I feel like all the big mod packages I’ve tried are works in progress, and sometimes the destination is too hardcore/fanboy-ish for my tastes. Despite some issues with the OEM game, I feel like it is the best overall package/presentation of the game. Trying out mods can breathe some life into the game, but so can the DLC.
The individual DLC are only OK separately, but all 3 taken together really do expand and enhance the game
In my view, the best Battletech is the OEM game plus all 3 DLC. YMMV.
As a celebration of the game, here are my thoughts on enemy mechs, by weight category: most feared, most annoying and of course best/worst enemy.
Light Mechs
Most Feared: Panther. Tough to kill for a light mech, with good damage and that dangerous PPC range.
Most Annoying: Locust. F’ing Locusts man. Zippin’ around, hard to target, shooting me in the back, doing more damage than you expect and just generally being pests. F’ing Locusts.
Best/Worst: Firestarter. Can both annoy and terrify with Flamer Fu but also blow up real good when hit properly.
Medium Mechs
Most Feared: Hunchback 4G. I specify the 4G b/c of the AC20, which can ruin your whole day. Plus they are mobile, relatively tough to kill and will just generally smack you around, for a medium.
Most Annoying: Phoenix Hawk: Jumpy little bastards who hit surprisingly hard.
Best/Worst: Cicada b/c I love to pop them like bugs.
Heavy Mechs
Most Feared: Archer. Lots of missiles, plus clustering = pain, at long range. They don’t kill with the suddenness of a big cannon-mech but man they will F your S up if you don’t close and smash em.
Most Annoying: Jaegermech S. They do truly ridiculous damage but their armor is also laughable. They can rain on your parade but once you get their range, they go down hard.
Best/Worst: Dragon. No explanation needed.
Assault Mechs:
Most Feared: This is a tie between the mighty and fearsome ballistic mastery of the Annihilator (who would take the crown but for its pitiful speed) and the mighty and flexible Bull Shark, which is an elegant death machine. In the base game, King Crab was king, but Heavy Metal has obseleted the poor crabber.
Most Annoying: Awesome, the one with the 3 PPCs. They blow themselves up almost as much as they blow me up.
Best/Worst: Not really best/worst in the way I mean it, but the Banshee is just kind of a joke for a 95 ton mech. I always feel sad for the enemy when I see a 95 tonner and it turns out to be a Banshee rather than a Bull Shark. The contrast between the two is stark.
Pfft. Draw a line through all the above, and replace with: Best Mech: Urbie
BT with 3025 Extended is a permanent fixture on my HD.
Im curious I missed it up thread, whats the key delta between this and BTA3062? I loved 3025, and just wondering if BTA3062 brings anything definitive to the table?
This is me as well. I always have a career or 2 going. Something about firing missile salvos to a robots face I find very cathartic after a day’s work. One is usually a gotta catch them all type affair while the other is tailored for a bit more challenging game play. Both provides missiles to the face, lots and lots of missiles.
BTA3062 adds more mechanics, assets, etc. To me it was one step too far in complexity for my tastes, and I prefer 3025. 3062 also requires higher specs on your PC, which makes it painfully slow on my machine.
I was thinking I would switch back to playing BTE, and this first mission was painful. 1 skull, had 2 mechs get CT taken out, and the other 2 needed refits. If it wasn’t for the Firestarter messing with the Wyverns heat levels, we might have lost all 4 mechs.
I don’t know what content is BXECE and what’s the DLCs I picked, either way I’m having a good time running a career.
Not sure how I’m ever going to not completely piss off the pirates though, seems like every world I go to at least 2 of the 6 missions is piss off the pirates and I’ve yet to see a single mission that fell under the heading of make the pirates happy.
Edit: oh, and BXECE does not so far make this harder, I’m just jumping to half skull planets and looking for salvage. I very much do not want Battletech harder. ;)
It does add complexity, which I don’t mind, and performance is for me on par with vanilla, which is to say, not great, but not terrible. What may get me to go back to vanilla though is how freakin HARD this is. I have yet to get beyond a few months in a career before my stable of 'Mechs is totally outclassed by everything I run into even on one-skull missions.
