[ModPack] dZ_Consolidated_Company_Commander
- Thread starter don Zappo
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
It is beta because I haven't thoroughly tested all of its functionality. So, it definitely works with the campaign, but I can't guarantee that every component of the Mod Pack is completely working.
Exactly. Also, if you see anything that doesn't work, please let me know so that I can fix it!
I'm off to try it today with a new campaign, so I'll get to test the chassis based Evasion floors in the early game. I'm looking forward to it 
Discussion time based upon my recent play time and feedback from Nexus Mods.
Regarding the repair times:
The mod is designed for longer repair times as a base feature to force you to have to field a variety of mechs and control more than just a 4-6 mechs. It is exacerbated by having new mechs from salvage require assembly. I have toned down the values for this aspect the base mod to make it more friendly. I have considered tonight it down a bit more to allow us to play with our new toys much more quickly; or just removing this aspect completely. The cramped Leopard at the beginning is a direct consequence of the repair times and I vacillate between "working as intended" and "is an issue that needs to be addressed." I haven't come up with a great way to address it if it is a problem since we can't store broken mechs. I also can't easily delay their assemblage, although it is a cool idea.
Right now, the first bonus mech bay pod on the Argo is basically a required upgrade instead of a nicety. I don't like that something has to essentially be required. I've thought of drastic measures like making the first bonus mech bay pod come with Argo or something. I can't make each Pod hold more mechs as this breaks the Mech Bays since the UI can't handle it.
What do you guys think? Does broken mechs that you salvage actually add to the experience, or is it more of an annoyance? Does the crowding of the Leopard and early Argo need to be addressed somehow?
Regarding the repair times:
The mod is designed for longer repair times as a base feature to force you to have to field a variety of mechs and control more than just a 4-6 mechs. It is exacerbated by having new mechs from salvage require assembly. I have toned down the values for this aspect the base mod to make it more friendly. I have considered tonight it down a bit more to allow us to play with our new toys much more quickly; or just removing this aspect completely. The cramped Leopard at the beginning is a direct consequence of the repair times and I vacillate between "working as intended" and "is an issue that needs to be addressed." I haven't come up with a great way to address it if it is a problem since we can't store broken mechs. I also can't easily delay their assemblage, although it is a cool idea.
Right now, the first bonus mech bay pod on the Argo is basically a required upgrade instead of a nicety. I don't like that something has to essentially be required. I've thought of drastic measures like making the first bonus mech bay pod come with Argo or something. I can't make each Pod hold more mechs as this breaks the Mech Bays since the UI can't handle it.
What do you guys think? Does broken mechs that you salvage actually add to the experience, or is it more of an annoyance? Does the crowding of the Leopard and early Argo need to be addressed somehow?
Before you start, I have one suggestion for you. Random Campaign Start was flagged as "non-functional" in Reddit. I really like its functionality for new campaigns and am sad that it had to be removed. If you want this functionality it would be awesome if you could include it in your new start and let me know if it worked for you.I'm off to try it today with a new campaign, so I'll get to test the chassis based Evasion floors in the early game. I'm looking forward to it
https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/mods/207?tab=files
I suggest modifying the mod.json in the following manner:
"Settings": {
"RemoveAncestralMech": false,
"NumberRandomRonin": 0,
"NumberProceduralPilots": 4,
"StartingRonin": [
],
"NumberLightMechs": 3,
"NumberMediumMechs": 1,
"NumberHeavyMechs": 0,
"NumberAssaultMechs": 0,
Hell, I should just nuke that post entirely; it's days out of date at this point.
EDIT: Hold on, gotta verify some things first. Might not have been me, but I edited the post accordingly, anyways.
Last edited:
So, the old version is no good. But on the 19th or 20th they updated it for 1.1. So I dropped it into the pack and reset the settings to how you have it above, well except I went with 2 Ronin & 2 Procedural and I did remove the Ancestral mech, so I rolled a 4th Light. Maybe I should have made it roll a 2nd Medium instead, but I'm gonna roll with it for now.
For my hard work RNG gods gave me a AC20 Urbie, a regular Jenner, a Commando 2D, one of the fancy Spider K? Variants with MGs in the arms and a Cicada 2A
I sold the Cicada for being useless, and refitted the spider to a 3 SL & 1 ML with a full set of 320 Armor (distributed over the Torso). It's done pretty good as a Melee Mech in the 3 missions I've played so far. I've had to travel systems twice for lack of contacts, but I suspect that is because I'm as I said only 3 missions in from start and none of the story missions have popped yet.
