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

 

[iratequaker]

This is a bug, on several missions you need to destroy the defenders, move to the objective and reinforcements are supposed to spawn. However, you fight both lances at once, move to objective then get told reinforcements arrive only to have the mission finished immediately. As already stated, the difficulty is too hard as it is now, your best bet is to play defensively and allow them to attack you piecemeal so you can ride out the whole battle but it severely limits your tactical options.

 

[Vanu Kaos]

This is a bug, on several missions you need to destroy the defenders, move to the objective and reinforcements are supposed to spawn. However, you fight both lances at once, move to objective then get told reinforcements arrive only to have the mission finished immediately. As already stated, the difficulty is too hard as it is now, your best bet is to play defensively and allow them to attack you piecemeal so you can ride out the whole battle but it severely limits your tactical options.

The way I deal with it is a Bulwark based lance, find good cover and take root. The OPFOR runs at you one at a time in a death march and you can Prec-strike them down. It's the only way with my limited gaming skills I can deal with the amount of Mechs coming at me but it's not very creative or fun after a while.

 

[Carl_Bar]

The way I deal with it is a Bulwark based lance, find good cover and take root. The OPFOR runs at you one at a time in a death march and you can Prec-strike them down. It's the only way with my limited gaming skills I can deal with the amount of Mechs coming at me but it's not very creative or fun after a while.

Honestly this is the games biggest issue late on. Early on being outnumbered isn't so bad as most enemies have messed up armour, but late on your outnumbered and outmased by stuff with full armour and skilled pilots. It can be dealt with, but it's just so boring because there's little room for varying your tactics or doing slightly risky things for the hell of it. You have to play just right for whichever of several limited builds your running or you get spanked. And that gets really monotonous fast.

 

[Vanu Kaos]

At the end of the day I am still loving BattleTech and my whole family is joining in on the fun so I am grateful and thankful for HBS making that happen. My criticism is not meant to be in any way spiteful but if we can make suggestions that improve the game in a respectful manner I am sure it will be listened too. It's still very early days and no doubt there will be patches incoming to spice things up for us so I am enjoying what I can in the meantime.

 

[Wakko.13]

I've run into this for every mission thus far. I honestly thought it was part of the game mechanics. Glad this is a bug to be fixed. Was starting to worry about the difficulty scaling when dropping in my 4 mechs and it turns out to be 6 mechs and 4 tanks where only One mech was supposed to be primary; or some other weird craziness.

 

[ThumbBreaker]

I've had this bug several times as well. To add to it, I've also encountered this bug when the "reinforcements" spawn outside of the map. While there, they couldn't move, fire, use sensor lock, or even Brace, so there was nothing they could do against me. Fortunately, I was just barely able to get them within Sensor Lock range while I had a 'Mech with PPC's whittle them down over the 15 minutes or so until they all finally died. Sadly, the rest of the time I encounter this bug, I am instead overwhelmed by 'Mechs and vehicles. I honestly don't think I can play this game again until this is fixed. I get tired of having my best 'Mechs shot at 8 times before I get to move them once.

 

[esotericist]

Honestly this is the games biggest issue late on. Early on being outnumbered isn't so bad as most enemies have messed up armour, but late on your outnumbered and outmased by stuff with full armour and skilled pilots. It can be dealt with, but it's just so boring because there's little room for varying your tactics or doing slightly risky things for the hell of it. You have to play just right for whichever of several limited builds your running or you get spanked. And that gets really monotonous fast.

I would contend it is still a very serious issue early on if you've brought four mediums (three 55s and a 50) because that's the best you have, but you're facing 8 mechs (four lights, 3 mediums, and an orion), all of which have LRMs except for the firestarter?

The reduced armor only buys you so much in that kind of encounter.

 

[Hazriel]

Some says that the spawn of reinforcement at the beginning is intended, some says it's a bug.
I'll go with a bug, since i heard Darius says "reinforcement incoming" or something like this when i already killed them + Reinforcement in main mission are spawning correctly.
Sometimes it's easy to handle, sometimes you just get wrecked.

If a Dev could tell us whether it's a bug or not, that would be great.

