Is Battletech good if i want some mech strategy kino? what are some essential mods that you guy's would recommend
 |
 Tip Your Landlord Shirt $21.68 |
|
Is Battletech good if i want some mech strategy kino? what are some essential mods that you guy's would recommend
I wouldn't go that far and call it good. I played it a ton, BT games are a rarity, especially strategy that isn't as in depth as megamek, and you can have fun with it.
The game nonetheless has quite a few compounding issues which can ruin it.
Huge issue with memory leaks and shoddy programming mean you will have to restart the game after a while, especially with large modpacks.
And the base gameplay is flawed.
You can only have 4 mechs but tend to fight larger enemy groups.
Combined with the initiative systema and mechs you are always incentivized to use the heaviest mecha you can.
Combat rounds are basically 5 separate turns which are resolved one after another. Generally all mechs of the same weight class act in the same turn which really fricks with the lighter ones.
As an example all heavies, 60ton - 75ton act in the 2nd to last phases, so a dragon and grasshopper share a turn. The latter is way stronger becaus it can have more armor and firepower and especially armor is worth a ton in the game. The dragon only has better movement speed going for it which isn't very useful and you can't switch the engine in vanilla either.
Modding consists mostly of large packs with 6 common ones.
Vanilla+, Battletech Extended, Hyades Rim, Battletech Revised, Battletech Advanced and Roguetech.
It may be worth going for a bit unmodded or something light, either Vanilla+ or some of the QoL mods it uses.
Interesting from those might be:
>LootMagnet
allows you to grab multiple instances if the same salvage
>melee mover
Allows you to reposition when in melee like the AI
>pilot health popup
Shows you when pilots get hurt and what their max HP is.
>skip intro
Self explanatory
>panicsystem
Allows pilots to panic and eject, might be interesting with late game AI having very high health.
Ad for the big mods, I haven't played them all extensively but as aqrd.
>Vanilla+
The aforementioned QoL mods and a few more combined with additional mechs and units.
No longer in active development.
>Expanded Arsenal
Forgot about that one. Basically the successor to Vanilla+. Even more toys to play with and contracts to use them in.
>Battletech Extended
More extensive than vanilla+ but mostly no gameplay changes uses the entire map of the inner sphere, a ton more mechs and units, additional quirks for pilots and mechs and heavy use of RAT for equipment appearance depending on the the ingame date.
>Hyades Rim
Custom campaign focused on the periphery with custom missions and map. New mechs and ballbusting loadouts for the AI.
>Battletech Revised
Balance focused mod which abandons tabletop for gameplay, never tried it myself but some anons really like it.
>Battletech Advanced 3062
Big overhaul. Substantially changed combat, shooting after sprinting, evasion after movement can't be shot away by enemies, friendly fire etc.
Full innersphere map fedcom war era, tons of new units and quirks.
Uses MechEngineer mod which allows you to change engine, gyros, armor, skeleton etc.
Not bad, I do like MechEngineer but the mod has been moving closer to bloat.
>Roguetech.
Closer to tabletop mod but mostly bloat tbh. Adds it all, full map, battle armor, vtol, tanks multiple lances for the player. 30+ initiative phases per combat round, artillery and turret call in.
Has mech engineer and new gameplay rules like BTA. And tons of other content.
Personally not a fan, performance can be ass and at that point I feel like I can just use MegaMek.
Thanks for the post Anon. I am gonna try out vanilla plus because that modpack sounds like it has everything i need, especially the CBTbehaviours mod.
>Combined with the initiative systema and mechs you are always incentivized to use the heaviest mecha you can.
Does the better initiative mod fix that? the entire better combat modpack also looks promising
https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/mods/699
>Does the better initiative mod fix that?
>Expands initiative to 10 rounds
>Initiative is based on mech tonnage and pilot skills
Seems like a promising approach, certainly will make things less of an issue I suspect Dragon, Cicada and anything else with oversized engines will still be meh but it should be an improvement.
>the entire better combat modpack also looks promising
Looks nice, seems a bit like how BTA does it without veering as far from vanilla.
The QoL has some nice parts too.
nexusmods.com/battlewtch/mods/683
Man I really haven't looked at mods in a while, perhaps I should clean up my install again and go for a new mod setup.
>Combined with the initiative system and mechs you are always incentivized to use the heaviest mecha you can.
While true in a general sense you certainly can make use of lighter mechs in the right roles. Dragons are good candidates for late game scouts because of their movement speed for instance, and they're not going to engage directly until the right moment. Cicadas are irredemable in any serious context though, and merely passable if you're stuck with one as your only fast mover in the early game.
Probably the worse aspect is that because of the nature of your lance needing to punch far above their weight mechs need to get specialized to an absurd degree and armormaxxing being as effective as it is is part of that problem. I turned a cataphract into walking death just by maxing its armor and loading up on medium lasers until I had to balance out the heat sinks. And I still had tonnage so I added a large laser in case I needed range.
>can make use of lighter mechs in the right roles.
True it's possible to make lighter and subpar mechs work but especially anything with a large engine tends to be worse.
On the other hand with the right sett of skills and equipment 4 firestarters are almost untouchable too.
Agreed, hyperspecialized mech always outperform generalists.
literal troony game
How so?
