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OK, so I need some advice on mods. I've played vanilla/minimally modded career mode games a bunch of times and want to spice things up some without drastically changing everything. I don't want another 400 mech variants (with all the DLC the amount of stuff is just about right for me), and I don't want to spend more of my game having Locusts shooting at each other and missing all the time. I don't really care about being ~authentic~ to table top rules. So most of the mega-mods don't appeal to me at all. I don't want to crap on the work people put into those, but just having MORE THINGS isn't my thing. Galaxy at War seems cool. I used SLDF Incoming once and liked it. Anything that adds mission variety, or new flashpoints that are actually good, or ups the difficulty a little without it just being cheap "Assaults in 2 skull missions" or "Everyone has half the hit % of vanilla" would be good.
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May 19, 2020 14:24
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You can get three of the Hyades Rim flashpoints as standalone mods, but I haven't gotten to them yet, so I can't tell you how good they are. I really like Mission Control, for livening things up a bit. Sometimes you get an allied lance that makes things easier, sometime the Opfor gets one (for a +75% cash reward) that makes things harder, sometimes you get both for a major battle. It also has a bunch of new contract types. But you also get situations where enemies spawn right next to you ( both sides start with 6 evasion in that case), and you can definitely get in unwinnable fights where you have to withdraw. If you can accept that, I absolutely recommend it.
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May 19, 2020 14:49
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Mission Control is pretty neutered by default in BEXCE and so far I am grateful for that
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May 19, 2020 14:52
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:big post On difficulty: there are missions where the skull rating is intentionally inaccurate, because you've got bad intel or the employer is lying. Those you can sometimes tell because you look at the payout and it seems awfully high for a 1.5 skull mission. Sometimes Darius even calls them out as being suspicious. But the much bigger thing that makes difficulty very swingy is that opponents are randomly generated. The system they use values diversity over exact balance, so if you do the same mission twice the first time you might fight vehicles plus mechs and it'll be easy, then the second time it'll be all mechs and hard. And then not all mechs are equally good -- the generator could pick a cicada 3C or a Griffin 1N for the same "role" slot, and the griffin is way better. The upshot is sometimes you get in over your head, and that's what the "withdraw" button is for. The game isn't like Xcom at all, there's a minor penalty for totally failing a mission and if you have partial success (accomplish any 1 objective) you still get partial payment. On the targeting percentages: it rounds to the nearest 5%, but it never lies in the way xcom does with secret probability manipulation. If you see a 50% chance to hit you've got a roughly 50% chance. The one thing that can be false is when you're in movement mode and hover over enemies it gives you a preview of the hit percentages, but then you do the move and the numbers are different because the LOS is obscured. On the ruleset: it feels both like a gritty sim and an abstract boardgame because that's what Battletech is. A gritty 1980s tabletop game that was trying to be a "simulation" and takes 8 hours to play. It's not at all an exact replica of TT but it's pretty faithful. On performance: yeah, it's pretty slow and janky. Buuuuut it's super modable and HBS is a pretty small team. SSDs are pretty much required for the game though.
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May 19, 2020 15:09
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Delete old saves, supposedly having tons of them hurts performance. Also it has a big ol memory leak so quit and restart the game when it starts to lag worse.
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May 19, 2020 16:20
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sean10mm posted:Delete old saves, supposedly having tons of them hurts performance. I play on ironman specifically because of that performance reason. I avoid escort missions though.
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May 19, 2020 16:34
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Think I'm going to go with Mission Control, Galaxy at War, Panic System, Little Things and Flashpoint Worthwhile Rewards and More Random Starting Mechs this time around. Will probably do EITHER higher enemy force strength in the difficulty settings, OR additional lance drops in MC, but maybe not both. Not sure which one to choose. Hate to take a 1 skull and have to fight a heavy AND have an extra lance drop in, especially since vanilla now has missions with extra enemy waves...
