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Klyith posted:Disagree. The assassin & vulkan are great for killing lights at the start of career, so they're probably the better mechs to get from the crate. But the phoenix hawk is real good later on though. Or you can slap a COIL-L on an Assassin and solo anything short of an assault.
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Dec 12, 2019 14:56
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After they patched the game yesterday, is anyone else having *everything* show up in the skirmish mechbay? Or is this just me because some mod is loving up the blacklisting function?Jedit posted:Or you can slap a COIL-L on an Assassin and solo anything short of an assault. The coils are ridiculous, but a) pretty sure a phoenix hawk can also sprint far enough to max evasive pips, and b) you can do the same with a Cicada.
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Dec 12, 2019 15:27
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Yeah, but the Cicada doesn't ignore 3 pips of evasion.
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Dec 12, 2019 15:35
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If you're sprinting with a phoenix hawk aren't you missing the whole point
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Dec 12, 2019 15:44
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Xarbala posted:Now that all the DLC is out I'm thinking of picking up BT Extended myself. The creator of BTX: CE has said Clans are next big inclusion but they'll be optional. Though I think it may be a bit before that happens I'm loving BTX: CE and the overall balance changes. Really does feel like a natural extension of the base game. With the inclusion of timeline progression, it gives the endgame better depth with the opfor changing along with your squad Also I think keeping engine swaps out was a good decision
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Dec 12, 2019 16:10
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BTW with the new flashpoint missions I like how it's a regular thing now that basically everyone who sees the Argo is aware it's the easiest target in the galaxy to pin down because it's giant, fat, and unarmed and unarmored. Half the justification for FPs right now are "we have a lot of missile systems aimed at you now slog through three missions to get to the sensor array" or "MY ship can shoot so let's talk". Not to mention the routine pirate raid  It's a nice justification for why you don't see more of it around beyond "they only made a couple". They only made a couple, and also it sucks for mercenary work beyond having a gigantic hold full of death robots.
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Dec 12, 2019 16:14
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Xarbala posted:Now that all the DLC is out I'm thinking of picking up BT Extended myself. Out of curiosity, what did they ignore or change? They did mention that they had to make some changes to the lore (It's basically a what-if time line if the clans showed up sooner so they can incorporate literally the entirety of the canon and semi-canon world into the game. Basically, an all versus all war with brief ententes as a result.) so as to enable stuff that wouldn't be possible without stretching the content out over several games/dynamic multiplayer maps. But I always thought that was kinda understandable. It's a design limitation of the lore, unfortunately. If I have a complaint about Roguetech it's that the Clans have perhaps the most deceptively brutal start. You start out with a bunch of junkers facing clantech mechs if you aren't willing to piss off the pirates. And since the closest place that'll be likely to let you get friendly with the pirates is liable to be literally hundreds of solar systems away since everyone starting out gangs up on them to get their initial gear there's no pirate controlled planets in Clan space. Which means you lock yourself out of the black market and had better get those upgrades to fend off pirates in random events ASAP. Then once you get your sick rear end super mechs you may want to go crusading in the Inner Sphere. Except...Oops, they actually modeled the pilgramage into the spheres. It's a brutal travel that drains money from your expenses. And at this point Davion and Steiner aligned players/mercs know they've got to plug the two chokepoints that let Clanners get in or they'll start loving up the Inner Sphere in very short order. So you had best be coordinating with other players to literally re-enact one of the big clan invasion if you want to not get trounced and be penniless in uninhabited space. It's entirely realistic to the lore and is a good counterbalance to how OP clan tech mechs are. If you see a player coming out of clan space on the map you know they're hardcore as gently caress since they went through a ton of uphill battles to get them. But goddamn are those some brutal gut punches if you go in thinking being a Clanner is going to be easy mode. Especially the actual travel out of clan space. Unless you knew how arduous that was in the canon (and know that the mod takes poo poo like that seriously) you're going to have a bad time. Also, what expansions are must haves at this point? I have none of them and am contemplating picking them up come the Christmas sale if they're on sale. Archonex fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Dec 12, 2019 |
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Dec 12, 2019 16:15
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Cease to Hope posted:The Catapult C4 is still an absolutely brutal SRM brawler. If you can get a four-missile Catapult or Jagermech, it's still a pro choice. The ARC-2S (unlike the 2R) has 4 missile hardpoints, like the C4. I think it has 4 energy hardpoints too. It doesn't make the C4 bad. It just means that the 2S can do everything it can better.