There are a few trannie mechwarriors you can hire, including one of your starting pilots. Also, there you can choose your pronoun at the start of the game. Also, one of the writers is troon or troon-adjacent.
>he actually plays the main story.
I made the mistake of backing the kickstarter. The original release didn't have career mode.
>There are a few trannie mechwarriors you can hire, including one of your starting pilots
They made the mistake of making self-insert characters a pledge reward.
I don't even pay attention to mechwarrior biographies. I'm surprised some people actually do. For me it's do they have the build I want, if so they're hired.
It would be nice to have a short blurb on the mechs and weapons each faction tends to emphasize. However I never really powergame relations and tend to just focus on certain alliances on each run. If it causes me to get cut off from markets then I just have to get things through salvage.
>short blurb on the mechs and weapons each faction tends to emphasize.
Yeah it is something which was truly missing, especially because game stores do not correlate to the setting's lore.
I.e. the FWL favours large lasers because they lack access to PPCs and are the only successor state with access to a factory capable of producing Awesomes, making heavy use of them.
So of course their store has LRMs, Highlanders, Kingcrabs, Victors and Banshees as assault mechs.
Roguetech also spews pro-Communist quotes at you while it takes 15 minutes to load a mission
these things may be related
>kino
It's anything but that
Why?
>Stuck with a blackjack
Boooring, when do i get the Shadowhawk?
Making the blackjack the only vanilla starting mech was lame because it devalued making your character anything but gunnery focused.
Shadowhawks are also kind of lame. They're kind of the gary stu of mechs in this game.
>beefy
>fast
>high melee damage
>good weapons spread
It's kind of ironic that they fall off because they're too well rounded to really specialize.
>they're too well rounded
Isn't that baisaclly Shadowhawk whole thing? be a cool all rounder mech
Yeah, it's just the way this game is set up all rounders aren't that good over the long term.
All rounders are perfectly viable what isnt viable are autocannon armed introtech mediums unless you make them into minimal armor ac2/5 snipers. The shadowhawk's slots suck for a standard medium mech
Is the AC2 supposed to weigh so much in tabletop? It's such an unworkable platform compared to other cheap/early game weapons. Probably the single biggest noob trap weapon system, which is sad, because the idea of strapping a few to something and getting a sniper would be nice if it wasn't so outclassed. It loses so very badly compared to ac5/10.
It's a problem of scale in the maps. As a sniper weapon it would be fine but no map is large enough with flat enough terrain to actually make use of it like that. And even if you get to make use of its range you have a lot of repositioning to do when the battle shifts. So you're losing more damage on top of already losing the damage from whatever weapons aren't in range. The most threatening part of stock blackjacks are the 4 mlas, not the autocannons.
It sure does not help that mlas are probably the most efficient weapon in the game until you get to assaults :/
Yes. Both the AC/2 and AC/5 have way better damage stats and the ac/5 I think also has better range compared to the tabletop.
That's just like CBT introtech, unfortunately.
The AC2 and AC5 are garbage in tabletop. They only get better once alternate munitions become available, such as precision ammo. Light AC2 and Light AC5 are better, but lose a bit of range and are post clan invasion. Take a LBX-2 if you want to shoot down aircraft or cause motive crits in vehicles.
I enjoy it. It is basically the turn based version of Mechwarrior 5 with slightly different mechanics. Pretty relaxing game, although it is not easy. I struggled getting my group going and I knew BT general mechanics going in. The story is whatever but if you like Battletech and the way the mechs work you'll probably like the game
I think the game is good when you're struggling at the start, especially on the open mode. When the strategic layer matters because you have to make decisions on how to use your C-Bills most effectively and the tactical layer has competing priorities between successfully completing the mission and salvaging some really great parts that you need, and when your lance still feels like a ragtag group of hand me down mechs you've built up to work in ways they weren't originally meant to, that's where the game is most fun.
It's a shame only a couple of months into the game you're stomping around in assault mechs with top tier kits because at that point you're steamrolling everyone and the strategic layer loses all meaning because there's nothing more you need to worry about. The game gets too easy as you continue to be successful which is a shame. I think it could've been improved by vastly increasing the time it takes to repair larger mechs so that heavies you could only use maybe once every two weeks and assaults once a month if they're wounded on the battlefield. You'd keep a bunch of simple to maintain mediums to make up the bulk of your lance and lead them with a heavy or assault, saving your biggest mechs to be deployed at major battles.
I remember game balance was really weird with some mechs having objectively garbage stats and other easily outperforming everything in their weight class.
Reputation system also didn't made much sense – you supposedly get access to faction-specific shops at good relations, but nowhere does it says what do each faction sells.
>remember game balance was really weird with some mechs having objectively garbage stats and other easily outperforming everything in their weight class.
Thanks for reminding me, Marauder especially was obscenely broken allowing you to dish out headshots every turn.
>nowhere does it says what do each faction sells
Yeah it's abysmal that you need to look at the files or steam guides for it. They are also kind of weird with some stores being worse than others too.
Canopus for example gets Awesome, Bullshark, Grasshopper, Wathammer and upgraded medium lasers all of which are top tier picks.
And the game doesn't tell noobs how important it is for pirates to like you considering g the blackmarkwt is the best store in the game.