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May 19, 2020 19:55
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Played around with the three big modpacks and decided on BT:A 3062 based on some initial play and posts in this thread. It's hitting a really good midpoint for me between Roguetech's ludicrous detail and vanilla's comparative simplicity! (Though honestly the biggest deciding point was primarily that Roguetech made my game run like utter dogshit and have absolutely ridiculous load times - sometimes up to like three to four minutes to load a save, even on my SSD - while BT:A runs about as "well" as vanilla).
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May 19, 2020 22:52
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Klyith posted:On the targeting percentages: it rounds to the nearest 5%, but it never lies in the way xcom does with secret probability manipulation. If you see a 50% chance to hit you've got a roughly 50% chance. The one thing that can be false is when you're in movement mode and hover over enemies it gives you a preview of the hit percentages, but then you do the move and the numbers are different because the LOS is obscured. Nah, the game lies, because it's not just rounding. It pretends shot difficulty corresponds to +-5% for every +-1, but instead of rolling a d100 it actually does this:  tldr your good shots are better and your bad shots are worse than the hit chance displayed. There's a mod to fix the display out there, somewhere, since I have it. Also regarding performance, be sure to turn off windows 10 telemetry. For some reason it really fucks up some unity games, HBS Battletech included.
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May 20, 2020 00:13
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Conspiratiorist posted:Also regarding performance, be sure to turn off windows 10 telemetry. For some reason it really fucks up some unity games, HBS Battletech included. Does this mean setting it to basic or disabling it entirely in the registry?
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May 20, 2020 00:46
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Randomer Starting Mechs usually isn't overpowered if you use the lowest tonnage option, but this time it gave me a SLDF Griffin lol
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May 20, 2020 02:00
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Conspiratiorist posted:Nah, the game lies, because it's not just rounding. It pretends shot difficulty corresponds to +-5% for every +-1, but instead of rolling a d100 it actually does this: Wasn't this worked out to be 'fudging the percentages to match up with tabletop battletech 2d6 overall hit percentages?' So it lies but in a way faithful to 'hit on 7+ is 58.34% chance or so to hit?
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May 20, 2020 02:49
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poo poo, have run into a bug where the mech lab acts wierd when I drag and drop items and then won't let me revert changes or exit. Annoyingly, I'm not running any mods with anything to do with the mech lab. 
sean10mm fucked around with this message at 03:12 on May 20, 2020 |
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May 20, 2020 03:06
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Conspiratiorist posted:Nah, the game lies, because it's not just rounding. It pretends shot difficulty corresponds to +-5% for every +-1, but instead of rolling a d100 it actually does this: God damnint I think you already told me this once like a year ago and I've forgotten since then  Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:Does this mean setting it to basic or disabling it entirely in the registry? Just basic is enough. sean10mm posted:poo poo, have run into a bug where the mech lab acts wierd when I drag and drop items and then won't let me revert changes or exit. When I've had this happen it was a modded item that had errors.   Also having both of you guys posting ITT is very confusing! 
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May 20, 2020 03:18
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:Does this mean setting it to basic or disabling it entirely in the registry? Registry. It's the only way to be sure.
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May 20, 2020 03:22
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Are there any stores with double heat sinks without any mods? What sort of worlds am I looking for, I tried high skull former SLDF places but didn't seem to run into any - do they need another tag as well?
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May 20, 2020 03:29
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VodeAndreas posted:Are there any stores with double heat sinks without any mods? What sort of worlds am I looking for, I tried high skull former SLDF places but didn't seem to run into any - do they need another tag as well? You want low-skull starleague planets, not high-skull ones. If it generates an + lostech weapon it can't generate double heatsinks.
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May 20, 2020 03:33
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Doh, I was close then - yeah was seeing some tasty weapons, but right now I want DHS more. I was also taking screenshots the first couple of times my Marauder just headshot a Assault mech but there was just too many for it to be notable anymore, drat that's a nice bonus. VodeAndreas fucked around with this message at 03:41 on May 20, 2020 |
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May 20, 2020 03:38
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is this game easy to jump into blind or is background on Battletech/Mechwarrior worth having? I played the CCG very lightly a long time ago, but know nothing about the universe, mechs, weapons, mechanics, etc. so I'm wondering if there's a good "beginner's guide" or "things to know" post to check out before buying. Closest comparison I can think of is to XCOM 2 where I found there were certain mechanics or best practices not clearly explained that I needed to know to best understand the game and avoid running into early (roughly) "unwinnable" situations.
