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Pattonesque
Jul 15, 2004
johnny jesus and the infield fly rule
I think RogueTech also futzes with reinforcements quite a bit, so there's some difficulty there

For instance if you take a "a lance of pilots has challenged you to a duel" contract, the reinforcements will always be four LRM boats and they will focus down one mech HARD

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Fat Samurai
Feb 16, 2011

To go quickly is foolish. To go slowly is prudent. Not to go; that is wisdom.

Pattonesque posted:

For instance if you take a "a lance of pilots has challenged you to a duel" contract, the reinforcements will always be four LRM boats and they will focus down one mech HARD
That's a curious definition of "duel"

Pattonesque
Jul 15, 2004
johnny jesus and the infield fly rule

Fat Samurai posted:

That's a curious definition of "duel"

yeah it's super annoying, I straight-up don't take those contracts anymore ever since two Barbarians started close enough to my lance to put 60 MRMs into my stationary melee Atlas and strip 300 points of armor off it before I could even take a turn

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

Fat Samurai posted:

That's a curious definition of "duel"

Seven other guys also wanted to duel and none of them wanted to wait

Party In My Diapee
Jan 24, 2014
Is anyone playing the roguetech alpha from the discord?
I'm hating the new system where i almost never can see what weapons and armor the enemies have. How can i make tactical decisions when i don't have any info on who i should be shooting or running from and so on. Any advice here?

Other complaints from recently added things:
Enemy can see me and shoot from outside my visual and sensor range so the first turn they killed my sprinting mech without me even seeing them.
Reinforcements come in right away so i'm fighting 8 superior enemies at once on easy contracts

I like the new content and rebalancing, but now it's changed so much from vanilla i don't understand how to play this anymore. Please help...

Pattonesque
Jul 15, 2004
johnny jesus and the infield fly rule

Party In My Diapee posted:

Is anyone playing the roguetech alpha from the discord?
I'm hating the new system where i almost never can see what weapons and armor the enemies have. How can i make tactical decisions when i don't have any info on who i should be shooting or running from and so on. Any advice here?

Other complaints from recently added things:
Enemy can see me and shoot from outside my visual and sensor range so the first turn they killed my sprinting mech without me even seeing them.
Reinforcements come in right away so i'm fighting 8 superior enemies at once on easy contracts

I like the new content and rebalancing, but now it's changed so much from vanilla i don't understand how to play this anymore. Please help...

read the changelog, you have been banned for bullying

Omar_Comin
Aug 20, 2004
Dark Jedi Carebear

Takuan posted:

A long time ago in this thread, someone posted a list of changes they made to things like visibility ranges, line-of-sight, and evasion. Does anybody have a list of those changes, or know roughly what date they were posted so I can try to find them myself?

Was it this post from Sandwich Anarchist?

Sandwich Anarchist posted:

After a day of playing with the tweaks I did, I am very happy with what it's done to my game; light mechs are actually starting to show some usability. Here is what I did:

code:
"AllowRearArcSpotting": false,
Changes spotting mechanics, so you need to actually have something in your firing arc to spot them. Seems to help balance LRMs a bit more on both sides.

code:
        "ToHitAssault": 0,
        "ToHitHeavy": 0,
        "ToHitMedium": 2,
        "ToHitLight": 3,
        "ToHitVehicleAssault": 0,
        "ToHitVehicleHeavy": 0,
        "ToHitVehicleMedium": 0,
        
Adds a bit more difficulty to hit light mechs, and adds some for mediums too, in an effort to give them a hair more usability later in the game.

code:
        "ToHitElevationLevelHeight": 18,
        "ToHitElevationModifierPerLevel": 0.5,
        "ToHitElevationUseMultipleLevels": true,
        "ToHitElevationApplyPenalties": true,
Changes height modifiers to be a little more dynamic. Being higher or lower will add cumulative bonuses or penalties to a shot, and has made terrain a much more important element in fights, especially considering the evasion tweaks I made below.

code:
        "ToHitMinimumRange": 8,
        "ToHitShortRange": -2,
        "ToHitMediumRange": 0,
        "ToHitLongRange": 2,
        "ToHitMaximumRange": 4,
        "ToHitCoverObstructed": 2,
Added a Short range modifier, making it easier to hit with any weapon up close (but outside minimum range). This required editing every single weapon with a short range value, and is totally optional.

code:
"ToHitIndirect": 6,
Made indirect fire have a steeper penalty in an effort to balance LRMs a bit more, and require an LRM user to invest in Tactics to mitigate the more severe penalties.

