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OddObserver posted:Except the special heavy metal special campaign ones, which don't respawn, and doesn't list when they expire, either. They never expire.
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May 16, 2020 15:12
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RBA Starblade posted:They never expire. Unless that changed in 1.9, I found out the hard way that they do; at least the latter ones.
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May 16, 2020 15:36
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The timeout (in game files) is 1250, I can only imagine that number is in days. So I guess start the HM flashpoint before your career countdown is over. Prototype and Unwelcome Guests have 300 day timeouts, and everything else is no expiration. Maybe 1.8 when heavy metal came out the timeout was lower?
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May 16, 2020 16:07
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Are we sure this isn't another case of the HM flashpoints spawning on planets with black markets and being easy to miss as a result? Because I have never heard of those flashpoints expiring but they can spawn places that make them hard to see on the map.
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May 16, 2020 19:20
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So apparently people solo 5-skull missions with Phoenix Hawks? How does this work exactly? And can you do it in Roguetech?
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May 17, 2020 05:42
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Finally picked this game up on sale. Holy hell the mechanics are really overwhelming at first but really fun now that I'm starting to actually grasp them. And is it just me or are missiles really bad? Even the LRM15's against beat up vehicles don't seem to really do anything.
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May 17, 2020 06:00
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The Firestarter is even more of an invincible godslayer in bexce than vanilla lmao, it's untouchable and pilots just eject left and right.
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May 17, 2020 06:27
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fennesz posted:And is it just me or are missiles really bad? Even the LRM15's against beat up vehicles don't seem to really do anything. One, they’re the best damage to weight ratio that you can really overstack up on without cooking yourself. Lasers are always better for “Jesus gently caress” amounts of damage, but if you want to just obliterate things every round without giving a poo poo about heat generation (ie, in deserts or in space), missiles are the way to go. They’re also much better at guaranteed head hits for that last point of pilot damage, the game doesn’t care how much damage is done to the head, it’ll still hurt the pilot. This is all really only true with SRMs, or a mech that’s using LRMs en masse, though. Two, indirect fire lets a pilot with decent gunnery and tactics absolutely hammer targets with more long ranged damage than their tonnage should really be able to get away with. This is really only true with a mech that’s using LRMs en masse, though. Three, stability damage. Missiles do absurd amounts of stability, and you can knock even heavy mechs on their asses by making it rain on them. This is really only true with SRMs or a mech that’s using LRMs en masse, though. Basically, don’t just throw LRM missiles onto a mech because they fit. Absolutely load a mech up with them, either exclusively or in combination with other long range weapons. Missiles suffer the most from the game rounding up damage reduction from guarding and cover, so pick your targets based on that. (Or just called shot their heads and rattle stupid motherfuckers around until the pilot is beat to death by headshots and gravity from knockdowns.) SRMs are really, really good for close range brawlers, though. Their damage per round per ton is almost twice that of LRMs, even if it takes more hard points. If you wanna see why SRMs are good, put a couple SRM 6s and some Small Lasers on something with decent armor and jump jets and have it hop around unloading into things’ backs. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 07:11 on May 17, 2020 |
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May 17, 2020 06:58
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I believe the HM flashpoints will expire, but will respawn later again. not a hundred percent. Also, missiles are sandpaper. lrms are a nice fine sandpaper, srms are a bit grittier. boating a lot of mlasers is a really high grit sandpaper. The LBX autocannons are a loving belt sander. regular ACs, large lasers, PPCs, thise are what will do a lot of damage to a single location. A lrm 15 does the same amount of damage as an ac10, but it splits the damage across fifteen location rolls. that averages to like eight damage per location, whereas the ac10 does the sixty to one location. Use LRMs at range to soften up targets. Use autocannons to punch holes. Use close range weapons, lasers, and more missiles to blow up whatever that hole exposed. Those LRMs do piss damage, but each one that hits structure can roll a crit that can disable weapons, destroy the location, pop an ammo bin, all kinds of good stuff. SRMs make great shotguns, mlasers fill tonnage and are an easy way to add damage. mlasers are really boring tho, channel your inner davion and slap as many autocannons as humanly possible into your mechs.
