I've got battletech now - it's not the most performant, but it runs fine.
Some of the design decisions are a bit strange, e.g. vision range smaller than some weapons ranges and sensor range being the same for all mechs. And every light vehicle seems to be a Striker.
But the immersion, oh my! Last time I've been this immersed in a game was back in the day when I played the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series.
Now if you excuse me, I have contracts to fullfill.
*heads back to the Leopard*
Thank you for sharing your findings with us, I'm sure this will come in handy once I'm through the campaign.
The Vision Range and Sensor Range are sort of tied together. The Sensor range of a Light Mech is farther than other classes of mechs. That is to allow Light Mechs to act as scouts and pick out targets so that your other mechs can utilize their possible extreme weapon ranges and attack the enemy before the enemy can return fire in kind.
This is pretty viable of a tactic early to mid game, but as you may want to bulk up your lance, the use of a Light Mech may fall out of favor. On the plus side, there is some equipment you might find later in the game that will help other classes in the scouting department. Don't want to say too much.
Lastly, every vehicle may seem to be a Striker now, but just wait till you get further .
All I have to say is...The first time an SRM carrier shows up, don't dismiss it because it is a vehicle. It will ruin your day if you let it get in range and attack. It carries 10 SRM6 launchers...yes...10!
The Demolisher, LRM Carrier, and Shreck aren't anything to sneeze at either.
Almost all of the heavier vehicles can ruin your day, but if you deal with them swiftly, you can deal with them easily. I think that's not a bad dynamic. It gives the enemy Battlemechs some time to take a shot at you, of course.
Your other option is to play distance and line of sight games so that the SRM Carrier, Demolisher, and Shreck can't shoot your units. This is understandably more difficult than killing them ASAP, and of course doesn't work against LRM Carriers is you're fighting some other unit that can be used as a spotter.
LocationHiding in a cake, left in green city called New A... something.
Posted 07 July 2018 - 05:10 AM
For those wondering, the recent hoola around Steam statistics has enabled people to extract the number of owners per game for the platform. BATTLETECH came in at a nice 289,619 users in total, which is some ~240,000 sales when you exclude the Kickstarter backers.
That puts the game in the same category as Shadowrun Hong Kong (which is owned by 268,438 people and comes out at ~230,000 sales when excluding the backers), so it did reasonably for HBS' standards. Compared to other games, this puts them in the same league as Blood Bowl 2, VA-11 Valhalla, Tales of Berseria (on PC), Omerta: City of Gangsters or Pit People.
To bring some context to the numbers flying during the initial days of the game's release, BT came out on the same day as Frostpunk which has been able to get 679,334 or roughly three times as many sales with no backing involved.
I just can't get Nexusmods to load. Something with my router, filter, etc., is keeping it from working on both PCs. My wife's Linux laptop can pull up the page, but can't successfully navigate the Captchas... and there's no way to download to my smartphone.
Are mods posted anywhere else? I want the full map after Weldry mod, the "show real hit chances" mod, and one of the ones that makes evasion more useful (but possibly introduces a slight to-hit penalty).
Then again... Sadly sorting ammo by caliber has some issues. Would need to make it so that you get 5 uses with Ac/20 120mm and 20 uses with Ac/5 120mm for example. Which is doable but would be a pain. Would players want that? It creates and breaks some build ideas by adding a bit more realism.
I just can't get Nexusmods to load. Something with my router, filter, etc., is keeping it from working on both PCs. My wife's Linux laptop can pull up the page, but can't successfully navigate the Captchas... and there's no way to download to my smartphone.
Are mods posted anywhere else? I want the full map after Weldry mod, the "show real hit chances" mod, and one of the ones that makes evasion more useful (but possibly introduces a slight to-hit penalty).
Been absent a bit. Made quite a bit of progress in the modding scenario. The issue I had with getting the autocannon mods to work tied specifically into combining the number of bullets per shot, and shots per firing. Apparently this is a F.U.P.A. and the game doesn't even try to handle it, instead sort of making a "default" interpretation. Since I always used the default weapons for easy access, this made it look like it wasn't taking the modded settings.
