It's completely worthless in the early game because you'll never hit anything and you can't carry enough ammo for it to attempt the doctrine of accuracy by volume of fire. I've tried some of the late game King Crab builds people recommend on here, but the battles are always over already by the time my KGC-000 manages to trundle its way into AC20 range of the opfor at a full sprint.

Should a mech like that be saved exclusively for the very rare missions where you're defending a point? I fully understand how the AC20 has its place in lore and in the table top, but I can't manage to make it work in this game. Am I missing something?

I’m still doing 1 skull missions but managed to piece together a MAD-3R through purchase. What’s a good early game build for this? I slapped a AC20, 2 med lasers, 2 small lasers. Seems pretty good but not optimal. Wonder if others have a better early game idea.

Edit: thanks for the good ideas. Have been running tho AC5 with large and med lasers with success. Just came across a UAC5 and picked it up. Thought it might be handy. Not sure if the build is the same. Gonna give er a go tonight.

i got an invite once when i was dirt broke and couldn't afford it, and its been hours and hours of gameplay and i haven't gotten another one. is there a way i can force this event to show up?

Is using this hero mech a war crime?

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So I’m starting a new career, first one. I think I got lucky with my starting lance. Two centurions with the missles lasers and autocannons, 9a I think. A firestarter and two commandos. Played a couple missions but then when I went to save I realized I picked Ironman in the settings accidentally. I kind of want to save scum my first career, but I got a good start. Question, in campaign every planet had missions on it. When I use the filter now it doesn’t show that’s the case. I want to find some good gear but can’t afford to travel around if I can’t scum. If I travel to a planet will it have missions on it and equipment to buy or is it only some of them?

Decided to give the inferno ammo a try and I have to say, it greatly exceeded my expectations. This build is capable of dishing out 240 heat damage per alpha, though with the new missile modifier in Bex Tactics I never get close to that. Still, I am consistently able to 1 shot mechs into shutdown that have no heat buildup, even on polar/tundra maps. The most I've hit for so far in 1 alpha is 160 heat damage (had 61% chance to hit). I save my resolve for this mech to do a called shot on something then the rest of the team gets free called until the enemy mech restarts and since the enemy mech loses a turn from the shut down you can essentially target the most dangerous mech on the opfor and take it out of commission for several turns. Thoughts on ways to improve? I will def be adding a Tag to this once I find one.

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Switched to BEX-T from BEX-CE, and my first attempt at a Kerensky run. I don't think it's going very well. Haha. Main difficulties I've encountered are with the pilot skill changes - can't hit as often as before, and can't tank the way I used to. My pilots getting injured after consecutive mission drops also slowed down my progress. Definitely more challenging, but also more fun, and I think will increase replay-ability coz more variables to consider and more options (mech combos and load-outs, pilot builds, etc.) to try. Nicely done mods! 👍

I just bought this game on sale and have been enjoying the campaign. Medusa was killed by a headshot. As I am looking for a replacement I wondered if attributes impact gameplay at all.

Edit: I wasn’t as clear as I should have been. When I say attributes I mean things like Disgraced, Nobility, Periphery, Criminal, Officer, etc. The flavor attributes from a Mechwarrior’s past, not their skills.

Going to try a vanilla career start after completing my first vanilla campaign. My pirate rep is unsalvageable.

Help me: 1.) what is the best background to pick and why do you like it? 2.) what is your favorite name for your merc crew?

My campaign crews name was “Mastiff” after my fallen mentor. Little did I know how well that would work in the story line.

To all of you complaining about the rare item salvage from Standoff, beat this one !

I beat the campaign, now what do I do? Is it worth keep playing? Pirates hate me -100 with them. Can I still get good gear and are there more campaign style missions? It’s my first play through and I have vanilla with the battlepass.

Hi there, I am wanting to either get into RogueTech or BTAU because I like the look of the complexity. I want something more than just ausing and AC10 ++ and changing more of the mech honestly.

However I have zero experience with the tabletop and all the different components that is quite overwhelming.

Is there like a cheat sheet of what to look out for / what to do early game? I have seen that getting high tactics and gunnery is important but that is about it. The mech situation is harder to comprehend with all the options available.

