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balance (44 comments)
Also, is it normal when you buy a 'mech (or 'mech parts) from the shop for it to assemble without a core?
Thank you for the very well thought out mod, LadyAlekto. I never played the tabletop, but I grew up on Mechwarrior and Mechcommander. Your mod definitely brings a great feel to a game that was sadly, starved for content, details, and feeling like you were running a mercenary company!
While I understand the feeling,You are not being out numbered 3 to 1 except in 1 or 2 specific missions
Read the mission text carefully and you will often find reference to "Multiple lances" or "A single lance"
5-10 minute stops are not what the game is about, unless you want to spend a half month in the mechbay Expect missions to be 15-30 minutes consistently
Avoid Escort missions if you dislike the numbers
Capture Base seperates things well into waves, These are the best to start with
Battle Has 1 lance on the field and can trigger reinforcements depending on the contract: Focus targets to avoid being overwhelmed
Destroy base has 1 lance and 4 turrets
Assasaination is like battle with 1 additional mech
My half-skull reference was to the vanilla game settings where most battles were 1 lance vs another, while just about every battle from 2-skull and up had you facing additional reinforcements. I'm not complaining, as this mod is beautifully done, but I am seeking information to help me along while I'm only sporting Wolfhounds and Jenners; Half-skull missions can sometimes come outta left field and whip my backside something fierce. I'll try more battles and record how many instances I get attacked by a second lance, but I'm pretty sure it's close to 80% of the time. Also I'll try more capture/destroy base missions starting off, I believe you're right and I've had pretty good luck tackling those missions early on.
If I have one complaint, it's for the vanilla game that I doubt can be modded. I miss multiple lances. I loved Mechcommander, and being given the option to hit a problem with numbers or hit the problem with weight class is something this game sorely lacks. Battles feel too much like arena fights. Even some of the old Mechwarrior games allowed you to designate AI to an additional lance for you to order around. I can't understand why the devs would make a game with sprawling maps and tons of 'mechs/vehicles to make essentially an infinite-RNG game, and leave you with a single lance.
But that's just idle chatter I guess; Until the modding equivalent of the messiah comes along and finds a way to add a second lance to the player's arsenal. Thanks again for the feedback, though, I'll try more mission variety and also go to the Periphery and see if maybe fighting ramshackle pirates negates the value additional numbers bring.
PS Never mind my inquiry about fusion cores. I spent a good amount of time going over all the articles on the mod page (very helpful info and hints, btw) and saw the section regarding "easily configurable options, specifically the assembly options. Set them to assemble a fully kitted out 'mech upon completion, but increased required components to assemble to compensate (don't want things too easy for me). Thanks again!
1: Focus on capture base or Destroy Base missions - These missions are based around 4 base turrets that you can keep out of range/ LOS from while you deal with the supporting lance
2: When you take a Mission remember the "Skull rating" is based on the total value of all enemy forces that aren't mission objectives - AVOID CONVOY ATTACK MISSIONS the Mission targets are not included
3: Base assaults mean the value includes the turrets, you will face lower quality mechs and vehicles thanks
4: On base attacks, if no mechs remain on the field, you can reserve past the turrets - forcing them to end their turn. This allows you to guarentee you have the opening salvo on them - try alpha strike 1 or 2 down with that advantage
5: On Battle and Assassination missions, the value is for all forces - if you are facing only one lance Expect it to be far better skilled and equiped than a lance with reinforcements
6: If you are really struggling read the Mission text and focus on missions which mention "Local Pirate forces" Pirates have the Malus' applied to them that mean they are usually at 50% Armour if 2 lances are present or 80% if a single lance. - This one is very useful early game
7: Convoy Escort missions are also good: You will sometimes have 1 lance of "Blocking forces" before picking up the Escort group, you will always have 1 lance while escorting - Use this so you never engage 2 lances at once and have the 4 APC's as extra firepower
8: Early game focus on making atleast 1 "Discoball of death" the number of shots matters more than the Alpha damage - especially early on.
Remember also that your hit chances are low, not only because of poor skills and Evasion, but also because there is a to hit Malus against hitting light mechs so Multihit weapons with Accuracy Bonuses like Pulse Lasers and Streak SRMs are KING
Run while you can!
1) id agree that it does have some very severe balance issues in that certain combinations of enemy numbers, makeup and map are hard to the point that some contracts are basically impossible.
2) thats the intention of the mod designers. they have been clear about that. "its hard" is literally on the front page of the mod listing.
