I Hope 5 (4+) Skull Missions Are Actually Hard

[Whiskiz]

Especially because:

1 - There is the non-togglable one-difficulty-fits-all (i love the infatuation and respect for Dark Souls challenging-but-fair difficulty i saw Kiva or whatever her name is, reference in a tweet. Lets hope that is what is being aimed for - properly)

2 - There are no weight limits. This is pretty insane and even though it was said, i can't imagine at least 9/10 times where it isn't best to run heavy/assault spam. It's a bit unfortunate not having to kind of take one of each and become proficient in loadouts, piloting and strategies of all weight classes - or having the fun, added challenge and diversity of choosing which weight groups to make sacrifices in to bolster your choice from another weight group, etc.

3 - We're able to continue playing the game even after the story and all the galaxy exploring and general neverendingness (what's the point if it ends up becoming 4 assaults w/ max +++ gear etc facerolling everything)

4 - Side missions being farmable - giving as much credits, gear, argo upgrades, mech pieces, pilot exp and anything else you could ever want or need by just by again farming side missions at any stage in the game.

5 - The fact that top skull difficulty is optional on contracts. If you don't like high difficulty, you don't have to do them. The people who do like high difficulty though, have no other option.

6 - Because we're all sadists at heart and what better way to show it than with big stompy robots blasting holes through eachother, while also having the option of putting our big stompy robot knowledge and strategy to the ultimate test.

And i'm not just talking about rng happens to go there way alot more and sneaky dodgy stuff like that. I mean better AI decisions, more reinforcement, etc.

Edit: 7 - because after you get enough cbills to get on your feet and maintain a few months in expenses and whatever else, there is going to be max salvage on contract spam, max salvage scum incombat and mechs will potentially be raining from the sky since you only need 3 salvage and can acquire that in just one mission, as well as never actually being able to lose a mech from the softcore rules - whether they come with a stock loadout or not (its reported to be not)

 

[Ursinix]

Because in this game, once you have a mech you can't lose it, you pay the same upkeep costs whatever the mech class is, armor is reconditioned for free, no ammo costs, there is no limit to mech tonnage deployed in combat, you can salvage weapon systems from tanks to fit your mechs etc, if you play the game carefully and with a modicum of competency, you will drown in so much cash that you will regret that the game has no mechanic where you could donate funds to starving kids.

 

[402Bernie]

Are you familiar with the dev posting about the universal difficulty level and how it ratchets up later in the campaign? That level rating is multiplied by the skull rating IIRC to ensure that later in game a one skull difficulty mission feels appropriate.

As to the buckets of cash comment, HBS_Adarael posted stating the most he managed to keep on hand was 3 months of expenses. Usually he managed 1-2 months. Since travel time in the game eats into your cash reserves I suspect you will be pleasantly surprised by the challenge of keeping your merc company in business.

 

[Stefan Amaris Jr]

Are you familiar with the dev posting about the universal difficulty level and how it ratchets up later in the campaign? That level rating is multiplied by the skull rating IIRC to ensure that later in game a one skull difficulty mission feels appropriate.

The global difficulty level impacts what "skull ratings" you find on contracts, adjusted a bit by system. A one skull mission will always be the same difficulty, but later in the game you'll be finding 4 and 5 skull missions not 1 skull missions.

 

[Chaon]

@HBS_Kiva explained how the difficulty level of the contracts works.

First there is the global difficulty setting which goes from 1 to 10 depending on how far along you are in the campaign.

Then there is the modifier of the planet which goes from -2 to +2.

And then contracts will have their own difficulty modifier. That looks to be -1 to +1.

So once you complete the campaign, you would be looking at contracts of 7 to 10 or 3.5 to 5 stars.

 

[Holy.Death]

Because in this game, once you have a mech you can't lose it, you pay the same upkeep costs whatever the mech class is [...]

But you do have to pay for repairs, and during that time mech is out of action. Which means you have to either pass time (which is not good in itself, because you are wasting money that way) or have more active mechs, meaning larger bills to pay each month. So it's not all roses. Finding a good balance between your expenses and income is crucial in terms of making game too hard or too easy, which is why I'd err on the side of payments being less generous in order to make deciding how to spend it a very significant choice for a player.

 

[Ursinix]

As to the buckets of cash comment, HBS_Adarael posted stating the most he managed to keep on hand was 3 months of expenses. Usually he managed 1-2 months. Since travel time in the game eats into your cash reserves I suspect you will be pleasantly surprised by the challenge of keeping your merc company in business.

