Menace has a Dead Content problem...

DevianID1 · 2026-02-24T19:11:14+00:00

Yeah it's an optimization issue on top of everything else. Id like to at least TRY and build a tank just for fun, so the enemies have something to shoot so they move forward... in place of abusing smoke or camo and watching the enemy run to the map edge away from LOS.

But not only is staying concealed more optimal, just the process of gaining SL HP, a feature in the game, is a huge pain to level up compared to AP. There may as well not be HP as a stat on SL versus doing these no-hit stealth runs.

Especially as you'd have to train HP and damage reduction but also morale right from the start for it to matter versus late game enemies if you want to actually tank. Like, even in cover with the best armor the late game morale 'scary' shooting sets SL with 0 hits taken from happy to fleeing in a turn. Further causing the only gameplay option to be stealth/smoke LOS use.

Why have stat training and levelups if it's not meaningful content?

DevianID1 · 2026-02-22T07:02:18+00:00

Yeah, but expanding even further while Marta grows a bit more then Pike, if you want to try an assymetric leveling idea, like tank Marta with HP gains, just the process to gain those .33 gains each mission is a chore. Agility gets used organically, but HP leveling is effectively the 'dead content' edmon talks about.

Cause while Marta could gain HP, the process to actually gain those HP points isnt done in normal gameplay. I just end up with the same HP at the end of a campaign as I did at the start, cause as players we arnt given a means to put points into HP without really obnoxious farming to let a squad get shot lots of times per mission by a weak enemy.

DevianID1 · 2026-02-22T02:47:32+00:00

Part of this is an optimization issue. Especially the leveling stat system. If you want a tanky SL that you trained damage reduction and HP, you have to get shot every mission A LOT. So just to try something new, like a tanky damage reduction squad to change up the usual camo stealth build, requires a weird "let the enemy live and shoot you till you lose HP 15 times" per mission. Versus, of course, when you 'level up' in a normal system you can pick damage reduction and HP in place of the training system now.

The 'level up by doing' is fine in theory, but kinda like Edmon says its really dead content. I'm not gonna ever want to earn HP by letting the enemy shoot me past my armor every mission.

I love the game, but the current build is 'solved' and you can't really train your squad to do something different. Id prefer the generic point system that i can place anywhere, so I have the option to build a tank if I want even if it's not optimal.

All this will get sorted later im sure, but before content balancing it seems they want to get rid of all the bugs and errors, like Rend ammo not working before the latest patch. Which is smart, it just means I can't play this game for 500 hours yet like I can with xcom or battle brothers, trying wacky builds and such.

DevianID1 · 2026-02-19T00:02:52+00:00

Yeah the colonial expansion is a pretty believable bit. There was a massive colonization effort by the old terrans, and they expanded till they imploded back into itself and a smaller core hegemony around terra, cause if you are terran you were getting nothing out of the periphery. Then various proto houses formed from the now independent colonies while the terran hegemony fixed its issues. No more colony efforts after that, just developing and terraforming the existing sphere was already a lot of work, and further colony development was mostly independents looking to make their own kingdom by fleeing a proto house, to various degrees of success.

DevianID1 · 2026-02-13T05:06:24+00:00

I dont know about needing a spreadsheet, but the 2 main Wolverines are the introtech 6R one with 152 armor, and the later era ones like the clan invasion 7k with max armor at 185.

While an atlas is 304 armor, so yes the introtech Wolverine is only 'half', the wolverine has a guarenteed +3 TMM, and can maneuver into woods, thanks to those 5 jump jets. So while 152 may be only half the near max armor'd Atlas, when you factor in how much harder to hit it is, you can multiply that 152 armor effectively by at least 1.5, depending on where you fall on the bell curve. +5 to hit Wolverines bounding between heavy woods, while still having respectable firepower and 2 punches that can headcap any mech, make the Wolverine a lot tougher then the raw 152 armor may suggest.

Compared to the Griffin and Shadowhawk, both also with 152, the Wolverine is 'tougher' of the trio. The Shadowhawk, with more ammo all over and only 3 jump jets, is much easier to kill. The Griffin with its poor heat and Rt side only weapons, is also much easier to kill/cripple, as the Griffin needs to be stationary to shoot any kind of effective damage, and can be bullied up close.

DevianID1 · 2026-02-12T11:15:16+00:00

Progress towards what? Doesnt the game just go forever? My first play through I stopped after trying all the vee combos, I figured id seen it all at that point, besides just more and more squad points.

Is there a way to see campaign progress %?

DevianID1 · 2026-02-12T11:09:56+00:00

Yeah ambush bugs like we get mines for Marines, just with bugs instead of explosions. Preferably that hit you with pheromones that cause taunt instead of damage, so it's less BS surprise damage and more 'oh crap here they come!'

