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Pornographic Memory
Dec 17, 2008

Gravity Cant Apple posted:

Last night I went from having no assaults to getting the Highlander from the story mission, killing the pilot of the Battlemaster in said mission and then headshotting a King Crab in my next contract. What's the best way to kit these bad boys out?

In my current campaign I'm running two King Crabs. One has two AC/20+ variants that have the 120 damage, with four tons of ammo and four medium lasers. It's a pain in the rear end to get it into a fight but it's loving amazing being able to core out a pristine heavy mech every turn. My other King Crab has two AC/10s in the arms, the plus variants with 70 damage, and two large lasers and two medium lasers. The range is a lot more forgiving than AC/20s and the upgraded AC/10s give you two headcappers that are a lot lighter, easier to find, and carry more ammo than gauss rifles.

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Skippy McPants
Mar 19, 2009

Gravity Cant Apple posted:

Last night I went from having no assaults to getting the Highlander from the story mission, killing the pilot of the Battlemaster in said mission and then headshotting a King Crab in my next contract. What's the best way to kit these bad boys out?

Step 1: I like to run the Highlander as pure fire support with the short-range weapons stripped out and a LL or PPC added to go with the Gauss Rifle and LRM20. This lets you pull out the DHS and replace them with single heatsinks, which you need for,

Step 2: Shove the four best SRM6s you have into the King Crab (+++ are best, but the +4 damage ++ version is a fine sub.), along with four MLs (+10 damge) and an AC20 (+20 damage). If everything is of the best quality, this build spits out ~550 damage. It also overheats in two alphas, so pack all your DHS into it and make sure its pilot has Vent Coolant. Totally worth it for a mech that can 1-shot enemy assault mechs through Bulwark.

Step 3: The Battlemaster is kind of mediocre but it does ok with some SRM6s and MLs, maybe a single LL if you want.

Stravag
Jun 7, 2009

I really like running highlanders as lowalanders and marchlanders tbh. An ac20 on a jumper backed up by srm24s is hilarious on that much armor.

Horace Kinch
Aug 15, 2007

My Battlemaster build is as follows:

All the small/medium lasers
All the heatsinks

Then just strut out and find a victim.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


anime tupac posted:

I'm sure this has been talked about, but this just went on sale so I'm dropping by to ask: can anyone remark on whether or not the writing is good? I loved Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong specifically because I liked the writing, and apparently the same guy was in charge of those and Battletech, so I'm hoping there are some good character stories or settings or whatever in here.

It's not an RPG so there's not really much in the way of writing. The dialogue that is in the game is fine but there aren't Shadowrun conversations or anything. It's a tactical combat game first and foremost.

Horace Kinch
Aug 15, 2007

It's Front Mission with less mecha customization and less anime but cool chicken-walker mechs.

Ugly In The Morning
Jul 1, 2010
Pillbug
I just picked this up this morning since I finally have a computer that can play it. Is any of the DLC worth getting while it’s on sale?

sean10mm
Jun 29, 2005

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD-2R World

Ugly In The Morning posted:

I just picked this up this morning since I finally have a computer that can play it. Is any of the DLC worth getting while it’s on sale?

I like Flashpoint but you can really put off getting it until you are finished with the main campaign the first time.

Plek
Jul 30, 2009

Ugly In The Morning posted:

I just picked this up this morning since I finally have a computer that can play it. Is any of the DLC worth getting while it’s on sale?

There is a mod out called Battletech Extended? Expanded? 2025 that as far as I can tell just adds a bunch of actually good mechs into the mix and if you play career mode it really stretches out the 'all I have are locusts' early game. Mechs added are apparently accurate to the timeframe. All I know is the I am sitting on a growing mountain of dead stingers, fire starters, and javelins.

Oh it also changes the random enemy list by making them pull from faction specific preferred mechs. So that's neat.