So far it's been pretty good, nothing feels broken and the light mechs are not unhittable to my starting pilots. About to go play some more.
I think the Cicada 2A should be pulled from the list of possible starting mechs tho, it's a total lemon for a medium.
I like the broken mechs salvage process. I just find repair times too long, particularly when you only have the Leopard. You must maintain 4 functioning mechs to be able to go on missions and keep some economy running. That leave you with only 2 slots to rebuild your salvaged mechs and upgrade to better mechs. As theses salvaged mechs are often in very bad shape, it means very long repairs that you often postpone to repair combat damage from missions.
So I reduced StructureRepairTechPoints to 10 and even with 2 bays in the Argo, I still had times where I couldn't field 4 mechs and had to wait for repair. I'm currently on the trip to Artru priority mission and my whole force consists of: Dragon, 2 Centurions, Blackjack, Vindicator (from random start), Enforcer (under repair), Shadow Hawk (under repair from salvage), 2 Firestarters (one from random start), Panther, Wolverine (under repair from salvage), Griffin. Not a very strong force when 3 skulls missions become aboundant.
As a side note: I role-play that each mech as a unique assigned pilot so sometimes even if a mech is available, its pilot may not due to injury. It's harder but in the spirit of BT universe
Thanks for this! We do have a curated list of available mechs for the random start when it is in the mod pack. Since you had to add it yourself that list was just the default for the mod ifslef. I personally like to try to make Cicadas work, but their value is very questionable.
So, the old version is no good. But on the 19th or 20th they updated it for 1.1. So I dropped it into the pack and reset the settings to how you have it above, well except I went with 2 Ronin & 2 Procedural and I did remove the Ancestral mech, so I rolled a 4th Light. Maybe I should have made it roll a 2nd Medium instead, but I'm gonna roll with it for now.
For my hard work RNG gods gave me a AC20 Urbie, a regular Jenner, a Commando 2D, one of the fancy Spider K? Variants with MGs in the arms and a Cicada 2A
I sold the Cicada for being useless, and refitted the spider to a 3 SL & 1 ML with a full set of 320 Armor (distributed over the Torso). It's done pretty good as a Melee Mech in the 3 missions I've played so far. I've had to travel systems twice for lack of contacts, but I suspect that is because I'm as I said only 3 missions in from start and none of the story missions have popped yet.
So far it's been pretty good, nothing feels broken and the light mechs are not unhittable to my starting pilots. About to go play some more.
I think the Cicada 2A should be pulled from the list of possible starting mechs tho, it's a total lemon for a medium.
So the Mod Pack does hit it's stride starting late early game. How to address the difficult early game is a core question. I somewhat favor an additional mech to start to take some of the heat off. Then we would also ha e one mech per pilot, too.
Since the goal of this pack is to promote having a Company, we could do something extreme like having two mech pods to start or just making the second pod free with the Argo.
The repair.timrs could be spef up a lot, too. It was a core principle of this mod but isn't absolutely necessary. It promotes a safe playstyle which isn't entirely appealing to me. I love the drag out fights with half mechs without having to take a month off. So, how do we promote large rookeries of mechs and pilots without a hard gateway that we have now? Ideas I've considered and am open to:
- Hard drop limits. We can attach this to planet size, for example, and this will force diversity as well. I personally like drop limits but it is thematically ambiguous and is fundamentally opposed by at least one designer at HBS.
- More differentiating between weapons to make us have to adapt to hot and cold drops.
- Financial walls to make it really prohibitive to have fatter mechs. This is minorly in this pack, but larger limitits, I believe, would be quite unpopular.
having issues with getting the latest version to work. Did fresh install, made sure mod folder was deleted. Added mod folder and modtek like last time. Down loaded new version and unzipped to mods folder. What am I missing?
I haven't had a chance to play the v1.1 with your mod yet, but definitely played A LOT on the previous version. I like the broken mech salvage, but yes Leapord part of campaign = massively longer grinds to get things going. However I'm the kind of player that binge plays a lot, and enjoy some of the frustrating parts of the grind. I feel it adds to the experience. I'm sure others may feel opposite, especially if they don't have a lot of time to play.
