Battletech

Liberate: Smithon contract can suck my dick. I've tried staying in LZ and letting them come to me. I've tried moving west. I've tried sniping the LRM turrets. Nothing works.

Remind me more details of that one. Is that the ammo crates?

Reasonably fast jump-capable armed scout northwest past the left side of the turret on its hill to spot for killing the ammo transports, preferably by direct vision so it can shoot too. LRM boat (preferably with multitarget ability) west but not too far. Heavy west to kill the turret, last guy, (general support role, but with an LRM 10 or 15) stays near spawn to engage anything coming over the starting ridge and fire finishing missiles at anything needed.

Kill the west turret, move the scout up to cover the road the ammo trucks use without exposing himself much to the center base, target lock the 2 LRM turrets in the base for your missile boat as soon as you get the chance. Heavy dicks around behind the first hill and supports the missile boat or the general support guy as needed. Once the two ammo trucks are down you have no real time pressure. Keep your scout out where he was spotting the road though, and watch the map- you will likely get a chance to catch two mechs in an ammo crate explosion at some point so use the scout to blow it when you do. The key is getting rid of the ammo trucks and the two lrm turrets quickly. The AI isnt eager to Leroy you over the ridge, especially after you alpha the Firestarter and Locust. Even if you dont kill them they tend to back off to the other side of the ridge again. Watch out, the panther will try to DFA you if he gets bored. Probably worth a called shot to wherever the Cicada keeps his PPC to neuter him.

In my run the Firestarter backed off after an ok salvo and just dithered most of the game. The locust got chased off with 1 minor hit, but when he finally came back he just...would....not...die. Ate 3 55 ton melee attacks and was still alive! He was a couple of 2hp red sticks and a head at the end there.

Yeah, I'll try again. But the fucking LRM towers can hit me non-stop from the beginning of the match and usually knockdown my striker by the time he can hit the first convoy.

All my mechs except the LRM Trebuchet have max armour and still get shredded.

I think I'll try 2x Shadowhawk with AC5, one with LRM as my scout, and one with SRM as general support guy. I use a Dragon heavy and Trebuchet LRM boat at the moment.

I also have an AC20 Hunchback I can use for the general support...hmmm.

you should be able to sensor lock the LRM turret and bring it down before it fires too many times.

Pretty sure a shadowhawk is a better all around mech than the dragon, you gain almost nothing in return for losing that point of initiative.

I could have done that one better. Took me a while to realize that there was spare ammo i could blow. And that there would only be two trucks. Thought i had to capture the ammo and was gunshy thinking the trucks would explode.


Did it on 3rd attempt. Nuking firestarter fast. I had one bruiser have to go running down road after trucks and just brute forced it. I did damage the 2 heaviest mechs blowing 2 crates. I remember it dragging on into the city on right with LOS use.

Iirc, i had a bruiser shadowhawk, lrm shadowhawk, bruiser centurion, and i forget second lrm boat, 3rd shadow or something similiar.

Wasnt afraid to burn precision for center torso nuking lighter things. I definitely ended up with damage and wounds. I would prioritize keeping evasion up, jumping gives an extra tick so in jumping and moving 3 squares even if i didnt need to move. I believe there was a patch of ice i used for my lrm boat.

Remember torso twisting is a thing. Instead of always presenting a broad face, turn so your stronger side faces enemy especially If no ammo etc on one side. In rare cases like 2 penetrated sides showing your back can help while you run. Can save yourself missile hits if you break los by end of turn via hiding and splatting nearby lights.

Which brings me to..... don't be afraid to have one mech temporarily run or find los blocking to hide. Computer likes to focus targets, but ive had several games they suddenly left a neart dead mech alone. Ive had some success with purposely making an easy target like getting my lrm orian closer to the front line ans some rounds not building evasion seems to help draw fire and spread dmg.


Some swapping of mechs might help for some. Like the trebuchet for the most part really doesn't seem worth it. Any extra missiles you try to pack in comes in a fragile little package. I'm still running a couple mediums even having found heavies because it was mostly garbage like dragon or laser boats.


