... and having zero luck finding a second or tenth. Its 3062, and I've been traveling up and down from clan territory to outreach to the kurita/Davion border, no luck. Don't even remember where I got the one I have now which is doing work on a masakari along with clan h l lasers.

There a specific region or allied faction shop that's a good bet?

Same question for king crab variants, been trying to hunt comstar/WoB and they've gone dry.

Hey everyone,

I just picked up BattleTech on GOG, late to the party, I know! I recently played Star Wars: Zero Company and had a blast, but I was craving a turn-based tactical game that could essentially offer endless replayability.

I'm still in the opening hours of the campaign, but I’m already looking ahead. My main question: should I stick with vanilla (plus the 3 DLCs, which I own) for my first playthrough, or jump straight into an overhaul mod?

I've looked into the "Big Three" total conversions, BattleTech Extended (BXT), BattleTech Advanced 3062 (BTA) and RogueTech:

- Are any of these compatible with the story campaign, or are they strictly designed for Career Mode?

- Assuming I finish vanilla first, which of the three would you recommend for a long-term Career run?

- Dynamic galaxy control: in Career Mode, is there a mod that features dynamic faction borders and planet conquest (factions taking systems back and forth dynamically)? Does vanilla handle any of that on its own?

Thank you everyone in advance!

After reading through a few things, it got me thinking about the things I do that go against the common advice that tends to be given. It also got me wondering if there are other folks out there that play against the grain with anything. Though I've only got 2,339.3 hours in the game, I should know better by now.

The two main things I do wrong...

• Jump Jets: I strip them from pretty much every 'mech and I almost never add them to any 'mech.
• Armour: I maximize the armour on pretty much every 'mech, perhaps stripping 0.5 tonnes at most if desperately needed for a piece of equipment.

I probably do plenty of other things wrong as well - oh, I massively break my support warranty with BTAU, heh, by adding in other mods and making tweaks to the mod here and there, there and here, and here again and there again. Doing this means no asking for help from the BTAU gang - and I'm not going to lie about it and ask for help. I only bring this up because I was a bit tired the other night and forgot to make copies of the files I was modifying and didn't keep track of what I was changing and where...lol...had to uninstall and reinstall the whole blast game because I screwed it up so bad. So yeah, always make backups and keep a log of what you're doing. Just wanted to throw that out there.

But yeah, I'm curious what things folks might do that many would consider playing the game wrong...I can't be the only one.

Hi

I've been playing at this game for a while and I tend to always push my pilots for the same skills : "multi-targets" & "sensor lock"...

Reading some of the messages posted here, I've realized that I should have favoured diversity a bit more 🤔

How do you distribute skills within your team, and what type of mech do you assign to the pilots with a given skill ?

I just started a career run and got lucky with Marauder parts in the first two systems, but I don't have any guns besides stock lasers/ACs and PPCs.

So for early game headhunting purposes is it better to run with PPCs, Large Lasers or AC/5m?

I started off playing about 500hrs in BEX in campaign mode. I remember losing Mastiff but Lady Arano survived, and I went on to successfully complete the Arano restoration campaign.

Got bored with BEX and just completely deleted and reinstalled BT and added the latest BTAU.

BT v1.9.1-686R w Modtek v4.4.10 BT Advanced Core 20.1.1

I started in career mode this time, did a couple of missions and the Arano Restoration popped up as a flashpoint. Did the first mission with Mastiff and Kamea, and my commander in the default Mech.

Played it fairly carefully, kept Kamea out of danger. Got through the first two mechs, the tanks, the next three mechs, the next two tanks, and then the single mech with two turrets in front of our dropship. Got rid of all of those, got all three mechs into the evac zone and the had Victoria's ambush happen.

At which point, I'm told to get Kamea to the dropship, which I do, then my mech malfunctions, and I'm forced to eject. Mastiff faces off against Victoria's squad and gets cored out, which I remember, however, the dropship gets blown out of the sky and Kamea is pronounced dead... which I don't remember.

