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DoctorTristan posted:Been playing campaign mode in vanilla after picking up the game in a sale a few months ago. I went and tanked my reputation with the Taurians to -100 because it seemed easier to just choose one faction to piss off rather than trying to keep everyone happy (plus the campaign storyline implied that the Taurians would end up hating me anyway). The Taurians are like the lowest consequence faction to tank your rep with. There are like 2 high skull planets in their entire territory, low faction rep doesn't lock you out of normal flashpoints (and there are none for the Taurians anyway), and there's no alliance flashpoint for them. I don't think they have anything special in their faction stores. Besides, there's an unlimited supply of the best weapons for the best mech in the game (++UACs, and the Annihilator, respectively) in the Davion faction store, so who cares what's in the Taurian store.
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Sep 6, 2021 17:00
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https://www.bta3062.com/index.php/Patch_Notesquote:Finally, there's a third default pilot skill, though this one is basically only for tanks right now: Careful Maneuvering. This gives you a 1-turn ability to move one hex and ignore terrain and pathing, letting you get unstuck from walls and holes and such. looks like they fixed my hovercraft issue from above. kinda sucks to start over but I feel like I have a better grasp on the overall mod
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Sep 6, 2021 17:00
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DoctorTristan posted:Cool, I’ll keep clowning on the bull people then, thanks. You can dunk on the Taurians, planetary governments and really the Magistracy too without missing anything significant in the vanilla campaign or career mode. Always maintain decent rep with the pirates for black market access and lower prices, but never ally with them outright since they are enemies with EVERYONE else and there is no upside.
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Sep 6, 2021 17:02
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Looks like air drop beacons can be bought at IS level tagged planets
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Sep 6, 2021 17:45
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FYI the BTA patch doesn’t break saves, I just continued my existing run and it’s been fine. My existing MV pilots just have access to either skill choice on level up. e: RBA Starblade posted:Looks like air drop beacons can be bought at IS level tagged planets rad, I’ll try to snag the missing one at some point there
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Sep 6, 2021 17:45
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Hauki posted:FYI the BTA patch doesn’t break saves, I just continued my existing run and it’s been fine. My existing MV pilots just have access to either skill choice on level up. yeah I just caught thanks for the hot tip. I'm glad the thread was talking about BTA as it has been pretty freshing. I think Battle Brothers is next but I may be on this train for a while
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Sep 6, 2021 18:54
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sean10mm posted:You can dunk on the Taurians, planetary governments and really the Magistracy too without missing anything significant in the vanilla campaign or career mode. I did go and look up some of the story fluff to see who were the space fascists that it would be morally defensible to murder, but it seems like that’s literally everyone.
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Sep 6, 2021 20:20
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Heads up for anyone playing 3062; if you see a "Mystery Machine" mission with Comstar as opfor, take it with max salvage. It appears to be guaranteed to spawn one of these things; Along with an assault escorting it.
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Sep 6, 2021 20:59
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LostCosmonaut posted:Heads up for anyone playing 3062; if you see a "Mystery Machine" mission with Comstar as opfor, take it with max salvage. It appears to be guaranteed to spawn one of these things; oh yeah, that was the 2 skull I did the other day with a Nighstar landing both gauss shots on my Firestarter turn 1 through the 8 evasion pips lol sadly salvage was maxed out at like 3/15 or something so I couldn’t even get a full mech out of the deal I got some of clan heavy smalls and the xl gyro in my random though at least
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Sep 6, 2021 21:03
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DoctorTristan posted:I did go and look up some of the story fluff to see who were the space fascists that it would be morally defensible to murder, but it seems like that’s literally everyone. WOB are the insane theocratic space fascists pushing the edge of transhumanism, but they’re written exactly as 2-dimensionally as that short blurb. Taurians are close in the whole glorifying strength thing. Kuritans are essentially WW2 Imperial Japan with a lot of samurai cosplay. Liao is essentially Soviet China. It’s worth remembering this whole setting was written by grognards in the 1980s, so it’s exactly as racist as you’d expect from dickholes like Blaine Pardoe. Yellow Peril is a huge theme, probably outdone only by Noblesse Oblige (usually those moral Davions).
