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I've been slow reading this thread, but at least it's still small enough that I actually managed to catch up and post (something that will probably never happen in PTN's thread, no matter how much of it I read). Just wanted to say that I've really been enjoying this! It's excellent fun. And on that note, I am voting Plan Gascon because whether it succeeds or fails spectacularly, it sounds fun either way. Also, I'm impressed at how thoroughly ComStar has hosed F1rst Try Solutions here. I don't think I could have done a better job as Saeder-Krupp running a Shadowrun game than ComStar has managed here. Never deal with a Space Wizard, as they say.
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Mar 21, 2018 10:22
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Just saying, if we'd gone with my plan, we'd be halfway to Solaris VII right now with a cargo hold full of C-Bills arguing over whose new name sounds the dumbest.
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Mar 21, 2018 11:34
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Xarbala posted:I'm also curious what the different Mission Types of contracts mean in gameplay terms. So, different contracts require different types of lances to be assigned. For instance, all of the "Raid" contracts require scout lances, Garrison requires Defense, Planetary Assault requires Fight, etc. And the different roles you assign your lances to will determine the likelihood of certain missions. However, baring certain edge cases (most notably how Base Assault works if you get one of those with you as the attacker, if it's pretty much anything but garrison and you win you finish the contract early and get paid for any months you didn't have to stay for, if it's garrison you just get like 1d3 months of guaranteed no combat) the actual contract type itself has no bearing on mission types. painedforever posted:Does MekHQ treat the different factions any differently? Are the DC more likely to screw you over? Will the Lyran Commonwealth pay better? Nope! All are treated equal under the auspices of MechHQ. Oh and if people want to see the original rules document with all the formulas and whatnot, in your MechHQ folder go to Docs, then AtB stuff, and open the Official AtB TT Rules excel sheet. Yeah it's included in the core download, who knew?
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Mar 21, 2018 12:55
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Thanks, for the heads up guys. Also this doc's pretty tucked away actually
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Mar 21, 2018 13:46
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How do you negotiate terms effectively in MekHQ? It feels like I can only negotiate the liaison/independent meter since that’s the only one where I have a negotiation button and that’s what changes when I try to renegotiate.
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Mar 21, 2018 14:29
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I think negotiation options open up when your admin person or commander has ranks in the 'negotiate' skill. They're basically a number of chances to re-roll individual terms of the contract but they can get worse and you usually only get a couple of chances. E.g. say you have 40% battle compensation on a contract and want better so you reroll said BLC. Now you have 60%. You have another chance to reroll it and you could get a better % but you could also get worse and be stuck with worse than 60% because you got greedy (there are probably factors that effect this but I don't know what they are.) 100% transport costs seems trivial to reach but salvage and BLC are a lot more variable and the rest really don't matter much. Saros fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Mar 21, 2018 |
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Mar 21, 2018 14:37
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Shoeless posted:Exactly. The problem is is that there are some people who hear this and think "Wow, this sounds like an awesome thing!" and that's where you get the people who think the Clans are legitimately great, and the fanboyism for them. Throw in Clan players who didn't follow Zellbrigen (sp) and games went south fast. Clan tech made heat management an afterthought for most 'mechs. I remember a kid at the LGS flipping through an older TRO and complaining that all of the 'mechs sucked because you couldn't run and alpha strike every turn.
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Mar 21, 2018 15:35
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Arcturas posted:How do you negotiate terms effectively in MekHQ? It feels like I can only negotiate the liaison/independent meter since that’s the only one where I have a negotiation button and that’s what changes when I try to renegotiate. Depending on which Admins you have and their Negotiations skill, you can reroll the terms on your Support, Transport, Command Rights and one other thing I forget. Notably you cannot negotiate salvage. Each admin provides rerolls to different things depending on their specialty. For instance, a Transportation admin gives, no surprise, rerolls on Transport Terms. It's worthwhile to just hire 1 admin of each type, they'll gradually gain XP as the game goes on which you can spend on upping their Negotiate skill to get more rerolls. Also, the better your admin is, the better terms you get by default; veteran and elite admins give a small bonus to the contract's initial rolls. PhotoKirk posted:Throw in Clan players who didn't follow Zellbrigen (sp) and games went south fast. Yep. Though to be fair, even with Zell it's still pretty favorable to the clans. After all, Zell's about honorable combat between two combatants (technically more complex especially when you get into vehicles and other clan organizational structure but you get the idea), and when each of your mechs, as the Clans, is pound for pound better than any IS mech of the same tonnage, well... a 1v1 fight heavily favors the Clan forces. And if the IS player tries to gang up on Clan mechs to abuse this, then that's casus belli for the Clan player to just say "OK Zell is over, I focus fire all my mechs on yours one after the other."