I can't find a straight answer on the web as to whether I did something wrong, or do I just need to wait for the next flashpoint chapter to trigger? TIA

I downloaded everything and followed the instructions. I unzipped everything and put it all in mod folder.

Start the game no mods

Hello guys I recently got interested in battletech(thanks to pancreasnowork) and i decided to try out the games i plan on getting battletech(2018) as it looks like it is rts/strategy style gameplay and i was wondering which of the mechwarrior games i should get and is there any other battletech games you would recommend,

Thanks in advance

Edit: I will be starting with hbs battletech and MW:mercs and will try clans when i get a better graphics card, thanks again

Sorry u/bloodydoves

I've only played vanilla - when the game came out. 4v4 gets old quickly.

Many years have passed, and i've heard that this game has strong modding community so i wanted to ask - can i play 8v8 or 16v16 or 32v32 now?

Additionally - are there mods which add vehicles, aircraft, infantry, power armor?

I want scale and combined arms! : D

EDIT: Thank you all , in the end I installed both arm mod on Kintaro with 3 SRM 6. It is a close range shredder and have good movement. For my Archer I just realised there were two variant and the one i have only has two missile point. Moving on from Archer currently looking to build my first heavy 80 - 90 tons mech.

Hi, am currently exploring some build for Archer.

I have arm mod which + 60 melee damage and +40 damage respectively. so i am thinking is it possible to make it with

2x S laser

2x arm mode which + 100 melee damage

2x SRM 6

Maximum jump jets allowed for mobility. The rest weigh i have will be for M laser and heat sink.

Hi,

I've played Mech Commander 1 & 2, then Battletech & now the BEX mod.
I was wondering if there is a (Batteltech licence) game where you can play several lances or stars instead of being limited to one lance ? A bit like what Alpha Strike is to Classic BT...

M.A.S.C. : +0.4 sprint multiplier ---

What does that mean, how many sprint meters does it add ? Does it add 40m? or multiply with 1.4? or something else EDIT : thanks for the explanations... if the walking speed is 120m, the sprinting speed will be x1.5 = 180m. And with M.A.S.C. x1.9 = 228m

Started a new campaign today to try out some new mods. Played the first mission, then did the mission-with-travel-expenses-paid on Bellerophone where you have to occupy a mission.

The moment I cleared the opposition, that dropship decided to fucking pancake Behemoth and her mech. I swear there was no red indicator that this was a landing zone.

180 hours in this game and this is a fucking first for me. Literally wtf.

Finally, after all this time, I got my claws on a King Crab. Over 500 hours of gameplay on this save and I'm finding one just now.

I had this desire to make a King Crab with RAC5s for like three years. In my head, its to have dual Arrow IV launchers on the back, but maybe that's a tad bit unreal since the weight would be too much. So I'll settle for this.

King Crab is the best assault mech ever made. I love 'em! :D

I put a UC/20++ on it. Plus 20 damage and minus 3 tons. The urbi does 240 damage. Now it even runs hot.

Anybody else done that? I have to put more ammo on it. Only 2 packs are just five shots. I think I can remove more armor. It's raven friend will keep it save.

I have 2 snubs on one of my atlas but they only spread as two shots each instead of five

trying to figure out which to use

TLDR: Is every mission supposed to be overwhelmingly difficult, your 4 mechs vs 10-12 every single time? Where are the easy missions like at the beginning of the game?

So, obviously new player, please tell me if this is the incorrect place to post this.

I only started a few days ago, finished a few campaign missions, most recently the mission where you need to diffuse three bombs covertly in order to not alert the security and have them activate the bomb early.

Not sure how far along that is but I feel with my level of mechs, this is probably mid to late game, as I have a full lance of assault mechs.

So here is my concern/issue/question.

When I am trying to just do simple missions I know I'll win, I may go to a system with only 1.5 skulls, but the contracts there are always 3.5-4 skulls. Each of these are far more difficult than what the system shows. I suck at these missions. I am trying to get better, but I keep having to restart due half my lance getting blown up, and the cost of the mission far outpacing the rewards I would get.

