Battletech

Redress said:

In Mechcommander, the larger ACs kinda sucked, since with real time and longer encounters, they would burn up their ammo in a hurry. I am finding more and more that in Battletech, ACs rule since they generate no heat and ammo is much less an issue.

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Oh, I totally forgot about Mechcommander. That was actually RTS. I had it, but I don't think I actually ended up playing it much. Maybe I've still got it around somewhere . . .

Why is it, when I get a crit, it takes out a heat sink or jump jet, and when the bad guys score a crit on me, it is a ++ weapon?

Redress said:

Why is it, when I get a crit, it takes out a heat sink or jump jet, and when the bad guys score a crit on me, it is a ++ weapon?

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You want to take out heat sinks and jump jets though. Save the good stuff for salvage!

Redress said:

In Mechcommander, the larger ACs kinda sucked, since with real time and longer encounters, they would burn up their ammo in a hurry. I am finding more and more that in Battletech, ACs rule since they generate no heat and ammo is much less an issue.

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I'm finding the same to be true. You get to pick your shots more in Battletech, at least by choice of facing, so you can spend the AC ammo where it counts.

Redress said:

Why is it, when I get a crit, it takes out a heat sink or jump jet, and when the bad guys score a crit on me, it is a ++ weapon?

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As I understand it, it is all a matter of where your gear is installed. If you look at an empty mech you will notice some slots have a heavier boarder, anything in those slots can be critted.

Put things you can stand to lose in those slots.

jmotivator said:

I think my only critique of the game at this point is the bizarre choices made in the user interface.

Every singe screen on the ship interface has a different location for the back button and, 70 hours in to the game, I'm still finding myself search for the back button when I want to back out of a page.

It's made worse by the fact that the graphic for the back button looks a lot like the rest of the artistic embellishments.

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My only other critique with 83 hours played is that the mission difficulty seems predicated on increasing the number of crappy mechs rather than giving you a real challenge with heavy and assault mechs.

Granted, my desires for a "real fight" is almost solely because I have no need for sub-70 ton mech parts, but I'm getting tired of a 5 skull difficulty rating meaning that I'll face 12 mechs under 70 tons and a smattering of vehicles rather than the standard 8.

jmotivator said:

My only other critique with 83 hours played is that the mission difficulty seems predicated on increasing the number of crappy mechs rather than giving you a real challenge with heavy and assault mechs.

Granted, my desires for a "real fight" is almost solely because I have no need for sub-70 ton mech parts, but I'm getting tired of a 5 skull difficulty rating meaning that I'll face 12 mechs under 70 tons and a smattering of vehicles rather than the standard 8.

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That is odd. I faced my first assault mech on a 3 skull mission when I only had 2 heavies. That was scary. Skull ratings are totally ****ed up tho.

Redress said:

That is odd. I faced my first assault mech on a 3 skull mission when I only had 2 heavies. That was scary. Skull ratings are totally ****ed up tho.

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Weird. Other than the Escape story mission I haven't seen any. I wonder if it's because I usually negotiate salvage only?

Redress said:

That is odd. I faced my first assault mech on a 3 skull mission when I only had 2 heavies. That was scary. Skull ratings are totally ****ed up tho.

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LOL! I figured it out. The problem was I was in the wrong area of space. I went to the blue sector and took a 4.5 Skull mission and it is two lances of all Assault mechs. :shock:

jmotivator said:

LOL! I figured it out. The problem was I was in the wrong area of space. I went to the blue sector and took a 4.5 Skull mission and it is two lances of all Assault mechs. :shock:

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Yeah, once I figured out to just navigate to other stars, life got alot more fun. Just traveling where contracts take you is boring.

Redress said:

Yeah, once I figured out to just navigate to other stars, life got alot more fun. Just traveling where contracts take you is boring.

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I finally landed a Stalker (actually needed to incapacitate two to get a full one). Now I have a proper missile assault mech with 2 LRM20+ (+1 stb) and 2 LRM15+++ (+50%crit, +2 stb) ... and nothing else. He hides behind rocks and knocks over other mechs.

I ended up having to be a bit cheaty with that mission, though, and hid all of my mechs behind a rock in the far corner of the map and just meleed everything that came around the corner. Now I can just wade in to battle while all of my opponents fall over.

jmotivator said:

I finally landed a Stalker (actually needed to incapacitate two to get a full one). Now I have a proper missile assault mech with 2 LRM20+ (+1 stb) and 2 LRM15+++ (+50%crit, +2 stb) ... and nothing else. He hides behind rocks and knocks over other mechs.

I ended up having to be a bit cheaty with that mission, though, and hid all of my mechs behind a rock in the far corner of the map and just meleed everything that came around the corner. Now I can just wade in to battle while all of my opponents fall over.

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I am fielding 3 assaults...and a Trebuchet, cuz I can’t find a Stalker, or the last wreck of a Catapult(I have 2 wrecks, had them for awhile). I got 2 LRM20s ready, a +++, all pluses for stability damage, and a ++, pluses to stability damage and damage...

Redress said:

I am fielding 3 assaults...and a Trebuchet, cuz I can’t find a Stalker, or the last wreck of a Catapult(I have 2 wrecks, had them for awhile). I got 2 LRM20s ready, a +++, all pluses for stability damage, and a ++, pluses to stability damage and damage...