For some of my standard laser tricks, found out the route to go is to use modified pulse laser templates with regular laser weights.
Indirect fire AC/20 for the Chemjet Gun on the Demolisher to match the lore (and the nature of the weapon) has proven...incredibly dangerous. Giving it the weapon range as found here (not that specific page as that's the GM Whirlwind/5 of the Marauder, but the actual page appears to be down at the moment, its in the same format, formulaic extrapolations, etc.) the Chemjet Gun is extremely dangerous. While horribly inaccurate at longer ranges, if RNGeesus is not on your side it'll be the equivalent of taking on Sans. (Note: You only need to see the character's first move and just know the youtuber takes almost 2 hours to finally beat Sans to get an idea of how brutally dangerous the Demolisher has become... even though the Chemjet Gun's damage is split between 4 locations instead of focused on one point in my mod.)
I'm working on placing them into planets based on the corporations document and likely distribution paths based on customers that buy them and may soon ask for testing help. (If you wish to be a tester, note it is best to do a game set as early as possible as it will break builds -- it goes well beyond weapon mods and heftily overhauls the game to be more based on the source material.)
Sadly one prospect that I don't think I'll ever achieve:
Simultaneous turns. OR turns then see all moves unfold at once akin to Frozen Synapse, Mechwarrior Tactics or one of HBS's early prototypes.
Thought I'd revive this. Will have workable testing versions of the mod soon (biggest thing is figuring out how to create an 'install' and 'remove' thing, as so many things get changed that it's too much to track without an automated installer.
Old trinkets refresher.
Lore based weapons, now including the SarLon series of autocannons, which are known for high volume of fire and high accuracy, but not so much for damage per shell.
Solved: Multi-shot traditional lasers.
Solved: A fully functional Chemjet Gun (AC/20) with indirect fire capability and a tweak to the AI so it knows how to use it. (Admittedly, just tricked the AI into thinking its an LRM, results are pretty amazing. RIP Dekker).
*Modified: Pulse lasers.
*Somewhat sloppy atm: 'shotgun' variant lasers, a concept Karl had proposed for making unique small laser variants aimed at high effectiveness against infantry.
*Achieved: Spread weapon variants into areas of manufacturer locations, as well as across areas of likely spread and known use.
New!
*Mech Rifles. (Basically classic tank cannons). (Still working on figuring out how to change damage based on against armor versus against structure).
*Mech mortars (used chemjet gun workaround to make the visual work right). Area of effect indirect fire cannons. Mounted in missile slots, EXCLUSIVELY on arms at the moment.
*VTOL craft. (No models, just functioning concept, currently looks like floating APCs). Test model: "Warrior"
(Currently tweaking AI as it isn't taking full advantage of its new found freedom).
*Infantry. (No swarm, enter structure, mount/dismount vehicle, or infiltrate mech options yet). Can easily disappear from view when near cover. Current infantry teams: SRM, LRM, Mortar.
*A quad mech. (No model, but functioning movement rules for a mech to be considered a quad. Comes with unique crit slot tree, although front legs are still called "arms.")
*Unique enemy pilots: A collection of "heroes", some loosely canon but mostly original enemies that are named, have personalities, higher than average skills, unique mech designs, and in many cases a desire to stay alive will make appearances to add flavor to missions both scripted and generated.
*Bounty system; the AI's using it too. Some of the unique enemy pilots are mercs and/or bounty hunters sent to hunt you down (or to hunt someone else down). These specifically are part of the neutral faction where they are hostile to both you and the rest of the AI. Others can be part of your faction or the enemy faction, depending on whom exactly the bounty is on.
*Working out the issues:
-All weapon variants have pristine and degraded versions, which pristine versions will gradually become degraded with use. (Need to buy fresh weapons or salvage fresh ones without damaging them in order to maintain a stock of pristine weapons).
