oh man wouldn't it be awesome to jump to heavies right away?!!!!!!
I've made it through 5 or 6 of these Ironman missions now and I've got a couple of mediums doing 1/2 and 1 skull mission and things have gotten a bit easier.
Still taking hard lumps though, like losing both arms on my Jenner, and not only paying more to repair the mech than I made on the job, but also having to field it short a medium lasers and an srm2 instead of 4 because my stores are so depleted.
Repair times and pilot injuries force me to take travel contracts to buy time for repairs and healing so that its not just wasted sitting in orbit.
Ironman is a rough go...but, like, a good rough.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
edited September 2020
I'm cruising on iron man because i always take like four years to do campaigns. Especially now that there is a black market. I finally finally finally got an energy weapon atlas and I'm about to go do my council of war after the fortress mission.
The global difficulty increase is a harsh fucking toke on iron man! I have 9ish highly trained pilots and +++ weapons on 300 tons of drop weight and I'm about ready to try and rush campaign end
Edit: i turned on mechs being stripped when they arrive and 4 salvage per mech and maybe some other hard mode type things and none of them matter really. I get new mechs by buying Victor parts in stores and highlander / thunderbolt / atlas parts in black market stores. It seems like salvage sucks which is the opposite of what i remember from years ago so maybe i clicked a difficulty setting that's making me think that.
Polar 2.5 skull ambush convoy gone horribly wrong. Was doing fine until the reinforcements appeared off screen and had infinite PPCs to shower down on us.
Ok, the guy dieing to coring, but the guy whose 'Mech is missing its head surviving with an 18-day vacation?
That's a hot load of bull right there.
I ordered him to eject after he'd lost a side torso and was down to something like 30 internals in the CT. I'm playing perma-death for mechs, and didn't want to lose two Centurions in a single mission.
Also, I successfully finished the mission, which is sweet, and got a Shadowhawk for my troubles. But I did it by killing the convoy and then beelining for the evac zone. 98% of time if you show up as reinforcements while I'm killing vehicles, I'm coming for you too and taking your mechs.
Polar 2.5 skull ambush convoy gone horribly wrong. Was doing fine until the reinforcements appeared off screen and had infinite PPCs to shower down on us.
RIP Provocator.
"Easy Pickings" mmhmm...
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
Ok, the guy dieing to coring, but the guy whose 'Mech is missing its head surviving with an 18-day vacation?
That's a hot load of bull right there.
I ordered him to eject after he'd lost a side torso and was down to something like 30 internals in the CT. I'm playing perm-deatha for mechs, and didn't want to lose two Centurions in a single mission.
Alright, that seems fine then. Carry on!
Still think it's kinda bullshit to lose a Pilot to coring, though. I guess it depends on how hurt he was prior.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
edited September 2020
It's kind of insane how poorly optimized this game is, 2 years after it has come out with multiple DLC.
I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to run this game in Borderless Windowed mode with RivaTuner and ProjectLasso running just so my Core i7-9700K + Nvidia RTX 2080 SUPER doesn't simultaneously stutter and run at full burn with high temps.
It's kind of insane how poorly optimized this game is, 2 years after it has come out with multiple DLC.
I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to run this game in Borderless Windowed mode with RivaTuner and ProjectLasso running just so my Core i7-9700K + Nvidia RTX 2070 SUPER doesn't simultaneously stutter and run at full burn with high temps.
You can fix the latter just by turning on vsync in the game's options.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
It's kind of insane how poorly optimized this game is, 2 years after it has come out with multiple DLC.
I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to run this game in Borderless Windowed mode with RivaTuner and ProjectLasso running just so my Core i7-9700K + Nvidia RTX 2070 SUPER doesn't simultaneously stutter and run at full burn with high temps.
You can fix the latter just by turning on vsync in the game's options.
It was on when the stuttering was happening. There is a bunch of conflicting information about what does and doesn't help, and in my experience the stuttering happens regardless of whether it's on or off via the game or via Nvidia's Control Panel. At this point I'm just focusing on making sure it doesn't burn out my computer...
