Many problems

[Torvaldr]

Let's start with game balance in regards to vehicles. In the original game vehicle had to track ammunition and heat the same exact way the mechs did. In this game they ignore both. Shrek PPC carrier with 3 PPCs can fire every single round and never over heat or even reduce its rate of fire. LRM and SRM carriers have a bag of holding or a wormhole to unlimited reloads of ammunition. These are thing no mech in the game can match. So why ever develop mechs? Vehicles are cheaper and easier to build and maintain so just build tons of them, no mechs needed in this universe. The only weakness they had was to being stomped on, but you have to close to them first. Give me the equal number of dollar amounts of vehicles versus any amount of mechs and in this game I would kick your butt. Take the cost of one lance, give me that dollar amount in vehicles and you are toast.

Major advantages given to the computer mechs that the human player never matches.

#1 Accuracy. I tracked firing accuracy for 3 full careers. Data does not lie [Mod edit: Disrespect]. For the computer opponents I tracked every shot, for the human player I only tracked the shots that the targeting system said I had a 75% chance or better to hit. So this gave a huge advantage statistically to the human player right? Nope. Computer accuracy 95% or better starting from the very first mission. Human accuracy tracking only the higher chances to hit? 57% And that accuracy tanked when only tracking the human player's primary weapons. I categorize a primary weapon as what weapon does the most damage on a given mech. Accuracy with primary weapon only tracking shots with a 75% or better chance to hit. Accuracy 42%. This accuracy comparison only improves modestly when the human player maxes out their stats. Even at maxed out gunnery and piloting the human player accuracy never improves beyond 75%

#2 Grouping. The human player is using a shotgun while the computer is using a sniper rifle. Even when I am maxed out in gunnery and piloting when I fire multiple weapons I rarely am able to hit all in one location, or even adjacent locations. If I fire 6 weapons chances are I will hit 6 different locations. And it does not matter if I am using Precision Strike, which I can't use every shot, even then grouping is all over the place. And I can't keep track any more of how often I will target an enemy mech with Precision Strike and have a 95% chance to hit across the board and have the primary weapon not only miss the spot I was aiming at, it will miss the mech completely. Meanwhile the computer mech will constantly hit all in one spot or in close proximity. This is from the very first mission. Not to mention the way the computer can hit a location through a mech. For example I have my left side turned to face the enemy and yet they manage to hit the right side.

#3 Combat range. The computer opponent always has a great attack range regardless of any specialized equipment the human player acquires. Throughout the game the computer is always able to fire at you even when they are too far away for you to fire back. I have had mechs with range finders that extend my combat range by 75 meters and the computer is still able to fire on my mech even when I can't target them and fire back.

#4 Head shots as common as a cold. In all the hours I have played I have not once been able to come out of a mission without at least one pilot injured from a head shot. Often I come out with multiple pilots injured from head shots. But isn't amazing that while the enemy mechs hit us int he head every single mission, we almost never hit them in the head? Not even when using Precision Strike?

These are all game mechanics and game balance issues that have been around since the game was first released and no effort has been made by the company to correct any of them.

Other issues are the constant continuous graphics glitches. They never end and they never get them fixed. Hiccups, twitches, skips, lock ups, crashes. I have to do a manual save before every single action I take with a mech to safe guard against either a lock up or crash, or when the RNG or combat generator decides to cheat. So nice for the very first shot by the computer opponent is a double hit in the head with 2 AC 20s, or a full volley pinpoint hits the location of your mechs primary weapon and takes it out in a single shot. Or when a single hit from an AC 5 somehow does enough damage to completely take off the undamaged leg of an Assault Mech.

(modified to remove disrespectful comments)

 

[MeiSooHaityu]

[Mod edit: please report, don't respond to disrespect]

As for the structured criticisms...

#1: I'm not sure how those values are being tallied, however I can speak from experience. The opponent is generally less accurate early game and tends to be more accurate as time passes, however that seems to be in line with my MechWarrior's experience as well. Early game the OpFor tends to run with less capable Mechwarriors and it shows. When I have been playing the Career mode early, I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, however as long as I had evasion, they couldn't either. Late game, my Mechwarriors were landing hits extremely reliably, however my enemy tended to do the same as well. I have never felt that the AI was cheating.

That is my take on it. I'll leave it up to others who are better at analyzing such data to either support or dispute your claim. Just as I experience the game, it seems to be rather fair.

#2 It sounds like (at least for called shot) you should be improving your MechWarrior's 'Tactics' skills. Tactics controls how well your MechWarriors can call shots on your opponent. The higher the tactics, the better your called shot grouping. Gunnery is good for improving general hit chances, however again, Tactics is what you want for specific called shots.

