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.")
Harder to lose legs than torso (IMO) and i'll take 2 injuries and a limping mech over a mech missing one-half of it's body and thus likely a chunk (if not all!) of it's armament.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Especially if it's loaded with +++ or LosTech weapons!
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.")
Harder to lose legs than torso (IMO) and i'll take 2 injuries and a limping mech over a mech missing one-half of it's body and thus likely a chunk (if not all!) of it's armament.
That's not opinion, it's just the way the game is. On average you will lose more side torsos than legs. For shots from the front, hitting a side torso is 1.75x more likely than hitting a leg. And depending on armor allocation of course, legs have more total armor available than the front of a side torso. And for rear attacks, it's 2.8x more likely to hit the side torso and less than half as much armor as a leg.
SiliconStew on
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
If the weapon is on the mech's arm, I put the ammo on that arm. If the ammo blows up it's not like you were gonna be getting any more use out of that weapon anyway.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
If the weapon is on the mech's arm, I put the ammo on that arm. If the ammo blows up it's not like you were gonna be getting any more use out of that weapon anyway.
That just makes it more likely for you to lose the weapon though. Crits are not your friend when they're targeted at you!
If the weapon is on the mech's arm, I put the ammo on that arm. If the ammo blows up it's not like you were gonna be getting any more use out of that weapon anyway.
That just makes it more likely for you to lose the weapon though. Crits are not your friend when they're targeted at you!
But putting it on your leg means you risk losing a leg and a weapon at the same time.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Yeah, I can't count the number of times where I've had armor blown through on an arm with a weapon I don't want to lose and the mech was still able to fight and complete the mission without losing the arm or weapon. Stacking ammo with the weapon using it is just begging to lose all of it, as well as potentially dumping damage into the side torso from ammo cookoff.
The exception being gauss rifles, since the ammo is inert and the weapon itself is explosive. In that case, you can safely put the ammo in with the cannon (though you probably won't because you won't have any spaces left open to put ammo in there).
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
Adding to the chorus of "Ammo In The Legs", for all of the reasons stated above.
But putting it on your leg means you risk losing a leg and a weapon at the same time.
Except, not quite. If you have an arm-mounted gun with ammo in the leg, and then lose the leg, you only lose the functionality of the gun until you get back to the ship.
This is an important distinction versus just "losing the gun" because when you start sporting +/++/+++ or LosTech (Ultras/LBXs) guns, you really don't want to lose one of those permanently! If you lose a leg with the ammo in it, you can either limp through the mission taking tactical care to save the gun, or you can eject the pilot and save the actual important hardware.
At this point, literal years of BATTLETECH and decades of Tabletop Battletech have borne this out.
For any weapon with more than one ton ammo, I now split it across two legs. In cases of a lost leg, you still have battlefield use of that weapon.
I used make a single "powder keg" leg. I thought splitting it just increased risk of ammo explosion, and I guess it does. Now that I think about it in more mathematical detail, I'm not sure splitting across legs is right. Would be interested to hear from you all.
But it is a workaround if your concern is for losing "leg and use of a weapon."
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
edited September 2020
I always split them across legs unless I have something I want to protect in a leg, e.g. a double heatsink (in which case nothing explosive goes in that leg).
It increases the odds it'll end up in a place with the possibility of a blowthrough, but it decreases the odds of a crit connecting with the ammo. Gut instinct says it probably about evens out? But I haven't run numbers and I try to even out my damage to both sides anyway so...
For any weapon with more than one ton ammo, I now split it across two legs. In cases of a lost leg, you still have battlefield use of that weapon.
I used make a single "powder keg" leg. I thought splitting it just increased risk of ammo explosion, and I guess it does. Now that I think about it in more mathematical detail, I'm not sure splitting across legs is right. Would be interested to hear from you all.
But it is a workaround if your concern is for losing "leg and use of a weapon."
I've always been a stickler for symmetry so always spread it evenly between the two legs. So I'm curious to see what the numbers say on this as well.
For any weapon with more than one ton ammo, I now split it across two legs. In cases of a lost leg, you still have battlefield use of that weapon.
I used make a single "powder keg" leg. I thought splitting it just increased risk of ammo explosion, and I guess it does. Now that I think about it in more mathematical detail, I'm not sure splitting across legs is right. Would be interested to hear from you all.