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Sep 6, 2021 23:50
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DoctorTristan posted:I did go and look up some of the story fluff to see who were the space fascists that it would be morally defensible to murder, but it seems like that’s literally everyone. Everyone in a mech is basically a knight. Even the 'good guys' are terrible. enjoy the violence.
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Sep 7, 2021 05:41
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Hollyyyyyyyy gently caress. They have Davy Crockett rounds for the Arrow IV.
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Sep 7, 2021 07:20
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DoctorTristan posted:I did go and look up some of the story fluff to see who were the space fascists that it would be morally defensible to murder, but it seems like that’s literally everyone. Battletech has a fairly realistic depiction of humanity where you have good individuals within bad to terrible systems. All of the great houses are feudal tyrannies mixed with inhuman galactic scale bureaucracies where entire planets are just battlefields to settle some centuries old score, the clans are hyper darwinian, murderously tribal and refuse to try to understand anyone elses way of life. Comstar are a technocratic cult that tried to control the entirety of humanity, murdered anyone who tried to bring old technology back and nearly handed the Inner Sphere to the Clans on a platter. Within those systems you have heroes that rise above and steer things for the better, and those are the interesting personalities in battletech.
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Sep 7, 2021 11:28
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Beat the game a few months into existence, has anything major changed balance-wise with all the expansions or is it still missile barrage city?
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Sep 7, 2021 14:18
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Tae posted:Beat the game a few months into existence, has anything major changed balance-wise with all the expansions or is it still missile barrage city? Well career mode is completely different with all the DLC and is where the vast majority of non-random mission content is now. The campaign is more like an extended tutorial by comparison now. LRM and SRM boats are still strong but so are Ultra and LBX autocannons, snub PPCs, massed infernos and some other stuff I forget. There are also quite a few new mech. Also some of the lostech weapons that were flatly bad got ++ versions that at least make them more interesting. ER Medium++ in particular is nasty if a bit hot still. If you played at the very beginning in vanilla you probably didn't see Gauss+/++ versions that are noticeably better than vanilla. Maybe some other stuff I'm forgetting. Regular PPC/ER PPC still run too hot in vanilla unless you mod their heat values down to like 28/35 instead of 35/45. sean10mm fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Sep 7, 2021 |
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Sep 7, 2021 14:50
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Tae posted:Beat the game a few months into existence, has anything major changed balance-wise with all the expansions or is it still missile barrage city? Yes. Alot has changed. Absent any DLC, they have changed how Bulwark and Evasive Movement (tier 1 guts and piloting skills, respectively) work. It used to be that Bulwark gave 50% damage reduction and entrenched (50% stability damage reduction) if you held still. Evasive just gave you more evasion pips. Now, bulwark gives you 40% damage reduction if you're in cover regardless if you've moved or not and does not give you entrenched. Also, Evasive Movement now gives you entrenched if you walked (not jumped/sprinted) in addition extra evasion pips (which are present for all forms of movement). They have also changed the stability bar scale so that bigger mechs take more stability to knock over. It used to be max stability = 100 for all mechs. Now max stability is 200, 175, 150, and 100 for assaults, heavies, mediums and lights, respectively. So all mechs, except for lights take more stability damage to knock over. These two changes both make it harder to achieve stability damage knockdowns, although it is possible. Additionally, the changes to bulwark and evasive mean that movement isn't punished and cover becomes much more important. I.e. the game isn't so biased toward turreting up. Career mode was mentioned and its basically the way most of us play now. There's no campaign. You just start with 5 mechs (randomized or not, your choice, but they're mostly lights with a med or two) on a half skull world with the argo and the game sets you loose. There's a scoring system for Cbills earned, mechs collected, planets visited, pilot XP, contracts, faction rep, etc. in case you need or want goals. They've also expanded the top edge of the map to add more high-value worlds, which makes career mode even better (you'd quickly run out of high value worlds with the default map). The DLC adds alot more. All