Skulls being wrong all the time reminds me of an old bug in Wargame: European Escalation, where rocket artillery hit a perfect circle outlined around the target point rather than being spread evenly through the area.
Yeah, skulls are also supposed to have some random variance from reality (there’s a setting in one of the files which gives the range, iirc). When you’re starting out and going with a half- or one-skull mission, of course, there’s really no direction it could vary but up.
Battletech is a bit roguelike though. Sometimes you just need to bail on a mission.
Then our next mission was to place three beacons, make sure a target got obliterated by the artillery and then extract.
Everything is going fine except for the part where the Vindicator lost the arm with the PPC on it. The beacons went down, artillery came down, the compound went up and then… with three mechs in the extract circle and the Vindicator one hex away Darius calls off the mission because we “can’t possibly win.”
We get a good faith payment, but zero salvage, even though the third part of the Griffin I needed is right there. WTF Darius!?
Time for a new career, where step one is “put Darius in the airlock.”
I prefer games where you control ~6 units, like BG or IWD. Also Silent Storm. Vanilla JA2 allowed you 6 units per squad, which was noice. Blackguards gives you four units, but in many missions you control additional NPCs, especially in the sequel.
But, four characters seems to be the norm, sadly.
I hate that one, though it taught me the value of mid-mission saves. You basically need to start moving toward the extraction point before anyone tells you to.
This has mostly to do with BattleTech fiction going on in the background.
The “dropship” that carries your mechs to and from a mission (that is, the flying pizza box and not the spinning can ship in orbit above) is of the Leopard Class, designed to carry a single “Lance” of Mechs, which is the equivalent of a squad. There are 4 mechs to a Lance, 3 Lances to a Company, 3 Companies to a Battalion and 3 or 4 Battalions (I forget which) to a Regiment.
They might have felt that to carry more than 4 mechs would require a different dropship type, and ect ect along with game performance, just didn’t know how to square that circle and so stuck with 4 mechs for the player.
Yep, this. Mechs operating in “lance” groups of 4 (Clan nonsense aside) was well established in tabletop Battletech ~30 years ago. The game is pretty consistent with this too. Player gets 4 units, opposition almost always comes in multiples of 4, etc.
I’m not saying anyone who wishes for more is wrong, but I don’t think this is a case of this game mindlessly recycling some tactical game trope. This is a case of this game maintaining faithfulness to it’s own lore which is commendable.
Armored unit platoons in the late 20th Century were 4 tanks. Basic tactical offensive air formations = four planes. And I’m almost 100% sure that Jordan; et.al. at FASA were grognards. So four mechs… yeah.
I guess some of us want a little more Battleforce in our BattleMech.
Tim_N
3375
Yeah, it needs to be four or eight.
I would love for there to be a secondary lance where you assign a lance leader and give him orders through the missions which is then executed by the AI. I think this would give a nice balance between not having to micro too many units, and being able to take part in larger confrontations where you have your B-team around also.
I need a Total War: 3025.
Ergh noooooo.
These are your archer^H^H^H^H fire support mechs. They come in groups of 60. We meant, 36.
These are your fast caval^H^H^H^H assault mechs. They inflict “moral penalties” when they attack the flanks of fire support mechs! They come in groups of 30. We meant, 12.
This is your exciting tech tree! Please notice that everything larger than 35 tons is gated behind neato buildings that you have to build in each settlement. They’re called mech factories, scrub! So enjoy playing 75% of the campaign with Wasps and the occasional medium mech.
Wow, I don’t know if it was your intention, but now I really want to play Total War 3025.
I just played a mission where the AI deployed an Allied lance. If this battle is how the AI would play an ally, I pass. We start out side by side. I move up and gain contact. The ally mechs are kinda milling around not doing anything. Give the enemy vastly outpowers me I drop back so I am basically side by side again. The ally mechs try to start doing something, but they get flumoxed by pathfinding in the valley we are in and I swear spend 75% of the time not taking any shots. Meanwhile I am getting smashed. One mech loses both legs. In another I have to eject. I basically take my last 2 mechs (which were butchered, both missing arms and legs) and hide behind the ally mechs as best i can. In the end we won but barely. If this was a AAR I’d say the ally lance commander was an inept political appointee.
So I to would love to command 2-3 lances, but not sure about AI.
I’ve played some of the missions with AI lances and they are just very conservative about closing to engagement range. Lots of inching up and guarding every round. The trick is to stay behind them and do the same thing. Then let them absorb the initial punishment from the enemy lance. Once the enemy is engaged with the AI, then you leapfrog them and start lining up headshots. Meanwhile the enemy lance will still be preferentially targeting the already-weakened AI mechs. If done right, this can get you a victory almost without getting shot at it. Sure the AI mechs will get stomped, but that’s someone else’s problem.
The only time AI ally mechs bother me is missions where keeping the idiot nerf herders alive is part of my objectives. Then I just leave them in the dust and try to take the fight on solo.
Sharpe
3381
There’s another aspect to this in that, in this game, Mech weight is pretty much a straight up linear indicator of mech combat power, and the greater mobility of the lighter weights simply doesn’t matter that much in the scenarios.
Other mech games have handled this differently. I think it was the MechCommander games that organized piloting skills by weight class, so that a pilot could become an expert at Light or Medium weights, but was nothing special with Heavy or Assault mechs.
There are a lot of ways they could have created a greater variety of combat balance other than just “Ugh. Big Mech. Big Gun. Big Armor” (mind you, I love rolling an awesome Assault Lance, but it does get stale).
In addition to having pilots specialize in different weight classes, either mobility could be increased for lighter mechs, evasion bonuses could be increased for lighter mechs (especially against indirect fire), new maps could be added that would make the current level of mobility more important, etc.
And of course, more weight limits on missions, more ways to win (and gain salvage) than just blowing enemy away, etc.
So the 4 mech limit is one constraint on game variety, but there are many other constraints that could be improved upon.
Nothing wrong with rolling in with a Steiner Recon Lance.
Sharpe
3384
Well, once you’ve reached that point in this game, there are no mountains left to climb, so it gets boring.
This is the suggestion that makes the most sense to me and still stay true to the source data. It would not create a problem if they introduced different Leopard variants that have different tonnage carrying capacity. Introduce one with a capacity of something like 250 tons and another with the full 400. It would force the player to either carry fewer mechs or lighter ones on some missions.