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
The outer layer seems like it's basically spreadsheets so I'm perpetually confused as to how it takes time to load and uses nontrivial resources
The outer layer seems like it's basically spreadsheets so I'm perpetually confused as to how it takes time to load and uses nontrivial resources
The Argo UI is a fully rendered 3d environment just like the rest of the game. That takes time to load assets just like loading into a mission does. The stores and contracts need to build all their entries randomly when you open them, so you're reading data from a lot of random files to do that. Though the mechbay and store apparently also use a pretty poor data structure and/or sorting algorithm for inventory that causes performance to degrade as the number of items in inventory increases. There's a performance mod that can help with that somewhat.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
That generating random missions takes so long is...perplexing.
I don't know what all it's looking at to build those contracts vs stuff it does when loading the actual mission, but some things it might be doing:
read starsystem files for biome enumeration
read biome/map files for specific map section and/or weather options
read starsystem files for difficulty enumeration
read starsystem files for faction enumeration
read faction files for name/icon display purposes
read all contract files for possible mission choices
read contract files for difficulty appropriate lance config
read contract files for difficulty appropriate pilot config
read all mech chassis files for lance appropriate mech choices
read all vehicle files for lance appropriate vehicle choices
read all turret files for mission/difficulty appropriate choices
build lance appropriate pilots with difficulty appropriate skills
And if their inventory system is anything to go by, it's possible they are simply repeating that whole process for every single contract in the list.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
And for what it's worth, bless their hearts, HBS games have always struck me as a little bit on the held-together-by-tape-and-bailing-wire side of code.
I love their games, but their software just always feels a little janky in use.
And for what it's worth, bless their hearts, HBS games have always struck me as a little bit on the held-together-by-tape-and-bailing-wire side of code.
I love their games, but their software just always feels a little janky in use.
Small but passionate dev team. The company grew a lot for BT, but they still only have 14 people listed under "engineering" and based on job title and being generous, maybe 6 of those would potentially have any responsibility over something like the technical performance of the inventory system or contract generation. And most of them were probably shuffled off to the next project not long after release. And being small I'm guessing they probably don't get the same amount of support for issues with the Unity engine as larger devs either.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
Yeah, totally. I'm hoping that the Paradox acquisition is allowing HBS to breathe a little bit post-BATTLETECH, and gear up for whatever their next project is.
Selfishly, I hope we see a BATTLETECH 2 sometime in our lives!
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
The outer layer seems like it's basically spreadsheets so I'm perpetually confused as to how it takes time to load and uses nontrivial resources
The Argo UI is a fully rendered 3d environment just like the rest of the game. That takes time to load assets just like loading into a mission does. The stores and contracts need to build all their entries randomly when you open them, so you're reading data from a lot of random files to do that. Though the mechbay and store apparently also use a pretty poor data structure and/or sorting algorithm for inventory that causes performance to degrade as the number of items in inventory increases. There's a performance mod that can help with that somewhat.
Isn't the Argo massively smaller than even the smallest map, since you only have to load one view of one place? Wouldn't that be a tiny fraction of the assets?
That's fascinating what causes the performance to degrade. I kept exiting every few hours thinking it was a memory issue
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SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
Well being made in Unity means there is a memory issue, that's just a fundamental problem with the framework.
Added a few more things to my mod list and deleted Hellfire and Brimstone cause it was making AC/20s blind me in the HBK-4G.
I have to say, with a full stack of mods Mechwarrior 5 is actually kinda fun for short session gaming. You can get in, blow some shit up, and get out. Right now I'm rocking two Grasshoppers with 7 MLAS and an SRM4 and two Griffin 1Ns both with triple SRM 6 racks and 3 MLAS and shit just melts. I'm going into contracts underweight and still bringing some serious pain.
Mechwarrior 5 Reloaded adding more bits to the mechs is also pretty fun. Having to hunt for parts to get a salvaged mech up and running just plain feels good. Especially knowing that the more I play the more spare stuff I'll have laying around as I retire mechs so it'll get easier to salvage things. Right now Standard 200 engines are a PITA to find tho.