-Unique pilots -- the game doesn't seem to understand the concept of "If unique person is dead, never spawn him or her again." As a tribute to this issue, I've imported "Ty the Immortal" from Valkyria Chronicles as one of the unique pilots, whom will be able to respawn no matter how many times he is killed just the like original enemy ace by the same name.
Expect my HBS Battletech Ty to be just as difficult.
Conceptualizing:
*Aerotech fighters/bombers -- as summonable support strikes used by both the player AND AI.
*Up to three lances deployed.
*"Time passes during mission," an effort to globally modify all missions generated and story so that the time clock passes by a given amount +/- a set tolerance of randomness according to what the mission time estimation is. For example if a mission contracts you for three days, then 2 to 4 days may pass after the mission is completed. If a mission contracts you for two months, then that time will pass. The actual earnings will vary accordingly, with lengthy missions paying more even if the job is minor. Garrison duty for two months would pay better than garrison duty for a day.
*Possibility of taking a contract and not having a fight at all is being considered; sometimes you're hired to defend against an attack that never comes. Sometimes you're hired to attack something that isn't what anyone thought it was. You still get paid. If I do this, will be using the game's hidden little gem for creating choices to give it flavor and opportunities.
A bit sad to not see a lot of excitement with the last update, but perhaps this might spark some interest (and potentially some help in solving a few of the current kinks).
So, mods aside... Got an actual topic for HBS BT and it isn't Flashpoint, which can tie back to MWO.
I saw in another thread, specifically one complaining about Piranhas, an interesting belief that is false about the game HBS Battletech.
"You can bring the armor values of front and rear torsos above max."
I suppose if you compare it to tabletop, sure.... Or just the numbers, as you can do 55 rear and 110 front on a 35 ton mech.
But one thing people must remember is weapons that normally do 1 damage are doing 4, 5, etc.. And actually if you take the armor and divide it by 5 and then multiply it by 0.75, you get straight tabletop armor.
Lost? Don't worry.
Think of it this way.
Tabletop is 1x armor.
MWO is 2x armor (without counting quirks or skill tree).
HBS Battletech is 1.5x armor... and then everything is then multiplied by 5. Except heatinks they're multiplied by 3 to make heat matter a little more. From there its tweaked up or down for flavor, but basically all damage and armor is x5.
Anyway... Lets look at the other aspect that this has which gives the illusion that you can raise armor above the max. There's two independent bars for each torso. Front and Rear. Regardless of how much front you do, nothing is taken from the rear max. No matter how much rear you do, nothing is taken from the front max.
But when you convert it all to tabletop armor levels, something becomes very clear.
You're limited to 2/3rds armor front and 1/3rd armor back. No more on either end. We're not getting 4/3rds, we're not getting more than the max, and in fact aside from the 1.5 times armor (akin to MWO's 2x armor), the values are strictly limited by tabletop's armor limits for each mech.
Adopting this system would reduce the number of deaths caused by rear-torso biting fish... But as a result, instead of 120 front armor on your King Crab, you'll only be able to manager 80-something, and be able to put that remaining 40 something on your rear. It isn't a Jesus solution as some think.
For all that armor and damage values in HBS are 5 times that of table top, armor still WEIGHS the same once you account for the difference in AP per ton. So in that respect, putting more armor on a torso section does take away from everything else because it's taking tonnage that could have gone to armor on other sections or even other equipment.
And if you do max all your armor values on your mech, you'll have so little tonnage left for weapons in most cases that your mech is likely to get shot to pieces anyway because you can't kill the enemy fast enough.
That is a fun, shorter way to say what I said without getting into what doing the same (2/3rds of total allowable armor per ton front and 1/3rd armor per ton permissible) into mwo would do for it.
Need to find out how to package a large mod for Battletech so that I can get some public testing going. I've had to do a number of workarounds which has led to a few things not quite being the way I really want them, but they're close enough to say "meh, that works."
Also, naturally, the expansion seems to have introduced some new issues that I have to tweak as the original ammo was becoming available again (despite replacing them all with specific calibers).
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Exilyth, on 05 June 2018 - 08:01 AM, said:
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