What will your day one mods of choice be?

[Tnarien]

I suppose in the absence of a formal mod, a relatively simple hack could be to go into the Mechdef file for say, the Griffin, and hack it to have an XL engine with double heat sinks (and imagine them to be 'Super' Griffins). Then the game would involve a hunt for Griffins, knowing that they would be very dangerous foes, but if salvaged, would permit the design I outlined above. It would be a cheat though, as once gained, you'd have an advantage the opposition would not.

Cooking up a variant to have an XL engine is about five minutes work. The issue is that the way DHSes work is different. In-engine sinks are locked to 10 SHS, and one can mix-match singles and doubles for the additional equipment.

So you'd have 10x SHS and 7x DHS for an (estimated*) cooling capacity of 72. You'll still be net positive for heat, but at +2 it'd take a long time to hit the ID threshold.

* - The cooling value of DHS is not known at this point. In beta they were not implemented but described in the files to be 1.3x not 2x. In promotional images later they were shown to be their usual 2x.

 

[Tnarien]

I think we're all missing the most important question:
How easy will it be to import new MechWarriors?
For reasons.

Starting Guts: 12

As to your query: building new mechwarriors into the system is easy. Getting them into your unit is a bit trickier.

 

[ED-209]

I think we're all missing the most important question:
How easy will it be to import new MechWarriors?

The KS backer Mechwarriors must be fixed, so replacing one of them is probably the easiest route. Whether additional ones can be added remains to be seen.

 

[Tnarien]

Whether additional ones can be added remains to be seen.

We successfully added them in Beta v1 and v2 with very little trouble. The complicating factor will be the randomized hiring halls presenting a barrier to getting the new additions into your unit in the campaign module, but I have some ideas about how to work around that.

 

[Jaidenhaze]

I really hope you roleplay as her

 

[Jadedfalcon]

Customizing and/or creating new hired mechwarriors

 

[Calantyr]

Starting Guts: 12

I like the way you think.

I'll be upset if HBS hasn't included their more iconic Shadowrun characters as easter eggs, but it's heartening to know that modding them in should be quite easy.

 

[Stuckenschmidt]

You surely need glasses.

 

[GenTask]

NOBODY used stock mechs for anything other than opforce NPC enemies, and even NPCs were sometimes modded as well.

*ahem* Nobody? Are you kidding dude? I sense bullshit.

 

[Panpiper]

*ahem* Nobody? Are you kidding dude? I sense bullshit.

Nobody I ever talked to, and I talked to a LOT of players.

 

[Falconaran]

INSTALLATION!

Not a game mod, just an alteration to my PC. But I am in no way going to have the patience to start messing under this games hood on day one.

 

[Jade_Rook]

There have been long discussions about heat and how hot mechs should run. The devs want heat to be relevant and we don't know what the final values will be yet. At this point I would recommend playing the game before modding any of the heat values.

 

[Jaidenhaze]

There have been long discussions about heat and how hot mechs should run. The devs want heat to be relevant and we don't know what the final values will be yet. At this point I would recommend playing the game before modding any of the heat values.

Thanks to the preview streams we have a lot of numbers to play around with. Here is a fairly complete list: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/weapon-stats-overview.1083542/

Single Heat Sinks reduce 3 Heat per round, Doubles are 6 Heat per Round. The 10 Heat Sinks from the Engine sink 3 Heat Sinks per round, 30 total, with no option to upgrade or change them. The rest is simple math.

 

[ithillid]

While I won't be modding my first run much if at all, I am most interested in alternate start mods, because the tools that I start the game with are going to impact how I want to play. Later on, I might well want to find mods that increase the number of medical and mech points that I get so that I can maintain a higher operational tempo.

 

[ronhatch]

Although my first inclination was to do an entire playthrough without any mods before fiddling, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that there are details I want to change.

Regardless, I will be going through large sections of the JSON files to see what options I have. I want more information before making a final decision. Generally speaking, I want to avoid anything that is likely to change the balance or difficulty, but I'm willing to make exceptions.

The things I know of that I currently think I would go ahead and change are:

• Adding my own unit logo. (Duh!)
• If it's still in, I will turn off the AI crit chance reduction. Having the AI cheat in my favor is just as despicable as having it cheat against me. Any consideration of difficulty (either too easy or too hard) takes a back seat to that, in my book.
  
• Reduce the grid spacing from 24 meters to 6. Trying this in the beta skirmish, I absolutely LOVE the expanded options. (Although I might use some other number, depending on further testing.) It makes the game take longer and the AI spends far more time thinking, but I am a very patient man. It's also very unlikely to cause balance problems.
• Increase the to-hit penalty for weapons that have been damaged but not destroyed. It always just felt wrong how easily the AI could hit you with a damaged weapon. Seems to me that it ought to be practically out of the fight. May test this more in beta as well.
• Increase the cost of replacing a destroyed section, both in time and money. Not sure if this will even be possible, but it seems likely that it will have an entry in the JSONs. This is by far the most likely to unbalance the game of the changes I want to make... it could be pretty drastic. But I'm arrogant enough to be willing to increase the difficulty some, particularly when I can mitigate it by... y'know... withdrawing from missions when I'm outmatched. (Weird concept, right?!?) It seems to me that this will primarily punish me heavily ONLY if I overreach.

 

[TheDarkestStig]

No mods for me the first playthrough.