three add more mechs, more weapons, and flashpoints, which are mini campaigns, usually 2 or 3 contracts long, scattered across the map. Flashpoints are a way to get a cash injection and boost your rep with the house factions. The writing for the flashpoints is, IMO, mostly good and helps flesh out the character of the various faction reps, and others. Heavy Metal adds a long, multi-stage, multi-planet flashpoint campaign which has some very interesting content and a very challenging final battle. The title of the thread is not ironic. All of the DLC is good. Its worth it at normal price, and a no-brainer on sale. On top of all of that, most of us are also playing mega-mods. The three main ones are Battletech Extended 3025 (BEX), Battletech Advanced 3062 (BTA) and Roguetech (RT). BEX is closest to vanilla+DLC. It adds more mechs and factions (including the clans), a timeline, a full IS map, faction specific mech tables, new flashpoints, new weapons (all from classic battletech, nothing novel), and rebalancing of existing weapons (including the much needed PPC heat fix). There are a few minor mechanical changes, but the mechanics are 99% vanilla. BTA adds all of the stuff BEX does, and adds a bunch of mechanical changes on top of it including a complete overhaul of the pilot skills, more drop lances (optional for BEX), vehicles, new customization options, and more. Roguetech is the most different from vanilla. Its basically every mod ever made, all mushed together into one. Its pretty crazy. Most people in this thread play BEX or BTA, and consider RT to be a bit too chaotic, although RT does have its adherents. Whichever one you pick, there are people in this thread who can help you with any of them (I personally have been running BEX for a while now). The recommendations we make for people in your situation is usually like this: -Get all of the DLC and play through at least one career -When you get tired of career mode in vanilla, try one of the mega mods
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Sep 7, 2021 17:39
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How can you call RogueTech "pretty crazy"? You're just biased against multimission flashpoints based directly off RoboTech and Transformers, is all.  Haven't actually found the Transformers one, but did watch one video of a single-mission playthrough. RT does add everything the can, however - you can select to have mechs/vehicles/gear from the "baseline" era, all they way through Jihad/Dark Ages, so you might be facing really high-end poo poo with... much less so. (Pirate start could be a bit sporty, but then you get all kinds of weird pirate poo poo to use.) RT is a major resource hog, however, and this is on top of the olde single-threaded memory-leaking Unity build that the original game was made with.
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Sep 7, 2021 21:02
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Lol I started with a Stinger so I threw my commander into it for a recovery mission to see what'd happen. At six evasion it dodged a total of one ML and one MG shot from a Locust and a Crab and it died is what happened
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Sep 7, 2021 21:32
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GD_American posted:WOB are the insane theocratic space fascists pushing the edge of transhumanism, but they’re written exactly as 2-dimensionally as that short blurb. Aren't the Magistracy more or less okay, at least by the standards of the other Houses? I don't remember them participating in any major war crimes off the top of my head, at least
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Sep 7, 2021 22:02
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DoctorTristan posted:I did go and look up some of the story fluff to see who were the space fascists that it would be morally defensible to murder, but it seems like that’s literally everyone. There're three "less bad" factions, although they've all got some problems they've got fewer than most. The Magistracy of Canopus isn't that bad, their leadership typically works to support their citizens and raise everyone's quality of living. The Centrellas are still nobility but they're in a "weak enough" position that they could be ousted, and that isn't likely to change. They're big on the arts and etc, but they're also a small fish surrounded by four hyper-militant expansionist empires and the only reason why the Free Worlds League hasn't eaten them is because historically the League has been too busy slowly eating the Capellan Confederation to remember the Magistracy exists. The worst the Canopans have done is sign themselves into a "deal with the devil" with the Capellan Confederation and Taurian Concordat. The Duchy of Regulus in the Free Worlds League is also notable for being one of the only "rebel" factions within a Great House (the other being Rasalhauge) that is )(typically) morally justified in their rebellion. New Syrtis, Tikonov, and Skye are primarily power-seekers looking to elevate their own nobility to 'great power' status (or whatever the gently caress it is Skye wants: to take over Hesperus II and become