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 Orlanth wrote:
Lot of talk about company scale modding. I knew from the outset that would come as Harebrained were just flat out wrong to restrict action to four mechs. It's not the correct number, it's not the sweet spot and a modded Leopard can carry six, and the modding can be paced out like with the Argo.

I want to see company scale multiplayer, then in order to fill out you will likely need lights and the full range of mechs will come into play naturally.

Otherwise its just a race to build the best assault lance.

One of the things I like about MWO is that using Assault mechs properly is hard, and you really need support from lighter mechs to use them well. They're so slow to move and torso turn that canny opponents can hit and run before you can react, or get below your field of fire with a fast light.

I would like to see tonnage be more of a factor. Either have the drop limited by maximum weight, or have a payment bonus for completing a mission with a lighter lance.

IIRC, there's a problem with the engine because the game is designed for players to only control 4 mechs. OR that's what I remember at least when modders were talking about it.

(On top of no actual mod tools)

 Elemental wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Lot of talk about company scale modding. I knew from the outset that would come as Harebrained were just flat out wrong to restrict action to four mechs. It's not the correct number, it's not the sweet spot and a modded Leopard can carry six, and the modding can be paced out like with the Argo.

I want to see company scale multiplayer, then in order to fill out you will likely need lights and the full range of mechs will come into play naturally.

Otherwise its just a race to build the best assault lance.

One of the things I like about MWO is that using Assault mechs properly is hard, and you really need support from lighter mechs to use them well. They're so slow to move and torso turn that canny opponents can hit and run before you can react, or get below your field of fire with a fast light.

I would like to see tonnage be more of a factor. Either have the drop limited by maximum weight, or have a payment bonus for completing a mission with a lighter lance.

https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/mods/142 here's what you want then

 Elemental wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Lot of talk about company scale modding. I knew from the outset that would come as Harebrained were just flat out wrong to restrict action to four mechs. It's not the correct number, it's not the sweet spot and a modded Leopard can carry six, and the modding can be paced out like with the Argo.

I want to see company scale multiplayer, then in order to fill out you will likely need lights and the full range of mechs will come into play naturally.

Otherwise its just a race to build the best assault lance.

One of the things I like about MWO is that using Assault mechs properly is hard, and you really need support from lighter mechs to use them well. They're so slow to move and torso turn that canny opponents can hit and run before you can react, or get below your field of fire with a fast light.

I would like to see tonnage be more of a factor. Either have the drop limited by maximum weight, or have a payment bonus for completing a mission with a lighter lance.

While I don't disagree totally, I think it's worth pointing out that PGI wouldn't know balance if it headshot their dev team with a gauss rifle.

Every time I pick a low-rated mission to ease in new pilots, it always turns into a bloodbath. First time, I lost a pilot to a Demolisher headshot, and the second time I went with a Jager/Enforcer/Shadowhawk/Jenner lance in a capture mission, then an Orion rolls out of the woods with three brawler buddies. But somehow, I finished it without a casualty by getting some lucky focus fire in and kiting them like crazy. Everyone had critical damage and was out of ammo, and the Jenner had 1hp left on one leg.

 Elemental wrote:
Every time I pick a low-rated mission to ease in new pilots, it always turns into a bloodbath. First time, I lost a pilot to a Demolisher headshot, and the second time I went with a Jager/Enforcer/Shadowhawk/Jenner lance in a capture mission, then an Orion rolls out of the woods with three brawler buddies. But somehow, I finished it without a casualty by getting some lucky focus fire in and kiting them like crazy. Everyone had critical damage and was out of ammo, and the Jenner had 1hp left on one leg.

The same thing happens to me, without fail. Noobs are cursed.

 Valhallan42nd wrote:

 Elemental wrote:
Every time I pick a low-rated mission to ease in new pilots, it always turns into a bloodbath. First time, I lost a pilot to a Demolisher headshot, and the second time I went with a Jager/Enforcer/Shadowhawk/Jenner lance in a capture mission, then an Orion rolls out of the woods with three brawler buddies. But somehow, I finished it without a casualty by getting some lucky focus fire in and kiting them like crazy. Everyone had critical damage and was out of ammo, and the Jenner had 1hp left on one leg.

The same thing happens to me, without fail. Noobs are cursed.

tend not to take them out till they have been in the training pods for quite some time!

 Valhallan42nd wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:

I have seen only once a Strider and bagged that guy.
Never laid eyes on a Marauder, Warhammer, Atlas or the fabled King Crab.

