I recently installed 49.7 and last night played a match with a friend.
FWLM (Marik Militia) units are tasked with punching a hole in LCAF lines so that and allied (Oriente Hussars) Field Commander can escape the Lyrans encircling and closing in on command unit.
The match consisted of level 1 units with the exception of a Mobile Command Post (MCP) and the following "players":
IS - Host: I open an instance of 49.7 select the map and planetary conditions. I also save games from this instance. Custom map 33 x 51, with some restrictive terrain/ choke points but a clear path with road that slightly winds its way through the center of the map. Weather was light rain, calm and set during daytime.
NME - Connect as a player when creating the game/campaign, later restart as a bot after initial units placed on board. This instance controlled all 10 enemy (NME-get it?
) mechs. Some were on map at the beginning of the map approaching from the north. Others entered during following turns, most from the north, some from NW/NE. "Nearest" is the setting for their retreat side of the map. This bot is aggressive using custom settings but the units would retreat upon massive or combat effectiveness reducing damage was received.
NME2 - Connect as a player when creating the game/campaign, later restart as a bot after all units placed on board, many of which are hidden units. This instance controlled all NME (14) vehicles and (10) infantry - several light tanks, APCs, motorized infantry and standard infantry platoons. These units were placed at the start of the game, the setting was "any" and their retreat side of the map was also "Nearest". This bot is also aggressive but more wary of damage taken.
ALLY - Connect as a player when creating the game/campaign, restart and set as a bot on turn 1. These 13 allied units are all vehicles moving 6/9, including APCs, Galleons, and Strikers escorting a MCP. This bot uses the default behavior settings but it set to escape the board on the north edge. These units will enter the south edge of the map on Turn 5. The bot chose to place most of the units on the center right side of the map in a good cluster with a few scattered of the far right to attack some previously detected NME units that were damage and left crippled. Once these stragglers were dealt with, these units made excellent use of limited terrain options to rejoin the main column.
HOTEL - Me controlling a lance of 4 Mechs (Griffin, Hermes II (Mercury), Shadow Hawk, Ostsol in that order unless next unit was used during the movement phase to gain an advantage. South edge of the board on turn 1.
PAPA - Friend controlling a lance of 4 Mechs (Trebuchet, Vulcan, Wolverine-M, Thunderbolt) in that order unless next unit was used during the movement phase to gain an advantage. South edge of the board on turn 1.
This game is similar to one I created on Stable 48, but we were unable to finish it due the save file becoming corrupted somehow.
Issue/Bug 1 - Firing phase and physical attack phase is set to simultaneous. There were at least 3 times during the fire phase where I was unable to fire the Ostsol's weapons despite having LOS and targets available. I usually go "in order/down the list of mechs" to fire weapons. Several times, all 4 of my mechs had targets. I'd fire the Griffin's weps first, then the Hermes II's, and then after firing all the Shadow Hawk's weapons or just those in range and selecting "done", my firing phase ended. The Ostsol didn't get a chance to fire despite having a legitimate target and no issues/conditions preventing it from firing weapons. This also happened during the physical attack phase were the Ostsol wasn't given the option to stomp infantry, but the Hermes II was able to kick a tank. My friend believes this happened to his Thunderbolt as well at least once. The issue seemed to plague the last unit in each or our lances. If I went out of order and fired the Ostsol first, there was no issue with the remaining mechs missing their firing phase. No settings like "skip ineligible to fire" were enabled.
Issue/Bug 2 - At least 1 instance where the Ostsol's sensor quirk failed to detect a hidden vehicle despite being in range.
Issue/Bug 3 - both the stable 48 and dev 49 games locked up about the same time. Ally would detect a hidden NME2 unit at some point during its movement phase and then it would be Ally's turn to move, but the bot would take no further action. Sometimes restarting Ally would clear the issue and the game would continue for a bit, but then the bot would lock hard. Restarting the entire game from either the autosave of specific save before the restart resulted in "Error unable to load game file."
Pointless Gripe - both versions of these games had Ally with a mix of 3/3, 3/4 and 4/4 P/G with the human controlled lances with 3/3 and some pilot abilities like sniper, natural gunnery, energy spec or missile spec. The NME mechs were 3/3, 3/4, 4/4, 4/5 with the heavier units having most of the better pilots but not all. NME2 had a few 3/4, but was mostly 4/4, 4/5 and a few oddball 3/5s or 4/6s. There were so many bot favored rounds when it came to RNG.
Bots need several 10s? No problem, have an S-load of 10s, 11s and 12s.
Humans need 4s? HAH! GET BENT! Nothing but 2s and 3s consistently.
I know its RNG and it's been beaten to death...but there were more rounds of that utter BS than not unfortunately...enough for my even my normally mellow/laid-back friend to be like, "Seriously? Again!?! Did you mess with the settings and give the bots and modifier!?! I needed 3s and still missed...again!?!"
In the nearly 2 decades we've played Megamek, we've noted some serious shenanigans revolving around GRF-1S Griffins.
Thoughts? Similar experiences?
