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Been playing it - I was too busy during the whole beta thing so the game has been a pleasant surprise. Combat feels like you really are toting giant battle titans around and there is a tension between knowing all the punishment you can take versus the weak points of your model. I feel a spike of fear whenever my Jagermech takes an arm hit and there is serious elation when the enemy hunchback has an ammo explosion.

The plot is pretty good is that kind of techno-anachronistic way that BT has always been known for. My only complaint is that you only get to mess with a fifth of the inner sphere map and the date - 3018, if before the really fun mechs like the hatchetman and axeman.

I almost screamed when a simple battle mission had a pair of thunderbolts show up. Only a judicious use of precision targeting saved my hide, but my centurion has been rebuilt more times than Yen-Lo-Wang at this point.

I think I got through that with a really lucky shot on an ammo crate when ~4 of them clustered around it.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
Getting really frustrated by Liberate: Smithon. My 4 medium mechs vs 8 mechs, they have turret support, plus I'm supposed to task one of my mechs to stopping 2 transports? Not sure how I'm supposed to handle this. I've taken 6 or 7 swings at it in various ways and nothing really has worked for me.

Same here, I ended up having to load an earlier save just to do some other contracts. It feels very unbalanced, you start in what is basically a ditch and those transports start running behind another hill only two turns in. The game is like oh use them ammo dumps, but the mechs avoid the aoe radius like the plague and those lrm turrets don't help. It isn't two skulls by a long shot. I'm just levelling my pilots some more so they miss less. Perhaps next time they could drop you on the side that doesn't give the defender a massive advantage and terrain shielding? What genius picks an insertion point like that?

I ended up writing the wounded guys off. They're a side mission; the transports to the turret base are a hard fail. Sucks to be them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I finished the campaign last night. It was fun. I moved to FedCom space (what there is of it).

I'm gonna try multiplayer soonish.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
That said, my pilots were fairly experienced, and I was using a loadout of 1 Medium--an LRM Shadowhawk I've been using since the beginning--and 3 Heavies: an Orion kitted out for brawling, with an AC/10, a few lasers, and 3 SRM6s; a Jager with pretty much stock loadout of 2x AC/2s and 2x AC/5s; and a Grasshopper equipped with a lightshow of max MLs and max SLs, but I took sod all damage because nothing lived long enough to do much; coming at you in groups of 1-2 really cuts their strength down.
(snipped)
It could well be that you have to load up an earlier save and grind some more, though. Taking on 2-3 skull contracts for more likelihood of heavy mechs you can salvage might be the only way, even if it means reloading a few times to get a matchup you can deal with.

I really appreciate you taking the time to type all of this out. I've decided to take you advice - I'm going to load an earlier save and save this mission for when I have more tonnage. The mechs you did this with are much heavier and better armed than the mechs I currently own.

 Wolfblade wrote:
I think I got through that with a really lucky shot on an ammo crate when ~4 of them clustered around it.

I did win a single time, but it was such a pyrrhic victory I can't live with it. I caught 3 of them around a crate, but even then I "won" with 2 dead pilots, 2 destroyed mechs, and an 80 day medbay stay for myself, along with the 2 surviving mechs having lost all the fancy ++ weapons and gyros I had accumulated to that point.

Yeah that mission was brutal, looking back on it, I would have gone into higher skull territory (manually by using the map) and farmed up some heavier mechs.

As for the stop the transports mission, I found that one to be bs too. One bad miss means the APCs won't all be killed fast enough, and they only take 2 moves to reach the base.

Just played the prison mission - took it slow and steady on the attack so still had all four mechs in good shape when the second part started.

Hard fight but won through - although my chracter again is in bed for the next 111 days ! Still have plenty of money and good experienced pilots plus mechs in good shape so will do some more missions to build up a larger stable, cash and more mechs - as our new patron suggested :0

Currently just got a JaegerMech as my only heavy then ShadowHawk, Vindicator and Spider as line mechs.