I'm also greatly enjoying the music mod that gets rid of the generic butt rock and replaces it with Mechwarrior 2/Timothy Seals music. It makes everything feel just that much better.
Five (!) pack mechs salvaged off one mission- Woo!
In other news, I wish there was some way to trigger an invitation to the Black Market. Even via a Flashpoint or some hoops that needed jumping through. I've been driving around the system, doing any work the pirates have, and the love me. But they won't invite me to their stores! Let me in, pirates! I will spend all my C-Bills with you!
Got my Jenner cored out by (un)lucky hit and an ammo explosion. Pilot survived. Next mission? Got my Panther cores out by a PPC hit I did not see coming.
It was late, I was frustrated, and I quit the game...causing a mission loss to be recorded too. Two skull mission that I brought a Wolverine, Vindicator, Blackjack and Panther too. First enemy that shows up is a Cataphract.
Gah! This Ironman career run has failed I think and it's time to start another.
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SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
Make sure to put your ammo in your legs to avoid disastrous ammo explosions if possible.
Hrm. I still prefer my ammo in the side torsos. Sure, they'll explode a little more often, but if you get an ammo explosion in the leg that's two pilot injuries, a knockdown and a significant hit to your mobility. I'd rather unexpectedly lose a side torso than a leg most of the time. ("Ah crap, that's expensive!" vs. "Oh shit, please don't die on me.")
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I figured that with my two Heavies, 1 Light and a Medium that I could actually pull things off against what always seems to be 2 waves of mechs. Granted one heavy is the Dragon which I just have to say sucks for what I do with it. The problem is that I either fight too long leaving my team somewhat beat up, or go for the mission and lose one or two mechs with a ton of repairs to get it done. I would have liked to actually have missions where you only fought one wave to make things fair, or at most lance of mechs plus some vehicles. But the overwhelming damage numbers against my team just isn't fun anymore. The only reason I ran the Dragon is I figured it could do some damage sponging and can melee the other team down while my other three mechs whittled away their numbers. But no, it is always "even" with the tonnage for the first lance against me then another lance or vehicles to ruin my day.
I'm just really upset right now that I feel like I wasted 1 hour today trying to redo two missions and couldn't complete one. It really feels like I wasted one hour of my time trying to have fun playing Battletech when I was anything but. I want to learn more about the story of this game, where everything goes, what the heck is up with the Argo, etc. I just wish they had an even easier mode where my mechs can do double damage or something while the enemy teams do standard damage or take twice as much damage, anything to just allow me to play the story and not feel like I have to play it in tryhard mode. I remember long ago someone complaining that if Battlemechs are so rare, why is it that every merc, bandit, etc. has so many of them? Hell, even factions have enough of them to waste two full lances against a merc crew! So yeah, thanks for letting me rant here.
I'll continue to have fun reading others adventures more than playing my own so please share your stories and adventures.
Steam: betsuni7
I've seen some cheat mods--maybe try one of those if you're not having fun? The game definitely requires that you play well within its mechanics--so you need a decent load out on your mechs, you need to field decent mechs for the difficulty, and you need to use good tactics unless you're overpowering the enemies with tonnage/firepower/agility. Unfortunately there is no story mode difficulty.
If you're willing to start over (and I get it if you're done and don't want to do that), going to max salvage and money makes your life much easier.
There's also cheat mods like this unlimited tonnage mod that can make the game easier if you want to continue more or less where you're at right now. Or this get all the salvage mod, assuming it works with the current version.
The game design does NOT encourage treating fights as "fair" and instead heavily, heavily encourages the player to be as conservative and safe as possible to avoid getting hit from behind or knocked down (since getting knocked down is ALWAYS much worse for the player side than the enemy side, due to enemy count).
The story difficulty can be trivialized by some grinding, but if you don't grind some it's also easy to end up underpowered and very frustrated.