code:
        "ToHitSelfWalkLight": 0,
        "ToHitSelfWalkMedium": 1,
        "ToHitSelfWalkHeavy": 2,
        "ToHitSelfWalkAssault": 3,
        "ToHitSelfWalkVehicle": 1,
Added some firing accuracy penalties after moving for everything but Lights. This is to try and take a bit of the bite away from Assaults, and promote run and gun tactics with lights.

code:
"ToHitMovingTargetDistances": 
[
	      90,
            120,
            150,
            180,
            220,
            250,
		],
        "EvasivePipsMovingTarget":
[
            1,
            2,
            3,
            4,
            5,
            6
        ],
        "ToHitMovingPipUMs": 
[
            3,
            6,
            9,
            12,
            15,
            18
		],
Increased evasion pip value by one, and set initial movement required to generate them higher. Evasion requires more movement investment now, but is alot stronger; light mechs can easily get maxed pips, while Assaults and some heavies struggle to, even while sprinting. With the changes to height modifiers, fire-and-move penalties, and increased base hit penalties for size, light mechs are much more survivable; reliably hitting them requires close range spam or sensor locking. For that matter:

code:
"SensorLockPipsStripped": 6,
and in Steam\steamapps\common\BATTLETECH\BattleTech_Data\StreamingAssets\data\abilities\abilitydeft5a

code:
"Details" : "ACTION: Select a target within sensor range to reveal it until the end of the current round and removes all of its EVASIVE charges.",
Sensor lock strips ALL evasion charges. Much more useful now, and is a pretty much a dedicated Light mech counter. Lights are pretty drat hard to hit now, unless you can get in close, melee them, or sensor lock.


Obviously these aren't all totally ideal changes, but it's made my game alot more fun for me at least. Here is a typical shot against a single move light now:



https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3821533&pagenumber=318&perpage=40#post483957862

Runa
Feb 13, 2011

RBA Starblade posted:

Seven other guys also wanted to duel and none of them wanted to wait

lol

Narsham
Jun 5, 2008

RBA Starblade posted:

I also like the Extremely Good Lostech Jagermech whose extremely valuable gauss rifles you blow off in one shot because lol it's still a jagermech

I just ran that scenario for the first time. He opens with a taunt about headshots. I cleared away most of the other mechs and he came into sight. My main character in a King Crab with 2 AC/20s moving on init 3 proceeds to roll up and take a precision shot at his head, instantly killing him.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

RBA Starblade posted:

Speaking of which I have a TTS that adds +3 to energy weapons and I'm having a hell of a time figuring out what to slap it onto, if at all. Everyone's already hitting 80%+, even the lovely newbies, and there's no room on the Black Knight or PPCatapult really (though the BK has DHS and Heat Banks and poo poo so).

TTSes other than missile are useless because by mid-game accuracy is not a problem, and the fact that

RBA Starblade posted:

is 4 tons. 1 or 2 sure, I can put that somewhere, but goddamn
they're way heavier than their bonus is worth. Missile is worth putting on a catapult or stalker, because indirect fire is the only thing that regularly stacks enough penalties to need it. The weight of many equipment mods makes them worthless compared to just putting on more guns. Thermal exchangers & melee mods also fall into this category. OTOH gyros and cockpit mods have really good bonuses and they're free.


Alternately:
this mod makes the TTS way more useful.


(Also if anyone is thinking of using the Sandwich Artist mod, I found it better to not set the evasive defense bonus quite so high, while at the same time changing ToHitGunneryDivisor to 50. This means that gunnery is a 2% bonus per level instead of 2.5% to nerf the aim side a bit. Putting everything into evasion defense made the late game kinda hosed since the AI stops generating evasion but the player can still get it pretty high with jumpjets etc.)

Stravag
Jun 7, 2009

I dont see how 1 ton for +3 accuracy is too heavy but ok.

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

Mine is 3 or 4 tons for 3 accuracy

Stravag
Jun 7, 2009

Start using +++'s

Edit: hartford s2000 for missiles, kallon lock on for ballistics, instatrac XII for energy

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week
Stock game:
_  +1  .5 tons
+  +2  1 ton
++ +3 2 tons
+++ +3 1 ton <- these were just introduced in 1.3 and are super rare, I don't think they can show up in any store including blackmarkets

The ++ ones are not great.

