What Are You Playing 8 (2023 Reboot)

[GloatingSwine]

The bias towards heavier mechs in most BT games is because they tend to be "your lance vs the entire world" and so you need the armour and firepower to get through.

[LibraryOgre]

Wonder if DFA is a good option when you've got some really battered mechs that are all you can afford to field.

[Triaxx]

One of the BTA systems designed to mitigate the weight issue, is a size delta system. For every 15 tons of difference mechs gain +1/-1 chances to hit. So an Atlas shooting at a Commando would have a -5, and the Commando would have +5. Makes life a lot easier if you end up against a much heavier mech, such as the target in an Assassination mission.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Wonder if DFA is a good option when you've got some really battered mechs that are all you can afford to field.

DFA was usually a desperation move. You could also jump and land in front of (or possibly even behind) and do a melee if you really wanted to, and without risking a piloting check. And let's face it, if you are in a jump-capable mech, and you have the capacity to DFA, you're probably already in desperate straits to begin with.

It was never a tactic people planned on using, it was simply something that you could use to YOLO and possibly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat... or yanno, improperly used (which was most of the time), snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

One of the BTA systems designed to mitigate the weight issue, is a size delta system. For every 15 tons of difference mechs gain +1/-1 chances to hit. So an Atlas shooting at a Commando would have a -5, and the Commando would have +5. Makes life a lot easier if you end up against a much heavier mech, such as the target in an Assassination mission.

The problem is that mechs weren't originally created or intended to be 'equal' in any meaningful way. However, the big balancing factor was originally economics, which later translated into a BV system. Also availability. You couldn't just order an Atlas off of Amazon.com and have it arrive next day. Unless your name happened to be Steiner, getting your hands on an Atlas was a very rare occurrence. Death's Head Legion got *one*, and that was the commander's personal ride. And the circumstances surrounding that acquisition were... let's go with 'non-standard'.

The issue here is that the game, as amazing as it is and as much as I love it, is simply incapable of doing an accurate representation of what a frontier merc would reasonably be capable of getting their hands on while still providing engaging gameplay for most players. You end up fielding a Steiner Scout Lance because you end up being able to afford one, and you can only put four mechs boots on ground at any time, which makes little to no sense at all. And the vast majority of missions given are ones that Assault mechs are naturally good at, because generally your objective is 'kill the enemy'.

For scout mechs to be viable into the mid and late game, you'd need to go from lance level to company level tactics, with having scout mechs as actual scouts, picketing possible ambush routes and such. And the enemy would be doing the same with theirs. Which would be why you also have your medium sized anti-scout mechs like Gryphon and Blackhawk, to discourage their scouts and deny them valuable scouting information. At that point, you're not using the scouts to attack bigger mechs, something they are entirely unsuited to doing for the most part (although an alley shot with something like a Panther or Urbie is always a hoot), you are using them for what they are intended for: scouting. Running reconnaissance missions (and recon-in-force), picketing the main column,

In that sort of scenario, you wouldn't need those sorts of 'catch up' mechanics, because no Commando would ever willingly get within firing range of an Atlas to make the situation relevant. He'd spot the Atlas on long-range, and radio back to his buddies the location of the assault mech and request fire support. He'd shadow the Atlas (by the way, that's why a lot of the heavier mechs have an LRM-5 for no apparent reason... to discourage such shadowing) and provide targeting coordinates for any Long Toms that happen to be in range, if you have any arty support. Atlases are only a 3/5, they're slow enough that you can hit them pretty easily with arty, despite the one turn delay between fire and effect. Which is another thing the game doesn't really adequately cover either. Either that or he'd try to lure the Atlas into following him into an ambush. That's what scout mechs *do* when they find an assault mech.

Unfortunately, the game engine really isn't designed for company-level logistical considerations that would make a mixed deployment more desirable. About the best you could do would be 'catch that scout mech before he gets back to x coordinates' or 'keep scout mechs out of x area so they can't see what we're up to' type missions, which would naturally favor light and medium mechs and their maneuverability.

