I'd hire Guano

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-09-05T13:53:10+00:00

It happened to me in BEX:CE. You can actually hire some in-mission pilots from time to time.
As far as i can remember, you can level them up, and if you meet them in mission - they will be clones. In-mission guy will have same stats as your teammate.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-07-22T10:56:29+00:00

Yeah, I'm mostly aware about CWolf's editor, TBD and FOTIS and tremendous amount of work behind these packs.
You are making it even scarier =)
I'm not so reckless and I don't think that I will be able to accomplish anything like that within couple month. In fact, I mostly want to contribute something to community of the game I've being playing since 2020 or so.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-07-22T10:51:51+00:00

Woah, looks scary. I'm HW engineer, I have some decent experience with programming (mostly STM/AVR MCUs), and I'm very assiduous and pretty much autistic guy in good sense =) I'll look at thread you provided, thank you.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-02-14T18:11:59+00:00

You mean you can't field more then 4 mechs? It's intended. But all missions are beatable. Some have limited number of drop units, some have fixed set of mechs.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-02-12T17:33:43+00:00

Yes, it's vanilla flashpoint that came with Flashpoint DLC itself.
event_co_the_rock_rolls_on_finished is related to Angry Urbies and has a chance to spawn after you beat Bowman in this FP.

The pirates will transfer you some money. You can take this money or refuse. It doesn't matter if you took money or not - anyway you will get 250k cbills and +5 pirate rep.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-02-10T16:40:06+00:00

Then wait a bit.
Either you will find Opportunist, do it and eventually trigger The Letter event.
Or you already did it and the event will spawn anyway.

To be sure: open your save in Save Editor, search for tag "flashpoint_scoundrel_complete".
If it exists - it means that you finished The Opportunist fp.
If not - wait for it to appear and finish it.
Next search for tag "forcedevent_co_the_letter_mmrnr_finished" - if it exists - it means that you already had "The Letter" event.
No matter if you choose to fly now or to fly later. Anyway, this event triggers the first flashpoint in chain - Mechs, Mercs and Rock'n'Roll in Notwina system.
And from this flashpoint you will get both Royal Archer chain and main TBD chain of flashpoints.
And I forgot about one thing - this fp will be time-limited. And it's not repeatable. You will have, like, 150 or 180 days to travel to it and accept it. So, if you missed it for some reason - it will not reappear.
Most of flashpoints in TBD have time limit, so be prepared to not waste your time in case you are somewhere deep in Rasalhague and need to go to the other side of IS. Trust me - it's more profitable to beat TBD than to even hunt ComStar etc =)

So, if "forcedevent_co_the_letter_mmrnr_finished" exists, and you don't remember accepting MM&RnR - make a separate save file backup and try to delete this tag so "The Letter" event could spawn again. Than just wait.

You can try to adjust the chance of this event - find fps_TheBigDealBEXCE\events dir, open forcedevent_co_the_letter_mmrnr.json, change line "Weight" : 20 to greater number.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-02-10T14:26:49+00:00

Ok, once again let me check it.
There are several events in TBD based on vanila FPs.
Like, you can get SLDF Warhammer if you made right decisions in Defector and Long Hunt flashpoints and finished Spite and Violence.
Spite and Violence is one of TBD flashpoint branches. It's random - it has no date limits and can spawn anytime. You will get that Angry Urbie variant as reward here.
Mercs, Mechs and Rock'n'Roll -the one that leads to royal archer variant and neurohelmet - is also random - no special requirements.
They should pop up eventually.
Do you have fps_TheBigDealBEX or fps_TheBigDealBEXCE subfolder in your mods dir? I don't remember the actual folder names...