Until the Harmony Gold Lawsuit issue is settled, you're unlikely to see them, sadly. The Atlas and the K Crab, however...

The case was dismissed (with prejudice) last month.

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2018/04/25/harmony-golds-copyright-case-against-harebrained-schemes-is-dismissed/

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
I have seen only once a Strider and bagged that guy

Strider? Do you mean a Stalker, or a Cicada?

Sorry, I meant Stalker:

Very happy with this guy... thinking I "need" two of them.
Very few mechs can stay standing after 2xLRM20's and a PPC.
Got to keep them back a bit due to only getting one evasion pip if you are lucky.

I really am getting to hate those triple PPC tanks... man those things hurt.
Not near as nasty as the SRM or LRM carrier stream of missiles but a really close third.

Had a Hunchback with the 6xMLs after me, that guy would just not die.
Remove both arms, a leg, left torso... just could not get that final kill in for wayyyyy too long but I got that strange "I can still fight!" award or whatever that is.

jouso wrote:

 Valhallan42nd wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:

I have seen only once a Strider and bagged that guy.
Never laid eyes on a Marauder, Warhammer, Atlas or the fabled King Crab.

Until the Harmony Gold Lawsuit issue is settled, you're unlikely to see them, sadly. The Atlas and the K Crab, however...

The case was dismissed (with prejudice) last month.

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2018/04/25/harmony-golds-copyright-case-against-harebrained-schemes-is-dismissed/

Specifically because HBS was not using any of the Unseen that Harmony Gold state are under their intellectual control. No Archers, Riflemen, Marauders, Phoenix Hawks, etc. If you look at the original filing, you can see that Harmony Gold didn't really have a leg to stand on when it came to HBS.

I mean, really, look at this gak.



In the case of HBS, I think Harmony Gold was trying to get some "go away" money off of them, as in "pay us and we go away without scuttling your game."

jouso wrote:
The case was dismissed (with prejudice) last month.

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2018/04/25/harmony-golds-copyright-case-against-harebrained-schemes-is-dismissed/

Doesn't mean much for the game though, as the case is ongoing against PGI and Catalyst.

 Talizvar wrote:
Had a Hunchback with the 6xMLs after me, that guy would just not die.
Remove both arms, a leg, left torso... just could not get that final kill in for wayyyyy too long but I got that strange "I can still fight!" award or whatever that is.

Swaybacks are wonderful 'Mechs. I've never used a regular Hunchback, always stuck with the 4P and its lasers.

I converted mine into what I call "The Monster", which has Jump Jets, Flamers, and 1 less ML (but all upgraded MLs). It just gets up in their face and murders things.

And I have all the black knight-related trophies now.

 Valhallan42nd wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Valhallan42nd wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:

I have seen only once a Strider and bagged that guy.
Never laid eyes on a Marauder, Warhammer, Atlas or the fabled King Crab.

Until the Harmony Gold Lawsuit issue is settled, you're unlikely to see them, sadly. The Atlas and the K Crab, however...

The case was dismissed (with prejudice) last month.
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2018/04/25/harmony-golds-copyright-case-against-harebrained-schemes-is-dismissed/

Specifically because HBS was not using any of the Unseen that Harmony Gold state are under their intellectual control. No Archers, Riflemen, Marauders, Phoenix Hawks, etc. If you look at the original filing, you can see that Harmony Gold didn't really have a leg to stand on when it came to HBS.
I mean, really, look at this gak.

In the case of HBS, I think Harmony Gold was trying to get some "go away" money off of them, as in "pay us and we go away without scuttling your game."

They were also idiots because they did not know the actual "unseen" models they were based on:

Phoenix Hawk - VF-1S Super Valkyrie
Crusader - VF-1A Armored Valkyrie
Warhammer - MBR-04-Mk.VI Destroid Tomahawk
Longbow - SDR-04-Mk.XII Destroid Phalanx
Rifleman - ADR-04-Mk.X Destroid Defender
Archer - MBR-07-Mk.II Destroid Spartan
Marauder - Glaug Commander Type

Anyway, this has been gone into detail before BUT the newer attempts to update these "unseen" to get them back into Battletech design have been good.
The Warhammer is so iconic they MUST get that back into the game:

Well we are supposed to have a cameo from Natasha Keresnsky in the game - anyone met her yet????

If she is in a Mech it has to be her Black warhammer in this period!