Sadly I'm annoyed with nexus mods since they require you to make an account to download the mod. I have no idea why they do it, but I just didn't feel like making another account I'll have to worry about to get them. I might take a look and bite the bullet to register. Thanks for the two mod ideas and yeah I've been tempted to restart the story again to do their skills "right" and build more efficient mechs. Thank you for the assistance and taking the time out of your day to help me try and have fun with the game since I really do want to have fun.
Yeah I have discovered exactly what you said about the game. The headshot part slightly annoys me because it feels even worse of forcing you to play only one way. Reading this I might actually redo my entire way of playing the game.
Steam: betsuni7
Even beyond that you can also get a save game editor and add money, add any item in any quantity in the game to your inventory, add mechs to your inventory, change pilot skills, and change faction rep. Just be sure to save a copy of the savegame in case a change causes it to no longer load. I use it so when I get ideas for component or mech mods I can just drop them into my in-progress game without needing to search the galaxy for a chance for it to drop in the stores.
Nice! Now THIS is what I just might do if I get to the end of my rope. Now to think up an account for their site.
Steam: betsuni7
I don't really know why they forced that in the campaign. Or at the very least why they didn't turn it off at the end.
Yeah. I mean, it makes sense that they wanted a regular ratchet of difficulty (and for you not to get too far in over your head in the campaign), but agreed that they should have turned that off once the campaign was over and the entire map opened up.
Went and dumped the Dragon and the Awesome. Pulled a Shadowhawk and Firestarter out of storage along with my old Centurion. Changed up my Catapult from the SplatCat (4SRM6s) to 2LRM10++ and 2LRM5s plus a boatload of ammo. Equipped an AC20 on the Shadow Hawk and 2t of ammo (feels good doing precision strikes to the back CT). Full armored the Firestarter and equipped it with 6SL, 5JJ and 2HS to make it my scout and backstabber. Cent is 2SRM4, 1SRM6, 1ML Zombie machine (sort of how I run 3SRM4s and 2ML in MWO, but gave it more missiles for BT).
Redid my first mission I failed at earlier today. Ran the Catapult, Shadowhawk, Kintaro (4SRM4s, 2ML), and Firestarter. Firestarter was the sprinting scout and the enemy lance chased the squirrel. I melted the entire team by focusing on legs and taking out backs. Oh and surprise, surprise the entire enemy first lance was a Cicada and 3 other mediums (Phoenix Hawk, Griffin, and Shadow Hawk). Took them all out with somewhat ease, although I did lose the Shadow Hawk's leg. Set my team up to ambush the reinforcements, but I had to eject my Shadow Hawk after a lucky hit to the AC20. Took out the remaining team with ease with lots of Precision Strikes to legs and rear CTs. Yeah, I did win and it is much easier with the team build I have now. Sad since I would love to run the fun other builds but they just don't do enough damage to the equal teams.
Edit: I actually am tempted to run the save game editor, but we'll see if I can push through my game to get the cheesy Marauders.
Steam: betsuni7
Agreed. Another downside of this in the campaign is you can get black market access when the pirates hate you for 2.5 million chills. But everything costs a mint. I paid 6 million for a ER medium laser!
With no half and one skull planets, there's no way to get back in the pirates' good graces!
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
And yet in this game I feel like I'm constantly forced into getting the heaviest mechs possible with the most available free tonnage so that I can just run headfirst into the enemy lance and kill something ASAP. Usually this involves abusing Jump Jets or LOS until I get the enemy AI to walk into a blatant ambush and just killing them from the flank or behind with stored-up Precision Shots. There's no real maneuvering or repositioning beyond that point.
I understand when people say "eventually you can run Firestarters with heavy Evasion/Initiative" or "once you pick up these DLC weapons then X becomes viable" but I feel like that's something of an indictment against the basic design of the game that they have to add entirely new mechanics to balance the ones that already exist.
