Some issues with career mode that could use a look.

[Moonsneeze]

Hi,

1. Difficulty level is not accounted for in the score as far as I can see. I noticed some people were posting data about their campaigns and I can't help but think they are not using the hardest difficulty settings.

Maybe everybody is way better than me. It could be possible. But playing on hard difficulty with stingy contracts/salvage and other difficulty changes makes for a pretty tough time. I'd like to see that reflected in the score. If your on harder difficulty you should at least get a score modifier of some type.

2. Career mode ends automatically when you run out of money. Even if you have millions in weapons/partial mechs it just says game over when you hit zero dollars. This came as quite a shock. Most games would say something like, "hey your broke, sell some stuff or game over." Then you sell a couple partials and are back in business. Not in Battle Tech. So even though I have two dropships and a hold full of loot because I ran out of cash temporarily between planets game over. That isn't how business or finance works and it's silly.

I know it was an easy mistake for me to correct on my own. If your wondering I was just running my lance cash light to maximize my chances of getting enough partials for more mechs. Every time I sell a partial that's a mech I probably won't be able to deploy so I tend to horde them. The shops are way overpriced and they never seem to be selling the partials I need.

Anyway, I lost an iron man campaign over this lol.

The only one I had almost been able to take to the end of the career time allotment on hardest difficulty settings. I only had 300 days left and was almost at a lance of full medium mechs. Poof. gone. Go ahead and laugh. I know I suck and should be able to destroy 5 skull missions with my light lance on day one like you guys but I can't. I worked really hard on that campaign and it shouldn't have ended that way.

Thanks for reading and considering these suggestions.

 

[mjbroekman]

1. Correct. There's an entire scoring guide in the pinned community guides thread where this is discussed. Yes, we all want to see the difficulty ratings taken into consideration, but since you can change most of them mid-game, it's going to be harder to do that. Only 2 'difficulty' settings are locked once you start the game: The number of parts per mech and whether or not you get equipped mechs from salvaged parts. So, right now, the score doesn't account for whether you have mech destruction turned on, or pilot lethality, or slow progression, or what your salvage/payment rewards are set to.

2. You get warnings constantly when you have less than 2 months of cbills available. Failure to sell inventory before you go bankrupt is, umm, not the game's fault. I think it's every 6 or 7 days if you have 1 or 2 months, and almost every day if you don't have the funds to cover the next financial report. You also have that nice handy chart in the upper left of the Argo screen that shows how many months of funds you have.

No one is suggesting that you should be able to take 5-skull missions with light mechs. In fact, quite the opposite. Anyone that can do that is displaying epic-level skills. Being able to punch more than 2 skulls above your weight is impressive (taking 3 skull missions with a 1-skull lance, or 5 skull missions with a 3-skull lance)...

 

[Moonsneeze]

1. Correct. There's an entire scoring guide in the pinned community guides thread where this is discussed. Yes, we all want to see the difficulty ratings taken into consideration, but since you can change most of them mid-game, it's going to be harder to do that. Only 2 'difficulty' settings are locked once you start the game: The number of parts per mech and whether or not you get equipped mechs from salvaged parts. So, right now, the score doesn't account for whether you have mech destruction turned on, or pilot lethality, or slow progression, or what your salvage/payment rewards are set to.

2. You get warnings constantly when you have less than 2 months of cbills available. Failure to sell inventory before you go bankrupt is, umm, not the game's fault. I think it's every 6 or 7 days if you have 1 or 2 months, and almost every day if you don't have the funds to cover the next financial report. You also have that nice handy chart in the upper left of the Argo screen that shows how many months of funds you have.

No one is suggesting that you should be able to take 5-skull missions with light mechs. In fact, quite the opposite. Anyone that can do that is displaying epic-level skills. Being able to punch more than 2 skulls above your weight is impressive (taking 3 skull missions with a 1-skull lance, or 5 skull missions with a 3-skull lance)...

I get what your saying about #2. I even pointed it out myself. But the fact is that it still shouldn't be game ending. What's the jump ship captain gonna do? Cast us off? Get mad that I have to pay him with an IOU and settle up in a few days? Or even really hours so I can scrap partials during transit between planets for some reason.

For that matter who dares to try and take possession of my mechs and drop ships when I still in fact have resources even though the game has decided it won't recognize them. Anyway I see your point. But this is still a lousy and LAZY mechanic.

 

[mjbroekman]

But the fact is that it still shouldn't be game ending. What's the jump ship captain gonna do? Cast us off? Get mad that I have to pay him with an IOU and settle up in a few days? Or even really hours so I can scrap partials during transit between planets for some reason

This is a pay-in-advance environment. If you don't pay up front, you don't get anything whether it's transport, pilots, maintenance, or whatever. You want to jump from point A to point B? Pay before boarding at point A.

For that matter who dares to try and take possession of my mechs and drop ships

Who's going to pilot or man "your" mechs and dropships when you don't have the money to pay them?

when I still in fact have resources even though the game has decided it won't recognize them

You may have resources, but they aren't "liquid assets". A jumpship captain has no use for a medium laser or 1/3 of a mech so barter is right out.

this is still a lousy and LAZY mechanic.

No. It's not. It's a design choice. You can dislike it, but that doesn't make it a bad mechanic (losing half a turn of movement because you killed the last enemy within sensor range is arguably a bad mechanic) or a lazy design choice (I can't think of a design choice that could conceivably be called "lazy" given how much testing has been done on all of the design choices).

