297 replies to this topic

[WrathOfDeadguy]

evilauthor, on 29 April 2018 - 06:34 PM, said:

Every other time, it's been Orions, Orions, and more Orions whenever a 75 ton mech shows up.

That does make sense. The Orion was in continuous production throughout the Succession Wars... but all of the Black Knight production facilities were destroyed. By 3025 the Black Knight would have been a pretty rare 'Mech outside of ComStar's stockpiles- they weren't produced again until the Civil War era.

[Alexander of Macedon]

Still contemplating whether I should use the goose waffle or keep it secret and safe.

Samial, on 29 April 2018 - 07:10 PM, said:

Its a really good game, which has a few issues at this time.. The RNG is atrocious..

Welcome to Battletech. It wouldn't be right if you didn't get an utter ******* of a roll now and then.

Samial, on 29 April 2018 - 07:10 PM, said:

and it has some game breaking bugs like reinforcements all jumping on you at once.. etc..

Just a tip: them being spawned on the map at mission start isn't a bug. And I really hope it doesn't get changed, because it makes it easy to string them out and kill a few at a tine. Lord knows LoS and sensor range are so short it's easy to avoid contact.

Edited by Alexander of Macedon, 29 April 2018 - 09:18 PM.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Alexander of Macedon, on 29 April 2018 - 09:18 PM, said:

Welcome to Battletech. It wouldn't be right if you didn't get an utter ******* of a roll now and then.

Some of the RNG-screws aren't just now and then at the moment. Like, for example, the headshots. Played another four hours... multiple headshot injuries in every mission again. Using cover, evasive bonus (up to +5 FFS!), bracing, bulwark skill... or all of the above... the only thing that reliably prevents headshots is facing, and unless you've specced all the way up the piloting branch you can't move after shooting. Behemoth, my bad luck pilot, is still getting smacked in the noggin on a regular basis and then sitting on the bench for ~3 weeks at a time because of itty-bitty love taps as minuscule as 1 damage. Not in the same 'Mech or build archetype, either- she started out in a long-range Shad, then moved into a mid-range Cent, then a bracket build Dragon, and now an Orion, and it's only since getting the Onion that she's been running a brawler and getting in peoples' faces. She even dropped in my Jenner at one point, and the only hit she took that whole mission was-you guessed it- a headshot.

Everybody else getting injured feels like RNG doing its job to make things interesting. Behemoth taking a bump on the braincase feels like fate. She is now sitting at 15 injuries- all headshots. All six other pilots on the roster, as of this moment (including Invictus, my Commander, who just suffered a freak knockdown because of an LRM carrier I didn't see coming), have exactly that many injuries combined. The next most injury-prone pilot in my barracks is Shortstop, with 6. Nobody else has more than 3. I'm completely stumped as to why the game has it out for Behemoth, but... it sure seems that way. It's not as if she's ever been in any danger of dying, either- she has the most health of any of my pilots (currently 5), and has never suffered an actual armor breach to the head- or a knockdown, or a ST destruction. Every single injury on her medical record was a headshot, and always from an idiotically low-damage hit that did nothing consequential to the 'Mech.

It's passed beyond annoying and into laughable now. I don't think I could have managed to get one pilot hurt so often, and so consistently, if I'd been trying to do it. I'm kinda curious to see how many times she'll suffer major trauma before the end of the story... if this were a PnP Shadowrun campaign, she'd be bouncing off the essence limit with chrome up to the gills.

[Ben Delat]

Behemoth is my most injured Character, too.

OK, Dekker died in a Mission at the Beginning, but who could ve seen that comin?^^

My own Character was the only victim of a rela Head Shot so far, he was gone for over 100 Days.....

[MustrumRidcully]

I love this game.

I had a lance of Jagermech, Catapult K2, Catapult C1 and a Dragon and accidentally took on a mission that had one skull more than I usually fight.

My opposition started out to be a King Crab and 3 Demolisher Tanks. Well, ****, i thought, but I can always reload and skip the mission as I would have normally done.

But I managed to take out the first tank (their side armor was a real weakness), and kept fighting, and surviving. But sometime in the battle -I think maybe one or tanks only taken out, and the King Crab still operational despite a lot of fire from me, the enemy got reeinforcements. Which I mostly noticed thanks to the LRMs that suddenly started flying my direction.

I managed to take out the King Crab by incapcitating the pilot and the last tank by another side armor penetration, and evaded further away from the oncoming enemy. By this time I think I realized that the reeinforcements where a group of heavies. (and heavier then mine, among them a Black Knight).

My K2 (piloted by Decker) was limping, havnig lost an arm and a leg (and maybe also the side torso there). I used jump jets and cover to keep him alive, he wa spretty much totally focused on bracing rather than shooting for a while.

But I managed to take them all out, and none of the mechs or pilots got taken out.

On the salvage screen, I could see all those sweet, sweet King Crab parts... And then i realized that I had only 2 priority picks.

Ah, well, I guess I'll have to go crab hunting another day.

[jss78]

I''d say RNG is pretty well balanced in this game.