 Wolfblade wrote:
The problem with the AC20 is it's damage to weight ratio is just terrible, and then gets worse when you factor in ammo. And if you're trying to get a precision hit on something (i.e. one shot the CT), level 9 of tactics grants called shot mastery which normally bumps any called shot up to a~66% chance for legs, 79% on side torsos, and something around 90% for the CT, and with a couple (two) comms systems you can very easily chain precision shots when you want to just kill an entire lance in a couple volleys. Alternatively, you can just maneuver to one side of a mech and fire that way, reducing spread, but not as much as with a called shot obviously.

Yes, which is why I kept talking about fitting a niche. Through much of the game you don't have pilots with high tactics, making called shots less useful for blasting away at a single location. And at no point can you make repeated called shots. During that time you mostly face light and medium mechs, and at least in my experience when heavies show up at first its many are the fairly lightly armoured Dragons.

A brace of med lasers and SRMs will do more damage than an AC20, but the meds and SRMs will spread their damage all over the target. You might not get crits even after a couple of volleys. However an AC20 will punch through the armour of pretty much everything you see for much of the game, and maybe even blow through a location entirely.

This doesn't make the AC20 superior. But it does mean it has a niche that can be very valuable if you know how to use it, which people will miss if they look at nothing but damage to weight efficiency.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
If the expansion/sequel allows us to field a second lance, then Lights could be useful. Then they could be used as scouts/spotters for all the bigger things.

If a sequel or expansion dropped the unit cap in favour of a tonnage limit for a mission, I'd take a mix of all weight classes. Light mechs to scout and harass where possible, mediums and faster heavies to keep contact with the lights and provide mobile hitting power, while the bigger heavies and assault mechs would provide a core of strength and do the hard work.

However, as long as the limit is four mechs with no weight limit, then the optimum pick in almost every mission is going to be the biggest mechs. Unless they get really funky with some special rules for smaller mechs, which is a bad idea.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Orlanth wrote:
The main hope is that the game developers will realise Battletech players have more patience than most gamerz and can handle eight or more units a turn without getting bored.

Like almost everything, the answer is variety. If every mission was company level, it would get to be a grind. Similarly, there's a grinding element that sets in now I'm taking a heavy lance in every mission, slowly moving towards an assault lance.

What I'd like to see is missions where I get a 120 or 150 tonnage max, and they tell me ahead of time I need fast mechs to intercept the enemy units. Next mission I take might be a 300 ton limit, but they tell me there's lots of opportunity for recon to call in support LRMs. Mission after that is also 300 tons, but its an assault on very well defended base, so I'm best off taking my toughest, hardest hitting mechs.

Just throw in whatever to make me change up my forces from mission to mission.

Rather than a tonnage limit I would like to see the Leopard configurable.

The four mech bays should be in poor repair rated for 2x 60 tons and 2x 40 tons respectively at the start.
Mech bays in their worst repair state are rated for 40 tons, with +20 tons per repair level. I would refrain from having light medium, heavy etc as there are already sufficient differences. Mech bay upgrades should be expensive.

The final two bays, normally for aerospace can be converted with a starting level of 0 tons, and upgradable as far as 60 tons.

Next I would include costs for drop costs, again based on tonnage to discourage maxing out. I would place the majority of price jumps irregularly So 20-30 costs similar amounts, then a price jump for 35-45, then a third bracket at 50-65, then 70--100.
Note that this also doesn't neatly fit in the light-medium-heavy-assault delimiter, so there is no optimum tonnage bracket for mechs that fits all criteria. Drop costs should not be too prohibitive that assaults are unusuable, but should take the edge off profitability.

Players should be allowed to take what they want for any mission if they have it and have the infrastructure and C-Bills, rather than hard limits the game should make encourage economies depending on payoff and what you choose to field.

Taking four assaults to a minor skirmish should end up costing the player money even if said assaults tank the damage in the mission and don't require repair.

To this end it might be necessary to include armour repair costs, though to keep the expenditure modest so that it might be cost effective to deploy and possibly have to repair a medium rather than deploy an assault mech that doesn't need repair in the same mission.

 sebster wrote:

 Wolfblade wrote:
The problem with the AC20 is it's damage to weight ratio is just terrible, and then gets worse when you factor in ammo. And if you're trying to get a precision hit on something (i.e. one shot the CT), level 9 of tactics grants called shot mastery which normally bumps any called shot up to a~66% chance for legs, 79% on side torsos, and something around 90% for the CT, and with a couple (two) comms systems you can very easily chain precision shots when you want to just kill an entire lance in a couple volleys. Alternatively, you can just maneuver to one side of a mech and fire that way, reducing spread, but not as much as with a called shot obviously.