[Triaxx]

Well, this is modded BT, and the head of the pack is an old TT player so he knows all about that. And has done a heck of a lot of work to model most of those things you mentioned. Factions have specific spawn lists for mechs they'd have access to, and spawn subfactions instead of generic 'House Steiner' troops.

Plus the mod allows quite a lot more than just 4 mechs. You start with 4 slots that can drop any combination of Mech/Tank/Battle Armor, 2 Mech/tank slots, and 2 dedicated BA slots.

And no, you're not going to find a Commando vs Atlas matchup unless something has gone hilariously wrong. But... things do go wrong, reinforcements get dropped into the battle... and sensor lock is a thing that exists so a light mech could be on the field with assaults, locking units it can't see, and providing vision to allied units.

You're right though for vanilla, all the things you're saying are 100% correct.

[Erloas]

I haven't ran into anything big enough to notice the +- size difference modifiers, but I know they said they did a lot to make sure mechs of various sizes stayed relevant throughout the game. Which isn't about giving a Jenner the ability to take down a MadCat, but to give the Jenner the possibility to scout and spot without being ripped to pieces in one round because it's the only thing in range.

I've got an OK missile boat right now, so I'm going to look at trying to make indirect fire work better, and I've had a little taste of the artillery (escort scout had one and I controlled and shot with it). It's definitely going to open on the tactical options that weren't really possible/practical in the base game.

[Triaxx]

If you find one in stores the Ballista SPG is a fun one.

[MCerberus]

I haven't ran into anything big enough to notice the +- size difference modifiers, but I know they said they did a lot to make sure mechs of various sizes stayed relevant throughout the game. Which isn't about giving a Jenner the ability to take down a MadCat, but to give the Jenner the possibility to scout and spot without being ripped to pieces in one round because it's the only thing in range.

I've got an OK missile boat right now, so I'm going to look at trying to make indirect fire work better, and I've had a little taste of the artillery (escort scout had one and I controlled and shot with it). It's definitely going to open on the tactical options that weren't really possible/practical in the base game.

You know using missile boats to shoot LRMs are fine, but have you ever heard of the pure glory of the Rocketpult?
You see, you take a catapult and, you see where I'm going with this?

Does it make sense? Is it effective? no
but the terror in the eyes of pilots that thought they were fighting a stock configuration is worth it.

I should note this does not work for any timeframes where double-sinks are not available.

[Erloas]

Why do rockets when you can do MRMs, then you can do it more than once.


Anyone tried to transfer the saved game between PCs? I figured out a way to link the saved games folder through OneDrive, and it all seems to be working just fine, but for whatever reason when I tried to load the game from my PC onto my laptop it just tries to load and gets stuck. I think each save is just the single file "\BTASaves\Cloud\C0\SGS1" folder. I'm pretty sure I created the career on the laptop then switched it to the desktop without any issue, then tried to go back to the laptop and it didn't work. I didn't have all of the save stuff automated at that point, but I don't think I'm missing something I need to save. I tried a skirmish and started a new career just to make sure there wasn't something else keeping the mods from running.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

You know using missile boats to shoot LRMs are fine, but have you ever heard of the pure glory of the Rocketpult?
You see, you take a catapult and, you see where I'm going with this?

Does it make sense? Is it effective? no
but the terror in the eyes of pilots that thought they were fighting a stock configuration is worth it.

I should note this does not work for any timeframes where double-sinks are not available.

So basically the H2 variant?

I mean, we all know what Tex has to say about Catapult variants, so you're just following rules 1 and 2 of Catapult modifications.

[Cespenar]

Oh, also to the BT lovers:

If you haven't tried it already, give Phantom Brigade a look. It's basically a slightly lite BattleTech + Frozen Synapse.