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May 20, 2020 03:57
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How...exactly do you use Mission Control? I have 3025 Extended, and would love to run a second lance. I downloaded the 1.0, and put it in the mods directory, but I don't see the option to change anything
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May 20, 2020 04:35
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PageMaster posted:is this game easy to jump into blind or is background on Battletech/Mechwarrior worth having? I played the CCG very lightly a long time ago, but know nothing about the universe, mechs, weapons, mechanics, etc. so I'm wondering if there's a good "beginner's guide" or "things to know" post to check out before buying. Closest comparison I can think of is to XCOM 2 where I found there were certain mechanics or best practices not clearly explained that I needed to know to best understand the game and avoid running into early (roughly) "unwinnable" situations. When I started playing I had very little knowledge, wasn't into the TT and didn't play the mechwarrior games back in the day. What I knew about battletech was only from general nerd osmosis (stompy mechs, inner sphere vs clans, marty-stu mercenaries). However I do have a good friend who was super into TT, RPG, books, and games in the 90s who info-dumped me once I got interested. But you could get the same thing reading sarna. The lore isn't a big deal in this game because the clans don't exist and the setting is a new minor kingdom they created for the game. Tactically it has fewer best practices than Xcom, because it's not at all the combat puzzle that Xcom is. The special abilities aren't as special. The only big "trap" is that most of the stock mechs have a mix of long, medium, and short range weapons. Don't emulate that once you start doing your own loadouts, specialization is better. The out-of-combat game doesn't have nearly as much potential for unwinnable death-spirals as Xcom can. Particularly in the campaign which dumps money on you in the plot missions regularly. GD_American posted:How...exactly do you use Mission Control? I have 3025 Extended, and would love to run a second lance. I downloaded the 1.0, and put it in the mods directory, but I don't see the option to change anything Mission Control doesn't do 2 player lances, it'll give you a lance of allies and add a lance to the enemy side. The Bigger Drops mod allows >4 on your team.
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May 20, 2020 04:45
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Does anyone who uses that real chance to hit mod know if odd numbers of Gunnery do anything at all?
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May 20, 2020 06:26
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Thanks for the advice last page y'all. Kitted out my team with SRMs and lasers as much as I could and I've just been dumping on any mission that comes my way. Took me almost 60 full days to retool my whole squad but was definitely worth it. Also is the AC20 good? I've really been enjoying running one just because it's fun to use.
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May 20, 2020 07:00
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fennesz posted:Thanks for the advice last page y'all. Kitted out my team with SRMs and lasers as much as I could and I've just been dumping on any mission that comes my way. Took me almost 60 full days to retool my whole squad but was definitely worth it. AC20 is great because of it's potential to knock out mechs in a single turn--the only thing to avoid is LBX20's because they sound great but in reality they're very sub par.
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May 20, 2020 07:17
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Hannibal Rex posted:Does anyone who uses that real chance to hit mod know if odd numbers of Gunnery do anything at all? They do. fennesz posted:Thanks for the advice last page y'all. Kitted out my team with SRMs and lasers as much as I could and I've just been dumping on any mission that comes my way. Took me almost 60 full days to retool my whole squad but was definitely worth it. AC20 is okay but you have to build around it: breaching shot + bulwark pilot, 3 tons ammo, full jump jets, and a medium laser or two as secondaries. And as with all Ballistics, the UAC20 is much better.
