Battletech by Harebrained Schemes (Shadowrun Returns)

This is the fun thing about LRM assault mechs. Any alpha strike brings even untouched targets to unsteady status so the next attack will knock them over.

But re ACs, early in the game when I only had the occasional un-plussed AC5, they seemed worthless to me, but a bunch of plussed AC5s or AC-20s, yeah, they are very nice. And later in the game you have such high pilot accuracy bonuses you hit all the time anyway. You just also need pasting-type mechs as well, either SRM or LRMs as you may prefer. Until this latest patch energy only seemed worthwhile at the medium-level where you could cram so many MLs into something as to make the usual balanced stock mech seem anemic.

The difference is in the ability to dramatically push your heat. The old ML and SRM let you do much more dramatic damage in alpha strikes, compared to AC5s. If you could take out two or three enemy mechs in a lance out with your alphas, you could afford to take a whole turn off cooling down. You also have to take into account the 10 free heat sinks. Basically, if your load out doesn’t have the heat potential to go past the redline in 2 or 2.5 or so alphas, you’re arguably heat inefficient. Given the weight of the ACs, that’s hard to do on medium and even some heavy mechs. I definitely don’t compare weapons, 1 to 1, by adding in the weight of necessary heat sinks the way you do.

Different strategies I guess, but if a weapon doesn’t deal stability damage, then its useless to me.

As I said, I still pursue an overheat strategy, just one that revolves around the superior AC 5, rather than the dinky ML.

Also, Anyone else notice how inaccurate mechs are after they stand up? Like really really bad?

The announcement of Xenonauts 2 got me interested to finally play Xcom2 War of the Chosen which I’ve had in my backlog for a long time. Should I play it as itself, or add all those workshop items Pavonis Interactive added? When I played Xcom 2 originally it was bare bones with no DLC (long time ago).

Sorry for slight threadjack!

I used some mods on the base xcom 2 to tweak a few things (timers and katanas) but didn’t feel like I needed to do anything on WOTC and I ran through two full campaigns on that one.

Maybe someone else who has used some will chime in if they feel there are some that are a must have, I’d be interested in hearing what they are because I know at some point I’ll dive in again (I can say this much though, imho once you play xcom 2 w/ WOTC there’s no going back to play it w/o it).

This Fall, we will probably have a Battletech Tournament. We’ll need to settle on a format.
Some ideas for the Tournament -

The map selection announced in advanced. Probably randomly generated before the start of the campaign, so everyone knows.

Build your own mechs and lances. My idea is to have everyone pre build two lances before the start of the tournament, and that what you use. Basically an A squad and a B squad. This cuts down on the amount of fiddling needed between games, and the overall time it takes to set up a game.

Groupings - Created 4 divisions - everyone plays everyone in each division. The top 2 in each division moves on.

Prize - NONE!!!

I’m looking for more ideas, and after a while, I’ll put together a survey and set up a thread for the Battletech Tournament thread.

Prize - The right to claim the qt3 ultimate mechwarrior championship belt for endying glory and fame.

Yeah, geez, what’s up with that prize. The winner should be able to call themselves “champion Mechwarrior” as their subtitle in the forum or something.

What am I, Oprah?

who is going to joe rogan the bouts on twitch?

Hard to tell from here.

Could Oprah write an excel spreadsheet of mech-y goodness like Legowarrior produced up thread?

I think not.

She would have people.
Damn, I need people!

So, let me know about ideas for the format of the future tournament. I really like the idea of making our own mechs, because that is part of the fun, but I really don’t like the idea of having people tweak their mechs after every game. That starts to take to long, and some of us have a limited window of time.
Alternatively, I don’t mind just using stock mechs because it lowers the barrier for a lot of people (no more messing with Sleepy PPC guys or LRM Mechs with zero armor).

I usually don’t do tournaments because I suck. But this is one I might join. I’d be fine with stock mechs. It levels the playing field.

While I’ll abstain as I normally do in MP games, I’d certainly follow the tournament with interest!

I don’t know if the scheduling would work out (my only available game time is generally 10 pm - midnight PST), but I’d be at least potentially interested.

I’m in favor of Lego’s proposed tournament format but if the round structure allows, I would add one thing:

tiers of mech purchase dollars corresponding to the rounds like this:

Round 1: enough money for a light/medium lance (say 15M)
Round 2: enough money for a medium/heavy lance (say 25M)
Round 3: enough money for a heavy/assault lance (say 35M)

This means each player would have to design a total of 6 lances (2 for each round) but the players could always choose stock configurations, and in my plan, you’d only have to submit your proposed 2 lances for the round before the beginning of that round (not the whole tourney).

This means that the tourney will feature a variety of mechs and also that the concept of reconfiguring your mechs and adapting is a part of the tourney.

And now to briefly return to the SP portion of the program where I beg your leave to bitch about what I have to show for a priority mission called Guldra. I have pretty much zip nada. The salvage was a joke.

Meanwhile Lady Arnano traipses around in an Atlas I desperately need yet she can’t be bothered to give it to me after the mission and meanwhile I got a battlemaster nearly shot dead losing a lot of 3+ weapons sitting there at the end of the mission getting pounded because of a rather contrived constraint that I stay in a rather confined space and get attacked from two directions for four turns…

@ArmandoPenblade will run a 900 part RPG session for us all to create the history and compositions of our merc companies.

Consider it done. I’m wrapping up my 18-part, 5-GM, 20-player scifi comedy extravaganza in about 36 hours and am gonna be real bored after that…