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You have the missiles, I have the mech. Aint it always the way?

I have never found any LRMs with + to damage. I would love to have a +Dam +Stb LRM20... do they even exist?

I probably depend on +Crit more than I think, though.

jmotivator said:

You have the missiles, I have the mech. Aint it always the way?

I have never found any LRMs with + to damage. I would love to have a +Dam +Stb LRM20... do they even exist?

I probably depend on +Crit more than I think, though.

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Just got my Catapult. About to try twin LRM20s.

Redress said:

Just got my Catapult. About to try twin LRM20s.

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Go go go! I was always too skeered to lower my armor enough to do LRM20s. Silly, I know, since he sat behind a rock all the time.

jmotivator said:

Go go go! I was always too skeered to lower my armor enough to do LRM20s. Silly, I know, since he sat behind a rock all the time.

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I did not have to lower armor. Got rid of jump jets, some lasers, and a heat sink.

Then I had to get rid of armor for an extra ammo slot...

Redress said:

I did not have to lower armor. Got rid of jump jets, some lasers, and a heat sink.

Then I had to get rid of armor for an extra ammo slot...

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yeah, I only run with max front armor because, as I mentioned, I'm skeered.

https://www.pcgamer.com/whats-next-for-battletech/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

It seems like the BattleTech timeline would allow for several different approaches.

MM: Here’s what I will say, just to set expectations. Any first expansion we put out will not be, "We’re advancing the timeline and here’s the Clans now!" We’re going to start—

MG: Incrementally.

MM: Yeah. We’re gonna work incrementally.

MG: But yeah, we like the idea of moving the timeline forward. We like it. We’ll see what happens, but we like it.

MM: Certainly the Clans are not off the table. But just setting expectations now, if we put out a first thing, that’s not where we’re going first.

MG: BattleTech’s timeline and history is so vast and has so many interesting hooks to play with. The hard part is actually figuring out which of these great hooks to use.

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jmotivator said:

yeah, I only run with max front armor because, as I mentioned, I'm skeered.

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It got real exciting on the first priority contract I took it on(just finished it), 1 mech attacked it(a medium) and the Catapult was orange all over. I was dreading one of the LRM carriers out there targeting the catapult.

On the other hand, after a salvo from the dual LRM20s and a fart will knock over any mech. Catapult + others mechs with multitarget = lots of salvage. Knock down, shoot side torso, wait for it to stand up, knock it back down, get three parts.

Redress said:

https://www.pcgamer.com/whats-next-...el=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

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Good. The Clans are... well, stupid. “They have all the same gear except better in every way” is not good game design. In a single-lance scenario like this, there’s no good way to introduce Clan mechs in any balanced fashion. That Catapult you kitted out with 2 LRM 20s by stripping lasers and jump jets? Mad Cat has that, plus two large lasers. And two medium lasers. And a medium pulse laser. And two machine guns. And more armor. And it’s faster despite being ten tons heavier. There’s not really a good way to balance out that sort of superiority in such small numbers. Inner Sphere forces win via superior numbers, tonnage, and tactics. But I can only drop four mechs! Perhaps company-level deployments solve that issue. Let me drop three lances to face off against a couple clan stars.

Although from a game difficulty perspective, the Space Bushido Code makes a decent stand-in for the AI being stupid.

On the strategic scale, I do enjoy the “superior clan tech appears, you scramble to beat them and start salvaging their gear” part we’ve seen in a couple Mech* games. MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries did it the best, the onset of the Clan invasion was midway through the game. You run into a couple light mechs who seem unusually fast and tough for their size, with no identification. By the end, you’re defending the Space Japan home world from a full-scale invasion force.

MechCommander was the other good one. Start of Operation **** You Smoke Jaguar Clan.

tl,dr: Clans are bad mechanically and bad narratively, hard to pull off well in vidya games. I’m skeptical.

Getting later in the game where I'm fielding 3 heavies and an assault mech, facing off against larger enemy forces. Getting harder to keep a good set of mechwarriors healthy. Not because I'm taking more damage, but rather because I'm taking a greater volume of fire and therefore am getting a lot more "single LRM glances off the windshield, pilot out for two weeks" scenarios. B-team pilots getting action these days.

I wish there was a damage threshold for pilot injury on head hits.

Deuce said:

Getting later in the game where I'm fielding 3 heavies and an assault mech, facing off against larger enemy forces. Getting harder to keep a good set of mechwarriors healthy. Not because I'm taking more damage, but rather because I'm taking a greater volume of fire and therefore am getting a lot more "single LRM glances off the windshield, pilot out for two weeks" scenarios. B-team pilots getting action these days.

I wish there was a damage threshold for pilot injury on head hits.

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Cockpit mods. The ++ version stops up to 3 damage.

Of course, there are more useful mods for that slot...

Holy hell, the final storyline missions where too easy...

First encounter with a 100-tonner!



Death via knockdowns and ammo explosions.

Deuce said:

First encounter with a 100-tonner!

Death via knockdowns and ammo explosions.

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I came across a King Crab in a mission yesterday and focused fire on RT and LT and legs and still an overly accurate LRM salvo took out the CT...