3726

Well, in the Table Top Version, Ultra let’s you fire twice, but at the risk of jamming, and greater heat and ammo use.

LBX are lighter versions of the regular Auto Cannons in tabletop. I believe they take up more more and generate more hear, but I am not sure.

I never had to worry about LBX Ammo in table top, but they could use their own Cluster Ammo, which around each damage point to hit a separate location, increasing your chance of a critical hit at the cost of punching through armor.

Streak requires lock on before firing. If you don’t have a lock on, they don’t fire. In table top, it meant that they never wasted ammo unless they hit (so fire and miss, no ammo used). They were great on SRM-2, because you had 50 shots, but that was all the Innersphere had in the settings I used (I guess if you had 3 or 4 SRM-Streaks, and 1 ton of ammo, it would make more sense).

3727

Oh boy, yes, I’m pretty sure you need a manual. Sorry, they only have a wiki. Weapons - BTAWiki . That’s a lot, only for guns.

Specifically, in case you want the short answer and it wets someone’s appetite (like mine, but not yet)

X-Pulse lasers are an upgrade to pulse lasers that extend the weapon’s range at the cost of increased heat. XPLs also differ from standard pulse lasers in that they fire three shots instead of just one, increasing their chance to land critical hits on internal structure.

Ultra autocannon are capable of firing twice in a row, doubling heat and potentially damage at the risk of jamming.

The Rotary Autocannon is capable of firing up to six times as many rounds as its standard cousin, allowing it to deal significant damage. At the same time, each extra shot increases the chance for it to jam.

The LB-X Autocannon is an advanced variation of the standard Autocannon. Its most notable feature is the ability to fire cluster munitions as well as the standard slug ammunition. The Projectiles column shows info for Slug ammo on the left and Cluster ammo on the right. More information on how cluster ammunition works can be found here. [ +50% Wpn Crits, +1 Wpn Accuracy, +1 Pips Ignored ]

Like larger artillery, the Mech Mortar fires a small shell in a high arc that falls on or near the target, doing damage in an area. Perfect for indirect fire support, mortars can utilise a variety of ammunition types to damage or inflict crippling status effects on enemies. Similar to other artillery pieces the rounds can scatter away from the initial point of aim.

Artillery may be fired directly or indirectly, however it is most effective when fired indirectly. Range brackets are significantly reduced when firing in Direct Fire mode and accuracy is also reduced. Artillery pieces experience a variation in damage from shot to shot and shells are prone to scattering away from the target.
[…] Long Tom 50 tons, 90 damage, 60 heat, -1 direct fire accuracy penalty. +/- 30 damage. Scatter 15-35m

Taking circuitry from Streak SRM launchers, these lasers have been rebuilt so that they do higher damage and have better accuracy than a normal laser, but like streak launchers they only fire on a guaranteed hit.

OTOH, if it’s too much, playing on the earlier date and away from clan regions cuts down on what appears, as far as I recall.

3728

That is extremely helpful and was probably posted up thread somewhere but I missed it. Thanks!

3729

Yeah, the joy and the curse of this is the detail.

In general, if a weapon has a specific nomenclature, like LBX or Ultra, it needs specific ammo. Having Ultra AC/10 Cluster ammo doesn’t help with a standard AC/10, etc.

Same with Streak missiles; you have to pair Streak launchers with Streak ammo. However, stuff like Acid or AoE or FASCAM ammo for missiles can be used with any “normal” launcher. So, FASCAM (scatterable mines) LRM ammo can be used by any LRM launcher (you choose it from the ammo selector in the battle screen for the 'Mech, during combat). If you have it loaded on the 'Mech, of course.

There are several types of artillery you can use. A 'Mech has to have that type of hardpoint though, and they can be rare. The most common is the Sniper Artillery which you can mount on a Shadowhawk; it shoots HE, Inferno, or Shaped Charge rounds with modest AoE and effect. There are Mortars and larger artillery pieces as well, though I have yet to come across a 'Mech that can use them (in my stable at least). Long Tom’s are vehicles, and you can buy them for like $2.2million in some systems.

Generally, as I understand it, pulse lasers are good against fast movers, as they ignore some pips of evasion. Extended range offers more range and damage at the cost of heat. Clan stuff is generally lighter across the board.

Ballistic weapons (and the game is confusing sometimes as to what type of weapon goes where) offer more stability damage than energy weapons as a rule; if you want to knock folks down (and you do) ballistics and missiles are the way to go. Missiles are more reliable because from what I’ve seen your MechWarriors went to the Imperial Stormtrooper School of Marksmanship, with grad work at XCOM Academy. Even high-percentage cannon shots tend to go off into the ether.

There are also some interesting weapons stuck in the category that is usually just MGs and flamers, so that’s worth a look.

The mod also offers a lot of weird variants like Chemical or Binary Lasers, and crude versions of some ammunition types, etc. Pays to read the text when choosing. There are also a lot of single-shot or two-shot weapons that can’t be reloaded in combat. Do high damage though.

The single biggest thing I’ve noticed though is that the mod really wants you to pay attention to your lance’s skills and how they intersect with their loadouts. That, and many of the missions that aren’t hard-wired for four slots like Flashpoints really, really benefit from landing two or three lances, not just one.

3730

Do the extra lances impact performance much?

