General Video Game Thread

[Jaded]

@ganymede
If they were throwing Griffons and Wolfhounds at me I might be worried because you'd be right. But so far the early game light mechs have been Locusts, Spiders, Jenners, and the occasional Commando rearing its ugly head. I did one mission where I had a surprise AC20 Hunchback appear over a hill and core my Spider - but other than that, the Shadowhawk has been the ace of the team nearly every mission.

As for the game itself - trust those who share good things. I'm enjoying it thoroughly. I could not recommend it enough.

[Deleted]

I am in the extreme early game. And I had a mission where I had to fight a 'wounded' Thunderbolt, Hunchback, and Wolverine.

Their wounds were 'minor armor damage'. Needless to say it was not a clean victory.

[Jaded]

@admiral Was that one of the story missions? I have only done the one where you meet the person and the first one right after that. Otherwise I've been bouncing around doing other random contract jobs.

[Deleted]

@jaded No not a story mission. I did the first story mission and no others yet. I am trying to get some parts and money and learn the loadouts better before i try to take it on.

Silly me for taking on a two-skullthing mission.

[Insomnia]

@admiral if I remember correctly, you beat it within the first week, and before the weekly events? That might be why.

[Deleted]

@insomnia It's possible. But I like the idea of randomly hard missions. Life is random, I shouldn't know just how risky every mission is when I accept it. Withdrawal should be a thing I have to use sometimes.

[Lithium]

@jaded Griffons do come later I have ran into a few heavies, a grasshopper, a jagermech, some Dragons, but for the most part, I am I think 80 odd weeks in now and I haven't seen any of the big nasty mech's yet. Centurions are deadly, Jenners can be scary in numbers. The biggest thing about the ShadowHawk which is making it very nice in the game so far is it's speed, 5/8 with jump jets is nice mobility.

I am running two ShadowHawks in my main lance right now, both are loaded near max armor 4 jj's, a large laser and an LRM-15 each. How you customize your mechwarriors matters a LOT.

It is imperative to put split fire mechwarriors into those shadowhawks to make sure they are applying full damage constantly and when heat gets high, melee attack to cool off.

Accompanying those two shadow hawks is a hunchback which I stripped the ac-20 out for an ac-10 (more ammo/range and ac damage is beefed up in the game compared to tabletop) and a pair of medium lasers with max armor and some jump jets, and a Trebuchet I've kitted with an upgraded zeus lrm-20 and 3 medium lasers. The hunchback is the slowpoke at 4/6 but it's been working well.

Sometimes you have to chase vehicles down (and my god, kill those first, they can do tremendous damage but are usually pretty fragile, especially if you can get up on them and melee attack them) and on those missions I usually bring a jenner or a firestarter.

[Packrat]

I just ran into a mission where I had to kill a scout Lance, which was a jenner, a spider and a panther. All had three quarters armour but no issue with my large laser refit Blackjack, LRM Centurion, SRM punch Shadowhawk and a stock Vindicator.

There was also a reinforcement lance who turned up atop a hill and started to shoot down at me, all with 3/4 armour. TWO Griffins, a Centurion and a Vindicator. Needless to say this was horrible and bloody and degenerated into overheated, out of ammo mechs pinking each other with medium lasers as bits fell off them.

[Thenomain]

Did I mention I'm enjoying Frostpunk?

[Ganymede]

@packrat said in General Video Game Thread:

I just ran into a mission where I had to kill a scout Lance, which was a jenner, a spider and a panther.

That's not a scout lance, that's an hors d'oeuvre.

There was also a reinforcement lance who turned up atop a hill and started to shoot down at me, all with 3/4 armour. TWO Griffins, a Centurion and a Vindicator.

Now that's a spicy meatball!

[Lithium]

@ganymede One thing I do like about the new BattleTech game is that it is somewhat procedurally generated. Missions don't always have the same composition in them. So one time it might be a Centurion, the next it might be a Kintaro, even on a re-load (I failed once, centurion managed to outrun my severely beat up lance and escape so had to reload it)

[Arkandel]

This last page in the thread is beyond me.

[Packrat]

@arkandel We are talking the talk of the Space Robot.

Also I think that the best role of the Shadowhawk is definitely a brawler mech, I loaded mine up with two SRM6, and SRM2 and a larger laser in the arm, but I think a medium might be better combined with a bunch of jumpjets.

Basically it runs at people firing short ranged missiles then starts to punch them, a Shadowhawk does I think the most melee damage of any medium mech so this is fairly devastating.

[Lithium]

@packrat A shadowhawk does the same punch damage as a griffon or wolverine. It's based on pure tonnage.

[Jaded]

...Locust crests the hill. Pirates. Okay this will be easy. What are the other three?

Hunchback comes into view. Okay AC20, keep it outside of range.

Black Knight crests the hill....uh...hrm. That's a lot of armor. Catapult crests the hill, LRM carrier. For the love of what the fuck this is a 1.5 skull mission!

So....I think judging mission difficulty by the Skull rating is not possible. The skulls lie. The skulls lie!

[Jaded]

@thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

Did I mention I'm enjoying Frostpunk?

I did want to take a minute to throw some support Theno's way about Frostpunk. This game is a very unique survival game with city building elements. It has a lot of steampunk themes to it of course. The game also presents the player with some interesting morality choices that have some very meaningful impact on how your city survives and develops. And there is a very lite story element to the game done through exploration which adds another layer to the game.

If you liked 11 Bit Studio's prior work, This War of Mine, Frostpunk is another quality game worth looking into if it falls into your genre favorites.

[Packrat]

@lithium It is heavily weighted on tonnage, but there are apparently other factors. A Vindicator does 55 punch damage for example whilst a Blackjack (the same weight) does 40. I think it comes down to if a mech has hands or not?

[Lithium]

@packrat Arm actuators actually. upper arm, lower arm, hand. In the base game it just made the difficulty change if you were missing some. I guess they made it change the damage!

Still in this case as wolverines and griffons have hands and such the damage would be the same as for a ShadowHawk.

[Packrat]

@lithium Sadly nothing as logical as that, each mech has its own unique damage and the only way to really tell is to look at one in a match.

Or check this spreadsheet

So for whatever reason a Shadowhawk punches for 85, other 55 ton medium mechs with hands punch for 70. The Shadowhawk actually hits harder in melee than most heavies.

[Lithium]

@packrat That's kinda silly...