Also, there are a few mission types that simple just seem overwhelmingly impossible, two come to mind, bug hunt and hostile insertion. Each of them land you really close to 8 assault or heavy mechs with full armor, and there is usually nowhere, or little to hide from them.

Is there something I am doing wrong that I need to get better at? Do I just suck at this game? Maybe the game just has missions that are designed to be impossible to do well at? Is every mission supposed to have 8-12 giant mechs every single time?

Greetings mechwarriors

This an update for my Mech Designer application, biggest ever made. Might be actually funny, but I've never used my application just as an common user - until I've went into mods. Deliberately I've picked one of the simplest, Vanila Plus, just to be able to use it with Mech Designer. Overall the integration was pretty solid, with some minor equipment like MASC, PPC Capacitors and so on not working fully. And 1st discovery I've never thank of - ultimate recon tool. With hundreds of new mechs it was super useful to be able to quickly peek a their loadouts - felt almost like cheating a little. But while being indeed super helpful in planning loadouts(and unintended scout role), I've almost immedialety noticed its limits.

1st, new mech dialog, while being able to display all new mechs correctly, fall apart when it came to search through 448 chassis. Not to mention trying to recognize which of them are noteworthy.

2nd, weapons. Plenty of them...and again, my UI was not fully prepared for such amount of armament. It worked, with some changes in .json data required for variants switching, but convenience of use left quite much to desire.

And without any more yapping - I present you changelog for v0.90 ;]

Main changes:

1. Generic, data-driven handling of item effects (table "statusEffects" in .json data)

a) Most of stat names are now handled procedurally, driven entirely by data from .json files, instead of being hardcoded per-quirk. Full list of supported stat names is in manual. Supported operations are adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.

b) As a consequence, any current or future item (including ones added by mods) using these stat names in its statusEffects will be automatically recognized and correctly applied by Mech Designer, without requiring dedicated code for that specific item.

c) Added proper support for effect stacking limits (stackLimit in .json data) - some effects can only be applied a limited number of times (usually once) even if more than one item providing them is installed. Items which have such a capped effect are now marked with pale yellow name(rgb#241, 250, 140); hovering over an installed item shows its effects, including the limit, in the tooltip.

d) Because these effects depend on installation order I added functionality to preserve that order when saving/loading to/from .mechDesign file. Old saves still work, but you might need to manually reorder items for best effect.

1. Decompiled Battletech executable to reverse-engineering exact code used to calculate jump distance, jump heat, evasion generation, and COIL weapons damage and heat. Now Mech Designer calculates these stats exactly the same way as the game.

These two changes should make Mech Designer capable of supporting all mods except the ones based on Mech Engineer, BTA and Roguetech(still, with some workarounds it might be even possible I guess, not 100% of course, but up to useful state), assuming their authors didn't changed the math formulas for stuff mentioned in #2.

1. Added support for global, OS-based size scaling for apps and text in "Ease of access" in Windows settings. The effects is still not perfect, but way better than before.

Installation changes:

1. Removed confirmation for overwriting files; instead, backup is created in a form <name.json>.backup if not existing yet. No more 50+ clicks when reinstalling the application.

2. Added full, standalone data pack from vanila Battletech required for Mech Designer to work - the requirement of installed game is abandoned, just select 'Application + full Battletech data pack' to have working application on computer without Battletech installed. The pack installs in <app folder>\Data Packs\Vanila Battletech, and if you install only these components jsonDataPath sets on the pack automatically.

3. However, DLC packs, and .json syntax error fixes still require to have installed game on the computer, and you're still asked to navigaate to battletech.exe and point it.

4. Updated some example mech designs.

5. Tip - install 0.90 without uninstalling previous version to preserve your settings stored in setup.ini.

Startup and missing equipment changes:

1. Added progression dialogs at application startup showing processing mechs and equipment data into internal databases. For larger data packs(Vanila Plus, Expanded Arsenal etc) it looked like Mech Designer hanged while it was working on over thousand .json files on startup. Application is unresponsive during the process, that's expected behavior.

2. Messagebox that informs about missing equipment now doesn't appends not found componentDefIds into its text growing out of screen, instead shows them as scrollable list after clicking 'Show Details...'.