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May 17, 2020 07:44
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PMush Perfect posted:They’re good for a few things. This. The perfect way to look at LRM's is they should never be alone, either stick as many as can fit with some back up weapons or don't bother. The only times this doesn't apply is on mechs that equip LBX weapons because they pair really well with missiles for sanding off a ton of armor from mechs.
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May 17, 2020 08:38
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Since I relaxed about trying to hit all the Flashpoints things picked up a bit - got 3 bits of Annihilator off a market after selling my soul, and got some lucky salvage on a Warhammer so I've skipped forward a fair bit! Just need some better equipment to throw in them.
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May 17, 2020 10:23
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Thanks for the replies, definitely didn't know about the head damage thing. The few times I've used precision damage while shooting missiles I've been making the mistake of targeting the legs. I'll fool around with finding a decent mech with missile capacity and just going hog wild on SRM or LRM. That said, I finally saw a Firestarter chassis in a store and, yeah, even just looking at it made me extremely excited.
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May 17, 2020 16:54
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fennesz posted:Thanks for the replies, definitely didn't know about the head damage thing. The few times I've used precision damage while shooting missiles I've been making the mistake of targeting the legs. Targeting the legs is not a mistake if you can maneuver to get side shots. That makes it into a high-percentage attack. Understanding facing and damage locations is pretty critical. That's probably why your LRM-15 didn't do anything to a vehicle -- if you shot it from a different facing from your previous attack you aren't going to hit the locations that are already damaged. (Or you just got unlucky rolls and put the damage into a fresh spot.) Against mechs it's an even bigger deal since they have more locations. If you could take nothing but side shots for an entire fight, your opponents would have effectively 1/2 the HP. Early game, precision shot is good for 1. legging with side shots 2. trying to take out a torso location that's already in structure 3. initiative manipulation -- knock the most dangerous mech back a turn so you can avoid it 4. oh god oh god it's a hunchback, shoot at the gun and hope to get lucky Later on when you have pilots with high tactics they get bonuses to called shot accuracy, so you can start doing headshots.
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May 17, 2020 17:15
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I know BEXCE wants to draw the medium game out but doing it by just shrugging and giving every mission 2 star and up two to three lances of SLDF/Helm level heavies and assaults and elite pilots with near perfect accuracy is a pretty lovely way to do it when 1.5 is nothing but lights and maybe one medium a mission. Rip half my mechs, pilots, money, lostech e: lol I forgot good faith withdrawls give you zero salvage so staying in to even try was a trap. Guess it's back to 0.5 skull planets for another twenty hours e: Or I guess do solo duels forever because it's a guaranteed two stalker pieces with a firestarter lmao, the difficulty in this mod is hosed up RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 17:39 on May 17, 2020 |
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May 17, 2020 17:20
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Klyith posted:Understanding facing and damage locations is pretty critical. That's probably why your LRM-15 didn't do anything to a vehicle -- if you shot it from a different facing from your previous attack you aren't going to hit the locations that are already damaged. A note to this is that there's a bug of sorts where turret hits on vehicles without a turret disappear into the ether and do nothing. There is a mod to fix this, however.
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May 17, 2020 18:09
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Klyith posted:4. oh god oh god it's a hunchback, shoot at the gun and hope to get lucky Early-game Hunchback 4G tip: shoot the left torso, not the right. That's where the ammo is.
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May 17, 2020 18:53
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RBA Starblade posted:I know BEXCE wants to draw the medium game out but doing it by just shrugging and giving every mission 2 star and up two to three lances of SLDF/Helm level heavies and assaults and elite pilots with near perfect accuracy is a pretty lovely way to do it when 1.5 is nothing but lights and maybe one medium a mission. hmm there are a combination of factors here like what timeline you started in and the mission difficulty weights. So I don't think all 2 skulls would be like that. Tho with LosTech / ClanTech there are some scary opfors that simply don't exist in vanilla Overall it is harder to step up more than a half skull at a time in BTX:CE. The biggest reasons being that pilot skill gains are slower and accuracy was nerfed a bit. This is to keep from snowballing early on and having headshot machines
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May 17, 2020 19:14
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Leif. posted:So apparently people solo 5-skull missions with Phoenix Hawks? How does this work exactly? And can you do it in Roguetech? Are they just normal phoenix hawks or the royal ones? Either way evasion tanking is really strong, it kind of breaks the AI when you max out your evasion pips because they'll decide you're too hard to hit and fire a single weapon at you. Plus the cumulative hit defense (+4) from maxed out piloting and another +3 for a gyro make you legitimately hard to hit with a little evasion. A PHX-1b could easily mount a loadout that lets it do jumping alpha strikes every turn for manageable heat and pick apart a bunch of assault mechs.
