Awesome deal, thanks for the tip!
The Flashpoints are nice but they are far, far too difficult for their rating. I have run into two that are so unbalanced at their rating level that it is absurd. They are 3 or 3 1/2 star missions that act more like 4 1/2 and 5 star missions.
Given that I am actually pretty good at this game, I am underwhelmed by the tuning of the Flashpoints. 3 1/2 stars? Better bring a lance of assault mechs to complete.
The Flashpoints may be poorly tuned, but they can be fun.
I just did one call “Bourbon and Battlemechs” where the first part of the mission is to blow up a bar full of drunken mechwarriors, who of course pile into their mechs causing you to fight waves of “hostile inebriates”. After that I chose the option to duel at a fixed weight (230 tons) versus a picked lance of the enemy. The enemy showed up in day-glo yellow/red custom mechs with custom names including a Centurion named Rhythm Nation and a Dragon named Awesome Dragon. And of course, a Catapult named Occam’s Missile:
I had to resist the urge to sing “Y!M!C!A!” as I defeated them.
The rewards were pretty sweet though:
How many skulls was that? The only flashpoint I’ve seen is 4 skulls which is way too much for my medium lance.
Likewise. The lowest I have seen is 3 1/2 skulls.
Have put a lot of time into the expansion.
Currently can only sell mechs to the store. The other categories don’t fill out. Can still buy everything so that is a plus.
Fortunately money is not really a problem, but it is annoying.
That was a 2.5 skull flashpoint the 2 missions within it were rated 2.5 skulls and 3 skulls. The fact that the missions within the flashpoint had different skull levels may explain some of the complaints: perhaps the listed skull level on the map is the first mission only and later flashpoint missions (depending on your choices) can be different skull levels? For example, in my flashpoint, I could have avoided the final 3 skull mission by paying the enemy 250,000 credits, but I chose to fight.
Did they fix the speed of the database if you’ve collected tons of stuff?
I wouldn’t say I have achieved late-game-jpinard levels of “tons of stuff” but I’m fielding a full heavy lance with half a dozen backup mechs in the bay, another couple mechs in storage, and quite a bit of gear in inventory, and I’m having no discernable slow down. Switching from mech-bay to storefront is smooth.
Plus, you can swap the spots of your mechs around in the Mech Bay now. Amazing!
I’m actually enjoying this expansion a fair amount.
I feel like it’s best with a new playthrough - you wont be able to do flashpoints until you get to a 2.5 or 3 skull level of power, but you’ll be able to set up your lance with awareness of the new abilities (and maybe some new mechs). The flashpoints themselves are a big step up in mission quality, although there is variation.
Some of the story-bits in the flashpoints are fun. I just did a flashpoint for Kurita where in the first mission, I destroyed the target they designated then they got pissy b/c their intel was bad and that was the wrong target. They demanded I fix this for free so I told them “F-U” and attacked them instead. Good times.
Cool thanks!
On Career mode it is going to take a year or more to ramp your lance up to have a chance to do these but the Flashpoints are a more fun way of handling merc contracts.
That same Kurita mission? I went the other way and went after the target again. I was greeted by a full company of mechs and tanks, including a couple of assault mechs. They blew my heavy lance to pieces but I killed the target - and received the Still Alive achievement (complete the contract, escape with only 1 mech but lose no mechwarriors). That was not profitable as it took over a month to repair my mechs but it was fun trying to figure out how to finish the mission and get the heck out of there. Grasshoopper FTW.
I have run into a couple of insane missions where I just restored before the flashpoint and skipped it entirely. Both were rated 3.5 skulls and both were far more difficult than that.
The first was an escort mission in a desert. Once you tag the escorts, 4 heavies instantly appear (they are not there before you tag the escort spot) and total 260 tons in deep forest cover with good pilots who all have bullwark. Then the minute the first escort tags the destination site you end up with 4 more mechs totally 220 tons. The armor, defense and heat of this situation makes it very difficult to come out on top and impossible to do so without crippling damage.
Worse was the one for the Kell Hounds. Assassinate an assault on a moon (dreadful heat buildup). The issue is that you are assailed by over 600 tons of mechs, most with massive LRM loads, all at once. Even if you want to try to separate the defenders LRMs will be raining down on you constantly. Again, with the heat issue you can not burn the defenders down fast enough and the battle turns into a slog where you find yourself completely outmatched if you took the appropriate tonnage for that difficulty.
I truly hope that someone figures out a way to make more Flashpoints and mod that in. I would love to start a career mode and play it all via Flashpoints.
I feel that this game understands why I love Mechwarrior stuff.
I just finished a Flashpoint for the legendary Morgan Kell and as part of my reward, I received one of my personal favorite Mechs…
The Mighty…
The Awesome…
The Walking Trash Can!!
The URBANMECH.
Oh yes. I shall customize it most excellently and put it in the field. It’s day shall come. Oh yes.
(This is not irony. I was overjoyed to find that stubby little bastard in my loot pile. I loves me some Urbanmechs. Don’t ask why. I cannot say why.)
On my first playthrough of Battletech I was delighted to find a system selling Urbanmech parts. I promptly built one, kitted it out with the finest equipment possible (a pair of Large Laser +++ I think), and fielded it in a 4 star mission with my best pilot.
It got a headshot and dropped a heavy mech. Because nothing can stop the Trashcan!
Ug broke my game didn’t back up my 423 file and having to reinstall.I assume I made a typo in the syntax of copied file when I added the 700a data to my 423. Sigh. Copying and pasting created a odd formatting behavior inserting line breaks so I did it manually. ug.
I got some play out of Flashpoint and they did improve the inventory problem, but I burnt out due to the now truly insane loading times. Loading the game, loading a save, loading the tactical battlefield, loading back into strategy mode after a tactical battle, they all are so slooooooooooow. Like a full minute to load the game initially and a full 30 seconds or more to load a tactical battle.
There are some great things here but I can’t shake the feeling they are really struggling to make the Unity engine work efficiently for them. First the inventory issue, now this.
I’m a bit frustrated b/c I want to play more but the delays are fairly painful.
It’s not like there’s that much data to load either. Subnautica has the same load time for the entire game.
It really is a mystery how long it takes to load a game into the UI. And of course a combat game with no indoors and limited world detail shouldn’t take long to load a gameplay level either.
I was playing some of the flashpoint missions and picked up some mods for increasing death from above and melee combat, +25% from death from above attacks and +25 to melee attacks. On a lark I configured a grasshopper as a melee fighter bristling with small lasers also maxed out for damage output. I did a death from above and one shotted a thunderbolt?! My legs were maxed out so they survived the hit, for 1 turn till a catapult one shotted my legs and took out one of the mods. Lol. It was fun to see what that could do, but I didn’t think it would be a very viable long term strategy.
Grasshopper with small lasers and melee mods is actually pretty viable - they get shot to crap but they punch the snot out of stuff too.