Yep, primarily for melee. I figure if you pound someone from a distance while they close, you may have some exposed infrastructure by the time they get to you. Your punch/kick will hit hard, but the machine guns will take advantage of any breaches.
The Battletech fluff is awesomely cheesy. All those Ultramarines, Tyranids, and “For the Emperor!” stuff.
Jade Falcon Awesome, 3026 (Colorized)
Don’t be silly, the clans didn’t use the Awesome.
Huh. First bug I’ve run into; my mechs didn’t get their armor replenished after a story mission (and I can’t set my team to work repairing them in the mech bay - I may have to do a refit to make it happen).
I’ve run into that a couple times. It is a very odd bug. IIRC I had to go into refit, and also muck about with the armor values (decrease and then increase) to get it to return it back to normal.
It appears to be a UI glitch because I brought the mech on a mission with me and the armor was maxed out like normal. And then once back in base, the UI glitch was fixed. YMMV.
It’s the weekend, so I’m back into this! I was worried I was getting a bit too overpowered, but the 4th-ish story mission (with the exploding crates) had some tense moments. I’m probably still overpowered with three heavies, so I’ll keep pushing through the story.
I got an Orion today and it is great. Loving how hard it is and its melee damage. My kind of mech. Running three heavies and a medium now; the aformentioned Orion, a Quickdraw, a Catapult and a Kintaro LRM spammer.
Yeah, I’m a little bit past that, and felt the same way. I had been cruising through most of the missions, but the ammo depot mission was the first time I had to accept only a partial victory, as I had to blow some of the crates, and couldn’t stop the escaping vehicles.
And then a bit later I suffered my first two pilot deaths, as a supposed 3-skull mission turned out to have the first assault mech I’ve seen, supported by two full lances of heavies.
Umm, now I’m scared. Two full lances – is that related to the reinforcements bug? Is that still a thing?
They said that is a feature, not a bug. Darius isn’t always very accurate in guessing the strength of the opposition. Were they fully armored? Some times they will have the heavier classes, but their armor will be pretty depleted.
Yeah, full armor. It was an assassination mission where there were three separate objectives for the target, the supporting forces, and the reinforcements.
The marker for the supporting forces was right in front of me, with the other two markers quite a bit past it and on either side. Previous missions at the same difficulty level seemed to have mostly lights and mediums, with maybe one or two heavies, so I thought I could engage and take out the supporting forces before the other groups could get into range. Instead, it turned out to be a Dragon, a Thunderbolt, a Griffin, and a PPC Carrier. I went ahead and engaged, hoping that maybe the reinforcements and the target would be lighter to balance things out.
Managed to wipe out the first lance, but it took a few turns and we lost a fair amount of armor, and by the time they were done, I was taking fire from both the reinforcements (another Thunderbolt, something 75T with lots of LRMs, and two more unidentified mechs), and the target (something 80T with lots of LRMs, supported by a Cicada spotter).
I could tell things weren’t going well, but held on to finish off the first lance so I could do a good-faith withdrawal, and was hoping that maybe the target would be something I could kill quickly. Once the 80T blip appeared on the radar, I knew I had to pull the plug, but by that time I had already lost two mechs and pilots (though fortunately not my top ones).
The heavier-mechs with depleted armor are dangerous but also represent a potential windfall of salvage. Killing a depleted armor heavy with a medium lance can get you heavy chassis earlier. That is offset by the potential for the heavies to shoot you to pieces, of course.
You can’t always tell ahead of time if the opposition will have depleted armor but the missions sometimes give clues: indications that the mechs are “poorly maintained” or “suffering battle damage” are usually signs that the enemy has depleted armor. Also, not not all enemy lances in a mission will have the same level of armor depletion; sometimes you will face one lance with full armor and one lance 75% depleted or 50% depleted armor.
If you do see the text that indicates depleted armor, be aware of the higher risk, but that’s also a time to crank up your mission rewards to full salvage.
And the “unreliable intel” thing goes both ways, at least. I just did a 4.5 skull mission where Darius warned me that my 270T all-heavy lance wasn’t going to be enough. I took it, figuring it was the last available contract in the system so I’ve got time if I need any heavy repairs or healing afterward.
And the total opposition was a Quickdraw and a Catapult, both with depleted armor, plus some heavy turrets that I was able to prevent from getting any shots off. Didn’t even take any structure damage.
…Of course, it wasn’t actually that profitable because I set the slider to all salvage in the hopes of getting my first assault mech.
The true tragedy in the BattleTech universe.
Question: am I missing something if I take off most of the armor from an arm I’m not using? I’d have to refit if it gets blown off, but any other issues? I guess extra damage goes straight to the center torso, huh?
Yes, I’ve had my share of them to even out the missions where it feels like I’m getting wrecked.
Iirc damage reflects in. So once the arm is gone, the damage starts heading into the torso.
Yup, my understanding is that the damage moves toward the center. So if you lose an arm the extra damage is applied to the right/left torso based on which arm is lost. Any extra damage when the right/left torso is lost would go to the center torso.
Yep, I’ve mistakenly popped a CT when trying to pick off legs by firing too many shots at a downed mech.
Another tragedy.
I don’t know if this is a bug, or WAD, as I’ve only noticed it in my last couple of missions (and I just completed the penultimate story mission):
It doesn’t seem now like you can score a knockdown in the salvo of one mech. You need at least one more salvo once the stability boxes are full and the unsteady sign shows to get a knockdown. I’ve observed that I’ve filled up all the stab boxes and the unsteady sign appears, yet the mech doesn’t go down (like it used to, IIRC). I have to fire on it again with another mech and then a knockdown will occur.
Has anyone else seen this recently? It’s happened to me multiple times in the same mission and I’m nearly certain that it’s not because the stab boxes aren’t completely filled.