BATTLETECH - Enemy Reinforcements begin in play

[Contemplative Sparrow]

One line summary of your issue
Enemy Reinforcements begin in play

Please explain your issue is in as much detail as possible.
The enemy forces in random missions will, if they have reinforcements, deploy them immediately upon the start of the mission, meaning that the battle is against the entire enemy force from the beginning of the mission, making battles extremely difficult to carry out without substantial repairs and medical leave being necessary.

Steps to reproduce the issue
Play random missions between story missions until you encounter one in which the enemy has reinforcements

Upload attachment

 

[esotericist]

Game is basically unplayable because of this bug. Needs hotfix ASAP.

I'd settle for an acknowledgement and stated intent to fix, myself. There's a lot of fires that need to be put out, I just want to be sure this doesn't get overlooked.

 

[Kellcat]

Agreed - there are bigger fires than this, but an “oops” or “intentional” would be nice, even if it has to wait. Of course, it has to wait at least until people are back to work on Monday.

 

[Huntingwolf]

Yea this is screwd up

also funny when you end the mission and the voice/NPC say that enemy reinforments are underway.and Gratulate for the successful mission

they mainly spawn all at once

 

[pvigo]

Had this happen in every mission with reinforcements, resulting in having to face between 8 to 13 opponents from the start. When you are defending a base, facing opponents with only partial armor or can exploit geography, you can sort of muddle your way through. But when it's just you against 8-13 enemies, it gets ridiculous very quickly.

My "favorite" so far was getting stuck between a heavy lance and a lance of 60-100 ton vehicles (SRM carriers, Demolishers -- the lot) on round 2. Didn't matter who I went after first, didn't matter what I tried, things always ended badly.

 

[sunder77]

I'd settle for an acknowledgement and stated intent to fix, myself. There's a lot of fires that need to be put out, I just want to be sure this doesn't get overlooked.

I agree. If this is indeed a bug, then they need to acknowledge that fact. As is there are missions that are just completely impossible with the current version of "reinforcements".

 

[dysaber]

It has to be a bug. After, hopefully, defeating the 8 or more mechs at the same time, I get the "Enemy reinforcements incoming" and then "mission successful". Pretty sure we should be getting the first group, and then the second group after. My mechs just take such a huge beating from all that firepower at one time. Almost not worth playing until they fix it, since I spend the next 30 days waiting for everything to be repaired, or pilots to get over their injuries.

 

[Malkavia Bloodangel]

Weldry, mission Hot Landing. Reinforcements engaged at the start of the fight. I had to metagame the mission and hit the first objective at an extreme angle away from where the reinforcements started. Even then, the reinforcement's light mechs came in on round 2.

 

[Stlaind]

It seems to me like this happens on almost any assassinate or battle mission I've dropped into. I can certainly believe that instant reinforcements are intended in some missions as it would give some sense of bad intel or conditions changing.

On the other hand, constant bad intel just makes me start considering medium mech loadouts unviable at at about difficulty 3, and almost requires me to ignore a lot of designed in abilities to just get more armor and straight firepower on the field.

This gets especially brutal when the target of an assassination is escorted by a full heavy Lance immediately reinforced by a medium lance packing enough lrms to knock down any mech that isn't braced in one turn.

 

[Wintermist]

So it's not a bug. This is from their AMA on Reddit ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Battletechgame/comments/8g2e8j/im_tyler_carpenter_one_of_the_hbs_devs_on/ )

"So this is largely a communication issue: the reinforcements aren't a bug, per se. They're supposed to be there. Unfortunately, the mission language calls them reinforcements which implies they were to arrive later."

 

[sunder77]

So it's not a bug. This is from their AMA on Reddit ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Battletechgame/comments/8g2e8j/im_tyler_carpenter_one_of_the_hbs_devs_on/ )

"So this is largely a communication issue: the reinforcements aren't a bug, per se. They're supposed to be there. Unfortunately, the mission language calls them reinforcements which implies they were to arrive later."

"There's gonna be some adjustment to some of the contracts as well, mostly in the form of adjusting the difficulty players see to more accurately reflect how hard they are."

So not a bug, but in need of tuning definitely.

 

[Vanguard319]

I get this bug constantly as well, and often find myself fighting eight or more enemies at once.

 

[Stlaind]

So, taking that answer plus another one from the ama:
"
Well, we're definitely going to ensure it's clearer that the "reinforcements" are more of "Shit, more forces than our intel suggested, Commander!" kind of message.

There's gonna be some adjustment to some of the contracts as well, mostly in the form of adjusting the difficulty players see to more accurately reflect how hard they are.

Beyond that, Connor is doing work, but what it entails, I don't know the specifics of."

https://www.reddit.com/r/Battletech...yler_carpenter_one_of_the_hbs_devs_on/dy8cusz

Apparently every single battle or assassination mission has bad intel? That seems awfully sloppy of every one of our clients.

 

[Huntingwolf]

So, taking that answer plus another one from the ama:
"
Well, we're definitely going to ensure it's clearer that the "reinforcements" are more of "Shit, more forces than our intel suggested, Commander!" kind of message.

There's gonna be some adjustment to some of the contracts as well, mostly in the form of adjusting the difficulty players see to more accurately reflect how hard they are.