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May 17, 2020 19:16
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Yeah it's funny that my firestarter would survive better than my kingcrab because it just wouldn't be hit using it's JJ's to flit around the map and rear armor shots means even assaults go down in a few volleys.
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May 17, 2020 19:24
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Coming back to play some BT, what mods should I install between Roguetech, BT Extended or BT Advanced. I mean they all have various features im interested in. Which one should I choose? Im at a bit of a loss to figure out which one I want. 
Xii fucked around with this message at 19:42 on May 17, 2020 |
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May 17, 2020 19:37
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I R SMART LIKE ROCK posted:hmm there are a combination of factors here like what timeline you started in and the mission difficulty weights. So I don't think all 2 skulls would be like that. Tho with LosTech / ClanTech there are some scary opfors that simply don't exist in vanilla 3053 start yeah. I don't mind that I got my rear end beat, I mind that the step up is, without fail, "heavies and assaults" from "three lights and a medium". That needs some smoothing. The firestarter didn't even die from the snipers tearing it to pieces though; the Hunchback did. The firestarter's pilot just said "gently caress this" and left lol. I do really like the panic mechanic. It's not as busted salvage-wise as I thought either, since there are so many different mechs you're not likely to see the things you need anytime soon, and you can't pick it all up anyway. I sold a shitload of scrap, took some cheapo missions, and now I have two crusaders and a catapult K2 so I guess let's see what happens in round 2. Clanner 5 skull missions must be a terror though.
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May 17, 2020 19:53
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Klyith posted:Targeting the legs is not a mistake if you can maneuver to get side shots. That makes it into a high-percentage attack. Thanks for the tips. I'm really enjoying the missions and how difficult they are so far. I don't even care that I'm save scumming a decent amount, I'm learning a ton each mission I roll into now.
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May 17, 2020 20:35
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I just lost Medusa and an almost-unscratched Jagermech because a Spider outmaneuvered me, got lucky and hit both M Lasers on rear center, punching through 45 armor and setting off the AC-20 ammo with the 5 damage that got through. 
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May 17, 2020 20:40
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Xii posted:Coming back to play some BT, what mods should I install between Roguetech, BT Extended or BT Advanced. So this is my own personal take; others might have different advice. All three modpacks add a fuckton of mechs and content to the career mode. The single biggest difference is how they handle the mech bay. BT Extended keeps the vanilla mechbay experience: swap and pop one missile for another, doesn't matter as long as you can handle any weight difference. BTA and Roguetech both add a lot of complexity to the mechbay to bring it closer to the tabletop experience, and RT piles on new weapons and equipment to take advantage of this. This gives you an enormous amount of flexibility in how you build out your mechs. It also is (if you're a non-tabletop player) a whole new set of systems to learn and get good at. I personally don't have the time or brainspace to handle the Roguetech mechbay. The other thing to bear in mind is that Roguetech is a metric fuckton of new content, nothing even compares. This is potentially fun: but it also means that load times can be monstrous and the game can chug. BT Extended just dropped an update that added the Clan Invasion as late-game enemies. I'm having a blast with it personally: it's basically vanilla-plus and that's everything I want out of BT. Mandatory Assembly fucked around with this message at 21:02 on May 17, 2020 |
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May 17, 2020 20:43
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PMush Perfect posted:I just lost Medusa and an almost-unscratched Jagermech because a Spider outmaneuvered me, got lucky and hit both M Lasers on rear center, punching through 45 armor and setting off the AC-20 ammo with the 5 damage that got through. I lost a double heat sink because a Wolverine got behind me, landed its ac5 on my Griffin's butt, and did nothing but turn the most valuable thing in the universe into confetti The payout was worth less than the dhs quote:The other thing to bear in mind is that Roguetech is a metric fuckton of new content, nothing even compares. This is potentially fun: but it also means that load times can be monstrous and the game can chug. Battletech Extended also chugs hard if that helps, I just get up and stretch each mission lol
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May 17, 2020 20:52
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Pornographic Memory posted:Are they just normal phoenix hawks or the royal ones? Either way evasion tanking is really strong, it kind of breaks the AI when you max out your evasion pips because they'll decide you're too hard to hit and fire a single weapon at you. Plus the cumulative hit defense (+4) from maxed out piloting and another +3 for a gyro make you legitimately hard to hit with a little evasion. A PHX-1b could easily mount a loadout that lets it do jumping alpha strikes every turn for manageable heat and pick apart a bunch of assault mechs. Yeah Royal ones, though I still don't understand how it works. Do you jump in close and shoot, or from a distance? Called shots? I keep hearing different methods.
