Harebrained Schemes' BattleTech Catch-All

I'm a bit leery of opening engagements with CT shots. IIRC, the damage will splash to attached areas, so I like to start at the extremities (arms or legs) and work in. I'll use the CT as a finishing shot after knocking off an arm or a leg, if I need a fast takedown. But it seems to me that the damage algorithm will spread things around from the CT more than the other parts, because of what it's attached to.

Dunno if that's a realistic concern, but it's my current understanding.

Robear wrote:

I wonder if ECM would help...?

The only way I can get ECM is to get access to Raven mechs.
Which I think I saw only show up when you do the "Prototype" flashpoint.
Which is a set of missions where the Opfor is Liao.
Which I can't accept because I'm allied with Liao.
Argh.

That's some catch, that Catch 22.

Quick DLC question: When and how should I be able to find flashpoints?

I'm about 300 days into a career with both Flashpoints and Urban Warfare installed. I got a popup some time ago saying that flashpoints would start showing up on the map, but have yet to find one.

misplacedbravado wrote:

Quick DLC question: When and how should I be able to find flashpoints?

I'm about 300 days into a career with both Flashpoints and Urban Warfare installed. I got a popup some time ago saying that flashpoints would start showing up on the map, but have yet to find one.

I started seeing them in the first month or so, they aren’t very visually obvious on the map though.

Aha! There were three marked -- they were just all way over on the far side of the map and I hadn't looked that far.

I bought the season pass during the Steam sale. Can I expect to see the new 'mechs (Cyclops, etc.) in the campaign I already had going before? Or do I have to start a new one?

Although after like 600 days of this campaign there are still 'mechs from the base game I don't think I've ever encountered, while others are weirdly ubiquitous. I own four Thunderbolts, three of them are the jumping variant that's lore-wise suppose to be exclusive to the Eridani Light Horse, and there were three of them in one lance in a mission I just did.

I bought the season pass when it was on sale (so not terribly long ago) and I played my ongoing campaign for maybe ten hours without seeing anything new. I don't know for sure about seeing new mechs in Campaign, but I for sure saw them in Career (along with flashpoints and city maps, etc) once I started one. YMMV, someone correct me if I'm wrong, blah blah.

I have seen the new mechs in the Campaign. Raven, the little Urbanmech, a bunch of others. They showed up very quickly in local missions. And they give you a bunch of options.

Anybody using the 3025 Extended mod? My understanding is it adds a bunch of 'mechs from the Community Asset Bundle, and that some of them have their own models (either made my modders or imported from MechWarrior Online) while others use placeholders. If I want to exclude the placeholders from my game so I only see 'mechs with their own models, anybody know what the proper install procedure for that is?

I've been playing a Career mode game with 3025 Extended for a couple of weeks. I have seen a whole lot of Stingers, Wasps, and Phoenix Hawks that all have their own models. By placeholders, do you mean mechs that are technically one thing but the in-game model is something else? I usually have the camera pulled so far back I'm not sure I'd even be able to tell. I guess I haven't even encountered any mechs that use placeholder models yet.

The community asset bundle adds a whole bunch of mech-specific folders under your Mods folder. I don't know if you could just delete/move the folders you don't want to use? The mod system seems to just ignore anything that isn't in the Mod folder.

Boudreaux wrote:

I've been playing a Career mode game with 3025 Extended for a couple of weeks. I have seen a whole lot of Stingers, Wasps, and Phoenix Hawks that all have their own models. By placeholders, do you mean mechs that are technically one thing but the in-game model is something else?

Yep. For example, digging into the files for 3025 Extended, the Merlin's chassis JSON file has lines that read:

"PrefabIdentifier": "chrprfmech_nightgyrbase-001",
"PrefabBase": "nightgyr",

I am pretty sure this is telling the game to use the model of the Night Gyr imported from MWO in the Community Asset Bundle. The two do look -vaguely- similar but 20 years of immersion in the lore of the BattleTech universe means I'll probably pop a blood vessel in my head every time I see a Merlin in my career now.

I did think about just deleting the files for the 'mechs I don't want to see, but could the game still randomly roll one of those 'mechs to show up in a mission? If the files for it are gone I presume bad things would happen then. Perhaps if I delete them from the rarity tables that come with 3025 Extended also?

But right now it's looking like the simplest way to achieve what I want may be using the "BLACKLISTED" attribute that the game puts in the files for the Star League-era 'mechs in story missions like Kamea's Atlas II that stops them from showing up elsewhere in the game. I'm probably going to try that first before I delete any files.

I'm in that spot in the campaign where you get 2-2.5 skull missions and can do them kinda easily, but then a random mission popped with an orion and an atlas in it. The mission said it had high level mechs and I was really excited, but my units failed to hit anything and I ended up accidentally breaking the mechs I wanted to capture. I have 2 parts of an atlas now, two parts of one orion type and one part of another.

The dragon(s) I've gotten aren't really worth the 5 ton increase and 35ton mech loadout they seem to afford for the initiative hit, so I really want to try that Orion. Soon, hopefully.

Unless patched out, a Dragon is very good if outfitted with jump jets and flame throwers the an appropriate amount of armour to absorb damage. Basically a tank that can lock down one enemy. I only ever brought one on any expedition.

Localgod54 wrote:

I'm in that spot in the campaign where you get 2-2.5 skull missions and can do them kinda easily, but then a random mission popped with an orion and an atlas in it. The mission said it had high level mechs and I was really excited, but my units failed to hit anything and I ended up accidentally breaking the mechs I wanted to capture. I have 2 parts of an atlas now, two parts of one orion type and one part of another.

The dragon(s) I've gotten aren't really worth the 5 ton increase and 35ton mech loadout they seem to afford for the initiative hit, so I really want to try that Orion. Soon, hopefully.

