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May 14, 2024 05:41
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- Crusader
- Apr 11, 2002
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new interview - https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/06/04/battletech-speed-options-patch-details/
quote:
RPS: Can you tell us more about the official speed tweaks you plan to offer in the forthcoming update? How extensive will they be? What are the red lines you don’t want them to cross, in terms of preserving your original vision for this game?
McCain: Good segue. In our first big update, among other things, we’re adding a full speed-up mode that can be enabled or disabled at any time from the settings menu. It greatly accelerates the majority of a given action, then eases out of the acceleration at the end – so that you don’t miss where a unit ends up on the map, or seeing the results of an attack. We’re also adding an “on-demand speedup” function – basically, you can hit the SPACEBAR during an action to accelerate only that action. I’m excited about this one for players like me who might often want to watch the action play out, while still having the ability to “fast-forward” when desired.
And yeah it’s an interesting question about “original vision”, I’d say we don’t really put too much stock in that. During development it’s important to have a clear set of goals, and selling the scale and weight of ‘Mech combat was definitely one of those. Post-launch though, right now it’s all about reacting to player feedback. And that includes re-evaluating things like pacing.
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Jun 4, 2018 17:58
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May 14, 2024 05:41
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- Crusader
- Apr 11, 2002
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Okay. Slightly opinionated skill guide to go with writing too many goddamned words about building mechs.
Tier 1 skills
Bulwark is a must. It's a massive boost to survivability any time your mech is in cover or guarding, and more often than not you'll want to keep your mechs in cover. The only time you want to skip this is on a dedicated pilot for fast-moving mechs, and even then you'll definitely want to consider it.
Sure Footing is a significantly weaker survivability choice than Bulwark in most cases; it's best on mechs that are going to stack up lots of negative to-hit mods, like from Evasion or being small. However, it does stack with Bulwark, and it gives you that extra evasion pip (and thus at least 5% less damage taken) as long as you move at least one hex. It's a must on any mech that is going to be evasion tanking, but evasion tanking falls off very quickly unless you're building an entire team of light mechs.
Multi-Target is situational. You don't actually want to split your fire very often, because it's almost always more important to score kills/section destruction than it is to fire every single gun every single turn. The main use for this skill is "tagging" enemies so they don't go after an objective you're defending. Shooting an enemy makes sure they shoot your mechs, and not the convoy or buildings or weaker NPC lance that you're defending. In these defense missions, you probably want one pilot with multi-target and long-ranged weapons like LRMs. Multi-Target also has some uses when you use Breaching Shot, but since it's a pre-req for BS anyway, I'll deal with that there.
Sensor Lock is negligible. It does help hit a single evasive mech, but there are other ways that don't take up your entire round of shooting, like going out and kicking it or chipping off evasion pips with split fire. It also enables pure indirect LRM spam, but that's a weak and very situational strategy. The main reason not to bother with Sensor Lock is that evasion just isn't that strong against concentrated fire. It gets better if you play with mods to make indirect LRM spam more desirable or evasion stronger, but in vanilla it's probably the weakest T1.
Tier 2 skills
All of these require the preceding T1 skill in the same tree, and a few of them have synergistic effects.
Coolant Vent is the most versatile T2; it works on any sort of mech as long as that mech runs hot. Shoot until you redline, vent and shoot again, then spend time cooling off (ideally by relocating to a better shooting position or punching enemies). That one extra turn of shooting is a lot of extra damage. The only downside is that you really need to build your mechs to take advantage of Coolant Vent, and a pilot without Coolant Vent and/or high Guts might not be able to manage such an overgunned, undersinked mech.
Breaching Shot requires Multi-Target, and additionally works with it. As long as you only shoot one weapon per target, it ignores that target's cover or guard (including the boost from Bulwark). If you've got one big gun and a bunch of smaller ones, you can use Multi-Shot to shoot the big gun at one target and the rest at another. Two big guns? Two big hits on two targets. It's a big damage boost if you make it work! I'm not a big fan because it does require using big guns, and the only ones that are particularly efficient are large LRMs (or large LBX/UACs, but those are rare). Plus, you need to set up your mechs for Breaching Shot, and a non-BS pilot would rather have a different weapon loadout.
