HBS Battletech Discussion Thread (there may be spoilers)

[Feenix74]

Well you should know all about the quality of Capellan military intelligence during the 3020s . . . dinner plate anyone ^-^

[Daryk]

LOL!  Got me there...  ;D

[Nav_Alpha]

Just started taking Davion missions in Taurian space. First up two and a half skulls to retrieve an operative and their biological sample. Which, oddly plays into the whole Davvy/Taurian chemical weapons atrocity...

Thunderbolt, Shadow Hawk, Vindicator, Jagermech. Oh... and then as we advanced, we found the SECOND lance. Two Locusts, a Panther and Trenchbucket.

Two and a half skulls my arse!

I took my B Team - Griffin, custom Shadow Hawk sporting Lostech weapons, Trenchbucket and Vindi.
Two pilots wounded for 15 days and Both their Mechs walking skeletons.

It was damn hard, but I like to think I used the right tactics - Trenchy hung back and rained LRMs down while the rest rushed forward. Once both PPCs were in LOS I propped up in the tree line and just hit the enemy again and again. All of the enemy were bloodied and looking bad by the time they made medium laser range.
When they got closer, the Shad rushed forward and DFA’d first the Thud and then the Jagermech.

I haz me a shiny new TDR-5SS Thunderbolt!

[Joskney]

Testing difficulty, I have saved and dropped everything from a light to an assault lance, pull relatively the same forces each reload.  But I pull different load for the same type of mission on different planets. I am beginning to wonder if there aren't 2 sets of 'skulls', as I pull larger/smaller for the same skull mission on different skull planets.  A baseline for a planet (i.e. say 2.5 skulls planet) and the difficulty of the mission (i.e say 3 skulls) seems to be easier than a (4 skull planet with a 2 skull mission).

[Lorcan Nagle]

Oddly, I just did a Davion/Taurian contract on my way back from the cache mission.  4.5 skulls, seize a location, capture a convoy and then escort it out.  And I know there are people here who despise escort missions, but I don't find them too bad.

Step 1 - seize the location.  It's defended by 4 mediums, but my lance is now 2 heavies and assaults, they make short work of the enemies. 

Step 2 - escort the convoy.  I made the mistake of walking one mech onto the base while the rest of the lance are out of position, so the APCs begin trundling away as I try to catch up, and wind up in range of the second enemy force - a tank lance.  They manage to kill one APC and go internal on a second before I kill them all.

Step 3 - convoy is picked up, I have to evac.  And of course there's a third enemy lance, this time medium and heavy mechs.  I get lucky with my fire - blowing up the ammo on one Thunderbolt and headcapping a Grasshopper - so the worst damage I take is a medium laser crit on my Black Knight, and armour stripped off a few locations.  Of course my character takes her fifteen millionth head hit of the campaign, but she's only out for 12 days so will be ready to get back in the saddle by the time we drop again.

[Phobos]

Step 2 - escort the convoy.  I made the mistake of walking one mech onto the base while the rest of the lance are out of position,

That sounds familiar... ;)
Depending on the mission, I'm used to either walk full force into the designated area or with just one (in case you need to just pick up a scientist or whatever)... NOW.

[Daryk]

Argh!  I just killed their SRM Carrier, and the game has frozen...  It's burning CPU cycles like there's no tomorrow, so I keep hoping it will come back... Only three more turns until reinforcements arrive!

[Crimson Dynamo]

I got bit by the post-salvage crash last night. Of course, I went from 0/3 Grasshopper pieces to 3/3 pieces in that mission, all gone thanks to the crash. First time that's ever happened in 680+ days in campaign. I was really looking forward to trying that brawler walking-atrocity some of you guys had mentioned earlier. When I reloaded the mission, the OPFOR changed to mainly lousy Dragons. Did get the last 2 chunks for a Catapult K2 though, so not a total loss.

Also, a BattleMech I'm having new appreciation for? The Hunchback 4P. Holy crap can that thing put on a light show, even in desert terrain an alpha strike with all it's lasers only brought the heat track up about 1/4-1/3. It is one of my go-to early activation units to support my paired Highlanders.

[Daryk]

Hmmm... I just figured out that my game appears to be fully functional... with the critical exception of video!  When I click on the appropriate places on the screen, I get the appropriate noises.  I just can't see if they're the right things to do...

[Nav_Alpha]

Gather around shipmates, gather around and listen to my tale.
Commander Takahashi Langstrom - an exiled Kuritan - and his band, Levithian’s Wake found themselves on Girondas in Taurian space as tensions flared between the realm and neighbouring Federated Suns.