 

[ronhatch]

Ok, this is a bit complicated, but I'd REALLY appreciate feedback on doing this right away on my first run.

I want my stalker at the beginning, and I'm willing to pay (in raw mech tonnage) to have it.

My thoughts around doing this are as follows. The total tonnage of the "starter" unit is 190 tons (BJ,SHD,VND,SDR,LCT). I remember that back on the other forum someone had found the .JSON for the campaign settings. I figure I can change the starter mechs around a bit in one of a few ways and hopefully not break the game. The "starter" blackjack, used in the tutorial, most likely cannot be changed since there's scripted events that require it. On the other hand, I'm willing to bet that the "starter" is not the one you start mission #2 in. I'm willing to bet that for ease of coding, they just coded in a fresh BJ-1 without any special "ancestral" tags attached to it. Even if it DOES turn out to be a special spawn of BJ-1 with special flags attached to it, there's still several options available.

Make a save after tutorial.

If the BJ-1 you are given at start of mission #2 is NOT flagged special: Replace with STK-3F, and see if game breaks on mission #2 start.
If not, then go back in, and change the rest of the starter mechs to equal 190 tons (including the STK). make sure the stalker is set in the place of the locust, so that you do NOT bring it into mission #2 (making mission #2 significantly harder).

If the BJ-1 is indeed special, then see if you can change the rest of the unit around without breaking the game. Keep the tonnage at 190 including both the STK and BJ, and again keep the STK in the 5th mech slot so it stays on the leopard.

If touching any of the starter mechs actually piloted in mission #2 breaks the game, the at least try to code the STK into the slot occupied by the locust. This last option, while the LEAST desirable by FAR, should have the highest chance of working since the mech in that bay has absolutely nothing to do with mission #2, and therefore shouldn't even exist with unique item tags for it and it's components until the loading screen after mission #2. In this case, I guess I'm a straight up cheating bastard, because I will have my stalker, at the start of the game.

Please if any of the modders could assist me with feedback on how to make this happen I'd really appreciate it. I'd really like to be that guy that has one really huge mech, and a bunch of tiny lights. I think it would be fun to run mission #2 with at most a BJ and 3 lights, if not 4 light mechs. Consider it a challenge gate. If I can't beat it with like 75 tons less than I should have, then I don't get my mech.

I would recommend balancing based on the skirmish C-bill values and not tonnage.

In any case, enough people have made comments about wanting different starting lances that I'll try to remember to experiment with it myself. My guess is that you really can change only the lines that list the mechs and it will Just Work™. That said, though, I wonder if you can have a single mech (or two, or three) instead of an entire lance? Since it's an array (at least in the beta), the odds are actually decent that a shorter list won't cause any problems.

 

[CHH_Rampage]

The only mods I desire are:

1. Adding some character avatars and descriptions that have followed me through almost every rpg that I have played.
2. If possible, adding in a custom unit logo.
3. Adding custom unit camo skins for all my Mechs.

I played around with the JSON files in the beta a bit but I did not want to do too much because the release could be different.

 

[Mojo Amok]

Reading comprehension.....it's a thing.

Please go back and read more than the first 2 sentences of what I typed. If you do, you will see that I VERY SPECIFICALLY stated that I know that the tutorial can't be messed with because of the scripted events in it. Read further, and you will see that my idea is SPECIFICALLY about making changes that won't take effect until AFTER the tutorial mission. The changes I want to make will take effect at the start of mission #2, when it says "3 years later". (start of mining mission)

That being said, do you have any thoughts on making my ENTIRE idea workable? I'd really appreciate them, since I'm not very good at adjusting game files.

Well, maybe. The surefire way is swapping the Locust - that's probably a 99% chance to work.

The rest of it is unclear and probably depends most on if there's JSON files which fully cover the starting mission and then the Magistry Metals mission. If there are, you might even be able to replace the blackjack from the start (at least if there were Jump Jets on the Stalker or if you could shut off Mastiff asking you to jump - might have to run a specific distance as well, I don't recall).

In the Beta, the starting lance was configurable, but of course, it didn't plug into anything so intricate as the Magistry Metals mission. If there's nothing overly special about that mission from a coding standpoint and it's just a JSON or just feeds off a strategic starting condition JSON, it should also work.

Thinking about the context, it's actually quite possible that there's no continuity between the Tutorial and Magistry Metals from a coding standpoint and they're just totally separate scripts, so the game isn't figuring on things in the same way as it will later to where you "have" the Blackjack (ie. two totally separate missions with starting mech lists). After that mission, I'm sure it would be really tricky to convert one mech into another, but for that particular mission string, it could work.

But the big question is how much of the start is just purely JSON-driven - can't answer much without that except that the Locust is almost surely moddable.

 

[Panpiper]

I'd certainly be interested in possibly changing a starting mech or two. I'd be even more interested in knowing how hard it would be to add variants to the game, whether it would be possible to get them to show up in random missions, and whether it would be possible to make them purchasable. I would also very much like to be able to simulate XL engines with their double heat sink capacity, but again, have no idea how hard that would be or even if it is possible.

My idea would be, if possible, to have several mechs (ideally most if not all) with XL variants but make them such that they only appear 5-10% of the time, the rest being regular mech variants. The XL versions could also appear in shops, but be ten times more expensive than regular. The point would be to make collecting not just about finding the right mechs, but the right 'quality' of mechs too.