Any talk of allowing 2 lances?

[Wolfenguard]

without a massive change of the gamemechanic (phase and turn) i see not really a big chance for a second lance,
a second lance will be nice especially for missions where iam outnummered and have to get some lucky hits on the enemy to get a win for the match
4 more mechs are a lot of more time for a match especially if you insert them into a mp match.

The other problem will be in the end the massive mainteance cost or montly cost to pay, 4 more mechs are 4 to 6 more pilots (depending on the dammed cockpits hits with a fixed time to recover after match)

i think there are some design Problems, who are in the game or ideas from the start on but dont get into the final game, like the benefits from the argo beta and charly hub. for every one you get 12 new places for mech pilots? who needs 36 pilots? when you can only use 4 in a match, maybe a 2 mores for replacement if one of your pilots get killed or need to recover from a match. a second or third leopard will be nice, when i can use them for other mission like iam on the planet and have 4 mission on them i can make one of the mission and send my other dropship to an other mission which is autocalculated depending on the mechs and pilots i send to the mission. or i send the leo to a other mission to get benefits in the my primary mission like, succesfull secondary mission the enemy mechs in my mission have not all armour or are alry in damaged. or the second enemy lance will not show up trough a distraction

 

[Prussian Havoc]

without a massive change of the gamemechanic (phase and turn) i see not really a big chance for a second lance,
a second lance will be nice especially for missions where iam outnummered and have to get some lucky hits on the enemy to get a win for the match
4 more mechs are a lot of more time for a match especially if you insert them into a mp match.

The other problem will be in the end the massive mainteance cost or montly cost to pay, 4 more mechs are 4 to 6 more pilots (depending on the dammed cockpits hits with a fixed time to recover after match)

i think there are some design Problems, who are in the game or ideas from the start on but dont get into the final game, like the benefits from the argo beta and charly hub. for every one you get 12 new places for mech pilots? who needs 36 pilots? when you can only use 4 in a match, maybe a 2 mores for replacement if one of your pilots get killed or need to recover from a match. a second or third leopard will be nice, when i can use them for other mission like iam on the planet and have 4 mission on them i can make one of the mission and send my other dropship to an other mission which is autocalculated depending on the mechs and pilots i send to the mission. or i send the leo to a other mission to get benefits in the my primary mission like, succesfull secondary mission the enemy mechs in my mission have not all armour or are alry in damaged. or the second enemy lance will not show up trough a distraction

I just took the following Star:

Against this AI Inner Sphere Company-minus:

It was a Smoke Jaguar slaughter of Inner Sphere forces...

...of course later this afternoon I’ll turn this scenario in it’s head and take this 80m Cbills of Inner Sphere BattleMechs against the above 160m Cbills of Clan Arsekickery!

Yeah, that’ll git r done! : )


ps: this is all due to ModTek and @bloodydoves Clan Beta Patreon effort. :bow:

 

[Eximar]

I'll never use the clan part of it, but bd's mod is looking really good.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

I'll never use the clan part of it, but bd's mod is looking really good.

I tried the above Skirmish Mission... and I’ll not be playing clans myself anytime soon.

But with @bloodydoves use of @Amechwarrior Better AI Mod, if you give the AI a full Star of OmniMechs and yourself only take a Heavy Inner Sphere Lance... HOT DAMN! It’s a great match with the AI finally having the durability and smarts to challenge me. : )

 

[Mabberton]

With some additional time with Mission Control/Bigger Drops under my belt, I had some more thoughts:

• I love the big maps and dynamic spawn locations. I like having a little more control over how to approach the fight, find the high ground, etc.
• Overall, I like the additional support lances. They tend to be vehicles (at least in BTA 3062) which adds some variety and works with lore as well (lots of mech regiments had associated armor regiments). It can make the fights long though and reduces how many missions you can complete in an evening. Would be good if the salvage rights were buffed a little bit similar to the payouts (you get a cbill bonus if you wipe out the support lance).
• The bigger drops are nice as well. I currently have 6 mech capacity (500 tons max). Having two more mechs to drop makes me feel like I can experiment with loadouts a bit more. I wouldn't want to dedicate 1 mech out of 4 to be an artillery mech, but 1 out of 6 is easier to accept.