Ace Pilot doesn't require that you build your mechs differently. Instead, it requires you to think differently. Every single turn, you need to think ahead: is this a place where I want to be standing not just for my shot this turn, but my shot next turn? How will the enemy move? It's a super fun skill! The problem is that your advantage for setting these situations up is that occasionally you can move this mech into cover so that the enemy targets a different mech. That's not much of a benefit for a T2 skill, let alone the amount of setup required. It's a similar problem to MT below, although this skill is more useful in situations where you have inherently higher initiative (usually because your mechs are lighter).
Master Tactician doesn't require you to build your mechs differently, but it does require you to think two turns ahead. You need to set up turns where you hold initiative in an advantageous position like being at long range, in cover, or in an ECM bubble. You hold initiative to wait for enemies to move, then move out and shoot. Then, the next turn, you go first and you can either take advantage of the double shot, or move back out of the way of enemy return fire. Initiative shenanigans like this are possible all game; MT makes it possible to do them with mechs of the same weight as your opponent. It's super situational; you need to create situations where you engage at an advantage, and that advantage fades as everything turns into a hairball. I love Master Tac but I have to admit that Coolant Vent on everyone probably would be more efficient.
Skill Points
Okay, so how should you spend your XP on vanilla skills once you've chosen your big abilities?
Gunnery is always important and almost always your first pick. Every single pip of gunnery is more-or-less equal value all the way up to 10. There is such a thing as overkill - you can't have more than 95% chance to hit - but as a practical matter, it's never wasted, and almost always the first skill you want to max out after your abilities are unlocked.
Piloting is extremely strong but has weird breakpoints. The main benefits are more defense (which is extremely strong, especially in light/fast mechs) and more sprint distance, but those benefits don't kick in until Piloting 6. The other abilities, like melee accuracy and stability HP, aren't nearly as significant. Piloting is a must for any fast-mover pilot, and pretty good on any mech, but either commit to getting to at least Piloting 6 ASAP or don't bother. The big breakpoints on Piloting are 6 (+defense), 7 (+sprint distance), or 10 (a ton of +def).
Guts is an important but deeply boring skill. The main benefit is the boosted heat threshold at 6 and 9. This lets you shoot more before needing to cool off (although it does not affect how much heat you sink per turn; you can push your luck longer but it isn't making you more efficient). The boosted pilot injuries at 4 are also pretty important; they go up again at 7 and 10 but that's usually overkill. High Guts pilots are useful in general but you definitely want high Guts for any pilot using a UAC, because Guts reduces AC recoil. The big breakpoints are 4 (4 injuries, which you want on every pilot), 6 (+heat threshold), and 9 (++heat threshold). You can skip Guts 10; a sixth injury point is basically useless.
Tactics is the weakest skill, although if you're cheesing the game you'll want at least one Tac 9 pilot. Tactics reduces minimum range and indirect fire penalties, but the only weapons with minimum range that aren't bad are LRMs and UAC or LBX 2 or 5. None of those penalties are important enough to waste XP on, even in a mech boating LRMs or small lostech ACs.
At Tac 6 and Tac 9 you get a bonus to called shots. That's extremely powerful (unless you are using LRMs, LBX ACs, or SRMs, ironically; their secondary pellets don't benefit as much, if at all). It doesn't make called shots more accurate, but it does make them more likely to hit where you want if they do hit. The problem is that the bonus only works with called shots, and you can't make those too often. Early-game, taking called shots on enemies that aren't knocked down costs resolve. Resolve is important in lighter mechs, for bracing against attacks while still being able to attack, and it's important with less-skilled pilots, because high resolve gives a passive boost to accuracy. Later on in the game, when your pilots all have high Gunnery and you have powerful sniper weapons and sniper mechs (like large ballistics and especially Marauders or Annihilators), high Tactics can be gamebreaking, allowing you to pop heads or legs off of enemies to maximize your salvage. However, it's rarely your first choice when leveling up a pilot, because it's worse than useless to waste Resolve on a shot that won't lead to destroying that section due to low accuracy or low pinpoint damage.
thanks! btw re-linking your big mech-building post as i couldn't find it last time i looked
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Feb 24, 2020 06:00
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Apr 24, 2018 04:09