Yes, which is why I kept talking about fitting a niche. Through much of the game you don't have pilots with high tactics, making called shots less useful for blasting away at a single location. And at no point can you make repeated called shots. During that time you mostly face light and medium mechs, and at least in my experience when heavies show up at first its many are the fairly lightly armoured Dragons.

A brace of med lasers and SRMs will do more damage than an AC20, but the meds and SRMs will spread their damage all over the target. You might not get crits even after a couple of volleys. However an AC20 will punch through the armour of pretty much everything you see for much of the game, and maybe even blow through a location entirely.

This doesn't make the AC20 superior. But it does mean it has a niche that can be very valuable if you know how to use it, which people will miss if they look at nothing but damage to weight efficiency.

Early on, yes you cannot make repeated called shots, however, the moment you get a couple of comms systems (total of ~+6 morale gained I think is what's required, had them before I had a second heavy mech) I've had no problem doing 4 back to back called shots as long as each results in a kill. As for high tactics, that depends on how you spend your EXP, I focused on rushing towards the +1init skill, which was rather easy to do as long as I didn't purposefully put all my pilots in harms way, I never had to swap more than 2 after a mission. And I never said the AC20 doesn't have a niche, it just fills it badly. At most 120 damage isn't that hard to equal or beat (especially on a called shot). Even with out a called shot simply moving so you can focus on one side will result in most damage getting focused onto a couple locations. My point is the AC20 fills a niche yes, but it fills it VERY poorly and outside of early game where the damage will go through just about anything you see it loses value very quickly.

 Orlanth wrote:
Players should be allowed to take what they want for any mission if they have it and have the infrastructure and C-Bills, rather than hard limits the game should make encourage economies depending on payoff and what you choose to field.

This idea is interesting, but doesn't really work under the current dynamic where the contracting phase is really just a means of selecting which skirmish battle you want to fight.

But consider if they expanded the notion of the mercenary company contract. Consider instead a contract where you can book as many contracts as you want, as long as you have the mechs and pilots spare. So player might have one lance on a raid, and another lance performing garrison duty somewhere else. Then consider that maybe some contracts like garrison, escort and base defense might not even produce fights, the player would just skip forward to pay day and take his cash. A player will be tempted to deploy more basic, economical mechs on those missions because having star league tech assault mechs standing watch while nothing happens is a horrible waste of resources.

Other contracts would require very different kinds of mechs - a raid might need speed because the enemy reinforcements would be overwhelming even for a lance of assault mechs so instead speed to get out to the drop zone after the mission would be key.

Increasing the variety of missions would introduce a dynamic where the optimum player choice isn't as heavy a set of mechs as possible, but is instead changes from contract to contract based on circumstances.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wolfblade wrote:
Early on, yes you cannot make repeated called shots, however, the moment you get a couple of comms systems (total of ~+6 morale gained I think is what's required, had them before I had a second heavy mech) I've had no problem doing 4 back to back called shots as long as each results in a kill. As for high tactics, that depends on how you spend your EXP, I focused on rushing towards the +1init skill, which was rather easy to do as long as I didn't purposefully put all my pilots in harms way, I never had to swap more than 2 after a mission. And I never said the AC20 doesn't have a niche, it just fills it badly. At most 120 damage isn't that hard to equal or beat (especially on a called shot). Even with out a called shot simply moving so you can focus on one side will result in most damage getting focused onto a couple locations. My point is the AC20 fills a niche yes, but it fills it VERY poorly and outside of early game where the damage will go through just about anything you see it loses value very quickly.

I've got three assaults and a heavy in my core lance, and I've still only got one comms system at +2. I dunno if your experience or mine is closer to the norm. It doesn't really matter that much though, as there's lots of other ways to boost morale so that eventually called shots can be taken quite often.

My point though, is that getting to that point takes quite some time, and even by the late stage it isn't as though you're free to make called shots with every mech, every turn. So a single, large gun which means a mech is putting all its damage in a single location has value. Its damage to weight ratio is bad, but 110 damage all put in to a single location can in many circumstances be a lot more useful than 160 damage spread all across a target.