Plek fucked around with this message at 14:02 on Feb 23, 2019

Amechwarrior
Jan 29, 2007

Pushed an update to my FP:

The Raid 1.0.1

Added a custom portrait and did some bug fixes.

Plek posted:

There is a mod out called Battletech Extended? Expanded? 2025 that as far as I can tell just adds a bunch of actually good mechs into the mix and if you play career mode it really stretches out the 'all I have are locusts' early game. Mechs added are apparently accurate to the timeframe. All I know is the I am sitting on a growing mountain of dead stingers, fire starters, and javelins.

Oh it also changes the random enemy list by making them pull from faction specific preferred mechs. So that's neat.
Battletech Extended 3025

Yea, JK who did the variants mods is working with the BTX guy to make this all mesh really well. It also uses my AI and our cFixes mods!

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

anime tupac posted:

I'm sure this has been talked about, but this just went on sale so I'm dropping by to ask: can anyone remark on whether or not the writing is good? I loved Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong specifically because I liked the writing, and apparently the same guy was in charge of those and Battletech, so I'm hoping there are some good character stories or settings or whatever in here.
I felt like the writing was really bad and the campaign story arc was loving atrocious. Its a really good tactical robot combat game though!

Amechwarrior posted:

Pushed an update to my FP:

The Raid 1.0.1

Added a custom portrait and did some bug fixes.

Battletech Extended 3025

Yea, JK who did the variants mods is working with the BTX guy to make this all mesh really well. It also uses my AI and our cFixes mods!
I may need to try out that mod then because I just cant do the base game in any form anymore.

Plek
Jul 30, 2009

Amechwarrior posted:

Yea, JK who did the variants mods is working with the BTX guy to make this all mesh really well. It also uses my AI and our cFixes mods!

Ah! I was wondering why the annoying little fuckers wouldn't let me reserve, or ran off randomly to hide. All in all it's generally pretty swell though.

Taintrunner
Apr 10, 2017

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Outside of 3025 Extended, what are the other essential mods at this point? I dropped this game after finishing it right around release and haven’t done flashpoints yet.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

I felt like the writing was really bad and the campaign story arc was loving atrocious. Its a really good tactical robot combat game though!

I may need to try out that mod then because I just cant do the base game in any form anymore.

I like the writing, it's quality pulp. there is a lets play on at the moment that quotes big chunks of it so you can see for yourself though.

Breetai
Nov 6, 2005

🥄Mah spoon is too big!🍌
Is there some sort of special case exemption for head hits on the final mission's King Crab that I'm experiencing? After taking multiple dozens of targeted shots with 10/10/10/10 pilots I have yet to get a single head hit.

Skippy McPants
Mar 19, 2009

Breetai posted:

Is there some sort of special case exemption for head hits on the final mission's King Crab that I'm experiencing? After taking multiple dozens of targeted shots with 10/10/10/10 pilots I have yet to get a single head hit.

Yes, on both the final mission and the earlier one where she drives a K-2 Victoria can't be headshot.

There's apparently bug where saving/loading breaks the scripting and allows you to land headshots on her, but I've never gotten it to work personally. If you really want her mech you can knock her down something like six times to get an incapacitation but its stats are just the standard KGC so all your get for the effort is a couple medium pulse lasers.

sean10mm
Jun 29, 2005

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD-2R World

Taintrunner posted:

Outside of 3025 Extended, what are the other essential mods at this point? I dropped this game after finishing it right around release and haven’t done flashpoints yet.

Skip intro and skip travel cutscenes. Edit audio constants .json to remove excess pauses.

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

Skippy McPants posted:

Yes, on both the final mission and the earlier one where she drives a K-2 Victoria can't be headshot.

Did they patch that out? My own King Crab absolutely shot her in the face and immediately killed her when I faced her. No loading necessary.

Skippy McPants
Mar 19, 2009

How long ago was that? Maybe something else borks the scripting? Dunno, I gave it a few tries on my most recent playthrough about a month ago and couldn't get a single shot to connect across several reloads.

