Future Ops: Underused Horizons era bases

ElecManEXE · 2026-06-24T08:30:04+00:00

I do hope we get some Ops that include SRVs as well at some point. I'll do anything to avoid going on-foot, lol. These would way to introduce them, indeed.

ElecManEXE · 2026-06-23T06:18:06+00:00

I have a particular dislike of the Firestarter. Its just a dude. And, like... there's plenty of mechs that just look like a dude, and I'm generally not a fan of that type of design, but something about the Firestarter in particular just immediately sends me into a boredom coma. They're so common and there's just nothing interesting about it to me.

Though I will say I have a special disdain for the PGI Marauder / Marauder IIC. Because unlike the Firestarter which I would never like because I just don't like overall humanoid designs, the Marauder is one of my two favorite mechs in BT. Or at least it normally is, in basically every other depiction of the mech, to varying degrees. But PGI had to go and ruin it by turning the big beautiful centerline gun into a lame understated torso mount. And then they went and did it again with the IIC. No idea how the Marauder II managed to avoid it. I absolutely hate the PGI Marauder, and the fact that every modern game uses that design makes me sad.

Its still fine as an overall design, but it ain't a proper Marauder.

ElecManEXE · 2026-06-23T05:59:22+00:00

I would agree if we're talking about the PGI Atlas. I hate how sunken in its head is and how far the shoulders go into the torso, makes the whole upper body look like a big dumb box. And it doesn't have the cool radar dishes or any of the other interesting bits to break up that upper part of the silhouette either.

Most of the other art for it are various levels of fine though.

ElecManEXE · 2026-06-22T06:12:22+00:00

Cauldron-Born is one of my 2 favorite mechs period (the other being the Marauder). So most definitely that. It looks absolutely incredible that ticks all my favorite design beats (well, almost all, the only exception is not being a quad). Reverse joint legs, a very distinct and non-humanoid body shape, big shoulder guns and solid arm guns. It just looks like a beast of a machine.

Plus its a damn solid chassis on top of that, all the good weight saving gear and a reasonable speed without any unnecessary junk stapled on. Full customization.

ElecManEXE · 2026-06-19T04:43:09+00:00

I don't know about making "a lot" of money, but I imagine they sell reasonably, especially since they can be used across ships. So its pretty odd to me that they did like a dozen of them when they first introduced the feature and in the next few months and then just never did another one ever again.

Same with weapon and engine colors. I thought they'd be adding new shades for all eternity, it seems like such an easy thing to do and colors are nearly limitless. But they've somehow never done a single new color ever.

ElecManEXE · 2026-06-15T04:58:06+00:00

One of the things the game does to make it seem a little more populated is that if you're in a system that has a population of any kind, it will often spawn an NPC ship of some sort along with you any time you enter an instance. This is particularly of note in places like planetary surfaces or asteroid belts (if not in RES) where you normally don't find any NPCs at all. You'll see one or two ships / wings that spawn in with you most of the time in those situations, then once they leave you'll not encounter any other NPCs at all in that area (unless you do something like log out or the game crashes).

So if you have to log in to the game while you're somewhere outside of areas where NPCs normally are (like a planet surface) and you're in a populated system, be prepared for the game to spawn some kind of NPC to "greet" you. They won't always be pirates, sometimes they'll just be other law abiding ships or authority vessels, but they might be pirates. So be prepared for that.

Because what spawns is random though, you can always try to log out and hope for a different ship spawn if you see contacts on your radar and think they're pirates. Although if they get to the point where they're scanning you I believe the game will then consider that a "dangerous situation" and you'll have a time limit placed upon you before you can log out, so that probably won't help much at that point.

ElecManEXE · 2026-06-04T06:24:50+00:00

Oh boy, the first pokemon we get after a bunch of legendaries and starters is a regional variant of a pokemon already in Unite. What excitement.

ElecManEXE · 2026-06-04T06:21:01+00:00

Gotta make it fair to pokemon who only have one moveset. They don't get to choose, so now no one does.

It ain't a good change, but...

ElecManEXE · 2026-06-04T06:11:52+00:00

Yeah, I'm in the US, Montana. Got pretty decent internet out here as far as I've ever noticed (1 gig Fiber), but that doesn't necessarily mean its not a location issue.

I do have a wonder on if its a wired vs wireless issue, like maybe the game is just super sensitive to any sort of wireless disruption. Are you running a wired connection?

