297 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

There was something I saw earlier today that I really wanted to reply to but I can't remember which post it was to quote and I don't seem to see it.

This said, there was someone that had an issue about the enemies... I'm pretty sure I answered Burke about the ones being triggered at the same time, it was something else.

Anyway whatever it was... Unless something changed from when they were asked this under their AI improvements, outside of mission scripting which has no actual AI, there is no coordinating AI. There's no director, no single player that you're playing against. Every unit has its own AI and each one acts in its own best interests. As such there is no actual teamwork among the enemies. No coordination. Each unit is acting in accordance with what would benefit itself the most, finding its own tactical advantage. Of course this means that they are not using pilot abilities to the best of their ability or coordinating any assaults as well as one would like.

They are not even prone to focus fire natively, each individual unit is looking for the fastest kill and so if a team member gets focused that's why. Pull that unit out of their range and then they will focus on what they believe to be their next easiest kill unless something harder to kill gives them a chance to do even greater damage. Each unit is also prone to attacking whatever last attacked them, too.

I hope this helps someone. And yes, on escort missions if you attack them, they will shift their attention, unless your attack was too weak. (They seem to have a threshold, a single AC/2 will not get their attention away from an easy kill. Sometimes even a single medium laser won't divert their attention.)

[Koniving]

Side note: Throughout much of the early game, "Kon" be like...
[Redacted]

Edited by draiocht, 30 April 2018 - 09:48 PM.
video included inappropriate language

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Bad luck finally caught up with my Commander... I was running a mission where I had to capture a munitions depot, with a secondary objective to stop enemy cargo trucks from escaping. The good 'ol Blackjack was the only thing I had able to get LOS on the trucks, which spawned in and started rolling out from the second round, leaving me almost no time to set up carefully.

Well, I got both trucks. Easily. I shouldn't have tried. I really, really shouldn't have. The cookies weren't worth what came next.

The following round, a jackass in a Spider DFA'd my Blackjack, which had already taken some stability damage from LRM fire and fell flat on its back. The Spider ate a face full of everything from the rest of my team in retaliation... but that was the start of the pain train for the poor BJ-1. It never got a chance to stand up again. For the next full round, the game treated me to an unending chain of cherry-tapping as every other enemy on the entire map piled on the BJ-1, ignoring all three of my other 'Mechs to get in on the fun at the expense of their own lives.

First, a Firestarter tried to get some flamer action in, using all its MP to get almost into melee range with the downed 'Jack. This put it within melee reach of my Thunderbolt, which it completely ignored even though the Tbolt was riding the ragged edge of the heat curve and would have made a better target. I had my Tbolt punch it, and the hit went cockpit, instagibbing the FS9.

Then, some more LRMs from the two remaining turrets.

Next, a pair of cross-map PPC shots called on the CT, one from a Panther and the other from a Cicada. The Cicada, which had the move-after-shooting perk, advanced and parked next to an ammo crate.

Next, a Jenner came out to play with the helpless 45-ton punching bag, again with called CT shots. This took off the LT and LA instead, to much "noooo!"-ing because it had taken me quite a while to get two identical ++ AC/2s to upgrade the thing with, and now one of them was toast. The Jenner had pulled up right next to the Cicada before it fired- you can see where this is going. My Dragon put an AC/5 into the ammo crate, and ten thousand years later somebody many light years away on Outreach wondered why it was raining bits of Cicada and Jenner.

But wait, there's more! There was also a Griffin, and it decided to pitch another PPC at my BJ-1. So much for the left leg.

A nearby Locust, legged and missing a side from an earlier round, hobbled straight past a fully loaded brawler Orion to step on the Blackjack's face, and succeeded- and was promptly erased from existence by AC20+3xSRM4+2xML (not that the alpha was strictly necessary, but it was very, very satisfying). I was beginning to wonder how the poor 'Jack was even still alive, but... five enemy 'Mechs now had been turned into chunky salsa because they were so single-minded about ending one Blackjack. I guess it's not so bad after all...

