Battletech

[ShadySands]

You can speed up repairs, healing, and travel by editing a file. Can reduce injury chance too. I'm still tweaking settings and haven't found that sweet spot yet.

 

I saw a mod to add in the Warhammer but it's the new reimagined version so I passed on it for now. I think they're supposed to add it in officially some time after launch along with the Marauder and a few more "reseen" mechs.

[Chilloutman]

Finally got over mission with escaping transports and ammunition stashes, that was tough one to get 100%

[213374U]

You can speed up repairs, healing, and travel by editing a file. Can reduce injury chance too. I'm still tweaking settings and haven't found that sweet spot yet.

 

I saw a mod to add in the Warhammer but it's the new reimagined version so I passed on it for now. I think they're supposed to add it in officially some time after launch along with the Marauder and a few more "reseen" mechs.

 

They won't be able to do it until the HG v PGI lawsuit is settled, and that's assuming PGI win. So at least a year from now, and perhaps never. I'll be using mods until then.

 

You mean you want this bad boy:

 

 

 

instead of this?

 

 

Not a really huge Battletech buff, but didn't PGI donate a bunch of meshes to HBS? Will they produce their own for unseen mechs or just keep using PGI's for expediency and, um, consistency?

 

Additionally, by installing these mods you know you're pissing off HG. DO EET!

[ShadySands]

I do believe they're all from PGI. I don't think HBS made any of them themselves

 

Anyways, I'm plugging along with my modded 55 ton Blackjack. It has two upgraded AC/5s and a couple of medium pulse lasers. I toyed around with ER PPCs replacing the AC/5s  but the heat was too much to manage on a mech of this size. Even with double heatsinks. But it's as I feared, I'm spending way more time modding than playing.

[Lexx]

Yup, all from MWO and I am a big fan of that. No matter what you think of MWOs gameplay, the mechs all look great, imo.

[Lexx]

Ok, I'm slowly drifting into "this is so unfun and unfair"-territory. 8 enemy mechs + 1 veteran + 2 striker vehicles vs. my lance of 3 medium and 1 light mechs. Mission is 2 skulls difficulty. If the LRMs don't toast me, then it's the pure numbers game. Even if I circle the map and rush the target, they all clog up on me and just shred my mechs one by one. It's really not worth the reward money at all.

 

I've won it once, but it had my main dude be injured for 110 days, a mech completely wrecked, and two damaged hard. It's not just the repair costs, but also the time needed to repair them...

 

Oh, and I agree that convoy missions are the worst. Same deal here, just LRM spam and I can't even get close. Hitting the vehicles with lasers and... most of the time I just scratch 'em. Best example for why mechs are useless in real--- tanks are just way more effective and don't cost as much.

 

Also there seems to be a memory leak, because loading a savegame takes more time the more often you do it.

[ShadySands]

I think by the time I got to 2 skulls I had 2 or 3 heavies. I can't imagine trying to do with light and mediums. Agreed on the LRM spam, never works as well when I try to do it either.

[213374U]

I've won it once, but it had my main dude be injured for 110 days, a mech completely wrecked, and two damaged hard. It's not just the repair costs, but also the time needed to repair them...

 

Also there seems to be a memory leak, because loading a savegame takes more time the more often you do it.

Do yourself a favor and edit the time it takes to recover from injuries. I'm all for pilots getting killed if someone lands a crit headshot with their large laser, but it's ridiculous that this is Terror from the Deep-casualty levels.

 

The load times increasing I remember it used to be an issue with Shadowrun, too. Possibly a legacy issue?

 

Anyway, can you actually run out of procedurally generated contracts? I've clocked about 10 hours or so and I haven't attempted a single story mission yet, just focusing on having a solid roster and building a financial cushion for the inevitable mission going sideways, hard. Considering that the plot device that gets things started is that there are no jobs available so we must circumvent the MRB, I'd expect to have... a bit more difficulty finding work.

[MrBrown]

Yeah, 2 skulls with 3 meds and 1 light is dangerous. I think I did one, faced 3 medium mechs, and it was quite hard and my mechs got damaged a lot.

 

I don't know what you guys are fretting about the pilot damage. Just get 1-2 extra pilots and rotate, you rarely need more.