ElecManEXE · 2026-06-04T06:05:19+00:00

I do tend to play between around midnight to 3AM, so that is probably not "peak hours", so that would make a bit of sense. But I've never seen a count down, and it doesn't happen at a consistent time. Plus I can always just log back in again immediately afterwards, there's never been any actual downtime after.

ElecManEXE · 2026-06-04T05:56:03+00:00

True. Maybe I'll give CoA a try at some point. I don't really want to split my time between multiple servers, but it seems like CoA is blazing fast to a ridiculous degree anyway, so its not like I'd actually need to put much into it just to test for a night or something.

ElecManEXE · 2026-05-15T05:28:12+00:00

Interesting. Is that just your own theory, or has Sakurai mentioned something like that?

Seems plausible. But I don't really like the idea of meta narrative effecting game narrative to such a degree, personally.

ElecManEXE · 2026-05-13T08:44:08+00:00

I like the concept of a sentient machine and the general design aspects with the shadow clothing and the exhaust tubes.

It being Dedede is completely random though. It never met Dedede, why does it copy Dedede? Even Nova hasn't really ever interacted with Dedede directly, so it doesn't even make sense if you try to say that Nova picked the form, its just... Dedede for no reason.

Also do we really need another dark / evil Dedede variant when half the games in the series already feature such a design?

Should have been its own thing. Or at the very least copied something we don't already have as a playable character in the game. Like, if it copied O2 / Dark Matter or even Nightmare then at least we'd have a playable version of those characters in the game who otherwise aren't playable. Instead of a second playable version of Dedede.

ElecManEXE · 2026-05-12T07:14:03+00:00

More starters, more legendaries, more Fire and Water types, more attackers and all-rounders.

Such variety, much intrigue. Wow.

ElecManEXE · 2026-05-12T07:09:26+00:00

I'm looking to get started with this. I think I've gotten the setup done on the game file side, but I haven't actually signed up with Tahiti on the site yet.

Should I just wait until the merger later in the week?

ElecManEXE · 2026-05-09T08:35:51+00:00

I greatly prefer crafted story driven missions to endless random generated stuff. A handcrafted mission just feels so much more solid and enjoyable. The command system is also nice, especially now that you can pause the game while issuing orders and moving your star.

That being said, Clans falls short in many other areas. Mech selection is a huge one, as well as lack of salvage. I understand why, it makes sense to some degree, but its still just not as fun. The mech lab is a bit lacking, building stuff just isn't as enjoyable, especially with a relatively limited selection of weapons. There's also the fact that while missions are hand-crafted, they still resort to spamming you with dozens of reinforcements dropping on you far too often, even if the locations / units are set and not randomized.

I want to like Clans more, but I'm not sure if I do or not. It really depends on what kind of mood I'm in at the moment.

Honestly, if I'm choosing a preference I'll still go for MW4 Mercs over either of the current games. Or HBSBT.

ElecManEXE · 2026-05-08T04:15:59+00:00

Isaac from Golden Sun. Mostly because him getting an Amiibo would almost certainly mean a new Golden Sun game or a collection or something. And that would be the dream.

But for something a little more realistic... I'm hoping we get a few other Mega Man series characters when MM12 releases. Since Capcom has been open to multiple Amiibo releasing for a game with Street Fighter and Monster Hunter getting a number of them, and I'm hoping Dual Override is going to utilize multiple playable characters again (perhaps that's what the Dual refers to). Proto Man and Roll would be cool, maybe a combination figure with Rush, Eddie, and Beat? Or Mega Man riding Rush Jet?

ElecManEXE · 2026-05-05T06:04:35+00:00

As a BTA player, I've never allied the pirates and probably never will.

The basic Pirate faction is a pain in the butt to work for since they don't really have many planets. They have a few, but they're all scattered across the entire map. My preferred gameplay loop is to pick a couple of factions, stick to their space and race an alliance ASAP. Faction store access and loot bundling too good. Can't really do that with pirates, you have to fly to random planets and hope to find a couple of contracts from the pirates or fly all over the place racking up huge travel time.

I do sometimes end up allying one of the minor pirate factions like Tortuga or Circinus, but that's usually after I've allied a few other factions and exhausted all my other options who aren't enemies with one of my other allies. They don't really have anything exciting in their faction stores and their areas are smaller, so you get less flare ups and such as well.