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Mar 21, 2018 16:45
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Shoeless posted:Yep. Though to be fair, even with Zell it's still pretty favorable to the clans. After all, Zell's about honorable combat between two combatants (technically more complex especially when you get into vehicles and other clan organizational structure but you get the idea), and when each of your mechs, as the Clans, is pound for pound better than any IS mech of the same tonnage, well... a 1v1 fight heavily favors the Clan forces. And if the IS player tries to gang up on Clan mechs to abuse this, then that's casus belli for the Clan player to just say "OK Zell is over, I focus fire all my mechs on yours one after the other." Speaking of THE GLORY. A plan so stupid I'm sure had to have at least been tried at some point comes to mind. Did anyone go "Oh YEAH!? Well if you're such a superior super pilot rather than just surviving off your training wheels. How about we swap mechs and see how hot poo poo your unit really is in 1 v 1  "?If so, did it work or just have the clanners go "My aimbot stats are genetic  " to make the clan seem even more badass?
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Mar 21, 2018 17:01
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Section Z posted:Speaking of THE GLORY. A plan so stupid I'm sure had to have at least been tried at some point comes to mind. Honestly, giving the IS 3/4 pilots and the Clans 4/5 pilots but the superior equipment would probably go a long way towards balancing a fight between the two. The Clans still have a significant range advantage then, but the IS player will have better gunnery to help make up for it, and if they can get to a range where both sides are in the same range band (long vs long, medium vs medium, or short vs short rather than long vs medium, for example) then the IS player would have the advantage. The Clan player would actually need to carefully consider movement and positioning to avoid giving the IS player equal shots, whil the IS player would want to gang up on and corner the Clan mechs to exploit their superior pilots. Of course this isn't ever going to become the norm in canon but that's not a bad idea for slapdash balancing.
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Mar 21, 2018 17:13
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In CE 2018 Battle Values balances Clan vs IS engagements just fine
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Mar 21, 2018 17:46
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Section Z posted:Speaking of THE GLORY. A plan so stupid I'm sure had to have at least been tried at some point comes to mind. The type of players that glommed on to the Clans (in my experience) were min/max, rules lawyers, WIN AT ALL COSTS types. Prying them out of a Warhawk and into a Trebuchet wasn't going to happen.
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Mar 21, 2018 18:04
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PhotoKirk posted:The type of players that glommed on to the Clans (in my experience) were min/max, rules lawyers, WIN AT ALL COSTS types. Prying them out of a Warhawk and into a Trebuchet wasn't going to happen. I was also wondering from a storybook perspective, but I figure the same applies there  Though if anything, you would be more likley to pry a player out of their Warhawk because you won't be impressed by their huge clanner gamer dick otherwise. "Oh, you plan to win using THAT? Maybe try to impress us next time."
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Mar 21, 2018 18:13
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The real best Clan mech is the Stormcrow anyway.
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Mar 21, 2018 18:19
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PhotoKirk posted:The type of players that glommed on to the Clans (in my experience) were min/max, rules lawyers, WIN AT ALL COSTS types. Prying them out of a Warhawk and into a Trebuchet wasn't going to happen. Luckily, there are plentiful techs on both factions now that can more than make up the difference. If I'm a super min/max optimizer (I AM) I'd even default to IS lances loaded up with C3i and mixed TSM heavy/assaults + longer raged gauss or heavy PPC boats.
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Mar 21, 2018 18:58
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Step 1: Rip the guns off clan mechs Step 2: Put them in IS mechs Step 3: ??? Step 4: PROFIT
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Mar 21, 2018 19:04
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Clantalk: my only knowledge of BT lore comes from the Mechcommanders/warriors, threads like these, and sarna.net but Clan Wolf seems kind of reasonable? They come off more like unwilling middle-managers than anything else, at least during the IS invasion.