Word came from the occupying FedRats that a heavy attack force of Taurians was rampaging through areas thought pacified by the victorious Feddies.
Expecting to face a Taurian assault or heavy Mech, Commander Langstrom
Came loaded for bear - his Thunderbolt, backed by an Orion, a Dragon and a QuickDraw piloted by a injury prone warrior who went by the name of Dekker.

Sensing an ambush, the lance pushed up river after landing in a broad river, making landfall around the flank of the target area.

Without warning the maraudering Taurians struck - a mixed medium lance of Mechs emerged from the tree line and the battle was joined.

The good commander had sent Dekker in a wide swing around the left flank, while the rest of the lance engaged two mediums and two lights in the broken ground.
Takahashi caved in the faceplate of a Shadow Hawk with a burst of cracklings lightning from his PPC and Behemoth in her Orion charged forward and body checked a Locust, leaving it a crumpled Mess. Their companions - a Panther and a Griffin dug in among the rough ground and poured highly accurate fire into Red Flag’s Dragon, wounding the verbose FedSuns ex-pat.

At this moment, as Dekker rushed across the valley to reach his lancemates, he detected something in the tree line off to his left. Something big.

Dekker’s scopes  read “80T” as the low slung form pushed through the scrubby, Brown trees.
Fearing a Victor or Awesome was about to pop up on his six, Commander Langstrom dispatches Red Flag to help Dekker while he poured fire into the Griffin.

Then it emerged... an 80 tonne target advanced and materialised into... a Demolisher tank!

The battle raged on. Langstrom dropped the Griffin with a series of well placed PPC and SRM bursts into its torso, while Behemoth once again beat another Mech into scrap.

Over on the flank, the Dragon and QuickDraw sniped away with LRMs and a PPC at the huge tank - in turn it picked a whole magazine of depleted uranium shells into the commander’s back, tearing off the Thunderbolt’s left arm, before hitting Dekker with the other gun.

But it mattered for little - Dekker saved the day by rushing into its guns, absorbing more damage before hitting the jump jets and coming down on top of the tank, killing the crew and squashing the vehicle flat
And that’s how Levithian’s Wake carried the day.

Anyone else found that elusive “most heavy attacker” turned out to be a tank before?
I was freaking out I was facing an assault Mech and then it turns out to be vehicle!
One of the most contracts I’ve had so far though

[Sandslice]

And, for a different story from Taurian space, there's the debacle that is going to have me rolling up a fresh campaign.  It's not that anyone died - because no one did.  It's that I need to step back and reconsider my approach to everything.

So I decide to go to Brisbane - which should be fine, it's only 2.5-sk; and do a training run for the boys (Medusa in the Awesome, Dekker in HGN-P, McWraith in the Grasshopper, and Groundapple (yes, his name is Groundapple) in the Griffin,) since unlike the girls (Behemoth, Glitch, and the CO) they're not skill-capped.

Now consider the fact that the previous contract I had taken - over in Liao space against Davion, which dropped my Davion rep into "not good enough" - was against two Assault Lances consisting of Dragon, Zeus, Awesome Q, HGN-P, and four (FOUR!) Banshee-Ms and I did fine there... not so much this time.

This time, on Brisbane, it was two Davion Hawks, a Trebuchet, and Thud-SS in reserve; Wolverine-R, Quickdraw, Dragon, and Jager-S main.  Quickdraw aside, that's a *lot* of Stab damage.  And with my initiatives being 4311, and theirs being 3x4 2x4, there was a... slight action economy problem.  And it was the Thunderbolt - very late to the party - that pushed it over, landing the PPC hit that planted McWraith on the ground.  One endless cycle of called shots later, and that boy earned a 55-day vacation, not to mention the repair time on the Grasshopper which I haven't checked yet.

At the time of the knockdown, I hadn't secured any kills at all, though the WVR and Jager were lacking side torsos.  Then the WVR was also lacking its head to Groundapple's fist, and Medusa's left hook reduced what remained of the Jager to just a head.  After that, it was a mad scramble to ride heat curves and polish off the QKD and DRG before hitting combat loss grouping.  Medusa dropped his left torso (no pilot damage though, yay for cockpit mods) in the penultimate round, but I managed to pull through.

One weird thing I noticed, which made things *even worse* for McWraith's situation, was that Ace Pilot gets negated by a knockdown; so the Grasshopper that had been acting at 3 thanks to AP was suddenly acting at 1.

Fixing the Grasshopper cost 311k.  Not even joking.