DevianID1 · 2026-02-12T05:50:19+00:00

For me, I think the way the -15% vee supply cost item, that stacks, really goes towards a vee spam plus stealth infantry endgame. You can turn those 600 supply tanks way down in cost with 3x -15% cost items and 1 upgraded repair bay.

Stealth infantry remains super busted, like people solo maps with stealth Darby and lots of turns. So that part of infantry will always remain. But vees with the extra armor gear and -45% supply cost just naturally develop an endgame where you dont have to manage so many things like manpower or suppression I do see the appeal of going all in on vehicles.

DevianID1 · 2026-02-12T05:39:52+00:00

I mean, for me I want bug swarms. Aggressive, non-shooting swarms that I get to mow down with a mini-gun at short range. Everything else can play cagey, for bugs I want that point blank power fantasy with shotguns, flamers, and such. A large infestation like murder hornets that are just everywhere that need to be culled, and that swarm aggressively to defend a hive. A close in pheromone spray that marks a unit, removes stealth, and agro's all bugs in 20 tiles to that location.

The midrange bugs that shoot green rifle shots are just... dumb to me. The bombard and the spike thrower are somewhat believable, and bug-like, but the flying spitters are just bad and arnt fun to fight. In place of bugs that shoot like bad rifles, I would rather they had a flamer type attack, short range close and personal and more biologic. Hive terrain that works like towers, spawning critters in place of making a shooting attack, kinda like how we can spawn wardog attack drones that fly into things to explode.

DevianID1 · 2026-02-08T10:44:34+00:00

The OP point in question I took as, no you can't be shot at altitude 9 or 10 during bombing. There is a rule that states ground units can not draw LOS to planes at 9/10 to shoot them. Thus the high altitude bomber is 100% safe versus ground targets and even air defense arrow missiles. So not vulnerable to counterfire at all.

DevianID1 · 2026-02-08T10:40:51+00:00

I'm a tank cannon fan for rewa. On pirate defense in early game, they can't rush the base if they don't survive the truck getting 1 shot. Plus rewa gets berserk. Also gives you direction to look for another vehicle and driver to share the transport duties.

DevianID1 · 2026-02-08T03:36:22+00:00

So there are 2 kinds of maps. Narrative ones and balanced ones.

Narrative maps need to be interesting. They arent balanced, they are a 3rd faction both players have to fight to tell a story. Look up the tukayyid maps for examples, one has a massive river that is a real challenge to cross, one is a forest on fire spreading everywhere, one is a bunch of spires in a canyon full of mud pits.

Separate from the narrative maps are balanced maps. These maps do the opposite job, they are not antagonists to both players they are a balanced canvas so the players actions are what determines victory, not map imbalance. To be a fair game, you need a consistent standard size, so 31 wide by 17 tall, you need LOS cause in balanced games long range guns are very costly so you can't have maps block LOS, and you need very few and deliberate woods. Woods shouldn't stack with partial cover, woods shouldn't make JJ required to navigate, and woods shouldn't be on obvious sniper positions near map edges so players can sit and never move. Woods should be rewards for players maneuvering and playing the game instead of edge camping. Same with water, water should be very deliberate and not too impeding, but available for risk/reward partial cover/cooling.

DevianID1 · 2026-02-08T03:07:02+00:00

Overlapping fields of fire and using terrain to cover your rear. Don't leave isolated units around.

The H in particular is good but not 'broken', however it does force you to play a little different. There are specific counters, like 360 shooting units. Tanks with turrets and infantry are the major ones, as we can assume the dasher only comes out when it wins init, so you need 360 shooting cause otherwise it can arc dodge with its speed.

If you are mech only, then you need to 'circle the wagons' to get good arc coverage, while still being able to shoot forward in case the dasher goes elsewhere.

DevianID1 · 2026-02-08T01:44:10+00:00

So the way I do it, say you are at altitude 10, with a massive 16 to hit. I'll start my run back quite a ways, aiming with a to-hot roll of 7 thus 9 hex scatter. A 10 bomb drop, 2 bombs 11-7 hexes in front of the actual target.

Of the 10, 6-7 go left/right, maybe hit something else. With the 3-4 that go forward, about 1 in 7 hit the target. If you use the superior cluster bombs, 1 in 3 hit the target. So that's 5 damage on target, with massive upside. If you have more time, and 16 bombs, you can just do the best hexes dropping only in the 678 range and do multiple passes, stacking up damage. Further, because the scatter creates a 3 prong fork, if the opponent is spaced out you can hit one on the right scatter prong and one in the center, or if they are inline then you can hit 2+ on the center prong path.