3) personally i do think it could use a bit of tuning because the difficulty curve seems to be the wrong way around. the hardest phase of the game, in every campaign ive played so far, is the start. and the game gets easier as i play against better mechs and better pilots. the first time i run into an atlas or a kingcrab i dont think "omg how am i gonna deal with this thing???" i think "yay! here comes the salvage!". in the early missions when i see a wolfhound i think "should i withdraw now, or wait till it cripples one of my mechs i can not afford to repair and dont have the gear to replace destroyed equipment on"
4) the big one. i think (3) happens because the balancing system doesnt always work well. balancing by cost is a great idea..but is broken because the real value of a particular weapon or item or mech itself isnt fixed and its tooltip value is. a specced out double-heatsinked triple exchangered laser boat of death is worth more on a desert map becuase all that heat management really makes a difference. on a cold map, its worth less but its still inflating the value of the lance. i havent checked in the latest patches but i notced before that MMLs have a huge value compared to LRM+s. iirc a MML9 had double the value of a LRM15+, and they do basically the same same dmg (9x8 vs 15x5). and the MML rarely does its full dmg because of falloff. the effectiveness of every weapon is changed by the accuracy of the pilots, and anything that buffs accuracy has a multiplier effect on weapon value that increases the more wepaons it effects on a given mech. pulse/steak is worth more on faster mechs that can get into range easier, and early in the game when you fight things that tend to have more evasion. ecm, stealth and ams add value..and if nothing shoots at that mech that value is wasted. ill freely admit that i dont understand how the cost balancing works and its totally possible that all those variations are accounted for. and i have no ideas on how it could be balanced differently..i get that weight balancing doesnt work, with all the ways we have to reduce used weight and heat and cram in more higher tech stuff.
5) the reason i originally wanted to post..the balancing in the clan area definitely seems broken. my starting lance was a stormcrow, a griffon II and 2 light mechs. it had a 4.5 skull value. it couldnt do 4.5 skull missions..the first one i tried, i was facing 2 assaults and 2 heavies. im guessing that the base value of clan mechs is set very high and its artificially boosting the skull rating? now i have 2 hellbringers, 1 catapult II and 1 warahmmer II. im at 5 skulls. so now i cant judge what level my lance is actually at, because its capped. but im pretty sure i cant actually do 5 skull missions.
TLDR - the mod is fantastic, you all do amazing work and i cant wait to see what you manage to add in the next major patch :) but i do agree that the balancing has issues.
First off, LadyAlekto, your mod is amazing. Arguably the best mod I've played in a decade, for ANY game. You are to be commended for your amazing work.
The balance issues are likely a combination of the main game rules exacerbated by the additional wall of tech from RT. I would observe the following *feel* like the primary concerns to me:
- Lack of tech being included in the "difficulty scaling". I just had a 0.5 skull mission (mission three from a new start) where my starting lance ran into a base assault mission where the enemies were not only full armor, and massively stronger... but they were all advanced tech as well. My standard hunchback, vindicator, cicada, and commando were utterly helpless against a team of all pulse-laser/double-heat-sink/warfare&ECM equipped death machines that outweighed us 2:1... AND had four twin-LRM turrets to lock-on and/or volleyfire us. I have zero problem with difficulty scaling... but tech level needs to be a part of that. This could be done by counting advanced tech as "higher" tonnage, if that's the only mechanism the game uses... but I know nothing about the inner workings.
- Lack of a cap on difficulty scaling. 0.5 skull missions shouldn't *ever* go over 1.0 skull, imho. You should cap at double your level. +1 skull at 0.5 is MASSIVELY different than 4 skull becoming 5 skull.
- Changes to melee have hugely changed the metagame. I'm fine with this (melee was pretty OP before), but when combined with the changes to melee vs. vehicles, it does make vehicles more powerful than they would otherwise be. As has been observed, you can flank them and rear-attack them... but that is a great deal harder to accomplish when you're outnumbered 9 to 4, AND out-tonned as well. I would suggest that the nerf to melee vs. vehicles might well have been unnecessary given the other nerfs to melee.
Overall, the mod is still the best thing around... but right now, balance IS pretty gruesome.
You can always withdraw if you are outgunned, you are not supposed to win every engangement immediately
As for the "you're not supposed to win every engagement immediately", no offense but that's not really a reasonable response. The entire idea of a balanced game is that every engagement should represent a challenge that, with sufficient skill and care, can be dissected. If the game design is expecting some games to be unwinnable, that's awful game design.
I'm a high-skill BT player. I know how everything works, and I'm tactically careful. I generally crank the knobs up because I *like* a steep challenge that makes me think. Playing on Ironman/Hard is very satisfying... IF the battles are possible. As it stands now, it is not.. you will regularly get battles where your only option is to go "oh, I'm screwed, time to bail". You may argue that this is realistic, and I won't argue that... but it is NOT fun.