Exception is grasshopper. Supposed to be laser boat but instead has ppc, srm++ then 6 or 7 machine guns and a ++ crit small laser. Not as good knockdown at range thansrm boats but strong melee, Peru much will instantly blow up components on breached sections hunting for ammo explosions. More of a killer but does fair well salvage hunting.

Gavinmad said:

you should be able to sensor lock the LRM turret and bring it down before it fires too many times.

Pretty sure a shadowhawk is a better all around mech than the dragon, you gain almost nothing in return for losing that point of initiative.

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I've been struggling to like the Dragon since I got it. Really wanted to use it as it is my first heavy, but that lack of initiative is killer. Mostly it just seems to soak damage and not much else.

Also note on that map there are ore deposits that give people shooting out of them a -2 to hit but shooting at someone standing in them -4 to be hit.

khorum said:

Get the April 25th nvidia 397.31 drivers __AND__ the full K-Lite codec pack.

I got a new laptop with a gtx 1060 pretty much just to play this game on the road and the loading times/stutters on the nvidia was faaaaar worse than on my desktop. The loading times are persistent even on SSD's.

Apparently it's an issue with codec the game uses for the in-game animations. Some versions of win10 and win7 home don't come pre-installed with certain codecs and the game ends up using some shitty directshow DLL.

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I DL'd the codec (already had the new drivers) and... holy shit. The game is running about 10x faster in every aspect - huge thanks bro, it's completely changed the game for me.

Evernothing said:

I've been struggling to like the Dragon since I got it. Really wanted to use it as it is my first heavy, but that lack of initiative is killer. Mostly it just seems to soak damage and not much else.

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It's generally not worth moving up a weight class until you can jump up to somewhere in the middle of that weight class. I wouldn't use a dragon or a quickdraw, the thunderbolt and the orion were the only heavies I really used. Similarly wouldn't use a Battlemaster, Awesome, Victor, or Zeus except in specific circumstances such as replacing a medium with an assault which is what I did with the Zeus, and the initiative loss really didn't matter since it was filling a forward tank role anyway. My current lance is a king crab + 3 highlanders, before i salvaged the king crab and two additional highlanders I was running a zeus, highlander, and two orions despite having access to a battlemaster.

Chysamere said:

I'm like 500 missions in and I still haven't seen an Atlas yet.

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Have you seen any lostech like what the SLDF mechs were sporting, or is it just + versions of standard inner sphere gear

re: LRMs and precision shots

Only the first missile of the salvo will get the increased roll to hit the called location, the rest will be as random as usual.

Never seen losTech out there, and the only 100 ton I have seen is the king crab.

Both times I have seen mechs I want it has been missions where I picked full cbills to keep from failing due to running out of money. Black Knight evades me. Can't wait to get one and find some Large Pulse Lasers

Source of that strateg statement? Even if rest 1% random id expect to see more. Meanwhile mg/flamer seem to have pretty high head hit rate without even calling shot.

Yeah machine guns will shoot 5x each with a random roll for each shot. Let me look for LRM sauce

Can't find a source right now while working, but I recall something about Precision only working when you fire 1 weapon at the enemy in the round, so a volley of multiple weapons would not have the benefit or precise shot.

Chysamere said:

No Lostech, no Atlas. No Heat Bank either.

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Weak. I remember reading somewhere there was talking of them patching in random lostech, but I haven't even figured out how to get the 1.01 update yet, i guess they still haven't released it as a standalone patch.

Gavinmad said:

Weak. I remember reading somewhere there was talking of them patching in random lostech, but I haven't even figured out how to get the 1.01 update yet, i guess they still haven't released it as a standalone patch.

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You on Steam or GoG?

Evernothing said:

You on Steam or GoG?

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GoG but I don't want to install galaxy.

Well hold on, is Heat Bank lostech? I have one but not sure where I got it.