32 replies to this topic

[Burke IV]

HBS battletech is very simple only just finished game. Its not capable of correctly displaying weapons and it condenses them down into single weapons so you have a vague idea of what the mech carrys. Check out the spider, load it with 2 meds and machine guns and look what shows in game. Battletech has very limited replay value, its story is dire. My first playthru i did about the first 1/3 of it before fake choice became tiresome and i just clicked thru it without reading. Its AI is also poor. Hopefully they can improve the quality of the story telling in future. What makes it so good imo is the battles, they are just too much fun and its battletech. Its a shame we couldnt have had engine ajustments cause as things are some mechs are good and some arnt. There could be some amazing mods for this game, think what stainless steel did for medievil TW2. BTW you ever let sega near your precious BT and you will be very very sorry

I actually uninstalled MWO yesterday anyway. Its not like it was anything close to being up to date, but i felt a bit sad when i did. Needed the space for green hell, found out after i cant get it yet anyway.

Edited by Burke IV, 20 May 2018 - 05:15 AM.

[jss78]

I played through the story campaign, but found myself come surprisingly quickly back to MWO. I LOVED the story-driven campaign, but I can't play the sandbox too much without it getting repetitive.

My overall feeling though is that HBS is sitting on what could become a hell of a series of games. The campaign felt a bit short, in this first installment, but the core gameplay is there. If they ever write more campaigns for it, be it DLC or full sequel games, I'll buy all of them.

Ironically, HBS BT completely failed to address a couple points it was totally expected to rectify compared to MWO:

- TTK is arguably even worse than in MWO. Take something like an Orion and load it up with a nice AC10+SRM+ML setup, use precision strike. It one-shot kills 55-tonners, and with the morale boost you get each time, can keep precision striking through the mission.

- Lights and mediums struggle even worse than in MWO. There's even less scouting/capping, and the speed does an even worse job at keeping you a live.

[Burke IV]

you hvt learned to use evasion

[Alexander of Macedon]

Burke IV, on 20 May 2018 - 05:19 AM, said:

you hvt learned to use evasion

Evasion being stripped when fired upon makes evasion largely meaningless later in the game when facing opfors of company+ strength worth of full-armor heavies and assaults.

No idea why they changed that from TT, but changing it back makes lights useful for the player and actually somewhat dangerous on opfor.

[DrxAbstract]

El Bandito, on 19 May 2018 - 09:59 PM, said:

I could start another account, from scratch. If I ever feel like it.

Have you tried the Punchlander yet? 4x+60 Melee Dmg, 2x+20 Melee Dmg, 3 Small Lasers, +3 Melee Hit Gyro and 3/3 JJs for a baseline--Getting the thing into range is a real task, but watching a Highlander 'One-Punch-Man' its way through a lance of assaults never gets old.

[Luminis]

Alexander of Macedon, on 20 May 2018 - 05:25 AM, said:

Evasion being stripped when fired upon makes evasion largely meaningless later in the game when facing opfors of company+ strength worth of full-armor heavies and assaults.

No idea why they changed that from TT, but changing it back makes lights useful for the player and actually somewhat dangerous on opfor.

More importantly, your get a - 4 difficulty bonus when using Precision Strike. A 10/10/10/10 pilot gives zeros ***** about evasion.

[The Lighthouse]

You don't need precision strike to kill lights as soon as you get Assault mechs that have plenty of free tonnage and not Banshee.

My King Crabs can casually alpha strike all of this weapons, and light mechs literally melt by sheer firepower alone, even with 4~5 evasions.

I mean in TT light mechs were really never meant to be competitive against heavier mechs anyway, and HBS Battletech makes it far worse because we can only deploy 4 mechs, and without any tonnage restriction.

In actual TT game some people literally use light mechs as pure cannon fodders too.

[MischiefSC]

Azure Kit, on 19 May 2018 - 04:26 PM, said:

I mean the waiting. Wait for the animation to play out. Wait for the two second pause where the camera just hangs after every action. It just feels tedious after a while. I'll still jump in and do a quick mission or two but turns just take forever when the enemy has lots of vehicles and turrets. Its still fun, just grates after a while. It also gave me a new respect for the HGN-732b.

You can turn all that off in settings.

There are mods that eliminate all pauses.

The Highlander is srs bsns.

Get moar mods. The NGNG rebalance is actually really good - increases difficulty, makes more weapons useful. Like large lasers.

Try going with a lance of all heavies and mediums without LRM boating. Very doable and a lot of fun late game. GHRs, Onions and Shawks oh my!

[MischiefSC]

The Lighthouse, on 20 May 2018 - 06:02 AM, said:

You don't need precision strike to kill lights as soon as you get Assault mechs that have plenty of free tonnage and not Banshee.