...nope, there was still a Dragon in the back with an AC5 and some LRMs for the coup de grace. *Pop* goes the Blackjack, after being attacked in succession by every single enemy on the entire map. Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say this is starting to feel exactly like a TT campaign. It felt exactly like when a human player manages to identify which 'Mech is your favorite one and tosses reason completely out the window to put their every single effort into ending that one 'Mech in particular, even if it costs them the game.

I mean, I guess if you've gotta get blown up, don't do it halfway? I think I'm more amazed that there was anything left to salvage. I knew it was impossible for the PC to die (spending the next three months in sickbay, on the other hand...) but I was certain that Blackjack was going to be a write-off when the CT went. When I got a look at it in the AAR, the only things left were the cockpit, the RT, and the RA- and only the cockpit still had armor. Nope! Other than the destroyed equipment, it buffed right out. The 'Mech was ready to drop again when its pilot still had two and a half months of convalescent leave remaining.

Given what Kon said above, it makes sense... but the enemies don't display even the tiniest hint of a self-preservation instinct, which would complete their AI. Out of 8 enemy 'Mechs on the map, five of them put themselves in a position that allowed me to instakill them because they were so tunneled in on attacking the incapacitated Blackjack.

That Locust, for instance, should have tried to retreat and find cover instead of limping past the forward arc of a 75-tonner to deliver the weakest melee attack possible in the game. The Firestarter should have flamed my Thunderbolt, which would have shut it down instantly and given the enemy two disabled 'Mechs to tear into instead of just one. The Jenner and the Cicada were even worse off; I got two birds for the price of one AC/5 burst- but I guess you need the enemies to be dumb enough to sit next to explodeybits for there to be a reason to have explodeybits lying about in the first place. The Spider kinda makes sense, because right then and there the Blackjack was the most immediate threat (having just taken one secondary objective and started in on killing the base turrets), but the rest of them? Their YOLO-ing handed me the win. They traded 160 tons for a single 45-tonner when they still had three heavies to deal with, all of which were completely fresh when they rolled down into the base proper.

The AI is already quite good at monkeywrenching your best laid plans with things like DFAs and surprise backshots. Give it a self-preservation directive, and the ability to prioritize the easiest disabling shot (overheat or knockdown) over the quickest hard kill, and it'd be downright scary. In a good way. I think.

Edited by WrathOfDeadguy, 30 April 2018 - 07:27 PM.

[Fox the Apprentice]

Koniving, on 30 April 2018 - 05:16 PM, said:

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..

False: in HBS Battletech ammo explosions destroy the component. Either the ammo wasn't in the CT, you killed the CT before the ammo explosion occurred, or you didn't get an ammo explosion.

...or you found a bug that nobody else has yet reported, in which case you should report it on the official forums!

[Luminis]

I don't get the Dekker memes.

Here's my Dekker on the last day of active combat duty, before retiring:



He's still sticking with the crew of the Argo until we can drop him off at a recreational planet to live out a more peaceful life. He made the cash and I kinda feel like giving him the HGN-732B he piloted for so long as a parting gift...

Read: I wanted someone with Bulwark instead of Evasive Move but I didn't wanna dismiss Dekker before the new guys makes it to 10/10/10/10.

[Burke IV]

I found 2/3 of a banshee for sale at some planet i cant remember where now. Also check out hellespont in the bottom right of map. All the missions there required davion rank to get in my game.

BTW ammo explosions can deffo kill the pilot and kill teh mech that way

WrathOfDeadguy, on 30 April 2018 - 07:24 PM, said:

Bad luck finally caught up with my Commander... I was running a mission where I had to capture a munitions depot, with a secondary objective to stop enemy cargo trucks from escaping. The good 'ol Blackjack was the only thing I had able to get LOS on the trucks, which spawned in and started rolling out from the second round, leaving me almost no time to set up carefully.

Lol that mission eh? I went and farmed up some decent mechs and pilots to beat that. You need to get out of range of those LRM turrets or suffer.

