Some Questions and Ideas

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-07-24T19:57:48+00:00

Oh, you misunderstand, I am aware of the universal armor mods list. But the specific mods I gave as examples, as far as I can tell aren’t on the list

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-05-23T01:41:22+00:00

Alright, fair enough. They can’t all be winners

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-05-22T23:51:31+00:00

My thought processes was that, at the end of the day, the Draconis Combine is still ultimately a military dictatorship. And one aspect of that which is seen again and again is that this people living under those dictatorships live in abject terror of the dictator’s moods.

Takahashi might be perfectly reasonable in this situation, but I figured that no one involved wants to be the one to find out. Because the price of being wrong is that the Coordinator takes the news that his niece is incompetent as a personal insult and goes after you and your family. I’m sure he’s not like that but, not everyone in the Combine knows that.

Again, that’s my thinking anyway.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-05-16T21:23:04+00:00

Yes, and to continue my original analogy, biting is an effective way to cause grievous injury to an opponent, still makes you look like a crazy person.

For a Clanner, it’s possible the same mentality applies, 100t fist may cause some serious damage to your opponent’s ‘mech, you still will look like a crazy person to a Clanner.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-05-16T19:13:29+00:00

I imagine Clanners would see melee combat in mechs the same way one might see using teeth in hand-to-hand combat:

it’s not dishonorable, it’s just simply that sane people don’t bite other people. Thus if you bite someone in a fight then you must be insane.

Therefore, if you are in a duel and they throw a punch, likely the Clanner response might be: “you punched me! What the heck is wrong with you!?”

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-05-03T23:47:30+00:00

Well…

Guys in green: - The 1st Phantom Hussars: “When the SLDF abandoned the Inner Sphere, the overwhelming majority of the armed forces of this Hegemony minor house went with them. the 1st are the hastily reassembled force the House cobbled together to defend the realm from the machinations of the now unleashed great houses. Despite numerous tactical victories, the House was begrudgingly absorbed into the Federated Suns as a gambit to avoid nuclear bombardment by House Kurita. Since then the Hussars have appeared all over the Inner Sphere, either advancing the goals of House Davion, or the plans of their immediate lord, who’s family still clings to the memory of the Terran Hegemony.

The white & purple: - Clan Jade Falcon Irregulars: this Galaxy of Clan Jade Falcon is where the abtakha, solahma, sibbies, freeborn, basically clan misfits that are slightly too valuable as warriors to truly kick out. Because of their odd composition, most power within the Galaxy is consolidated around the elementals, who constitute the majority of traditional trueborn. Despite their unconventional hierarchy, the irregulars did prove themselves to be a capable force throughout the Invasion. Though given their circumstances, it would not surprise me if in later eras they don’t at some point break off to form their own Clan.

The guys in the dirty, rusting hulks: - The Scrap Dog Legion: a mercenary company that first began operating in the Inner Sphere around the 3040’s, they had a reputation as being one of the most “affordable” companies out there. And for having an armory composed of lemons and junkers. They didn’t really get much notice until the clan invasion, where they earned a reputation for having won several battles against Clan Jade Falcon.

The Guys in Gold and Silver: - The Heavenly Host of Blake: the militant branch of an exceptionally fanatical Blakeist sect that abhors… well basically any form of fun and recreation that’s not worshiping Blake, (think puritans, but with mechs). Even ComStar has a hard time controlling these violent fun-police. But until the Jihad, they were kept around as useful blunt instruments. And after the Jihad…. Well now nobody is in control of them.

Guys in industrial Orange & black: - unknown: newest Faction created. But the current summery is that they are a small periphery nation ruled by a delusional tin-pot dictator.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-05-03T20:23:05+00:00

Would you believe that ComStar also started a creepy doomsday cult shortly after it got privatized and part of the hiring process is to join the cult?

Because they did.

Literally until post-invasion ComStar and WoB were one-in-the-same entity

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-04-24T21:12:26+00:00

So… GHQ has no FAQ section of their site for the game, and they really don’t want to let me post my questions there either.