[Zevox]

Finished Mortal Kombat X's story mode. Definitely improvement over MK9's in some areas. Partly that's just because it was telling one story instead of three (MK9's was basically retelling the stories of MK 1-3 for the reboot), but also partly that allowing the characters to grow and change significantly made things more interesting. Johnny Cage becoming mature, Scorpion becoming human and burying the hatchet with Sub-Zero, Jax dealing with trauma from his time as Quan-Chi's undead servant (though that does make it a bit strange that Scorpion and Sub-Zero seem unaffected by that...). Even the new kids were fine characters. The newcomers who didn't get much from the story mode, like Ferra and Tor or Erron Black, really come off as dull, though. The constant flashbacks that the time skip necessitated did get a bit irritating though, particularly when they meant that you switched variations of the character in between fights. Finding out you suddenly no longer have a move you were using a lot kind of sucks.

The difficulty was a lot more reasonable though - I again turned it way down, since I'm not an MK player, and though a couple of fights featured the AI being annoying aggressive for such a low difficulty, I mostly breezed through it even not knowing how to do much beyond looking up a basic string and canceling it into a special move. Having the PS5 controller instead of the X-Box one helped too - though MKX has its own weirdness with the controls at times. Mostly from the new dash feature, which it often prioritized over me trying to do forward + attack moves, or the fact that dash + block gives you the game's run mechanic when I might just want to, you know, dash forward a bit and then start blocking.

Anyway, on to MK11 I suppose. And hopefully once I've gone through that's story mode it'll be clear when Storm's dropping in Midnight Suns. The devs' twitter account apparently said the other day that news about her would be coming next week, and on all the past characters they seem to have been dropping them on the day their trailer releases, so should be soon.

[MCerberus]

Oh, also to the BT lovers:

If you haven't tried it already, give Phantom Brigade a look. It's basically a slightly lite BattleTech + Frozen Synapse.

So basically the H2 variant?

I mean, we all know what Tex has to say about Catapult variants, so you're just following rules 1 and 2 of Catapult modifications.

Honestly if you're a memeapult of any kind, you're okay in my book

[danzibr]

Finished Mortal Kombat X's story mode. Definitely improvement over MK9's in some areas. Partly that's just because it was telling one story instead of three (MK9's was basically retelling the stories of MK 1-3 for the reboot), but also partly that allowing the characters to grow and change significantly made things more interesting. Johnny Cage becoming mature, Scorpion becoming human and burying the hatchet with Sub-Zero, Jax dealing with trauma from his time as Quan-Chi's undead servant (though that does make it a bit strange that Scorpion and Sub-Zero seem unaffected by that...). Even the new kids were fine characters. The newcomers who didn't get much from the story mode, like Ferra and Tor or Erron Black, really come off as dull, though. The constant flashbacks that the time skip necessitated did get a bit irritating though, particularly when they meant that you switched variations of the character in between fights. Finding out you suddenly no longer have a move you were using a lot kind of sucks.

The difficulty was a lot more reasonable though - I again turned it way down, since I'm not an MK player, and though a couple of fights featured the AI being annoying aggressive for such a low difficulty, I mostly breezed through it even not knowing how to do much beyond looking up a basic string and canceling it into a special move. Having the PS5 controller instead of the X-Box one helped too - though MKX has its own weirdness with the controls at times. Mostly from the new dash feature, which it often prioritized over me trying to do forward + attack moves, or the fact that dash + block gives you the game's run mechanic when I might just want to, you know, dash forward a bit and then start blocking.

Anyway, on to MK11 I suppose. And hopefully once I've gone through that's story mode it'll be clear when Storm's dropping in Midnight Suns. The devs' twitter account apparently said the other day that news about her would be coming next week, and on all the past characters they seem to have been dropping them on the day their trailer releases, so should be soon.

TIL MK actually has a decent plot.

[Zevox]

TIL MK actually has a decent plot.

What's "TIL"?

[danzibr]

What's "TIL"?

Ooh sorry it’s Today I Learned.

[Zevox]

Ooh sorry it’s Today I Learned.

Ah, I see. Yeah, I'd say as of the last couple of games that's true. It's nothing amazing, but it's fairly good. Certainly head and shoulders above the writing in most fighting games.