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

About launch. Glitch just sauntered off and the very first shot my team fired blew the cockpit up :v:

rocketrobot
Jul 11, 2003

sean10mm posted:

skip travel cutscenes.

Is that an option now??

Amechwarrior
Jan 29, 2007

sean10mm posted:

Skip intro and skip travel cutscenes. Edit audio constants .json to remove excess pauses.

My QuickCam mod now includes the audio delay removal and cut down the egregious camera delays! No longer will it take 4 seconds to watch a building collapse.

https://github.com/BattletechModders/QuickCam/releases

I'll probably add one more "cut" in a few days once I get to testing it. I found out how to shorten the time the "Fly Cam" takes to get to the final position and I'm tuning it so I can keep the dynamic attack cameras but not miss the impacts like the stock one does. Set too fast, and it gets whippy on you, to slow and it missed impacts. I need to find a good compromise time.

Chaos341
Aug 13, 2010

Skippy McPants posted:

Yes, on both the final mission and the earlier one where she drives a K-2 Victoria can't be headshot.

There's apparently bug where saving/loading breaks the scripting and allows you to land headshots on her, but I've never gotten it to work personally. If you really want her mech you can knock her down something like six times to get an incapacitation but its stats are just the standard KGC so all your get for the effort is a couple medium pulse lasers.

Well that explains why 10ish called shots to the head resulted in zero hits. Wish they would've just grayed the head out so I didn't waste all that resolve trying to get another King Crab.

Breetai
Nov 6, 2005

🥄Mah spoon is too big!🍌

Skippy McPants posted:

Yes, on both the final mission and the earlier one where she drives a K-2 Victoria can't be headshot.

There's apparently bug where saving/loading breaks the scripting and allows you to land headshots on her, but I've never gotten it to work personally. If you really want her mech you can knock her down something like six times to get an incapacitation but its stats are just the standard KGC so all your get for the effort is a couple medium pulse lasers.

Ah, okay. Well if it's not a special chassis with any kind of actually useful lostech, gently caress it. I'll just take her legs out. Thanks!

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
When I played it (pre-expansion), her head was blacked out and unselectable in the precision shot ui, but after you knocked her down you could called shot her in the head just fine. Her mech wouldn't show up in the salvage list unless you save/loaded, so I thought it was a balance thing to stop you cheesing the mission with a bunch of precision-striking ac/20s.

I guess they changed how that works at some point?

Stravag
Jun 7, 2009

Is it even confirmed that you cant get hits on her head? Ive had strings of 10-15 called shots in a row where unless i called for a ct shot my salvo hit everything but what i marked for the hit. Back to back no LT hits from a lrm 70 stalker and a marauder II that had a gauss 2 erls and 2 erms against a cyclops, etc. Its a thing that happens.

SirFozzie
Mar 28, 2004
Goombatta!
I don't know whether to offer Glitch burn cream, an ice bath, an I'm sorry note, or all three.

Smithson moon story mission (doing the campaign), Glitch was riding the red line of heat in the Martian-style environment (she currently pilots my SRM-ShadowHawk). Gets a back shot on Lady Espinosa,



Glitch: "Captain, I'll over heat if I do that."

Commander "We need to take her down. ALPHA STRIKE.

Glitch: (hesitantly) "Ok"

(fires everything)

(Both Espinosa's and Glitch's mechs blow up) as she cores Espinosa's mech with a SRM16 (6/6/4) combined with a laser, and Glitch due to the heat damage taking out the last of her CT

Commander: You know, I really should've checked her CT structure before I did that.




(The good news is Glitch survived. She's a bit crispy around the edges (95 days out), but.. yeah, I'm paying her bills.)

Amechwarrior
Jan 29, 2007

I just ran the "Showdown" via debug contract generator and yea, the "pilot_cannot_be_headshot" tag acts differently now. No longer can you tell Location: "Head" is off limits and can attempt to make a called shot vs. them, and my attempts all failed where I was able to plink the others heads in her Lance, one of them was a AC/20 + LL from Kamea herself who only was shooting a 5% head hit. I remember it being a grey, unselectable head. Now, this did piss me off at first. Maybe this is their way of hiding it from the player so you won't know some pilots have "plot armor" but that cat's kind of already out of the bag.

I'm going to say this is probably fine for new players that will have never known of the older version, but frustrating for launch players that are expecting to be told when not to bother aiming for the head.

I R SMART LIKE ROCK
Mar 10, 2003

I just want a hug.

Fun Shoe

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

I felt like the writing was really bad and the campaign story arc was loving atrocious. Its a really good tactical robot combat game though!

I may need to try out that mod then because I just cant do the base game in any form anymore.

Yeah I haven't played in a couple of weeks and decided to try out Extended 3025. It's amazing how much better the early game is with more lights and lower end mediums. Not running into near zillions of Panther / Locust / Commando is such a breath of fresh air

I started with a LCT-3V, COM-2D. FS9-H, SDR-5V and a loving UM-R60. Though AC/10's are surprisingly useful at this stage of the game

Warmachine
Jan 30, 2012



I'm having a bit of a difficult time wrapping my head around progression of mechs. And, I suppose, what each weapon category is designed for. Does anyone have a good writeup that talks about weapon and mech design philosophy?

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

Warmachine posted:

I'm having a bit of a difficult time wrapping my head around progression of mechs. And, I suppose, what each weapon category is designed for. Does anyone have a good writeup that talks about weapon and mech design philosophy?
This but with stompy robot design in the 31st century in place of America:

SirFozzie
Mar 28, 2004
Goombatta!
In all seriousness, you may want to design a Mech that has decent manueverability, decent heat management and decent damage in every increment.

You may want to, but you'll never be able to. Too many trade offs.

So, what I do is, decide what the mech is going to and then fill in what I need. For example, if I have a Trenchbucket, er... a Trebuchet (this also goes for Catapults, Quickdraws and if you have the Extended 3025 mod, the Archer), and I decide it's going to be a fire support mech then I'll load it up with the most LRM's I can find. I can skimp on armor, but I need it to be firing turn after turn after turn.

Or my brawler mechs. I know they're going to be in the thick of things so MUCH more armor, and instead of a variety of weapons, I may put the heaviest weapon I can fit on it (AC/20 for example), and then fill out around it. (remember, you can get an ability that removes cover/bulwark/entrenched if you fire a single weapon).

My style is a "Hold em by the nose, then rain death on them" type, so I create mechs to either do the tanky role (for example, a Banshee is not great weapon wise, but the fact that it can melee people for a ton of damage means that if you can get it close, they HAVE to treat it as a serious threat.

While they're dealing with my upfront mechs, the backline mechs are picking up the enemy's most dangerous mechs and laying in all the missiles they can.

Also: FOCUS FIRE.

It's much better to do 400 damage to one mech a turn then it is to do 100 damage to 4 mechs. Remember, the balance of force is probably going to be against you, numbers wise, so you need to be reducing the number of folks firing back at you as quickly as possible.

Did I say most dangerous mechs above? Don't forget vehicles. They're squishy (literally, you do double damage when you step on them, which means most vehicular attacks are oneshot auto kills if it hits).. but if you fail to kill a Shreck PPC carrier (3 PPC), another one (Demolisher? Manticore?) with double AC/20, and the SRM carrier which will shoot about 1 billion srm's at you. you will pay for it.

(When I failed to kill a SRM carrier one time, I muttered to myself, "here comes the drum solo" and the SRM carrier obliged, about 10-12 seconds straight of SRM's thudding into my mech)

Horace Kinch
Aug 15, 2007

Warmachine posted:

I'm having a bit of a difficult time wrapping my head around progression of mechs. And, I suppose, what each weapon category is designed for. Does anyone have a good writeup that talks about weapon and mech design philosophy?

Weapons:

Energy Weapons are for pinpoint damage at just about any range. They're very weight efficient but they're very hot so heatsinks are a must-have. Do not bring energy weapons into a Lunar biome due to the heatsink penalty. PPCs are the only energy weapons that provide stability damage as well as a malus to enemy accuracy, but generally run too hot and are too heavy to justify bringing except in some fringe cases.

Ballistics provide an alternative source of pinpoint damage + stability damage at the expense of requiring ammo and a significant weight investment. As an autocannon's grade increases (AC2->AC5->AC10->AC20) so does its damage and weight, at the expense of range. An AC2 barely does more damage than a medium laser, at twice the range and 6x the tonnage before ammo (it's trash). An AC20 does an obscene amount of damage and stability, but its optimal range is very short. Gauss Rifles on the other hand provide a great mix of medium-high damage, stability damage, and long range murdering.

Missiles provide a good balance between damage output, heat, and weight at the expense of spreading damage on a mech. Their real specialty is stability damage. If you need a mech knocked down SRMs and LRMs are the way to do it. LRMs are great for softening up far away targets and can be fired indirectly as long as an ally has line-of-sight to the target. SRMs will utterly shred anything in close quarters and is basically the "shotgun" of Battletech until we get LBX Autocannons.

Support weapons are generally an afterthought since they all have a very short range, but should never be underestimated. Small Lasers provide additional pinpoint damage. Machine Guns have a very high critical rate which makes them excellent for destroying exposed structure. Flamers can be used to force an enemy mech to overheat and shut down, allowing your team some free called-shots.

Heatsinks: you can never have too many.

Jumpjets: see heatsinks.


Mechs (SLDF 'Royal' Mechs omitted):

Light - Self explanatory. They're fast but fragile. They will get thoroughly demolished by anything heavier than them in a toe-to-toe battle.
Recommended: FS9-H: True to its name, the Firestarter can carry a ton of Flamers which makes it a great crowd-control mech.

Medium - A good compromise between speed, durability, and firepower. They're reliable in many cases but eventually you'll want to graduate to heavy mechs.
Recommended: HBK-4G: a one-trick-pony with an AC20, great for deleting small/medium mechs / SHD-2H: a good jack-of-all-trades mech / KTO-18: SRMs all day / WVR-6R: jumpjets and SRMs make it a great flanker and ambusher.

Heavy - Slower than medium mechs at the expense of more tonnage and armor, there's no situation where bringing a Heavy Mech is a bad idea.
Recommended: GHR-5H: lasers and jumpjets make this great for burning down mechs from unexpected angles / TDR-5SE: a bigger, angrier WVR-6R, load it with SRMs and shred the opposition / ON1-K: a brutal brawler, it can put assault mechs through the wringer / ON1-V: a fantastic LRM platform.

Assault - Big, slow, and angry, Assault mechs are designed to KILL KILL KILL. They are heavily armed and armored.
Recommended: STK-3F: LRMs all day, shower the enemy in missiles / HGN-733/P: both Highlander variants have flexible build options and jumpjet capabilities, giving them additional mobility / KGC-0000: big, mean, and can dual-wield AC20s, it exists to end other mechs as soon as it's in range.

Horace Kinch fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Feb 26, 2019

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Warmachine posted:

I'm having a bit of a difficult time wrapping my head around progression of mechs. And, I suppose, what each weapon category is designed for. Does anyone have a good writeup that talks about weapon and mech design philosophy?

