Not to worry, I mess about playing side missions so much I’ve yet to complete the 2nd piece of the main story missions and I’m 40 hours in. I just enjoy hopping around doing side missions. Heck, you’ll probably still finish it before I do, haha.
RichVR
2046
My theory is, don’t go for 2 skull missions until you have all medium mechs. I did several 1 skull missions until I got a lance that I liked. Then I did the prison mission. At one and a half skulls.And I rocked that thing. You gotta level up to do the higher level missions.
Yeah, this. I’ve had no real problems with excessive pilot injury or having my whole team trashed at once because I’ve approached things very cautiously. Do a lot of side missions between plot missions, only gradually ease up to higher difficulty rating missions when the current ones start to be cakewalks, etc.
In general an all-medium mech team is a pre-requisite in my mind for going 2-skull or higher because light mechs are just so damn fragile. Evasion is not an effective primary defense because the odd enemy potshot will get through on a luck roll. If that shot was with a bigger weapon then a light mech has an immediate and pressing missing-body-part problem.
I didn’t start getting into 2.5 skull missions or higher until I was fielding a team entirely on the upper end of medium mechs. I think I had a couple of 55 ton mechs and a couple of 50s in my main lineup.
Also, important tips for anyone starting out
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AC/2’s are worthless. Get them out of the starting BlackJack ASAP and put in a single AC/5 supported by smaller weapons. That’s the basic template for an effective medium mech. Works for Shadow Hawks, Wolverine’s, etc.
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Bulwark is a game changing early game skill. Get it on ALL your pilots.
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For the upper tier skills, you want a lot of people going up the tactics tree. Those will eventually be your front line pilots in the heavy mechs and they NEED that master tactics skill. Those not going up the tactics tree should be going up the shooting tree. That’s good for the long range fire-support mechs later on.
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Melee attacks are THE way to handle annoying light mechs and vehicles that wander into range. Vehicles take double damage from melee so they pretty much squish instantly when kicked. Light mechs don’t get their evasion bonuses against melee, so it’s a decent way to beat up the dodgy nuisances.
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Reserve (delay) initiative a lot. Reserving until phase 1, and then going again on the next round before the enemy essentially gives you two chances to beat them down before they can return fire. Let the enemy waste their actions moving to close range and taking low-percentage long shots while you are sitting tight. Preferably in trees.
RichVR
2048
I would add, focus fire. Focus fire. Focus fire. You have 4 mechs they have 4 mechs. Focus fire on one. Then they have 3 mechs and you still have 4. As much as I like multiple targeting, that’s for vehicles. Mechs are the main target. Unless you are getting slammed by PPC and LRM tanks, which is a different thing, then you have to do a dance in the trees. You know what I mean. :)
That is an excellent summary of lessons learned from the first twenty hours indeed. Well done sir!
It still works. You need to press shift+crtl+minus to bring up the debug menu. (After applying the regedit entry)
I stopped doing the missions that appear on the mission list and headed to a high tech world. And got a mission with these goodies for salvage!
Edit: The rangefinder is awesomesauce. Takes up only space with zero weight!
The debug mode speed up and the changes to the json sound delays made game play much much faster and enjoyable!
Took on a mission and got to face off 4 heavy/assault class mechs with my heavies!
They were (Stalker, Awesome, Highlander and Victor)! I was fortunate that they came lumbering one at a time so I can focus fire and cause them to fall.
It really pays off to take the inner sphere high tech missions.
Edit: Looking forward to using that Highlander!
Sharpe
2053
Man, I can’t get the debug thing to work. I have followed the directions exactly as listed on the reddit page and on RPS.
I’m not all that technical: am I maybe missing something obvious about using a registry editor or something?
Any links that would help are appreciated.
I love the core gameplay but it needs to be 100X faster. (Earlier today I thought it needed to be 50X faster. Yesterday, 10X. The day before, 5X. You get the picture: every day that passes with slow game play makes me more and more and more sensitive to the slowness, and slowly more and more and more insane.)
Also, is there a way to skip the goddamned jumpship animations? It was nice the first couple of times but now it’s just a repeating annoyance. The stacking annoyances in this game are pretty out there: it’s slow in so many different ways. Aaargh!
JoshoB
2054
Ah, that explains it. I try to limit the amount of clutter I have in my mech bay, and I’ve gone with money rather than salvage as rewards for doing missions so far.
Heh, all I get now are three/four skull missions, and I have…one heavy mech.
ShivaX
2056
Hit up the star map and fly someplace that’s 2 skulls if you need to.
So far I am getting a good mix of 1.5 to 2 star mssions. I am still in the early game portion though, with only 1 Quickdraw to my name.
Regarding the regedit:
I was unable to use the method described where they advised to make a .reg file.
Instead I open up “regedit” from Windows 10 search. Then found the registry node for:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Harebrained Schemes\BATTLETECH]
Then create an entry for dword (32bit):
last_debug_state_h176629417
For it’s value: type in hex or dec “1”.
Restart Battletech. In combat screens, press crtl+shift+minus(non-numpad). The debug menu should appear.
Also, you can increase the rate of day passage in the travel and dropship with the following Json edits found at this page: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?557302-Battletech!-(The-new-one)/page7
Edit: Warning! Click on the “Speed up” button of the debug menu only ONCE. Every click increase the movement speed animations by 5X and there is no feedback from the menu indicating that you had it enabled. You need to do this speedup at the start of every battle.
Before you know it, you’ll be wondering how you managed to play before without the speedups.
I like the slow movement of the tactical game, but the dropship travel does drag on. I set a destination and go get a drink or a bite to eat. Thanks for linking to this.
Another boneheaded decision. I once flew from one side of the galaxy to the other. Why on Earth do you have to sit there for several minutes just to watch the same animation over and over and over and over and over…
Where is the the escape button to skip it if the game is going to force you to watch 15 jumps in a row?
Weird thing I noticed of late; no mid-flight events seem to be popping up for me like they did when I started. Is that normal?
Using the star map is a pain; I wish there were more indications, easy to see, of where what is. But in any event, I just did the next story mission and tonnage issues are, um, solved.
I was sad I had to refund the game, but now I’m not, reading all these little niggles adding up stories.
Will buy after a couple of patches.
Sharpe
2064
cicobuff is my hero. That .json thing sped up travel a lot, and debug mode is working for me now after using the direct regedit method.
I have to say, after playing with 5X speed vs vanilla, I truly cannot understand what the devs were thinking and I also have no idea why it would take a long time to patch. I mean, 5X speed is already in the game in the debug menu - how hard would it be to take that option from the debug menu to the settings menu?
There are a lot of brilliant design elements to this game and a lot of complete head-scratchers as well.
I would like to see a dev-post mortem or an indepth interview with the devs to get a sense as to how some of this incongruity occurred.
BTW the entire reason the little niggles add up to bother me is that the game itself is damn good. An excellent, crunchy, tactical core, interesting strategic options to modify, buy and sell mechs, and a reasonably entertaining implementation of Battletech lore. If only the devs understood their players better in terms of player friendly design and options.