But it is a workaround if your concern is for losing "leg and use of a weapon."
That's actually an interesting thought - if I only require one type of ammo, but need multiple cans of it,I absolutely try to spread it around between the two legs as evenly as I can. But if I require multiple types of ammo, and those weapons are only on one side or the other of the mech, I tend to stack my ammo on the side of the weapon. But that is a sound thought of spreading it around anway so you don't lose it all.
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
Also, it makes for the greatly amusing mental image of ammo feeds working through both sides of the hips, up through every torso section, through a shoulder joint to its eventual location of use.
Battletech!
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Also, it makes for the greatly amusing mental image of ammo feeds working through both sides of the hips, up through every torso section, through a shoulder joint to its eventual location of use.
Battletech!
That's why the battlemechs are so rare. It's not hard to make a mech, but getting one that will let you feed ammo in from its feet? Now THAT'S engineering!
Also, it makes for the greatly amusing mental image of ammo feeds working through both sides of the hips, up through every torso section, through a shoulder joint to its eventual location of use.
Battletech!
This made me think of this, I know there is an ammo priority location list in MWO. Is this the same in BT or do they follow the tabletop rules (not sure if they are different, but I think I remember they were)?
There is an additional confounding factor in the math that I forgot to mention. HBS Battletech does not reroll crits. So all slots in that section count as crit padding where if it lands on an open spot or a previously destroyed item, it doesn't try again. So if you had the choice of a bin of ammo in the leg or a bin of ammo in the side torso, and ignoring the fact the side torso is easier to hit in general, and ignoring that legs are typically more armored than torsos, you would be less likely to have the ammo crit if it is in the side torso (1/10) vs the leg (1/4). Which is why center torso ammo is particularly bad in this game. Any CT crit has a 1/4 chance of hitting an ammo bin in the CT and destroying the mech vs the 1/11 chance it had in TT. And also why filling a leg with 4 ammo bins is a really bad idea as any crit will destroy the leg.
Further, an ammo bin that has been depleted below 50% does not explode. Which is why you want to right-size your ammo loadout to be empty or nearly empty by the end of a typical mission as that will reduce the chance of having enough ammo to cause an explosion by the point in the missions you start to get armor blow throughs. Also, ammo bins are depleted in the order they are mounted on the mech, so pulling one off and putting it back on will put it at the end of the list. You can use this to for example make sure you deplete risky CT ammo before the ammo in safer areas.
And lastly, unless you've modded your game like I have, enemies have their actual crit rate cut by 80% against the player. So the player is far less likely to get ammo critted at all compared to what it could be.
SiliconStew on
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
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SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
I had been wondering about ammo depletion order, so that's good to know. I tend to make my mechs with shield arms.
Also, ammo bins are depleted in the order they are mounted on the mech, so pulling one off and putting it back on will put it at the end of the list.
Holy shit, this is neeeeeever mentioned anywhere, ever. That's super important!
Well I think it's more happy coincidence than deliberate on their part. Just a consequence of how the inventory array for a mech is filled. Same thing applies inside the mechdef files. Bins at the top of the inventory list are depleted first if you wanted to tweak the behavior for the enemy loadouts for example. It's like how the visible weapon models are not always symmetrical on a mech even if both sections are equipped the same. Weapon slot 1 may have models for two or more types of weapons and whichever gets added first wins and the other gets bumped to slot 2 for display purposes.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Also, ammo bins are depleted in the order they are mounted on the mech, so pulling one off and putting it back on will put it at the end of the list.
Holy shit, this is neeeeeever mentioned anywhere, ever. That's super important!
How is this super important? What am I missing?
Let's say you're rocking an AC/20 with appropriate ammo counts, requiring like three or four bins.
Let's say, for argument's sake, you need to spread them around. Space is tight, you're cramming it wherever you can. You decide that you put a bin in:
Head
Right Torso
Right Arm
Right Leg
Now, which order would you want to empty those bins, knowing the odds and potential damage from attacks and ammo explosions?
I personally think, having not even run the numbers, the order is probably
Right Torso (if this explodes early, OWIE)
Right Leg (Bad, but not as bad as losing the torso)
Right Arm (An explosion here only guts the arm, safer still)
Head (Comparitively safe! And if you were getting crit, you're probably dead anyway)
Is this a great example? No. But it's that train of thought that's important, and the game does nothing to even tell you there's a train to think about!