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Mar 21, 2018 19:50
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Radio Free Kobold posted:Step 1: Rip the guns off clan mechs This is literally what the IS was doing with clantech during the invasion, yes. Well, with the stuff that wasn't going to R&D to try and replicate it or figure out how it worked. Rygar201 posted:In CE 2018 Battle Values balances Clan vs IS engagements just fine Actually not quite. The current BV system overcosts pilots by a bit (along with speed) which means that in a BV balanced engagement an IS player will usually out-tonnage them significantly, and with that also out-armor them. Then it's just a zerg rush to close with the Clans to negate their range advantage and bring your superior amount of armor to bare. This heavily incentivizes Clan players in such a situation to kite as much as possible, and in fact the term "moonwalking" came to be from the frequency you see clan mechs walking back and forth over the same ~5 hexes to maintain a good move mod while avoiding closing with the IS forces. BV is really good at engagements where the techbase and pilot skill are the same. IS vs IS, Clan vs Clan. When you mix them, things start to get a bit wonky.
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Mar 21, 2018 20:22
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Radio Free Kobold posted:Step 1: Rip the guns off clan mechs
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Mar 21, 2018 20:51
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Radio Free Kobold posted:Step 1: Rip the guns off clan mechs I dunno, that kind of logic seems pretty sound to me. I don't think you even need a Step 3 there. Edit: Nevermind, the post above me has a much better Step 3.
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Mar 21, 2018 20:51
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Unfortunately anyone good enough to have fought the clans and won and gotten salvage is probably good enough to be as dangerous as facing the Clans themselves, only without any reservations about ganging up on you and fighting dirty. Clantech is most dangerous in the hands of an IS pilot, in that regard.
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Mar 21, 2018 21:03
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Shoeless posted:This is literally what the IS was doing with clantech during the invasion, yes. Well, with the stuff that wasn't going to R&D to try and replicate it or figure out how it worked. I'm having a hard time reading "The Clan player must leverage his Superior Pilots and equipment to overcome the IS player's tonnage/numbers advantage" as a bad thing. Alternatively, the Sphere player can bring veteran/Elite pilots if you want a more tonnage even clash, right?
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Mar 21, 2018 21:08
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Shoeless posted:Unfortunately anyone good enough to have fought the clans and won and gotten salvage is probably good enough to be as dangerous as facing the Clans themselves, only without any reservations about ganging up on you and fighting dirty.
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Mar 21, 2018 21:17
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Zell is also optional in later eras, as many Clanners see Inner Sphere warriors as being dishonorable, and many more are of the opinion that If You Cheat, They Can Cheat Too. For all their talk of honor, they're only honorable when they can afford to be. There are plenty of cases of Clan warriors doing questionably dishonorable things because the glory for winning outweighs the cost of using questionable tactics. Might makes Right after all, and history in the Clans is made by the winners.
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Mar 21, 2018 21:21
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Rygar201 posted:I'm having a hard time reading "The Clan player must leverage his Superior Pilots and equipment to overcome the IS player's tonnage/numbers advantage" as a bad thing. Alternatively, the Sphere player can bring veteran/Elite pilots if you want a more tonnage even clash, right? Well it's a bad thing in that the playstyle it encourages isn't particularly fun to fight against. Fighting someone who insists on keeping at max range at all times while you trudge through incoming fire isn't enjoyable for most people. Scalding Coffee posted:Fighting dirty is far from a new concept in the IS. Right, that's what I mean. Clanners (at least in the initial invasion before they realize "gently caress, our honorable combat system breaks down once people care more about winning than honor") will not fight dirty, not unless they're fighting pirates or other "dishonorable" foes. A group of IS pilots with Clan mechs have no compunction about ambushing you, using indirect fire, and ganging up on your out of position elements.
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Mar 21, 2018 21:21
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Shoeless posted:Well it's a bad thing in that the playstyle it encourages isn't particularly fun to fight against. Fighting someone who insists on keeping at max range at all times while you trudge through incoming fire isn't enjoyable for most people. Every table top game I've ever played has included some combination of long ranged, gun line and/or shoot and scoot factions. Learning to play against different styles of OpFor is a big part of playing tabletop war games.
