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I mean, MW:4 Mercs did have the ending where you hosed off once you realized the psycho Steiner is losing hard, and instead go get yourselves a planetary base somewhere. Though I think that has the implication you get nuked by the Wobbies in a few years, so still no happy ending. Also the ending where you go join Clan Wolf (though that's still in support of nobles). Ultimately for this game just the single straight-arrow story line was a bit annoying, but tolerable if they eventually release other stories that are a bit more open/fleshed-out.
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May 15, 2018 22:47
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RBA Starblade posted:You can bad faith withdraw and get some loot too. I recall reading, somewhere, that mercenary contracts are enforced by Comstar, and salvage rights are part of that. Provided you don't break the contract too badly, you'll get the salvage terms. Comstar does this to stop somebody from hoarding tech, and to keep everybody at about the same levels of fighting ability. If this was made up or is canon somewhere I have no idea. Magnetic North posted:This is awesome. Also, it reminds me: is it okay to remove armor from an arm that has nothing on it at all? Besides having to replace it, does it do any other harm? The AI knows exactly what your armour values are and will pick on areas it thinks are under armoured if it's pilots have the called shot skill. If the area is empty, it's harmless, but if you skimp on armour for your legs, the AI will cut them out from under you.
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May 15, 2018 23:04
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Honestly, I could do without the main questline in this game. I had way more fun doing mercenary stuff and hunting for mechs than I did on the scripted missions. In the future, I hope for more improvements to that aspect instead of another relatively uninteresting questline to follow. Give each faction some scripted missions for when you hit a breakpoint in relationship, positive or negative, and focus on making the freeform part of the game even better.
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May 15, 2018 23:08
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Comstar definitely runs the mercenary racket all the way up through the Clan Invasion and basically any weird conspiracy theory you can think of implicating them in trying to keep humanity down and them at the top is either true or attempted by Comstar but failed for being too stupid, even for Battletech.Cynic Jester posted:Honestly, I could do without the main questline in this game. I had way more fun doing mercenary stuff and hunting for mechs than I did on the scripted missions. In the future, I hope for more improvements to that aspect instead of another relatively uninteresting questline to follow. Give each faction some scripted missions for when you hit a breakpoint in relationship, positive or negative, and focus on making the freeform part of the game even better. I think faction-based reputation milestone missions making faction-based "mini-campaigns" would be pretty neat. And good fodder for non-procedural "sidequests."
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May 15, 2018 23:09
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Xarbala posted:Populist revolutions in the BTverse either get crushed underfoot by the aristocracy or become the new aristocracy crushing others under their own foot. And if you do succeed then a company of white liveried SDLF tech mechs combat drop on your head
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May 15, 2018 23:10
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Eej posted:And if you do succeed then a company of THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN CORRECTED OF TRANSMISSION ERRORS BY COMSTAR. AS THE BLESSED BLAKE FORETOLD.
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May 15, 2018 23:17
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EoRaptor posted:The AI knows exactly what your armour values are and will pick on areas it thinks are under armoured if it's pilots have the called shot skill. If the area is empty, it's harmless, but if you skimp on armour for your legs, the AI will cut them out from under you. You know you can right click on enemy mechs and see that too, right? I didn't think the AI could do called shot though, unless your mech is knocked over.
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May 15, 2018 23:33
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:There is a lot going on here. Thanks for all the advice on builds. Like with the Grasshopper for instance, I wasn't sure if the PPC was causing too much heat or if that was just how it worked. Like you said, I rarely fired it along with everything, just when I really wanted to exploit an opening. Makes sense now that I'm home and can look at the numbers. I've gone through most of the campaign on  and only recently started deviating heavily from whatever the mechs came with by default. Usually I'd strip whatever seemed superfluous to make room for some jump jets, jump jets are life. Figure I'll restart at this point. I had fundamently misunderstood how Initiative and salvaging mechs worked for a long time.
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May 15, 2018 23:40
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I like the look of blue lasers and wish that LLs and their derivatives weren't such garbage in this game
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May 15, 2018 23:45
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Darkrenown posted:You know you can right click on enemy mechs and see that too, right? I didn't think the AI could do called shot though, unless your mech is knocked over. I didn't mean to imply you didn't have this info, I just meant the AI makes decisions based on armour values. And if the AI pilot is high enough level to have the basic called shot skill from the tactics tree, they do make called shots. It's pretty rare, but I'm sure it happens. And I don't think it's possible not to make a called shot on a downed mech, which is kinda weird.