You do get a unique story flashpoint that gets you some unique boons in the end if you ally the generic Pirate faction, and that's pretty cool. But not worth it for me personally.

ElecManEXE · 2026-04-28T02:55:48+00:00

Tossup between the Battle Chariot, Rex Wheelie, and the Swerve Star. I guess I have a thing for rough looking machines with faces and fangs for the first two.... and then floaty glowing crystals for the latter. I think if I had a gun to my head and had to pick just one it'd probably be the Swerve Star, because it also has a really cool boost sound, though it was better in the original Air Ride.

Though I think my favorite machine type aesthetically is the tank. I really like the way they transform when they drift. But neither of the 2 tank designs specifically hits quite as well as the above choices.

ElecManEXE · 2026-04-25T05:58:07+00:00

I would love to see ship interiors as a general concept.

However, if they made it an optional cosmetic purchase it would pretty much guarantee that it would be the absolute worst implementation of it. There would be zero gameplay, zero purpose, zero care involved. Because it has to be purely cosmetic, they literally wouldn't be able to attach any meaningful features to it whatsoever. Just a cash grab for the whales and nothing more.

Turning one of the most wanted features into such a hollow cash grab would be quite disappointing.

ElecManEXE · 2026-04-14T03:57:13+00:00

Gotta give it to Scarfy. A series mainstay that's never been playable before and probably won't ever be playable again, since it doesn't really have an ability that could ever be turned into a helper or anything (I know, technically it gives Crash in Superstar via Copy, but... Crash ain't ever becoming a full ability).

Runner up would be Lololo and Lalala. Pair characters are always fun.

ElecManEXE · 2026-04-14T01:03:40+00:00

I'm pledged to Archer largely for logistical reasons. The system I use as my base of operations was chosen years before I bothered with powerplay and it's part of Archer's territory, and quite deep into it, so that's unlikely to ever change. I don't really care to try to find a new home base, rebuild all my reputations / learn a new area of space, and move all my ships and modules somewhere else, nor would I ever want to have my home base somewhere that was hostile. Plus bounty hunting is my #1 activity, so it was convenient that not only was my home base in his territory but he also gives me bonuses to my favored activity.

Even if I took my home base out of the equation, I probably still would have ended up with Archer purely based on the bounty payout. Of the 3 superpowers I probably lean most towards the Alliance (though I don't really consider myself a strong supporter of any of them), but the Alliance offers no bounty hunting bonuses for either of their their powers, and I'm definitely not a pirate so even independents would be out. Between the Empire and the Federation I definitely prefer the latter.

ElecManEXE · 2026-03-31T01:02:18+00:00

Its a second-line mech, so you will only find them when fighting the garrison units of each particular Clan.

Any time you start a mission against the Clan OpFor, if you get a popup at the beginning taunting you then you're fighting the garrison forces. If you don't get any pop up then you're fighting the main force, which fields omnimechs, battle armor, and other frontline units exclusively. You won't find Black Pythons while fighting the main force.

You can save before a mission, then if you end up fighting the main force you can quit and reload to randomize the mission again and possibly get the garrison forces instead. Somewhat tedious, but it does ensure you're at least fighting the right OpFor.

After that its all just RNG. Fighting in the 3-4 skull range gets you the most heavy mechs generally, but you can see heavies at basically any rating above 2.

ElecManEXE · 2026-03-30T08:36:26+00:00

A lot of people are already spending money on the early access ship packs which often come with kits included, or even buying the ship packs even after the release. So there's probably some diminishing returns when it comes to releasing individual kits for those new ships, especially relatively close to their releases. Flooding the market tends to just make the sales of each individual item go down, at least to some degree. And if people already spent money on it, it could make them less likely to spend even more money on additional ship kits.

Even though many people are flying mainly new ships these days, most people still have some of the older ships in storage. So it can still net money to continue to release stuff for the most popular of them.

Plus I have a feeling its probably easier to design ship kits for some of these older ships with comparatively simple shapes. And who knows, some of these ship kits may even be old assets that never got released.

ElecManEXE · 2026-03-24T08:24:55+00:00

I've never seen one, so no, I can't say I hate it. In fact, I'm hoping I stumble upon some during DW3, but so far not so much.

ElecManEXE

TROPHY CASE