In addition to the above, I wish they adjusted the information economy in this game in the sense that they actually added one, rather than following the roguelike pattern of forcing you to memorize scenarios or just look them up beforehand (this is one thing I really, really hate about more recent game design, btw - artificially gating difficulty behind memorization and/or your ability to look up information on a wiki). More randomization in scenarios, paying for scouting information beforehand, removing some or all of the Refit penalty so that you can take advantage of said information, etc. would make the setup phase less onerous, feel less penalizing, and would actively reward you for planning within the game itself. Imagine if instead of waiting 10 days to refit everything you just paid money/salvage to do so, and the scouting took 1-2 days and the refit took 1-2 days. Or if you wanted to YOLO it in you could do so with a 25% payment bonus instead.
Anyway, I'm rapidly reaching the mid-game point where I'm starting to wonder if there's any strategy at all or if I'm just going to spend the next 10-20 hours just grinding through the motions until I get to the end...
A few months ago I finished a Kerensky campaign and haven't picked up a new career game since because I am so burned out from doing ~200 contracts in the most optimal way.
I've done a few skirmish mode games here and there and they are a lot more fun because A) you have to work within the constraints of the points system,
It was one of those battle missions where you take on one one lance, but then a second lance drops and everybody is kung fu fighting. Normally these missions are great, because the tonnage is higher than you would expect and there's great salvage opportunity. You can just get out of the way and let the two lances beat each other up and them come mop up the scraps.
In this case, though, the enemies dropped right next to the patch of woods my team was in, so there was limited opportunity to foist them off on one another.
Still, we were clearing folks out pretty efficiently, and damage was minimal. There was a Shadowhawk on one side and a Wolverine on the other, either of which would be a great acquisition to our still opening line up of stock Centurion x2, stock LL Commando x2.
Then, from around a hillock, the fourth mech of the original lance walks into sight - a Marauder. It alphas Jasconius' Commando, destroying it outright and killing the pilot in the process.
Then I get a little greedy. Wouldn't it be great to take that Marauder home? We take a lot of damage whittling down the other forces. It's not going too badly until an armless Jenner punches my PC in the head, destroying the Centurion (not forever - fortunately) and putting her in Medbay for 120 days!
Eventually it's down to a one armed Commando and Chili's Centurion on our side, and a one-armed, one-legged Marauder on the other. I think we're one head hit away from knocking the pilot out. Unfortunately, positioning is a bear with no jump capable mechs. Even pulling punches to try to take out that second side torso, Chili accidentally overshoots and takes out the CT.
So for the cost of a pilot, a Commando, two pilots in medbay, and over 47 days of repairs we take home... one piece of Marauder and a complete Jenner. Which is to be fair an upgrade over a Commando. Just not what I'd been aiming for. :razz:
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Still taking hard lumps though, like losing both arms on my Jenner, and not only paying more to repair the mech than I made on the job, but also having to field it short a medium lasers and an srm2 instead of 4 because my stores are so depleted.
Repair times and pilot injuries force me to take travel contracts to buy time for repairs and healing so that its not just wasted sitting in orbit.
Ironman is a rough go...but, like, a good rough.
The global difficulty increase is a harsh fucking toke on iron man! I have 9ish highly trained pilots and +++ weapons on 300 tons of drop weight and I'm about ready to try and rush campaign end
Edit: i turned on mechs being stripped when they arrive and 4 salvage per mech and maybe some other hard mode type things and none of them matter really. I get new mechs by buying Victor parts in stores and highlander / thunderbolt / atlas parts in black market stores. It seems like salvage sucks which is the opposite of what i remember from years ago so maybe i clicked a difficulty setting that's making me think that.
to the limit
one more tiiiime!
Polar 2.5 skull ambush convoy gone horribly wrong. Was doing fine until the reinforcements appeared off screen and had infinite PPCs to shower down on us.
RIP Provocator.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
That's a hot load of bull right there.
I ordered him to eject after he'd lost a side torso and was down to something like 30 internals in the CT. I'm playing perma-death for mechs, and didn't want to lose two Centurions in a single mission.
Also, I successfully finished the mission, which is sweet, and got a Shadowhawk for my troubles. But I did it by killing the convoy and then beelining for the evac zone. 98% of time if you show up as reinforcements while I'm killing vehicles, I'm coming for you too and taking your mechs.
But not today, Reinforcements. Not today.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
"Easy Pickings" mmhmm...