[Phobos]

In case anyone wants to have a good laugh: Yesterday a took a Davion mission against a pirate outfit and was faced with fully armored PPC carriers (2), 1 Stalker, 1 Awesome and... 4 (!) Banshees, all of them attacking at the same time (didn't help that I had increased sensor and spotting range for the first time...). They didn't stand a chance of course, since stock Banshees are utterly useless in this game, but the mere thought of having such a heavy periphery pirate unit with well-maintained assault lances as OpFor, boggled my mind at least a little.

[Luciora]

Maybe the video card got burnt?

Hmmm... I just figured out that my game appears to be fully functional... with the critical exception of video!  When I click on the appropriate places on the screen, I get the appropriate noises.  I just can't see if they're the right things to do...

[Daryk]

Doesn't seem to be it... Killing the process in task manager and reloading, it's working again.  The bad news was they brought TWO SRM Carriers the second time.. The good news was that the Allied Sleipners killed them... that's the first time I've had useful Allies!

[SD501st]

I got bit by the post-salvage crash last night. Of course, I went from 0/3 Grasshopper pieces to 3/3 pieces in that mission, all gone thanks to the crash. First time that's ever happened in 680+ days in campaign. I was really looking forward to trying that brawler walking-atrocity some of you guys had mentioned earlier. When I reloaded the mission, the OPFOR changed to mainly lousy Dragons. Did get the last 2 chunks for a Catapult K2 though, so not a total loss.

Also, a BattleMech I'm having new appreciation for? The Hunchback 4P. Holy crap can that thing put on a light show, even in desert terrain an alpha strike with all it's lasers only brought the heat track up about 1/4-1/3. It is one of my go-to early activation units to support my paired Highlanders.

I get the post salvage crash every 3-5 missions or so... which is why I now ALWAYS save before dropping the last enemy Mech/vehicle/turret/building or fulfilling the last objective.  xp

I don't really know what the problem could be... the game is installed on a fast SSD, CPU is a i5-6500 Quadcore with 3.20 GHz per core, 16GB of RAM, Zotac GTX 1070 GPU, HD and RAM are tested for faults and came up negative, HD is defragmented, drivers are up to date, CPU and GPU load are normal while playing... honestly, all I can think of is some kind of memory leak in the game.

Doesn't seem to be it... Killing the process in task manager and reloading, it's working again.  The bad news was they brought TWO SRM Carriers the second time.. The good news was that the Allied Sleipners killed them... that's the first time I've had useful Allies!

SRM carriers are only dangerous if they surprise you... but then they are worse then Demolishers. Even worse is a Demolisher/SRM Carrier combo... or undetected LRM carriers! *shudder*

Whenever you detect an 80 ton tank, it's either a Demolisher or Schrek. I'll let you decide what's worse. If you see 60 ton tanks, they are either LRM/SRM carriers or Manticores, and here the best possibility is a Manticore. However, the 80 tonners and the SRM carrier get much less dangerous if your whole lance has jump jets... either to get out of LoS or to DFA attack them before they can become a threat. The LRM carrier on the other hand...

[Daryk]

Fortunately, I've only run into one LRM Carrier so far.  That was pretty scary.  The first play through of that scenario, Behemoth's PPC missed the SRM Carrier (on a 95% chance!) after the Firestarter found it.  I was lucky the Firestarter didn't drop, and then walked over and stepped on it.  That's why I was so bent about the crash.

The mission after that was also turned out pretty scary.  It was a "Rescue the VIP" mission.  On approach, I first spotted a Kintaro, followed closely by a Quickdraw.  Then I saw the two blips on my flank.  They BOTH turned out to be Orions!  I was using my 199 ton lance (three Shadow Hawks plus the Firestarter) on a 2.5 skull mission.  Fortunately, they weren't fully armored, but they did manage to core one of the Hawks (Behemoth survived, luckily, with 84 days in the Med Bay).

I'm now busily training up a new crop of MechWarriors, since I bought the first drive upgrade for the Argo.  Breaching Shot is the order of the day!  With that as a base, the other ability is useful no matter what it is (Piloting, Guts, or Tactics).

[Sandslice]

...well, the replacement campaign is now being replaced.  1.5-skull battle mission before Weldry, opfor is a Spider, Panther, Jenner, Wolverine R, Partyback, Blackjack, and I'd like to imagine a Striker tank... all in perfect condition... on Martian terrain.  The most spectacular thing was that these enemies were doing jumping alphas at every opportunity.

So they have 4 evasive every turn (though I did *almost* knock down the Wolverine at one point) meaning that only some of my LRMs, plus the Firestarter's point-blank weapons, can even hit with my team at mostly 4 gunnery at that point; and my own evasive seemed to never work well enough (as for Bulwark... one does not simply left-arm tank a Partyback's alpha.)