I'm also an experienced game developer. Once, many years ago, I worked on a combat flight simulation game that meticulously recreated air combat in WWI in excruciating detail. It was historically ultra-accurate... right down to the reality that most sorties had no combat, and led to patrols where pilots would fly their routes, find no enemies, and fly home. This was the most historically accurate simulation of its type... and it was about as fun as watching your refrigerator light bulb burn out. We fixed that in a subsequent version, but it was a very valuable lesson for me... that historicity/authenticity does not = good game.
So please, don't tell me "if you get a bad scenario, you should just withdraw". That's not the right answer. The right answer is to craft a scenario-builder that will create difficult challenges that, with skilled and careful play, *can* be beaten.
If you employ every tool at your disposal, play everything to your advantage and know how to sue your mechs, then yes, you CAN win EVERY engagement
But that would be saying "git gud", so i rather tell people to withdraw if they cant handle it
That said, the tank melee damage penalty is not removed and definitely exists, just dont kick a tank with a light mech that only has upper arm actuators and therefore bad melee
"I'm not sure they are taking double melee damage, honestly"
"I'm a high-skill BT player"
...\o/
Take my above example. Tell me how you take a 3025-tech lance comprised as above and have ANY hope of beating the force I faced. Show me. Educate me. Mathematically, it is functionally impossible. Their gunnery was superior (so they were capable of hitting 4 chevron targets easily), their weaponry superior (at all ranges), their firepower superior (any one mech sported more firepower than any two of mine), the defense was superior (NSS/ECM equipped for all of their main lance made it such that I was facing 5 or 6 chevron unless I could bait the AI into a low movement attack, which I actually did pretty well, though the superior firepower and gunnery made that a painful trade quickly)... and they outnumbered me 2:1 AND had defensive structures to eventually have to deal with. I'm sorry, but I have difficulty believing that you'd have had any different outcome. To be clear, on earlier iterations of RT, I had a 2000 day campaign without losing a single pilot and with only one mech ever being knocked out... so suffice it to say that this is a VASTLY different experience. While I'm not suggesting that I want to never be at risk, I am saying that I should never be faced with "utterly impossible"... and I already have been.
As for melee... lack of arm actuators doesn't actually impact kick damage, unless I'm missing something. My Cicada kick did listed melee damage, which is why I wondered about your statement. Obviously it was a desperation play in a horrific matchup, but it was an attempt to maximize his potential against what I faced. If there is some rule regarding melee that affects kicks by armless mechs, please do let me know... that would be news.
Your mod is wonderful, and I'm enjoying it a great deal. I just wish you'd take some constructive feedback that will improve the experience for players and won't gimp the experience for folks who wish to crank the knobs up.
Ontop, dont fight house forces if youre not equipped for advanced tech
Get into the periphery
This feedback rises from people being used to very easy games now, games like these were the norm in the early days of gaming.
About the pointlessless...
This game is a sandbox, can be hard or easy, you choose the mission skull level.
And people are complaining that this game does not have an easy mode, well the devs have made one already!
Its called "Difficulty by Planet", if you need to, you can have four heavies and keep doing 1 skull missions, or 2 skull or 5. Depends the level of challenge you want.
I´m pretty sure that everyone complaining is using the other setting.
Theres also the difficulty menu
Theres always the choice of whom they fight
Difficulty is decided by many factors but the most often one is players being used to be jerked every second of the game like a good rat in skinners box
I think when you take "seems-okay" mission and it turns out impossible to finish, IT IS AWESOME. Because this is rare happenning thing and it seems natural. The lack of difficulty info, you know. You take 3 skulls, turns out it's 4 skull.
YOU MUST UNDERSTAND: if you take a mission it doesn't mean you are able or there is way to complete the mission. The game is not a puzzle to solve, RogueTech is a tough world, The Inner Sphere, more realistic than it ever been
Game becoming easier with pilot skills up and mechs getting stronger.
Don't make the game any more easier, LA, don't listen the ones saying "the balance SHOULD be this and that..if u can't win it's a bad balance". Those people forgot that u still getting something when lose, and there is always button "withdraw".
The Balance for me is when I feel challenge that I need to overcome.
I often die in the Mechwarrior Online. Still playing it 2 years in a row. [ENOVA [Maskirovka]]
BUT : if an all assault (ECM, lammellor, the works) lance with 11 x artemis srm 6 Marauder, Gauszilla, 5 clan PPC marauder and heavy Gauss Atlas (vs vehicles you kind need pinpoint) can not finish a convoy mission...then you have a balance problem.
Picture this: start 4 vs 8 you move a mech you shoot then it gets sensor locked down to 2 or 3 pips. THEN it gets blasted by 3 PUMAS with 7-8-9 (didn't count ) launchers each. And some of these lrm "carriers" are turn 2 so they get another go. If it's still sanding next turn all you can do is rotate and give them another target, because your locked mech is down to half armor. You can only do this so many times. So you take out the scout to gt rid of locks, and finally you kill everything, even getting frustrated at times like: whole lance firing into the back of a tank can not kill it (point blank heavy gauss to the back alone should wreck a behemoth but here it melts a bit of turret) or 7 head hits, 5 on the same pilot - just raw missile density.