 

[Wintermist]

Some says that the spawn of reinforcement at the beginning is intended, some says it's a bug.
I'll go with a bug, since i heard Darius says "reinforcement incoming" or something like this when i already killed them + Reinforcement in main mission are spawning correctly.
Sometimes it's easy to handle, sometimes you just get wrecked.

If a Dev could tell us whether it's a bug or not, that would be great.

They have already said it's not a bug. Check a little bit back in the thread for a link to it.

 

[ChromeDrake]

They have already said it's not a bug. Check a little bit back in the thread for a link to it.

So it's a feature, but is it working as intended? It certainly doesn't seem like it judging by some of the reports on here and my own experience.

 

[Hazriel]

They have already said it's not a bug. Check a little bit back in the thread for a link to it.

Wintermist, i already read the post where Tyler Carpenter said "the reinforcements aren't a bug", (thanks to you for the link).
But to me, he is not honest on that topic. There's too many things that people pointed out to let me think it's a bug. It's hard to believe it's just a langage error.

If it's really intended to behave like that, this "feature" need a balancing.

Still i'd like if a dev could settle this

(Sorry for the eventuals grammar mistakes i could make, i'm not a native english speaker)

 

[nindustrial]

I would also be interested in getting more clarification than the statement in the AMA, which in light of these reports doesn't seem to reflect an understanding of what's actually happening in-game. I've only just finished the opening tutorial missions but I'm not sure if I should wait to play the game (because it's a bug) or press on (because it won't be changed). It frankly sounds pretty miserable to have to avoid fully two types of missions in the game because they spawn "reinforcements" at the same time as the main force without fail.

For now I guess I'll just go play something else.

 

[Wintermist]

Well I certainly think it's bugged in the way it's happening way too often, and most likely also way too strongly. It's quite crippling.

I imagine they intended it to add some challenge, on rare occassions. So theoretically the feature itself is not a bug, but how it works certainly seems bugged. And if it's not bugged but working exactly as they intended it, I think it's a really, really badly designed feature.

Ideally it would be scaling better to your own strength, and not happen as often as it does now, and certainly not spawn right next to you when it does happen.

 

[nindustrial]

Well I certainly think it's bugged in the way it's happening way too often, and most likely also way too strongly. It's quite crippling.

I imagine they intended it to add some challenge, on rare occassions. So theoretically the feature itself is not a bug, but how it works certainly seems bugged. And if it's not bugged but working exactly as they intended it, I think it's a really, really badly designed feature.

Ideally it would be scaling better to your own strength, and not happen as often as it does now, and certainly not spawn right next to you when it does happen.

Exactly -- my concern is that if they intended for extra forces to be spawned immediately, but not on 100% (or near to it) of certain mission types that have them, then I'd prefer to wait until it's patched to play. But if they intended for these types of missions to almost universally dump 2x-4x the mechs on you right from the start and it's only the timing/text of the dialogue that is bugged, well then I'll suck it up and play right now.

It would be a much more minor bug if it only concerns when the dialogue plays, or that the dialogue text should say something different (recognizing that the current timing of the dialogue trigger does imply there is a problem with something). And if it's intended for most of certain mission types to regularly contain massive amounts of mechs right from the start, then I'd also agree that seems like a very bad design decision---it would likely lead me to avoid those missions most of the time anyway. But I'd like to have a definitive answer before I willingly submit to punishment

(EDITED for clarity)

 

[Raven Zahadoom]

So the devs say it's not a bug, funny how they don't have any comments on this thread the actual forum for the game.

This is the reason I will not be buying this game. I went round my friend's house yesterday to check it out as he had preordered on steam. Cool, I thought I get to see the game before I buy (side no how come no one makes demos anymore). And boy am I glad I did. He was telling me things seemed somewhat harsh and buggy, I said ahh your being salty let us have a look. And sure enough, we try a 2 skull mission with reinforcements that spawn at the start. So we are faced with 12 units *8 med mechs and 4 tanks* give a couple tries and give up maybe we were not meant to do that mission we say. Moving on another 2 skull mission, easy peasy just the 4 mechs to kill. Hmmm so one 2 skull mission has you fight 4 med mechs and another has you fight 8 med mechs and 4 tanks? and the easy mission had a better payout? if this is not a bug as some devs seem to think then you people have no idea how to make an enjoyable game. I don't want to pay money to buy something that is just going to frustrate me and make me angry. A fair challenge would be fine but this sort of thing is not worth it.