[Lexx]

I'm more worried about mech damage than pilot damage. The rooster is limited in the beginning and you can't just swap out mechs. This costs money and time and wasting time costs even more money... and surprise, you don't have money in the beginning.

[ShadySands]

Yeah, 2 skulls with 3 meds and 1 light is dangerous. I think I did one, faced 3 medium mechs, and it was quite hard and my mechs got damaged a lot.

 

I don't know what you guys are fretting about the pilot damage. Just get 1-2 extra pilots and rotate, you rarely need more.

I'm just cheap

 

I really should get a few more for the rotation just in case and even though I've already lowered the time to heal

[MrBrown]

I'm more worried about mech damage than pilot damage. The rooster is limited in the beginning and you can't just swap out mechs. This costs money and time and wasting time costs even more money... and surprise, you don't have money in the beginning.

Yeah, that's true, you might get into a position where you just have to wait a month without doing missions.

 

You can always take less than 4 mechs, if the mission is easy. 3 Meds on a 1 or <1 skull mission is often enough.

[Lexx]

Nah, I'm good to go by now. Running with 2.5 million credits and in worst case I have some mechs to sell that would give me about 1 million additional credits. I'd love to get my hands on bigger mechs, but I can neither find them, nor buy them. Guess I'll have to pick the next story mission to advance the tech level or something.

 

Still, reaching that point took me hours today, with countless reloads because I had to suffer huge losses due to the annoying RNG.

Edited April 28, 2018 by Lexx

[213374U]

I don't know what you guys are fretting about the pilot damage. Just get 1-2 extra pilots and rotate, you rarely need more.

I have extra pilots because I enjoy having more options. The problem is that if someone gets two injuries which isn't that unlikely in a mission, you're looking at about two months downtime for that merc. Next mission, bring in the b-team gunner. Oops! AC/2 chipped your cоckpit paint? That's it, you're out of people who can fill that role... for several weeks. And all because of RNG, it's not like you were getting pounded and failed to withdraw. In one early mission I got hit exactly once, by a LRM salvo. Boom, one casualty. Really?

[Majek]

Finally got to try it out myself. Nice. I can see myself enjoying this a lot, if time allows it.

[MrBrown]

If you think your pilots aren't getting enough injuries, there's apparently a debug button left in the game: https://www.reddit.com/r/Battletechgame/comments/8fi4tc/psa_dont_hit_f6_in_the_barracks_menu/

[Gorgon]

So, I kept playing, and I like the campaign story missions as well as the freelance stuff. I'm a few main missions into the game.

 

However, I still don't have a mech that I like. This is a problem. The light mechs seem like they could be fun to use, jumping around and engaging vehicles, hitting turret generators and such. There is no tonnage limit though, I rather, I am nowhere near hitting it, so why would you ever use a light mech.  

[Malcador]

Is annoying to roll through a mission, and then get my commander injured for 50 days due to MGs

[Lexx]

Anyone knows where I can buy a catapult? Tried to farm one from random contracts, but they don't appear all that much yet.

 

PS: Never thought I'd say that, but the laser boat Hunchback is my new fav+. Totally wrecks most of what is in front of it in one go.

[213374U]

So yeah, I found out why you can't buy intel and must fly into every mission blind. I just tried a 1 1/2 skulls mission that had two trebuchets and a wolverine, and "reinforcements" consisting of two heavy tanks with more firepower than anything I can field and two missile carriers. If you could buy intel it would defeat the point of these "surprises" and you'd never need to use the retreat function.

 

Whether this is "fun" or not, I haven't decided, but it's again bad design to put the player in a position where the options are a) get ****ed and b) get slightly less ****ed with no recourse.

 

I, of course, savescummed my way to heroic victory against impossible odds. I don't play games to roleplay a chump.

[Malcador]

Some of these Liberation missions are pain, the Pravyn one was ridiculous, trying to run a gauntlet of 8 mechs aided by ineffective turrets. Smithon is turning out to be worse, as well, to hell with the bonus objectives there.

[Oner]

I'm really curious now how or to what degree my experience differs from everyone else's. I've had only one mission I had to reload because of a lucky CT melee punch, otherwise I can manage only minor mech damage or occasionally one or two injuries and somewhat bigger mech damage, which is then solved with substitutes and travelling.