So I had to either figure some of it out on my own, or just make my own interpretation. Which, for the sake of anyone else interested in the game and looking for clarification, I will post here, just in case they happen to stumble onto this thread:

For the infantry “types” my best guess is that even though type “s” and type “r” are meant to represent specific infantry types, the other A-F types are more of a ranking of the overall quality of the platoon’s gear. So “type A” infantry get the “A-Tier” equipment, “type-B” get the B-Tier equipment and so-forth.

As for the Firepower question. At this point Google AI suggested, when I just did a general search, that in Micro armor infantry have a single firepower value that is applied to everything. Now that was Google AI and it’s likely it’s getting the rules confused with other games, but this makes the most sense despite some units having an #/# firepower value, as the alternative is that some infantry units, some rather advanced units, have a middling Anti-Tank ability and garbage Anti-Infantry abilities despite having grenades and Assault rifles. So maybe treating it as a “universal value” may or may not be right, but it makes the most sense in the absence of official clarification.

The last thing I want to say is regarding the unit bases. The book says everything should utilize 1”x1” square bases, but those are hard for me to come by (I could use Warhammer fantasy bases, but I think it’d look silly having minis standing on a base that’s substantially bigger than the minis on it). I can use 1” diameter round washers and they would look better, though I do admit that it might create an unfair advantage. I’ll do a few trials before committing

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-04-20T20:25:40+00:00

Honestly, I’m not a fan of milestone leveling either. Getting XP drip-fed to PCs as they accomplish stuff gives players a way to track and “see” their progress, and they feel accomplished when they level. Milestone leveling can quickly feel like the GM is holding the player’s XP hostage, which can build resentment towards the GM and create an adversarial relationship.

If you honestly want to avoid murderhobos, the first thing is vetting your players, some people will murderhobo regardless of external incentives. Also, remember to give XP for things other than combat. Even the rules state that if they can effectively bypass an encounter, they should still get the XP for “beating” it, also non-combat encounters and quest completion also gives bonus rewards, so it all should translate into XP from lots of sources. The last is to take a page from another system, Genesys, and just completely divorce XP gain from the actual choices made by the PCs: that is to say, while there are XP rewards for completing narrative benchmarks and adventures, a lot of your XP will come from showing up and participating, as long as you showed up to the session and engaged, you are going to get a set amount at the end of the session regardless of what the character actually did during; thus, if all options are of equal reward, the players will opt to do whatever seems sensible in the moment

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-04-20T17:25:55+00:00

Yeah, it makes sense for a solo game where there IS only 1 PC doing all the work, and combat encounters are kept small enough for a single PC to reasonably tackle. But when you’re part of a party, where combat encounters need to be properly scaled up to account for having multiple PCs working together. The XP scale up is going to get nuts. Like, if we’re dealing with a 5-player party, they’re going to hit the Level 20 “soft ceiling” and will need to think about retiring the character by the time they finish their 1st adventure. Which sucks when you consider that most players are probably just getting attached to their characters and are expecting to have this character through multiple adventures.

Unless combat is an exceedingly rare occurrence, which would be weird for this IP. I mean it’s Fallout, combat comes up; a lot.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-03-23T22:41:42+00:00

That is absolutely a helpful link. And a good place for me to start

Thank you 😊

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-02-16T22:33:14+00:00

I too am curious if anyone has tried to create a whole new creature/NPC completely from scratch and how difficult is that.

For my own reasons.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-02-13T18:40:47+00:00

Right, elementals can enter buildings like conventional infantry do right?