Here's my ideas, don't know if it's good or not:
1). Although I like multiple mech repair @ same time concept, maybe remove it and speed up mech repairs? This way, early game isn't to punishing with repair times, and late game isn't just a breeze (or a combo of the two). Perhaps increase mechtech rating, and lessening the additive effects of mechbay modules to speed up repairs. So by end game, you aren't fixing fully broken mechs too fast, and not having 100+ days during early leapord days.
2). Is there a way to increase repair times based on mech tonnage? This way as I progress, and acquire heavier mechs, and also as my mechtech rating gets better, I'm not breezing through fixing heavies + assaults. And also allowing the starting lighter mechs to be fixed quicker during Leapord grind?
3). Perhaps increasing maintenance cost exponentially vs linear increase per ton? Kind of a financial wall, but heck, I was doing decent $ wise by mid game. Still can't ball out and buy every ++ / +++ weapon / mods, but definitely can go many weeks w/o bankruptcy in sight. With the readily available 1.5-3 star missions, this also makes me want to use lights and med's a lot more (also w/ the new ace pilot + perm evasion, makes them a lot more practical to field).
4). Then adding some kind of modifier so each player can adjust this to their liking?
Again, just me brainstorming based on previous experience with this mod, not sure if any of these are good / implementable in code.
The increased mech repair time per ton is actually a core component of this mod. Right now it is balanced around taking 10 days to repair 50 points of damage on a 50 ton mech to start. Heavier mechs take longerland lighter mechs are faster. It was 7 days per 50 points before repair bays.
Repair bays are almost assuredly here to stay as I really like that functionality. It does make the Argo extremely more valuable, for sure. I could always remove the tiered repairs and make them all work at full functionality.
Front loading mech repair time and decreasing the value of add-ons was done early on, too. This could possibly use another balance pass.
I could also change the algorithm to make mediums and lights much easier to repair and heavy and assaults significantly harder.
The modifiers ARE actually all in there. They can be tweaked by the player and we point them out when asked. It is a lot to digest, though, so I don't have a comprehensive guide on all the tweak able values.
Hello!
I'm sure you know this already, but just in case, I'd like to point out that HBS made some very reasonable changes to weapon stats, in particular the heat generation.
Are you going to rebalance the weapons in the mod taking those changes into account?
Anyway, for some time now I've wanted to present my outlook on the matter of skill points.
What struck me most was that some of the skills seem... misplaced. Completely.
1. I have no idea why the called shot bonuses are in tactics for example. Isn't it just the kind of thing that should be placed in the gunnery tree? Seems reasonable to me.
2. Why guts is responsible for recoil penalty reduction is beyond me as well. OK, you might be badass enough to not whimper from the AC/20 rocking a couple of meters from you, but that should make you better at aiming the gun back.
Again, it's something that should be in the Gunnery skill.
3. I understand why increased heat threshold would in the Guts, it would be perfectly reasonable... if not for how the said heat threshold works. It would make sense if the pilot took damage after his heat threshold is passed, but it's the mech that gets the damage instead.
OK, you can take the heat (literally), but why someone's dislike of saunas would make the heat take damage more easily?
I've seen someone in this thread (I apologize for not remembering the name) suggest that heat threshold be moved to tactics.
As much as that would f..k up my pilot building plans, I like the concept from logical point of view.
If we treat "tactics" as something more akin to "mech tech operation" or something like that (in other words a technical ability of sorts), then we could assume the heat threshold is about more complex, internal heat management in the mech rather than withstanding higher temperatures in the cockpit.
And then in turn it would a perfect sense to have a better indirect fire, sensor lock and heat threshold in tactics "tree".
4. Better melee hit chance increasing with piloting skill absolutely makes sense, but I would also like to see Guts fully responsible for melee, and leave piloting to evasion/sprinting.
This is what I would personally do with the skill tree if I was responsible for that.
Gunnery:
Put Called Shot Improvement/Mastery as well as Recoil Penalty reduction in here, maybe nerf the accuracy bonus per level to not make it OP
Piloting:
It works well as it is, especially with that perma evasion pips from Ace Pilot. Perhaps move melee hit chance to Guts if we go down that route.
Guts:
Juggernaut/Bulwark(activated in melee) + melee hit chance per level plus HP bonuses, together with increased post-battle survival odds do it for me. Perhaps heat threshold could stay, or perhaps not.
