This is a great mod and remedies a lot of the inherent problems with borderline weight class mechs.
I went digging through the .dll and noticed you have updated the tooltips in the mechbay (when hovering over initiative) to update for the new system, but not in when hovering over the initiative of mech parts, etc. Any chance you also have this on github somewhere? This is an excellent bare-bones solution to a problem that other mods address in a more convoluted way, and I'm sure some modders would love to fork and run with it if you no longer have an interest.
I'm having a blast with this mod, but the new Extended has a very wide range of movement and I'm finding it hard to balance without nerfing or overpowering something.
Not a crazy amount, but two or three extra phases would help a lot!
Thank you either way!
Edit: maybe a less complicated alternative could be separate speeds for L/M/H/A classes?
I love the new dimension this mod adds to combat, but it has caused me no small amount of frustration when dealing with swarms of bugmechs, who now move before me even if I drop their initiative by 2 with a called shot knockdown. There seems to be something wonky going on with resetting initiative debuffs. A mech that had already moved at phase 5 will get dropped to phase 3 by a called shot knockdown or a called shot leg destruction, and then the next turn it will move at phase 4 when it should be at phase 3. I'm fairly certain it's this mod, because it stopped happening as soon as I deactivated this mod. That said, I will still use the mod, but I will leave it disabled until I have bigger mechs and no longer have to worry about a swarm of locusts murking my lance by shooting me in the back on turn 2. ':/
This simple change adds so much balance to the game.
Combine it with SustainedEvasion from Bourbon Vanilla mod - this makes the evasion skill retain a minimum evasion when you move rather than jump. The minimum evasion is the mech's initiative so the combination together subtly balance out the under-enginned jump-jet meta.
The DLCs in aggregate are so good that little mods like this are polishing off the game towards it's final form :) Thanks!
1.9 compatible, for any who might be curious. Just gave this a whirl on my Paradox Launcher install, and it works (through the built in mod-loader, of course).
This mods seems interesting but I do not have modtek any link I can get to a single download or maybe ask if this can be made to work with just the default mod loader in the game.
I just tested it on my second install, no modtek, and it worked, so you should be able to just use it with the default mod loader. Yay. Easy enough to set up. Just follow the instructions the game includes in the pdf found in the mod folder. Basically, just this step: 2) Once you’ve identified and downloaded a mod, place the mod contents into a named folder inside the same folder where this document is located. a) WIN: C:\Users\user_name\MyDocuments\MyGames\BattleTech\mods b) LIN: /home/user_name/MyGames/BattleTech/mods c) OSX: /Users/user_name/MyGames/BattleTech/mods
But if you do want to snag modtek anyway, the release for modtek can be snagged here: https://github.com/BattletechModders/ModTek/releases
I haven't tested it with a complete BEX mod set, so I can't say if it does or does not work. Possible that BEX has a mod in it that is tapping into the same functions, and thereby causing my changes to either not fire or else setting the initiative again, but in the old way Should be easy enough to test. If you start a new career, many of the starting mechs (Centurions, Panthers, Blackjack, Locusts, Spider, Cidadas, etc) are impacted. So if those first three aren't moving in the Heavy Phase (second to last), and the other three are moving in the LIght, Light, or Medium phase, respectively, it definitely isn't working.
I'll have to see about setting up a second install of the game and testing it myself.
While I haven't had a chance yet to test a second install with BEX (combination of Paradox's lackluster launcher and my crappy internet speed), I did take a look through all the dll mods in BEX to see if any might conflict. The only one I saw that touched the mech's initstats was BT_Extended_Quirks, and nothing that I saw there should create a conflict. And a thread on Reddit mentioned at least one person running it with BEX without any problems. So it should work.
I'll still check it out, of course, once my second install is done.
This mod works for me with BEX:CE without any issues. One thing I did was disable the mod, restart the game, enable the mod, and restart the game one more time.
I can confirm this installs and works without problem on BEX CE 1.8.1.9.