Stravag
Jun 7, 2009

No they appear in stores

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Stravag posted:

No they appear in stores

You positive? Playing stock? In the itemcollection files those only appear in itemCollection_Upgrades_SLDF.csv, which does not get referenced in any of the itemcollection files that populate the stores. Even the planets with starleague presence now have a tiny chance of having a Gauss gun for sale, but not the upgrades (or mechs).

I don't know the rules for how the game decides what goes into salvage so they might show up as there?

Amechwarrior
Jan 29, 2007

Klyith posted:

Bulwark never had entrenched in the first place. You just thought it did because your own bulwark units didn't get knocked down much.

What was going on is that standing still dumps 2 bars of stability, while moving only gets rid of one. On average it works out to the same thing -- twice as much removed instead of half taken. Bulwarked units were possible to focus down with stab damage, but you had to know what was going on so you could do enough stab before the next activation. (Which the AI couldn't do and the player hardly ever needed because the AI didn't use bulwark properly.)


I don't want to go back to static bulwark, if only because the AI was truly bad with it and I don't see that changing. I do think stability needs to be revisited -- it's become a thing that the player is virtually immune to in the mid-late game because you kinda need ++ weapons to do enough stab damage now.


Actually kinda mad that I'm now spoiled on this, because that would be a loving amazing surprise to put in a custom mission!

I was thinking of writing a PM about more AI stuff, but I see you don't have plat. Whats an email address where I can sent you a plat cert for the lowtax spine fund?


Wow, thanks! Check my profile page here for some info or hit me up on the BT goon discord: https://discord.gg/GBYqqnc

Don't worry about spoilers - that was a legit accident while I was flipping optional chunks on and off to see what happens. I wasn't planning on using that even after I found it as I had already planned this FP out fairly solidly. It's not quite finished and some explosion chunks are pink blocks. Won't say I won't use it ever, but not on this next one for sure.

Pattonesque
Jul 15, 2004
johnny jesus and the infield fly rule
lol I just realized that the reason those pilot duel missions are so hard for me is that I had the elite pilots mod for RogueTech installed, which makes the enemy base skills insanely overpowered, which is why they'd hit multiple PPC shots from beyond visual range on a target with 9 evasion pips

One dude I saw had TWELVE PILOT HEALTH which means his Guts skill was probably 20. I like a challenge but that's a bit much

Takuan
May 6, 2007


This is exactly it. Thank you!

Technowolf
Nov 4, 2009




The Beginner's Box, Starter Box, Shattered Fortress sourcebook, and 35th Anniversary T-shirt/Hoodie are now available.

Organ Fiend
May 21, 2007

custom title

Klyith posted:

Bulwark never had entrenched in the first place. You just thought it did because your own bulwark units didn't get knocked down much.

What was going on is that standing still dumps 2 bars of stability, while moving only gets rid of one. On average it works out to the same thing -- twice as much removed instead of half taken. Bulwarked units were possible to focus down with stab damage, but you had to know what was going on so you could do enough stab before the next activation. (Which the AI couldn't do and the player hardly ever needed because the AI didn't use bulwark properly.)


I don't want to go back to static bulwark, if only because the AI was truly bad with it and I don't see that changing. I do think stability needs to be revisited -- it's become a thing that the player is virtually immune to in the mid-late game because you kinda need ++ weapons to do enough stab damage now.

To echo what others have already said, old bulwark totally had entrenched. I could never push a bulwarked target into instability with a single LRM flight pre-Flashpoint. My mechs could take so many hits before getting close to instability. Now, a flight of 3xLRM15+++ put a heavy into instability easy.

If you don't want Bulwark to be an auto-add then you either have to give it a trade off (because it doesn't have one now) or you have to buff the other level one abilities to match it. Before flashpoint, Bulwark was totally overpowered, but I would still use pilots that didn't have it because it was worthless for mechs that were constantly moving (mainly jumping or melee oriented infighters). There is currently no trade off for using it (it works for literally any kind of mech) and replacement of juggernaut for coolant flush makes the guts line even more valuable overall.

After thinking it over, I think the following changes would make bulwark much better:
-Only activates while immobile
-Gives 20% in open
-Immobile mechs do not drain stability damage (bracing while immobile still drains stability damage)

That last change would give you an easy way to dislodge bulwarked snipers. If they don't move, they're getting knocked over, and if/when they do move, they have to drop their defenses. The overall idea would be that mobile mechs are more vulnerable to damage, and immobile mechs are more vulnerable to knockdowns.