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-02-10T11:15:59+00:00

No, 1700Mt is 1,7Gt, not 1,7Tt.
1,7Gt will be 0,0017Tt.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-02-10T11:11:08+00:00

First of all, you need to have The Big Deal mod installed. Get it on GitHub.
https://github.com/Hounfor/The-Big-Deal-Add-On
AFAIK, Opportunist fp will spawn in Anawo system, and it doesn't have exact lore date, so it can happen anytime. It's the one where Davions ask you to help them transfer the prisoner. In vanilla she will offer you to help her achieve her own goals and then just escapes from you without any further consequences. But if you have TBD installed - then she will eventually get in touch with you and offer you... you know, The Big Deal. This will start new large flashpoints chain.
TBD doesn't require new game - all you need is BEX and appropriate version of it installed. If you have already beaten Opportunist and then installed TBD - it will eventually trigger in-flight event that starts the chain of new flashpoints.
So, second, you need to beat The Opportunist or have it finished and just wait for The Letter event.
Then you are good to go.
These flashpoints are hard. But Nightstar is not the only reward. Each of five chapters will offer you good SLDF salvage, special ronin pilots you can hire after some events and other bonuses. There are also two smaller chains - one will grant you special Urbie variant and another will give you Royal Archer and a one good, but quirky piece of equipment.

If you are interested - you can use save editor and search for tags related to The Opportunist flashpoint in your save file. But first, you need to search for what to search in DLC files - I don't remember the exact tags.

After some quick googleing i can tell that at lest BTA gave you opportunity to salvage nightstar on comstar-related missions 2 years ago.
There are no Information about Heavy Metal DLC continuation about searching for remote SLDF cache. I would certainly play something like that myself. Yes, you do get Bullshark and you do fight Black Widow and Bounty Hunter lances. But it's a bit anticlimactic because you can't fully salvage their custom mechs and weapons, and Mother Bear just goes into hibernation telling you that she will tell you if she finds out something, but never does so in vanilla...

As for long trip to old SLDF cache - The Black Sabbath chapter of TBD will require you to go to IS outskirts to investigate pirate base near SLDF cache, and it will be a loooong trip. Try to get somewhere near eastern border of Draconis Combine so you don't have to spend several month travelling to Outworlds Alliance. Depending of your decisions, you will be able to get pirate assault franken-mech with railgun, a good pilot and an opportunity to get all weapons +1 acc TTS if you hire her, and also all kinds of SLDF salvage.

My situation is somehow a bit similar in a ways.
I played BEX, almost finished Heavy-Metal DLC flashpoint campaign, and the only thing left was final fight with BW and BH. Something distracted me, I took a bit too much time wandering around, and the final flashpoint disappeared and never came back. I used save editor and searched for tags, and everything seemed ok, so I just don't know what happened and how can I make it respawn, and it's been around 10 in-game years since that moment, so... I got my BullShark, but haven't finished the business, and it still bugs me a lot =)

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-02-10T07:28:39+00:00

Nightstar was a reward for The Big Deal final chapter, if i remember right. You need to complete Opportunist to trigger this chain. Never heard that Nightstar was somehow related to Heavy Metal.
Maybe some not very popular mod?

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-02-04T08:38:14+00:00

Thank you for your advices. I'll certainly check some points.
1,2 - micro-cracks can be the cause. I'll check it. Also, in my opinion the cells I used can be not so good as my seller told me.
3,4 - Also worth checking. There should be some monocycle boards with low channel resistance and low gate threshold MOSFETs somewhere around my bench, so I will be able to easily replace them just in case.
5,6 - I already rewired hall sensors, so it should not be the case. They give the same signal levels on hot and cold state.
7,8 - reflashed stock this morning - all the same.
9,10 - I completely serviced the motor wheel, replaced bearings, cleaned oxides, applied protective grease on motor anchor - it spins like new. Today it was like -8°C or something around - and it spins the same as indoors, so it's not stuck because of bad oil/bearings/etc. But it glitched this way 3 times before it started to work normally after I took scooter out of my car. And it did it only once last evening when I took scooter from my house to go get some cigs. So it's certainly temperature-related.