This mod makes intuitive sense, and really clarifies how Mechs like the Assassin and PhoenixHawk gained their reputations as such fearsome Light hunters. Many thanks to the mod author, for this excellent mod I never knew I needed.
I wonder if ghostmaker00 perhaps was using an in-mission save? If that's the case, it would use the saved initiatives, rather than the newly calculated ones. That's what the InitStats function for mechs does for where it sets the values, so what I did for my postfix as well. But it should apply on any subsequent missions.
Very interesting. Something I have always wondered is why weight isn't setting your engine's Initiative and range *dynamically*. I remember reading Harrison's exasperation at the weight classes not considering the actual used weight of your 'mechs in MechCommander Gold (I still have the manual. Hell, I doubt it'll play on 10 but I still have the *game*) and I tend to agree. If you lowball the effective weight of a Mech it should move, fly, and have initiative of a lighter Mech! I know why it doesn't work that way on the tabletops, but this is the videogame setting, for the love of God!
Sadly, the game doesn't seem to store a mech's current weight as far as I can see. Otherwise, you could probably tap into the get function for MoveMultiplier to make it let an under-weight mech move further.
Technically it's not weight or speed that should drive "initiative", but rather Engine power/Weight... Don't think engine power appears in the game, so using max speed is a good idea.
It should work with new mechs, yeah. What it does is use the MaxWalkDistance from the movement file for the mech to determine the initiative brackets, rather than the weight. Just using a different bit of info, no changes to the mech's files at all. So it should play nice with mods that add mechs. And yup, you should be able to add it to an existing campaign.
28 comments
I went digging through the .dll and noticed you have updated the tooltips in the mechbay (when hovering over initiative) to update for the new system, but not in when hovering over the initiative of mech parts, etc. Any chance you also have this on github somewhere? This is an excellent bare-bones solution to a problem that other mods address in a more convoluted way, and I'm sure some modders would love to fork and run with it if you no longer have an interest.
I'm having a blast with this mod, but the new Extended has a very wide range of movement and I'm finding it hard to balance without nerfing or overpowering something.
Not a crazy amount, but two or three extra phases would help a lot!
Thank you either way!
Edit: maybe a less complicated alternative could be separate speeds for L/M/H/A classes?
That said, I will still use the mod, but I will leave it disabled until I have bigger mechs and no longer have to worry about a swarm of locusts murking my lance by shooting me in the back on turn 2. ':/
Combine it with SustainedEvasion from Bourbon Vanilla mod - this makes the evasion skill retain a minimum evasion when you move rather than jump.
The minimum evasion is the mech's initiative so the combination together subtly balance out the under-enginned jump-jet meta.
The DLCs in aggregate are so good that little mods like this are polishing off the game towards it's final form :) Thanks!
2) Once you’ve identified and downloaded a mod, place the mod contents into a named folder inside the same folder where this document is located.
a) WIN: C:\Users\user_name\MyDocuments\MyGames\BattleTech\mods
b) LIN: /home/user_name/MyGames/BattleTech/mods
c) OSX: /Users/user_name/MyGames/BattleTech/mods
But if you do want to snag modtek anyway, the release for modtek can be snagged here: https://github.com/BattletechModders/ModTek/releases
I'll have to see about setting up a second install of the game and testing it myself.
I'll still check it out, of course, once my second install is done.
This mod makes intuitive sense, and really clarifies how Mechs like the Assassin and PhoenixHawk gained their reputations as such fearsome Light hunters.
Many thanks to the mod author, for this excellent mod I never knew I needed.
I wonder if ghostmaker00 perhaps was using an in-mission save? If that's the case, it would use the saved initiatives, rather than the newly calculated ones. That's what the InitStats function for mechs does for where it sets the values, so what I did for my postfix as well. But it should apply on any subsequent missions.
Can't wait to try it !
Will this work if I have mods that add new mechs?
And can I add it to an existing campaign?