Here's the short version. There will be caveats here and there, and I"ll mention a few, but the rules of thumb hold:

Mech progression is pretty linear. Lights are worse than mediums which are worse than heavies which are worse than assaults. Bigger mechs hold more armor and more weapons. The caveats to this come on the edges of the weight classes. The heavy versions of a lighter class tend to be better than the light versions of the next one up due to how initiative works. So a Orion, at 75 tons is, all things being equal, going to be a bit better than an 80 ton Victor. Note that some mechs just suck because they've over-engined. You'll figure this out when you realize you can put a relatively low amount of weapons on them. The Dragon is the platonic ideal of this - it's a heavy that's markedly worse than most mediums.

The weapons are all more or less equal paths to the same goal. People will pipe up with their optimized builds involving all SRMs and medium lasers, but the single player isn't crazy enough that you can't use what you want.

Lasers: innate accuracy bonus, lots of heat, deals no stability damage, usually good weight: damage ratio that is somewhat offset by high heat. No ammo needed.
Autocannons: needs ammo. Low heat for all the damage. The heaviest ones are the beefiest weapons in the game. Does a fair bit of stab damage. OK-ish damage:tonnage ratio
SRMs: short range missiles. Great damage to tonnage ratio. Missiles will hit a few different locations on a mech, so you're not focusing your fire as much. Good all around meat and potato weapon. Does lots of stab damage.
LRMs: long range missiles. Deal less individual damage than SRMs. Capable of firing over obstacles if you have a spotter. Spreads damage like SRMs. Medium stab damage. Has its niche but you need to focus around making a fire support mech to really leverage them fully.
PPCs: basically an energy weapon that has a really low heat:damage ratio but does stab damage. Fucks up the enemy's targeting a bit. OK damage. Probably the weakest weapon in the game right now, but still feasible in SP if you just like them (lots of people just like PPCs)
Gauss rifles: very rare. Like REALLY rare. very long range, high damage, obscenely low heat. Great all around weapon that is really only held back by the fact that they're so loving rare.
Support weapons: Small Lasers and machine guns. These are super short range but you can fire them at the same time you melee attack. They're too short range to be much use otherwise, but you can make some MEAN builds where you punch and shoot people to death at the same time using them.

Beyond that you have some additional lostech weapons that are rare (pulse lasers, ER lasers) but you'll figure them out if you find any. You also have improved versons of each weapon designated by +, ++, or +++. These add accuracy bonuses, bonus damage, etc. The best versions can get loving MEAN.

The heart of building your mechs is going to be balancing your damage output with the amount of heat you generate. Your mech's ability to store and dissipate heat is the main "resource" that you end up managing. A good rule of thumb is that you should be able to fire all your weapons at least 2 turns in a row, ideally 3, before either stopping to cool off or, ideally, falling back to using only some of your weapons so you can finish out the fight. If you're beefy enough using melee combat is also a great way to bleed heat.

Warmachine
Jan 30, 2012



A bunch of good advice, lots of it confirming my first impressions.

I guess where I am at is that I haven't really settled on a strategy. I'm only 3 missions into the campaign, so my mech pool isn't very broad. My current lance seems really good at generating tons of salvage, but things can get dicey quick.

The tonnage borders I didn't really get until one of my pilots got geeked in a Dragon. Where I am at I usually run one heavy, two medium, and one light (An FS9-H, loaded with MG/ML and jump jets). My heavy is a TDR-5SS loaded with ML and armor. The mediums are my flex picks, though I usually don't leave the barn without a SDH-2D that I have loaded with SRMs and armor.

I am convinced though that jump jets are king. The ability to stack evasion even on heavily armored mechs for a few points of heat saves me tons of repair bills. I need to sit down and put together an AC/20 carrier that isn't a Hunchback. The stock one is too slow for my liking. I guess I like speed?

edit: I know the story and writing isn't exactly a shining example of games as art, but an exchange between the commander and a nearly-dead MechWarrior who has been laid up in bed for three months is pretty :3:

Warmachine fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Feb 26, 2019

Conspiratiorist
Nov 12, 2015

17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth sixth some day

Warmachine posted:

I'm having a bit of a difficult time wrapping my head around progression of mechs. And, I suppose, what each weapon category is designed for. Does anyone have a good writeup that talks about weapon and mech design philosophy?