As I mentioned already, you get plenty of warnings about your cash situation. You get so many, in fact, that I find it difficult to believe you didn't have multiple opportunities to sell equipment at stores before going bankrupt without even resorting to scrapping parts and so attempting to blame bankruptcy on something like that just won't fly. Sorry. No dice.

No money? No pilots to man mechs (aside from your commander). No techs to maintain and repair the mechs and dropships. No medics to tend your injured. No dropship to take you planetside and back to the jumpship. No jumpship to take you to other systems. In other words, end of game. It's really not hard to avoid...ESPECIALLY if you've already gotten 900 days into a campaign.

 

[Jade_Rook]

A little something from Schlock Mercenary about failing to make payroll:

You have a group of very well armed individuals whose main skill is using large amounts of firepower to kill people and blow things up. Not exactly the kind of people who will react well to missing a paycheck.

In the games which allow the player to run in the red for a month, they always start with a warning that fund are low then a second warning when the player is about to get a game over because of lack of money. In this game we get warning that fund are low two months out then a second warning when the player is about to get a game over because of lack of money. The warnings are complete with giant pop-ups and bright colors in Caution Yellow and Emergency Red.

Is the issue that the game did not make it clear enough that Broke = Game Over?

 

[Moonsneeze]

1. I thought I had. I thought I had paid the whole transit cost of the jump ship travel. But apparently I had only paid a part of it. Something in that in an RL situation my character would have instinctively known.

2. I did have resources that were easily translatable into money in about 5 seconds using the mechbay and scrapping some partials. The reality is that partials are as good as cash since they can be turned into cash even in transit.

3. Again.. Please understand that the resources could easily be turned liquid. EASILY!!!

Some people just always have to defend the game developers and their choices. I understand that but I really wasn't soliciting that kind of feedback. You haven't convinced me of your position [Mod edit: flamebait]

 

[Moonsneeze]

Let me just try one more thing here.

To be clear. I did not miss my payment to my mercenaries or my techs or any of my upkeep fees. I PAID my monthly costs and had a very low balance left. But it was enough to make the transit to another star system. So I paid that and got the transit moving.

THEN, I went to the mechbay and started up my repairs. I RAN OUT OF MONEY DURING THE DROPSHIP TRANSIT NOT DURING THE MONTHLY PAYMENT SCREEN!!!

 

[Havamal]

Greetings Mechwarriors,

Please post topically towards discussion and not at each other personally.

Please post with civility and respectfully even in critique and disagreement.

Please do remember to leave room to agree to disagree.

Please avoid expressions of disrespect, snark, combativeness, and hyperbole on this community.

Posts choosing not to take this advice may experience Jump Drive malfunctions to the Far country to be used as nesting materials by the locals.

Thank you.

 

[mjbroekman]

To be clear. I did not miss my payment to my mercenaries or my techs or any of my upkeep fees. I PAID my monthly costs and had a very low balance left. But it was enough to make the transit to another star system. So I paid that and got the transit moving.

THEN, I went to the mechbay and started up my repairs. I RAN OUT OF MONEY DURING THE DROPSHIP TRANSIT NOT DURING THE MONTHLY PAYMENT SCREEN!!!

So, this is a VERY important detail that you didn't mention up front. Why is it important? Because it DOES illustrate something that can be improved in the game.

Jumpship (aka transit) fees are NOT paid out of your cash UNTIL you actually jump. When you are in orbit and select a new system to travel to, NO MONEY IS PAID until you dock with the jumpship and the jump animation occurs. At that point, 30k C-Bills is paid out and you jump to the next system along your route. If you were only going one jump, you undock and head to the planet. If you were going more than one jump, the jumpship charges up, you pay ANOTHER 30k C-Bills, and you jump to the next system. So on, and so forth, paying 30k C-Bills AT EACH JUMP ANIMATION until you reach your destination.

Why is it done this way, instead of paying up front? Well, for one thing, you can stop at any system along your route, undock, and travel into the system, interrupting whatever pre-planned route you had. In order to avoid charging the player for travel that hasn't occurred, you only pay at each jump animation, not when you select the route.

Is there a better way to do this? Maybe. It would be a change in code to the current mechanic to switch from 30k / jump to full-payment at travel + a refund mechanism.

I can totally see a check whenever you start work, whether it's on a mech or on the Argo, to see if the cost of that work will drop you below any current jumpship travel and throw a warning to the player along the lines of "This will cause you to go bankrupt when you jump. Are you sure?" or something like that.

 

[The Shadowhawke]

So you backup to your last save point and restart from there.

Stop being such purists, and screw the ratings for the 1,200 day mark. In the grand scheme of things the ratings will amount to 100% Jack Squat. Learning from your financial or tactical errors will actually count for your skill as a player.

 

[mjbroekman]

So you backup to your last save point and restart from there.

Stop being such purists, and screw the ratings for the 1,200 day mark. In the grand scheme of things the ratings will amount to 100% Jack Squat. Learning from your financial or tactical errors will actually count for your skill as a player.

I'm not sure that works in Ironman (as the OP stated) if it overwrites the save at the jump or if it forces a save at bankruptcy. In a non-Ironman game, you are totally correct...you just load up the 'previous' save and go from there.