[kilgor]

This is the 'Mech combinations that has served me quite well so far.

Med Laser boat (Hunchback/Grasshopper/Battlemaster) with a minimum of 6 Medium Lasers, they get the called shots when it's available and definitely during knock downs.

SRM boat (Wolverine/Orion/King Crab) puts heavy stability damage and regular damage on a 'Mech. Usually teams up with the Med Laser boat.

LRM 'Mech (Trebuchet/Thunderbolt/Stalker) is one where I had 20+ LRMs to do stability damage

Mixed range (Blackjack/Highlander/Atlas) is the 'Mech with any Long range heavy weapon and later on, an LRM rack.

Also, if you destroy a 'Mech's legs, there are 3 of the 'Mech chassis available for salvage so you can get a full 'Mech if you are set for 3 priority.

[Ghogiel]

Fox the Apprentice, on 30 April 2018 - 07:28 PM, said:

False: in HBS Battletech ammo explosions destroy the component. Either the ammo wasn't in the CT, you killed the CT before the ammo explosion occurred, or you didn't get an ammo explosion.

...or you found a bug that nobody else has yet reported, in which case you should report it on the official forums!

I think in HBS BT they only explode if it's more then half full. Other wise the ammo is just destroyed and doesn't explode or kill the component it's in. But yeah don't put ammo in your CT lol

[Koniving]

Fox the Apprentice, on 30 April 2018 - 07:28 PM, said:

False: in HBS Battletech ammo explosions destroy the component. Either the ammo wasn't in the CT, you killed the CT before the ammo explosion occurred, or you didn't get an ammo explosion.

...or you found a bug that nobody else has yet reported, in which case you should report it on the official forums!

Its a locust 1v in AI control. Stock ammo is in ct. Laser is in ct. I got "ammo explosion". It went on and attacked with structure exposed.

[Fox the Apprentice]

Koniving, on 01 May 2018 - 03:50 AM, said:

Its a locust 1v in AI control. Stock ammo is in ct. Laser is in ct. I got "ammo explosion". It went on and attacked with structure exposed.

Fox the Apprentice, on 30 April 2018 - 07:28 PM, said:

[...]or you found a bug that nobody else has yet reported, in which case you should report it on the official forums!

https://forum.parado...ug-reports.998/

Edited by Fox the Apprentice, 01 May 2018 - 04:01 AM.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Having a great time with the game myself. Honestly I can't find much to complain about although I have a few criticisms on a few game play designs and also a item for my wish list.

Complaints:

• Load Times

Criticisms:

• Salvage System. Hate the 3 parts Rule. If I surgically remove the mechs head from the body, the full mech should be 1 pick from the salvage not 3. Basically if the mech is intact enough to drop all 3 parts, then it should just be 1 pick. Also to balance getting a mech this way, you should have to repair and refit anything broken or missing on it. Reason for this. Headshot a lovely K2 on the first shot of a mission, couldn't acquire the K2 because I only negotiated for 2 guaranteed salvage. 10 hours later I am still sitting with 2 pieces of a K2 having seen exactly zero K2's in like 10 contracts.
  
• Salvage System. I know it is a quality of life thing but I just don't like the fact that magically as soon as you get three piece of a mech variant, it automatically gets assembled apparently by magic and also again apparently by magic, it comes fully kitted out with the stock loadout even if you didn't have the weapons or equipment in your inventory previously. Really it should take time to assemble and it should come stripped rather than your techs magically pulling an AC/20 that you didn't own out of their rear.

Wish List:

• Larger Contracts requiring 8 and 12 mechs to complete. Personally as much as I like the game, playing with a single 4 mech lance is really limiting. I mean I would love to have some fast, light recon on the field or even fast, light mechs in some scenarios depending on the objective but you really end up gimping yourself if you bring a Jenner in place of a Thunderbolt. Basically you almost always better of bring a heavier mech. However when you scale at least some of the contracts up to multi-lance levels and include multiple objectives and such during the contract, there would actually be situations where bringing an entire recon lance of fast mediums and lights plus a combined Heavy/Assault lance might make sense. You would also have more tactically flexibility such as using fast light mechs to lure the enemy Assault lance into a trap or perform hammer and anvil maneuvers, etc.
  