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May 20, 2020 07:20
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PageMaster posted:is this game easy to jump into blind or is background on Battletech/Mechwarrior worth having? I played the CCG very lightly a long time ago, but know nothing about the universe, mechs, weapons, mechanics, etc. so I'm wondering if there's a good "beginner's guide" or "things to know" post to check out before buying. Closest comparison I can think of is to XCOM 2 where I found there were certain mechanics or best practices not clearly explained that I needed to know to best understand the game and avoid running into early (roughly) "unwinnable" situations. Things that may be non-obviois that the game doesn't explain, IIRC: 1) There are 4 sides you can attack enemies from -- forward/left/right/back that are visualized by highlighting a red quarter-circle. This changes what hit probabilities are a lot --- site hits concentrate fire on that side, and back hits hit really thin back armor. 2) if you move normally, changing facing costs movement points, so you may need to do move less if you need to face in particular direction. If you use jump jets, changing facing is free. 3) After you destroy the armor in a part, you have a chance to destroy or damage equipment in that part of the mech before the party is completely destroyed. Hits to ammo have a chance of blowing that part up 4) Extra damage to destroyed parts can spill over towards the center... But I am not sure of the exact rules.
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May 20, 2020 13:43
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PageMaster posted:is this game easy to jump into blind or is background on Battletech/Mechwarrior worth having? I played the CCG very lightly a long time ago, but know nothing about the universe, mechs, weapons, mechanics, etc. so I'm wondering if there's a good "beginner's guide" or "things to know" post to check out before buying. Closest comparison I can think of is to XCOM 2 where I found there were certain mechanics or best practices not clearly explained that I needed to know to best understand the game and avoid running into early (roughly) "unwinnable" situations.  Disabled windows telemetry and got a massive performance boost, weird but won't question it! Game runs smoothly enough now, loading times are still absurd but eh. Also that firestarter build is hilarious, between that and having managed to build a Warhammer and a Catapult I feel much more capable now. Not entirely sure how to outfit the Warhammer, it comes with PPCs, medium Ls and lots of small Ls which seems like an odd mix. It performs well by mostly facetanking everything. Should the Catapult just be a LRM machine because it sounds like it should and also it seems like if you're going to go LRMs the more the better?
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May 20, 2020 13:49
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Limbs transfer to that side's torso, then to the center.
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May 20, 2020 13:50
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:Not entirely sure how to outfit the Warhammer, it comes with PPCs, medium Ls and lots of small Ls which seems like an odd mix. It performs well by mostly facetanking everything. Nothing but energy weapons as much as possible on the 'hammer, because it's Optimized Capacitors module gives a boost to energy weapon damage. That boost becomes stupid nuts if you equip it with Snub-Nose PPCs. Try to find the variants with additional damage - 2 of those on the 'hammer makes it a murder machine. Catapult is eh to ok as an LRM boat, but you can improve it by taking out the jump jets, removing energy weapons and upgrading the LRMs to 20s with sufficient ammo. Still, look to upgrade that to an Archer as soon as you can.
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May 20, 2020 14:06
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This sounds dumb, but I downloaded and installed the Bigger Drops mod, and I can tell it took because the post mission briefing has slots for 8 mechs, but on the deployment mission screen....I only see 4? How do I add the additional mechs?
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May 20, 2020 14:15
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GD_American posted:This sounds dumb, but I downloaded and installed the Bigger Drops mod, and I can tell it took because the post mission briefing has slots for 8 mechs, but on the deployment mission screen....I only see 4? How do I add the additional mechs? I'm not sure if that mod does it by default or if it's a 3062 thing, but on the Argo upgrades screen I have to upgrade the ship to support more mechs and heavier total drop weights. So check engineering?
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May 20, 2020 14:31
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PageMaster posted:is this game easy to jump into blind or is background on Battletech/Mechwarrior worth having? I played the CCG very lightly a long time ago, but know nothing about the universe, mechs, weapons, mechanics, etc. so I'm wondering if there's a good "beginner's guide" or "things to know" post to check out before buying. Closest comparison I can think of is to XCOM 2 where I found there were certain mechanics or best practices not clearly explained that I needed to know to best understand the game and avoid running into early (roughly) "unwinnable" situations. Thanks for the info everyone!
