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[Anvilfolk]

Hahaha. Well, I don't recognise any of those mechs. I guess I'm all 3025 You thinking of doing a bigger MekHQ campaign (Against the Bot) or just small skirmishes?

[Robsoie]

No idea which era are those mechs, i was just selecting them by weight

For now i just skirmish around, waiting mostly for the Let's Play thread to get started so i can figure out better how the Against the bot stuff is working, as last time i just opened the MekHQ+AtB package and scratched my head quite a lot for some time

That said i like a lot those simultaneous options, it improve the gameplay pace to counterbalance the slow bot calculation, much faster than having to wait for it to decide to do something multiple times by turn.

[Erkki]

Weight is probably the worst thing to balance around right after C-Bill cost.

BattleValue (or BV) has its down sides but unless a player puts all in one basket way or another its usually pretty good meter. One skill a player needs is how to balance the fighting force with the available units.

[Robsoie]

Speaking about the balancing, how do you guys balance a Clans team vs an Inner Sphere one when you skirmish with the AI ?

On the tabletop, there are apparently " rules " that can help this stuff, but the bot do not really care about this, with small maps, it nearly nullify the big weapon range advantage the Clans mesh have, but they still hit harder than the IS opponent.
so the main solution i see is the number with giving more mechs to IS and less to Clans.

But as there's a lot of randomisation with the rolls in Battletech , it's not making it easy for me to find a good way.

[Erkki]

Generally speaking, the only proper advantage that the IS has is numbers.

Since Clans have better 3/4 pilots, waaaay more firepower, have more range and, for similar speed, have similar or better durability while you only have numbers, you want to brawl.

In a proper brawl all weapons but small lasers perhaps will be using short range bracket which takes a great deal out of the Clan advantages in range brackets and better pilots. Theres a considerably lower gap between needing to hit 6+ vs. 9+ on a 2d6 than 8+ vs. 11+ or 9+ vs. 12+. Brawling also allows the IS to rotate received damage better(moving damaged meks last and making sure they arent the easiest target, even hiding them etc.) and opens up opportunities to use all the dirty tools and tricks such as battle armor(riding a mech), inferno SRMs, TSM boosted physical attacks, thunder LRMs, even charges and blocking movement. Fast vehicles(hover laser/missile boats like Drillson, J.Edgar, Saracen and such) can also help you growing sheer numbers and can flank and backstab; the enemy needs to take them into account so just their presence alone can open up opportunities. They are low, fast, easy to keep hidden and many of them have space for carrying battle armor right to the clanners' feet. Remember that BA can also spot for indirect fire, and does it at any range and without the shooter suffering spotter movement modifiers(they can jump every turn and still spot!).

To get close you need speed. Your average Clan OPFOR mech unit will be at least 5/8/X, so to stand a chance in closing the gap without taking too much damage you want to keep your entire army at that speed or above it. Dedicated LRM and missile boats may be excluded from that rule but they too should jump, and you shouldnt use too many of them.

One good Clan buster mek is the Draconis Combine's WVR-7K: yes its kinda fragile with XL engine, but its cheap-ish, has 5/8/5 movement and its weaponry is all pulse lasers and streak SRMs. Theres many more and lots of slower mechs too can be useful way or another with the right support, or them being the support themselves.

[Robsoie]

Thanks for the tactics hint.

I have not yet played with artillery and spotting in megamek, will have to give it a serious try soon.

[Sharp]

So I tried the latest dev version of MekHQ and saw Against the bot in the rules and it looked amazing. Then after a day of struggle I found out it was broken and didn't work. Then after another day of struggle I found a slightly older build with AtB working and it's really great. So much easier wtih AtB sorting out contract generation and other stuff. It's still slightly annoying when generating opponents for MegaMek but that is probably because I tried using infantry which seems to confuse the heck out of AtB (yes facing 2 lances of light mechs is probably fair against my 4 platoons of infantry....) and MegaMek using Infantry doesn't really work well either so I would advise sticking to Mechs and Vehicles only but other then that its pretty amazing.

[Anvilfolk]

Yeah. There's already a fix for AtB not working, but it's not out yet. You can use 0.3.19 for now, and it should work peachy! There are a few bugs that I've encountered, but it's a pretty enjoyable experience so far! You still do need to set the company up initially, which takes a while, but other than that I think it's mostly automated!

Also, don't delete finished contracts. Turns out unit rating is based on contracts that you've finished, and if you've deleted them, it doesn't count. I was wondering why my rating was so low

I also gave up on the double the vehicle rules, in case you have that enabled. Battletech is full of extreme effects (CT crit to the engine, or crits to ammo, etc) that, even though low probability, with enough vehicles throwing their puny weapons at you, they *will* happen. To your brand new assault mech Also makes the game a lot slower

[Robsoie]

UrbanMech best mech

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

when they outnumber their target

[etgfrog]

Hm...so that atlas got hit in the head once before that shot...but I am more curious, the urbanmech was 2 tiles away and either the atlas was on the ground or the pilot of the urbanmech was veteran level.

[Robsoie]

The key is what i wrote before the screenshot in the spoiler

when they outnumber their target

On the urban map there were 8 Urbanmech vs 1 Atlas
The Atlas destroyed 4 of them before getting downed by that headshot, it took a lot of hits in the previous turns.
2 of the UrbanMechs never managed to get a lock on the Atlas tough, those buildings all around can sometime play against them too.

Nearly 1 UrbanMech was destroyed every turn

[etgfrog]

Hm...try an urban map where the urbanmechs have the ac/20 on them, they are already rather fragile for being light, but those can seriously mess up larger mechs.
I'm seeing quite often those urbanmechs will win vs an atlas at 4 to 1, which translates to roughly equal battle value.

[Neonivek]

Urbanmechs are great mechs... in their own environment.

Though I don't quite know how they seem to have this "joke robot" reputation.

[Erkki]

Because even in their preferred environment, battle armor squads and Elementals do the same job better?   

[Hanzoku]

Even in their preferred, close-quarters environment, their low speed and tiny jump radius makes them vulnerable. They don't really have the firepower to threaten heavy and assault mechs, and light and medium mechs can generally outmaneuver them. Plus they look like a giant R2D2... or a beercan on legs.