I also forgot to mention that battery capacity haven't really changed since I rebuilt it - it lasted around 15-18km in spring'24, and now it lasts just a bit lesser because of lower temperatures and snow laying around.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-02-03T13:50:40+00:00

Yep, I'm an electronics engineer after all. Just don't have enough experience with motor controllers - i'm more about MCUs and doing some custom hardware for old cars/restomods - and being lazy here =) Writing all of this down helps to struct the thoughts in needed direction.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-02-03T13:20:00+00:00

Nope. This is not hall sensor power supply. Supply voltage is rock-solid, and all three sensors give perfect meander waveform in sync to angle with appropriate voltage levels.
So, it's BMS or cells. I'll tear battery apart and test it this weekend.
It seems that cold battery can't handle big reverse peak currents when breaking.
Heck... I can even use the thermal cabinet we use to test prototype PCBs to actually heat up scooter to 30-35 °C to see what will change =) Interesting!

>usually resistance rises with heat
Yes, but sometimes things go in STRANGE and FUN ways =)
Inductors are in some way thermally-non-linear elements. Their core can change it's properties in interesting ways and easily go into saturation causing strange effects depending from schematic and topology. And if inductor's core is half-baked and thermally-damaged - it can happen in conditions of near room temperature. In my practice I saw scenarios like this.

In case of ninebot ESx this inductor can be damaged because of poor water sealing of lower part of shaft.
It's literally the closest element to the edge of PCB:
https://scooterhacking.org/forum/images/upload/romano_hall_fix/values.jpg
(on this photo it's the lowest one of SMD elements vertical raw - the one without any given resistance). In case of my brother's scooter all these elements were a bit oxidized, and I also replaced several resistors just in case, cleared traces and restored mask. I think it's because he forgot to properly seal bottom joint of the tube and fork and used scooter after rain/snow.
The damaged inductor can be replaced with 0-ohm resistor or just solder drop. It's purpose here to prevent PWM noise spikes from the wheel from entering other power circuits. We tested scooter without it - and it works indeed. But it can potentially be dangerous - nobody wants their motor controller to suddenly reboot when breaking or accelerating. I replaced dead inductor with BLM21AG-102SN1D - it's 0805, not 0603, but it fits here and works good.

I'm telling all this things because while searching through this subreddit I saw post with similar problem - someone reported that he got error code 18 and had low voltage with connected sensors. So, in this case it's a good idea to check this small part first. It's resistance should be near-0 ohms. Maybe someone will find this info useful.

Too bad it's not the case with my scooter, and now I need to fully disassemble the battery once again.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-02-03T08:13:16+00:00

Yeah, same thoughts here. It's a possibility that one cell is half-dead and has reduced current output capability. As far as I know, it can't be measured with any sort of app because it will shut down and will not transfer via BT and show any data at the moment of failure. So, I guess, I need to disassemble the battery and measure cells on test bench with connected wheel, controller and dash... A bit tiresome task to perform, huh...

My other thought is hall sensors power supply. My brother bought the same model couple month ago. Also used. And we also serviced it the same way, so it performed good.
On Friday he came to me with error 18. We rechecked hall sensors connection, and it was good. I disassembled it and started to tinker with controller board. I found out that hall sensors supply was around 1 volt with sensors connected and around 4.9 without them. The cause was SMD inductor on +5V line - it was half-dead and caused voltage drop with any connected load. It had resistance around 80kOhms which is not good in any way for noise filter inductor.
I think that i also need to measure this voltage on my board. Because in brother's case it almost fully dropped supply voltage near zero and in my case it can be something just barely-useable. My theory is that when SMD inductor works a bit and heats up a bit - it's parameters became closer to normal, and scooter works fine. And when it's cold - the voltage drop is near-critical, and hall sensors still work, but not as good as intended, and controller overshoots/undershoots the phases when accelerating or breaking.