• Larger maps to accommodate the multi-lance battles. Maps where maybe there are two objectives each on the far side of the map and you have to allocated resources to each objective based on how much firepower you think is required. I guess this goes back to that larger scale, tactical flexibility that 4 mechs just doesn't allow.

Anyway, I love the game, I just wish that it was on a much larger scale.

[Zergling]

Viktor Drake, on 01 May 2018 - 09:32 AM, said:

• Salvage System. Hate the 3 parts Rule. If I surgically remove the mechs head from the body, the full mech should be 1 pick from the salvage not 3. Basically if the mech is intact enough to drop all 3 parts, then it should just be 1 pick. Also to balance getting a mech this way, you should have to repair and refit anything broken or missing on it. Reason for this. Headshot a lovely K2 on the first shot of a mission, couldn't acquire the K2 because I only negotiated for 2 guaranteed salvage. 10 hours later I am still sitting with 2 pieces of a K2 having seen exactly zero K2's in like 10 contracts.
  
• Salvage System. I know it is a quality of life thing but I just don't like the fact that magically as soon as you get three piece of a mech variant, it automatically gets assembled apparently by magic and also again apparently by magic, it comes fully kitted out with the stock loadout even if you didn't have the weapons or equipment in your inventory previously. Really it should take time to assemble and it should come stripped rather than your techs magically pulling an AC/20 that you didn't own out of their rear.

Yeah, the salvage system could use improvement. I definitely dislike how a disabled mech requires 3 salvage picks.

[Boris the Bulletdodger]

After a few days....it has become rather boring and repetitive. You get the same objectives in every single drop. Now i know every spawn point of every single drop and exactly what the AI will do or how it will react to what i do. B O R I N G.

Also, there's a sever lack of content and no free play option. I need more stuff, more mechs more etc etc. Why not even vehicles to command. MORE LANCES! I also need to play the game without having to deal with Arano and her heroic BS.

This game has so much potential but i'm afraid the developers will never care. Hopefully the modding community will show some love and bring it to it's full potential. There are a few mods out there that improve it, lets hope we will get more.

[MischiefSC]

The salvage system is an abstract to represent value; rather than have to rebuild a mech from chassis parts (each hit location) engine, gyro, cockpit and such it's just three general pieces of a set. This prevents you from having 3 Banshee Right Torsos, 2 CTs, 5 right arms, 2 left arms and only 1 right leg as an example.

It will never be more than 4 mechs because that would utterly and completely break balance. The more mechs on the field the more things that get to shoot you before you get a second action. If both player and enemy have 8+ mechs in the same place at the same time they can easily obliterate at least 1 mech per turn. Unless the AI is extra stupid in which case just turn on godmode, no ammo/no heat and walk through enemies because it will play the same. If you can focus targets down with 6, 8, 12 mechs under one players control then you literally can't lose unless either A) the player is intentionally bad or B ) the AI is stone cold broken.

Having more than 4 mechs under players control would require totally changing game balance and it would be less enjoyable; it would be built around the idea of both sides being able to focus 8+ mechs on a target before the target can move a second time.

[FireStoat]

Finished the Campaign. I put over 90 hours into it (yup, I'm a madman). It is a very fun game and I agree with many of the points others have mentioned here. There was a dev AMA the other day where a lot of issues were gone over including game bugs and hints of what the crew at HBS will be up to. The "in success" meme is over with. The dev confirmed it was a much larger success than anticipated. Much larger. So right now the team is going to focus on bug fixing and optimizing the game for faster load times and greater stability on a wider range of hardware and drivers.

They're aware of the huge demand for multiple lance combat from the player's point of view. There are limits to the game engine and other concerns, but the idea of deploying two or three lances that do work simultaneously in different combat theaters of a battle that will either add percentages / bonuses to the main lance fight OR result in multiple single lance fights that are completed by the player to get a final outcome are on the table.