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Dec 12, 2019 16:26
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I R SMART LIKE ROCK posted:
I am about as diehard as possible with customization, but even I think that you don't really lose all thaaaat much by restricting engine swaps in HBS Battletech. It would be abysmal if this was a first person style Mechwarrior game, but in a hex/grid based game it's just not as big a deal. In MWO there was a lot of room for minute optimization where larger engines also made you more maneuverable or maybe you wanted to bump from a 300 to 325 in your atlas to fit that last extra engine heatsink, but those aren't big factors in HBS Battletech play. The only place I feel like engine swaps really have an example to shine is in either fixing the really awful outlier mechs (Dragon, Banshee, somewhat Battlemaster, Cicada), or to let you create a machine to easily fill a backline sniper/LRM boat role, where you just downgrade the engine because it doesn't need to be able to keep up with your shorter ranged units. That's pretty much all I've ever used engine swaps for in my modded playthroughs of stuff like XLRP that uses Mech Engineer and so on.
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Dec 12, 2019 16:29
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I did the all-Urbies deathmatch flashpoint, that's the quality I expect from everything from now on.
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Dec 12, 2019 17:21
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Organ Fiend posted:The ARC-2S (unlike the 2R) has 4 missile hardpoints, like the C4. I think it has 4 energy hardpoints too. It doesn't make the C4 bad. It just means that the 2S can do everything it can better. Yeah, I noticed the same issue involing the 2D Shadow Hawk compared to the standard 2H. The stock 2D is garbage, but the hardpoints for it are basically the 2H But More, so there's no reason to keep a standard 2H once you've scrounged up the parts for a 2D. Likewise with the -101 Assassin vs the -21. The 101 is everything the 21 is But Better.
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Dec 12, 2019 17:51
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A customized Shadow Hawk 2D is one of my favorite builds and one of the easiest stock builds to totally annihilate Go all in on lasers, missiles, mgs, and jets and you're golden. I've never made a 2H I was particularly happy with but I always try to keep the AC on it and that just eats up most of its space. RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Dec 12, 2019 |
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Dec 12, 2019 17:59
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RBA Starblade posted:A customized Shadow Hawk 2D is one of my favorite builds and one of the easiest stock builds to totally annihilate 2H is helped with UAC/LB-X ACs, even the best AC5+++ is very  But yeah, the 2D is much easier to make a good mech with.
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Dec 12, 2019 18:04
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The Argo really strikes me as something that would be great as a centerpiece for a legitimate powerful fleet/military group rather than as an independent mercenary ship. It has a huge 'sustain' capability with the grav decks and the onboard manufacturing facilities along with a deep cargo hold, but it has to stay in orbit and is utterly at the mercy of any armed dropship. It would be super handy to bring along with a dropship mobile regiment with lots of aerospace cover but as an independent mercenary vessel you are just asking for the first baron who has two Leopards or something to steal it and sell it in order to become (for a bumpkin baron) turborich.
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Dec 12, 2019 18:26
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Early in my career I found the mod out of an Assassin that lets a mech ignore evasion on sale for $500k. I put it on a Cataphract and many tears were harvested as acted as my butcherer of lights. On its very last mission before I replaced it with a Black Knight, the Cataphract got it's torso blown off by a lucky AC20 and I lost the mod. How screwed am I? I have only seen one of those anywhere. I badly want another one.
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Dec 12, 2019 18:31
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So I bought the season pass and started a new career. Do the DLCs activate later in the game? I just did the mission to get the Argo. But wanna make sure I didn't forget to enable them or something.