If you don't do that, or introduce some other kind of tradeoff, then you have to buff the other level 1 abilities. Some ideas:
-Multi targeting allows you to fire any weapon at a melee target and/or a different target when meleeing
-Evasive movement halves evasion pip decay (i.e. it takes two mechs to drop an evasion pip)
-Mechs with sensor lock passively sensor lock any mech they shoot at (you can still sensor lock mechs out of LoS or sensor lock without shooting, as you can now)

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

quote:

If you don't do that, or introduce some other kind of tradeoff, then you have to buff the other level 1 abilities. Some ideas:
-Multi targeting allows you to fire any weapon at a melee target and/or a different target when meleeing

This would be the brokenest thing in the world, at least with how I play

Organ Fiend
May 21, 2007

custom title
This isn't in reply to anyone in particular, but RE the issue of lights being useless in the late game:

The big problem with Battletech is that its balanced around the idea of more tonnage = better. There are two ways you could fix this:
-Change nothing about the way Battletech is balanced, but change the way engagements are balanced so that its by lance tonnage rather than number of mcehs
-Change the mechanics of Battletech to make lights/meds closer to parity with heavies/assaults

The first option is the easiest one. Currently you can take 4 mechs of any tonnage. What if you could take 6 mechs, but with a max tonnage of 400 tons? You could still take 4 KGC/AS7, but you could also take 4xOrions and a KGC/AS7, or 5xAWS, or 5xTDR and an Orion. What if you bump that up to 8 mechs / 400 tons? Maybe we'd find that the 4xKGC/AS7 is still optimal, but it would still give you more options. From a metagame standpoint, you could excuse this by saying that the Leopard can only carry X number of mechs and Y tons. You could even have upgrades for the Leopard to boost its carrying capacity the same way you upgrade the Argo, or allow the player to put in a loan for another Leopard to drop more mechs/tonnage.

The second option is more difficult as it would require a complete rebalancing of the game. Currently, the whole economy is built around the idea that smaller mechs = cheaper, so if you increase the performance of these mechs to match their heavier counterparts, then its a big nerf for the heavier mechs. Aside from balancing the metagame, the simplest way to do this from a game mechanics standpoint is to increase the armor per ton for smaller mechs. Currently, smaller mechs can build up more evasion, but once they do get hit (and they will with all of the sensor locking and 4 vs 8+ odds you get in 5 skull missions) they die fast. If you keep the max armor tonnage constant but increase the amount of armor points per ton, you can mitigate this effect. You can justify this by saying that smaller mech shave less surface area so you need less tonnage to achieve the same thickness, etc. For example, if you did something totally ridiculous like give very light/small mechs 2x armor points per ton, a max armor locust could get the same armor protection as a hunchback.

I think I'd prefer the first option, though I'd be interested in trying the second. Its not exactly apples to apples, but in NBT-4/NBT-Mercs (MW4 multiplayer league), battles were balanced by total tonnage with 8 players maximum per team. Drop weight was determined by the type of battle (raid, planetary assault, etc), but the heaviest battles were ~600 tons and the lightest were ~300 tons. You definitely saw lots of light mech usage at the lower end of the tonnage scale, and even saw mediums into the highest tonnage drops. More mechs made it harder to focus down targets. Maybe this wouldn't translate over to BATTLETECH since all mechs are under perfect control of one intelligence (AI or player), but I think its worth a shot.

Organ Fiend
May 21, 2007

custom title

RBA Starblade posted:

This would be the brokenest thing in the world, at least with how I play

But would it be broken enough to take it over bulwark on a master tactician pilot?

EDIT: think about multi target with my broken rear end idea for sensor lock. A pilot with enough guns could sensor lock/debuff 3 targets at a time in one turn ... but would it still be better than bulwark?

Organ Fiend fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Jan 23, 2019

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

You generally don't really need to sensor lock three targets in a turn, and a mech with arm mods and any amount of weapons would erase any other mech in punchin range with the extra 150 damage+ a hit. That'd be super fun though.

Amechwarrior
Jan 29, 2007

So I've been screwing around with 4x 55t Lances vs assaults spam. Turns out missions like Convoy Assaults on Lunar are far easier with the Evasion crew and while I'm not wiping the entire OPFOR, I don't have to like when I'm too slow to escape. This is with forced max difficulty OPFOR and I also fixed a bug that makes the AI wig out when you gain 7 Pips.

High evasion can work at max difficulty contracts, but not nearly as many as just Bulwark Assaults. Also, completing those contracts nets less salvage as I'm not trying to wipe the field clean. So while it is a good tactical option, it's a worse strategic one in that it's less profitable.

