It feels weird to me that my best tank seems to be the light mech I bring along that runs all over the place then hunkers down defensively.
Same channels, but now itās Labo time.
Dat evasion though! I need to get into the game more and get a better feel for how things play out. But Iām curious, do you bring 4 mechs on each mission? I have suspicions about the game and its action economy (and how that affects a dominant strategy). Maybe itās just early game light/medium mech stuff. Or maybe Iām overthinking it without knowing enough.
Iām not 100 percent sure, but I donāt think the game will let you deploy with less than 4 mechs once the main campaign starts. Iām not sure the game scales the encounters to what your deploy either. For example, I had a Jenner, Centurion, Shadow Hawk, and Blackjack. I was hunting a War Criminal. The Criminal was in an Orion (75-ton Heavy) while being backed up by a Trebuchet, Wolverine, Spider, and Locust. I deployed a 185-ton lance and the contract had a 1 1/2 skull rating.
Iām not sure the game will let you cheese the system by constantly deploying lighter mechs. I think if you take a 150 lance to a 3 Skull mission youāre going to be fighting twice your tonnage.
If you reload the game back to right before you click on the mission you get the same map but the units will change slightly. 2 Wolverines, a Blackjack, and Jenner could become a Kintaro, Shadow Hawk, a Vindicator, and Panther.
Light Mechs with running on Evasion have to be careful that it canāt be meleeāed by a heavier mech. If I punch your Mech hard enough, it gains unsteady and you lose all your evasion. Then I open up with my heavier guns and light mech becomes scrap.
One mission I deployed and there were no mech opponents, just vehicles.
Protip: A melee attack on most vehicles will destroy them in one hit. Stompy stompy.
You may find this helpful.
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I realize now that there are some rules in Battletech I never fully understood. Due to the way we played, we often collectively overlooked minor rules that, seeing them fully and universally enforced by a computer, really change the game 
Not all of the rules in the game are exactly the same as they were on the table.
Also the table rules were different depending on which edition, which books we were actually looking at, etcā¦
I will say that this feels very right. The right number of ridiculous headcrits happen.
The main thing I donāt like, rules-wise, about this PC edition are the hard point limitations on mech construction. I mean, it makes sense for the sake of realism, but Iāve never seen that before in any edition of the Battletech rules, and it really makes mech construction way too limiting and way less fun. I canāt make a missile boat. I canāt put a PPC in my foot. Not cool.
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The factions seem to correlate to certain kinds of missions and behaviorsā¦ some being more or less trustworthy than others. And the mission briefing does usually tell you enough to make you take some considerations about what to bring or maybe to dust off early. And it seems like you should target your rewards to the missions based on what opportunities present: get salvage on assassination missions vs get all the money on base defense. Also you āshouldā try to get your rep up at some point, but Iām perpetually scraping by.
In my case I have yet to lose a mission or retreat, but Iāve had my entire crew kicked in and most of my mechs totaled. Lessons learned in some places.
The Hardpoint limitation came about I think because they wanted each 'mech to have itās own quirks. Instead of each 'mech being a āskinā for a certain weight class. Itās been implemented in MWO, but their itās to fuel the economy. āWhatās the point of buying Variant-A, if you can acheive the same result with the Original.ā I think the hard points are a little stingy on some 'mechs given the amount of equipment available.
I had read somewhere theyāre importing the art assets for the mechs straight from MWO so it also might be a limitation of the art engine.
If you think about it, thereās not a lot of difference between in a baseline Wolverine and a Griffin. One uses an AC and SRMs and the other uses a PPC and LRMs, but the Hardpoint dictates the weapons choices.
Part of it might have come from the fact they wanted to differentiate regular Battlemech from Omnimechs. Given the same rules system an OmniMech could be reconfigured in a day. (I can see this game getting expansion moving the timeline along.)
The differences between different 'mechs of the same weight class are supposed to be the equipment that doesnāt go in the slots. What engine does the 'mech have? What kind of gyro does it have? Does it have MASC or Triple Strength Myomer? Is the internal structure standard or endo steel? Does it even HAVE arms? Maybe itās got a hatchet for an arm.
Youāre supposed to be able to put any standard part into any of the standard slots. Instead of hard points there should simply be more or less slots available in different areas. No arm, you got no arm slots. Big engine, you got less torso slots. Small engine, you got smaller torso slots. Different armor types, different tonnage per unit of armor.
Yeah, I am not bothering customizing mechs yet due to the limitations. I canāt make my utter monstrosities from the old days with this system.
Two gauss rifles, front armor only, ton of jump jets, hardened armorā¦
Playing this game again gave me new appreciation of 3025-tech. Maximum tech was where things got a little weird.
I donāt mind them adding new stuff to the game per se, but I think really needs to add something to the actual game experience and not just be cheese.
No gauss rifles, the game is pre-clan.
So now I just put a ppc on everything.
One thing thatās starting to bother me though is the balance of missions. There are no light mech tonnage missions after the wee early bits of the game. It starts to expect a mostly medium lance pretty quickly and its pretty easy for those to be in repair or being refitted.
The logistics/economic element of the game is nice but I feel like they could do more with it, like lighter mechs being cheaper and easier to maintain. Smaller lower tonnage missions could be useful for sustainment while you repair the big mechs for big payday missions. You could use assault mechs on low tonnage missionsā¦ but taking too much damage would make the mission almost a wash. You progress on the game by building up the tonnage you can reliably field. I feel like they are trying to do thatā¦ but it seems more gated by the story missions.
However, in a twist of economics, I have started to use light Panther mechs as disposable. I put my player char in one to brawl/scout. It goes down a lot but my PC canāt die so I risk it. Itās also a common mech so I ended up with a bunch of em as salvage from other missions. When I trash one I sell it and bring another one out of storage.
Iām really just a fan of the idea that everything has its place in a game. I donāt mind clearly inferior units if they are cheap to retain or can give you an advantage in the action economy (or you field more of them). Reading about how clan mechs vs IS mechs were balanced in some versions of the table top kinda gave me some hope Iād see more of this, but I havenāt really noticed it yet.
And donāt get me started on SRM carriersā¦
Basically do the story missions as you can, they pay the bills and keep you flush. I do minimum morale for payments at this point, 300k vs 900k in maintenance costs? Fuck that. A million a month is way harder to keep up with than selling a light.
Campaign mission: Served Cold
Bring at least 3 Heavy Mechs.
Once thing I do like about this game is how the mechanics demonstrate how Battlemechs are generally better than vehicles. Battlemechs generally react faster and last much longer than vehicles of equivalent tonnage. Also the handle hilly terrain better than most vehicles.
I could sort of understand some of the logic, Medium 'Mechs are Light 'Mech Hunter-Killers, except for specialized Recon missions and ant-recon vehicles thereās not a lot for a Lance of Light 'Mechs to do. Since Lighter 'Mechs are easier to get, it makes sense Pirates would field them.
Your PC might be immortal, but if he āDiesā heāll still be out of action for 90 days.
I sort of get that mechs make more sense than vehiclesā¦ except SRM Carriers.
They have 10 SRM6s! They one shot any mech that gets close! They have to be more cost efficient than mechs, even if they are twice as cost efficient as mechs, 8 of those could totally take down a lance.