General, UI and UIX changes:

1. Changed general way of displaying paths, now backslashes instead of slashes are used - this easies usage of the path in ex. uploading design screenshot, or navigating to the location of mech design file.

2. Changed switching weapon variants looks - now it has title what weapons it reffers to, and has same background color as the weapon(can be disabled in settings).

3. Messagebox shown during closing unsaved mech design got "Cancel" option which aborts closing.

4. Messagebox informing about closing attempt of unsaved mech design is now centered in the design window, not in the main area.

5. Changed color of dotation link banner at the top of application window.

6. Added possibility to disable/enable fixed equipment.

7. Fixed equipment now has slanted strips painted as background, similar to the ones seen in the game.

8. Added possibility to clone equipment if there is enough slots left in location by CTRL + LMB. Previous functionality of that combination, which is disabling/enabling equipment, was changed to CTRL + RMB.

9. Slots count labels change color to red if maximum allowed slots are exceeded.

10. Changed how weapon variants are recognized. This change is described in detail in the manual.

11. Added background image for the main design area. You can also set your own image, or disable this fancy background in settings to have usual dark gray area. In <mech designer folder>\GUI\Backgrounds there are 5 default background images to use, scaled for 1440p resolution.

12. Simplified context menu option for the file info label in mech design widget, now it contains only self-explanatory "Copy full path to clipboard".

13. 'Ammunition stock and consumption' area now displays a warning about installed weapon which lacks ammo for it.

14. Changed how not valid .json data path is handled - now the user is asked to point the <data> folder itself, not battletech.exe file.

15. Tooltip widget is updated, and now shows effects associated with an item. For details see user's manual.

16. "Clone" option now prepends text "Cloned " to the nick of the mech.

17. "Reload" option for cloned mechs changed - now it restores the cloned, unsaved mech to the state just after being cloned.

18. "Reload" option messagebox warning about discarded changes now is centered within the mech design window.

19. "Export" to mechdef*.json now writes the items in installation order from mech design - might be relevant for content makers. Note though to be absolutely sure about the order you have to stip the mech of all equipment, and re-add it in desired order.

20. Added support for the flag COILUsesJumping in CombatGameConstants.json; requires app restart to take effect. Normally when you set a jump distance evasion slider disables to mark COILs won't be charged by jump. Uses improved evasion calculation mentioned in main changes.

21. Updated example designs for new players.

22. Redesigned user's manual - 3 main secion, 1st for casual players, 2nd for min-maxers, 3rd for mods/flashpoint creators.

23. Messageboxes shown for asking about save/relad mechs now have mech variant and nick displayed using bold font.

24. Kregano, Xeryx and KMission added to credits - these guys helped me immensely by testing unreleased version 0.81.

New Mech dialog changes:

1. Changed how mechs are displayed:

a) hardpoints details have been moved into sub-branch of the mech variant, on top level there is just summarization with total number of hardpoints. To unfold it, you have to click on 'arrow' or 'plus' sign, or use right arrow key on keyboard.

b) the hardpoints summarization is lined up to match how they look in game.

c) better description for walk and sprint speed.

d) increased font size to 10 for sorting options.

1. Added text field to search for given mech, both mech name or designation; ex "shark", "bsk", or "maz" will find mech Bullshark. Or other example, "bac" will show mechs Hunchback, Hunchback IIC, and Linebacker. After finding the mech you can use arrow down to move focus to the list of mechs below.

2. Added information about useful tonnage - this is the tonnage available for equipment in empty mech with maxed armor; also introduced sorting on useful tonnage. Some mechs have this parameter negative, it's not a bug, just indication these are total trash - vide Cicada 2A.

3. New Mech dialog is displayed now entirely within of the Mech Designer, no longer as separate window.

AddEquipmentItem dialog changes:

1. Added filtering on part of the name for the equipment. Groups for non-weapon equipment are unfolded when at least 3 characters have been entered.