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

It's mildly annoying how Morgan Kell survived in his piece of poo poo Orion with no arms or side torsos to the very end of the 4v8 only for four mechs to fail for three turns in a row to shoot a Jagermech in its chest so it just headbutt Kell's Krappy Korion to death one second before someone finally loving shot it. Rox aced the mission though :v:

Nice loot as a reward at least but it'd be nice if I got even a part of that Stalker.

RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Jan 24, 2019

Ash1138
Sep 29, 2001

Get up, chief. We're just gettin' started.

Any word on what the next DLC is going to bring in terms of mission/map variety in the existing biomes? There sure are a lot of faction lances who still think the last war is still on and have to be put down.

Skippy McPants
Mar 19, 2009

Ash1138 posted:

Any word on what the next DLC is going to bring in terms of mission/map variety in the existing biomes? There sure are a lot of faction lances who still think the last war is still on and have to be put down.

The next DLC is called Urban Warfare so a proper city tileset seems likely. Maps with a lot of ways to break LoS could be pretty neat for the weight class balance in this game. A light or medium with Ace Pilot could ruin a lot of assault mechs.

Ash1138
Sep 29, 2001

Get up, chief. We're just gettin' started.

Skippy McPants posted:

The next DLC is called Urban Warfare so a proper city tileset seems likely. Maps with a lot of ways to break LoS could be pretty neat for the weight class balance in this game. A light or medium with Ace Pilot could ruin a lot of assault mechs.
Yes, but what about existing biomes? I love this game mechanically, but drat it needs some more desert/tundra/lowlands/etc. wilderness maps. And some new mission briefing text, which doesn't seem important, but would help obscure the grind without actually having to *do* much.

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

Skippy McPants posted:

The next DLC is called Urban Warfare so a proper city tileset seems likely. Maps with a lot of ways to break LoS could be pretty neat for the weight class balance in this game. A light or medium with Ace Pilot could ruin a lot of assault mechs.

4v20, opfor is stock urbies only

The last lance is AC20 Urbies

binge crotching
Apr 2, 2010

RBA Starblade posted:

4v20, opfor is stock urbies only

The last lance is AC20 Urbies

Is that trashcan in the game yet? I saw some pictures of it and it is a hilarious looking mech. It would be fun to play with a bunch of short range glass cannons like that on a map that supported it.

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

binge crotching posted:

Is that trashcan in the game yet? I saw some pictures of it and it is a hilarious looking mech. It would be fun to play with a bunch of short range glass cannons like that on a map that supported it.

I've gotten three as Flashpoint rewards

binge crotching
Apr 2, 2010

Sounds like I need to get around to finishing the campaign so I can get try some flashpoints.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Ash1138 posted:

Yes, but what about existing biomes? I love this game mechanically, but drat it needs some more desert/tundra/lowlands/etc. wilderness maps. And some new mission briefing text, which doesn't seem important, but would help obscure the grind without actually having to *do* much.

The maps are big and most missions only use parts of them, so they really don't need new maps that use existing biomes. Just more missions would be enough, you can do a lot by moving the mission zone and rotating it so you're coming from a different side.

Unfortunately missions are also one of the least modable parts of the game. Changing up the text is definitely possible, and I think it wouldn't be hard to make more variations of existing missions with altered difficulty. But I think that won't really fix the problem of "I've played this game for 500 hours and have memorized multiple missions".


Personally I think one problem is that there should be more planets that push the lunar or martian missions. I've only played a handful of each when not counting story, because there aren't as many locations they show up.

edit: alternately, try out the Mission Control mod for random extra units added to your battles.

Klyith fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Jan 24, 2019

Stravag
Jun 7, 2009

binge crotching posted:

Is that trashcan in the game yet?

As of the date of release, yes.

Horace Kinch
Aug 15, 2007

binge crotching posted:

Is that trashcan in the game yet?

You mean thrashcan.

ditty bout my clitty
May 28, 2011

by FactsAreUseless
Fun Shoe

RBA Starblade posted:

Nice loot as a reward at least but it'd be nice if I got even a part of that Stalker.

Headcapping that stalker is the biggest gently caress you in the game

Cease to Hope
Dec 12, 2011

binge crotching posted:

Is that trashcan in the game yet?

it was in the game at launch, but extremely rare. later patches have made it somewhat less rare, but a rare light mech is always going to be an unusual appearance

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Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
I'm pretty sure it was deliberately not in any opposing lances (only buyable in shops), because the ai struggled to handle something that slow.

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