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Dec 12, 2019 18:31
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Popete posted:So I bought the season pass and started a new career. Do the DLCs activate later in the game? I just did the mission to get the Argo. But wanna make sure I didn't forget to enable them or something. You wanna be playing in career mode, not the campaign. By default none of the flashpoints activate until after you finish the whole campaign, which sucks. Career mode with all the flashpoints is where all the expansions really shine.
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Dec 12, 2019 18:40
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Fender posted:Early in my career I found the mod out of an Assassin that lets a mech ignore evasion on sale for $500k. I put it on a Cataphract and many tears were harvested as acted as my butcherer of lights. On its very last mission before I replaced it with a Black Knight, the Cataphract got it's torso blown off by a lucky AC20 and I lost the mod. That can even show up?
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Dec 12, 2019 18:41
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Gwaihir posted:You wanna be playing in career mode, not the campaign. By default none of the flashpoints activate until after you finish the whole campaign, which sucks. Career mode with all the flashpoints is where all the expansions really shine. Oh dang, so I won't see any of the DLC until after I beet the campaign? I never beat it before so I figured I'd go thru it again. What about city battles and all the new mechs?
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Dec 12, 2019 18:53
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Popete posted:Oh dang, so I won't see any of the DLC until after I beet the campaign? I never beat it before so I figured I'd go thru it again. You absolutely see city battles along with the new mechs and equipment. Along with a bunch of new contract types that were definitely not in at release.
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Dec 12, 2019 18:55
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Ok cool, I'd like to beat the campaign so I'll just keep going with it. I can wait to see flashpoints until then.
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Dec 12, 2019 19:00
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Yeah, new gear, new missions, new biomes, etc all show up. It's just the flashpoints that won't, but the flashpoints are a huge thing and probably the best single part of the expansions. e: There's a simple mod to turn on flashpoints at the start of the campaign too. They really work best that way because a ton of them are set up for lighter or earlier game lances. Gwaihir fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Dec 12, 2019 |
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Dec 12, 2019 19:00
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Archonex posted:Also, what expansions are must haves at this point? I have none of them and am contemplating picking them up come the Christmas sale if they're on sale. Just get the whole set with the season pass, each of the expansions adds something good. Urban warfare is the weak link 'cause ECM isn't very interesting, but the city maps are loads of fun. Also there's this option which is apparently a legit site: Q_res posted:WinGameStore has the base game for $9.59 and the Season Pass for $27.90 if any of you have been on the fence about any of those. Popete posted:So I bought the season pass and started a new career. Do the DLCs activate later in the game? I just did the mission to get the Argo. But wanna make sure I didn't forget to enable them or something. The Flashpoints don't activate until after the plot campaign is done. There's a simple mod a bunch of pages back to make them available during the campaign, but IMHO it's better to just try to complete the plot quickly and then do the career mode to do flashpoints. (The plot missions get really easy if you spend a lot of time doing other stuff and building up the ultimate force.) Everything else in the DLCs is new mechs, new terrain, and other stuff that shows up any time. Gwaihir posted:I am about as diehard as possible with customization, but even I think that you don't really lose all thaaaat much by restricting engine swaps in HBS Battletech. It would be abysmal if this was a first person style Mechwarrior game, but in a hex/grid based game it's just not as big a deal. Agreed. If they do Battletech 2 and have XL engines I think they should rethink the criticals system & interaction with engines etc. Crits are really de-emphasized in the current game which is fine, but adding XL engines would need to make crits more of a factor. Also in all the stock mechs XL engines are used more to add speed than guns & armor, which would be dumb in the current game because all the small map / short sightlines / short range stuff. A game where mediums and heavies have current light movement range needs a different scale.