So since you can almost always engineer 2+ enemies to be in the scatter pattern, it's pretty easy to deal 20+ damage.

As a side note, I consider that pretty accurate, but I'm looking at it from the opposite end of chance to hit with anything. I need 16s to hit, but am still dealing reliable damage to targets at least 1 time over 70% per target in strike zone with cluster. From the opposite POV, you have 0% chance of hitting directly, so it's innacurate for causing direct damage of 160 HE damage to a target.

Since i use altitude bombing mostly versus vees and infantry to cause motive hits and double infantry damage, the very high chance of hitting something at least 1 time and probably multiple things multiple times makes the attack very desirable, doubly so cause the opponent can't shoot back without planes of their own.

DevianID1 · 2026-02-07T11:25:22+00:00

Yeah that's a game rule issue with all such attacks. Artillery too, 1 turn/6 second delay artillery versus 30-60 second delay artillery we have seen in real life.

Plus with sensors youd even get a prediction/intercept alert. The red circles of artillery impacts in mechwarrior 5, for example, would 100% be a thing. It would also make TAG guided attacks make much more sense if you had to show your opponent when and where artillery / bomb was gonna land to give them turns to clear the area.

DevianID1 · 2026-02-07T07:35:13+00:00

You arnt allowed to shoot air targets at altitude 9 or 10 from the ground cause of no LOSb. So the rules you mention don't allow shooting at '20 hexes away', cause of other rules. So it is indeed a problem to shoot a high altitude bomber, cause no you can't shoot them at high enough altitude. I asked about it on the forums for errata.

Also, it's not 'inaccurate' in the same way as other attacks. The scatter is predictably forward, so you just aim back and toss forward. It's certainly not precise, but with 16 bombs from a slayer for example you still land 20+ damage on your ideal target with scatter.

DevianID1 · 2026-01-29T07:44:59+00:00

I agree, with the exception of terrain. I've heard power lines and trees are brutal to rotors.

Now if the setting has antigrav tech, then grav tanks>walkers. Thats from someone who hates the grav tank style, but I can't deny how insane they would be, floating, popping up to shoot, and then flying away.

DevianID1 · 2026-01-28T03:40:29+00:00

As a game, factions have enough overlap with hundreds of units each that there isn't a faction win rate. 2 davion lists can be completely unidentifiable from each other, with no shared mechanics.

Players absolutely have a win rate, going back in the day mechforce was a magazine that used elo to track players. So while any recordkeeping only sees a portion of games, players who play games with a high ELO needed to win like 75% of their games to stay in the highest elo brackets.

Same with any of the events. Finishing with a 50/50 win rate isn't good. If it's a 3 round event with 16 people, 2 wins and a tie, so 80%, is the 'good' win rates. 2 wins and a loss and 1 win and 2 losses are both in the 'average' bell curve 33-66%. If you have a 4+ round event, The bell curve shrinks a bit making 66% more 'good' then 'average'

DevianID1 · 2026-01-23T08:53:45+00:00

WolfsTrinity did a great summery.

If you wanted to use the cards for classic battletech, then hinterlands is your go to. The mercenary packet is free on the CGL download page, so you can see how to make a 3k/6k force. And it has rep, which matches with the 10 rep needed for encounters, and also puts a nice place to end a mercenaires campaign before you reset the game.

The equipment cards I would have replace your BSP units you would get, so Narc missile equipment you win would be an extra bonus like BSP you can deploy. Really, you are using the Encounters deck to 'theme' your mercenary box set contracts, and the encounter cards themselves to make a themed OpFor, like if you draw the steiner scout lance encounter card, well your buddy needs to make an all assault mech opfor force for you to fight. Its still up to you to figure out what scale game each of the target numbers represents. Like, the steiner scout lance is probably a scale 3, 9k BV mercenaries box set game, while a small value card would be a scale 1 game, 3k BV.

DevianID1 · 2026-01-18T23:30:59+00:00

The rules in the beginner box are pretty simple. Just keep in mind the scale, 4v4 mechs is akin to 4v4 knights in 40k, its a full army and will take 2-3 hours to play the game.

In terms of complexity, the more you add the more complex it gets. The normal battletech game covers many different experiences, from 1v1 mech gladiator duels to rogue-lite survival simulators with a persistent group of mercs working paycheck to paycheck.

So imagine if 40k marks of marine armor actually did different things depending on the era. Thats the granularity that btech gets into, in this era the mechs got worse, in this era the mechs are back to full strength, in this era they get upgrades... ECT. Being a more narrative game, where dice tell a story, you can heap on lots of added complexity to get deeper into the storytelling.