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May 16, 2018 00:15
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What they should have had for the random missions wee little mini campaigns, chains of missions that you're meant to do shortly after one another, where you complete a simple story. Just a short series of missions: Battle Capture base Escort convoy Assassinate Becomes helping a little noble protect his planet from usurpers, rescuing the heir to the throne, protecting the heir during his return to the capital, and killing the usurper. Fairly standard battletech flair, but you just some of the text pop ups to have half of a story on it. Maybe have some options to switch sides or that kind of thing, not unlike how it worked mech warrior 4
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May 16, 2018 00:27
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Eldragon posted:Backup your mod folder before you apply the update. According to the patch notes modding the files breaks your save game after the update. I hope this isn't something we have to do every patch.
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May 16, 2018 00:41
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Is there a way to look at my overall team's morale? Like the running total of the ups and downs you get from the FTL-like events when traveling?
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May 16, 2018 00:57
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Lord Koth posted:I mean, MW:4 Mercs did have the ending where you hosed off once you realized the psycho Steiner is losing hard, and instead go get yourselves a planetary base somewhere. Though I think that has the implication you get nuked by the Wobbies in a few years, so still no happy ending. Also the ending where you go join Clan Wolf (though that's still in support of nobles). For how much MW4 I played I remember gently caress all about what I did playing them. Playing through Mercs again one mission and one crash at a time isn't helping! Like I had no idea Mercs had an overarching plot instead of various microcampaigns RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 01:01 on May 16, 2018 |
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May 16, 2018 00:57
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RBA Starblade posted:For how much MW4 I played I remember gently caress all about what I did playing them. Playing through Mercs again one mission and one crash at a time isn't helping! The first, like, half of the game is just you making your ridiculous rep while the war heats up. Then it's open contract time from both sides. Assuming this all isn't just some old smarmy sounding guy telling impossibly tall tales about how he won the war for Victor and walked into Solaris to win it, etc.
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May 16, 2018 01:03
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gwarm01 posted:I hope this isn't something we have to do every patch. The tools are fairly new but applying json changes via BattleTechModLoader + ModTek should be pretty patch-safe.
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May 16, 2018 01:04
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EoRaptor posted:I didn't mean to imply you didn't have this info, I just meant the AI makes decisions based on armour values. And if the AI pilot is high enough level to have the basic called shot skill from the tactics tree, they do make called shots. It's pretty rare, but I'm sure it happens. And I don't think it's possible not to make a called shot on a downed mech, which is kinda weird. You don't get a called shot on a downed mech if you include it as part of a multi-target attack. There's little reason to do this unless the downed mech is swiss cheese and you would likely core it anyway with random fire from just a couple weapons.
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May 16, 2018 01:12
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If the only thing I modded were the audio files for the speed up stuff, will I break my saves if I patch?
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May 16, 2018 01:15
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Oh boy, my capturing squad is 4 mechs with + stability lrms. Just murder the mechs you don't want and knock down the guy you do. Usually I do 3 knockdowns then blow the sides off on the last knockdown. Machine guns help because they generate lots of head hits I think. I think in my second run through I'll mod in dhs, endo steel and ferro.
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May 16, 2018 01:19
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RBA Starblade posted:For how much MW4 I played I remember gently caress all about what I did playing them. Playing through Mercs again one mission and one crash at a time isn't helping! Yeah, the beginning of the game is just doing whatever, but eventually you start having to choose a side as the FedCom civil war heats up, with enough missions with one faction locking out the other. Ultimately you either help with the final assault on Tharkad (Davions), run information to Clan Wolf and end up taking a Trial of Position (Steiners), or screw off to the Capellan March to take a planet back from the Capellans, then be given it in trust (Steiner up until the final mission, then you say gently caress being on the losing side and leave to take a lucrative contract). And honestly I'd love to replay it, but it's just a nightmare to get working on Win10.
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May 16, 2018 01:40
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Rygar201 posted:If the only thing I modded were the audio files for the speed up stuff, will I break my saves if I patch? You should be fine, but you may need to re-edit the .jsons. As I understand it, the things that will gently caress you on save are mostly if available resources change. Like if you've made changes to VersionManifest.csv or MetadataDatabase.db to add some pilots, and the patch reverts the version manifest to its original state. Suddenly the database can't find the resource it's supposed to point towards and the game will lock up when it tries to load.
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May 16, 2018 01:54
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Finally finished the game, saw a Victor once, and never saw an urban mech
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May 16, 2018 01:57
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There weren't any procedurally generated missions in MW4: Mercs either. All missions were part of a mini-campaign on each planet, often with a story branch depending on which contract you chose next. For example, on Styk, you get a choice between honor guard for peace talks between the locals and the Capellans or sabotaging the peace talks by assassinating the local delegates (of course at the behest of House Liao)
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May 16, 2018 01:57
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Kharnifex posted:Finally finished the game, saw a Victor once, and never saw an urban mech Urbanmechs aren't valid enemy choices for whatever reason.