As for laser like focus with the AI, I have not experienced this myself with any unfair consistency. Sometimes shots tend to hit the CT, other times my mech's paper doll looks like several shades of grey across it's surface. Again, I just don't see them always hitting CT.

As a side point, If you want to try an limit the amount of locations your weapons can hit without using a precision strike, try getting into your opponents side arc (especially which ever side you wish to wreck). This will limit the amount of locations a weapon can hit and will focus more fire on either the side torso, leg, or arm facing you. It's better to have 3 locations (maybe CT can still be hit making it 4) to hit vs 8 when it the front arc.

#3 I believe this varies depending on weight class (or it might just be a boost to lights). Some mechs can just see farther than others. For instance, Light mechs get a huge boost to visual range to help promote them as scouts. There may even be a boost to Mediums as well, I'm not sure. That can help get you spotted by them, when you can't see them (if you are running heavier units). Also keep in mind that if they Sensor Lock you, then they can see your mech they locked onto and can fire from out of your sight range at you.

Keep in mind, that if you have Sensor Lock, you can also do the same to them.

#4 Headshots don't seem like too much of a problem to me. It was a bit worse when the game first launched, however I haven't been as worried for a while. They might happen with more frequency than you would like, However overall I don't think it is that much of an issue in my experiences. I feel this may just come down to being subjective on a person to person basis.

I do feel like the game has glitches and I do have faith that they will get ironed out. I think Flashpoint has brought a few, however they have been discussed in some length and I know a lot of it is on HBS's radar. I haven't had any massive issues like freezing or crashing myself, maybe I am just lucky.

I know that sometimes the RNG can feel a bit brutal in the game, I think we have all been on the receiving end of it. Still, for every bad RNG I have been subject to, I have also had good RNG that has saved my butt. I have had Medusa get one shot by an A/C20 turret at the end of a campaign run, and I have had a clutch A/C20 headshot from my Hunchback in a Flashpoint that would have resulted in a certain fail of the mission had I missed (and that shot had only a 5% chance to connect).

Part of the fun (IMO anyway) is rolling with the bad or the good, and rising to the challenge regardless of what the game throws my way. It isn't easy being a merc, and sometimes that means a string of bad luck. The fun is coming back from the bad luck, and making some good luck of your own.

Either way, don't let it frustrate you. Practice, look up some strategy videos and posts, and put it to good use. I think you will find that you can conquer the game and that when those little bouts of bad RNG do rear their ugly head, you can recover with the best of them...and make the OpFor have a string of their own bad luck.

 

[stjobe]

#4 Head shots as common as a cold. In all the hours I have played I have not once been able to come out of a mission without at least one pilot injured from a head shot. Often I come out with multiple pilots injured from head shots. But isn't amazing that while the enemy mechs hit us int he head every single mission, we almost never hit them in the head? Not even when using Precision Strike?

I tracked head shots over the course of half a month or so, back in May. Here are the results:

May 1st:

May 10th:

May 13th:

Just summing up from the May 13th data, we're looking at
302 individual deployments (75.5 missions)
58 head shots

So that's one head shot every 5.2 individual deployment, or one injury every 1.3 missions.

Is that "as common as cold"? Your mileage may vary, but I don't think so. I've also dealt my fair share of headshots (with or without Precision Strike) to the opfor, so saying that "almost never" happens is also a bit of hyperbole from where I stand.

As for your other points, my experience is nowhere near yours; I haven't tracked accuracy or grouping, but I don't feel the need to as to me the game feels fair.

 

[Amechwarrior]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-tactics-guide-line-of-sight-control.1130808/

You should watch the video in this thread and all of those problems will go away. We've checked the code and the AI doesn't get to cheat like you suspect. There is a normalizer function that curves shot odds in either direction if it's above or below 50% but that's not really going to be causing the issue you have here. I tend to play "brawl" and disregard a lot of the LoS control methods in most contracts and I barely get any head hits anyway. My worst pilots in my 188 days of 8 part career are 28 deployments to 5 injuries and 32 deployments to 5 injuries. But both of those were mainly from one very hard mission that went south and racked up 3 on each of those pilots, leading to one ejection. My Dekker on the other hand has 25 deployments and 0 injuries. Most of my other pilots are at 1 or 2 injuries.

Dekker 25/0
Painter 34/5
Rhino 34/2
Spicy 29/1
Sumo 1/0 *New Hire
Tracker 28/5
Ultimatum 29/1

I'm playing with much harder settings than stock, with modded AI that can reserve as well as most players and I'm not babying around with LoS control as I want things over quickly. I've never been in a situation on this save where I had to hire someone or be short a pilot or drop with less than 4 'Mechs.