Mike

 

[unclecid]

With some additional time with Mission Control/Bigger Drops under my belt, I had some more thoughts:

• I love the big maps and dynamic spawn locations. I like having a little more control over how to approach the fight, find the high ground, etc.
• Overall, I like the additional support lances. They tend to be vehicles (at least in BTA 3062) which adds some variety and works with lore as well (lots of mech regiments had associated armor regiments). It can make the fights long though and reduces how many missions you can complete in an evening. Would be good if the salvage rights were buffed a little bit similar to the payouts (you get a cbill bonus if you wipe out the support lance).
• The bigger drops are nice as well. I currently have 6 mech capacity (500 tons max). Having two more mechs to drop makes me feel like I can experiment with loadouts a bit more. I wouldn't want to dedicate 1 mech out of 4 to be an artillery mech, but 1 out of 6 is easier to accept.

Mike

with bigger drops....i find myself using fewer assaults during a career run and a larger variety of meds/hvys and i even find myself using certain lights far later into a run then i normally would without the mod.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

With some additional time with Mission Control/Bigger Drops under my belt, I had some more thoughts:

• I love the big maps and dynamic spawn locations. I like having a little more control over how to approach the fight, find the high ground, etc.
• Overall, I like the additional support lances. They tend to be vehicles (at least in BTA 3062) which adds some variety and works with lore as well (lots of mech regiments had associated armor regiments). It can make the fights long though and reduces how many missions you can complete in an evening. Would be good if the salvage rights were buffed a little bit similar to the payouts (you get a cbill bonus if you wipe out the support lance).
• The bigger drops are nice as well. I currently have 6 mech capacity (500 tons max). Having two more mechs to drop makes me feel like I can experiment with loadouts a bit more. I wouldn't want to dedicate 1 mech out of 4 to be an artillery mech, but 1 out of 6 is easier to accept.

Mike

@CWolfs is a Pilar of our post-HBS BATTLETECH Community...

...and it ain’t even “post-HBS” yet! : )

As ever, good luck and good MISSION CONTROL BATTLETECH gaming, Good @Mabberton :bow:

Steve

 

[Aotrs Commander]

And so, off to the Steam statistics to find out how many people are still playing the game a couple months after the last DLC drop (let's call those 'nerds', or 'easy money'), and how many people actually played the last DLC for a while (likely purchasers, or 'middling easy money'). Moderate hard sell is to people that bought the base game but never bought a DLC, or people that bought it on steam sale, or even people that bought MW5Mercs but didn't buy the original BATTLETCH game. Hard sell is to new purchasers... market for turn-based big stompy robot games with overtones of Game of Thrones written by attractive and successful game development houses may be saturated. There's a well to go to... but how deep is that well?

And even that doesn't tell you about people like me who these days can and will wait over a year to play a game even after they've bought it (and/or only buy stuff when there's a good sale on unless they want/need to play it right now - which is often never me these days, unless I'm kickstartering), but will buy the DLC - often if there's an offer on, if again, they are currently playign something else when it comes out - periodically, so that when they do play it (or play it again), there's a boat-load of stuff to play. (I haven't played since pre-Flashpoint, but I have accrued all the DLC.)

(See also Imperator, which I bought because I got a good offer pre-release, but haven't even installed yet, or Pillars od Eternity 2 and Pathfinder:Kingmake, which I backed at kickstarter and only played through after a year and all the DLC came out.)

I guess I'm going to have to take the contrary opinion and say I do not want to manage more than a single lance. Turned-based battles in this game with just four mechs already take upwards of 30 minutes each. I've had a few approach an hour, and this is with the game's relatively small maps. I do not need even more mechs drawing out the length of the battles.

I seems that some players feel strongly about this feature, so it's great modders have stepped up. But I don't want this in the base game. I think this is a great example of less being more.

Funny enough, I feel the same about the XCOM remake. A ton of players bemoaned only being able to use four (and ultimately 6) units whereas the original game had you managing 8-12. I think this was an improvement - I found combat in the original XCOM where I had to move 8+ units every single round exceedingly tedious and slow.

I think managing multiple lances would be best for an RTS or strategy game, not a tactical game like this one.

I personally would think it would be nice (were it a feasible option) to have SOME missions be able to use more than one lance (flashpoints/sotry missions etc, maybe ONE type of regular mission); I think doing it every time would perhaps be over-doing it.

Though one feels at this point, we are at the point where it is only going to be the preview of modders. (Though now we have official mod support, I might be more inclined to look at mods; before, I just did not fancy the idea of having to arse about after every patch/update!)

 

[ajac]

2 lances would be nice hell the enemy is allowed to throw so many at us... and with their perfect aim sometimes 2 lances would be nice.. sigh hope some day we get a true Mercenary game of mechs vehicles aeorpsace and whatever in large unit sizes.

 

[Hoi Neuling]

Yes, 2 Lances were good, but the Leopard can only bring in 1 Lance with 4 Mechs.