And now another lance of reinforcements on the high ground. And you have 1 fresh mech, 1 ok and 2 that are about to be opened. You try to kite, and hide in terrain to spring an ambush, then you get sensor locked and lrm X 100 again. And you withdraw in good faith. Maybe a melee banshee instead of SMR marauder would have done better but AI tend to sensor it and shoot it in the back.
How is this a 5 skull when i finished the one before with just cosmetic dmg ? Some vechicles are way too strong: they can Alfa all the time (unlike a mech) with 100 lrm each, have 4 center torso-thick hitboxes to get through and you start sensor locked.
Bottom line is this: 2 lances of vehicles are like 5 jormungandr + 3 Atlas, all of then scouts. Would like to see you beat them when they have high ground.
Your job is to run a profitable merc mech lance, not get a perfect record of wins. If its tough and doesn't suit your lance, dont try and win, just withdraw. In fact if you think your lance isn't suited to that type of mission why even take it in the first place.
However if you like super hard challenges, then go for it. RT gives you the options, YOU choose what to do, so dont really complain if its not doable. If ALL Missions were easily doable, it wouldn't be fun and it wouldn't be RT. You should be grateful for the fact that even at the very higest levels of lance value etc (like you are at now) the game can STILL be difficult!
Can I take 200 artemis-high-ground-sensor-locked-lrm per turn is not a challenge. Again not max difficulty.
In short my point is: Axel II tank :1100 armor 1x large pulse, 2 x lrm 15, 1 x mag - fine
Atlas II clan : 1600 armor , 2 x large pulse, 2 x ml heavy, 2 x UAC5, 1 x lrm 20 - sholud be the max a mech can be
Puma PAT II clan: 1150 armor, 1 x er ppc, 2 x mg, 2 x er ml, 4 x atm3, 4 X lrm15, artemis(? how can it have ATM ?), ecm - almost 2 shinigami stalkers in firepower as it can alfa all the time -what mech has 13 weapons this size ? Stick to lore and give it either 3 x MML 7 or 2 x lrm 20, even if the loadout is not clan speciffic.
Also there are nuke carrying urbanmechs
I have a faksimilie of that on my end, its awesome to face it, though it lacks the aoe (unsalvagaeable ai only)
Almost everything i put in the mod as enemys or weapons, are the less op s#*! i create to give the ai a fighting chance, even the ai routines
If i wouldnt be busy with among other things figuring out why the new lbx decapitate almost every other shot, id finish the halfway done ultra hard mode for those who want to play at those levels
To me, the public default, is easy
Still pissed at those Puma tanks they carry ATMs and Artemis 4 (which should be impossible) and they have no ammo for their MG...last escort mission was 9 vehicles and 1 mech (4 Pumas thank God only 1 scout). Should check vehicle/mech ballance and That tank for max 1 spawn/lance and nerf the accuracy at the very least.
Their LRM's have artemis but with the way it works, it affects the ATM
i didnt saw him do that and have removed it for the current preview patch for the future
The LBX issue is not something i would assume anyone here who doesnt has access to the new code to understand, since we now got REAL clustered damage profiles for them
(still, leaves the claims of op tanks to be utterly blatant bullshit in general, i fight them with doubled structure/armor)
By the way, the one advantage for the player is the instant withdrawal... just imagine if you need to move to a withdrawal area before you can withdrawal.
Happy playing and have a nice day.
It's on the front page folks....
They are after all gods and must be pandered, it cannot absolutely be that they simply suck and project their tiny id on everything but their own shortcomings
The AI plays by the same rules as you do
Its that simple
Just because youre used to get the games cheating for you in the background doesnt mean the game/mod is at fault
The Challenge to the player is knowing how to outwit the computer, and since the AI is way limited beyond what im trying to teach it, makes that rather simple
Install hard mod that gives you an actual chance to fail, even while doing your best.
Complain when failure happens.
Blame everybody and everything else.
The universe is not cheating when it is impossible for you to run naked from here to Mars.
The AI is not cheating when tanks are too stronk or RNGesus strikes again.
I am not even sure what the term "balance" is useful for in a discussion about battles vs AI.
Thanks for this great mod! ;-P
Balance to me is good. Difficult but you win some you lose some.... and you can always hit WITHDRAW at any time in the game if you dont like how its going...
If I win all the time its too easy, if I lose all the time its not fun.... so far RT is perfect in providing a fun challenge. Well done to all involved.....
And they r not strong. It's you r weak, my friend.