Quality of life issues with the UI and other mission inconsistencies are acknowledged and are going to be worked on. Anyway, you can read a lot of what was covered here -- https://www.reddit.c...he_hbs_devs_on/

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Viktor Drake, on 01 May 2018 - 09:32 AM, said:

Hate the 3 parts Rule. If I surgically remove the mechs head from the body, the full mech should be 1 pick from the salvage not 3. Basically if the mech is intact enough to drop all 3 parts, then it should just be 1 pick. Also to balance getting a mech this way, you should have to repair and refit anything broken or missing on it.

I regret that I have but one upvote to give for this comment. I've missed out on about half a dozen full 'Mechs now. At the same time, yeah, it is silly that the second you have three parts the 'Mech is ready to rock right then and there. You should have to repair and refit before putting it into action.

I also think that there should be a rule allowing you to use one part from a different variant of the same chassis to complete the 'Mech. Most variants are just refit kits, not as-built factory originals, and they're structurally identical to the base variant save for one or two components which have been altered to accommodate the new hardware. Since the "parts" in HBS/BT are an abstraction anyway, why can't the game just assume that 2/3 means I've salvaged all of the parts unique to that variant, and the remaining third is just the common bits which I could take from any 'Mech based on that chassis? *edit: for example, why not let me build a HBK by using 2/3 4G parts and 1/3 4P part?

Edited by WrathOfDeadguy, 01 May 2018 - 10:07 AM.

[Boris the Bulletdodger]

I don't see how another lance would change the balance negatively. It's not an MMO you know. The only "balance" we have to worry about in this game is the weapons and equipment balance...which is already way off.

And you completely ignore that you almost always fight against more than one enemy lance. Some times even 3 lances. They just keep coming and coming. So what's so bad about having the option to even the odds? Does it affect YOUR experience? Nope. Not one bit.

[Luminis]

Had to reinstall the game... The damn thing refused to load my saves and not a single one of the proposed fixes did anything...

Oh well, it works again and I had a reason to play a couple matches in Solaris, so there that

[C E Dwyer]

Iron Heel, on 24 April 2018 - 01:35 PM, said:

I don't pre-order any more, but, i was going to purchase this game..



Do they really think catering to the SJW sect is going to sell more games? *sigh*

Catering ?

No they just decided to add a few options that none have to use.

[MischiefSC]

Boris the Bulletdodger, on 01 May 2018 - 10:06 AM, said:

I don't see how another lance would change the balance negatively. It's not an MMO you know. The only "balance" we have to worry about in this game is the weapons and equipment balance...which is already way off.

And you completely ignore that you almost always fight against more than one enemy lance. Some times even 3 lances. They just keep coming and coming. So what's so bad about having the option to even the odds? Does it affect YOUR experience? Nope. Not one bit.

Are you in a position to be shot by 12 mechs at once?

While you fight 2 or even 3 sets of 4 you are always able to limit your exposure to large AI groups. In part because of AI limitations, the rest is game design.

If the player, however, has 8 mechs you can always, always kill 1 or 2 (maybe 3) enemies per round. Knockdown and concentration of fire. If the enemy AI is changed to instead deal with you having 8 mechs then it will have 8+ mechs there in a murderball as well -

The result being that you'll always have some mechs destroyed every single mission because whatever mech is up front will get shot by 8 enemy mechs before it can move a second time.

That you don't understand the balance issues this creates is its own thing. If you don't realize how broken it is then just use mods or hacks to give yourself a 2x firepower buff on your 4 mechs and you can happily steamroll the AI all you want without forcing the rest of us to deal with badly broken game mechanics.

Not to mention the time. If you're doubling the players total mechs the AI is going to need its mechs doubled so you're moving from 12-16 total mechs in a mission to 32 that need moved every round. In actual practice you're talking about a 3x increase, or more, in the time it takes to play a mission.