They've actually intentionally toned it down a lot from tabletop. No through armor crits, no engine/gyro crits, ammo explosions less likely (and I think less devastating too).

That you generally fire multiple weapons makes it a lot less painful than in XCOM. Though missing those 85% AC/20 shots still hurts.

Unseen -- yeah, for me it's also a case of glass half full, with all those non-Macross unseen in the game. I actually care more about those 55 tonners than the heavies.

[Koniving]

Samial, on 29 April 2018 - 07:10 PM, said:

Its a really good game, which has a few issues at this time.. The RNG is atrocious.. and it has some game breaking bugs like reinforcements all jumping on you at once.. etc..

I'd wait till they patch a few things before playing through.

From an earlier post of mine where I repeatedly do the same mission over, the proceedurally generated missions are not set. The enemies you encounter, when they appear, etc., is also not set. Sometimes they all come immediately, sometimes they come in waves, sometimes they come in impossible numbers, sometimes they come with such a pathetic force that you're sad when its over and spend the remaining turns paranoid that something might happen... til it does near the end or doesn't ever happen. Sometimes it launches a wave of complete and utter ********.

If you think it gives you a completely unfair hand, you can reload a save just before launching on the contract and try again.

[Koniving]

Ben Delat, on 30 April 2018 - 12:34 AM, said:

Behemoth is my most injured Character, too.

OK, Dekker died in a Mission at the Beginning, but who could ve seen that comin?^^

My own Character was the only victim of a rela Head Shot so far, he was gone for over 100 Days.....

Koniving and Glitch get injured the most often. Behemoth has actually never been out of action and is in every match for me. She's only twice changed mechs, but she's always in my Shadowhawk.

It seems like characters low on guts tend to get hurt more often.

[Burke IV]

You cant moan about the RNG in this really. Sure its a cheating so an so but its downright gentle compared to xcom. I think they got that balanced well. Its a cheat but not so much that it kills the fun... like xcom on impossible.

Lol glitch is dead btw. Trebuchets are not good mechs in this.

[Brody319]

I have 3 good mechs. Pilots never get injured enough to kill them.

My Grasshopper, My Jeager (three AC5s and a ML), and my Dragon have all been beaten down but never killed their pilots. Sure I've had to replace everything but a leg and the CT on a few occasions but the pilots always come home.

My last mech seems cursed. Every person I put in my last mech gets 1-2 drops on average. Went through 3-4 mercs in a single string of missions. I'm sure the rest of the lance call it the Iron coffin because no one that steps in lasts long.

[Luminis]

Samial, on 29 April 2018 - 07:10 PM, said:

Its a really good game, which has a few issues at this time.. The RNG is atrocious.. and it has some game breaking bugs like reinforcements all jumping on you at once.. etc..

Sufficiently easy to mitigate, though.

Alexander of Macedon, on 29 April 2018 - 09:18 PM, said:

Still contemplating whether I should use the goose waffle or keep it secret and safe.

Put it into something with a lot of armour and go to town. No point in having it if you're not using it. Plus, I generally find regular +++ weapons to be better than LosTech ones. I'd probably rage harder if I lost one of my DHS than my Gauss Rifle

WrathOfDeadguy, on 30 April 2018 - 12:06 AM, said:

headshots

Cockpit Mods are your friend.

Edited by Luminis, 30 April 2018 - 05:42 AM.

[evilauthor]

So before going to bed last night, I decided to do an Escort Mission rated at 3.5 skulls, which is about where my unit is difficulty wise. Having done a previous escort mission and having read the forums, I knew that if I hit the rendezvous point ASAP, the escortee would rush ahead and my deployed lance ( 3 65 tonners and a 60 tonner) would have trouble keeping up.

So what I did was park my LRM boat just outside the rendezvous point while my other three mechs ranged ahead (the road makes it easy to see the travel route) to clear the travel route ahead of time. And let me tell you, doing this makes escort missions a snap... even if the OpFor hadn't been made solely of Lights, Mediums, and weak Vehicles.

Here's how things went:

Blocking force was a lance of Lights, 2 Spiders and 2 Locusts. My heavy lance chewed them up in almost no time.

Parked my LRM boat by the rendezvous while I sent my other three mechs down the road. No enemies found, but I did find the pickup point, which is basically marked by red "Danger! Dropship will be landing here!" markers when I;m considering moving into there.

I spread my lance more or less evenly along the route (it's not very long), and then have my LRM boat trigger the escortee spawn.

A second enemy lance spawns, one consisting entirely of vehicles. I immediately kill them. Two SRM Carriers by the Dropship pickup point? Killed in one salvo each from two different mechs. Striker in the woods? Killed by the other two mechs; the LRM boat didn't even have line of sight on it, just lobbed missiles over a mountain. Striker on the ridge line? Left alone til the next turn because it had line of sight on NOTHING. It was killed on the next turn because it wandered on the next turn.

Needless to say, the escortee Sleipnirs got to the pickup point without incident.

When the first vehicle got there though, another enemy lance spawned. Two Commandoes and two Enforcers... facing my four heavy mechs. They didn't stand a chance. They did get a couple shots off on the Sleipnirs, but did little more than scratch damage.