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May 17, 2020 21:04
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RBA Starblade posted:3053 start yeah. I don't mind that I got my rear end beat, I mind that the step up is, without fail, "heavies and assaults" from "three lights and a medium". That needs some smoothing. CDR-3L's are money and will carry you a long time if you get SRM++'s in there. 3R's are still good but jump jets turn them into backstabbing machines I started a new campaign and am pretty pumped about having a better late game state with clans around. I tended to lose interest after getting 2-3 assaults and being able to roll over opfors I too want to see what a 5 skull clan assassination mission spawns 
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May 17, 2020 21:16
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Xii posted:Coming back to play some BT, what mods should I install between Roguetech, BT Extended or BT Advanced. I far prefer the mods that use the MechEngineer mechbay (That's the one that lets you swap engines, which is what BT:A and roguetech do afaik). The extra customization ability just makes so many more mechs usable, and lets you use stuff that looks cool even if it's a mech that would be a turd otherwise. I haven't tried a roguetech career at all yet, so I can't comment there. I've just about finished one in BT:A, which I enjoy a great and balances clans well. In normal HBS battletech, the armor values are a bit off kilter from TT- The amount of max frontal armor you can put on your torsos in normal battletech is the amount that you have to split between front and rear in normal TT. So normal Battletech allows you to effectively have much more heavily armored torsos than in the TT game. But Clan mechs in BT:A adhere to the TT rules, so they're effectively much more fragile. Their weapons are also good, obviously, because they're lighter and do more damage, but they've been tweaked to be typically hotter and closer range than the IS equivalents. Also, Omnimechs not being able to mount the extremely good high level +defense Gyros is a really significant drawback. My only problem with BT:A is now that I'm in extreme endgame, Battletech itself just tends to eat poo poo if I try and play more than 1, maybe two missions in a row. Like the actual mission works fine, but then after selecting salvage and sitting on the loading screen to return to the Argo, the game just crashes out with a UnityPlayer.dll access violation error in my windows event log. This didn't really happen until I started endgame running around Clan space taking on missions with 20 enemy mechs. I can't really blame the mod for this, but it's definitely a factor.
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May 17, 2020 21:36
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I R SMART LIKE ROCK posted:CDR-3L's are money and will carry you a long time if you get SRM++'s in there. 3R's are still good but jump jets turn them into backstabbing machines I don't have a lot atm so my one 3L has a shitload of medium pulse lasers, srms6s, small lasers (no upgrades yet sadly), and heat sinks and it's just an ultra-banshee and I love it. The other I just got and is iirc without looking an lrm 50 with lasers to back up the newly crippled catapult K2 with an uac5 and an ac5 (formerly a sldf uac5 but it exploded with the hunchback rip). The thing I love about BEXCE though is that it's just Battletech But More. I like the core gameplay, so just a handful of changes and quirks for mechs and pilots and this and that is perfect. TBH I don't care about swapping out engines with what we have right now but I'm coming from MW4. quote:In normal HBS battletech, the armor values are a bit off kilter from TT- The amount of max frontal armor you can put on your torsos in normal battletech is the amount that you have to split between front and rear in normal TT. So normal Battletech allows you to effectively have much more heavily armored torsos than in the TT game. But Clan mechs in BT:A adhere to the TT rules, so they're effectively much more fragile. Their weapons are also good, obviously, because they're lighter and do more damage, but they've been tweaked to be typically hotter and closer range than the IS equivalents. This explains a lot about MW5.