rich and/or to become the Terran Hegemony again I think, Defiance Industries please correct me). Regulus primarily wants to roll back the "emergency powers" that have been granted to the Captain General over the past 300 years and return the Captain Generalcy to an elected rather than (effectively) hereditary position; and in the Word of Blake era they try to intervene (but ultimately fail) to protect the religious freedoms of their neighbors. The Ghost Bears are by far the "least bad" Clan. They still have some very problematic elements (because they fell pretty hard for Nicholas Kerensky's idiocy); but after (somehow) getting Prince Ragnar Magnusson from the Wolves, they've integrated into Rasalhague so their leadership has a vested interest in securing Rasalhague's government. The Ghost Bears are notable for being one of the few Clans that doesn't despise "freeborns" because they were founded by a husband and wife pair. Generally, the Bears are pretty content to chill inside their borders and let their citizens be citizens, so there's a good chance the Clan system is going to break down in the Ghost Bear Dominion over time and become something less oppressive / more freely meritocratic. The Bears are also notably the only Clan that started Crusader and went Warden en masse when they reached the Inner Sphere and started to realize how stupid the whole Exodus and Clan Invasion really was.
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Sep 7, 2021 22:02
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Not many other houses have made it law that it isnt rape if a woman is doing it because men are just for breeding and cant hold office, usually its a wink wunk nudge nudge and the rapist had to be of sufficient lineagr
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Sep 7, 2021 22:03
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That's been excised from the setting entirely and has been gone for longer than it was a "thing." In-universe it was FWL propaganda to keep their periphery-adjacent areas from emigrating to the Magistracy en masse.
PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Sep 7, 2021 |
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Sep 7, 2021 22:04
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Ah ok i knew it wasnt brought up anymore but didnt know a retcon had happened
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Sep 7, 2021 22:08
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The Magistracy did originally bar men from holding government positions, but have had universal suffrage since 2597. The only position that can only be held by a woman is the Magistrix. The Magistracy has a blanket ban on political parties, special interest groups, and lobbying because they're overly divisive and actively enforce the separation of church and state for the same reason. In the Magistracy, the church stays out of politics and vice versa.
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Sep 7, 2021 22:15
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They need to retcon Burrock back into existence.
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Sep 7, 2021 22:33
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Organ Fiend posted:They need to retcon Burrock back into existence. I think he's saving the lost lands at the moment
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Sep 7, 2021 22:34
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PoptartsNinja posted:The Duchy of Regulus in the Free Worlds League is also notable for being one of the only "rebel" factions within a Great House (the other being Rasalhauge) that is )(typically) morally justified in their rebellion. New Syrtis, Tikonov, and Skye are primarily power-seekers looking to elevate their own nobility to 'great power' status (or whatever the gently caress it is Skye wants: to take over Hesperus II and become rich and/or to become the Terran Hegemony again I think, Defiance Industries please correct me). Skye was typically written as a separatist hotbed for two reasons; one is that as the Scottish analogue, they pretty much had to be the seething, rebellious province. The other is so that the Duke of Skye could easily fulfill the scheming antagonist role for whoever was ruling Steiner at that point. It was a crutch for authors. Andurien is another one that was written as inherently troublesome, although I can't remember enough Marik history to say if that was historical or just starting in the 3000s with Dame whatshername (or earlier with Anton Marik's revolt)
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Sep 8, 2021 02:35
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Oh, Andurien was always a problem. They were the portion of the League that the League had been slowly stealing from the Capellans so they were a pure hotbed of unrest trying to secede and defect to the Capellan Confederation. Why they didn't do that when the League broke up? Who knows. Probably because Regulus was the designated League boogieman at that point, despite being an order of magnitude more sympathetic than the League itself. "Ideal War" was written from the perspective of the villains.