PS I have done a career and campaign in vanilla so not totally new. Also haven't looked at BEX 2.0 as my impression is it is still very close to vanilla mech assembly when I want more complexity. I could be wrong however 😅

I've never played the tabletop. The only Mechwarrior games I've played before this one and Mercs were 3025 on SNES and one for the original XBox 20 years ago.

This game has made me LOVE all of the mechs I would never touch in Mercs.
* The Javellin, while not the worst in Mercs, is super solid here. 4 M lasers in the rear arc is absolutely atrocious.
* The Spider (disclaimer, I do love the Anansi) mobility and jump capability is astronomical. Clear across the map
* The Griffin, in Mercs it just feels like a dud to me. Due to the live action combat, it simply doesn't pack enough punch IMO, and I never grew to love it. In HBSTech it has taken the role of harraser / scout, replacing my usual scout position in Lance.

Etc.

I think a big part of it is the way Jumpjets actually make sense in this game compared to Mercs, they function and look / feel as they should, rather than basically being just a convenience in Mercs for certain scenarios, like avoiding artillery, infiltration missions, and the occasional hopping over a rock in my wolverine for funsies.

edit: forgot to mention the Grasshopper, because I haven't had one since I played the vanilla campaign. I used it once in MW5, it wasn't bad but there were better options. in HBSTech, its extremely fun and dangerous.

On my first play through with vanilla. After the last mission I played I got a prompt that I should have a couple lances ready for my next drop. I started watching a video to see what size lance i should be targeting and the dude had a king crab and atlas’. I haven’t seen anything that big. I have a highlander732b, 4x stalker 3f, 1x awesome 8Q 1x marauder 3r. Is that good enough for the final run? Or should I be booting around looking for heavier mechs to buy. The last missions I made it through with a minor repair bill, 3days worth repair time, no lost weapon.

Edit: I ran both missions with my stalkers and Highlander. Took damage to one stalker and pilot in the first mission but you get the atlas for the next so that replaced my lost pilot and mech. That King crab put up a fight. I tried to salvage it but i must have missed and hit the ammo on my targeted strike to the leg. Thanks everyone for your help! Now I gotta figure out what to do next, do I keep playing? My rep with pirates is terrible and it seems they are the gate keeper for good mechs. May start a new career and try to stay on the pirate good side.

That's right folks, nothing to see here. Move along now. We're here to help this poor Black Knight out.

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So im playing tactics. Middle mouse button switches ammo types on normal AC weapons, but for UAC weapons it changes between single and double fire. What am I missing? Can I not use different ammo types with UAC weapons?

I’ve been on and off with the game since it came out, and I’m looking to spice it up/expand my options, but I don’t want to append too much time/effort modding.

What are the best single mods I can try for new gameplay?

Are any of the DLC a stand out above the rest? Do any of the DLC add additional campaigns or is it mainly mechanics and mechs?

Also this game is great! At least for me it was the perfect level of difficulty, with that being quite hard. I almost rage quit because of a few of the missions, but I am glad I did not.

It is just now turning 2030 in my BEX campaign, and I have some cash to spend.

I have been farming some Comstar missions (thanks to everyone who helped me find them!!) and I am at best coming away with some slightly upgraded mechs and double heat sinks.

None of the highly lethal stuff you guys suggest, like snub PPC's and the like.

I have a grand total of ONE Med Pulse Laser, and some PPC's and LL's that are not any better than I find in shops.

I can handle 2 skull missions pretty well with a mix of FS/Phx backstabbers, an Enforcer sniper, and a few mixed midrange mediums, with an LRM boat subbed in as needed.

Where and what should I be hunting for?

I know the Marauder 2R have been optimized to high heaven, but I was wondering why UAC20++ (+20 damage, -3 tons) have not been considered as an option. Combined with 6 Medium lasers ++ (+10 damage), the probability of head shots is actually significantly higher than the commonly used 6 ER medium laser + UAC2 combination.

https://imgur.com/2EkzQrK

The commonly circulated chart (link above) has this latter combination at 79%, 79% 51%, and 24% headshots at 0%, 20%, 40%, and 60% damage reduction respectively. However, using a UAC20++ instead of the UAC2++ (and Mlaser instead of ER Mlaser), you get a 83%, 68%, 68%, 50% head shot probability respectively. This is because a single UAC20++ hit combined with one MLaser hit is enough even at 60% damage reduction.