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May 17, 2020 22:04
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RBA Starblade posted:
Well..... Nothing explains MW5, really, because adhering to any form of numbers for weapons and armor from TT in a game where you can actually aim is pure lunacy. What should be actually important is maintaining the feel of weapons (PPCs are slow firing heavy damage sniper guns, etc) while using numbers that actually make sense for an FPS.
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May 17, 2020 22:18
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RBA Starblade posted:This explains a lot about MW5. IIRC PGI's Mechwarrior games simply double the armor (and structure) points from tabletop, but you do still have a cap per component that is shared between front and back. MWO builds often have shockingly low amounts of back armor to put it all up front, though MW5 builds are somewhat more reasonable because AIs can take friendly fire and are stupid so they shoot each other in the back a lot.
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May 17, 2020 22:27
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PMush Perfect posted:Missiles suffer the most from the game rounding up damage reduction from guarding and cover, so pick your targets based on that. I'm pretty sure that the game calculates fractional damage correctly, only the floating numbers are rounded up or down. Hannibal Rex fucked around with this message at 23:15 on May 17, 2020 |
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May 17, 2020 23:11
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Just when I thought I was getting better at this game, I'm getting dumpstered in the lowest difficulty missions I can find. Over and over I'm facing squads of full durability mechs that outnumber us at least 2 or 3:1. Maybe I'm just getting bad missions.
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May 18, 2020 03:27
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post your fits
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May 18, 2020 04:01
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PMush Perfect posted:I just lost Medusa and an almost-unscratched Jagermech because a Spider outmaneuvered me, got lucky and hit both M Lasers on rear center, punching through 45 armor and setting off the AC-20 ammo with the 5 damage that got through. What did we learn from this?
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May 18, 2020 06:47
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Conspiratiorist posted:What did we learn from this? Edit: Also "watch the flanks" and "Spiders are assholes." In my defense, I was focus firing a Hunchback at the time. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 06:55 on May 18, 2020 |
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May 18, 2020 06:50
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Lazyhound posted:post your fits Vindicator with a PPC & L Laser Centurion with M Laser, AC5, AC2 and some SRM Blackjack with two AC2 and 4 M Laser Panther with PPC and 3 M Laser Also have the following stock Mechs: 2 Jenner, Spider, Javelin, 2 Commando, and two flavors of Locusts. I've done three different missions now that are the easiest on the board. Banged my head into a wall for an hour or so on each before conceding defeat. I have ~2M in the bank, should I just roam and look for better mechs/weapons? I do have a snub PPC+ in my inventory, just haven't slotted it in yet. e: Just reading my Vindicator setup makes me think I need to retool it. I think I'll try throwing the PPC Snub+ on it and just turn it into a close range shotgunner with as many M or S lasers I can cram onto it. Changed it to this, I think that should help me a bit as I can toss my other non-gunner on it and he should be a lot more effective. 
fennesz fucked around with this message at 07:01 on May 18, 2020 |
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May 18, 2020 06:56
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SRMs on the Centurion instead of ACs, the Snubbie is fine to use but otherwise put Large Lasers instead of PPCs. Swap LLs in for the ACs on the Blackjack. Swap in the Jenner instead of the Panther, 4 MLs, max armor and jump jets should see you through.
anakha fucked around with this message at 07:03 on May 18, 2020 |
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May 18, 2020 07:00
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Never use PPCs nor AC2s.
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May 18, 2020 07:02
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Conspiratiorist posted:Never use PPCs nor AC2s. anakha posted:SRMs on the Centurion instead of ACs, the Snubbie is fine to use but otherwise put Large Lasers instead of PPCs. Swap LLs in for the ACs on the Blackjack. Swap in the Jenner instead of the Panther, 4 MLs, max armor and jump jets should see you through. Done and done. Was using PPCs a lot because it felt like the only weapon punching through and stripping limbs. Refitted my squad and feel like they should do a lot better. Glad I had the money in the bank to sit here for a month and refit. I should probably change my Vindicator to keep the LL but I'll see how this snub does first.
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May 18, 2020 07:10
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