Heck, in that sense you could even call it regressive lol!
But the English language had deteriorated into a hybrid of hillbilly, valley girl, inner city slang, and various grunts.
So you’re smart, huh? I thought your head would be bigger. Looks like a peanut!
Yeah, the BT universe is reactionary, regressive, and downright fascist, really. All the Successor States are absolutist monarchies or equivalents, except for the Free Worlds Alliance (House Marik), which devolved into a freakin’ religious dictatorship after the ComStar split. Even the whole “House” thing is, as noted above, just a SciFi Prince Valiant thing, with about the same level of adolescent love for strongmen, sugar-coated visions of nobility, and glorification of violence. Hell, at the wedding of Hanse Davion (the Fox) and Melissa Steiner, Hanse used the reception as the venue to announce his first-strike invasion of the Cappellan Confederation, even distributing desert plates that, when the desert was eaten, revealed planets being targeted by his forces!
You also get some bargain-basement Heinlein in the books at least, with the glorification of MechWarriors and warfare as the true expression of, well, everything valuable, and the celebration of virile, violent, masculinity reaches Blakemorian levels at times.
But the pronouns…
I prefer amateur nouns.
WH40K does over-the-top fascism really well in an amusing way. This game does mostly nothing, but it sounds like it’s been written by people who live in Seattle and read a lot of Twitter. It’s not offensive, just annoying.
I can’t speak for the universe or the books. Maybe they’re better.
Well… Depends on the author to some extent, and your expectations. Michael Stackpole’s books are quite readable and fun, if not exactly complex. Some of the other authors are pretty solid, too, probably more consistent IMO than the authors in the Warhammer/40k literary galaxy.
The universe itself, though, is pretty much irredeemable in terms of anything approaching insight or nuance about hypothetical social and political organization. It’s not even really science fiction, it’s more “let’s extrapolate societies based on what a table top wargame needs.”
I think I might be the only one here who prizes my faction handbooks!
So, I have decided to travel around a bit before grabbing the next story mission.
Salvage is such a gamble though. I did a recovery mission, put in full salvage because it was against the directorate, and all it was was light mechs and tanks. The second mission was a 2 skull rescue mission, and it was 3 heavies and a medium. Of course I had selected only 1 salvage. Still, it was enough to complete my Orion, which I used to replace my Thunderbolt!
I laughed out loud. And I rarely laugh out loud when alone. To live is to suffer.
I’m sure it’s been touched upon in this thread, but there are 2600+ posts.
Basically, how do you spec your mechs out?
I’m currently running my main character in a centurion with shirt range missiles and jump jets, max armour. Can brawl quite nicely and take a serious beating. Main character has sensor lock as well, so he goes forward, spots things, bashes them and everyone else piles in from range.
Best case scenario is he knocks and enemy down and the other 3 get called shots in the same round. It’s happened about twice now and feels good.
Everyone else is long range, either lrm or ppc.
Seems to work.
I did have autocannons at one point but they seem a bit underwhelming.
Ditto machine guns and lasers.
Thoughts?
Best weapons in the game are AC20s, medium lasers and missiles, but that’s long term.
I do favor losing weapons to max armor. Very few times the trade off is not worth it, specially with heavies or assaults.
I usually have one LRM boat (avoid LRM 10s whenever possible, they are a fools game) and one Brawler.
I personally love AC 5 and AC 10, for it’s mix of range and it’s stability damage.
I recently got 2 PPCs that each deal 30 extra stability damage, and those are a lot of fun, especially on a sniper mech with breach shot.
One of the great things about this game is customizing mechs to match your playstyle.
I tend to have somewhat balanced mechs which go heavy on the armor and light on the heat sinks. Two are better at range, two are better in close. I also ALWAYS load up my support weapon slots to help with finishing off downed mechs. I also have a communications system (which keeps building morale during battle) and cockpit mods wherever I can, plus I search for gyros which give hit avoidance (makes it harder for all weapons to hit that mech).
edit - as for weapons in particular, their value does change over the course of the game. Don’t underestimate AC’s, but early on their weight just takes up so much of your severely limited usable tonnage. Medium and small lasers are terrific at precision strikes and targeting knocked down mechs. Large lasers are best left adorning the walls of your mech bay to look cool.
I wonder what the next balance patches will bring, especially in respect to the Large Laser and PPC.
I should mention I am still fairly earlyn in the game. I just liberated Panzyr, which was a fun mission. I used 3 mechs to distract the enemies, and used my close combat mech to jumpjet all the way to the objective and smash it down.
I have an AC20 somewhere, but it seems a bit…not that good.
And LRM10 is the best LRM I have.
And I have found precisely one modification, whihc is a leg gyro.
Two LRM 5’s weighs less, and produces the same heat as an LRM 10. Whenever possible, ignore the LRM 10.
It’s great once you don’t need to be overly concerned about its mass and the risk of its ammo going “boom.”
The value to it as opposed to other more efficient weapons is all the damage is on a single spot. That annoying Jenner which keeps lasering you or the Firestarter which loves to ruin your day? BOOM! Want to get extra salvage for another medium mech? Precision shot on leg.
I’ve tried a bit of everything on my mechs, and now in the late game (just have Coromandyr left to go) I’m still favouring putting jump jets on everything - even my Atlas. I tend to run my mechs hot, and the ability to jump behind a convenient ridge to cool down and escape from enemy LOS is fantastic.
I do have one missile boat, but otherwise am finding PPC’s to be great all around weapons. Two missions ago I had enemy reinforcements show up behind me. My Stalker missile boat was now facing off against the enemy lance, and everyone else was hurrying back to support it. PPC’s allowed my lance to provide covering fire while the Stalker fell back, killing a heavy well before entering medium range.
Granted, these are the +30 stability damage type PPC’s, but they are just fantastic.
Agreed that large lasers need a buff. Too much heat, but no stability damage…no good. The +++ models are good if you’re short on tonnage and want a longer ranged weapon, but even then…
Jump jets on everything seems to be a good idea. It’s annoying for a heavy without jets to get picked on and picked on by everyone targeting it. Unless you waste a couple of turns sprinting it out of combat it’s kinda doomed. But with jets you can just waste a single turn or even half a turn with that morale defense thing and pick up with it later on, maybe having shed some heat or used it to sensor lock something or whatever.