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May 16, 2018 02:06
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ScottyJSno posted:Lore question. How do pirates and other undesirable Mech units operate on a planet? Surely the local authority keep tabs on the limited Jumpships and who was on them. Okay so to break this down a little bit as to why there can be space assholes landing on your planet and not know why they are here. A part of the answer is something you need to know about Battletech in general and its 'So we can have cool giant robot fights'. Thats always going to be part of the answer to any 'how' or 'why' question. To get to the rest, Battletech planets for the most part don't really have extremely sophisticated or even common satellite networks that just cover ever part of the planet and space is really loving big. In general they point their satellites at the system's jump point and track ships coming to and from scheduled traffic. So in order to not get spotted, batshit crazy pirates jump in at 'Pirate Jump points', which as you learn in the campaign, are basically points inside of a systems proximity and therefore inside gravity wells making them super dangerous to try and show up in. But on the flip side it means they are closer to their destination AND its unlikely a planet's limited satellite and sensor coverage is pointing there. Pirates alone generally cant afford jumpships but coalitions of pirates tend to form to run lots of little raids all the time to drop people on a planet, fly a dropship down with supplies and resources to raid and run operations and they keep looting and pillaging until they run out of stuff to steal or someone calls in support, then they call for a pickup and share their loot with the jumpship crew. This is why you see so many pirate nations form up in general or pirate warbands with their own planets and systems. Jumpships/support crews/raiding parties all end up working together and usually have someone put in charge or rather someone taking over. Most planets don't have aerospace fighters, especially in this time period so they don't really have a rapid response force, instead they probably just have dropships and even then only some of those are going to be combat capable. Dropships take time to get ready and going so if they dont catch something in time they just don't have the ability to react to it before the opposing ship has landed, dropped it's payload off and is taking off. The planets that get hit just don't have the kind of response times/resources/defences to deal with a dropship (even if its likely a piece of junk) showing up and deploying a lance of mechs and vehicles to the surface .
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May 16, 2018 02:09
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Tarezax posted:There weren't any procedurally generated missions in MW4: Mercs either. All missions were part of a mini-campaign on each planet, often with a story branch depending on which contract you chose next. For example, on Styk, you get a choice between honor guard for peace talks between the locals and the Capellans or sabotaging the peace talks by assassinating the local delegates (of course at the behest of House Liao) I've never actually played MW:4. Is it worth a play?
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May 16, 2018 02:19
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It felt and even looked less interesting/fun than MW3 as far as I'm concerned
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May 16, 2018 02:21
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Getting it play well on a modern system may have it's issues, but yes, you should.
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May 16, 2018 02:25
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Emy posted:Urbanmechs aren't valid enemy choices for whatever reason. Because they move so slow that they were literally breaking the pathing and unit cohesion AI lol.
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May 16, 2018 02:26
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Shouldn't the PC having the Argo be like, a huge deal, in universe? Also when you blow up a loving dropship that seems like it should be a source of heat too
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May 16, 2018 02:28
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Cling-Wrap Condom posted:Shouldn't the PC having the Argo be like, a huge deal, in universe? Also when you blow up a loving dropship that seems like it should be a source of heat too Yeah the Argo is kind of a huge deal but as long as you stick to the Periphery Comstar probably isn't too concerned about, uh, repossessing it. It's got no armaments and can't really do much that a small group of dropships can't. As for the second point, Dropships are actually produced in decent numbers. It's destroying Jumpships that is a big loving deal.