Light mechs don't like being punched or kicked I have found

If you're going to use Light 'Mechs, get a Jenner ASAP, strip out the SRM4, and fill that space with more armour.

They did a reddit AMA. Some nice information - summary I found.

Game has been very successful for them.

More content is coming. Didn’t go in to specifics, but based on things he said likely new mission types, crew interactions and events.

Patch is their number 1 priority at the moment. Expect s lot of fixes and improvements.

DLC is of course being planned, nothing concrete, but they’ll make sure everyone knows when they got something.

Artillery is something they are working on, not a high priority, but they want it to be a fun thing to have.

No actual plans for this, but they have talked about the idea of missions in which you deploy more forces (besides your main lance) offscreen to help complete the mission.

Very, very unlikely we’ll be in command of anything bigger than a lance.

Headshots working as intended.

Also missions where reinforcements show up right away is also working as intended. What they are changing is the language used as it should be less “enemy reinforcement have arrived” and more “Oh gak our intel was bad!”.

They want to add ways of gaining some LosTech outside of story missions.

They are tweaking weapon values as we speak.

They would also like to add difficulty modifier options. Stuff like CT gets destroyed Mech is gone and collect 5 salvage instead of 3 to build a Mech.

They do not want to artificially force players to use light and mediums via tonnage limits. They are however working on late game reasons to use lights and mediums.

Oh yeah and the Withdraw button at the top of the screen? Yeah you’re supposed to actually use that from time to time.

Honestly the only way they're going to get people to use Light and Medium mechs late game outside of their Heavies and Assaults being in the shop is tonnage restrictions per mission. But it's too late now to really introduce that into the campaign, it would be a major rework.

Also missions where reinforcements show up right away is also working as intended. What they are changing is the language used as it should be less “enemy reinforcement have arrived” and more “Oh gak our intel was bad!”.

Yeah... no it's not.

You get a reinforcements warning after you defeat the enemy force and instantly get a mission successful after acknowledging the incoming reinforcements, because they're already dead.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Also missions where reinforcements show up right away is also working as intended. What they are changing is the language used as it should be less “enemy reinforcement have arrived” and more “Oh gak our intel was bad!”.

Yeah... no it's not.

You get a reinforcements warning after you defeat the enemy force and instantly get a mission successful after acknowledging the incoming reinforcements, because they're already dead.

Exactly First time that happened I thought “Oh gak, MORE?”, then I got the mission successful screen...

Against my better judgement, I bought it Saturday and spent all weekend playing, much to the determent of my college studies. It's finals week and I really needed to finish some projects! Oh well.

Call Sign Thumper has spent more time in the Med Bay then on the Battlefield. I manage 1-2 missions, then "Critical damage! Mechwarrior wounded" plays out. And then Thumper is in the Med Bay for 97 DAYS. OMG. So I lose my commander and have to replace him with some scrub I hire at the next port of call...

Speaking of which... there seem to be a lot of Mechwarriors wandering around. I thought they were supposed to be kinda rare, given that Mechs are so rare. I've also managed to kill every Founders Mechwarrior I hire. Hammer- one of them there SRM Death Spitter Carriers got in range of his Jenner and that was that. Sunny Bear took a PPC to the head. Pretty much if I need to sacrifice a Mechwarrior, I just hire a Founders Mechwarrior.

What else? Saw an Awesome in a store on Kilma for 1.3 million C-Bills, and bought it. Turns out I just spent 3/4 of my C-Bills for 1 part of an Awesome. Spent the next two months playing scrub missions so I could afford to keep playing.