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Dec 12, 2019 19:09
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Yeah, I am definitely down for a total rework of that kinda stuff. Especially since it's so essential to light play. Lights without all the weight saving techs are just complete shitpiles and need so many bandaids to work well in a game like this. e: Also, to be fair, the crit interaction in this game was so meaningless because stock, we don't have endo, FF, or DHS. The Star League mechs that did have it just have it abstracted away with no crit slot usage at all. Gwaihir fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Dec 12, 2019 |
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Dec 12, 2019 19:29
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Gwaihir posted:I am about as diehard as possible with customization, but even I think that you don't really lose all thaaaat much by restricting engine swaps in HBS Battletech. It would be abysmal if this was a first person style Mechwarrior game, but in a hex/grid based game it's just not as big a deal. I still think that some kind of zoomed out metagame that involved long-distance positioning would give a useful role for over-engined mechs. If you have your magic dropship that shits you out 3 turns from a battle, your big guys lagging by one turn isn't a big deal. However, if your dropship is forced to keep a wide berth from the area (not hard to imagine), then a 100 km ground slog will really make speed matter.
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Dec 12, 2019 19:36
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I feel like we should be able to get, like, Mech Commander 2 scaled maps at the least. Where your area of operations is maybe 4x(max range of any mech scale weapon) vs the maps here, where it feels more like you're never more than 1.5x to 2x at most from max range, while in practice everything happens far closer.
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Dec 12, 2019 19:38
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my biggest ask for Btech 2 is to speed up the ai's decision making process. Any mission with multiple forces ends up with the player sitting around, for chunks of time, as the ai ponders on the most optimal decision. Which in a way accurately describes playing any tabletop game
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Dec 12, 2019 19:46
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I R SMART LIKE ROCK posted:my biggest ask for Btech 2 is to speed up the ai's decision making process. Any mission with multiple forces ends up with the player sitting around, for chunks of time, as the ai ponders on the most optimal decision. Which in a way accurately describes playing any tabletop game I'm not sure it's even AI per se. There is just a huge pause between each AI move when the enemy is outside sensor range and they're just supposed to be walking their patrol route or whatever. I think the game literally makes you wait for the time it would take for the slow walk animation to play for every individual mech that's off-screen, one after the other, unless you mash the spacebar over and over during the unseen enemy move phase.
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Dec 12, 2019 20:06
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sean10mm posted:I think the game literally makes you wait for the time it would take for the slow walk animation to play for every individual mech that's off-screen, one after the other, unless you mash the spacebar over and over during the unseen enemy move phase. It's this. It speeds it up a lot to hammer the key lol It makes it really obvious too just how many vehicles are on the map
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Dec 12, 2019 20:11
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Fender posted:Early in my career I found the mod out of an Assassin that lets a mech ignore evasion on sale for $500k. I put it on a Cataphract and many tears were harvested as acted as my butcherer of lights. On its very last mission before I replaced it with a Black Knight, the Cataphract got it's torso blown off by a lucky AC20 and I lost the mod. RBA Starblade posted:That can even show up? gently caress, that's what I thought. I even kinda suspected I got a bugged one. It had no weight, and if I hovered over it the tooltip said it was worth $0. It was magical while I had it though.
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Dec 12, 2019 20:16
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RBA Starblade posted:It's this. It speeds it up a lot to hammer the key lol I'd say it should just have off-screen enemies teleport from point to point without an artificial delay for ~immersion~ , but IIRC that was the origin of a lot of  bugs.
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Dec 12, 2019 20:17
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I appreciated HBS attempts to create new game mechanics with ECM but it was awkward as gently caress. BT needs shaking up to stay interesting though. Battletech tabletop has had glaring problems for decades, and a lot of problems in the various battletech games are inherited directly from it. Larger maps are an awful solution to differentiating engine speed. Players will stick to the speed of their slowest mech so you're just wasting their time. You could get the same result by just giving a mission a speed minimum on the basis of 'Your lance will not get there in time if it is not X fast because of how far away we have to drop you.' The role created for faster mechs in this manner would admittedly be artificial, but its not like you have to take the job in a game like this. One thing i really liked about MWO when i played it was that a good light mech could often defeat an assault mech 1v1 by virtue of being fast enough to stay out of arc and so low to the ground compared to the assault mechs perspective as to be difficult to hit anyway. Light mechs would benefit from being really good at infighting (as long as they kept their speed up) rather than avoiding it at all costs. Although I heard they changed some skill system in MWO that gave big mechs more torso twist and turn speed so get hosed locusts. Maybe larger engines should just flat out get free heat sinks to ameliorate the tonnage cost. Or a wacky secondary stat like X free weapons heat per turn that applies to firing but not to general cooling. Or just a reduction in tonnage cost! That's how XL engines worked in practice anyway....they were a backdoor redo of game mechanics. I feel like the issue with crits is that they arnt important because they dont start happening until armor is stripped. In otherwords the location is probably hosed next turn anyway, especially in BT with its called shots. 'Leaky crits' to some degree would mean they are always a risk, and make more sense anyway; a critical hit in context of 'reality' would be directly hitting a laser lens, to which armor wouldn't mean much.
