2 replies to this topic

[Monky]

TL:DR; The game is generally good but has a lot of obvious warts that should be easy to fix.

- Big hits to rep for shopping around kills exploration, reduce rep hit penalty (maybe slow down gain slightly if needed to compensate).
- Energy weapons are king in the era of *single heatsinks* please fix, reduce heat on non energy weapons.
- Allow my techs to fix armor w/o penalty in conflict zones, we should have armor on hand and techs shouldn't forget how to apply it because of *space danger*, it's a field refit and they have a comfy dropship to do it in!
- Please improve how spawns work in combat, it is tedious and annoying to blast a company of suicidal idiots every mission. Fewer better spawns, and spawns already on map with fewer but more dramatic dropship entries would fix.
- Relax hardpoint restrictions for weapons a smidge and let us tick engine up/down a notch in rating, so many junk mechs that are unsalvagable for serious play. Battletech fanatics can *already* play it stock if they want to, let the rest have fun with these cool mechs by making them workable.
- Unlock hardpoints on JJ's and other equipment so you can use the spot for other things like heatsinks/ammo, stop AI from smashing towns they are defending, please provide ammo with cantina/mission rewards for the gun/system in question.

Hello,

After 80 hours in I have noticed a few things that could easily be tweaked to improve the MW 5: Mercs experience;

1. Reputation hits from taking contracts are severe, it feels like the game should be titled Mechwarrior 5: Irregulars, because it tries to enforce you on a "be loyal to x faction while not technically being under their command" in order to get any decent salvage payouts or be able to call in support/get insurance. C-Bills aren't hard to come by unless you're a spend thrift, but you can't really explore the galaxy *and* build your mech company outside of buying at shops, which sucks when you come across those missions with 'rare' mechs you'd like to salvage that you can't buy anywhere else. If you haven't indentured yourself to whatever faction is offering them, too bad. You won't have enough negotiation points (or may even be so far in the hole it's just not worth it).

2. Autocannons are still meh. Lasers still rule. Missiles still drool (except maybe non-stream SRMs). PPC's get dismounted and sold until you get so much LOStech DHS you could run an icecream shop from your mech's reactor. Most of this could be fixed with heat. Somehow, lasers are more functional than non-energy based weaponry in the era of *single heat sinks*. This should be pretty simple to spot and address, improving heat efficiency of AC's and LRM's and maybe a little on SRM's should be pretty easy to do to fix this. Stream fire SRMs are also a joke, they spread everywhere due to slow stream fire. Stagger firing half and then another half would address it if you really want to keep a similar mechanic (all SRM are divisible by 2 so not a hard fix).

3. Armor should be assumed to be part of your operating budget and NOT impacted by conflict zone penalties. It makes no sense for a merc company to be operating without armor reserves to patch their mechs, and it equally makes no sense that if this is assumed to already be the case, that your techs suddenly can't figure out how to slap armor back onto a mech because of how much conflict is going on in the local area. I can understand structure repair, parts replacement, etc. being more expensive/time consuming, but armor just slows the game down and forces a lot of silly stuff that should not be happening, keeping armor on your mechs during a fight should be rewarded with very quick repair times. I've had it take 30 days to re-armor heavies and assaults that weren't breached and took no internal damage, for no reason. Flying out to the nearest industrial zone would take just as long to repair, so what's the reason behind this?

4. Spawn behavior is tedious and annoying. Having garrisons on maps already statically deployed would be much preferable (the few times spawn behavior has functioned to simulate this where there was a field of units to deal with all at once/as they could assemble were intense, fun missions). Having things just spawn in behind you in places you just cleared is *annoying and immersion breaking*, and consistently facing 3 lances of suicidal light mechs early game was just an eye rolling endeavor. Good news, once you get your tonnage up it's 3 + mixed lances of suicidal mechs. I get the AI can't be easily fixed without potentially introducing new issues, but can you reduce the amount of targets and make them just spawn smarter so they don't cause these issues? Maybe have their spawns be pre-determined instead of what seems to be 'random and wherever you're not looking' ? This isn't fixable by dropship spam either, that also gets really eye-rolling when everyone just has leopards ready to drop in some suicidal random assortment of mechs well after they've lost the fight every mission. Leopard drops should be intentional and designed to pressure the player rather than hand them a free pinata to isolate and destroy.