The biggest PITA Mission so far: Stubborn Surrender. Two skull mission, worth 700K C-bills and salvage. Couple old Mechs with maintenance issues been harassing the local populace. I jump in with my Shadowhawk, Jenner, Centurion, Vindicator. The first mech I see? A Quickdraw. OK. I can deal with this. Then a Shadowhawk pops up. Hmmm. This could be tough. WTF is that?!?! A GRASSHOPPER TOO?!?! WTH just cored my Vindicator? A JagerMech?!?! This isn't a couple Old Farts trying to relieve their glory years! This is a full on Death Squad dispatched to deal with the local Merc Problem! OMG! The Grasshopper just did an DFA on my Jenner and squished it like a bug! Come on guys! Rally to... <insert PPC noise followed by lurms, and just as an FU, a medium laser> Critical Hit! Structural damage! Internal damage! Knockdown. Pilot incapacitated. OK Glitch. It's all up to you! Remember, these are rust bucket mechs piloted by geriatric Mechwarriors wearing Depends Adult Diapers and... Did that Quickdraw really just kick your mech so hard in the crotch that the force of the blow traveled up the CT and blew your head clean off? "Argh! Commander! I'm hit..." Structural damage. Internal damage. Knockdown. Pilot incapacitated. MISSION FAILURE

I play Ironman Battletech. All the ejection systems in my mechs have been disabled. We do not withdraw, run away, tactical retreat, whatever you call it. We've declared Jihad on House Espinosa! Death to Santiago Espinosa! Long Live Kamea Arano! If you have a problem, and no one else can help, and if you can find me, then you can hire the A-Team. For a (negotiated) fee, of course. And if I hear about how unhappy the crew is one more time... the beatings will continue until morale improves!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
If you're going to use Light 'Mechs, get a Jenner ASAP, strip out the SRM4, and fill that space with more armour.

I meant I punch them

So far I quite like the whole - "we think this is what's there but it might not be" - fits with the fluff / war in general - but then I have not had any really bad match ups yet and certainly not faced carriers which were terrifying in tabletop.

Some escort and destroy convoy missions are so ass backwards. I had an escort mission where the friendlies started halfway across the map and had to drive past the enemy to the extraction. Needless to say they were dead by the time I reached their position. Another one, escort engineers, they start midway and have to move to a point behind me. "Ok great" I think. What did they do, the actually started driving directly away from their objective into the enemy. Nothing was obstructing their path to my mechs, it even had a road to travel on

Same for enemy convoys, spawn far away and escape in two turns. Glorified 5 min loading screens.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Also missions where reinforcements show up right away is also working as intended. What they are changing is the language used as it should be less “enemy reinforcement have arrived” and more “Oh gak our intel was bad!”.

Yeah... no it's not.

You get a reinforcements warning after you defeat the enemy force and instantly get a mission successful after acknowledging the incoming reinforcements, because they're already dead.

Last night I had a mission where reinforcements spawned on me.

They weren't dropshipped in, they didn't walk in from offscreen, one turn they weren't there and then the next they'd pinged into existence next to my LRMhawk and right behind my Jager, whereupon they got a full round of shooting at my Jager's backside before I could even do anything about it.

If that's working as intended then frankly their intentions are BS.

I also disagree with their assessment of the Withdraw button; sure, use it if you fethed up and need to GTFO, or the enemy was a little more than you could handle; saying "you can always just withdraw" to excuse the awful matchups you can come across when the game decides that you're artificially not allowed to win, though? Sod off.

I want to have to pull out because I failed, not because I was never supposed to win. That's never, ever fun, only irritating.

I’ve never used the withdraw button, I just save scum. If there was an actual integrated Iron Man mode then that would be a different story...

When do you guys start seeing assault mechs? I'm at about 425 days in, and the heaviest mech I've seen was 65 tons, and that was an outlier. I almost always see the same variants of shadowhawks, vindicators, jenners, locusts, and sometimes hunchbacks.

 Ouze wrote:
When do you guys start seeing assault mechs? I'm at about 425 days in, and the heaviest mech I've seen was 65 tons, and that was an outlier. I almost always see the same variants of shadowhawks, vindicators, jenners, locusts, and sometimes hunchbacks.

outside of the story mission, ~3.5 skulls or higher

edit: they're still fairly rare in 3.5, uncommon in 4 and very common in 4.5 or higher

Were you seeing them at 3.5-4.5 before the story mission that introduced them? Because I'd not seen any up until then at 3.5-4, and not seen a single 4.5 mission available.