The Dragon was in a tough spot even in the tabletop game because it's inefficiently designed... in that it has to invest a lot of tonnage into its engine to achieve its speed, and thus ends up no more mobile and no better armed than medium 'mechs that are 5 or 10 tons lighter. But the initiative system in this game that works off of weight class REALLY screws the Dragon because now it's basically just a medium 'mech that moves later.

When the game came out I was wondering if there would be any way to make a mod that sets initiative by movement speed, but as far as I could tell it's impossible without telling the game a bunch of 'mechs are different weight classes than they really are and that screws up other stuff.

Re: salvaging parts of different variants of the same 'mech, there is at least one mod that allows you to combine parts from different variants and choose which variant you want the completed 'mech to be.

Funny you should mention that, Vector. I just outfitted a crab to do something similar, though set up more as a backstabber. I had some fun with the firestarter as a hop in and out lockdown unit.

I enjoy the smaller mech gameplay a bit more than the brawler style you get with heavier mechs. I look forward to trying out different tactics and maybe some mixed lances.

And I'm glad to see I am not the only one with Dragon problems. Cool to hear about mods that can help with this sort of thing, but I'm trying mod free for my first playthrough. I'll look into something like that later. I saw there's a difficulty slider that makes salvaging harder by requiring more parts. That's interesting, but kind of the opposite of what I like. I'd rather get mechs sooner and experiment.

Fwiw, I've never played the tabletop game and know nothing of the lore. I just enjoy turn based tactics and this one caught my fancy.

I seem to remember putting an Arm Mod++ and an AC/20 in a Dragon and having quite a bit of fun with that. Especially with a MechWarrior that maxes out the Piloting skill, which gives you bonus initiative and extra melee damage. It made a great finisher on damaged mechs - rush in and either blow a huge hole in them with the autocannon or knock a limb off with a punch.

Isn't it the Tactics skill that gives you bonus initiative and not Piloting? I thought there was only a Piloting skill to move after firing if you wanted to.

You're right - Master Tactician, Tactics ability at level 8 is the one that gives +1 initiative.

The Piloting skills give extra evasion, not initiative. My mistake.

Boudreaux wrote:

You're right - Master Tactician, Tactics ability at level 8 is the one that gives +1 initiative.

The Piloting skills give extra evasion, not initiative. My mistake.

No problem, I was kicking myself thinking I had somehow missed a way to give a pilot constant +2 initiative.

Steiner Scout Squad would be so good with +2 initiative.

I mean if you're willing to run "only" three Atlases all with Master Tactician and then the fourth 'mech is a Cyclops with MT and the battle computer...

I quite like my Dragon! It's usually piloted by a max gunnery MechWarrior and I've put a AC/20+++ on it, it cores light and sometimes medium Mechs like an apple if I do a breaching called shot to the torso, but that'd work on any Mech capable of holding an AC/20 I suppose. It was my first heavy however, and I really liked how speedy it was despite its size, I'd flank around with it to backstab with the AC/20 which was wonderfully effective, and the extra evasion it got offset its lighter armour. It is finally starting to see the bench more now I have a few assault and higher weight class heavy Mechs.

I think I was having a tactical problem with the low tier heavy mechs. As with the Dragon, I took a Quickdraw along and had it set up for max armor. Thinking it would better at tanking hits, I had it positioned as the most convenient target for the AI to shoot. For the second straight mission with such a mech along, the AI obliged and targeted the heck out of my heavy, knocking it to the ground and back to turn 1. Unfortunately, with the battlefield saturated with enemies, this meant a lot of shooting at my downed mech before I could finally pick it up off the ground and relegate it to back row duty for the rest of the battle.

The first time, with the Dragon when this happened, I actually had to punch out to save the mech and pilot and finish a story mission with three mechs. This time, I was able to taunt the AI with juicier seeming targets, disable the missile boats (including a 60t vehicle I hadn't seen before - Manticore? - with a bunch of LRM20s), and finish the fight. Unfortunately, my pilot suffered two injuries. I may have to upgrade my medbay as the learning curve keeps getting these poor souls hurt.

The quest for the perfect mission continues! I'll find a use for these heavies yet.

Localgod54 wrote:

(including a 60t vehicle I hadn't seen before - Manticore? - with a bunch of LRM20s)

LRM Carrier. There are also 60t SRM Carriers. Both are lightly armored but can do horrendous damage, because they're basically a bunch of missile launchers duct-taped together.

The Manticore is a less-specialized heavy tank at the same tonnage.

Localgod, I find Quickdraws draw fire because they are fast (and so tend to get out ahead a bit, meaning they get hit earlier and by more enemies). The other thing that I find is that they seem to have glass jaws. Every damn time I think one of them might be able to tank, in a level appropriate encounter, they get knocked out much faster than I expected. In fact, if I see them among an enemy force, I know I can take them out quickly and I do so.

So... Maybe it's the Quickdraw.

Good to know. It feels like my "discoveries" are mostly just a slow drip of common knowledge I'm acquiring the hard way.

Quickdraw has no more armor than the average medium 'mech. It's less well protected than stuff like the Hunchback, Wolverine and Shadow Hawk, actually.

Expanding on what Middcore said: Heavier 'mechs can have more armor than lighter ones, but in default configurations, they often don't. I often take a secondary weapon or two off of a new 'mech in exchange for more armor.

Yes, the relationship between 'mech size and the amount of armor it can have is basically linear. However, in their stock configuration, 'mechs that actually carry their maximum allowable amount of armor (at least in the 3025 era this game is set in) are few and far between. Most are at least 10-20% short. The Quickdraw is just over 30% short.