Alright, that seems fine then. Carry on!
Still think it's kinda bullshit to lose a Pilot to coring, though. I guess it depends on how hurt he was prior.
I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to run this game in Borderless Windowed mode with RivaTuner and ProjectLasso running just so my Core i7-9700K + Nvidia RTX 2080 SUPER doesn't simultaneously stutter and run at full burn with high temps.
You can fix the latter just by turning on vsync in the game's options.
It was on when the stuttering was happening. There is a bunch of conflicting information about what does and doesn't help, and in my experience the stuttering happens regardless of whether it's on or off via the game or via Nvidia's Control Panel. At this point I'm just focusing on making sure it doesn't burn out my computer...
The Argo UI is a fully rendered 3d environment just like the rest of the game. That takes time to load assets just like loading into a mission does. The stores and contracts need to build all their entries randomly when you open them, so you're reading data from a lot of random files to do that. Though the mechbay and store apparently also use a pretty poor data structure and/or sorting algorithm for inventory that causes performance to degrade as the number of items in inventory increases. There's a performance mod that can help with that somewhat.
read starsystem files for biome enumeration
read biome/map files for specific map section and/or weather options
read starsystem files for difficulty enumeration
read starsystem files for faction enumeration
read faction files for name/icon display purposes
read all contract files for possible mission choices
read contract files for difficulty appropriate lance config
read contract files for difficulty appropriate pilot config
read all mech chassis files for lance appropriate mech choices
read all vehicle files for lance appropriate vehicle choices
read all turret files for mission/difficulty appropriate choices
build lance appropriate pilots with difficulty appropriate skills
And if their inventory system is anything to go by, it's possible they are simply repeating that whole process for every single contract in the list.
I love their games, but their software just always feels a little janky in use.
Small but passionate dev team. The company grew a lot for BT, but they still only have 14 people listed under "engineering" and based on job title and being generous, maybe 6 of those would potentially have any responsibility over something like the technical performance of the inventory system or contract generation. And most of them were probably shuffled off to the next project not long after release. And being small I'm guessing they probably don't get the same amount of support for issues with the Unity engine as larger devs either.
https://www.igdb.com/games/battletech/credits
Selfishly, I hope we see a BATTLETECH 2 sometime in our lives!
Isn't the Argo massively smaller than even the smallest map, since you only have to load one view of one place? Wouldn't that be a tiny fraction of the assets?
That's fascinating what causes the performance to degrade. I kept exiting every few hours thinking it was a memory issue
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
Added a few more things to my mod list and deleted Hellfire and Brimstone cause it was making AC/20s blind me in the HBK-4G.
I have to say, with a full stack of mods Mechwarrior 5 is actually kinda fun for short session gaming. You can get in, blow some shit up, and get out. Right now I'm rocking two Grasshoppers with 7 MLAS and an SRM4 and two Griffin 1Ns both with triple SRM 6 racks and 3 MLAS and shit just melts. I'm going into contracts underweight and still bringing some serious pain.
Mechwarrior 5 Reloaded adding more bits to the mechs is also pretty fun. Having to hunt for parts to get a salvaged mech up and running just plain feels good. Especially knowing that the more I play the more spare stuff I'll have laying around as I retire mechs so it'll get easier to salvage things. Right now Standard 200 engines are a PITA to find tho.
I'm also greatly enjoying the music mod that gets rid of the generic butt rock and replaces it with Mechwarrior 2/Timothy Seals music. It makes everything feel just that much better.
In other news, I wish there was some way to trigger an invitation to the Black Market. Even via a Flashpoint or some hoops that needed jumping through. I've been driving around the system, doing any work the pirates have, and the love me. But they won't invite me to their stores! Let me in, pirates! I will spend all my C-Bills with you!
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
It was late, I was frustrated, and I quit the game...causing a mission loss to be recorded too. Two skull mission that I brought a Wolverine, Vindicator, Blackjack and Panther too. First enemy that shows up is a Cataphract.
Gah! This Ironman career run has failed I think and it's time to start another.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053