I've only just completed that mission, myself, so I'll see what happens later.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Were you seeing them at 3.5-4.5 before the story mission that introduced them? Because I'd not seen any up until then at 3.5-4, and not seen a single 4.5 mission available.

I've only just completed that mission, myself, so I'll see what happens later.

I think I had to complete the story mission, and even on 3.5 missions it's still very rare to see an assault, even a light 80 ton like the viktor.

Yet to see an assault 'Mech. Seen everything up to Grasshopper in size.

Rocking around with a Orion/Thunderbolt/Centurion/Hunchback crew right now.

My Hunchback pilot is a monster. She just steamrolls anything in her way. If they don't die to endless medium laser fire she just punches them to death.

Anyone seen a Marauder yet - probably my fav 'Mech.

So far my "I Spy" of enemy Mech's is:
Jenner, Locust, Commando, Griffin, Shadowhawk, Kintaro, Wolverine, Centurion, Firestarter, Spider, Blackjack, Jagermech(*), Quickdraw(*),

(*) main story only

 Mr Morden wrote:
Anyone seen a Marauder yet - probably my fav 'Mech.

So far my "I Spy" of enemy Mech's is:
Jenner, Locust, Commando, Griffin, Shadowhawk, Kintaro, Wolverine, Centurion, Firestarter, Spider, Blackjack, Jagermech(*), Quickdraw(*),

(*) main story only

Plenty of Panthers on my campaign, quite a few hunchbacks, blackjacks and cicadas, too. A single Dragon on the mission to prevent the dropship from landing.

jouso wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Anyone seen a Marauder yet - probably my fav 'Mech.

So far my "I Spy" of enemy Mech's is:
Jenner, Locust, Commando, Griffin, Shadowhawk, Kintaro, Wolverine, Centurion, Firestarter, Spider, Blackjack, Jagermech(*), Quickdraw(*),

(*) main story only

Plenty of Panthers on my campaign, quite a few hunchbacks, blackjacks and cicadas, too. A single Dragon on the mission to prevent the dropship from landing.

Ah yes forgot the Cicada - might be where I have been - which is not that far.

No Marauders in the game.

It and the Warhammer were cut due to the Harmony Gold lawsuit.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
No Marauders in the game.

It and the Warhammer were cut due to the Harmony Gold lawsuit.

Really - I thought that was all sorted by MWO pushing back - there they have Locusts, Marauders, Warhammers and the like

Given that Natasha Kerensky is supposed to turn up as a NPC I would be disappointed if she is not in her sig Mech as she is in MWO?

 Mr Morden wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
No Marauders in the game.

It and the Warhammer were cut due to the Harmony Gold lawsuit.

Really - I thought that was all sorted by MWO pushing back - there they have Locusts, Marauders, Warhammers and the like

Given that Natasha Kerensky is supposed to turn up as a NPC I would be disappointed if she is not in her sig Mech as she is in MWO?

The Marauder and Warhammer are derived from "Robotech" designs. The Locust and Thunderbolt meanwhile come from Crusher Joe and Fangs of the Sun respectively. They were never very contentious and even if they were once upon a time when's the last time anyone actually watched either of those Anime's? The problem is basically that Harmony Gold lives and dies off lawsuits over the Robotech IP.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
No Marauders in the game.

It and the Warhammer were cut due to the Harmony Gold lawsuit.

Really - I thought that was all sorted by MWO pushing back - there they have Locusts, Marauders, Warhammers and the like

Given that Natasha Kerensky is supposed to turn up as a NPC I would be disappointed if she is not in her sig Mech as she is in MWO?

The Marauder and Warhammer are derived from "Robotech" designs. The Locust and Thunderbolt meanwhile come from Crusher Joe and Fangs of the Sun respectively. They were never very contentious and even if they were once upon a time when's the last time anyone actually watched either of those Anime's? The problem is basically that Harmony Gold lives and dies off lawsuits over the Robotech IP.