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May 16, 2018 02:33
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Cynic Jester posted:I've never actually played MW:4. Is it worth a play? If you're into the universe, yeah, it's a fun stompy robot game. MW4: Mercs is all around better because letting you make a merc unit is basically the cheat code to cheap, effective fanservice in that universe and everyone figured out how to write those stories years ago. The story isn't as good as MW2: Mercs, but it's pretty solid for what it is. Oh, and the Solaris announcer is pretty damned entertaining. Honestly I can't think of any MW games that haven't had passable stories (well, SP ones - we'll leave MW:O out of the conversation on this matter). None of them are exactly high art, but they do the job for action schlock. Hell, even the original 1989 MechWarrior had a effective "they dun killed your family, find out who this unit of mercs was and gently caress 'em up" story that, while boilerplate as gently caress for the universe and shallow as can be by today's standards was pretty well executed for that era. Off the top of my head, for the non Mechwarrior (i.e. FPS/sim) games in the universe. . . Crescent Hawks Inception: pretty good story by the standards of 1988. Workable mystery, and it's a mary sue merc unit origin story but hey that's pretty much 90% of the BT universe by weight. Crescent Hawks Revenge: more polished, story elements obviously had more work. Ditched the RPG elements for a more RTS approach. Brought the clans in and did a pretty OK job of telling the tale of the turn around during the battle of Luthien. Some of the battles could be pretty loving brutal. Beating it might have been the proudest accomplishment of 12 year old me. Whatever that SNES/Genesis BattleTech game was: Didn't like it. Story was completely forgettable and the controls were god awful, especially if you were dumb enough to do multiplayer. MechCommander: holy poo poo you're not a merc! But wait, you're trapped behind enemy lines during a hosed invasion so you need to buy poo poo with "requisition points" kind of like . . . getting paid for missions and using those profits to buy better poo poo. Oh, and salvage is super important because ~behind enemy lines~ almost like what those mercs do! Story was actually pretty decent, and managed to convey the idea that you were part of a much larger campaign. MC2: back to mercs. Weaker story that focused on the FedCom civil war. Not as good as MC1's story but not bad either. Solidly B+ slightly above average. I played that game way more than I want to admit but it's pretty much obsolete now that we have BT. MechAssault: 
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May 16, 2018 02:34
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Dropships are expensive but not irreplaceable, you might be thinking of jumpships. Santiago blew up at least one dropship during the coup too. As for the Argo, its noteworthy as a curio of past times, but its a boondoggle. Its an exploration ship in an age of war, and its a half broken shitpile that costs too much. Sure its got a overstrength company mechbay with some fancy half-working SL era automated systems, but they're constantly on the fritz and the Argo is comparable in size to a Behemoth class dropship, which can carry about 50% more commercial cargo and probably cheaper to build and operate. Militarily an Overlord dropship is far smaller and can carry over twice the mechs and is MUCH more heavily armed (and can also enter the atmosphere). So basically its notable only for being a relic with some interesting tech that probably exists in limited examples elsewhere. Once the Helm Memory Core hits in a few years, its jury-rigged tech is no longer of any interest and is rendered nothing but an expensive white elephant.
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May 16, 2018 02:36
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Cling-Wrap Condom posted:Shouldn't the PC having the Argo be like, a huge deal, in universe? Also when you blow up a loving dropship that seems like it should be a source of heat too Because as brought up in game. The bigger issue with making more argos is less "Can't because of all the lostech", but "Won't because it's a luxury liner in a standard issue war torn future." The old tech mechbay is more like a rich boy's sports car garage of the era, while a current day ship would be filling that space used on low G pools and hydroponics on more space for war toys. If you really wanted people to poo poo their pants. Imagine if instead you stole the fortress for yourself  It's okay, it's lore friendly for it to exist.
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May 16, 2018 02:36
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Tarezax posted:Yeah the Argo is kind of a huge deal but as long as you stick to the Periphery Comstar probably isn't too concerned about, uh, repossessing it. It's got no armaments and can't really do much that a small group of dropships can't. As for the second point, Dropships are actually produced in decent numbers. It's destroying Jumpships that is a big loving deal. Honestly I dont' even think it would be THAT big a deal. It's not like it was full of super awesome lostech, and it was practically a hulk. If anything it's the drop ship equivalent of some uncommon star league era mech (like the Black Knight is in lore) that long since had all its interesting lostech weapons replaced with mundane bullshit. It's a neat novelty but at this point it's functionally identical to the stuff used by everyone else.
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May 16, 2018 02:37
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Honestly, if the PC ever decided to get out of the merc business, they could probably refurbish the Argo as a fancy cruise liner taking noble scions on Grand Tours to various destinations. We've even got our own security detail!
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May 16, 2018 02:40
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Low-G swimming pool. C'MON!
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May 16, 2018 02:41
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I adore that the response to a shitload of empty space is to put in your own swimming pool.
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May 16, 2018 02:42
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Tarezax posted:Honestly, if the PC ever decided to get out of the merc business, they could probably refurbish the Argo as a fancy cruise liner taking noble scions on Grand Tours to various destinations. We've even got our own security detail! Bring the kids to the Low-G pool! Dine on the finest totally legal not bootleg F burgers. Enjoy your honeymoon with a romantic walk down the beach, in a pair of highlanders crushing pirate scum.
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May 16, 2018 02:42
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Well there is the Comstar exploration corps but the Argo doesn't really do anything new or novel enough to be noteworthy beyond its historical value. Dropships can already generate artificial gravity via thrust. The Argo's main feature are the hab decks that can simulate gravity for extended periods without thrust, but that just makes it a very good orbital platform.
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May 16, 2018 02:44
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