As for vehicles, energy weapons like the PPCs on the Schrek do have Heat Sinks allocated to them. Vehicles have a single shared internal structure, a lot less of it than 'Mechs and far fewer hit locations. This makes even the best armored vehicles in the game relative glass cannons to a 'Mech of similar tonnage. A 80t AWS-8Q vs a 80t Shrek? The AWS will win every time.

 

[Torvaldr]

Mileage may very. I have a number of friends all experiencing the same issues that I am. And as I mentioned before data does not lie. My track was 3 full careers. Not just portions. The only proviso I will make is that those careers were right after the original release. In my current career the last 9 missions all had enemy headshots on my pilots. I am not tracking just a single pilot, I am talking the lance as a whole. It is exceptionally rare that I finish a mission without at least one pilot injured through a head shot. This last mission all my pilots were injured. So you can tell me that doesn't match with your experience, all I can do is report what is happening to me. As for tactics I do everything I can to change angles, facings, use terrain, movement, and so on. I just went through a perfect example of the kind of targeting I outlined. I was fired at by 3 different enemy mechs all firing from different angles, different ranges, through cover as I was in a wooded area, and one was firing over a terrain feature. All three mechs hit with every weapon they fired, and regardless of all those modifiers every single weapon hit the same locations, right arm and torso. Not one single weapon hit anywhere else. Not even the ones being fired by an mech shooting directly from my mechs left side.

But it would appear that her at least I am the only one experiencing these issues. I have reported honestly the issues that I have experienced, I am glad that the people here at least have not had the same trouble, so I will stop posting.

 

[Jade_Rook]

There was a bug with the head hit rates at release. They were approximately double what they were supposed to be. That bug has been fixed.

Four head hits in a single mission is a bit high, but not particularly unusual. One per mission isn't odd at all.

Data is valuable and helped us track down the original issue with head hit rates. If you can provide more specifics, such as total number of attacks and number of hits. Purposeful, controlled testing is more likely to uncover issues. Yours is the only report I have seen about odd hit locations and it doesn't match my own experience.

If you have a mech firing from the side and hitting the opposite side, your game is either modded or bugged. Attacks from the left side are unable to hit the right. Is it possible that the attacker was just at the edge of the front arc? Each arc is 90 degrees, so it might appear that a mech is shooting the side when it is still considered front. Also mechs tend to torso twist as part of their idle animations. These don't change the hit locations.

Accuracy is relatively high in general, but player actions can affect it. If your mechs aren't getting much evasion each turn, they will get hit a lot. Again, more details about what you are doing will help us offer better advice. What kinds of mechs and tactics are you using?

Screenshots of attacker locations or after mission damage reports might help us track down issues.

 

[Aleksandria]

On the topic of hit location weirdness: I've noticed some very odd angling since 1.3, it feels like what "counts" as flanking has changed as its much easier to get an angle on the opfor nowadays. More relevant: I've noticed a number of occasions where the enemy goes in for a melee and the hit angle lit up under the mech is completely wrong. Like, they move to 90 degrees on my right side and punch hitting the right, but the four part circle under my mech indicates left (where the enemy mech was before it moved into melee).

I'll try to get a screenshot of it if it would help as it seemed to be a minor bug, but I hadn't noticed this behavior prior to 1.3.

 

[Pherdnut]

@OP, consider my points and if this is all stuff you know/are already doing I'll start some new games to see if I'm missing something but I'm fairly confident there's just some stuff you may not understand about the game yet.


Kill tanks first and fast.

Tanks are usually easy to kill and they give you as much resolve as killing a mech. And they often have nasty guns. So they're both glass cannons and called shot food. That merits priority. Hit from the rear or side or called shots to a less-armored location when you can. This will often one-hit the tank. Or hit them with melee which does double damage to vehicles, often punching through any possible location for a guaranteed 1-hit kill. Then turn all that resolve on the remaining mechs. Spiders and Jenners are vehicle SLAYERs in the early game because they can run so freaking far for their melee attack which will 1-hit most any vehicle on a 1 skull mission. A Firestarter with a +40-60 melee mod and some small lasers can 1-hit pretty much any tank in the game. In any case, by the time a heat mechanic would have mattered to a tank, it should already be dead. Don't even try to kill heavier tanks directly from the front where they're strongest.


Use Reserve

One way to handle SRM carriers or Demolishers which you don't ever want to be attacked by before you've made them dead is to let them get closer while you reserve your turn behind cover. It's also handy to use reserve when your last turn ended in a strong defensive position they're unlikely to be able to do much against. Knowing where they've all ended their turn at the cost of taking marginal damage first can make it a lot easier to outmaneuver them. Just try it out occasionally if you never use it and the potential of it starts to make sense. And of course if everything is slower/heavier than your mech, it effectively gets two moves in a row against whatever it moves against if it reserves to the last initiative phase.