I can't speak for the game you played, but I can speak to the experience of the game I've played. And during the period where light, then medium and finally the lighter heavy mechs were dominant, I got great value out of a Shadowhawk and then an Orion with an AC20. I think possibly I got more value out of this because of my experience with the tabletop game, where it was a more obvious strategy to focus on targets with locations you could punch through with a single AC20 slot. It meant I was more aware of how to make the AC20 work in the computer game.

Does this mean the AC20 is great? Nah, it's a niche gun that you need to learn how to optimise. I think it could do with a small damage upgrade and a big boost in stability damage. But it goes way too far to say its a bad gun, because concentrated damage has a clear place in the game.

 sebster wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wolfblade wrote:
Early on, yes you cannot make repeated called shots, however, the moment you get a couple of comms systems (total of ~+6 morale gained I think is what's required, had them before I had a second heavy mech) I've had no problem doing 4 back to back called shots as long as each results in a kill. As for high tactics, that depends on how you spend your EXP, I focused on rushing towards the +1init skill, which was rather easy to do as long as I didn't purposefully put all my pilots in harms way, I never had to swap more than 2 after a mission. And I never said the AC20 doesn't have a niche, it just fills it badly. At most 120 damage isn't that hard to equal or beat (especially on a called shot). Even with out a called shot simply moving so you can focus on one side will result in most damage getting focused onto a couple locations. My point is the AC20 fills a niche yes, but it fills it VERY poorly and outside of early game where the damage will go through just about anything you see it loses value very quickly.

I've got three assaults and a heavy in my core lance, and I've still only got one comms system at +2. I dunno if your experience or mine is closer to the norm. It doesn't really matter that much though, as there's lots of other ways to boost morale so that eventually called shots can be taken quite often.

My point though, is that getting to that point takes quite some time, and even by the late stage it isn't as though you're free to make called shots with every mech, every turn. So a single, large gun which means a mech is putting all its damage in a single location has value. Its damage to weight ratio is bad, but 110 damage all put in to a single location can in many circumstances be a lot more useful than 160 damage spread all across a target.

I can't speak for the game you played, but I can speak to the experience of the game I've played. And during the period where light, then medium and finally the lighter heavy mechs were dominant, I got great value out of a Shadowhawk and then an Orion with an AC20. I think possibly I got more value out of this because of my experience with the tabletop game, where it was a more obvious strategy to focus on targets with locations you could punch through with a single AC20 slot. It meant I was more aware of how to make the AC20 work in the computer game.

Does this mean the AC20 is great? Nah, it's a niche gun that you need to learn how to optimise. I think it could do with a small damage upgrade and a big boost in stability damage. But it goes way too far to say its a bad gun, because concentrated damage has a clear place in the game.

And again, my experience has been so long as you don't rush into the middle of an enemy lance, you can easily focus damage onto one side, mostly negating the one advantage of the AC20. Past the early/mid game it quickly drops off in value, especially when you can get a chain of 3-4 called shots easily (high starting morale/kill per called shot/knockdowns/blowing parts off). Having run several games (one to a double 4x krab/4x atlas lance, and one to just past the final mission) and I have gotten more use from laser boats in general than any mech with an AC20 and some extra weaponry depending on the weight class. Maybe it's playstyle variations, but focusing down one mech at a time has always in my experience favored the laser/missile boats being able to effectively use called shots or being able to focus damage. Even when that's not possible a couple of mechs firing onto a single mech normally does more than enough damage. And even with the advantage of damage focused onto one area, once you start fighting heavies, you end up needing more hits on the same area to deal enough damage anyway. It really doesn't need too much of a damage boost, but I think you could cut AC weapon's weight by 25-50% and they'd probably be worth using.

As for your comms system situation, I think you're mostly unlucky. Comms don't drop like candy (or heatsinks), but they've never been so rare (for myself or a few of the other people I've talked to) that having a couple by the time they had 3-4 heavies.

 Wolfblade wrote:
And again, my experience has been so long as you don't rush into the middle of an enemy lance, you can easily focus damage onto one side, mostly negating the one advantage of the AC20.

That's true, though I'd note a single drive by will still spread damage between the leg, torso and arm. That's not going to penetrate armour in any location unless you seriously outweigh the target.

Past the early/mid game it quickly drops off in value, especially when you can get a chain of 3-4 called shots easily (high starting morale/kill per called shot/knockdowns/blowing parts off).

Oh absolutely, once you're passed the mid-game the focus of 110 damage in a single location has little value. This is because you can make a lot more called shots, and because you're facing much heavier targets that can soak 110 damage to a single location. By that stage you're packing so much firepower that when you do engage units that can't soak that damage to a single location you can normally wipe them anyway.