Go to a planet run by the “Local Government” that has the pirates as a faction on that planet. (These will mostly be in the independent area near the Aurigan Reach.) There should be missions for the pirates against the local government. That’s how you make the pirates happy. (There are other pro-pirate missions but what I described is your best bet.)
Thanks man, I’ll keep that in mind and try to head in the general direction of an independent so I can patch things up a bit with the ole pirates.
Amusingly so far I’ve really just managed to mildly piss off everyone and not made anyone happy.
Mission types make a big difference that modders didn’t change in the mission rating (probably too much work), 3062 needs a read of the Readme as it amplifies it with new mission types. You can, however, use more than a Lance.
haven’t played either mod myself, just caught one stream of 3062.
It definitely is different. There is one starting story option where you end up with $3M credits in the bank to work with. I haven’t really looked at what the others do. You also seem to start with beefier mechs in BTA3062, but on the flip side you are facing tougher stuff it seems. Has anyone played with vehicles in BTA?
The BTE career looked like it was going to be a lost cause between the injuries and repair bills I would be almost tapped out before I could get back in the field. Started a 2nd one, and got an easier start location this time. Finished up a training mission, and have a number of 1/2 skulls to clear up before moving on.
Vehicles are pretty key in the early game in 3062. I do love an LRM carrier, mortar carrier, or artillery piece (or even a good speedy hovertank as a scout). That said, they tend to be very squishy until you get to the mid-game. By the late game, I’m generally no longer using vehicles because I’m filling my limited drop tonnage with mechs.
My first playthrough of vanilla BT I went fully on “poke-mech”, trying to collect at least one of each model of mech. I don’t think that’s viable with 3062, but I might give it a shot sometime…
I’ve tried two times to get into this, and I always get overwhelmed by the number of options available. Between keeping track of heat and having to think about locational damage, I get paralyzed with my new players brain, thinking I have to understand it all. I haven’t gotten past the first mission.
Recommendations for getting through the first several missions without being overwhelmed?
Repairs are both expensive and time-consuming, so minimizing damage is very important. Evasion (which you get from moving, more if you’re jumping) is critical, as is cover. Keep your mechs moving, keep them in cover if you can, and avoid letting the enemy take potshots at your back.
Vanilla? Do the campaign, advancing in it gives you enough money not to worry too much about mistakes. Other than that, off the top of my head:
Here’s a simple path to get started with the vanilla game:
Start a campaign. There will be two short tutorial missions then a more open mission, and then you will end up in control of a mercenary company. You will have several mechs, including a Shadowhawk, a Vindicator and a Blackjack. The Vindy, without any modifications, is a solid choice for short to medium range scrapper and the unmodified Blackjack is a solid medium to long range shooter. Those will be your core mechs. The Shadowhawk stock setup is kinda weird and janky, but don’t modify it until you have enough mechs set up to your liking to fill out a lance of 4 with the Shadowhawk being repaired. For your fourth mech, you are going to have to use one of the lights at first, just pick the least-worst.
You will start in the independent part of the map with a lot of half-skull and one-skull missions. Stick to those. Use your Vindicator as your front mech to get close and your Blackjack to shoot from range. Use your other mechs as appropriate. Try to focus fire and kill one foe at a time. Vehicles are easy to kill, especially if you get close enough to stomp em (Mechs do double melee damage to vehicles on a stomp). Missions where you fight vehicles or take out enemy convoys are a good way to build up some funds. Be careful about the skull ratings and also pay attention to the additional verbiage Darius will give you. The skulls LIE. But if you pay attention to Darius, he will often clue you in, like “we have no intel on this mission” - that’s a clue the skull rating is off. Also pay attention to the money offered for the mission - if it seems high for the number of skulls that means the skull rating is wrong - trust the money, doubt the skull. Even with all that said, Darius is still a dope smoker some of the time. Be aware that on some missions, accomplishing the main goal and then bravely running away is a very viable option.