My King Crabs can casually alpha strike all of this weapons, and light mechs literally melt by sheer firepower alone, even with 4~5 evasions.

I mean in TT light mechs were really never meant to be competitive against heavier mechs anyway, and HBS Battletech makes it far worse because we can only deploy 4 mechs, and without any tonnage restriction.

In actual TT game some people literally use light mechs as pure cannon fodders too.

Banshee is best mech. 6 MGs, 4 jump jets. Arm mod for +40 melee damage. Leg mods for 2x-40 DFA damage taken. You will punch for 202 direct damage and 90 pts of MG damage. It's rare NOT to one-shot any assault mech. You can also DFA for 240 on the last enemy or two for pure comedy gold.

Get NGNG mod, makes evasion way more useful.

[Burke IV]

The AI light mechs arnt using maxed armour, i assume the player always is close to maxed and front loaded? A properly set up jenner can make use of evasion and soak up more fire then a light mech ought to, especially if you use trees. Its not going to stand up to an assult mech of course.

[Angel of Annihilation]

First Battletech is a turn based game, of course it is going to be slow. There just seems way to many people out there spoiled by being weened on a generation of predominantly RTS games. Let face it, we are in what I like to call the "Now" generation. Nobody has patience any more or even likes things that require any thinking. They all want, click, click, click, now, now, now.

Now I am not saying there is anything wrong with that but there is just so many aspects of a military simulation that cannot be accurately portrayed in RTS. For example, you can't break off a team of mechs and have them go execute a complex strategy way off on the flank while you focus on the main battle in a RTS simply because all the game reads is a click to go to the flank. There is no commander on the scene that will form up a complex formation and active react to the enemy movements. I can't count the times I have set a plan in motion, sent troops to the flank only to find that they ran into the enemy much sooner than I expected and ended up getting shot to pieces before I could make it back to them to take control of them again.

Turn based however, lets you see up this complex battle plan, form that complex formation and react to the enemy because it slows the whole process down and allows you time to actually be the commander in charge of each and every unit rather than relying on some poorly scripted AI to do the right thing if you can't keep up with the micro. Also speaking of micro, not everyone wants to do that so turn based offers an alternative.

So the pace of Battletech isn't a problem, rather it is just personal taste.

As for the game itself. It is fun but being limited to 4 mechs gets to be repetitive after a while as it doesn't allow any tactical flexibility like fielding a lance of light mechs to preform recon or lure the enemy into an ambush. Also as the game progresses your forced to use the heaviest mechs you can field which means those great light and mediums you enjoyed early on become useless by mid game. Still even with these limitations, I found the game to be great. I have 56 hours played so far and a ways to go to finish up the campaign so overall well worth my $40 investment. I have bought many triple A titles that I lost interest in fast that cost more money in the past as well.

[Kiiyor]

Azure Kit, on 19 May 2018 - 04:26 PM, said:

I mean the waiting. Wait for the animation to play out. Wait for the two second pause where the camera just hangs after every action. It just feels tedious after a while. I'll still jump in and do a quick mission or two but turns just take forever when the enemy has lots of vehicles and turrets. Its still fun, just grates after a while. It also gave me a new respect for the HGN-732b.

Yeah, that pause is annoying as hell, but you can fix it. I heartily recommend doing so.

From an RPS article: said:

Found via assorted good people on Reddit, this fix involves navigating to [your Steam install directory]\steamapps\common\BATTLETECH\BattleTech_Data\ StreamingAssets\data\constants in Windows Explorer, then find and make a backup copy of the file audioconstants.json, before opening the original in your text editor of choice (I used Notepad++).

Find the following lines, and change the number at the end of each to 0, so they wind up looking like so:

"AttackPreFireDuration" : 0,
"AttackAfterFireDelay" : 0,
"AttackAfterFireDuration" : 0,
"AttackAfterCompletionDuration" : 0,
"audioFadeDuration" : 0,

Save, and done. Enjoy the sound of not quite so much motionless silence. You might notice that the variables changed are all to do with audio triggers, i.e. the pauses are not number-crunching, but simply, well, deliberate pauses. Sometimes the reason for this is obvious, such as, once I’ve done this fix, the way the game will sometimes jump directly to another character’s turn without my a chance to take in what happened at the end of the last one. By and large though, it’s so much better this way – as well as the simple fact of less dead time, no more motionless pauses means the game feels far more polished.

[draiocht]

[mod]The original topic has been reviewed as a "farewell" post,
thus this thread is now closed.

Please move constructive, positive discussion to other relevant threads.[/mod]

Edited by draiocht, 22 May 2018 - 07:45 AM.