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Dec 12, 2019 20:20
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Gwaihir posted:e: Also, to be fair, the crit interaction in this game was so meaningless because stock, we don't have endo, FF, or DHS. The Star League mechs that did have it just have it abstracted away with no crit slot usage at all. From my somewhat limited understanding of TT, even just comparing 3025 vs 3025 criticals are way less of a thing. Empty slots harmlessly absorb crits. All ammo is functionally CASE. No through-armor crits (except for gauss now). Engines can't be crit at all. But yeah the couple of Star League mechs are crazy OP because they just omit the extra weaknesses of that tech. OTOH I don't think the massive RNG swings of TT are a great thing to bring back in a modern strategy game. So something in between, possibly using stuff like debuffs or temporary damage that're easy for a computer game to keep track of but hell in TT. TheDeadlyShoe posted:One thing i really liked about MWO when i played it was that a good light mech could often defeat an assault mech 1v1 by virtue of being fast enough to stay out of arc and so low to the ground compared to the assault mechs perspective as to be difficult to hit anyway. Light mechs would benefit from being really good at infighting (as long as they kept their speed up) rather than avoiding it at all costs. Although I heard they changed some skill system in MWO that gave big mechs more torso twist and turn speed so get hosed locusts. A huge factor in MWO & any other first-person game is awareness. If it's possible to sneak up behind you being small and fast is an advantage that's difficult to simulate in a TT game. Evasion tries, but the only true solution is hidden pieces and off-board movement record which is just extremely bad in all TT games. Klyith fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Dec 12, 2019 |
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Dec 12, 2019 20:25
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I feel like there are almost no good uses for light/fast mechs in this game because nobody made any effort to design missions for them. In real life we don't use M1 tanks for everything. Some of that is boring practical/cost considerations, but it's also just dumb to use huge fuckoff monster vehicles for missions like reconnaissance and counter-recon because they're unwieldy as gently caress. Catch a fast enemy convoy. Escort a fast friendly convoy that won't wait for you because they have a tight timeline to evac. Finish mission in X time or huge enemy reinforcements show up because gently caress you, they saw you coming, figure it out. You're doing a raid behind enemy lines using stealth drop pods that can only carry X tons per.
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Dec 12, 2019 20:38
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What about a deployment cost prior to the mission? You have to pay an opaque "maintenance/fuel/ammo" fee upfront the more tonnage you bring to a fight, it may even end up costing you more than the fight is worth if you bring 4 heavies.