My point is about the game before that stage, up until and including the stage when you're facing mediums or light heavies. At that stage an AC20 is a viable weapon, if you use it right.

It really doesn't need too much of a damage boost, but I think you could cut AC weapon's weight by 25-50% and they'd probably be worth using.

One thing that's basically written in stone in Battletech, throughout all its versions, is the weight of various weapon systems. Different computer games have used different mechanics for hitting and damage, but the weight of every weapon system has always been the same. This has flowed through from a core concept in the tabletop game, that every weapon once fielded never has its stats change. An AC20 has weighed 14 tons in every single version of Battletech since the mid 80s. I don't think they should change that, one of the nice things about the game is how resources written for one game actually work for all the others.

Another option would be to introduce some of the special ammo rules. There was precision ammo, tracer ammo, caseless ammo, and so forth. Their rules would have to be tweaked, but I think it'd be a good way to boost autocannons generally.

As for your comms system situation, I think you're mostly unlucky. Comms don't drop like candy (or heatsinks), but they've never been so rare (for myself or a few of the other people I've talked to) that having a couple by the time they had 3-4 heavies.

I think when you get a really wide range of potential stuff dropping each turn, there's a tendency to produce some interesting clustering effects. That's not a complaint, either, I quite not knowing what I might end up with, and knowing the next game might play out very differently.

I don't like drop limits.

I'd want it the way MechCommander did it.

"But MechCommander had drop limits!!!"

Yes, it did, but it also had a cheat code that removed the drop limit.

"So you want to cheat?"

No, because the cheat code removed the hard cap on what you could bring, but didn't actually remove the drop weight. Let me explain.

In MechCommander you were not a Merc group, you were company that was part of a House RCT. As such the game's economy was abstracted to 'Resource Points', a way of looking at logistics and requisition, repair and parts, manpower and so on and just giving it a simplified figure.

If you went into a mission with a lower tonnage than the maximum you would receive bonus RP. The voice at the end would literally say "Commendation for low drop weight".

Here's the thing though, it worked in reverse. You did need a cheat code to remove the cap on drop weights, but bringing more than you were allowed reduced your RP reward for the mission. In fact, it was possible to have missions cost you RP if you brought enough stuff.

I liked this as a concept - you were using more than the resources allocated to you, so you had to give something up to bring more than normal. It also meant you weren't really 'cheating', you were just spending your resources in a different way. Yes, you could also make your 'Mechs invincible and give yourself unlimited airstrikes, but that's different.

 sebster wrote:

 Wolfblade wrote:
And again, my experience has been so long as you don't rush into the middle of an enemy lance, you can easily focus damage onto one side, mostly negating the one advantage of the AC20.

That's true, though I'd note a single drive by will still spread damage between the leg, torso and arm. That's not going to penetrate armour in any location unless you seriously outweigh the target.

Past the early/mid game it quickly drops off in value, especially when you can get a chain of 3-4 called shots easily (high starting morale/kill per called shot/knockdowns/blowing parts off).

Oh absolutely, once you're passed the mid-game the focus of 110 damage in a single location has little value. This is because you can make a lot more called shots, and because you're facing much heavier targets that can soak 110 damage to a single location. By that stage you're packing so much firepower that when you do engage units that can't soak that damage to a single location you can normally wipe them anyway.

My point is about the game before that stage, up until and including the stage when you're facing mediums or light heavies. At that stage an AC20 is a viable weapon, if you use it right.

It really doesn't need too much of a damage boost, but I think you could cut AC weapon's weight by 25-50% and they'd probably be worth using.

One thing that's basically written in stone in Battletech, throughout all its versions, is the weight of various weapon systems. Different computer games have used different mechanics for hitting and damage, but the weight of every weapon system has always been the same. This has flowed through from a core concept in the tabletop game, that every weapon once fielded never has its stats change. An AC20 has weighed 14 tons in every single version of Battletech since the mid 80s. I don't think they should change that, one of the nice things about the game is how resources written for one game actually work for all the others.

Another option would be to introduce some of the special ammo rules. There was precision ammo, tracer ammo, caseless ammo, and so forth. Their rules would have to be tweaked, but I think it'd be a good way to boost autocannons generally.

As for your comms system situation, I think you're mostly unlucky. Comms don't drop like candy (or heatsinks), but they've never been so rare (for myself or a few of the other people I've talked to) that having a couple by the time they had 3-4 heavies.