Consider whether the AI hitting you more isn't your fault

Learn about the evade mechanic. You haven't mentioned it so you're probably not using it well if you're getting hit as often as you say you are. Those pips next your mech that grow with rapid movement are like -20% to enemy targeting a pop. Learn to feel vulnerable any time you end a move with less than 3-4 evade pips. Heavier mechs get more by jumping typically. It sounds like you're not even aware of the mechanic and are just 2-stepping it to tree cover and then getting clobbered by every shot. Evasion 5 and beyond is typically VERY hard to hit. Light mechs get a built-in evasion bonus that makes them even harder to hit. I think 6 or 7 are the most you can get with pilot maxed out and the sure-footing ability. Look for + defense gyros for even greater penalties to enemy attacks once you start hitting 4.5-5 skull missions. The best are +3.

To get past enemy evasion, whomp them with melee which ignores it. Prefer shooting at mechs with 3 or less pips or using sensor locks or melee on higher numbers of pips if you can't find an easier target. Unbalancing mechs with stability damage clears evade pips altogether so TTS++ high-accuracy LRMs and PPCs can be a light mechs' worst nightmare. Once you start taking fewer hits overall, you'll take fewer head hits. They're not uncommon but one or more every mission or more than one or two parts with light structure damage is probably a good sign that you're simply taking too many hits.


How to take the hits that refuse to miss

Face enemies with your sides. Your head and particularly core are less vulnerable from the side. When your side parts start to go a bit off-white, face them with your other side. When both sides have parts that are going darker gray, pull behind other mechs and face from the front to keep the fire from being as focused on any one part. But always face front if you're dealing with spotters and lots of LRMs from 3+ out of sight enemies with LRMs. Those can focus down a side fast if there's a bunch of them and it's probably better to eat a few core hits to spread that fire around. Doing this can mean the difference between losing 3 side parts and going off-white all over. Conversely it's ideal to focus enemies on the sides until you get better called shots since it's fewer parts to focus and once a single one blows the rest go really quickly. See below for more on that. Also, if you do a couple points of pilot damage before doing heavy damage to their core through the torso pop and a knockdown you can try for a pilot kill by focusing the other side to get complete mech part sets. Enemies have 3-5 injuries but 3-4 until late-game typically. Stability knockdown or a head hit, a leg and two torso pops usually does the trick until late-game.


They are not better at focusing fire on a part but I'll bet I know why you think that.

It's the same in the TT rules. When you lose a part like an arm, it still counts as a hit location. When a missing part location is "hit," damage transfers inward. Arms/legs to side torsos. Side torsos to cores, chaining all the way to the core if all parts are gone. Losing one part will start to look like the AI is great at focusing fire real fast if you don't get the mechanic, but shots are spreading as normal. It's the damage that gets auto-focused to one part. So never face the enemy with a missing part location and pull a mech back if that's difficult to avoid. Even if it's just an empty arm or a leg on a mech with jumpjets, that mech is seriously vulnerable to heavy damage with a little focus from that side. Once a torso is out, your core is highly vulnerable from 3 sides and that mech should be sprinting/jumping for cover and out of the fight. On the offensive, pounce on a side with a busted part any time you see one and enemies will go down dramatically faster. When called shots improve at Tactics 5 you can focus torsos or legs at close to 50% from the side. 80%ish at Tactics 9. And beware confirmation bias. There aren't that many parts. 3 hits on one part from 3 separate attacks isn't exactly the odds of falling through the wall because all of the molecules lined up just right (there's an actual calculable chance for that apparently).


Headshots are common

For you too. With CS Mastery you can land them 18% of the time. I have builds that often get lethal shots on any mech on the first attack by focusing a ton of smaller weaponry at their head. But again, you're probably taking too many hits if you get them every mission. I get plenty of lethals and head hits on non-called shots myself. There was a bug at one point that made it worse but it also made intentional headshots hilariously easy but that's been fixed and I'd notice if it hadn't been because my mechs are built to blow heads off. It's usually about 1/3 of the time they manage a lethal on the first attack and often in streaks where it's a bunch in one mission.

Note: you can actually negate 1-3 injuries with cockpit mod parts. I prefer comms because injuries aren't that frequent.


Mechs all have the same base visual range.

Elevation might matter (don't think it does) but it's more likely you're seeing the effect of spotters. Long range weapons are much longer than visual range. But if a mech with long range weapons has a friend that can see you, they can target you if there are no obstacles or they have LRMs which have indirect fire. There are also range-finder parts that enhance visual range but I wouldn't expect regular enemies to have those. I'm not sure about turrets. I think they have the same range but they can all sensor lock anything in sensor range and their buddies can target that. You can turn the spotting mechanic to your own advantage by sensor locking turrets and hitting them before they get a chance to lock you. I think turrets actually lower sensor range than you do. That or they die fast enough it doesn't matter.