Battletech

Weapon changes look great, ability to speed up game looks great.

Not sure why they buffed SRM6 and LRM15 though...

Denamian said:

Brings them in line with the rest of the SRMs and LRMs as far as heat/missiles.

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The point i think was they already were like amazing, lrms in general but the lrm 15 iirc was also the most dmg/ton effecient.

Im interested to see lrm called shots. The bonus to hit that part or the overall accuracy bonus gets halved? Means a knocked down mech might become a lot harder to blow a side torso off with missiles.

Sounds worse than that. Reads like the called shot bonus is halved for each missile as a rack fires?

I got a my first King Crab off an Assassinate the other day. 2x AC10 and 4x SRM6. The Alpha on this is hilarious. Got a headshot kill on it's first run out, as did my Gauss Highlander.

My lrm crab didnt come to fruition due to running out of space since all 4 are in side torso. I basically could copy existing dmg from my 85 tonners. Srm boat seems to be best, but could still probably workin a diversified loadout.

But i stopped messing with it and been playing roguetech. Overwhelming amont of cool mods etc. Nice having large laser/ppc be viable. Only a few missions in but right away balancing economy tough. Trying to rush tech points so maxing armor doesnt take amonth. Sadly urba mech so far is hard to use because its so slow. I love using it in mwo.

Melee much more viable being able to punch after a sprint and othr nice "rule" changes.

Erronius said:

Pre-purchased this but just started playing today.

No real complaints, except...once you accept a mission and start heading to the jumpship (assuming you need to travel to another system) is there any way to cancel the damned contract? I clicked on the wrong damned contract (out-system instead of in-system) and didn't realize what I'd done until I got the dropship page. All I could figure out to do was to reload a past save. Just seems like an annoying mechanic.

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As far as I know, no. You have to be careful what missions you take but more particularly when you decide to fly to those missions. Make sure your set-up is ready for the travel and that that travel is something you actually want to do, because once you start flying to a new system you are locked into it.

If it helps any, the beginning of the game is the hardest part.

You can go back by clicking on the double chevron (<<) at the top of the screen, and then go back to the Argo and select a different mission. However, this will be In Bad Faith, and affect your reputation and merc rating. That is, IIRC.

I never did it, but you can do it.

Why would you need to drop into the mission? Even when you arrive to planet it will ask if you want to proceed with mission or not just yet. (IE if you needed more repair time or to buy stuff etc.)

Are you facetanking shit with a blackjack and not pretty much always staying in cover/maxing evasion? Unless you get really over your head and maybe rush story missions to the pirate captain with a quickdraw and you don't have a full lance or are all like 25 tonners, the games pretty gdamn easy. Try Roguetech mod and punch your computer then.

Unless it's grossly overweight. Four 50 ton mechs aren't gonna go up against 320 tons, consisting of two 100 tonners, and two 40 tonners. Well, they aren't gonna go up against it and have a reasonable chance of winning.

He's right though. Melee in this game is highly underrated.

goishen said:

Unless it's grossly overweight. Four 50 ton mechs aren't gonna go up against 320 tons, consisting of two 100 tonners, and two 40 tonners. Well, they aren't gonna go up against it and have a reasonable chance of winning.

He's right though. Melee in this game is highly underrated.

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Uh sure they can if built well. Did you skip over winning just with lights? Thats a little extreme but at 50 you start getting builds that can alpha almost as well as many assaults sub 100 ton just less durable.

Woops. 280. Accidentally added another 40 on there.

Erronius said:

I think you missed my earlier post. I accidentally selected the wrong mission out of several taking me to other systems and not realizing it until I'm heading to a jump point, and there's really no easy way to drop it. Save-scumming is probably the best solution, because fuck flying all the way to a system, dropping into the mission and then withdrawing just to get past it (which was one suggestion given).

I suppose I could have just done whatever mission I chose by mistake...it just seems like a weird design choice to me.



I've had several missions where the AI seemed hell bent on chasing the Blackjack to hell and back, completely ignoring everyone else. Coupled with a few games where even with 3-4 evasion an enemy mech somehow manages to hit every shot to the CT. I don't think I've lost more than an arm/leg on any other mech so far.

Put my commander into a Cent and later an Onion and never saw anything like that again. Could have just been really odd RNG, but the odds have to be really long on that.

Speaking of weird AI, had a few defense missions where I had some heavy SRM/AC builds. Enemy mech runs over the hill, I alpha, then in their next movement they're like "FUCK THIS I'M OUT" and do a 180 right back over the hill. Meanwhile another mech comes over the hill, rinse and repeat. It was like watching lemmings throw themselves over a cliff.

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No I read it is why I even commented. But I get what you mean about wanting to swap the mission itself, I thought the complaint was mainly more about stopping the space travel more than the mission itself since that's the most time consuming nuisance part. That part of the game certainly is clunky.


There are tricks to juggling AI agro, you can try to search my posts in this thread because my memory is hazy. But essentially as you move into a medium/heavy lance, one thing you can do is purposely leave targets less evasive or possibly even in the open to create more tempting targets. However once they pierce armor, they are much more likely to make mad dives at a target. So if you can before you are too close and know you might be losing armor in their next attack, start withdrawing or often what can work really well, is just jump up out of LOS or behind hard cover they can't shoot thru. Peekabo works really well especially when they are heavier to avoid fire though watch for LOS/Sensor lock and LRM barrage.

Story missions often have tight timers, but in randoms. On some maps I'll spend 3-4 turns flanking around to make sure I have plenty of favorable cover to work with. Likewise once you learn the maps (not that many really) you can pretty much tell where the reinforcements typically will be and go after them first or at least make sure the enemy has more travel to get to you rather than going up the obvious route and getting sandwhiched.

Be proactive about facing, I'm usually losing arms, but supposedly elevation can impact where hits are, and if you are squared off vs them, most hits do go chest, vs if you purposely twist almost like in MWO so you barely make LOS to fire on one flank or another, you can make most shots hit arm/side torso. Tank some dmg there then rotate to the other side. In extreme circumstances don't forget you back armor is separate so assuming you didnt leave the back completely bare can buy you some more escape time.

Been playing a roguetech mod that makes things much harder, changes some of the rules, adds crazy tech too and rebalances stuff so it's not just LRMS are god followed by medium lasers and ac20's. , so some of my vanilla memory again hazy. One funny thing I'm not sure is in vanilla, at the point you get double heat sinks. Check the actual heat stats highlighted in the mech bay. Might only be in roguetech but mixing and matching actually loses you a bunch of cooling. So my laser boats got huge upgrades by dropping the otherwise great on paper heat banks because that sabataged the doubles.


RNG does get wierd as you said sometimes. I swear %'s lie just like in their other game at times. Like missing 3 90% shots kinda shit. Coring the blackjack is pretty easy if fighting bigger than 25/35 tonners too.

I know they had some balance patches, so especially vs assaults it's perhaps not that way. But from what I recall, the game still really strongly favors running 2 LRM boats and just knock down raping things. Especially before they nerfed called shotting with SRM/LRM's when you not only were knockdown chaining but surgically taking the body parts you wanted. AC's largely disappointing except the 20. I think they nerfed MG's which used to be pretty comical running 6-7 of those + punching on a grasshopper.

Erronius said:

I've had several missions where the AI seemed hell bent on chasing the Blackjack to hell and back, completely ignoring everyone else. Coupled with a few games where even with 3-4 evasion an enemy mech somehow manages to hit every shot to the CT. I don't think I've lost more than an arm/leg on any other mech so far.

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The AI priority is something like First Seen>Lower Evasion Chevrons>Guarded>Proximity to simplify it a hell of a lot.(Rear attack possible is also considered as is heat\ instability\damage and a bunch of other stuff)

And First Seen seems to be weighted very highly I've often had mechs run past other mechs of mine even ignoring rear attacks just to nail first seen.