- Take the Bulwark skill (Guts 5) on everyone.
- Never leave ammo in the center torso.
- Max head and front CT/ST armor on all your mechs. Arms too if they have any weapons on them.
- Dedicated LRM boats can afford to have less than max armor if it means packing more tubes (ie CN9-A with 2xLRM20 + 4 tons ammo), but be judicious.
- SRMs and MLas are the the best general weapons, followed by AC20 and LRMs (which are more specialized, and benefit from having the mech+pilot built around them). LLs are good, AC5s less so. The rest range from bad to really bad and are just very rarely worth bothering with.
- Support Weapons (SLas, MGs) are exceptionally damage efficient, but it's dangerous to get into melee range once you start running into 55+ ton mechs on the regular. Note a melee hit strips 2 evasion pips if you have support weapons equipped.
- Ammo goes in the legs. They are tough and have a low chance to get hit compared to other sections, and while getting crit and knocked down sucks, it sucks more to get crit and instantly lose several rare weapon variants.

- Jump Jets go in the torsos. Even if you lose your legs you can still jump just fine - unless you also put your JJs in the legs, ensuring your mobility is compromised no matter what.
- If playing correctly you shouldn't be taking any unintentional rear shots at all, such that when you do it should be a calculated risk (ie a few potshots), therefore you don't need much back armor. I slap in just enough to block a medium laser so that I don't immediately start rolling criticals in such a case.
- Empty side torsos, on the other hand, need no such protection. If the enemy hits them and starts doing structure there, that's a net win - means you didn't get hit on the bits you actually care about.
- Lopsided builds are better than more distributed designs. If you have nothing on the right arm and nothing on the right torso, that's 29.6% of hits going on fully expendable sections. It's effectively ablative HP.

Empty segments, and putting ammo away from your weapons, gives you much better control over your HP. It's what makes designs like the Menturion so good in this game - it both punches above its weight with an efficient weapons package, and has the structure of its arms and right torso as entirely disposable HP.



The good skill combos atm:
Guts 1 / Tactics 2 (general use)
Guts 2 / Pilot 1 (brawlers and skirmishers)
Guts 1 / Gunnery 2 (AC20 mediums and LRM builds only)

Echoing/elaborating on what was said earlier, mech progression is generally linear (bigger is better), with the following caveats:
- All mechs at the bottom of their respective weight class are bad compared to their near peers, with the exception of the AWS-8T which is okay.
- The Crab, Hatchetman, Trebuchet, and Banshees all have less available pod space than their peers, sometimes combined with unfortunate hardpoints, and as a result range from bad to awful.
- Missiles > Energy > Ballistics, broadly speaking, so Energy+Ballistic mechs are at the lower rungs of the totem pole for their weight.

Skippy McPants
Mar 19, 2009

I think Guts 2/Pilot 1 win over Guts 1/Tac 2 since the skill rework. Coolant Vent is a universally good skill, maybe second best after the obvious best Bulwark and it's crazy they put them both in the same tree.

Cardiac
Aug 28, 2012

So once I have a full 90+ ton assault lance in career mode, is there anything left than to go crab hunting?

Also, how do I get rep back for a fraction that hates me?

Conspiratiorist
Nov 12, 2015

17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth sixth some day

Cardiac posted:

So once I have a full 90+ ton assault lance in career mode, is there anything left than to go crab hunting?

Also, how do I get rep back for a fraction that hates me?

1. Doing the Flashpoints.
2. Go look for low difficulty planets and take contracts for max rep rewards.

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ded
Oct 27, 2005

Kooler than Jesus

Cardiac posted:

So once I have a full 90+ ton assault lance in career mode, is there anything left than to go crab hunting?

Also, how do I get rep back for a fraction that hates me?

You get points for them hating you.

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