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This loadout is actually possible with the default MAD-2R armor (before making adjustments) with -18 heat and 5 rounds of UAC20 ammo (or -24 heat with 7.5 rounds of ammo). You can sacrifice more armor to increase ammo or decrease heat, but I find 5 to 7 rounds of UAC20 enough for most missions (with good ammo management) and I always use a cooling vent pilot on the marauder (best ability for heavy and assault mech pilots imho, or at least vs AI) which helps to manage heat greatly (Mlasers also need significantly less heat than ER Mlasers). I personally wouldn't reduce armour below the default configuration, but I am comfortable enough with the default Marauder armor, but maybe that is just me. (edit: default armor is 11.5T)

Not sure what is the most common Damage reduction % observed in game (probably either 20% or 0%), but usually, the most annoying mechs are those with 40% or 60% damage reduction. Having my MAD-2R being able to quickly and consistently dispatch them helps A LOT, and my other mechs can easily dispatch the remaining mechs.

Of course, this mech is much more limited by range than UAC2 with ER Mlaser, but I personally have rarely had range issues on a jumping marauder, since vision is usually a more limiting factor. Plus, with this build, you can dump the rangefinder for comms to improve morale regeneration, which I find to be another major factor if you want to complete missions fast.

Any thoughts or feedback on this?

EDIT: LAM = Land Air Mech - a mech that has a flying mode.

Trying to take the Rattler down without community content EDIT: (or nukes) has made me revisit my original approach to LAMs.

Like many others, I came out of the vanilla game with a four-mech-lance combined arms strategy. My recon and headshot specialists were a pair of jump-capable SLDF Marauders armed with six ERML++ each, my sniper was a four UAC2 boat Annihilator with one gauss rifle just because it was cool and I liked the sound and firing effect, and an 80 to 90 tube LRM Bullshark for indirect fire support when necessary.

I went straight into RogueTech right after I finished the vanilla campaign, and suddenly, I couldn't get the practically guaranteed headshots per turn that I was used to once enough resolve had built up by the second round of enemy contact. Not only that, missions could spawn as many as five lances AT THE SAME TIME. This wasn't the 'an extra lance will appear by turn 6, another one by turn 9' and so on. No, you reach a certain part of the map, find a sensor trace, and suddenly, the two lances you were facing turn into five. I needed a better strategy.

Back in the days of my vanilla campaign, a kind and knowledgeable player, u/DoctorMachete (the guy who beats vanilla missions with a single unarmored mech) showed me how to build long-jump brawlers with SNPPC-wielding SLDF Warhammers and Royal Phoenix Hawks. I didn't use them too much back then, though, because you just received so much more salvage with headcappers. Backstabbers were lucky if they got two pieces of a given mech.

In RogueTech, however, I quickly gave up trying to maximize salvage and I just wanted to be able to successfully complete the missions. I found a shiny new 55-ton Dervish in a Davion mech dealership one day, stuffed it with jump jets and SRM6 launchers, and I was off to the races.

Both BTAU and RogueTech have undergone many updates since then, but my four-mech lance of jumpers has adapted and changed with them.

Which brings us to LAMs and u/bloodydoves Rattler challenge, where you have take down a monster unit that has armor and structure points in the tens of thousands and its entourage of 20+ to 30 mechs, ground vehicles and VTOLs without the use of nukes or community content anything.

At the suggestion of u/bloodydoves himself, I've been trying LAM builds, the theory being that they might have the evasion and movement range to survive the hundreds of combat turns necessary to whittle down tens of thousands of armor and structure points.

First, I went with various Nagual iterations. Then the 80-ton Hector LAM (Yes, u/bloodydoves advised me against using that one, but I had to give it a shot. For science.). I also tried the 60-ton Champion and the 55-ton Screamer.

What I've found is pretty much what caused me to shun LAMs in the first place. Their huge movement range and evasion comes at the price of durability and damage potential. The most well-rounded in terms of armor, mobility/evasion and weaponry is the 55-ton Screamer. It can mount an Osprey gyro, harjel, modular armor, a called shot FCS, and it has more weapons tonnage than the Nagual. The Nagual looks great on paper, but even with all the maxed evasion from a Sparrow gyro, and the defensive bonuses from the CLPS and NSS systems, it was still getting hit from all the way across the map by ERPPCs and gauss rounds on 5-skull missions. And you can't mitigate the damage because thanks largely to the regular endo steel structure, there aren't enough slots to put in harjel or modular armor.

