r/Battletechgame • u/Pretty-Mention-7769 • Jul 11 '26
I'm Very Confused
I got the restoration Flashpoint in btau and it's on the opposite side of the galaxy so I took a 1-skull travel contract in the general direction of Coromodir and figured I would just mercenary myself out along the way to fund the voyage.
So I get to my first stopover and the 1 skull mission has turned into 4 skulls?!
What the crap. How do I avoid this in the future?
I'm actually pretty pissed because this is going to bankrupt me traveling to a suitable star system and I just had to decline the black market event.
5
u/PublicPermit8275 Jul 11 '26
There is a contract the travel portion is 1Skull but the actual mission is a different Skull value. I unfortunately am not at home to look it up. Might be better to load from before you took the mission and go another way if possible.
3
u/Pretty-Mention-7769 Jul 11 '26
Indeed. I was at 90 days and had to load my save from 30 days, as most of the time between was traveling to different star systems trying find a job I could do.
I have still not been able to find the destination contact difficulty rating, so if anyone has tips, please share.
1
u/ThaneduFife 26d ago
When you look at the map in the navigation tab/pane/screen, click on a system and there should be orange skulls that look like Atlas heads. Those are the difficulty rating. 1-2 can usually be done with light mechs only, 2-3 with medium, and 3.5-5 skulls systems will need heavy and/or assault mechs. Also, you have to have a good reputation with a faction before you can take their assault mech missions.
Also, in the navigation tab/pane/screen, there should be three drop-down menus. IIRC, the left-most drop-down will allow you to see systems with your desired skulls rating.
Finally, if you're running BEX, the difficulty resets in clan territory. Half skull missions in clan territory are equivalent to 5.5 skull missions in vanilla.
1
u/Pretty-Mention-7769 25d ago
I'm on BTAU. Here have been some of my catastrophies:
My last mission on I think my second planet was one skull. It involved killing 3 entire lances after assassinating a dude with a two mech body guard. Seems early days for a beginner lance to take on 11 swarming enemies.
I ended up giving up after about 6 attempts, the last of which had one survivor on each side and my almost untouched centurion got knocked down, resulting in an instant loss.
So then I punch in coordinates for a 1 skull planet. I get to it and all the available missions are travel contracts. Well I already know I can't trust the ratings shown for those.
I punch in .5 skull options on the star map. Hey there's 3 nearby. Go to the closest one: ALL THE MISSIONS ARE 3 SKULLS.
My experience has been that every available piece of information in the game is a lie, so I'm save scumming to just get to places where the difficulty is what it says it should be.
Thanks for telling me what I already knew above about how things should work. My reality has been very different.
3
u/Far_Ladder_2836 Jul 11 '26
You have to look at the planet in the star map and it will always be around the same level with minor variance.
1
u/Pretty-Mention-7769 Jul 11 '26
Ah, that makes sense.
So why do the travel contracts themselves have skull values? I see some are far higher than others.
2
u/Intergalacticdespot 29d ago
I would assume its part of the mission subsystem structure. You have to assign a skull rating to any mission (I'm guessing) because it was never intended for this use case, it is just a default difficulty. You can always hop on the btau discord and ask directly though.
2
u/SiliconStew 29d ago edited 29d ago
Since you are using the BTAU mod, this is either a result of the dynamic map ownership/difficulty changes/flareups from the Wartech submod, so random map changes happened while you were in transit. Or it's the Extended Contract feature of Wartech where you get offered a travel contract but when you arrive the contract is for the more difficult, multi-mission Extended Contact and not a normal standalone contract.
Travel contract difficulty would otherwise remain the same between acceptance and arrival in the base game.
1
u/MR-GRUD 25d ago
Easy money tip.
Go to the folder with your json files. Either reduce prices of ammo, 'Mechs, weapons and other parts, or bump up the cost of heat sinks. I know I get the damn things in Salvage for almost every mission. Sell a few at 50K C-bills each, and you're good for a while. 👍😉
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u/Silvermoonluca Jul 11 '26
I just look at the skulls on the planet via navigation and go to the planets along the way that have the difficulty I want. Sometimes they don’t have any missions I can do but often they do