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Sep 8, 2021 02:40
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I think my least favorite part of the overall game design is the shot in the dark guesswork for salvage v. payment. I get what they were going for but the wild variance in terms of enemies you face basically means that you should always take full salvage and just get hosed when the missions only spawn a few enemies. Because the millisecond you go for the money, you'll encounter 12 enemy mechs and the salvage pile will be full of one in a million drops that you don't get. It's just a lovely feeling all around.
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Sep 8, 2021 03:25
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:I think my least favorite part of the overall game design is the shot in the dark guesswork for salvage v. payment. I get what they were going for but the wild variance in terms of enemies you face basically means that you should always take full salvage and just get hosed when the missions only spawn a few enemies. The salvage will nearly always be worth more money in the long run anyway, so unless you don't plan on doing a lot of murder or it's just a real low salvage limit never set that below maximum
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Sep 8, 2021 03:51
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Yeah I had money problems until I realized full salvage was the way to go 100% of the time (also once I realized scrapping a mech for C-Bills was not the same as selling the mech). Even if you don't get a full mech you can still sell the part by itself
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Sep 8, 2021 04:20
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The Atlas RG is an absolutely insane punchbot. Try it if you get one.
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Sep 8, 2021 07:16
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A Clash of Titans mission just dropped a Ghost Bear Assault mech, a Dire Wolf, directly behind the Kuritan's baby assault mech lol lmao Also, it's murdering my lance of baby mediums and lights, oh jesus e: Lmao an ammo explosion ignored CASE II and damaged its core, killing it and giving me all the parts, so I guess I won this campaign month 1 e: Never do Training Day in BTA. If you bring vehicles or anything large, it guarantees a support lance and the broken Wasp or Urbie you're stuck with won't survive eight mechs shooting it (and they will regardless of where it is), and if you made the mistake of bringing a tank, sometimes they have piercing ammo or can just instant kill it regardless of its actual health because they're still buggy, and if anything dies, you instant fail. RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Sep 9, 2021 |
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Sep 9, 2021 18:23
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An ammo explosion in the core without CASE II would normally not give anything or maybe 1 piece, it must have been crit damage to the engine for you to get everything.
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Sep 10, 2021 16:03
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Carcer posted:An ammo explosion in the core without CASE II would normally not give anything or maybe 1 piece, it must have been crit damage to the engine for you to get everything. I'm not sure how it died but I'm glad it did that way. This thing is disgusting. I had to take the ER PPCs off so it didn't try to kill itself with heat death though
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Sep 10, 2021 16:08
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Welp, went and Roger Tech'd last night. Someone posted a melee Griffin build over on the RT Discord that I liked the looks of. But, I didn't quite have everything they used. Like the Thunder Griffin. And some of the specific components. Buuut, I did have a usable variant. With a better quirk, IMO. And so:  7/10 sprint, before I turn on the Hotseat (activates TSM) and Supercharger. SHINY AND CHROME! And oh look a solo duel to try it out in... Duncan "Announcer" Fisher, all loaded out for fightin' with the Gladiator tag, Berserker skill and a quart of "Lostech Weekend" brand bourbon. With nearly no ground combat experience (has been nearly exclusively a Screamer pilot since I started dropping him), and zero Griffin familiarity. (First Griffin I've deployed, unless one snuck in on a Flashpoint that forced me to use specific mechs.) Highlands, so the Arena map. Enemy: Wolverine WVR-8KP. Same weight, but those ranged weapons could be a problem... Turn one - sprint into woods, can't shoot anything (Tag and Remote Sensors), so that's that. Wolverine... stays parked, shoots nothing. Turn two - I've got initiative still, so turn on Supercharger and Hotseat. Still out of range for melee, so sprint immediately behind the Wolvie, and no firing arc.  