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Also, ammo bins are depleted in the order they are mounted on the mech, so pulling one off and putting it back on will put it at the end of the list.
Holy shit, this is neeeeeever mentioned anywhere, ever. That's super important!
How is this super important? What am I missing?
You may want to load ammo in a particular order based on how exposed the location is. Arms are more likely to get blown off than legs, for example, so if you lose the arm you might still have ammo left in the leg, but if you loaded the leg ammo bin first then you may not have any ammo by the time the arm gets blown off.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I just realized that there's a Black Market that I don't have access to, and I'm pretty sure I'm close to the end of the campaign. The I do some quick Googling and see how F'd up the reputation system is, and that I'm basically locked out of an entire feature due to broken, completely obfuscated reputation mechanics and a literal RNG event.
I just realized that there's a Black Market that I don't have access to, and I'm pretty sure I'm close to the end of the campaign. The I do some quick Googling and see how F'd up the reputation system is, and that I'm basically locked out of an entire feature due to broken, completely obfuscated reputation mechanics and a literal RNG event.
WTF is this? Who thinks this is good design?
It's super easy to dance around if you know to do it (I had the pirates loving me my whole campaign), but yeah it's bullshit how you have to still wait for a random invite, on top of it maybe not being obvious you shoudln't make enemies of the pirates during the campaign.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Ammo in the head has always seemed like a bad idea to me. If you get a crit, you are FUCKED. And while there may not be much structure there, 1 point of structure is infinitely more than 0 when you tank an AC/10 shot to the face.
I just realized that there's a Black Market that I don't have access to, and I'm pretty sure I'm close to the end of the campaign. The I do some quick Googling and see how F'd up the reputation system is, and that I'm basically locked out of an entire feature due to broken, completely obfuscated reputation mechanics and a literal RNG event.
WTF is this? Who thinks this is good design?
The issue with the campaign permanently raising the planet difficulty is why it's recommended to just restart in career mode after you are done to take on all the Flashpoint stuff. Plus you'll be at a more appropriate tonnage level when they come up. I'd guess it was done that way to provide or perhaps force faster progression of salvaged mechs due to the restricted map area of the campaign and the free travel contracts pushing unaware players towards campaign planets instead of roaming out to the few available high level planets in that map area. Planets stay the same difficulty throughout career so you can always go back to easy areas if you've tanked your rep with a faction that badly.
As to the black market, there is an initial one-time invite event that in my experience happens reasonably early, often early enough that you can't afford the fee. If you decline that one, there is a second, repeating invite event that will eventually pop up, but it will not happen any sooner than 90 days from the first. But if you decline the second time, the event goes in the "discard pile" and you basically have to wait for the entire remaining stack of events to cycle through before those "discard pile" events get added back to the available event pile again. The significant increase in the total number of events they've added with updates has made it take longer to pop up again than it used to. However, there is a third invite event that occurs if you become friendly with the pirates, specifically to get around the RNG aspect, and it is prioritized to pop very soon afterwards. Unfortunately if you've already tanked you rep with pirates and campaign has boosted the difficulty to near end campaign levels, yes it will be very difficult to find contracts to restore pirate rep.
But as a last resort, there is a save game editor on nexusmods you can use to simply enable black market access. Though if you also have bad rep with the pirates, you're going to be paying outrageous purchase prices for everything. Or less drastically, you can use it to bump your pirate rep up a bit off the floor so you can regain access to low level missions that will let you build rep again via normal play.
Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about BM access for the campaign. Difficulty-wise, I feel it's not really needed. I'd just finish it out and start a career run with the idea of getting it there.
SiliconStew on
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
In all honesty, the Black Market post Heavy Metal utterly breaks the game progression. The baseline Black Market is pretty reasonable IIRC.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
I unlocked it but I honestly rarely bought anything. I just salvaged most of my upgrades.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Huh. I honestly have never put that much thought into where my ammo goes. I figure if it blows up, I'm already in enough trouble in the game and the location was a negligible factor.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited September 2020
If you put it in the CT it is a significant factor. Otherwise yeah basically, if you start getting cookoffs you already in trouble.
I mostly just stick it in the legs. Sometimes side torso.