But I did learn a little something. Do NOT concentrate fire at first when protecting some third party. You want the enemy to shoot at you instead of what you're trying to protect so you need to grab their attention, and the only way to do that is to shoot them. If you don't attack them, they'll ignore you and go after the objective.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Koniving, on 30 April 2018 - 04:19 AM, said:

Koniving and Glitch get injured the most often. Behemoth has actually never been out of action and is in every match for me. She's only twice changed mechs, but she's always in my Shadowhawk.

It seems like characters low on guts tend to get hurt more often.

That's actually dead opposite my Behemoth's experience- she has my highest Guts spec, but the most injuries.

Heh.

Behemoth, freshly back on the roster after eating an SRM to the cockpit window on her previous mission, goes down to the 'Mechbay to check on her baby- just in time to hear the others beating a hasty, giggling retreat. She shakes her head, which is still sporting a bandage from that last drop as she's come straight down from medical, and climbs up to the cockpit to have a look. The company is short on funds and can't afford to leave a perfectly good machine sidelined because its pilot has a concussion again.

She hates when other 'Mechwarriors use her 'Mech. Medusa always eats in the damn cockpit, and there are usually crumbs all over the console when he drives her machine while she's down and out. This time it's clean. About as clean as it's ever been in her lifetime, in fact. If the outside weren't still rough and grubby, she'd almost be fooled into thinking someone had replaced her almost half-millennia old 'Hawk with one found in a LosTech cache. Something's fishy here. She climbs back down and heads back for the barracks, but there's no one there apart from Yang, who's using one of the desks as a workbench.

"Yang, how many times do we have to tell you not to-" she starts, but she doesn't finish. Yang whirls around with a flourish and a bow, clunking his artificial arm on a locker as he does so.

"M'lady," he says in an uncharacteristically solemn tone, "may I present your new neurohelmet?"

Her jaw almost hits the floor. He's encased the bloody thing in bubble wrap- so much of it that her head's going to look like a marshmallow.

"I am going to kill you in your sleep," she growls, turns on her heel, and goes to get some coffee. Coffee makes everything better.

The corridors echo with laughter all the way to the mess.


...okay, I take everything back. The crazy headshot rolls are fine- makes for a better story anyhow. XD

[Koniving]

I've been planning on some BT short stories using megamek HQ. There are a number of things here I was already planning on including on my own but as it turns out there is still some stuff I didn't know about such as the merc review board and so on. Lenders is also a nice touch that I loosely considered but forgot about. Instead I focused a little more on insurance for all the power lines and such destroyed along the way and so on.

[Koniving]

I will have it up in its own thread under BT discussion when it is ready as both the short story and a breakdown of the matches. The last attempt at an ambitious one had somewhere around ten megamek windows open for movement in different locations, patrols etc with set rules AMD 'cards' to help govern stuff megamek can't handle. The last chance techs for BT discussion has a bit of it for anyone interested.

Hopefully this weekend but probably next.

[Danger817]

Finally got a full heavy lance. 1 Orion, 2 Dragons, 1 Thunderbolt. My secondary lance is two Shadowhawks, a Hunchback, and a Centurion. The rest of the mechs I put into storage to save on upkeep cost.

I gotta say the Hunchback really took me by surprise how good it is. Love the AC/20 it's got when you've got a high skill gunner.

[Brain Cancer]

Quote

But I did learn a little something. Do NOT concentrate fire at first when protecting some third party. You want the enemy to shoot at you instead of what you're trying to protect so you need to grab their attention, and the only way to do that is to shoot them. If you don't attack them, they'll ignore you and go after the objective.

This is the other reason multi-target is handy. A few LRM 5s on a decently mobile chassis and you can trololololkite pretty much anything on the map into chasing your shiny metal hindquarters simply by spreading the love as far and wide as possible.

[MischiefSC]

I now have a Banshee 3M with 6 small lasers, 4 jump jets, a mod for +40 melee damage (which is already insane) and a leg mod with -30 Death from above self-damage.

I can one punch kill all but Atlas and King Crab with it. Trying to get a King Crab.

However I'm finding that the all assault missions you get later on are less enjoyable. Actually planning on restarting and just sort of hanging out in the pre-Castle timeframe. The mixed mediums and heavies missions were the most fun for me.

[IllCaesar]

This appears to be the universal Battletech experience so far.

[Koniving]

jss78, on 30 April 2018 - 03:32 AM, said:

I''d say RNG is pretty well balanced in this game.

They've actually intentionally toned it down a lot from tabletop. No through armor crits, no engine/gyro crits, ammo explosions less likely (and I think less devastating too).

That you generally fire multiple weapons makes it a lot less painful than in XCOM. Though missing those 85% AC/20 shots still hurts.

Unseen -- yeah, for me it's also a case of glass half full, with all those non-Macross unseen in the game. I actually care more about those 55 tonners than the heavies.

Had a Locust enemy with an ammo explosion... a Locust 1v, where the ammo's in the CT. There wouldn't be a thing left of the mech in TT. Here? He shakes it off and shoots me with a laser.

So made the ammo explosions softer is an understatement..