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May 20, 2020 14:40
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So in BEXCE I was excited to get a Stalker until I realized it was almost exactly on par with my 65-ton Crusaders lol Crusaders are pretty good mechs
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May 20, 2020 14:46
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Found my problem with the mechlab, I think the Battletech Performance Fixes for 1.9 change to the the mechlab was causing a conflict with something somehow. Luckily it's easy to just disable that bit and so far the problem went away.PageMaster posted:Thanks for the info everyone! Also some mechs are kind of "trap builds" because they trade speed for available tonnage and it's a poo poo tradeoff. Some of the worst culprits are the Dragon, Quickdraw, Zeus, Victor and Banshee (except the S version.) There's basically a hidden variable of engine size where making big mechs faster than "normal" costs way too many tons. sean10mm fucked around with this message at 14:54 on May 20, 2020 |
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May 20, 2020 14:47
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Conspiratiorist posted:AC20 is okay but you have to build around it: breaching shot + bulwark pilot, 3 tons ammo, full jump jets, and a medium laser or two as secondaries. And as with all Ballistics, the UAC20 is much better. That -8 recoil penalty on the UAC20 is no joke, though. If you want to use one before you have near maxed pilots and some decent TTS, you'll probably need to plan around only firing it every other turn. The basic AC20 and LBX20 only have 2 recoil, which you can pretty much ignore.
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May 20, 2020 14:55
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RBA Starblade posted:So in BEXCE I was excited to get a Stalker until I realized it was almost exactly on par with my 65-ton Crusaders lol Whaaaa? No way lol, a 3/5 85 ton mech has WAY more space for firepower and armor than a 65 ton 4/6 mech lol. The stalker actually has a lighter engine than a Crusader (not by much, like, half a ton, but still) so it's just a pure loving beast of weaponry. (Unless you got the gimpy 75 ton cut down Stalker 4P. Then you might be a little underwhelmed).
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May 20, 2020 15:48
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anakha posted:Nothing but energy weapons as much as possible on the 'hammer, because it's Optimized Capacitors module gives a boost to energy weapon damage. That boost becomes stupid nuts if you equip it with Snub-Nose PPCs. Try to find the variants with additional damage - 2 of those on the 'hammer makes it a murder machine. For raw damage the +10 damage snub PPC is comical. The Large Pulse Laser++ are kind of great on the Warwhammer too, because they can each headshot through light cover with the +20% damage boost. They're also less hot than PPCs and get +2 accuracy. It looks a little weird to have a Warhammer without huge fuckoff PPCs in the arms though. I like to mod down PPC heat some so the regular PPC isn't just a shitpile.
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May 20, 2020 15:52
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Gwaihir posted:Whaaaa? No way lol, a 3/5 85 ton mech has WAY more space for firepower and armor than a 65 ton 4/6 mech lol. The stalker actually has a lighter engine than a Crusader (not by much, like, half a ton, but still) so it's just a pure loving beast of weaponry. (Unless you got the gimpy 75 ton cut down Stalker 4P. Then you might be a little underwhelmed). My Crusader can fit LRM45 with about the same armor and ammo as the Stalker 3F doing LRM50  . My other Crusader has two m pulse lasers, 4 s lasers, and srm24 (it punches to cool), with 1240ish armor.I could under-armor the Stalker but the lances in BEXCE are insane. Maybe I just shouldn't use all the missile tubes lol e: Actually nevermind I just hosed up lol RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 16:10 on May 20, 2020 |
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May 20, 2020 16:00
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3 x LRM-15 vs 5 x LRM-10? That's the only way I think you could end up with a result like that. Never use LRM-10s.
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May 20, 2020 16:09
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Q_res posted:3 x LRM-15 vs 5 x LRM-10? That's the only way I think you could end up with a result like that. I think my mistake was that and for some reason trying to fit a ppc in also, I want to have more than a missile dump but no DHS to support any lasers if I do
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May 20, 2020 16:11
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