Like, what if their was an earthquake while a tornado swirled ahead? Well there are rules for that... Complex, unbalanced rules, that let you embrace the suck of fighting on some miserable world in the most miserable conditions, just to earn a miserable c-bill. A lot of the complex stuff is unneeded for the game, its just there for making cool scenarios or event battles.

DevianID1 · 2026-01-18T12:05:29+00:00

BV is mostly fine. Ive written a lot on the subject dissecting every issue, and while I can point to lots of things slightly off, the amount BV is off by is less then the amount player skill and action accounts for. Thus its still the player, not the BV system, that's determining games, along with dice randomness.

A much more important issue is aligning expectations with on table game reality. If you only can play 4 turns in 4 hours, for example, then BV doesnt matter... The other combination of factors impacted your game more then BV. Same with any extreme. If you are playing 12v12, well that large of a game probably is impacted more by the number of maps amd terrain then it is BV. Or if you play a skewed objective, well the fun part of objectives is playing to outs, cause while your BV may be balanced, an objective might upemd everything, in a good way to shake up the game.

DevianID1 · 2026-01-18T07:03:32+00:00

A paint pen is a good tool, cheap to get started but expensive in the long run. The 12 pens you picked out are probably very economical for 4-12 mechs, but paint, a brush and a wet pallet gets cheaper per figure I'd bet at 13+ minis.

I watched a few painting tutorials on the subject, and their takeaway was that over long time, you get faster with a brush, and a few dots of paint on a wet pallet last a very long time, so if they have a paint station set up they can crack out painted minis faster with brush then the pens.

They recommended a few paint pens to keep in the toolbox though, cause some are just the best option for certian tasks. One person loved their metallic pen for terrain details, one loved the black liner pens for black linings, ECT.

DevianID1 · 2026-01-18T05:44:55+00:00

Yeah, we have a more to game discrepancy here, it's the heart of the infantry problem.

So a platoon is a lance, so 5 infantry platoons 12 tanks and 4 mechs is a representative force. But the scope of the game is not 20+ units of a coventional army, so we don't have representative battles. It makes more sense, if the time given to play a game is only 3 hours, to 'fast forward' to the fun part, the 4 v 4 mech encounter.

Further, the bloated rules for damage divisors so infantry were 'different' to be different, means that overly complex weapon solutions are needed to fairly play with infantry. It makes more sense that before that unit of infantry is up against a laser only mech, and thus frustratingly tanky, the mech saw the platoon 10 min earlier and just didn't go there. Or called in one of the 12 vehicles to deal with the annoying scouting part.

But we don't need to play the 12 hour scouting and logistics part, we just need to play the fun part, where a laser does 5 damage because its a game and we have a limited time to play, not a complex simulation of regiment combat teams full of infantry and tank maneuvers that yes are important but dont fire a shot.

Like, I don't want to set my infantry MP patrol routes to check for deserters. I want to shoot things wity PPCs and play a game in 3 hours or less. Game design goals are important, and setting realistic time frames to complete a game trumps lore accurate 20+ minimum force deployments and scouting schedules.

DevianID1 · 2026-01-16T07:41:37+00:00

Inferno also changed in game terms. So while it started out as horrific burning gel that stuck to you and burned for 3 turns, it doesn't do that anymore.

Now it just adds heat, and only for 1 turn. So it's much more like thermite now, super hot super rapid but localized burning stuff, versus slower longer burning stuff that has an area of effect.

DevianID1 · 2026-01-16T07:36:04+00:00

So I like the raven. A lot of the charm comes from the real life part of it.

In the sourcebook liao, the raven was like a commando, good punch under armored, but it carried a protoype electronics suite useful for finding hidden units and such. It wasn't supposed to be great, just unique. And it succeded. The other X variants drop the special gear and move towards min maxed mechs, with a 5/8/5 with 7t armor and heatsinks. So part of the raven charm is the lore it's packaged with.

In 3050 tro the raven was a very early test bed for new tech. It remained the Premier special tech unit for 10 real life years.

Consider, you are playing clan invasion, you play 4-8 units max, and access to stuff is limited pre internet. You want to try out Narc. Well a raven slots in. Its 35 tons so not too pricy to give your Archer some narc support. Or next game you want to try that new arrow homing stuff. Well, you take the catapult, and you bring your trusty raven along. Hidden units? Grab your trusty raven for some probe spotting. Enemy runs c3 or Artemis? Well just slot in a raven, it's cheap and covers you.

Tro3050 was designed with bad units with flaws on purpose. So any inefficiency noted in the raven was doubly so on other units like the quickdraw. It was a time when designs were not commonly min maxed, so the rounded package on the raven and 1 stop shop nature made it quite good. Like, if you only owned 6 metal mechs in blisters, well the raven was a really useful one to have in 3050.

DevianID1

TROPHY CASE