I beat the live fire drill on my third try. that was harder than expected. good god 4 LRM15 urbies are obnoxious. And thank god the enemy vehicles weren’t firing real rounds.
Anyway I followed the wiki guide and went and found myself a more heat friendly system after that.
But the first mission there is not going well. Vehicles are so hard to kill, and everyone is so inaccurate. Even saving missile/AC attacks for when I can have one mechwarrior do the bonus accuracy special ability. My special chest on day 3 - I wouldn’t dream of playing without it in the mod at this point; I’m not near good enough yet - had LBX AC/10s and I feel like maybe that was a bad roll. Down the road I am sure they are amazing (insfoar as AC/10s can be, but I don’t know to what extent the weapons have been tweaked from vanilla), but I can’t shoot well enough to make proper use right now (although my main is in a Shadow Hawk with an AC/5 and she seems to be missing a shitload; bad luck I am sure).
Both are in BTA 3062. LAMs are annoying as hell when the other team has them.
The mod is tough. Took me about four or five re-starts to get on a roll. Your pilots are the gang that couldn’t shoot straight at first, and your selection of 'Mechs is all up to RNGesus. The live fire drill is sort of a good trial by fire to see if your starting lance is even worth continuing with.
Keep in mind that weapons can use different ammo types. For ACs, the choice is generally between Cluster and Slug. The former is a shotgun spread, the latter is, well, a slug, a single penetrator round. You have to both load an allotment of both types of ammo on your 'Mech and switch to the desired ammo in combat, from the info panel (click on the word “Cluster” or “Slug”). I find that Cluster is better at first as you will at least hit something. Missiles can use different ammo as well, though some requires fire control components like ARTEMIS.
One thing to keep an eye out for is artillery, which early on can equalize difficult missions. Look for Sniper Artillery 'Mechs to salvage if you can. Also, look for enemies who are clustered together or who are in a line ahead formation. Often you can hit things other than your targets as the game tracks the actual path of projectiles.
One final thing: generally, always push the Payment/Slalvage slider on contracts all the way to the “Salvage” side. You will usually still get enough cash to cover ammo costs, but your chances of getting enough salvage to cobble together new 'Mechs is vastly increased. For money, you can sell the additional salvaged bits like unneeded Cores.
Stomping is generally a good idea when you can, yeah. It’s frustrating though that it is often all or nothing, and nothing is as bad as whiffing on a stomp. Oops.
It’s a good example of the core balance of the game: every pilot skill has uses. Piloting may not seem that great at low levels, but it helps with stomping a lot. Gunnery is always good b/c Guns, Guts is good for hit points and recoil (especially if you are using UACs) and Tactics is my personal favorite due to the Called Shot bonuses. Picking the right pilot for the right Mech is key. For example, for a stomper you don’t really care about Gunnery or Tactics but Piloting and Guts can be very important.
Are you playing a mod that changes stomping damage? Stomping is usually a high percentage / high damage attack. When a mech stomps on a vehicle of roughly equal tonnage (or less) it’s basically an insta-kill unless the attack whiffs.
I don’t know how they accomplished it, because the armor/structure numbers look similar, but vehicles in the mod are definitely much harder to deal with (and they say as much in the tips on the wiki, also directing one to stomps). But I wasn’t using a properly upgraded pilot in any instances, most likely.
In the base Battletech video game it does not, unless one does it as a jumping Death-From-Above attack. I can’t speak to the various mods though, and most of the conversation in this thread of late is about playing various modded flavors.
In BTA 3062, vehicles are No Joke. They can take a ton of direct weapon damage, and even stomping requires you to outweigh them significantly, damage them first, or just get lucky sometimes. In this mod, you definitely prioritize killing vehicles.
Melee in general is effective but risky in this mod. Many times I’ve seen the AI kill itself running up and kicking me, and it can happen to the player as well if you are not mindful of your structure and stability, and the respective weights of the two combatants. On the other hand, you can buy axes and stuff to replace your hands and do some wicked damage too.
Vehicles in the MW warrior piss me off, anyway. I mean, I’m supposed to be conducting battles between giant stompy robots, and then this punk-ass MF rolls up and delivers like 20 SRMs at me each turn.
The “stomp does double damage to vehicles” is a transparent conceit to disguise the fact that a single Rommel is enough to trash your light mech lance.
I love tanks and infantry. One of my favorite series in Battletech was about the Grey’s Deaths Legion. Sure, they had Mechs, but they also had anti mech trained infantry, engineers and tanks.
Combined arms is always more interesting then just Mechs.
Yeah Vehicles are giant bricks of armor in this one, despite the lack of numbers change.
About to do live fire again. In this start, I got a Centurion, a another LRM/20/L Pulse Griffon, and a Cicada to go with an irrelevant light and a decent light. The special chest gave me. . . I can’t recall anymore, mech wise. But LBX/10, 2x Med-X-Pulse, and a Large-X-Pulse. I think these rolls are somewhat deterministic or something (I wonder if it’s rolling “batches of X or Y” in other words)? It’s not the first time I’ve seen the selection of X-pulse lasers (there’s a small too).
I refitted the Centurion to run the LBX (I’ve got 2x cluster and 1x slug, would rather have more cluster at this point anyway) and the two M-X-Pulse lasers. I removed the LRM and added some heat sinks and armor. Last game I was able to score some Inferno SRM ammo and that was a ton of fun but not this time.
My plan is to drop something like this:
Light mech with a guy that has Sensor Lock, the entire purpose of this mech is to just sensor lock. This is a type of mech unfamiliar to me but it’s got speed and jump jets for days.
Either the other light or the Cicada, with someone that has the other tactics ability that gives +2 accuracy to everyone.
The above mentioned Mediums + the chest one for primary dps.
Eventually the salvage you get will include things like “M Laser (x9),” so there is some clustering for sure.
The RNG is just as wonky in this mod as in the vanilla game, of course. I had a Marauder get cored (pilot was fine) and totaled, by some loser Solaris gladiator reject. Of course, the rest of my lance turned him into scrap the next turn.
I finished the Heavy Metal flashpoint chain with the most difficult fight I’d ever had between my lance, and the Black Widow and Bounty Hunter’s lances in an epic three way. I had to reload and replay it about 8 times to finally limp out a winner. And what did I get as my “Rare Mech” ranfom reward? An friggin’ bog standard Cicada…
You got your Preward in the form of the Bull Shark earlier in that chain. It’s like a non-refundable tax credit. After you get the nice bonus, you then have to go put in the game time to pay the game tax back.
If you have not checked out that Bull Shark, please do. That thing is the shit.