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
If you lose a limb (and the expensive gear inside it) you just made a bad situation worse so best avoid the loss in the first place!
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Yeah the Black Market was a final piece of DLC where the Devs said, “Fuck it, let’s just go crazy with this one.”
It’s not meant for a first time playthrough, or possibly even second or third.
The BM is the place where the game’s difficulty goes to die. It’s where you get the stuff to do absurd game breaking things.
It would have frankly been a terrible, terrible piece of DLC if it wasn’t also the last one.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
I tried a lightning fast campaign run and liberating smithon is ROUGH. Three turrets and 8 mechs when I'm running 2 shadow hawks, a centurion, and a kintaro, with weak to medium pilots. I'll keep trying it, maybe give up on the escaping transports or something.
But I was sort of seeing how easy the campaign is if you do absolutely minimal side missions and liberating smithon is where it seems to come off the rails. Experiment over.
Is it worth spending $60 on the three DLC? DLC always seems stupidly expensive to me.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
I tried a lightning fast campaign run and liberating smithon is ROUGH. Three turrets and 8 mechs when I'm running 2 shadow hawks, a centurion, and a kintaro, with weak to medium pilots. I'll keep trying it, maybe give up on the escaping transports or something.
But I was sort of seeing how easy the campaign is if you do absolutely minimal side missions and liberating smithon is where it seems to come off the rails. Experiment over.
Is it worth spending $60 on the three DLC? DLC always seems stupidly expensive to me.
The DLC is on sale on Steam right now. 50% off. So for $30 I'd say it is well worth it.
edit- That said, the Heavy Metal DLC is the one with the Black Market and if you're still a new player I'd say you could skip it for now. It is up to you, but the Black Market is largely for people who have played a bunch and just want to have a crazy fun time breaking the game's difficulty over their knee. Of course you could always buy it now and just not use it. Or do. Your call.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
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SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
If you have the game on Steam, last I checked it was 50% off on everything right now, which definitely is good to grab all the DLC.
Oh yeah, Paradox Strategy weekend, so yeah it should be around for a couple days.
Yeah the Black Market was a final piece of DLC where the Devs said, “Fuck it, let’s just go crazy with this one.”
It’s not meant for a first time playthrough, or possibly even second or third.
The BM is the place where the game’s difficulty goes to die. It’s where you get the stuff to do absurd game breaking things.
It would have frankly been a terrible, terrible piece of DLC if it wasn’t also the last one.
The black market was introduced for the first DLC (Flashpoint) 1.3 free update. And while it tended to have a wider selection than the normal store and made it easier to find ++ weapons, the item availability was still reasonably balanced.
Where things went ham is with the third DLC (Heavy Metal) and 1.9 free update. Not only the DLC introducing a bunch of overpowered tech that shouldn't be available for the time period, but the update changed the itemization in the stores to make it more likely to find high end stuff all the time.
For example, it used to be that if you were lucky you might run across one BM store selling 3 parts of a 732b Highlander, aka the best mech in the game at the time, once during an entire career playthrough. And that was fine. It's a very rare, high-powered mech, it should be unlikely to acquire one. Now all BM stores seem to have a fairly constant supply of 732b's, Atlas II's, Annihilators, etc to buy. It's rather ridiculous.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Yeah i have black market access with zero DLC and it's great if you have infinite dollars
I tried a lightning fast campaign run and liberating smithon is ROUGH. Three turrets and 8 mechs when I'm running 2 shadow hawks, a centurion, and a kintaro, with weak to medium pilots. I'll keep trying it, maybe give up on the escaping transports or something.
But I was sort of seeing how easy the campaign is if you do absolutely minimal side missions and liberating smithon is where it seems to come off the rails. Experiment over.
Is it worth spending $60 on the three DLC? DLC always seems stupidly expensive to me.
The DLC is on sale on Steam right now. 50% off. So for $30 I'd say it is well worth it.
edit- That said, the Heavy Metal DLC is the one with the Black Market and if you're still a new player I'd say you could skip it for now. It is up to you, but the Black Market is largely for people who have played a bunch and just want to have a crazy fun time breaking the game's difficulty over their knee. Of course you could always buy it now and just not use it. Or do. Your call.