In any case my friend and I decided to carry on with the missions and come up vs a 1.5 skull mission with reinforcements, ok lets try this one, this time 4 med mechs and 4 tanks, two of which are carriers (I think LRM and SRM if I remember right), and they are all in the middle of the map from the start. We got stubborn we are going to do this mission we said and after 12 reloads we finally gave up... a 1.5 skull mission should never be this hard, let alone reinforcements spawning on top of primary targets at the very start of the battle. Tell me devs HOW is that intended? How can this mission be undoable as a 1.5 when we can do some 2 skull missions with better payouts so much easier with little to no repairs.

Before some people go on here and say well you are not playing it properly or using the right tactics, listen we reloaded 12 times we did everything we could think off i.e; constantly moving to keep evasion up, using called shots, facing full armoured sides, always attacking the same side of armour of the enemy, jump jet rushing the tanks to melee them quickly and I could go on and on. This is simply not fair.

At the end of the day I will not be buying the game in this condition, and my friend after seeing how often this "bug/game feature" happens is sad he will not be able to refund the game.

I have liked many paradox games in the past and never had such a problem that I bothered to make a post on the forums before, but IF the devs are actually reading this (I do highly doubt they are seen as there has been no reply from them) you messed up so bad I had to make my first ever post on here. Well done on the monumental fook up there lads. Now stand up to your mistakes and fix this bug, or don't people will always speak with their wallets in the end.

 

[Ghostsigns]

Had this like 4 times and lost pilots twice (pretty much shredded most mechs there too). Final straw tonight was the starting targets being a tank lance 1 manticore, demolisher and 2 lrm carriers to my north go to engage the manticore and the lrm carriers use his sight to knock down my Dragon. Okay nasty, with the pretty much certain knock down the lrm's will cause each turn, but can live with that close and take them down I thought focus the demolisher on the way by.

Then the mech lance spawned same distance to my east 3 mediums and a Quickdraw. Dispatch a medium in hopes of getting in close and taking down the lrms and stomping them while I precede to focus the Quickdraw and hope the demolisher doesn't close too fast. No such luck LRM's just knock down my heavy mechs one by one while all other enemies call shots on the guy before I can get back up.

In the end I just alt-f4'ed after the enemy had taken down 2 of my heavy mechs and my Hunchback was only two thirds of the way to the lrms as they reveresed each turn. too much distance between either force and which ever way I went the other would pummel me to pieces.

 

[DKPortela]

I'm going to join in and, with extreme respect to HBS work, add my discontent voice on this matter. It's not fun to have to deal with 9 battlemechs at the same time when you only have 4 trust me. As a Ex-Soldier that would mean immediate retreat or face annihilation and with the economy mechanics we cannot but say "retreat" when you have bills to pay. A challenge is most welcome but this is extremely annoying.

I have friends that stopped playing the game because of this and I'm thinking of doing the same after I finish the campaign because it's so extremely time consuming and based on SA, terrain, and tonnage to prevail (making light mechs and mediums obsolete in the medium to end game spectrum by the way!) to actually achieve victory.

Other than this the game has been an ode to Battletech which I thank you profusely HBS. THANK YOU!

 

[Wintermist]

I'm going to join in and, with extreme respect to HBS work, add my discontent voice on this matter. It's not fun to have to deal with 9 battlemechs at the same time when you only have 4 trust me. As a Ex-Soldier that would mean immediate retreat or face annihilation and with the economy mechanics we cannot but say "retreat" when you have bills to pay. A challenge is most welcome but this is extremely annoying.

I have friends that stopped playing the game because of this and I'm thinking of doing the same after I finish the campaign because it's so extremely time consuming and based on SA, terrain, and tonnage to prevail (making light mechs and mediums obsolete in the medium to end game spectrum by the way!) to actually achieve victory.

Other than this the game has been an ode to Battletech which I thank you profusely HBS. THANK YOU!

Yep I stopped playing too because I simply can't enjoy it like it is, I will probably stop checking in here too now. They said it's as intended and don't seem to join in on a dialogue about it either so. *shrug* Not the end of the world but it's a shame because I really want to play the game, well, without this issue.