I think when you get a really wide range of potential stuff dropping each turn, there's a tendency to produce some interesting clustering effects. That's not a complaint, either, I quite not knowing what I might end up with, and knowing the next game might play out very differently.

I dunno, a mech with a focus on lasers and/or missiles can do plenty of damage even at a worst possible spread, I mean LRMs can do up to 6 damage per rocket and SRMs can do 12. One of my favorite loadouts towards the end game is a stalker with 4 LRM 20s, which even at base damage is still 320 damage to 480, and that's just for a focus on stability damage. Against a mech of equal weight (say, another stalker), that's roughly 105 damage to 160 if you get a perfect (and terrible) 33% split, which won't break the torso or leg if it's max armor (180) but will break the arm (140), but again, that's the absolute worst possible split. However even a small lean towards one of 40/30/30 is enough to break any part that's hit at max armor (192 damage). It's also incredibly rare to find a stock mech running max armor too (and not full armor/no poor maintenance, but actual max capacity for a location).

I think we're also focused on two different sections of the game, you were focused on the early/mid game, and I was focused on the end of the mid/late game where AC20s are more common and can be fit onto mechs easier without sacrificing too much armor/heat.

And that's a good point about the weights in battletech, sadly the alternative is a pretty serious buff towards AC weapons or some noticeable nerfs for missiles and MLs, especially if they want to compete with missiles for stability damage or lasers for pure damage to justify their weight and heat usage (for the AC20 at least).

And I honestly have no idea how rare comms are, I don't have a large enough sample size obviously (3-4 people on a over 2-3 campaigns each is pretty tiny, and I don't think anyone has datamined the drop/spawn chances for comms yet), so it might just be dumb luck of finding them in stores/or as battlefield drops.

 Wolfblade wrote:
I dunno, a mech with a focus on lasers and/or missiles can do plenty of damage even at a worst possible spread, I mean LRMs can do up to 6 damage per rocket and SRMs can do 12.

SRMS getting a 50% damage boost per missile is one of the things that really tips them over the edge in to being such a dominant weapon. If there were ++ and +++ AC20 that were boosted to 150 damage we'd see the gun very differently

One of my favorite loadouts towards the end game is a stalker with 4 LRM 20s, which even at base damage is still 320 damage to 480, and that's just for a focus on stability damage. Against a mech of equal weight (say, another stalker), that's roughly 105 damage to 160 if you get a perfect (and terrible) 33% split, which won't break the torso or leg if it's max armor (180) but will break the arm (140), but again, that's the absolute worst possible split.

I run a Stalker with 1 LRM less, with more armour and more ammo. I'm not sure about getting the side shots though, a Stalker decked with LRMs isn't really a flanking unit.

I think we're also focused on two different sections of the game, you were focused on the early/mid game, and I was focused on the end of the mid/late game where AC20s are more common and can be fit onto mechs easier without sacrificing too much armor/heat.

I'm not focusing on any part of the game. The question was whether AC20 are any good, and I said during a certain phase of the game if used against the right targets then they can be valuable. It is not that I think that early to mid-phase is more important or worth more focus, I was just saying that was the period where the AC20 had a clear niche.

And that's a good point about the weights in battletech, sadly the alternative is a pretty serious buff towards AC weapons or some noticeable nerfs for missiles and MLs, especially if they want to compete with missiles for stability damage or lasers for pure damage to justify their weight and heat usage (for the AC20 at least).

I don't think the tweak would have to be that big. What they could do is just pull back on the knock down damage done by missiles, not remove it just weaken it a little. Then ramp up the knock down damage on AC weapons, so they become the key way to knock down an opponent.

But this is a problem that plagues Battletech in general - autocannons are mediocre. What's kind of funny is AC2 actually got a huge boost from the table top game, their relative damage was more than doubled, and they still suck.

 sebster wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Players should be allowed to take what they want for any mission if they have it and have the infrastructure and C-Bills, rather than hard limits the game should make encourage economies depending on payoff and what you choose to field.

This idea is interesting, but doesn't really work under the current dynamic where the contracting phase is really just a means of selecting which skirmish battle you want to fight.

But consider if they expanded the notion of the mercenary company contract. Consider instead a contract where you can book as many contracts as you want, as long as you have the mechs and pilots spare. So player might have one lance on a raid, and another lance performing garrison duty somewhere else. Then consider that maybe some contracts like garrison, escort and base defense might not even produce fights, the player would just skip forward to pay day and take his cash. A player will be tempted to deploy more basic, economical mechs on those missions because having star league tech assault mechs standing watch while nothing happens is a horrible waste of resources.