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Mar 21, 2018 21:40
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Rygar201 posted:Every table top game I've ever played has included some combination of long ranged, gun line and/or shoot and scoot factions. And I'm saying that BV effectively forcing Clan players to adopt a single strategy if they want to be competitive and have a decent chance of winning is not an ideal thing. People being pigeonholed into one type of tactic is generally not great. And given that the aim of the game is to have fun, yes I'd say it's a bad design element if it encourages half of the factions in the game to play in a style that is neither fun to play against, nor particularly interesting to play as. It's not that the clans are good at long-range combat, it's effectively the only option they have if they want to be competitive, which forces them into a certain playstyle and makes some mechs DOA if they're designed for brawling, which is a play style the Clans will, if you'll pardon me pulling a statistic out of my rear end, lose four times out of five assuming a balanced IS force is opposing them.
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Mar 21, 2018 22:02
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Asymetrical game design is always going to run into exactly the problem you describe tho.
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Mar 21, 2018 22:15
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Rygar201 posted:Asymetrical game design is always going to run into exactly the problem you describe tho. It's not asymmetric game design though. Neither faction has access to some mechanic that the other doesn't. Clan weapons are more powerful, sure, but they ultimately function the same, just weighing less, doing more damage, creating less heat, or some combination thereof. The problem is that Clan weapons and Clan pilots, under the BV system, as so expensive that the numerical advantage the IS has is so great that the resulting game is in fact imbalanced. The problem isn't that the Clans can kite, it's that the Clans must kite to win because the fights aren't properly balanced. This imbalance then heavily incentivizes long-rating kiting and range games. This isn't like Warhammer 40k where if you don't like long-range combat just don't play Tau. The Clans weren't made with the idea of this being their playstyle and "hey if you don't like it go play something else." I mean I suppose I can't say that for 100% certain but I'm fairly confident given the whole idea behind Zell, and that originally BT didn't have a balancing system because ""hey people are just gonna play for fun" and the large number of close-range brawling mechs that the Clans do have available. It's all a product of how BV2.0 prices pilots and weaponry.
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Mar 21, 2018 22:24
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Rygar201 posted:Asymetrical game design is always going to run into exactly the problem you describe tho. It's a common issue to be sure. Though it probably stands out that much more in Btech due to the whole "THE GLORY!(Unless I'm losing)" gimmick. "I AM THE PINNACLE OF GENETICS AND WARFARE! NONE ARE BRAVE OR STRONG ENOUGH TO FACE ME IN BATTLE! ...can't this think backpedal any faster? They might actually get to shoot back at this rate!" Has a way of drawing attention to those moments with a Lisa Frank sparkle highlighter, compared to say, WW2 combined armed simulator nine thousand. Section Z fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Mar 21, 2018 |
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Mar 21, 2018 22:33
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Shoeless is talking about an issue that's widely known among BT players and has been a point of some discussion since BV 2.0 became the standard. He's not just complaining about "asymmetrical game design." When I mentioned that BV isn't perfect, this is what I mean. The BV modifier for pilot skill is just a touch too high and trying to accurately balance for the effects of outnumbering the other player isn't easy to bake in to a simple formula.
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Mar 22, 2018 01:43
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We had a little BV exercise in the HBS discord talking about the cheesiest things we could bring. C3i was brought up and I replied the Clans would just bring 5 good units w/ECM which led to Angel ECM on a 75t fast brawler to act as C3i spotter for the rest. When we calculated what two of those and 2 Hvy Gauss snipers would cost it was like 17k and that's 4 Dire Wolf C's and a Timber Wolf E w/ 4/5 pilots. That or 5 Blood Asp Primes. It was much more economical to go with something like a STD engine Hauptman B at 2.2k a 'Mech or for 17k, 11 WHM-6D's. Sure you got 11 4/5 WHM, but those 5 Blood Asp's got just over 20 armor on the side torsos, 22 PPCs will get through even if half of them whiff. In my TT experience with mostly 3060ish tech, I found the IS side trying to out-tech the clans doesn't make for smart BV budgeting. It was far more effective to go with STD engine cheap but hard hitting, well armored, units like the Hauptman B, AWS-8Q and WHM-6D and outnumber/tonnage them instead of trying to out tech them with poo poo that makes your BV skyrocket. That and ECM adds like 60 to a units BV where a C3 system with a lot of units is way more expensive.
