I haven’t played the game yet, but am wondering, is there a dedicated wiki just for the game? What comes the closest? Thanks.
In BTech lore, only mechs can sustain “build ups” of heat from lasers - conventional vehicles have to allocate enough heat sinks to dissipate all heat generated every turn, but can shoot missiles and cannon for free. So there is a high bias toward conventional weapons.
To hobble vehicles, ICE engines have the same rating but double to weight of fusion engines. ICE engines don’t come with any heatsinks either. So the “weight” of a PPC is actually 17 tons, since it’s 7 tons for the PPC but 10 tons for the heat sinks.
OTOH, it is possible for vehicles to have fusion plants, it’s just considered an extravagance in a time of technology decline. Fusion plants weight half as much AND have 10 heat sinks for free.
So there can be really huge differences between “low tech” vehicles and “high tech” vehicles - stuff like the Scorpion and Bulldog are just an AC/5 or Large Laser on wheels and boot bait, while the PPC Carrier and Manticore were fusion powered “high” tech mech killer.
RichVR
1827
Thanks for the explanation. I don’t know the lore very well. But I like when giant robots fight.
Something else to consider is that different types of weighed vehicles get a discount on the size of engine necessary, but can’t get the same tonnage.
Do Flamers work against the vehicles too?
multiplayer doesn’t have tonnage limits, it’s value limits
If I mod it will be to get more fun out of it at my level of playing - not to brag to everyone how well I am doing. I doubt any of the folks on QT3 would do that.
what you are describing isn’t even the same kind of thing he’s talking about regarding being artificial. feels like you are missing his point entirely.
Vehicles don’t have to worry about heat in the same way as mechs. they just need enough to fire each weapon, there is no heat build up. They also don’t have as much internal weight dedicated to staying standing so they have more space for guns and heatsinks. that’s why you get 10 srm6’s 3 lrm20’s 2 ac/20’s or 3 ppcs on the nasty ones.
sadly the heat build up wouldn’t do jack to any tank in the game. so you end up with a crappy 5 damage weapon that looks cool
There goes my plan of Flamers on Light and a bunch of armor to make it a tank killer. :(
my spider is a monster vs tanks: he just runs up and steps on em…
Mark_L
1836
unfortunately, the tanks get bigger, but the spider does not :(
Lantz
1837
Vehicles take double melee damage from mechs. I am not sure if the game says that anywhere.
vyshka
1838
Probably one of the better use cases for a light. :)
Thrag
1839
I know from experience the Demolisher laughs off stomps from Spiders.
And campaign wrapped up. I enjoyed the story missions in general, but towards the end they did not scale and became an afterthought. They had the prettiest maps, though (a problem with the generic -not random since they repeat a lot- maps is that they are mostly uninteresting because they need to fir several different missions).
As i said before, a more story centric game would have been my preference, since at the end I felt I was grinding a lot. It would have required a different way of telling the story, though. the current implementation has nice cutscenes, but regular dialog and overall narrative seems off.
BUT I like the plans the devs have to expand this. If they introduce a lot of new maps and mission types so lights and mediums are viable post game (and of course more special content, new mechs, etc…) I will be glad to revisit. Right now, with the story wrapped up and finally 4 assaults in the hanger there’s little need to keep playing.
he’s talking about having an organic and natural in-game reason for you to want to bring a light or medium instead of a heavy instead of arbitrarily saying you have to. For example making a mission that involves a lot of speed or quick movement between two points so that you would be encouraged to bring something lighter instead of simply forcing it.
That’s nothing at all like the things you are saying regarding limitations on weapons or the like (which are all from lore fwiw).
There’s a small amount of your logic that applies to the 4 mech limit, but there are several reason that they went with that. A couple of those are the fact that Btech has always been very strongly connected with the concept of the 4 mech lance (right up until the star was a thing). It’s easier to balance a game when you know there will only be 4 player characters, the HUD and UI are easier to maintain as well. On top of all of that, the Leopard dropship only has room to drop 4 from what I recall, though that part might be incorrect.
I can’t think of a single thematically fitting reason for why a mission might have a tonnage limit other than clan stuff or the tonnage capacity of the dropship. Plus from a balance perspective tonnage doesn’t always mean jack. They have struggled over the years to come up with a system that actually works with rating mechs in comparison to each other. Tonnage fails, the Battle Value system has a lot of issues, as does the C-Bill Value system they currently use in multiplayer. Though both BV and CBill are better than tonnage at saying how mechs would do against each other.
/miniranttangent
I get a bit triggered whenever people throw the ‘such and such isn’t realistic anyway, what do you expect’ with regard to games and logic. For example, even in a game that has people flying around and throwing spells and the like, I can still want realistic gun reloads or physics, but you will often run into a wall of people screaming that if I wanted realism I shouldn’t play a game that has superpowers. There’s a disconnect in people’s logic in that regard imo. You can embrace a game worlds realism and still maintain a sense of fun.
So what are you guys negotiating as payment on these contracts? Mostly cash, or mostly scrap? I’ve been going cash heavy early on to stave off the banks, but having limited scrap selection means my mech bay is still pretty light on gear. Nervous about going for too little cash though, as I’m having trouble keeping on top of repair costs as it is. Maybe I just need to do more story missions, but I’m having such a great time with the contracts (1.5 to 2 skulls is about the sweet spot right now; challenging and nerve-wracking, but survivable).
Scrap is always more valuable then wages, but I hedge my bets by going at least one level of wages. That being said, it depends on the mission and what I need.