If the Argo would have a second docking Point for an second Leopard with Pilot then it would be possible. But the Game is designed for 1 Leopard and 4 Mechs for your Freelancer-Company.

I compensate that with Mech-Improvements (Cockpit, Rangefinders etc.) and + / ++ / +++, the special Lasers as well as ER-Weapons from the Star Leage.

The Devs are not changing that anymore, because they work on 2 new Projects with all Hands. The others are doing Bugfixing (like Missing Translations, Modding-Tools etc.) for Battletech until Development ends officially.

 

[unclecid]

Yes, 2 Lances were good, but the Leopard can only bring in 1 Lance with 4 Mechs.

If the Argo would have a second docking Point for an second Leopard with Pilot then it would be possible. But the Game is designed for 1 Leopard and 4 Mechs for your Freelancer-Company.

I compensate that with Mech-Improvements (Cockpit, Rangefinders etc.) and + / ++ / +++, the special Lasers as well as ER-Weapons from the Star Leage.

The Devs are not changing that anymore, because they work on 2 new Projects with all Hands. The others are doing Bugfixing (like Missing Translations, Modding-Tools etc.) for Battletech until Development ends officially.

which is fine because HBS have handed the game off to the modders.
and the modders have already made a mod that will use the port side docking collar for a 2nd leopard and extend your drops to 2 full lances.

 

[Hoi Neuling]

That sounds cool. If such a Mod can downloaded from the Workshop and get easy integrated in an seperate Mod-Folder then I will use it.

 

[unclecid]

That sounds cool. If such a Mod can downloaded from the Workshop and get easy integrated in an seperate Mod-Folder then I will use it.

workshop?

goto nexus
download mission control
then goto github and get Bigger Drops (this is the mod that adds extra lance but depends on mission control)

 

[Hoi Neuling]

That´s to much work. No Workshop, no Mod.

 

[unclecid]

if you are talking about steam workshop.
that is not and never was on the table to ever happen.
but hey..not everyone is comfortable with downloading and unzipping files..i get it.

 

[Hoi Neuling]

The Problem is not the Unzipping and downloading. It´s that you must have an account to do that on this Website. And that the Files which get unziped overwrite the Main-Files of the Game.

For Hoi 4, Stellaris and other Games like Kotor 2 there are better solutions. They have an seperate Mod-Folder which don´t destroy or overwrite the original Main-Files of the Game.

If you download that Mod and unzip him over the Main-Files and Mod support will get canceld then you have to take 1 Hour or so to get Battletech installed completly new. That´s why I and many others don´t like this solution.

 

[MeiSooHaityu]

Does the mod 'Advanced 3062' automatically come with two Lance deployment, or is that an additional mod on top of it? I ask because I think Baradul was running the mod in the video I watched and his deployment involved 2 Lances.

I would rather use 1 Lance only if I decided to run the mod. I'd deal with two lances if I had to though.

 

[unclecid]

The Problem is not the Unzipping and downloading. It´s that you must have an account to do that on this Website. And that the Files which get unziped overwrite the Main-Files of the Game.

For Hoi 4, Stellaris and other Games like Kotor 2 there are better solutions. They have an seperate Mod-Folder which don´t destroy or overwrite the original Main-Files of the Game.

ok if having to have an account at a freesite is an issue i have an answer.
you dont have to get MC at nexus.
it is also on github where ya dont need and account to d/l anything...you can get Mc and BD there without signing up.

and i think you are confused with how modding works with BT.
the mods merge with game files as needed only if mods are enabled.
its not really overwriting.
these mods for BT are put into a separate 'Mods' folder.
to put it simplistically the temporarily change or add values to the main game files during that session only
if you exit the game and disable the mods then restart it will be vanilla again.
NONE of the mods for this game destroy any game files.

 

[Hoi Neuling]

That´s good to hear that HBS had fixed this Problem. Then I will try it. Hope the second Lance-Mod works with the German Version of the Game.

 

[Mabberton]

Does the mod 'Advanced 3062' automatically come with two Lance deployment, or is that an additional mod on top of it? I ask because I think Baradul was running the mod in the video I watched and his deployment involved 2 Lances.

I would rather use 1 Lance only if I decided to run the mod. I'd deal with two lances if I had to though.

The Advanced 3062 mod does includes Mission Control and Bigger Drops standard. That is where I have been using the second lance. You start with a capacity for 5 mech drops and can increase that up to 8 through the Engineering Upgrades screen. I am up to 7 right now, but I don't think I have dropped more than 6 so far.