Nor did the Firestarter even offer a deterrent with its heat addition; I cooked the Jenner to heat damage, and it responded by jumping *into* the nearest radiation zone as though it were a refreshing pool of water, and alpha-striking Behemoth's arms off.  At that point, I only had the enemy Wolverine and Jenner damaged, and I'm not even sure they counted as being in the same lance for kill-progression purposes.

In short... it's the infamous "Settling the Grudge" mission that got me here.  >.<

...modified: and I just looked at my saves for the 925-day campaign... the aforementioned "debacle in Taurian space" was ALSO the result of a "Settling the Grudge" mission.  FREEBIRTH STRAVAG dezgra waste of...!

[Feenix74]

Managed to get through the Extraction story mission on Guldra, just.

Kamea got through unscathed thanks to the armour of her Altas II (that thing is a heat pig). My PC got shot out of his Orion-Bow, and Behemoth got shot out of her Awesome, both of us are having 60 days of convalescing ahead of us for our trouble.

[Colt Ward]

They make LRM20s heavy heat monsters (seems more than LL) so if you drop out the LRM once in a while you can get your heat under control while still pouring out the damage.

[Sandslice]

They make LRM20s heavy heat monsters (seems more than LL) so if you drop out the LRM once in a while you can get your heat under control while still pouring out the damage.

Actually, all LRMs, and the SRM-2, use canon-equivalent (CBT value x3) heat.  Only the SRM-4 and Flamer are lower; the rest are higher.  If anything, what causes the Fatlas to run hot is its pair of ER Large Lasers, though its AC/20 doesn't help either.

[Colt Ward]

Well, the heatsinks do not work the equivalent IIRC what someone said earlier.  The ACs seem hotter than they should be too.

[Hythos]

Someone had asked about selling salvage at friendly vs unfriendly systems: seems that all sales are the same regardless of if you buy at a discount, or +50%.

Smithon:
Didn't seem to have any trouble here, but I went in expecting to need to split my forces.
I used my standard 2xAC20 4xML HGN (can 1-shot almost anything) in the canyon, sent my melee-mod'd Firestarter to the right, and two other (SHD & VND) to the left.

HGN 1-shot the first thing through the door. Did the same when the BLR came in range. I think one or two more units followed suit.
By that time, the FS had downed a spider and a COM, I think; so it was a turn-7(?) mop-up and done.
The left-side had a spider, Jenner, and something else(?), which were down in a turn each.


The HGN with close-range is a "not in my backyard" build, and seems to be even more than the KGC. Less salvage by coreing things straight-away but means far less incomming dmg. If/when wanting salvage, I'll take a leg, and have the other units go for a targetted-kill.

Probably not as viable in PvP, but I'm not interested in that game-mode.

[Daryk]

I experimented with a Flamer+ in my Firestarter (which mostly has Small Lasers), and toward the end of the battle I got a "Flamer fuel exhausted" message.  I didn't see an ammo value for Flamers, nor any way to install more.  Am I missing something?

[Luciora]

For balance.   Flamers in HBS don't build heat in your unit but do heat and damage to the target. The game has it set to 6, i changed the value in the weapons json file in mine to be 20 shots per vehicle ammo rules but you can't add more ammo like a AC or missile weapon.

It should be the starting shots value, from what I remember.

I experimented with a Flamer+ in my Firestarter (which mostly has Small Lasers), and toward the end of the battle I got a "Flamer fuel exhausted" message.  I didn't see an ammo value for Flamers, nor any way to install more.  Am I missing something?

[Daryk]

Six... huh... Thanks!  I think I'll go back to all Small lasers then...

[Colt Ward]

Eh, six works . . . rarely has my scout run out of flamer juice before the end of the game- but then again I do not have them on for every physical.

[Tyler Jorgensson]

I do a four/ split with Flamers and Small Lasers: by the time those six shots have run out most things are damaged/overheated enough that their easy pickings. Plus as others have said the six or seven Med Lasers on my Grasshopper work well enough at anything but melee.

[Daryk]

If there hadn't still been a functional Orion on the field when I ran out of juice, I'd agree six would be enough...

[Giovanni Blasini]

Has anyone figured out which WarShip gets blowed up in the intro?

[Sandslice]

Has anyone figured out which WarShip gets blowed up in the intro?

Apparently, HBS simply drew a WarShip of arbitrary specifications, without referencing any of the canon classes.  However, they did a rather good job of making it look like a Carrack (even if by accident,) other than the twin dorsal fins in the front which are more of a Texas or Congress feature.

The event being referenced is the loss of the Texas-class SLS Nebraska during the New Vandenberg Uprising.