I tried so many. I initially was using a King Crab, that incredible Bull Shark, a Cyclops and an Atlas. I kept having huge heat issues, and the opponents would ignore eachother to focus down the King Crab pretty much every time. I tried many different combinations after that, switching in some heavies, and even trying one with a Shadowhawk hoping the added mobility might help. In the end I had to refit a bunch of my mechs to emphasize heat efficiency and just did my best to keep most of the lance hidden from both opponents until both were below half strength. I still took a ton of damage and only had one mech left standing at the end…
The key in those multi-side battles is “Let’s you and him fight!” which means range, IMO, more than maneuverability. King Crabs are great but generally short range - a Marauder with 3 PPCs or 3 good ACs is much better for that scenario IMO. Or if you want to go big, an Annihilator with some mix of 5 good ACs is nasty. Plus at least one Archer S type for missile support (Jaeger A or Catapult substitution acceptable) - again, if you want to go big, a Stalker or Highlander with 50 or 60 LRMs is good.
The key to not getting targeted is to be far away, and preferably in cover, with evasion pips as a bonus. Plus with range and called shots you can zap the damaged dudes as the other side wounds them.
My late game elite lance for heavy duty missions is something along the lines of Orion (or Battlemaster or TBolt) in frontline config up front, some combo of Marauder/Annihilator/Bull Shark/Jaeger S snipers in the next two spots, and an Archer or Stalker missile boat (or Cat or Jaeger A) in the back.
If I wanted to remove mods and play my vanilla campaign, would it suffice to delete the mod folder or is something more needed? I have the Community Asset Pack and 3025 Enhanced installed at the moment.
I like what I’ve seen of them, but playing the game again has prompted me to want to knock out those last few campaign missions after all.
I mean you can try just deleting the mods sub folder and seeing what happens.
My guess is you just nuke the game in steam an reinstall and that’ll work for sure.
I’m in a career mode in BXECE and got to say while some of the additions are fine, I don’t find much about it all that different from vanilla.
But the real problem for me in career is that I find myself asking why I’m even bothering with this because it’s basically just tactical engagements over and over because there is no strategic layer to this game.
I think you could just rename the Mods folder to something else, and play your vanilla campaign if you want to jump back to the mod later. I’ve been switching between BTA 3062, and 3025 Enhanced by renaming the folders.
That is an ideal solution - I’ll try that.
When going back to the mod you might need to run the modtek injector again (not sure if it that is really needed again).
That was what had me concerned/confused, since I wasn’t sure exactly what it was doing.
It seems to function without injecting modtek again when switching between the mods. I don’t have a vanilla save to jump into, but the game started up fine with the folder name changed.
Edit: It does look like it modifies a dll, assembly-csharp.dll in BattleTech_Data/managed/, but I’m not sure it impacts anything if you are not using mods. It is modifying how mods get loaded.
While there is no real strategic layer, and boy would I love a BattleSpace type game, there is a modicum of strategic action in trying to get enough faction rep to get decent missions. This does make location and choice of missions important, to a degree. But yeah, it’s really a competition with yourself to see how successful you can be and what toys you can get.
The big differences for me with mods like BTA 3062 are the sheer variety of 'Mechs, and the ability to drop two full lances (plus a lance of vehicles if you have that upgrade). The variety means you run into weird stuff like converted construction 'Mechs and the like, and see a ton of different weapons like artillery and weird varieties of ammo. The ability to drop two lances makes for a lot more tactical decision making, even if it does sometimes mean you will be a bit overpowered compared to the enemy (though RNGesus equalizes things in evil ways). And Flashpoints are, as far as I’ve seen, always limited to one Lance max.
Speaking of “Battletech” in games, I can’t really think of anything else like it. From Battletech, to MechWarrior, to MechCommander, to Battletech.
Equipping giant manned robots with several independent weapon systems replete with their own established naming conventions (LRM20, PPC, Autocannon, etc).
Is there something similar but different elsewhere I don’t know about?
Also I would happily sacrifice a dozen Warhammer 40K games for even one more Battletech.
Even an Adeptus Titanicus game?
I would pay A-List prices for a game based on Dan Abnett’s Titanicus novel. A-List prices.
Heavy Gear and Heavy Gear 2 came pretty close back in their day … which was more than 20 years ago now. Plus the mechs had wheels that could extend from their feet. I think conceptually they were smaller (slightly larger than man-sized), but you could change out a plethora of weapons. I remember the games as feeling very similar to the MechWarior games of the same era.
There’s the Front Mission series for a different (Japanese) take on stompy robots battling each other. They’re tactical RPGs and have customizability (you can equip different weapons in each arm, I think there were options for torso and legs as well, but it’s basically a standard RPG equipment system and less complex than BattleTech’s) similar to BattleTech, but they’re much more story-based and linear compared to the more sandboxy stylings of BattleTech. However, I haven’t heard of a Front Mission game since the PS2 console generation and I only have clear memories of Front Mission 2 for the PS1, but I suppose the old ones are just a ROM file away.
Not sure if it’s good news - I just saw an Adeptus Titanicus game while looking through the mech game listings, apparently came out of early access this year. Sadly not super well reviewed…
There’s MekTek for table-top rules Mechwarrior.
And there’s Mechwarrior: Living Legends.
And finally, if you want to go paleolithic old-school gangsta, fire up UAE, and play Battlefort :)
The Earthsiege universe had a MechWarrior-like series of games and a tactical series(Cyberstorm). I believe that universe spawned the Tribes games and then the stompy robot portion of it died out.
Missionforce: Cyberstorm is on GOG, and it is pretty damn good.
Don’t forget about Heavy Gear!
It’s one of my all time favorites and probably the game I’d most like to see remastered.