[Lexx]

I, too, am curious how you are doing this.

 

At present I experience two kind of missions: The ones where I don't have to reload and the ones where I get wrecked so hard, it isn't even funny. The later one are the missions with instant reinforcements. They would be a lot less hard if the reinforcements would appear a bit later and not right away, making me having to stand vs. 8 well equipped mechs.

 

I just don't like this. It made me create a savegame at every mission start now, then I just run ahead and see what's going on. Then I likely reload and divert to the place where the "reinforcements" are standing around. I'll try to knock them out as quickly as possible, as they usually only consist of light mechs. At this point, however, this lance can't be called "reinforcements" anymore, as someone else already said somewhere. They are just another part of the main lance. It's not exactly fun and pretty much the only thing I really don't like about this game. Well, and escort and convoy missions. The LRM swarm increases the difficulty level *so much* it can't be right. I can beat them with time and savescumming, but it's just not the kind of experience I am carving for...

[213374U]

I'm really curious now how or to what degree my experience differs from everyone else's. I've had only one mission I had to reload because of a lucky CT melee punch, otherwise I can manage only minor mech damage or occasionally one or two injuries and somewhat bigger mech damage, which is then solved with substitutes and travelling.

 

RNG. From another forum:

 

 

A couple weeks ago Kiva (the lead dev on the the simulation half of the game) went into how mission difficulty is calculated and assigned. Basically, there's a hudden Difficulty number for a random mission: this number starts at 1 and goes up to 12. Every planet has a difficulty assigned to it (based on the planet's tags like how populated it is, who controls it, whether it's along a border or other warzone, etc). This number is the base difficulty. Then there's a global difficulty modifier, which starts at 0 and increases as you progress the campaign. This number is added to the planetary base. There are a couple of other factors that raise or lower the total slightly, like mission type and terrain, etc. And then there's a fudge factor: a random die roll (which I believe is weighted to a normal distribution) that adds anything from -2 to +2. Then the total Difficulty number is divided by two, and that's your skull rating (a 1 diff is a half-skull, a 6 diff is a three-skull, etc). However, the outcome of the random fudge factor is not included in the skull rating!

 

What this means is two things: first, a mission can be up to a full skull easier or harder than its listed difficulty, and this is the game working as intended. It also means that contrary to the impression some people had gotten, skull difficulty is not relative. A two-skull mission is a two-skull mission regardless of where you are in the game (except, of course, when it's not a two-skull mission, but is secretly a 1.5 or a 3 or whatever).

 

The fudge factor is there to simulate the fact that mercenaries sometimes get bad intel. If you get into a mission that seems like an absolute ****fest, that's because it is. Pull the ripcord and get out. It's 100% intended that sometimes you'll just need to withdraw.

 

Also, the difficulty number counts higher than 10, so at the endgame you will sometimes get five-skull missions that are actually six-skull difficulty.

I understand why they did this, but I'm still not sold. Once you understand that the game is going to throw unwinnable (or close) scenarios your way, it becomes a matter of recognizing that you are in one and getting the duck out of fodge, for which there are no consequences—just kill the weakest sucker quickly for a "good faith" show—other than having your time wasted. Is the wasted time worth the supposed immersion this system is meant to create? Different strokes and all that.

 

Also, there seems to be a bug with reinforcements in some circumstances, which can cause them to spawn right away. If after killing everyone you get the typical "we have incoming" message immediately followed by mission success, congrats, you are the proud winner of a bugged scenario.

[Gorgon]

I like the game, but the missions are kinda short compared to older mechwarrior games. I remember bigger maps and in mission repair rigs. Given that this game is turn based I don't understand why this is the case. 

 

Some of these Liberation missions are pain, the Pravyn one was ridiculous, trying to run a gauntlet of 8 mechs aided by ineffective turrets. Smithon is turning out to be worse, as well, to hell with the bonus objectives there.

Is that the one with the ammo crates. Use the explosions to damage the enemy mechs, you will lose a couple of

 ammo crates but will be able to mop up faster. Forget chasing after the trucks.