I think we are onto something, you could say have two or more missions simultaneously, you only have one Leopard so can only drop one lance/demi-company at a time, but you can drop a second lance for x days as a garrison or for a patrol circuit. This might or might not form part of a single contract, i.e 'protect our base while leveling theirs'. Garrison/patrol lances call for pick up later, and are normally uneventful to not bog the game down, but you might be interrupted by a message of 'meanwhile on patrol/ meanwhile back at base' which triggers a scenario. This would force you to have different lances for different work, patrol lances would differ from garrison lances and from the principle strike lance.

If you are running a strike lance, a patrol, and a garrison you have a combat company straight off and must use separate pilots. A player may or may not be able to handle all the contract options if they don't have enough mechs and pilots.

 Orlanth wrote:

 sebster wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Players should be allowed to take what they want for any mission if they have it and have the infrastructure and C-Bills, rather than hard limits the game should make encourage economies depending on payoff and what you choose to field.

This idea is interesting, but doesn't really work under the current dynamic where the contracting phase is really just a means of selecting which skirmish battle you want to fight.

But consider if they expanded the notion of the mercenary company contract. Consider instead a contract where you can book as many contracts as you want, as long as you have the mechs and pilots spare. So player might have one lance on a raid, and another lance performing garrison duty somewhere else. Then consider that maybe some contracts like garrison, escort and base defense might not even produce fights, the player would just skip forward to pay day and take his cash. A player will be tempted to deploy more basic, economical mechs on those missions because having star league tech assault mechs standing watch while nothing happens is a horrible waste of resources.

I think we are onto something, you could say have two or more missions simultaneously, you only have one Leopard so can only drop one lance/demi-company at a time, but you can drop a second lance for x days as a garrison or for a patrol circuit. This might or might not form part of a single contract, i.e 'protect our base while leveling theirs'. Garrison/patrol lances call for pick up later, and are normally uneventful to not bog the game down, but you might be interrupted by a message of 'meanwhile on patrol/ meanwhile back at base' which triggers a scenario. This would force you to have different lances for different work, patrol lances would differ from garrison lances and from the principle strike lance.

If you are running a strike lance, a patrol, and a garrison you have a combat company straight off and must use separate pilots. A player may or may not be able to handle all the contract options if they don't have enough mechs and pilots.

Take a long, hard look at X-COM long war mod, then copy it straight away. Especially how a smaller team with lighter equipment gets infiltration bonus, etc. And with multiple lances engaged in different places pilot and mech management would be much more strategic.

I'd even pay for a DLC like that.

I have a Grasshopper I've started to call "The Death Sentence," as being assigned to it means that the enemy focuses entirely on it to the exclusion of almost anyone else. It's claimed both Fuzzy and Glitch so far.

 Valhallan42nd wrote:
I have a Grasshopper I've started to call "The Death Sentence," as being assigned to it means that the enemy focuses entirely on it to the exclusion of almost anyone else. It's claimed both Fuzzy and Glitch so far.

I have a similar mech which I call the Sponge. It is a Dragon that is in charge of spotting, and putting its nose into sensor contacts. Decker was its original pilot, and he still has 96 days in the medbay- it's eaten two newbie recruits, one of which caught a Demolisher volley- with her face.

I love this game!

edit- changed Decker's location from mechbay to medbay. He probably is more cybernetics than organs right now, but I'd guess he's sensitive about it.

Finished the campaign - really enjoyed Appreciated the final gifts from our patron !

Also major shout out for the music - love it

Every time I take Glitch out she gets injured every single time.

I took her out again, and within seconds she gets hit in the head. Only this time I had ripped out the Rangefinder on her K2 and put in a Cockpit Mod.

I had forgotten about it completely though, so at the end of the mission I was looking to see how long she'd have to sit in the Medbay again and... fine!

I need more of those things. They're so damned rare!!!

They're a must-purchase any time I find them.

The problem is they're so rare.

Still haven't seen a Heat Bank or Heat Exchange.

Did get a TTS for Energy weapons though. That's nice.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The problem is they're so rare.

Still haven't seen a Heat Bank or Heat Exchange.

Did get a TTS for Energy weapons though. That's nice.

outside of mods, there are only heat sinks Ds or regular heat sinks.