You save valuable +++ gear too since it makes the mech untargetable / out of the battle.
This. You save the mechwarrior AND the mech (or what’s left of it).
That’s not a bad thing, actually. I never knew that. For some reason I figured the mech was lost.
But… in my finished campaign, I lost exactly 1 mech pilot who was a scrub and never ejected once. So I’m not sure it’s a major feature in the gameplay even though I now can see some merit. And I still think it ought to be an automatic event in the event of mech destruction. And I might even argue that ejecting to insure a mech can’t be damaged anymore is a metagaming strategy in reality.
The one time I ejected is the only time I’ve hit a bug in the game. It apparently was so disappointed in my choice it wouldn’t move on to the next mech/round. At that point the mech had no weapons left, and I didn’t want to lose dekker since he was maxed out. It was at the end of one of the later campaign missions.
Was your mech knocked down? If I eject while prone the game locks up for me.
I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure he was just hiding in some trees at the time.
We are discussing the format for an August tournament if anyone is interested.
fuck yea im interested!
I still field a dual LRM-20 Centurion alongside my heavy and assault mechs. I’ve been thinking about how to replace it with a heavy missile boat but havent started playing with builds.
I’m current fielding the highlander you get from the story mission, modified slightly with upgraded weapons and some of the dual heat sinks replaced with regular ones so I could use them elsewhere. A grasshopper sans jump jets but with dual PPC++ (stability), six flamers and the dual sinks from the Highlander. The dual LRM-20 Centurion and my beloved firestarter for hot missions and a Jenner for cold weather.
I hide and sensor lock to soften up the enemy with long range fire as long as possible and then when things get close the firestarter jumps in from behind and the grasshopper sprints into the fray to move from long range PPC fire to flame and melee.
Two mechs with six flamers each at close range is a thing of beauty when it goes well. Great for salvage as you can neutralize an enemy with heat and carefully remove its legs
Well you’re a lot more creative than I am.
I’m pretty content just lining up an alpha strike on the center torso to watch the robot explode.
My Atlas took some big hits so I finally went through a replaced all the LosTech weapons on it. The ER Lasers and Pulse Laser never seemed worth it. Ended up with an AC20, AC5 and 2 LRM20s.
I hope the first DLC is something theme’d along the Helm’s Memory Core. No Clan tech, but a few more weapons to play with.
I just had my worst mission performance so far, and had to eject out of one mech … and had another destroyed.
I’m killing time and hoping to pick up a few more assault mechs before i head to Coromandir, so I took on a 3.5 skull assault mission and assigned it to my “B” line team - a Battlemaster (with AC20++ and jump jets), stock-ish Zeus, and my Orion-K and Jagermech-A as LRM boats. I usually only run one LRM support, but decided to try two out tonight.
I run into two heavy lances in fairly close succession (my mission target isn’t around yet), but what really hurt was an SRM carrier coming into the fight and taking most of the skin off the Battlemaster. IThere’s literally no armor left on the thing. Not wanting to lose the AC20++ or the rest of the mech, I have Dekker punch out, figuring I can take on the rest of the force with what’s left.
Then I manage not to kill the SRM carrier, and it strips off the armor from the left side of the Zeus. The SRM carrier dies afterwards, but my mission target shows up - in an Awesome. PPC’s core out the Zeus, and Behemoth is lucky to earn a three month stay in Medbay.
So, I’m down to my two LRM support Mechs. Here’s where I’m thanking my lucky stars that I’ve brought along the Orion and not two Jagermechs, because the Orion has about 1000 points of untouched armor and proceeds to take point against the Awesome, a Catapult, Quickdraw, and Thunderbolt. At least the Heavies are somewhat beat up, and my duo manage to finish everyone off, nearly emptying their LRM magazines in the process, and definitely losing limbs left and right.
I ended up with not much salvage, as I had to CT core most mechs ASAP to reduce incoming fire. So, not enough parts to reconstruct anything (yet), minimal cash as I was hoping for better salvage, 3 Mechwarriors in the hospital for a while, a headless Battlemaster (I realized I lost the Comms System mounted there when the head blew during ejection), and a husk of a Zeus.
Oh well, I’m glad it was the B team and not the A. An epic, memorable mission though - and it reinforces my desire to go collect some more assault mechs.
Yeah, stuff like AMS and ECM would be good, though goodness knows what the AI would do with ECM. The whole spotting/counter-spotting set up right now is a bit basic.
The 3.5 skull missions seem like the ones where things go can wrong at random. A mission like that was probably my worst result recently (lost a lot of good gear) when I got pinched on two sides by two lances of good heavies. Then last night I did a 3.5 skull mission that was laughably easy, with a few scattered vehicles in the reinforcements force, and the main force a mile away, including a 40T mech??
This makes me feel relieved. E.g. there’s a viable way to avoid in-game difficulty without cheating or lowering the difficulty setting. (Haven’t bought the game yet.)
Had to eject for the first time last night. I decided to risk a 4.5 skull battle with my mixed 2A + 2H lance, and the opfor turned out to be 3A + 5H, all with full armor. Once I got sensor contact with the main lance, I set up my front lines (Highlander with dual AC/20++, and Battlemaster with loads of medium lasers, both with Bulwark & Multi-shot pilots) in a stream so they wouldn’t have to worry about heat, with two missile boats (Orion and Jagermech) hanging back.
But they turned out to be smart enough not to take the bait, and a Quickdraw jumped right over the stream to go after my Jagermech, as well as acting as a spotter for the second lance which turned out to be up on a cliff to the east. I tried pulling the Jager further out of range, but my front lines couldn’t turn to deal with the Quickdraw without exposing their rears to the rest of the lance, so they stood their ground.
It was up to the Orion and the damaged Jagermech to try and finish the Quickdraw, but I got unlucky with the hit locations on a missile barrage, so it was left with 2 structure in the CT, and kept spotting for another round of fire from the high ground. That left my Jagermech without both side torsos (scrapping a full set of LRM 10/15 ++ in the process) and had to eject.
Fortunately, the rest of the battle went much better. Most turns, my Orion destabilized the enemy Atlas, and my assaults tapped it over with an SRM-2 while blasting away with their main weapons at the Thunderbolt and Catapult. After a couple of turns of that, the heavies were scrap, the Atlas pilot was dead and his fully intact mech was mine.
The wrap-up operation agains the second lance went as well as could be expected. Once all the spotters were down, they couldn’t harass me from up on the cliff anymore, and had to start walking around to get back into LoS. This strung them out and I was able to focus fire on each of them as they came around the corner. It turned out to be another Catapult, a Cataphract, a Stalker, and a Banshee. By the end, I was out of ammo and wound up finishing the Banshee in melee, but my armor held, so the only serious damage was the mostly totaled Jagermech – a trade I’d make any day for the salvaged Atlas.
Great write up. It’s stories like these that make me love this game so much!
I was wondering what a 4.5 skull mission would be like. Sounds fun!