Enemy appears to dislike that, jumpjets to my rear arc and unloads... two hits from pulse lasers, which tickle. Guess the ECM/Mimetic armor/Signature Damper/all that evasion from YEEEEEEHAW! charge did what it was supposed to.Turn three - oh look, initiative. Melee range. Back attack possible. Activate Berserker for melee bonuses. 86% chance for 200 base damage punch. FATALITY! Killed the engine, without destroying a torso! Loot phase: nothing really special, other than the electronics. Three part for a free mech, though, so I take one just to be sure. I/7 pick/allocation (or was it 1/9, I forget; maxed loot, anyway). Get a bunch of stuff, but not the electronics... And one more mech part.  And looking at the list... the third part loving *evaporated* or something, it was there before I picked and went to allocation!  Still, that was a fun squash match. Gotta get experience with it, so the affinity and quirk can kick in. (Affinity: Brute (20): +10% Punch/Kick Damage/Stability. Quirk: Barrel Fist - Facefull of Fist (40): +1 Punch Accuracy, +5% Punch Damage, +20% Punch Instability.) Also refit my Munin LAM - yoinked the Stealth package and 2x Medium X-Pulse lasers, gave it a sword  and some Small X-Pulse, oh and a pirate Dragon Breath head-mount flamer. (Actually, I wanted a *flaming* sword, but the closest I have a Vibro Sword, and it's too heavy for the LAM.) Effectiveness yet to be determined...Ygolonac fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Sep 10, 2021 |
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Sep 10, 2021 19:08
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That Wobblie LAM in BTA is now my endgame goal, I’ve got 2 of 3 pieces
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Sep 11, 2021 00:45
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Overlong video of big dumb Roger Tech LAM builds, pilots and a duo duel. Once the initial charge attacks complete, the loving-off begins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92lDD1zT2q8 I'm particularly proud of loving up and rotating the Screamer, instead of making the melee attack I wanted. Second place is Glitch totally whiffing that kick. Edit: oh my god, I found something new.  And no, Darius is not huffing mech-bondo again. There's a lance of LAMs you must defend. (AI is still a bag of hammers, if it doesn't start out in LAM-mode, they'll just sprint around on the ground and sometime use jumpjets.) You're assigned a lance of LAMs. You can drop a second lance of mechs/vehicles, and the third all-vehicle lance - max drop for everything is 600 tons. Gee, I wonder who has a full lance of LAMs already, and is willing to burns a few days refitting them all for dogfighting? Throw on the spare Vulcan RACs. Stuff some MMLs in there, with Tandem SRMs and SAM LRMs. Switch over to SLIC Suite cockpits, which increase Initiative for everyone in the lance (IE, everyone in your three lances - allies are still slow-rear end n00bs.) Medium-sized urban map. Enemies are mostly airborne, except for the Ajax LAMs. Who pay for their timidness. (Well, *all* the enemies pay, because I'm providing a ferro-aluminum overcast, raining death from the skies.) Bad news is, I'd been playing too long, and Roger Tech itself lawn-darted - CTD on extraction, before the after-action reports and the loot phase. Good news is, when I do it again, I'll capture it to show the hot LAM-on-LAM action. "Oh, Land-Air Mechs are a dead-end in Battlemech technology -" Shut up, mudfoot, air pirates are talking... Ygolonac fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Sep 12, 2021 |
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Sep 12, 2021 05:17
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Never take light mechs on Blackout missions in BTA. The turrets are bugged to have maximum initiative to start and will just instant kill any of them. They also lie about what their initiative actually is and when they can go after the first round. It also looks like in Flare-ups if one side is more than five up to win, they're guaranteed to despite player interaction. I've won every mission and it degrades at an equal rate to the losing faction (we're defending). Not a big deal though, since the loot reward for winning is just random stuff, but I'm not sure what the math is on it to begin with. They're excellent for hunting for certain mechs from certain factions though (Comstar 1-1.5 ones almost always have a few LAMs in there!) e: Lol and attack and defend missions are impossible to defeat before reinforcements if you kill everything because the buildings bug out and turn them untargetable and invincible to ground attack if there's nothing to shoot. RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Sep 12, 2021 |
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Sep 12, 2021 18:35
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Maybe it's because my timeline hasn't advanced to the big WOB war yet, but there are very few raids/invasion involving WOB. You have to do a lot of planet hopping to try adn hunt down WOB Mechs
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Sep 13, 2021 02:14
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