5. Overly restrictive weapon hardpoints are another major issue. I get it, you like battletech. Battletech sucks as a Mechwarrior title, however, and there's no respectable argument saying otherwise. Let people customize their mechs! So many are reduced to junk by being overburdened with huge engines, or just not being able to fit an actual loadout that a sane person would design/use. If we can spot this problem, allow us to fix it. Most mechs are 'meme' mechs to some degree and usually that degree is extreme. Playing this game with these restrictions really has me asking "why do I like this franchise?". I am not asking for total unrestricted freedom, I understand that some level of balance is needed or every mech just becomes the same, but really there is just no purpose to *not* being able to tick an engine up or down a notch from stock, or being able to put larger/more weapons on hardpoints for some mechs that are gimped to the point of worthlessness.

6. Minor unsorted quibbles. Friendly AI mechs seem to love destroying cities you're defending by walking through them. Often inconsequential, but very eye-roll inducing. Being unable to intuitively position them makes it tedious to manage your lance and gain any defensive advantage, so you just end up doing laps around the target hoping to find the enemy and avoid having your lance-mates trounce through the town, or posting them in a spot and ignoring them until things get to where you actually need the backup.

Ammo should come with weapons/gear you get from quests/cantinas, getting a NARC or AMS or whatever is great, until you realize you have to farm for the ammo by sailing around half the galaxy hoping for the right thing to spawn in the store or the right cantina job. 1 ton of usable ammunition is all I'm asking.

Hardpoints for JUMPJETS of all things stopping me from utilizing locations for other gear is annoying as hell. Why did this regress from MWO? I can see wanting to say, be able to only put jumpjets in legs, fine, but why can I not swap a single heatsink or ammo in there instead? It makes no sense and gimps many already gimped mechs (most JJ equipped 55 tonners, specifically) due to mixed weapons loadouts and no safe space to put the ammo. Makes them instant cold storage and sell at first opportunity unless you have no other options. You can kinda fix this on the Griffin but it has no actual hardpoints to work with so it is worthless anyways.

[Wildstreak]

1 - I am guessing (no proof) rep losses might in part be due to what happened in Faction Warfare in MWO where the rep and benefit system became easily abusable for lots of free goodies.

2 - ACs can be good, Missiles are decent though semi-Streak LRMs are annoying and SRMs are actually messed up in cooldowns requiring changes to all RPM / CD values for them. Currently best RPM SRMs are SRM4 Stream, SRM6 Stream and SRM6 Stream Artemis with equal values.
Why remove PPCs? They do damage inside minimum range for once and the HUD disruption on shooter, target and anyone close by is neat. Now if only they would remove semi-Streak function from LRMs and let them do damage in minimum range like MWO Clam LRMs.
Ditch the SRM10.
It may also be weapons have some strange damage going on based on target. For example, I had a Cicada-3C stock PPC + 2MGs in Career, if I shot a turret the MGS were god weapons easily killing it but did barely nothing to Artillery, the PPC was good against turrets at range but not close yet easily destroyed Artillery at any range.

4 - Spawn behavior partly depends on Mission type and if you are in a random or scripted scenario.

6 - Defense missions are the worst actually due to spawns, if you want to avoid spawn issues avoid Defense missions followed by Warzone then Assassination if possible.
Fixed JJ hardpoints threw me too, I suspect they cannot allow other things in them because of the overall hardpoint system would then allow anything in other hardpoints. No idea why they added this.
Still wondering why they added Mechs that use CASE but you do not have it in game so they modified stats. CASE would help locating ammo in some places.

[LordNothing]

5. i often say the games should swap mechlabs. highly restrictive bulds make sense in an mp game, and some of the insane mwo meta builds belong in an sp game. would be nice if you could fit 2 light weapons in a medium slot or 2 medium weapons or 3 light weapons in a heavy slot.