Do not take on any escort missions or 2 skull missions until you know what you are doing. Shepherding those drunk-driving vehicle dudes is like herding cats, and at the 2 skull and up level, bad things can happen.
As you gain money and parts, start customizing your mechs to your preference. LIke Perky_Goth said, I like to have my mechs focus on one range of shots so I can alpha strike with confidence. I know others like Lego Warrior enjoy a mix of weapon ranges but that’s weird to me.
As an example, when you customize your starting Vindy, strip everything off but medium lasers and SRMs. You’ll notice they have the same (short) range so they make a solid combo. For close range mechs I like to add jump jets. I’d rather have a “slow” 4-movement-pip mech like the Vindy with jumpjets than a fast Cicada with many more movement pips but no tonnage for armor or weapons. By slapping jump jets on the Vindy you make up for a lot of maneuverability and allow it to get close to use its weapons. For that starting Blackjack, I tend to strip out everything and put a couple of AC5s in there - that gives you a solid mid to long range punch without a lot of heat problems.
As you add mechs to your collection, a few to look out for:
I love the basic Centurion, configured as a missile boat. It’s a 50 tonner with only 4 movement pips and as a missile boat I leave the jump jets off. That means it slow but with the long range and indirect fire of LRMs you don’t care. It has 3 missile mounts so you can easily get 35 or 40 LRMs on there - it’ll run a bit hot and be a bit light on armor, but again, missile boat.
The Hunchback 4G is your buddy if you want to rock an AC20 - I usually strip most of the other crap off there and focus on the AC20, plus jump jets to get in position.
The 5-movement-pip 55 ton mechs are all interchangeable IMO but I like the Shadowhawk best due to its high base melee attack of 85. Even without arm mods, a Shadowhawk can punch a light mech into next week. The stock Shadowhawks all have janky configs so you will need to retool them: I tend to go for jump jets, SRMs and Medium Lasers.
There are many other ways to make light and medium lances that are good; I leave that to you.
Generally speaking, the lightest mechs in a tier suck b/c they have the initiative and engine weight of that tier, without the tonnage to really carry it all. As an example, the 55 ton 5-movement mechs are IMO better than the 60 ton 5-movement mechs. By the time you account for the engine, the 60 tonners don’t actually have more usable tonnage than the 55ers and yet they are one whole initiative point less active, and I believe in initiative.
Mechs that I like to customize that you can access fairly easily
Vindy
Blackjack
Hunchback 4G for ballistic, 4P for laser
Shadowhawk as a puncher
Centurion as a missile boat
Panther as my preferred light mech
Jenner if you have nothing better
Firestarter if you are a weirdo who loves pain
At the heavier tiers, I like:
Thunderbolt: very flexible, can be configged in many useful ways
Catapult: everyone loves missile boats
Jaegermech: weird but the A is a good missile boat and the S is a nasty ballistic platform
Archer: the best missile boat in the game. I love me some Archers
Grasshopper: the best short range/melee light mech killer
Orion: very flexible
Marauder: only available from Heavy Metal DLC and can be hard to acquire but one you get the Baby Jesus will cry. I could explain but really, you need to get a Marauder with a Tactics 9 pilot and experience it.
As you play the campaign, the campaign missions will provide helpful cash boosts, but try to have your lance ready and pay attention to the pre-mission briefings. Many of the campaign missions have special requirements but are very doable with planning.
That’s a neat hack. I may give that a go if/when I start two separate campaigns.
You know what’s a game-changer? A Shadowhawk with a Sniper Artillery piece, that’s what! Inferno rounds to roast clumps of enemies, Shaped Charge rounds to blow holes in things. And now I have two of 'em. Heh.
Have not used vehicles yet myself, though they are in many missions. As allies they tend to be useful as harassers, and they usually aren’t too fragile during escort missions. As enemies I try to kill them fast, as they often mount some nasty stuff.