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Mar 22, 2018 02:22
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In the case of TSM brawlers + (heavy) gauss snipers I don't even think that the C3 is really super needed. It's really better served on max speed lights that never get stuck in to close combat I think. (I just really really like C3i and if I'm going to cheese someone I use it even when I shouldn't) Gwaihir fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Mar 22, 2018 |
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Mar 22, 2018 02:54
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Gwaihir posted:In the case of TSM brawlers + (heavy) gauss snipers I don't even think that the C3 is really super needed. It's really better served on max speed lights that never get stuck in to close combat I think. Amechwarrior posted:We had a little BV exercise in the HBS discord talking about the cheesiest things we could bring. C3i was brought up and I replied the Clans would just bring 5 good units w/ECM which led to Angel ECM on a 75t fast brawler to act as C3i spotter for the rest. When we calculated what two of those and 2 Hvy Gauss snipers would cost it was like 17k and that's 4 Dire Wolf C's and a Timber Wolf E w/ 4/5 pilots. That or 5 Blood Asp Primes. It was much more economical to go with something like a STD engine Hauptman B at 2.2k a 'Mech or for 17k, 11 WHM-6D's. Sure you got 11 4/5 WHM, but those 5 Blood Asp's got just over 20 armor on the side torsos, 22 PPCs will get through even if half of them whiff. In my TT experience with mostly 3060ish tech, I found the IS side trying to out-tech the clans doesn't make for smart BV budgeting. It was far more effective to go with STD engine cheap but hard hitting, well armored, units like the Hauptman B, AWS-8Q and WHM-6D and outnumber/tonnage them instead of trying to out tech them with poo poo that makes your BV skyrocket. That and ECM adds like 60 to a units BV where a C3 system with a lot of units is way more expensive. Also note that the actual range to target is used when determining damage dealt by weapons like Heavy Gauss Rifles and Variable Speed Pulse Lasers. Even if you have a C3 spotter close enough to the enemy to count as Short range, if your Heavy Gauss Rifle is 15 hexes away you'll deal damage for that range, which is 10.
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Mar 22, 2018 03:20
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So I heard that they removed pilot customization from the game. None the less this LP has convinced me to preorder.
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Mar 22, 2018 21:15
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Godna posted:So I heard that they removed pilot customization from the game. None the less this LP has convinced me to preorder. You just can't change their name and whatnot through the UI, you can if you use notepad
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Mar 22, 2018 21:28
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You also get to design your starter character for SP, it's just you can't make your own later hires. I fully expect this to be an early patch addition or part of the first DLC (the former more likely than the latter since it was touted as a release feature) since presumably they only need to make a nice UI for it, rather than having to create and balance a whole new system (since that will presumably already have been done as part of the existing singleplayer content).
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Mar 22, 2018 21:41
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RabidWeasel posted:You also get to design your starter character for SP, it's just you can't make your own later hires. Yeah, I'd imagine at this point it's just that they're focusing all their attention on polishing everything they already do have as much as possible. Adding the customisation likely wouldn't be a huge amount of work, but it still would take a nonzero amount of time, which is currently a pretty valuable resource what with the impending release. So right now that time is probably better spent working on things that are already implemented, particularly since many of those things are likely more critical to the overall game experience. Once the release has come and gone (and whatever bugs have been quashed ) they'll probably have quite a bit more freedom to work on additional small features like that.
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Mar 22, 2018 22:27
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Here's really hoping that this game does well, because the "In success..." mantra we keep hearing would be lovely. HBS has a really strong track record of this with the Shadowrun games, so I hope they get the same opportunity to do to Battletech what they did for Shadowrun. All those cut features people have been wanting might show up, along with more in-depth campaigns, new mechs, etc.
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Mar 22, 2018 22:44
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aniviron posted:Here's really hoping that this game does well, because the "In success..." mantra we keep hearing would be lovely. HBS has a really strong track record of this with the Shadowrun games, so I hope they get the same opportunity to do to Battletech what they did for Shadowrun. All those cut features people have been wanting might show up, along with more in-depth campaigns, new mechs, etc. This may be confirmation bias, but I feel like there's some good buzz building, and it's good streaming fodder with the Xcomesque potential for sudden horrific upsets. HBS are very good at support, too, based on the Shadowrun games, so they know how to get and keep goodwill.
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Mar 22, 2018 22:59
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