No, the black market is part of the base game. So you'll still get the unbalanced itemization of the 1.9 version, you just wont see the unbalanced weapons and mechs that came with Heavy Metal DLC if you don't buy it.
I tried a lightning fast campaign run and liberating smithon is ROUGH. Three turrets and 8 mechs when I'm running 2 shadow hawks, a centurion, and a kintaro, with weak to medium pilots. I'll keep trying it, maybe give up on the escaping transports or something.
But I was sort of seeing how easy the campaign is if you do absolutely minimal side missions and liberating smithon is where it seems to come off the rails. Experiment over.
Is it worth spending $60 on the three DLC? DLC always seems stupidly expensive to me.
Flashpoint: A number of flashpoint story missions (each flashpoint is 2-5 branching missions with a connecting story), a new contract type (Target Acquisition, hold ground in 3 zones to mark a target for an orbital strike), tropical biome maps, and Hatchetman, Crab, Cyclops mechs.
Urban Warfare: A number of flashpoint story missions, a new contract type (Attack and Defend, defend your own base against waves of enemies while still needing to destroy the enemy base), urban biome maps (city fighting), Electronic Countermeasures equipped mechs and vehicles, and Raven 1X (ECM equipped) and Javelin mechs.
Heavy Metal: A number of flashpoint story missions (more of an entire campaign this time), 8 new weapon types: TAG, NARC, snubnose PPC, Mortar, Inferno SRM2, Coilgun S/M/L, UAC 2/5/10/20, LBX 2/5/10/20, and Bullshark, Vulcan, Rifleman, Phoenix Hawk, Flea, Assassin, Archer, and Annihilator mechs that each have custom built-in components that make them really strong.
Personally, I think they all have something to recommend them. The flashpoint missions in each DLC are more (small) story missions than were in the main campaign, probably somewhere around 50-60 missions across all 3 DLCs. And you'll run across some legendary mechwarriors from the lore. If I had to rank the flashpoints, I'd say Heavy Metal first, Flashpoint a close second, and Urban warfare 3rd. The urban maps are great and definitely require a different style of fighting. And if you are a fan of certain famous mechwarriors or like overpowered gear, then Heavy Metal is good for that.
SiliconStew on
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Posts
Harder to lose legs than torso (IMO) and i'll take 2 injuries and a limping mech over a mech missing one-half of it's body and thus likely a chunk (if not all!) of it's armament.
That's not opinion, it's just the way the game is. On average you will lose more side torsos than legs. For shots from the front, hitting a side torso is 1.75x more likely than hitting a leg. And depending on armor allocation of course, legs have more total armor available than the front of a side torso. And for rear attacks, it's 2.8x more likely to hit the side torso and less than half as much armor as a leg.
That just makes it more likely for you to lose the weapon though. Crits are not your friend when they're targeted at you!
The exception being gauss rifles, since the ammo is inert and the weapon itself is explosive. In that case, you can safely put the ammo in with the cannon (though you probably won't because you won't have any spaces left open to put ammo in there).
Except, not quite. If you have an arm-mounted gun with ammo in the leg, and then lose the leg, you only lose the functionality of the gun until you get back to the ship.
This is an important distinction versus just "losing the gun" because when you start sporting +/++/+++ or LosTech (Ultras/LBXs) guns, you really don't want to lose one of those permanently! If you lose a leg with the ammo in it, you can either limp through the mission taking tactical care to save the gun, or you can eject the pilot and save the actual important hardware.
At this point, literal years of BATTLETECH and decades of Tabletop Battletech have borne this out.
I used make a single "powder keg" leg. I thought splitting it just increased risk of ammo explosion, and I guess it does. Now that I think about it in more mathematical detail, I'm not sure splitting across legs is right. Would be interested to hear from you all.
But it is a workaround if your concern is for losing "leg and use of a weapon."
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
It increases the odds it'll end up in a place with the possibility of a blowthrough, but it decreases the odds of a crit connecting with the ammo. Gut instinct says it probably about evens out? But I haven't run numbers and I try to even out my damage to both sides anyway so...
I've always been a stickler for symmetry so always spread it evenly between the two legs. So I'm curious to see what the numbers say on this as well.