Tactics:
Min range is OK, indirect fire is OK, skills are ok, maybe put a heat management here to round up the "tech skill" theme.
Whoa, finished this. sorry for the banter. Didn't want to later regret that I haven't shared those ideas of mine. I would be happy if you at least thought about those points a little.
I'm sure you know this already, but just in case, I'd like to point out that HBS made some very reasonable changes to weapon stats, in particular the heat generation.
Are you going to rebalance the weapons in the mod taking those changes into account?
Anyway, for some time now I've wanted to present my outlook on the matter of skill points.
What struck me most was that some of the skills seem... misplaced. Completely.
1. I have no idea why the called shot bonuses are in tactics for example. Isn't it just the kind of thing that should be placed in the gunnery tree? Seems reasonable to me.
2. Why guts is responsible for recoil penalty reduction is beyond me as well. OK, you might be badass enough to not whimper from the AC/20 rocking a couple of meters from you, but that should make you better at aiming the gun back.
Again, it's something that should be in the Gunnery skill.
3. I understand why increased heat threshold would in the Guts, it would be perfectly reasonable... if not for how the said heat threshold works. It would make sense if the pilot took damage after his heat threshold is passed, but it's the mech that gets the damage instead.
OK, you can take the heat (literally), but why someone's dislike of saunas would make the heat take damage more easily?
I've seen someone in this thread (I apologize for not remembering the name) suggest that heat threshold be moved to tactics.
As much as that would f..k up my pilot building plans, I like the concept from logical point of view.
If we treat "tactics" as something more akin to "mech tech operation" or something like that (in other words a technical ability of sorts), then we could assume the heat threshold is about more complex, internal heat management in the mech rather than withstanding higher temperatures in the cockpit.
And then in turn it would a perfect sense to have a better indirect fire, sensor lock and heat threshold in tactics "tree".
4. Better melee hit chance increasing with piloting skill absolutely makes sense, but I would also like to see Guts fully responsible for melee, and leave piloting to evasion/sprinting.
This is what I would personally do with the skill tree if I was responsible for that.
Gunnery:
Put Called Shot Improvement/Mastery as well as Recoil Penalty reduction in here, maybe nerf the accuracy bonus per level to not make it OP
Piloting:
It works well as it is, especially with that perma evasion pips from Ace Pilot. Perhaps move melee hit chance to Guts if we go down that route.
Guts:
Juggernaut/Bulwark(activated in melee) + melee hit chance per level plus HP bonuses, together with increased post-battle survival odds do it for me. Perhaps heat threshold could stay, or perhaps not.
Tactics:
Min range is OK, indirect fire is OK, skills are ok, maybe put a heat management here to round up the "tech skill" theme.
Whoa, finished this. sorry for the banter. Didn't want to later regret that I haven't shared those ideas of mine. I would be happy if you at least thought about those points a little.
Timely feedback as we work on the skills and think about what we want from them.
- We are taking their changes into account and discussing how much we want to change our values based upon their current vision. This is a big point of discussion right now with the Balance Overhaul.
- We have discussed having called shot move to gunnery. It is hard to move skills, though.
- So, the recoil penalty is the stability hit you take for firing a ballistic weapon. The refire penalty is the to-hit penalty for continued firing of those weapons. It can make sense to have recoil in guts (or in piloting).
- Heat threshold on Tactics does make a lot of sense. Something to consider if it can be moved, which may be hard.
- Moving melee to guts would actually be quite difficult coding-wise.
Your idea of speeding up repair times for lights / mediums maybe a great solution. Right now, I'm stuck w/ starting mechs and the centurion I got from Argo mission until I grind forever to accumulate funds to have Argo upgrades / complete repairs on a few mechs. Late game isn't too bad, multiple repairs @ once, Mech bay module upgrades etc., definitely speeds things up, but still gives me challenges vs vanilla and forces me to be more varied with my company composition.
If you can quicken the repair speeds for lights and mediums (which is mostly what we will be encountering during early game) then we get to play with the new toys faster. Now, if you go hard in the paint on early 4 star missions and get a heavy, or even an assault, then it makes sense to spend forever fixing it on board the Leapord. I mean, Leapords are not designed to be space field bases, they're supposed to ferry a lance from point A to B, so that makes sense. Therefore, until you get to the Argo, and have the appropriate upgrades, bigger mechs should be harder to field due to lack of proper facilities.
Last edited: