Battletech

[JeditOjanen]

Don't ever use LLs, their heat:damage ratio sucks. PPCs are as bad, but they at least cause stability damage. This makes them an OK combo with an LRM-boat; the boat sandpapers the target and makes it unsteady, possibly causing a pilot injury, then the PPC mech knocks it down for a second injury and possibly a KO if you managed to destroy a side torso or cause an ammo explosion.

If you're wondering why you don't combine the PPC and LRMs on one mech: apart from Locusts, no mech can be knocked down by stability damage with a single attack even if it maxes the bar. You have to make them unsteady first, then max the bar to get a knockdown. The only way to get a knockdown on a steady mech is to destroy a leg.

 

[Devrij]

Don't ever use LLs, their heat:damage ratio sucks. PPCs are as bad, but they at least cause stability damage. This makes them an OK combo with an LRM-boat; the boat sandpapers the target and makes it unsteady, possibly causing a pilot injury, then the PPC mech knocks it down for a second injury and possibly a KO if you managed to destroy a side torso or cause an ammo explosion.

If you're wondering why you don't combine the PPC and LRMs on one mech: apart from Locusts, no mech can be knocked down by stability damage with a single attack even if it maxes the bar. You have to make them unsteady first, then max the bar to get a knockdown. The only way to get a knockdown on a steady mech is to destroy a leg.

Ah, but LL have range. They also weigh less than a PPC. I found them useful at times, but generally I would boat ML with loads of heatsinks instead. Only really used ppc on lighter mechs.

 

[Oxide™]

Finally acquired an Atlas last night - running Atlas/Highlander as Melee and Highlander/Battlemaster as range

Next Priority mission is the one where you pass the point of no return

I love this game but it could do with some polishing up like in xcom2

Don't suppose you can recommend other turn based games like Battletech/XCOM2 please?

 

[BUDFORCE]

Yea Xenonauts is basically a remake of the original X:com game and much truer to the original, random enemy spawns, just basically much more difficult. I dare anyone to play it on ironman mode and not get completely whooped.

I preferred it vastly to the official X:com remake.

 

[theone8181]

Ah, but LL have range. They also weigh less than a PPC. I found them useful at times, but generally I would boat ML with loads of heatsinks instead. Only really used ppc on lighter mechs.

It does seem that a lot of the bigger weapons seem waaaay to heavy or put out too much heat compared to the damage they do.

 

[BUDFORCE]

It does seem that a lot of the bigger weapons seem waaaay to heavy or put out too much heat compared to the damage they do.

Yea I agree with that also.

 

[Devrij]

It does seem that a lot of the bigger weapons seem waaaay to heavy or put out too much heat compared to the damage they do.

It's a trade off. You may have an assault mech with loads of weight, but you only have so much space. Big heavy weapons make sense then, and you have enough weight to load them full of heatsinks as well.

Also, don't forget lasers get an accuracy boost over other weapons which is another pro for LL

 

[BUDFORCE]

I'm trying out an lrm 40 catapult, real shame they don't have all the variants like they do it MWO would be interesting to see even more LRM'S on it, would be possible if it had the hardpoints.

I'm trying to work out how viable having a lrm boat is, you know, sit right back and just spam missiles using the other mechs LOS.

I've got mine set up, not maxed armour just 2xlrm 20's, ammo and HS. It's fun, but... More valuable than having another regular mech, not so sure.

 

[new boy]

LRM boats are great at what they do. They rack up a lot of stability damage, are good at critting places where the structure is exposed and they are good at taking out turrets. The damage spreads though, so if you fire a salvo at a undamaged Mech, it's still going to be pretty much undamaged (though probably unsteady and just a poke away from knockdown), and aiming them at tanks is a waste of time really.

For salvaging, they are a great help.

 

[JeditOjanen]

LRM boats are great at what they do. They rack up a lot of stability damage, are good at critting places where the structure is exposed and they are good at taking out turrets. The damage spreads though, so if you fire a salvo at a undamaged Mech, it's still going to be pretty much undamaged (though probably unsteady and just a poke away from knockdown), and aiming them at tanks is a waste of time really.

It's not worth using a LRM-boat on a vehicle unless you have Precision Strike up. If you do, you can generally send the great majority of a salvo into one location. As vehicle sides normally have about 150HP at most, you can one-shot it with around 50 tubes. Obviously I'd still rather put an AC/20 and two MLs into it, but with missile carriers your sole priority is to end them immediately and you don't care how.

 

[BUDFORCE]

They could do with balancing some of the mechs out a bit, some are just completely inferior compared to others, in MWO you had a little more flexibility with hard points due to the different variants, and how you could swap out engines, endo steel, double heat sinks etc etc. So even the crap mechs did have some kind of niche build if used on a certain way.

In this game I get a new mech, either give up at fitting or use it once and sell it, as there is no flexibility at all to make it viable.

 

[Werewolf]

They could do with balancing some of the mechs out a bit, some are just completely inferior compared to others, in MWO you had a little more flexibility with hard points due to the different variants, and how you could swap out engines, endo steel, double heat sinks etc etc. So even the crap mechs did have some kind of niche build if used on a certain way.

In this game I get a new mech, either give up at fitting or use it once and sell it, as there is no flexibility at all to make it viable.

IIRC MWO is set quite a long time after Battletech, as it's after the initial invasion of the Clans, which means there are a lot of additional variants based on Clan mech designs from memory.

It's also playing in a fairly small part of the Battletech universe so there is room for more mechs to be introduced in expansions as some variants were not common outside of certain areas, in the same way that you don't see many of the advanced weapons in it at the moment as they're rare in the time period of the game as they are lost tech that isn't brought back into general use until the Clan's invade.
IIRC the innerspher lost the ability to make some things, or only retained it at a handful of installations so you don't see some things in general use as those who could still make them kept them for their own use outside of the Clan Worlds (I think in the canon the Star Com forces for example had access to mech tech that was pretty much lost to any of the other inner sphere factions).

 

[BUDFORCE]

One thing I noticed about some of the missions in this game is that they are much more difficult than others for similar skull ratings.

So I am just past the Panzyr mission, doing 2.5 to 3 skulls missions, mostly cruising them, the odd pilot injury through random headshot, occasional mech damage, rarely anything requiring a refit. The missions normally involve a mix of mostly medium, some heavies, and they tend to be gimped up ones with low armour. I am in my comfort zone though definately.

However, every now and then the game seems to throw a curveball mission at you, so last night, played your typical 3 skull mission, it's that desert map where you start in a ravine, there is a big hill to the left, and rocks to the right, and then like a military base area over to the right. I travel down the ravine and get jumped on by 8 hostile mechs at once, mostly heavies with a few mediums, all full armour and high skilled pilots.

I get my arse kicked completely, well, actually managed to complete the mission just, only my LRM catapult and half of my SRM Kintaro remaining - I swear that Kintaro had 9 lives that round. 2 pilots down, fortunately both survived. But yea, Im like, damn that was significantly harder than the majority of other similar rated missions.

I have also experienced this before a couple of times, unusually hard missions out of the blue.

In a way a quite like it, keeps you on your toes, but I am playing ironman, so yea, its a costly couple of months in recovery each time.

 

[Devrij]

One thing I noticed about some of the missions in this game is that they are much more difficult than others for similar skull ratings.

So I am just past the Panzyr mission, doing 2.5 to 3 skulls missions, mostly cruising them, the odd pilot injury through random headshot, occasional mech damage, rarely anything requiring a refit. The missions normally involve a mix of mostly medium, some heavies, and they tend to be gimped up ones with low armour. I am in my comfort zone though definately.

However, every now and then the game seems to throw a curveball mission at you, so last night, played your typical 3 skull mission, it's that desert map where you start in a ravine, there is a big hill to the left, and rocks to the right, and then like a military base area over to the right. I travel down the ravine and get jumped on by 8 hostile mechs at once, mostly heavies with a few mediums, all full armour and high skilled pilots.

I get my arse kicked completely, well, actually managed to complete the mission just, only my LRM catapult and half of my SRM Kintaro remaining - I swear that Kintaro had 9 lives that round. 2 pilots down, fortunately both survived. But yea, Im like, damn that was significantly harder than the majority of other similar rated missions.

I have also experienced this before a couple of times, unusually hard missions out of the blue.

In a way a quite like it, keeps you on your toes, but I am playing ironman, so yea, its a costly couple of months in recovery each time.

I had that once (same map) only they were assault mechs (one heavy) and demolishers. At the end I got a message about reinforcements just as the load screen came up so I wondered if it was just that the reinforcements triggered straight away. I just set up a firing line in the ravine and took them out as they came over as they couldn't all come at once.

 

[JeditOjanen]

One thing I noticed about some of the missions in this game is that they are much more difficult than others for similar skull ratings.

So I am just past the Panzyr mission, doing 2.5 to 3 skulls missions, mostly cruising them, the odd pilot injury through random headshot, occasional mech damage, rarely anything requiring a refit. The missions normally involve a mix of mostly medium, some heavies, and they tend to be gimped up ones with low armour. I am in my comfort zone though definately.

However, every now and then the game seems to throw a curveball mission at you, so last night, played your typical 3 skull mission, it's that desert map where you start in a ravine, there is a big hill to the left, and rocks to the right, and then like a military base area over to the right. I travel down the ravine and get jumped on by 8 hostile mechs at once, mostly heavies with a few mediums, all full armour and high skilled pilots.

I get my arse kicked completely, well, actually managed to complete the mission just, only my LRM catapult and half of my SRM Kintaro remaining - I swear that Kintaro had 9 lives that round. 2 pilots down, fortunately both survived. But yea, Im like, damn that was significantly harder than the majority of other similar rated missions.

I have also experienced this before a couple of times, unusually hard missions out of the blue.

In a way a quite like it, keeps you on your toes, but I am playing ironman, so yea, its a costly couple of months in recovery each time.

It's a known issue/deliberate feature. You don't have perfect intel, so the difficulty rating (measured in half-skulls) can be out by as much as 3 in either direction.

The other issue, and this one isn't deliberate, is that enemy reinforcements have a fixed start point and a fixed trigger point, both determined at the start of the mission. This can sometimes lead to reinforcements spawning immediately the mission begins, or right in the middle of your lance if you're unfortunate enough to have positioned in the wrong place. And as mechs appearing like that triggers a surprise action, they always get to act first.

 

[FlamBango]

I learnt early on to head off to one side or the other errors when starting missions. Ploughing on down the middle is recipie for disaster. It might take a couple of turns to trigger things off but the enemy end up much more controllable.

 

[theone8181]

It's a known issue/deliberate feature. You don't have perfect intel, so the difficulty rating (measured in half-skulls) can be out by as much as 3 in either direction.

The other issue, and this one isn't deliberate, is that enemy reinforcements have a fixed start point and a fixed trigger point, both determined at the start of the mission. This can sometimes lead to reinforcements spawning immediately the mission begins, or right in the middle of your lance if you're unfortunate enough to have positioned in the wrong place. And as mechs appearing like that triggers a surprise action, they always get to act first.

That maybe why sometimes a get swamped then. I struggled on the mission to save the APC.

 

[it1uk]

Just finished the campaign last night. I enjoyed it, might have to have another play through without doing all the extra missions as i went of and done loads of them before doing much of the campaign.

Did manage to grab my first Atlas when it spawned in the middle of my lance as reinforcement! Used multi-shot to keep knocking it down with missiles while concentrating on the rest of its lance.

 

[BUDFORCE]

I think the missions ratings are dodgy.

I played my first ever 4 skull today and when trying to do the mission the dude even turns up and says something along the lines of you dont have enough firepower and do you still want to proceed.

Ended up being one of the easiest missions I played this evening.

 

[Squid Vicious]

Just got past Liberation: Smithon - hardest mission for me so far but managed to get through with only minor injuries and a few lost mech limbs (ran with 2 close range Orion, 2 LRM Thunderbolt).

Missed out on a Cataphract which turned up in a mission completely unexpectedly - was very disappointed when the pilot was incapacitated after 2 lucky head shots and a knockdown and I'd selected all credit for the reward