[MCerberus]

Ah, I see. Yeah, I'd say as of the last couple of games that's true. It's nothing amazing, but it's fairly good. Certainly head and shoulders above the writing in most fighting games.

People observing the plot: "Can you explain exactly why his butler turned into the mean point of a spider, hellraiser, and gollum and only makes hissing noises?
Soul Caliber: The semi-mythical bandit with the clockwork arm says 'no'

[Zevox]

People observing the plot: "Can you explain exactly why his butler turned into the mean point of a spider, hellraiser, and gollum and only makes hissing noises?
Soul Caliber: The semi-mythical bandit with the clockwork arm says 'no'

Heh. And Voldo wouldn't even crack the top 10 of weirdest/dumbest things in fighting games.

King of Fighters 13's story ends with the main character, Ash Crimson, deliberately creating a time paradox: trapping his evil ancestor from the past in the present, so that he will never be born, and thus never be able to cause his ancestor to be trapped, etc. Somehow the only effect this has is erasing the two of them from existence. And then, two games later, Ash is back and everyone remembers him, because an event happened that resurrected all of the series' dead characters. And if you see a problem there, you've probably already put more thought into it than the writers did.

[Anonymouswizard]

Certainly head and shoulders above the writing in most fighting games.

Twenty years after playing a certain one question sticks in my mind.

Why was construction vehicle dueling so widespread?

[Resileaf]

Twenty years after playing a certain one question sticks in my mind.

Why was construction vehicle dueling so widespread?

It's the closest thing to giant mech battles you can get in this day and age.

[LibraryOgre]

Finally decided that I was tired of being on the Institute's Railroad. Got done with Bunker Hill, sweet-talked my dumbass son, and when I got to the meeting of the Directorate, I killed all of them. I briefly tried the "not murdering" route, but it had Father saying "We need to do this dangerous thing to build more power producers" and not me responding "You know, I can go out and get the stuff to make you a few reactors, we don't need to dot his."

Then I went to Desdemona and, instead of saying "Yeah, I killed the Directorate", I said "I'm sorry, I can't go into the Institute anymore."

Just... dumb. Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb writing.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Finally decided that I was tired of being on the Institute's Railroad. Got done with Bunker Hill, sweet-talked my dumbass son, and when I got to the meeting of the Directorate, I killed all of them. I briefly tried the "not murdering" route, but it had Father saying "We need to do this dangerous thing to build more power producers" and not me responding "You know, I can go out and get the stuff to make you a few reactors, we don't need to dot his."

Then I went to Desdemona and, instead of saying "Yeah, I killed the Directorate", I said "I'm sorry, I can't go into the Institute anymore."

Just... dumb. Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb writing.

The worst part about that? It won't matter. Not one little bit. Because eventually, no matter which other faction you decide to side with (yes, even the big stompy mech), it won't acknowledge that you just killed the entire Directorate and the entire faction of the Institute should now be devolving into something a good deal less dangerous while it tries to reorganize. No, the Institute is still the boogyman that must be defeated at all costs, and when you go there instead of a burning husk with bodies littered about your escape route, it's a clinically clean bustling underground city again with no trace of your previous rampage left.

Because we can't let Player Choices get in the way of Plot, now can we?

[Triaxx]

*new vegas* I'm sorry I can't hear you over the Boomers and the Enclave.

[MCerberus]

Anyone have a recommendation for me for a game with 1. a crafting system that's more complex than "take 3 of resource to crafting station to make item" and 2. isn't full loot pvp?

Going back to fallout 76 doesn't work because they haven't fixed high level damage sponginess yet so my vast array of custom-tuned death machines sit unused in favor of the 2-3 viable 3 star heavy weapons I have.