Yeah I know that but that is why a lot of people wanted to see what happened when MWO had marauder and Warhammer's - which they did and still do have in their game.

The Kickstarter does say:

) A UNIQUE ORDER OF VALHALLA PAINT SCHEME available for 8 'Mech chassis of historical significance to the Order. These exclusive paint schemes will appear on the Locust, Shadow Hawk, Thunderbolt, Warhammer, Marauder[b], and BattleMaster and two more classic BattleMechs we’ll announce at a later date!

Was this changed in an update I have missed? I will have a look on the KS page

Checked the FAQs and they have this:

We’re excited by the great re-imagined 'Mechs Piranha and Catalyst have done for some of those “imperially entangled” ‘Mechs. We're excited that the Marauder and Warhammer will be in our game.

Let's see, outside the story missions, I've seen:

Spiders, Commandos, Locusts, Panthers, Firestarters, Jenners, Cicadas, Blackjacks, Centurions, Kintaros, Hunchbacks, Wolverines, Griffins, Shadowhawks, Cicadas, Trebuchets, Vindicators, Black Knights, Caraphracts, Grasshoppers, Jagers, Orions, Quickdraws, and Thunderbolts.

Oddly enough, no Catapults or Dragons outside of the story in this campaign. Saw one Catapult not far into my first failed attempt, but nothing this time around.

My current lineup is a Lightshow Grasshopper, Orion K for the increased armour over the V, LRMJager that replaced my Shadowhawk, and a fire support Jager I swap between an AC and PPC version of depending on climate, expected resistance, and how I feel.

Now I've got hold of a Highlander and a Battlemaster, though, I'll be making a few changes.

I'm still loving this game, but I'm definitely seeing how swingy things get at 2 stars. I had a battle mission (destroy a lance, scramble to defend against a reinforcing lance), the first time I went through I got nailed by a Kintaro, 2 shadowhawks and a wolverine. Slugged through them only to be met by 2 hunchbacks and a heavy. I lost two pilots, so I quit and reloaded my save for the exact same mission. This time I got a medium/heavy vehicle lance (most of whom died as soon as they entered range) and a wolverine backed by two cicadas and a striker tank. I steamrolled the whole lot of them.

I suspect the random forces generator is using tonnage as a factor in a much wider band than it really ought to be. There's a big difference between facing a stock cicada versus a stock hunchback. I love the idea of the unknown, but a little scaleback might make sense.

Right now, I'm really hoping to run across some nice heavies. I have 2 thunderbolt salvage, but would love a nice catapult or other dueling heavy.

Does anyone know if they've released al ist of all the mech chassis in the game? I dream of a warhammer or charger, but I don't have high hopes.

 ChargerIIC wrote:
I'm still loving this game, but I'm definitely seeing how swingy things get at 2 stars. I had a battle mission (destroy a lance, scramble to defend against a reinforcing lance), the first time I went through I got nailed by a Kintaro, 2 shadowhawks and a wolverine. Slugged through them only to be met by 2 hunchbacks and a heavy. I lost two pilots, so I quit and reloaded my save for the exact same mission. This time I got a medium/heavy vehicle lance (most of whom died as soon as they entered range) and a wolverine backed by two cicadas and a striker tank. I steamrolled the whole lot of them.

I suspect the random forces generator is using tonnage as a factor in a much wider band than it really ought to be. There's a big difference between facing a stock cicada versus a stock hunchback. I love the idea of the unknown, but a little scaleback might make sense.

Right now, I'm really hoping to run across some nice heavies. I have 2 thunderbolt salvage, but would love a nice catapult or other dueling heavy.

Does anyone know if they've released al ist of all the mech chassis in the game? I dream of a warhammer or charger, but I don't have high hopes.

Good question - I'll ask on the KS page

I am hoping that the Marauder and Warhammer are still in as per their original statements. Agree on the slightly random opposition and it can be a big difference.