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Dec 12, 2019 20:40
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Klyith posted:From my somewhat limited understanding of TT, even just comparing 3025 vs 3025 criticals are way less of a thing. Empty slots harmlessly absorb crits. All ammo is functionally CASE. No through-armor crits (except for gauss now). Engines can't be crit at all. But yeah the couple of Star League mechs are crazy OP because they just omit the extra weaknesses of that tech. Engines are sorta a very separate case vs the other weight saving but space occupying techs. XL engines used up twice the space in TT but made losing your side torso a guaranteed mech kill. So yeah, without engine crits existing in this they would have to bring some downside to the XL engine back. (I would just do what PTN does in his revamped Battletech thread, where engine crits now need 4 to kill a mech, but each hit reduces your heat sinking capacity by 3. (So that would be 9 less heat sinked per turn per crit in HBS terms). The other stuff had no tradeoffs at all in combat effects. it couldn't get crit or anything, and it didn't pad out areas to protect ammo from getting crit or whatnot. The trade off was always just to building your mech itself and simply running out of space. IS Endosteel and FF armor takes a TON of space, combined with DHS.  This Mech only has 3 weapons, and no heat sinks outside the engine (It has a 280 engine, so it can fit 11 sinks internally), and it still only has 4 crit slots free. That's while also using heavy FF armor, which takes more crit slots than normal, but normal IS FF armor is loving trash, so that's ok. In practice, it means that you might opt for a couple of the weight saving techs on a mech that uses fewer, heavier weapons like ballistics, but for stuff like energy loadouts that need to be filled to the brim with DHS, you're typically able to build something better by not using every weight saving tech out there.  That's the campaign's Royal Highlander for an example, too. It's only got 5 free slots in TT terms, but is totally open with a ton of space in HBS tech.
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Dec 12, 2019 20:45
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Gwaihir posted:
Am I the only weirdo who puts a Gauss+ in their 732b and uses the weight savings for a missile TTS+ make up for the fact that the game doesn't account for Artemis IV? 
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Dec 12, 2019 20:54
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Popete posted:What about a deployment cost prior to the mission? You have to pay an opaque "maintenance/fuel/ammo" fee upfront the more tonnage you bring to a fight, it may even end up costing you more than the fight is worth if you bring 4 heavies. generic fees are dumb and bad no one will bother dropping a lighter mech to make a small bit more money. Actual mission diversity and greater class specialization is a good choice, but that's also not what Battletech as it exists is designed for. It's pretty strictly big = better without a ton of specialty techs that were not introduced until much later in-universe time. To actually make lights worth a poo poo in terms of keeping one in your lance, when you yourself have limited numbers, it'd mean totally re-doing the scaling battletech has for internals and armor from light to assault, along with stuff like the melee damage formula, engine ratings, and so on. I think it's a good idea, personally, but the type of people who typically play Battletech are seemingly VERY INVESTED in the exact stuff like the Dragon always having a 300 engine and moving this speed and being a pile of poo poo while the Cicada has a 320 engine that goes THIS speed (and also being a pile of poo poo). So never changing anything at all is the most safe option. Gwaihir fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Dec 12, 2019 |
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Dec 12, 2019 20:57
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sean10mm posted:Catch a fast enemy convoy. Escort a fast friendly convoy that won't wait for you because they have a tight timeline to evac. Finish mission in X time or huge enemy reinforcements show up because gently caress you, they saw you coming, figure it out. You're doing a raid behind enemy lines using stealth drop pods that can only carry X tons per. These are things that often have a big negative reaction from players -- look at Xcom2 which had turn limits on most missions to encourage aggressive play and taking risks. It got a lot of negative player reviews on steam for them because people didn't like the pressure. Personally I love that type of artificial bad situation, but it can still be a bit frustrating when you don't understand the hidden rules. For example, I just recently played an attack & defend mission for the first time. It went... poorly for a few of my mechs because I took the objectives too literally and tried to do too many things at once. Next time I play one I'll know what to do. Gimmick scenarios fall in that trap a lot. (Also they did add missions with drop limits.) Popete posted:What about a deployment cost prior to the mission? You have to pay an opaque "maintenance/fuel/ammo" fee upfront the more tonnage you bring to a fight, it may even end up costing you more than the fight is worth if you bring 4 heavies. At some point the most obvious answer is to just do the Clans thing and say "they're bringing these 4 mechs, you need to stay under X tons". Gwaihir posted:TT mech lab Cool stuff!
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Dec 12, 2019 21:16
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Random topic: so we've established that trading usable tonnage for speed in this game is poo poo. Yet it seems like a lot of people seem to value the 55t mechs equally or higher than the 50t hunchback/centurion/enforcer even though the 55 toners... give up usable tonnage for speed. Is there something I'm missing here?
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Dec 12, 2019 21:30
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