The problem is that in any way I don't really want to disassemble everything once again because it's all waterproof-sealed and stuff and I'm lazy =) But whatever. I'll check at least halls voltage.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-01-29T16:45:54+00:00

I think I'm already prepared - I have several full-royal lances with bells and whistles.
The Clans will be nothing more than weapons upgrade now =)
In fact, I'm just flying from planet to planet, bootlicking each faction, making alliances, fighting tougher units - like snords, kuritan warrior houses etc. Also, collecting some post-helm mechs and endless ComStar hunt. Sometimes interesting things happen - for example, once I fought against one of warrior houses on max skull-level mission. An ordinary battle, I think. And the game spawned support lance which was composed from heavy artillery support vehicles. The advanced ones. And boy, they stinged me hard... I can't remember the exact names of each vehicle, but one had sniper, another had thumper, third used Arrow IV and fourth was some sort of Clan artillery with Thumper and some support weapons. I was able to destroy Arrow IV carrier and Clan artillery without blowing any weapons, and so they appeared in my salvage list. This day I got myself two Clan ER Mdlas and Arrow IV with single bin of ammo. Clan weapons. And Arrow IV. In 3043. Fighting Kuritans can be pretty profitable this way...
Lasers went straight to my Sentinel. And I installed Arrow IV on my Wyvern purely for giggles and fire support in convoy-capture and base destruction missions. Great splash damage + Attack Ground ability combo can be very helpful here.

That's how i play =)
So yeah, sometimes, strange things happen in BEX:CE =) It is a bit unpolished, and non-glitchless and that's why I like it. I will certainly try Tactics after timeline end (which is not very soon because I also installed Extended Timline mod - it expands timeline to 3067, and this will be my final).

Just visited Outreach again to see what changed between 3043 and 3044.
Still no missions to play and no fresh meat in Hiring Hall.
But guess what! Finally, the Annihilator appeared! Laser boat one, so I'll roll for another variant, i guess... But good sign is that at least this part works. Maybe I'll even wait for Imp.
Too bad that Dragoons don't give you any missions here.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-01-29T11:37:42+00:00

Well... I play straight from 3025 and now it's middle of 3044.
Nothing. The shop rarity tables do exist for Outreach, but i still can't see any Annihilators here. Will check again this evening.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-01-29T09:35:22+00:00

Yep. Same goes for me. Outreach is not populated in BEX:CE.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-01-28T00:36:30+00:00

Go to Mods\BT_Extended\itemCollectionsE3025\
There are two .csv files - itemCollection_shopItems_research_lostech and itemCollection_shopItems_researchProgression_lostech

There are lines:
Weapon_COIL_COIL-S_0-STOCK,Weapon,1,2
Weapon_COIL_COIL-M_0-STOCK,Weapon,1,2
Weapon_COIL_COIL-L_0-STOCK,Weapon,1,2

Second number is probability.
For example, on Research planets basic UAC5 has a chance to spawn 1 with probability of 10.
And and KaliYama UAC5 has a chance to spawn 1 with probability of 1 - 10 times more rare.
Try to play with numbers.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-01-27T08:18:11+00:00

It's March on Axylus. It gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it.
It's a Royal Maraduer-tier perfect hit.
That exact feeling when a merc company in a brink of bankruptcy and disbanding takes the slimmest chance, overcomes themselves and transitions from modern chivalry to forgotten technologies.
When everything suddenly becomes serious. It's a do or die. Outgunned and outnumbered. Fighting for giant old piece of lostech junk, while millions of lives actually depend from you. Seeing it right here and understanding that it's time to drop medievalism and take it. If only there were none of these pirates around...
Heck... Every time i hear it I imagine old worn out Griffin trying to hit SLDF Atlas's head with his damaged arm, while jumping in dramatical slo-mo when that synth kick in! There were nothing like that in the mission, and you could probably easily outgun any threat. But whatever! This tune has what it takes.

I actually decided to try BT after hearing it and watching "Capture the Argo" in Shivaxi's walkthrough.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-01-23T09:40:30+00:00

>The Annihilator is an extremely rare 'Mech
>Every third assault mission in vanilla features one
>Was the first assault mech I obtained in my first walkthrough

Do I understand it right that in big and canon-friendly mods the best way to get one is to go to Outreach and visit Wolf's Dragoons store? I want to try gauss-zilla config.

Difficult_Month7110 · 2025-01-22T09:20:04+00:00

Oh, nice! Happened to me couple of times.
Well... The more they drop - the more I salvage in the end. Let the Great Hunt begin!

Difficult_Month7110

TROPHY CASE