3731

Well, the bar is not very high here, but the only real issue is that with more units things tend to take longer, but that’s only an issue with the number of units on the other side. That’s when you have to wait for the machine to do its thing, and it’s slow. But the fact that you are controlling more units doesn’t seem to have much effect on performance that I can tell.

But again, it’s a pokey sumbitch anyhow.

3732

Well 3062 being harder than the base game is something you feel immediately. I don’t remember rogue tech being this rough. The lower accuracies are a real pain. But I’m reading and tweaking, looking for good melee mechs and trying to make sure I have proper sensor/tactics people to help everything out. I like it so far.

3733

I’m a ways into a (finally) more or less successful career run. Fielding seven MechWarriors on most drops, running mostly mediums and a couple of heavies. The skills are finally getting to the point where I can focus on designing some platforms that don’t have to load up on weapons just to have a chance to do any damage.

3734

All the talk has made me reinstall. Since my computer is weak I went with Battletech Extended 3025 CE with the 3039 start to make sure I see at least a few cool new toys.

I’m still in mostly my starting mechs but I have picked up a Raven with an ECM package that I don’t remember seeing before. It looks like it will be great later but right now it isn’t that much use in close range slugfests with pirates.

3735

I have a new system, any ways to easily install the mods? I had a bear of a time with it the first time.

3736

The Battletech Extended 3025 CE has pretty clear installation instructions. I just re-installed it a week ago, so feel free to ask if you have any questions.

I can’t speak to BTA 3062, since I’ve never tried that one.

3737

BTA 3062, is probably even easier than BTE to install as it has one installer to run that handles both installing BTA and the Community Asset Bundle, and I think even runs the modtek injector. In both cases they are pretty straightforward.

3738
  • Install and run the community asset pack. This installs, well, all the community stuff. It’s a BIG download, as in many GB. Make sure the cache dir is set to a drive with room.
  • Download and install BT Extended 3025 CE.
  • In the modfolder, there will now be a .modtek folder. Open it and run the executable.

Every month or so, rerun the community asset pack exe. It will look for updates to the CAP and install them.

That’s it.

3739

This is actually much more clear, thanks - the Nexus page says it requires a clean mods folder, yet it also requires the CAB. That struck me as a wee bit of a contradiction which just confused the hell out of my simple brain, lol.

3740

Now THATs clear! Thanks

3741

3062 is simple as can be, really, so either one is probably an easy thing to do.

I did learn something about vehicles, though. If you field one, and it gets destroyed, it seems you are out the whatever huge price you paid for it, as they don’t seem to be repairable…ouch.

3742

The longer I play in a career the more I feel I should know more of the lore. I really don’t know who are the “good guys.” For that matter I still have troubles keeping the names of the Houses matched up with the names of the political entities.

3743

The lore, particularly the books, don’t really pick one “good guy” side IIRC, though the most familiar feeling to us would probably be things like the Federated Suns or the Lyran Commonwealth; both are pseudo-Western European style monarchial thingies. The Cappelan Confederation is House Liao is, well, China and Russia through a filter that is part PRC, part USSR, and all cheese, while Draconis Combine is mostly House Kurita as Space Samurai basically. The Free Worlds League is nominally a democracy but really a House Marik military dictatorship of sorts. I can’t keep them all straight (this site helps).

Comstar is a sort of high tech priesthood/church cum technobabble cult that historically kept the Hyperpulse generators going, the things that allow communication between systems. The history is intricate and confusing, but essentially the Clan Invasions wound up having Comstar ditch the quasi-religious bits and lose a lot of power. The Word of Blake group you might hear about in the game is a splinter that wanted to hold on to the zealory.

And of course the Clans, each with its animal totem identity, bigotry against people born from actual women (“freebirths”), obsession with genetics (sort of like Space Marines, come to think of it, or vice versa perhaps), and bad-ass tech. In the lore, Wolf, and Jade Falcon seem to come off the best in terms of likeability, though I recall some Ghost Bear and Nova Cat stuff too. Really though there isn’t much to pick from in terms of which Clan is better than another in most cases.

tl;dr, it matters not one whit. The lore features good characters from pretty much every faction, and bad ones as well. Some characters switch factions. Every faction has its bloodthirsty, power mad zealots and its noble heroes. Etc. If you are not a Clanner, any Clan can be considered the bad guys at the level of the game. As a merc, though, the only thing you need to do is balance relationships. It becomes difficult to maintain good relations with all the factions because missions tend to put one against the other. You can I suppose just take anti-pirate missions, but those get stale and the cooler ones are tied to factions usually. As your rep gets better, you get access to more missions and Flashpoints, and the opposite is true too. Nothing like spending $100,000 and a month to get to a system only to find that all of the juicy contracts are locked behind a reputation wall.

My comments are based on BTA 3062, though, so some of the nuances might be different in a vanilla play through. The basics are the same though–none of the empires/houses/factions are really “good” or “bad.”

3744

Remember: 1980’s edge here. No “good guys”. Think grimdark, only American and with stompy robots.

3745

Yeah, the setting and lore aren’t that interesting here. It enthralled me as a teen, but with more cynical adult eyes I can see it’s just a thinly-veiled grimdark rip-off of the actual dark ages in Europe after the fall of Rome. As an original story, it’s weak. As a plausible-enough backdrop for endless wars of stompy giant robots, it’s perfectly serviceable.