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[Paul]

Flanking can also work well. Rear torso is much weaker than front. Or shoot from side for better chance of taking out legs or arms. Once you get a feel for mechs and their loadouts you can focus on taking off dangerous weapons. Some of the mechs have most of their firepower on an arm or side torso. Focusing some fire on that side can quickly reduce the threat of the mech even if you don't kill it.

Or if you just want to core a mech and frontal fire has already busted one side torso, shooting more on that side will be a good way to take out the torso.

[ChairmanPoo]

I think I'm understanding this a bit better. Seems like, with cover being mostly testimonial, the common wisdom of games like xcom and the like doesnt really apply and instead you're supposed to be ludicrously agresive: close distance ASAP, guns blazing, punch them if you can. At least I had more success doing that than trying to hold the high ground and rain death upon the enemy, which didnt seem to have a noticeable effect

[Rince Wind]

Combined Arms: Use one Mech to rain death from above and cause stability damage, then punch them in the face so they fall down more quickly. Have some machine guns/flamers on the punching mech for extra damage and potential crits.

[Mephansteras]

Also depends a lot or mech loadouts vs what you're up against. Keeping yourself at an optimal range that is a poor range for the enemy is a very valid strategy. So your LRM mechs will want to hang out at long range when fighting, say, a medium laser focused mech. While your short/mid ranged mechs will want to close in on a long ranged opponent to give them penalties to hit your while your shots will almost certainly hit.

Like any good tactics game, there is no one single 'best approach'. Though you may find specific tactics that generally work best for your particular lance configuration the majority of the time.

[Sanctume]

I think I'm understanding this a bit better. Seems like, with cover being mostly testimonial, the common wisdom of games like xcom and the like doesnt really apply and instead you're supposed to be ludicrously agresive: close distance ASAP, guns blazing, punch them if you can. At least I had more success doing that than trying to hold the high ground and rain death upon the enemy, which didnt seem to have a noticeable effect

 

Sure you can close distance with guns blazing; however, you're limited to 4 mechs, and the AI compensates with a larger number of mech/vehicles. 

No cover, but there's evasion pips ">" that reduce roughly 5% to get hit each, and the pips are reduced by 2 for each enemy firing.  Sensor lock ability removes 2 pips.  Moving number of hexes, and jumping adds to evasion pips.  Some terrain give defense bonus.  There is brace with give stability bonus and even indirect fire damage reduction.

High ground still has some advantage to help break LOS which works great for 'missile boats' mechs. 

[Flying Dice]

Friendly reminder that turning base chance to hit down to 50% and innate size modifier to CTH to -4 for lights/-2 for mediums makes the game more interesting and keeps lighter 'mechs useful even when you can field Steiner scout lances.

(I do recommend also moving over-heated energy weapons and the AC/20 back down to a straight scaling of their tabletop heat values, otherwise nothing will ever get killed early on. That, and bumping flamer ammo way up, since they're canonically supposed to not even have ammo.)

[Kanil]

Friendly reminder that turning base chance to hit down to 50% and innate size modifier to CTH to -4 for lights/-2 for mediums makes the game more interesting and keeps lighter 'mechs useful even when you can field Steiner scout lances.

I take it they never did change how their generic no skill pilots were more accurate than a typical clan warrior with pulse laser and tcomp?

[Flying Dice]

Friendly reminder that turning base chance to hit down to 50% and innate size modifier to CTH to -4 for lights/-2 for mediums makes the game more interesting and keeps lighter 'mechs useful even when you can field Steiner scout lances.

I take it they never did change how their generic no skill pilots were more accurate than a typical clan warrior with pulse laser and tcomp?

Yep. And they still have the RNG adjustment in vanilla (high % shots are more likely to hit than they should be, low % shots are less likely to hit than they should be) to avoid getting people who don't understand statistics up in arms about "WTF GAEM BROKE MY 90% SHOT MISSED" a la nuCOM.

Thankfully it's an easy couple fixes to make. There's also a mod that adds additional innate evasiveness to 'mechs with higher speed ratings, but I don't think it has updated yet.

So for reference right now in my game a Gunnery 5 MechWarrior firing arm-mounted MLas in ideal range at a mobile Manticore (1 evasion pip, no innate evasion) has a 60% chance to hit with each, which feels about right. I've seen CTH even for higher Gunnery than that drop all the way down to 5% (the minimum, as it can't list 0% on shots you can take) against sprinting Locusts and Spiders.

That said, the downside is that it seems to make AI spam melee attacks. If you're not careful it just turns into rock-em sock-em robots with zero tactical depth.

[ChairmanPoo]

Ok, after playing career mode and finding I like the game after  all I tried getting back onto the campaign, but sweet jesus of borg, I can't listen to three sentences by Princess whasshername without wanting to stuff a sock in her mouth

[A Thing]

Ok, after playing career mode and finding I like the game after  all I tried getting back onto the campaign, but sweet jesus of borg, I can't listen to three sentences by Princess whasshername without wanting to stuff a sock in her mouth

You're not missing much if you just never touch the campaign again. The story doesn't get any better\more interactive and I don't really remember any missions besides the LosTech one.

[NullForceOmega]

I remember putting the princesses' bitch cousin in the mosh pit and taking her king crab.

[Flying Dice]

Mm. I know BTech is full of cliche-riddled stories, but this one went above and beyond. That, and trying to outdo House Davion with the " "No we're totally a democracy that cares about the ordinary people!" -absolutist monarch" schtick.

[ChairmanPoo]

Mm. I know BTech is full of cliche-riddled stories, but this one went above and beyond. That, and trying to outdo House Davion with the " "No we're totally a democracy that cares about the ordinary people!" -absolutist monarch" schtick.

Indeed. Very very clicheish.  And the whole thing with

No we're totally a democracy that cares about the ordinary people!" -absolutist monarch"

Is personally annoying, but I don't want to derail this thread onto politics and my opinion on inbred royals and parlamentary monarchies

[umiman]

Maybe in the sequel we get to kick her arse and take her planets to the flame.

"We're instituting Absolute Agnatic Elections, bitch!"

[ChairmanPoo]

Mind you, I dont know if a story in which she was actually in favor of representative democracy would have been even more clicheish. But in THIS particular story, she's being sold off as democratic, when as far as I remember (because I AM skipping the intro) the big difference of opinion with her evil uncle (he's one vizier title short of a cliche combo btw)  wants power centralized while she wants to devolve power to nobles in the periphery.  Which, while not a bad thing (I'll avoid derailing this onto my personal politics again ) is far from being inherently democratic.  In effect, both her and her uncle are authoritarian monarchs, the only difference is their place in the CK2 "real centralization" setting.

And yeah for a further campaign I'd rather take part on a revolution (capitalist, anarchist or communist, it matters not)  against feudal overlords. You can even leave the main char as a noble if you want. Let me play a futuristic Kropotkin

Personally I'm enjoying the career mode better, just ignoring the whole battletech thing and pretending that I'm actually playing a game in which I lead a cybernetically enhaced Ultranaut mercenary company.