The 80-ton Hector LAM is saddled with a poor selection of hardpoints, and both it and the 60-ton Champion LAM are hobbled by the weight of the massive engines that their airframes require.

In actual combat, it takes multiple rear armor passes and strikes by the entire four-LAM lance to take down an enemy. By way of contrast, I can send any one of the jump backstabbers in my normal four-mech setup to deal with a surprise OpFor spawn all by itself, without any support, and many times, when reinforcement units have become available, at least 50% of the enemy units are already dead.

Part of the problem also lies with the fact that a LAM is almost always visible unless you land it and take cover behind something. It's much easier to control or deny line of sight with a jumper, plus, you can face in any direction, unlike a LAM in air mode.

I got rid of the Champions and Hectors, but I'll probably keep a mixed lance of Naguals and Screamers to use, partly because they're sort of cool and partly for the novelty of it, but I'm certainly not bringing them along for things like defend base or ambush convoy missions, where I need to kill stuff fast.

As always, good luck, and above all, have fun!

Started a new run with the SLDF cache start and managed to get two M Coil lasers from the crate which is a first for me. Slapped them both on the Talon I started with and even a rookie pilot can get 5 pips of evasion for 75 dmg on each Coil laser. Still can't hit anything with the changes in the new patch but it's made the grind of the early game more manageable.

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I am doing my first BTAU campaign, started in FedSuns space and did the campaign flashpoints until Sanctuary space opened up. Went there and got several mechs, specifically the bombard focused Rashnu and Archer. Then I wanted to check out clan space and these Sanctuary mechs make dealing with battle armor so easy. Just fire it at a mech carrying BA and it destroys both pretty easily. Is this an intended counter? I was very scared to go to clan space but so far it's a walk in the park. Further question, what's the best way to increase difficulty for a campaign? Are there certain options that Amp things up more than others?

So I have been playing BTAU for some time after finishing the vanilla campaign and all official expansion, and I must say, it is easily a sequel we never officially got. While I generally only have enough time to squeeze in a mission or two every couple days, it is full of memorable moments so far.

The latest one was the first 3 skull mission I decided to handle on my current playthrough after feasting on lower skull missions to build up my arsenal and get my pilots some skills. By now, I am running a unit consisting of 3 vehicles (2 Hunters and a Condor Davion version), 3 lights (Mongoose, Jenner, and Firestarter), 4 mediums (Shadow Hawk, Centurion retooled as a missile boat, Huron Warrior with Gauss rifle, and a Phoenix Hawk), one heavy (Balar), and one assault (Longbow). Most of my mech bay backups are in the light to medium range, with one Merlin and a few 50-55 tonners the heaviest of the bunch, all Inner Sphere tech.

The mission was supposed to be a battle on the urban map where I was supposed to trigger a heavy mech trap and kill whatever shows up, with pirates as the employer and local government as the OpFor. So, I figured I can kill an occasional assault machine or a couple heavies, grab the salvage, and maybe get a few more powerful mechs for the higher skull missions.

The first thing I see when I am dropped into the map is a 100 ton blip, which turned out to be an Atlas. Then, my scanners started lighting up, and my joy at seeing easy salvage turned to concern. I ended up facing a Kell Hounds unit with an Atlas, an Executioner, a Battlemaster, a Nova, two Adders, an Ice Ferret, an Avatar, a Rifleman, an LRM/SRM heavy tank with a German-sounding name, and a Shrek PPC carrier.

This was one of the most fun battles I had in the game. I concentrated most of my forces on the Atlas, maneuvering around the urban landscape and using my light mechs' mobility and jump jets to draw fire while at high evasion and at altitude, all the while laying everything I had into the enemy assault machines. The Atlas went down, followed by Executioner, Battlemaster, Avatar, Nova (though by then it was nearly disabled after losing one arm and one side torso with most of its weapons gone and heat through the roof, thanks to my Firestarter), and the vehicles. The Clan-tech light and medium mechs went down to LRM fire and a few Gauss rounds.