Steam: betsuni7
That's actually an interesting thought - if I only require one type of ammo, but need multiple cans of it,I absolutely try to spread it around between the two legs as evenly as I can. But if I require multiple types of ammo, and those weapons are only on one side or the other of the mech, I tend to stack my ammo on the side of the weapon. But that is a sound thought of spreading it around anway so you don't lose it all.
Battletech!
That's why the battlemechs are so rare. It's not hard to make a mech, but getting one that will let you feed ammo in from its feet? Now THAT'S engineering!
This made me think of this, I know there is an ammo priority location list in MWO. Is this the same in BT or do they follow the tabletop rules (not sure if they are different, but I think I remember they were)?
Steam: betsuni7
Further, an ammo bin that has been depleted below 50% does not explode. Which is why you want to right-size your ammo loadout to be empty or nearly empty by the end of a typical mission as that will reduce the chance of having enough ammo to cause an explosion by the point in the missions you start to get armor blow throughs. Also, ammo bins are depleted in the order they are mounted on the mech, so pulling one off and putting it back on will put it at the end of the list. You can use this to for example make sure you deplete risky CT ammo before the ammo in safer areas.
And lastly, unless you've modded your game like I have, enemies have their actual crit rate cut by 80% against the player. So the player is far less likely to get ammo critted at all compared to what it could be.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
Holy shit, this is neeeeeever mentioned anywhere, ever. That's super important!
Well I think it's more happy coincidence than deliberate on their part. Just a consequence of how the inventory array for a mech is filled. Same thing applies inside the mechdef files. Bins at the top of the inventory list are depleted first if you wanted to tweak the behavior for the enemy loadouts for example. It's like how the visible weapon models are not always symmetrical on a mech even if both sections are equipped the same. Weapon slot 1 may have models for two or more types of weapons and whichever gets added first wins and the other gets bumped to slot 2 for display purposes.
How is this super important? What am I missing?
Let's say you're rocking an AC/20 with appropriate ammo counts, requiring like three or four bins.
Let's say, for argument's sake, you need to spread them around. Space is tight, you're cramming it wherever you can. You decide that you put a bin in:
Head
Right Torso
Right Arm
Right Leg
Now, which order would you want to empty those bins, knowing the odds and potential damage from attacks and ammo explosions?
I personally think, having not even run the numbers, the order is probably
Right Torso (if this explodes early, OWIE)
Right Leg (Bad, but not as bad as losing the torso)
Right Arm (An explosion here only guts the arm, safer still)
Head (Comparitively safe! And if you were getting crit, you're probably dead anyway)
Is this a great example? No. But it's that train of thought that's important, and the game does nothing to even tell you there's a train to think about!
You may want to load ammo in a particular order based on how exposed the location is. Arms are more likely to get blown off than legs, for example, so if you lose the arm you might still have ammo left in the leg, but if you loaded the leg ammo bin first then you may not have any ammo by the time the arm gets blown off.
WTF is this? Who thinks this is good design?
It's super easy to dance around if you know to do it (I had the pirates loving me my whole campaign), but yeah it's bullshit how you have to still wait for a random invite, on top of it maybe not being obvious you shoudln't make enemies of the pirates during the campaign.
The issue with the campaign permanently raising the planet difficulty is why it's recommended to just restart in career mode after you are done to take on all the Flashpoint stuff. Plus you'll be at a more appropriate tonnage level when they come up. I'd guess it was done that way to provide or perhaps force faster progression of salvaged mechs due to the restricted map area of the campaign and the free travel contracts pushing unaware players towards campaign planets instead of roaming out to the few available high level planets in that map area. Planets stay the same difficulty throughout career so you can always go back to easy areas if you've tanked your rep with a faction that badly.
As to the black market, there is an initial one-time invite event that in my experience happens reasonably early, often early enough that you can't afford the fee. If you decline that one, there is a second, repeating invite event that will eventually pop up, but it will not happen any sooner than 90 days from the first. But if you decline the second time, the event goes in the "discard pile" and you basically have to wait for the entire remaining stack of events to cycle through before those "discard pile" events get added back to the available event pile again. The significant increase in the total number of events they've added with updates has made it take longer to pop up again than it used to. However, there is a third invite event that occurs if you become friendly with the pirates, specifically to get around the RNG aspect, and it is prioritized to pop very soon afterwards. Unfortunately if you've already tanked you rep with pirates and campaign has boosted the difficulty to near end campaign levels, yes it will be very difficult to find contracts to restore pirate rep.