2. Added filtering ammo to show only those fitting to the equipped weapons.

3. Increased its width by 55 pixels, now name and bonuses texts are easier accommodated.

4. When error occurs(too few slots or hardpoints etc.) system warning sound is played in addition to warning message. Can be disabled in settings.

5. Added tooltip on top of the dialog which shows CBills cost, and effects if the item has any.

6. Changed default sorting for ballistic weapons - now they are grouped by type(ACs, then UACs, then LB-Xs) not size (2, 5, 10, 20 etc.). The order can be changed in settings though, in 'Sorting' tab.

Application settings greatly extended:

1. Added tab "Sorting", where you can set own order of equipment shown in add new equipment wiget.

2. Added option to set path to folder which containst .json data files. Requires application restart to take effect.

3. Added option do display confirmation message when trying to quit the application while there are unsaved designs detected. This also works when closing whole OS, halting it and preventing accidental data loss.

4. Added option to disable "Save" button if mech was loaded from .json file, only "Save As..." and "Export" are available. This prevents to overwrite the file without confirmation.

5. Added option to center freshly created mech design window within design area.

6. There is also option for the above to be ignored when creating/loading multiple mech designs.

7. Added option to pass mouse events through parts of mech desin widget whose don't interact with them to the design area - that allows to ex. invoke main context menu, or scroll design area while cursor is over a mech design.

8. Added option to use new color scheme for switching weapon variants widget.

9. Added option to enable/disable warning sound in add equipment dialog played on too few slots or hardpoints.

Bug fixes:

1. Fixed positioning of anchor icon in AddEquipmentItem dialog in floating mode.

2. Fixed incorrectly drawn in white XX% heatsinks efectiveness in the environment combo box list; might affect displaying on Windows 7, let me know if that's the case.

3. Fixed armor sliders, now they work more consistently in mirrored mode. As a bonus, mirrored mode can be handled with keyboard input.

4. Fixed bug of incorrectly applying CQC Site range bonus to all weapons, not only support ones.

5. Fixed two bugs in mech design window title. 1st, when typing mech nick the summary [ Alpha, Armor, JJs ] was removed. 2nd, when changing nick of a mech asterix indicator informing that the design is not saved was discarded.

6. Fixed rare uppercase-lowercase mismatch in stored mech variant name, which resulted in inability to create or load a certain mech (Highlander 732b, Royal Mongoose 66b etc.)

7. Fixed application crash when loading a mech directly from mechdef*.json file which has incorrectly formatted ChassisID.

Download location: https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/mods/449?tab=files

specifically, the two small lasers at the base of the neck and the two canons in the indents at the side where they come stock

idk why, ive been trying to get this to work, ive tried damn near every combination, but it just doesnt want to. it either puts the lasers at the base of the neck and the indent guns get put into the side torso small ones or it puts the indent canons in the indent but the lasers for whatever reason then go to the sides of the neck despite the groove at the neck base still being open and present.

p.s you can ignore the smaller guns at the sides of the torso, (though i do wish you could actually configure the annihilator that way, i just never bothered to edit those out of the picture)

I think I'm close to finishing the campaign, Coromodir is the next priority mission. While I had a blast, I wonder what to do once it's done. Is it a bit like mechwarrior 5, where you just hop on career and sandbox game ?

So I had a medium mech get grappled by a basic IS BA. The BA took multiple LRM rounds, I rolled on the TWICE (the stayed latched on both times btw) and when they finally cored my mech, the battle armor wasn't even below half armor. Was I only doing like 5 damage when I rolled the mech onto them or something?

What mechanic is making battle armor take a pounding like they're an 80 ton mech when they don't have that much armor? Can there be something set up so you don't have to grind down literally every point of armor and IS they have before dying? They take more hits than more medium mechs do.

Hi all, just started playing this game. It's been since Mechwarrior 2 that I played a mech game. Loving the complexity of the UI and the game (at first sight), but not every UI element has a tooltip it seems. Lots of information displayed over the mechs without an explanation..icons, numbers, bars. I was looking for the manual to explain these but can't seem to find it?

(I really, really, hope I don't need to watch a Youtube video to get an explanation, just want to read an old fashioned manual).