Oh, did I mentioned that having 3 pieces of chassis salvage means they are instantly assembled into a new mech, at no cost?

no cost people. you must pay for internal damage repair on your mechs, but building a mech from parts that is basically internal damage galore, is free. very logical consistent.
game design these days. trump logic for poor game balance design

 

[Chaon]

Oh, did I mentioned that having 3 pieces of chassis salvage means they are instantly assembled into a new mech, at no cost?

no cost people. you must pay for internal damage repair on your mechs, but building a mech from parts that is basically internal damage galore, is free. very logical consistent.
game design these days. trump logic for poor game balance design

Rebuilding a mech is no cost in the beta copies of the game the streamers are using right now. That may change because the devs are watching some of the streams and taking notes about what they are encountering in game.

And the rebuilding a mech and getting free stock loadout seems to be a big bug.
Rebuilding mechs for nothing may be a bug as well.

 

[mjbroekman]

Oh, did I mentioned that having 3 pieces of chassis salvage means they are instantly assembled into a new mech, at no cost?

no cost people. you must pay for internal damage repair on your mechs, but building a mech from parts that is basically internal damage galore, is free. very logical consistent.
game design these days. trump logic for poor game balance design

You must have also missed the statement from HBS about the fact that newly assembled mechs will be naked after being assembled from salvage. It's a change from what the streamers have in their build so you're not getting fully armed and armored mechs from salvage.

 

[Stefan Amaris Jr]

You must have also missed the statement from HBS about the fact that newly assembled mechs will be naked after being assembled from salvage. It's a change from what the streamers have in their build so you're not getting fully armed and armored mechs from salvage.

Ah, interesting. Lots of people have been asking about this for this week's Q&A. Link to the statement please?

 

[Pedroig]

Hey look, another, "let's freak out because of what we saw on an early release build" thread...

 

[mjbroekman]

It was talked about in SideStrafe's stream yesterday. I don't have a link unfortunately.

 

[Stefan Amaris Jr]

Ok, thanks

 

[sbrengard]

Haters are going to always hate. Don't like the game mechanics? Then don't buy it and move on. The rest of us are patently waiting.

 

[Keschnarf]

I think that building a mech from salvage should, at least, take some time and should not be finished instantly the moment you obtain the last fragment. Perhaps somewhat like 30 days, so you have to consider carefully when to order the assembly.

Regarding the weightlimit: who will dictate such limits, respectively what should be the limiting factor, that allows 150t in one mission but 400t in another?

Further on I'm not sure if you really can farm as much side-missions as you like between the story-missions. What I've seen in Cohh's streams is, that when he had accomplished a side-mission, there didn't appear more new missions after that. So eventually you can make perhaps 3 to 4 side-missions before you have no other choice but to continue with the next story-mission?

 

[402Bernie]

I did some research and found this about salvaging mechs (not a dev post)

"At 16:15 mark of the final Q&A, Mitch said we have to kit out the new mech but didn't mention anything about having to spend time putting the parts together. Cohh's version is even more generous giving player a fully kitted with default gear."

Here's the link to roughly that time in the Dev Q&A video, where they DO confirm that you'll need to kit out the mech after salvage.

 

[Ursinix]

Hey look, another, "let's freak out because of what we saw on an early release build" thread...

Hey, look, another apologist that thinks that the game version on the brink of release date given to streamers to promote it, thinks it's just some kind of beta version.

HBS should've named this promotional stage for the game as "open quality assurence" if that it is

Haters are going to always hate. Don't like the game mechanics? Then don't buy it and move on. The rest of us are patently waiting.

I've already bought the game since kickstarter because I was "threatened" by the devs it will also be a game that would demand a level of competency and not everything spoon-fed as it is the norm overall in game industry nowadays.
You don't like critical observations and the demand for logic and lore consistency?
Then don't react and wait it patiently.

 

[Panpiper]

Haters are going to always hate. Don't like the game mechanics? Then don't buy it and move on. The rest of us are patently waiting.

Or mod it.

 

[Ursinix]

Or mod it.

Yeah, right.

One of these days maybe HBS will learn that the degree of how much your game failed from a design point of view is directly proportionate with the number a mods and the number of downloads these mods have after you release the game on the market.

 

[Havamal]

Greetings Mechwarriors,

Please post topically towards discussion and not AT others personally.

Please post with civility and respectfully even in critique.

Posts disregarding the above may experience Jump Drive malfunctions to the Far country to be used as nesting materials by the locals with no further reminder.

Thank you.