Uh-oh. Posted reviews generally lukewarm to not good.
Here’s content from a post in the steam forum that has me concerned about flashpoint difficulty that I’m watching to see what gets said in reply.
title: Flashpoint missions LITERALLY impossible
wall of text describing problem: So I bought flashpoint today and loaded it up. Did the Steiner Mission set with no problem. The escort missions still suck because the APCs are driven by idiots with a death wish, but babysitting APCs is nothing new or even all that challenging. Next I allied with the Federated suns and tried their flashpoint as an ally. (not sure if being allied to a faction changes the missions). On the final level, you have 8 turns to place 3 beacons at 3 widely seperated points. To place a beacon your mech must sit in the designated zone for 2 turns. Seems easy enough right? Hell No. The beacon zones are protected by 12 assault and heavy mechs. Thats right, you have 8 turns to kill your way through 12 meaty mechs and take and hold 3 points that cannot mutually suport each other. I had the two star league reward mechs, an Atlas, and an LRM boat Stalker, normally one of the strongest, Highest DPS, toughest lances you can possibly deploy. It isnt possible to win. if your mechs stick together, you cant get the beacons. if your mechs split up, they cant kill thier way through the enemy fast enough to survive, if you run a lighter lance of mediums or fast heavies, the asault mechs make you thier ♥♥♥♥♥, it is strait up impossible. Im not super upset about the money I spent on the DLC as it adds a lot of cool stuff and flushes out the endgame quite a bit, but I am curious. DID ANYONE PLAY TEST THESE LEVELS BEFORE THEY LAUNCHED?
Sounds like a bad RNG roll on the mission difficultly scale maybe. I don’t know though.
If it is anything like vanilla Battletech, you could maybe restart the mission to re-roll the RNG? I’ve had a couple impossible missions before where there is nothing I could do to win so I just had to abort after killing some mechs. I’ve also restarted a mission and went up against 1 medium mech and 1 light mech instead of the 2 lances of 4 mediums prior…
We need your opinion :)
Hmm. I recall something from the description saying light or medium mechs were needed (perhaps to beat the heavy mechs there). Ah, here we go:
NEW ENCOUNTER
Target Acquisition is an exciting new mission type that challenges you to put your light and medium 'Mechs to the test. Take control of three locations to triangulate fire on an enemy installation before time runs out.
Or … not this:
I suspect if you go light which is what the mission likely wants you to do, you just get dead trying to push thru what’s in front of you in 8 turns.
If this is a common difficulty spike on the new mission sets I’ve no interest in this.
Because when coupled with what they characterized as “re-balancing of mechawarrior abilities” which reads to me as nerfing of abilities like bulwark that I needed in order to survive 4 on 12 encounters the last run through I grow concerned.
Net: unless I hear from the hive mind here a chorus of thumbs up on this DLC I’m going to assume this update based changes off a vocal hardcore minority (no doubt the very same people who screamed for making it harder and beta’d the update) making the game play not more interesting for the decision complexity increasing but instead simply harder.
Came back to this for the expansion, picked up my mid-campaign save, and discovered that I’ve gotten hilariously rusty in the intervening months. Also, wow, some dramatic changes to mechwarrior skills since last I played. I appreciate the reset but am scared to death of re-assigning points - what’s the current wisdom on good builds for your mechwarriors?
They’ve been very good in the past about balance passes so if you’re concerned now I would suggest at least checking back in. I plan on playing again sometime in the next few weeks and will report back.
I can wait. Pathfinder has me busy.
The Merc career mode has a host of options you can set in terms of difficulty, ramping up payouts and salvage and ramping down difficulty if you want to, or vice versa for the masochists. Ironman is on by default in this mode but you can turn that off at the start if you like. For me, the merc career mode is the real draw of this DLC, as I’ve done the campaign twice already.
I started a new campaign to try the DLC and it seems fine to me. I get the sense the folks who are complaining jumped straight into a late game save, and then after a major revamp and skill reset felt the balance was off.
I’m going to reserve judgement until I’ve leveled up from within the new skill system. Thus far I get what they intended and it seems fine by me.
This is true for me too, despite not having finished the main campaign yet.
For those who’ve tried it, how does the merc career start you out, in terms of starting mechs and crew/pilots, compared to the original campaign mode?
Someone needs to start a blog where they pick apart the logical inconsistencies and stupidity of steam reviews. I feel for the developers who work crazy hours to release a game and then they read:
"I am still confused on exactly what I got for $20. There are no new missions or none outside the campaign I already played. I guess there are new mechs somewhere in there. The new mode is a tweekable version of an already bland and nonexistant endgame.
I am going to draw you a picture of why people liked Battletech. You had a great story with good art/cinematics and a playable battletech game. It wasn’t a great game; it was a great story.
Why are you trying to sell me an expansion with no more story comprised of bolt ons for a game nobody really plays? Know your strengths and sell those."
Eh what?
Imho the story was quite bland but the gameplay was interesting.
I shelved the game once I’d broken the power curve and was regularly coming up against Atlases, precisely because the story wasn’t enough to engage me.
The only bit I liked was the twist where someone killed someone they maybe ought not to have done.
I dont want story. I want the ability to set up epic MP games which I have always wanted to do on table top, with combined arms, scenarios and objectives.
Hey that tournament never happened, did it? Well it still could…
A modkit to make our own scenarios would be epic
We should, but life got caught with me, and balance changes were coming down the line.
And how to organize it.
At this point I’d be so rusty my ass would creak.
Most strategies people have for beating it don’t involve trying to kill all the heavies in the way, merely survive and accomplish the objectives. One that I thought was kind of neat was having a very fast mech reserve to move after the heavies, jump onto the beacon location for one round, then move before them the next round, and jump out. Apparently that counts?