Beyond that, Connor is doing work, but what it entails, I don't know the specifics of."

https://www.reddit.com/r/Battletech...yler_carpenter_one_of_the_hbs_devs_on/dy8cusz

Apparently every single battle or assassination mission has bad intel? That seems awfully sloppy of every one of our clients.

The thing is .ok bad intel can happpen.

but i dont see why ALL Enemy Groups spawn at ALL AT ONCE and Reinforcements engaged at the start of the fight is so wanted

also there is no warning over the com in the mission.surely fun when you get attacked by 4 lances or more That spawn ALL at once and get rekd

and if you beat the mission: "oh btw: enemy reinforcements underway" over the com

no, its a bug
certainly dont believe that instant reinforcements are intended
the reinforcement wave/group should arrive later time delayed

 

[Stlaind]

Yeah. In the real world there's the fact that the situation changed between when someone got the intel initially and when the unit needing the intel gets it. There's also deception leading to the intel being "correct" ... but for what someone wanted to be seen, not what reality is. Then there's just plain someone made a mistake or something was missed, that happens too.

But sometimes, sometimes everything is right and things are what intel said they would be. Doesn't mean it will all go right, but at least intel was not wrong.

I can accept the former options if there's actually some chance of the latter. As it is, there's a 100% way to change your difficulty: Choose all battle/assassinate missions or never choose any. That leads to a wide variance in difficulty of the game. I can honestly say that the priority missions feel easier than a battle mission with a comparable difficulty rating. I've never had a question of if I'm bringing home all my mechs and pilots on a recovery mission for instance. But an assassination? Those are now a question of whether I'll make anything in the end, and that's becoming a fast answer of "no".

Difficulty ratings should sometimes be wrong. That I think all of us can at least accept if not agree with. There shouldn't be NEARLY the difficulty swing between mission types of the same rating.

 

[Bacchus169]

I only had one mission where I just reloaded from my pre-contract save. Mostly I use terrain to only draw 1 or 2 enemies at once, then called shots to either the CT to disable the fast, or to specific parts if they destroy their main weapons, Called shots are your big equalizer.

 

[Chester Rico]

Yeah this is super annoying. Something's broken; either the reinforcements never spawn at all or they're present right at the start of the mission.
Just had an assassination mission with 1 Atlas (the target), his retinue (Victor, Stalker, 2x Jagermech) and the reinforcements were almost in the exact same spot from the beginning of the mission (I think it was a Demolisher, PPC carrier and 2x Orions or something.) RIP.

It might be even doable on some maps, where you can use terrain or something; but more often than not, you'll get a wide open map with no chokepoints. Please fix this.

 

[Wintermist]

It's messed up because you may have taken a contract that your whole campaign rely on financially, only to arrive in that system (having travelled there for the long time that takes) only to find you can't do that mission because it has that "bad intel". No other contracts to do and end of month financial report is up.

I get what they're trying to do, but they overdid it and also made it way TOO hard when it happens. It's basically an RNG that can end your whole game without you even given a chance to get around it. Play it and wreck all your mechs and kill some pilots, suffer more expensive repairs than the mission itself actually pays, or don't fight it and fail anyway because you're out of money. Screwed both ways when that happen.

 

[SpectralShade]

the fact that darius tells us: "re-inforcements incomming" AFTER you already killed the reinforcements several turns ago makes it rather clear that it's a bug.

The question is why they are refusing to acknowledge the problem.

 

[Vanu Kaos]

It's messed up because you may have taken a contract that your whole campaign rely on financially, only to arrive in that system (having travelled there for the long time that takes) only to find you can't do that mission because it has that "bad intel". No other contracts to do and end of month financial report is up.

I get what they're trying to do, but they overdid it and also made it way TOO hard when it happens. It's basically an RNG that can end your whole game without you even given a chance to get around it. Play it and wreck all your mechs and kill some pilots, suffer more expensive repairs than the mission itself actually pays, or don't fight it and fail anyway because you're out of money. Screwed both ways when that happen.

This happened to me. Couple of bad missions fairly early on, travelled out to nearby system to hit a 2 star mission to make financial safety and blam, ran into the situation where I was up against a lance of 3 Med Mechs and reinforcements seemed to be a full lance of Med Mechs backed up with SRM Carrier, Demolisher and a Manticore. My 4 Medium Mechs were turned to scrap in short order, failed to hit financial targets and game over. Was sitting thinking...Oh, that's pretty rough.

 

[SpectralShade]

This happened to me. Couple of bad missions fairly early on, travelled out to nearby system to hit a 2 star mission to make financial safety and blam, ran into the situation where I was up against a lance of 3 Med Mechs and reinforcements seemed to be a full lance of Med Mechs backed up with SRM Carrier, Demolisher and a Manticore. My 4 Medium Mechs were turned to scrap in short order, failed to hit financial targets and game over. Was sitting thinking...Oh, that's pretty rough.

count me in that boat too. except it was a system with no other missions available, and it went into full 5 skulls for some reason, pitting me against 8 assaults and 4 heavies at the same time. The heavies even hitting me in the rear after I had engaged the assaults while the 8 assaults were advancing from the front.
And I had 1 assault, 2 heavies and a medium to try and deal with all that. Plain impossible and frustrates me that you need to savescum before accepting missions because the game can put you in unwinnable situations like that with no way out save reloading an earlier game and not choosing the mission. ridicilous.