But as a last resort, there is a save game editor on nexusmods you can use to simply enable black market access. Though if you also have bad rep with the pirates, you're going to be paying outrageous purchase prices for everything. Or less drastically, you can use it to bump your pirate rep up a bit off the floor so you can regain access to low level missions that will let you build rep again via normal play.
Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about BM access for the campaign. Difficulty-wise, I feel it's not really needed. I'd just finish it out and start a career run with the idea of getting it there.
I mostly just stick it in the legs. Sometimes side torso.
It’s not meant for a first time playthrough, or possibly even second or third.
The BM is the place where the game’s difficulty goes to die. It’s where you get the stuff to do absurd game breaking things.
It would have frankly been a terrible, terrible piece of DLC if it wasn’t also the last one.
Yeah, should note this in the OP somewhere so we will never forget.
Steam: betsuni7
But I was sort of seeing how easy the campaign is if you do absolutely minimal side missions and liberating smithon is where it seems to come off the rails. Experiment over.
Is it worth spending $60 on the three DLC? DLC always seems stupidly expensive to me.
The DLC is on sale on Steam right now. 50% off. So for $30 I'd say it is well worth it.
edit- That said, the Heavy Metal DLC is the one with the Black Market and if you're still a new player I'd say you could skip it for now. It is up to you, but the Black Market is largely for people who have played a bunch and just want to have a crazy fun time breaking the game's difficulty over their knee. Of course you could always buy it now and just not use it. Or do. Your call.
Oh yeah, Paradox Strategy weekend, so yeah it should be around for a couple days.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
The black market was introduced for the first DLC (Flashpoint) 1.3 free update. And while it tended to have a wider selection than the normal store and made it easier to find ++ weapons, the item availability was still reasonably balanced.
Where things went ham is with the third DLC (Heavy Metal) and 1.9 free update. Not only the DLC introducing a bunch of overpowered tech that shouldn't be available for the time period, but the update changed the itemization in the stores to make it more likely to find high end stuff all the time.
For example, it used to be that if you were lucky you might run across one BM store selling 3 parts of a 732b Highlander, aka the best mech in the game at the time, once during an entire career playthrough. And that was fine. It's a very rare, high-powered mech, it should be unlikely to acquire one. Now all BM stores seem to have a fairly constant supply of 732b's, Atlas II's, Annihilators, etc to buy. It's rather ridiculous.
No, the black market is part of the base game. So you'll still get the unbalanced itemization of the 1.9 version, you just wont see the unbalanced weapons and mechs that came with Heavy Metal DLC if you don't buy it.
Flashpoint: A number of flashpoint story missions (each flashpoint is 2-5 branching missions with a connecting story), a new contract type (Target Acquisition, hold ground in 3 zones to mark a target for an orbital strike), tropical biome maps, and Hatchetman, Crab, Cyclops mechs.
Urban Warfare: A number of flashpoint story missions, a new contract type (Attack and Defend, defend your own base against waves of enemies while still needing to destroy the enemy base), urban biome maps (city fighting), Electronic Countermeasures equipped mechs and vehicles, and Raven 1X (ECM equipped) and Javelin mechs.
Heavy Metal: A number of flashpoint story missions (more of an entire campaign this time), 8 new weapon types: TAG, NARC, snubnose PPC, Mortar, Inferno SRM2, Coilgun S/M/L, UAC 2/5/10/20, LBX 2/5/10/20, and Bullshark, Vulcan, Rifleman, Phoenix Hawk, Flea, Assassin, Archer, and Annihilator mechs that each have custom built-in components that make them really strong.
Personally, I think they all have something to recommend them. The flashpoint missions in each DLC are more (small) story missions than were in the main campaign, probably somewhere around 50-60 missions across all 3 DLCs. And you'll run across some legendary mechwarriors from the lore. If I had to rank the flashpoints, I'd say Heavy Metal first, Flashpoint a close second, and Urban warfare 3rd. The urban maps are great and definitely require a different style of fighting. And if you are a fan of certain famous mechwarriors or like overpowered gear, then Heavy Metal is good for that.
EDIT: It could be that cheap on Steam as well? I can't see the price since I own the DLC.
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/12661/BATTLETECH_Season_Pass_Bundle/
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2