In the end, I suffered some damage on the Jenner (lost a leg) and Mongoose (stripped armor from a few lucky shots), but no casualties or injuries along my pilots. Instead, I walked away with enough salvage to rebuild an Executioner, an Atlas, and an Avatar, plus some Clan-tech weaponry.

Now, this was probably far from the most impressive victory on here, but it was fun and I enjoyed it, especially now that I have Clan-tech mechs to use in future missions, and I got there with much individually weaker machines. Certainly memorable, and I look forward to getting to use those assaults down the line.

By now, I've tried a number of Nagual LAM builds and have thrown four-mech lances of them at various 5-skull missions, the logic being that if they couldn't do well in those situations, there was no chance of them being able to beat the Rattler.

So far, I think that the Nagual is not the Rattler antidote that I was hoping for. For one thing, it takes too much damage. I gave it the Sparrow gyro so that it could gain as much evasion as possible, and retrained my pilots from Ace Pilot to the skill that grants sensor lock immunity because I couldn't shoehorn in a Clan ECM. The result? Even with evasion of 10 or more, the Naguals were still taking at least 10 to 30 points of armor damage per turn. Now, that was still okay for the five skull missions that they went on. The Naguals did successfully complete the missions with only minor damage. The Rattler fight is a whole different ball game, though. They would literally have to survive hundreds of turns in order to seriously damage the Rattler. Assuming that each Nagual only gets five points of damage per turn, over a hundred turns, that's already 500 points, which is enough to seriously cripple or kill the fragile LAM. And since there aren't enough slots or excess tonnage for harjel or modular armor, even 5 points of damage per turn isn't survivable in the long run.

The other problem lies with the weaponry. Because of the poor choice that the mech's designer made by using regular endo steel on a mech where the majority of slots are already taken up by fixed equipment that can't be swapped out or altered, those fourteen endo steel slots don't really leave you with much to work with. My first choice was the Super M Lasers that I salvaged from some Crosscut mechs. The lasers only weigh a ton, but do 50 points of damage each. Perfect, right? Nope. Not only do they take up two slots each, they also generate 20+ heat per laser. Now this might seem like a lot of damage for the heat, and it is, but the problem lies in the fact that the Nagual is a bit of a heat hog. The LPS and NSS systems that make it difficult to hit already generate nearly 50 points of heat per turn. This uses up practically all of the heat sinking ability of the Clan DHS kit. So you're left with a huge heat delta, and no way to add more cooling because you're out of slots.

How did we run out of slots? In addition to the 14 slots for endo steel, we needed to give up 7 slots for Clan ferro fibrous armor, or you won't have the free tonnage for the weapons and other necessary equipment. When you factor in the cooling required to allow you to fire all of your weapons every turn without overheating, which is a two-ton bulk heat bank that takes four more slots, you're left with three slots for weapons, and they shouldn't generate much more than 30 heat.

My second choice was a toss up between the Clan ERPPC and the shotgun ERPPC, for both the damage and the accuracy debuff. But even with the Precision FCS that grants breaching shot AND -1 recoil to offset the +1 PPC recoil, to-hit percentages were pretty lousy.

Then I moved on to the medium piercing laser, with its +2 accuracy and 1 evasion ignore. Although each one weighed two tons, they only took up one slot, and the 30 or so heat generated by all three was quite manageable. As a nice bonus, each one does 9 structure damage in addition to the 18 points of regular armor damage.

In practice, however, it took forever to complete a mission, even with 100% rear armor shots. To-hit percentages were much better, but each enemy mech required four to five backstab alphas, on average, before they gave up the ghost.

My criticisms notwithstanding on its viability as a Rattler killer, the Nagual is actually a pretty good LAM for its tonnage. I plan to keep the four that I've customized and use them as long range recon scouts, but I just don't think that they can survive the Rattler challenge.

Oh, well... back to the drawing board!

I love the big guns. AC20++, Gauss Rifles , PPC. I’m less about total damage as single location damage that punches holes in mechs and tears off limbs. What are the best big guns in the game and best big gun mechs?

A usual tactic for me is to run three or four big shoota mechs that have pilots with breaching shot and multi target. Then cycle through three enemy mechs that think they can hide in cover.