I've thought about fallen earth but my long-ago character would have been wiped and my max int supersoldier with hand made top-end rifles, advanced polymer armor, hand-crafted battle stims, and my pride-and-joy electric motorcycle would turn into "That guy, who can't make the good ammo for his cardboard pellet gun" and that hurts my soul

[Wookieetank]

Anyone have a recommendation for me for a game with 1. a crafting system that's more complex than "take 3 of resource to crafting station to make item" and 2. isn't full loot pvp?

First few things that come to mind for this is: Factorio, Satisfactory, and Dyson Sphere Program.

Going back to fallout 76 doesn't work because they haven't fixed high level damage sponginess yet so my vast array of custom-tuned death machines sit unused in favor of the 2-3 viable 3 star heavy weapons I have.

I've thought about fallen earth but my long-ago character would have been wiped and my max int supersoldier with hand made top-end rifles, advanced polymer armor, hand-crafted battle stims, and my pride-and-joy electric motorcycle would turn into "That guy, who can't make the good ammo for his cardboard pellet gun" and that hurts my soul

However taking all this into consideration, there's 7 Days to Die, The Forest (and Sons of the Forest (haven't played it yet myself)), and Valheim

[Zevox]

Went through the last of my Mortal Kombat story modes the last couple of days, MK11. Which is really solid. Not as much good character stuff as in MKX I'd say, but still a fun one, with lots of twists and good moments. The interactions between the present versions of characters and the past ones was probably the highlight, especially Johnny Cage. Seeing the present, more mature version chew out his arrogant, jackass past self is just wonderful. Well, that and the shared moment of grief between Cassie and Johnny after what happens to Sonya at the start, which is really well done and probably the most emotional moment in the entire series. And it's certainly the most epic of the modern MK stories, with Kronika making a great villain for a story with big scope and impact from its outcome.

I don't have the DLC addition to the story, Aftermath, since I never bought the expansion it comes with, so I re-watched that on Youtube instead. Though there was little reason to I think, it's the weakest of the modern MK story stuff. Mostly because it's redundant - it basically retells the last third or so of MK11's story, but with events altered somewhat due to the presence of a few additional characters. To little ultimate purpose. The non-Kronika villains get closer to achieving their goals, but in the end it still winds up at the same place: with Kronika defeated and Liu Kang using her hourglass to restart the timeline. Well, there is the alternate ending where Shang Tsung wins, but it's very brief and obviously won't be the canon one. But yeah, the journey there isn't as fun either, as there's little in the way of good character stuff compared to the main story mode. Heck, they have to retcon Sindel's entire character and Shao Khan's death to even make most of the changes to events happen, and even those are ultimately meaningless since Shang Tsung just betrays them both and steals their souls in the end. So I guess the only purpose that DLC served was to give people who really wanted to see those handful of characters have a role in the story a chance to do so. Still great production value and presentation, but in the end it just feels so meaningless and empty due to how they decided to handle it.

Meanwhile, seems they announced when the last DLC is coming to Midnight Suns... which is in a week and a half, surprisingly. So I've got some time to fill yet before jumping back into that. Hm...

Twenty years after playing a certain one question sticks in my mind.

Why was construction vehicle dueling so widespread?

I'm honestly not sure what that one's referring to?

[Anonymouswizard]

It's the closest thing to giant mech battles you can get in this day and age.

I'm honestly not sure what that one's referring to?

BCV: Battle Construction Vehicles is a very memorable game. I mean it all starts out normal, and then the crane comes up the stairs.

[MCerberus]

However taking all this into consideration, there's 7 Days to Die, The Forest (and Sons of the Forest (haven't played it yet myself)), and Valheim

Gave Valheim a game pass download, very early on in progression you need to have a roofed house over your crafting station.
Now either a whole lot of experience is needed with the ark/rust stuff or the snap grids just don't work in combination of the terrain making things impossible.

But hey a tree I knocked down broke into two logs one of which assassinated me

not a good impression

[Resileaf]

BCV: Battle Construction Vehicles is a very memorable game. I mean it all starts out normal, and then the crane comes up the stairs.

I've experienced it through the Game Grumps playthrough.

It's uh... An experience.