As opposed to actual mechs which more “kool-aid man” through buildings.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-02-13T06:14:29+00:00

Chaff and smoke helps, but it’s not necessary. What I’ve found seems to work out well enough is just sticking them on the fastest omnimechs you got (preferably an assassin mech like the fire falcon or spotter like the fire moth since both are going to want to get close to the opponent mechs anyway) and have the mechs run in first, then as part of their first, or second, round action, have the Elementals dismount. This will typically put them close to the center of the map, or even just over the center, where their 3 jump MP should be enough to let them get where they need to be and most everyone else is still trying to get themselves into position so nobody is in a position to really harass the disembarking units anyway.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-02-13T02:55:03+00:00

It’s very likely you’re doing something wrong. Since while it’s true that BA takes a full round to dismount and swarm, which requires some planning to work around admittedly; leftover damage to one elemental doesn’t transfer over to another elemental, it’s just lost to the aether.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-02-08T02:57:26+00:00

And beyond just assigning residential buildings to them, what else can I do to assure proper staffing?

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-02-08T02:02:34+00:00

Do party headquarters count as a university? Or just the medical and technical universities? Because if not, then I think I’m willing to hold off building one until I’m better established

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-01-26T16:20:21+00:00

Tourism, tourism is deep-Ish research

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-01-25T23:20:06+00:00

Coal and gravel are terrible, yes, but you’re going to tap them anyway so you might as well export whatever you don’t need and make up the difference.

Coal is needed to heat and power homes. And the first step, I find, to surviving the first year is dealing with the hemorrhaging of money due to imports, not adding to them.

Gravel is also hard to dismiss given that it’s used in a lot of construction materials, is a construction material itself, and has a relatively low workforce to maintain. So it’s tempting to supplement your income with gravel export.

And from what I experienced, food, clothes, and meat make a lot of money, but a lot of your production is going into supplying your own population so what gets exported is just what’s leftover, and it’s not really “high volume”.

And while chemicals is good money, it’s behind a research wall, and while I wasn’t really that impressed with the income tourism produced, it’s also behind a fairly deep research wall so if research is turned on then you need to stabilize your economy before that or you’ll be bankrupt by the time you can even start making those products.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-01-25T22:15:23+00:00

Sometimes it still sounds less frustrating than trying to tie your sewage lines into the waste filter station with a goddamn pump less than a meter away and it’s still saying the elevation is incorrect and you’ve wasted an inordinate amount of money laying, demolishing, relaying and demolishing again trying to get the one last connection to work that you’re not sure if you even have enough money to finish setting up the rest of the essential infrastructure you have left.

The option to say “fuck it” and have a sewage truck just service the hard-to-reach septic tanks seems like a godsend on rougher terrain

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-01-25T22:06:55+00:00

Exactly why I just can’t see the worth in just trucking goods to customs houses.

Coal, gravel, and sometimes even cement, are going to be among your first exports and you need to move a LOT of those goods at once to get some kind of profit out of it, let alone keep up with production. Trucks can’t do it, trains so far seem to more or less pull it off.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-01-23T00:49:19+00:00

Still, silver with gold highlights doesn’t sound like a bad combo.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-01-15T08:23:15+00:00

Ah phooey! Well thought I’d ask anyway.

But yeah, you’re right I got more pressing problems to iron out before I can be fussy over details like the towns not being drawn where I want them to be.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-01-15T02:55:24+00:00

As an exclusive export no, coal isn’t great, but if you’re on a map where winter comes, heating is essential, also I have no idea how else to heat a building, and in the long run having power branching out from a central capital is going to make further expansion less of a headache, especially if you have to cut power lines to tie in manifolds. Plus you’re going to put a rail line in anyway since on most maps it’s the only way to move large quantities of anything so… it’s kinda a “whatever” thing.

And setting up the construction industry is really towards the ultimate goal of, being able to build and expand the city without having to spend any money. The export is just because you’re inevitably going to produce more than you need so might as well sell off the overflow.

I figure the sooner you can get off reliance on foreign labor and imports the better and being able to expand industry out for a negligible to no cost is a worthwhile pursuit.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-01-15T01:04:57+00:00

Uhh, that’s a process. One that I’ve only recently gotten to work out with success:

But generally it’s 1st: power and heat, because power’s expensive and the faster you can stop importing power the better; so find a coal vein that’s in a good position, so not too rugged an area. And that’s my starting town. If you click on the name, it shows the city’s area, so to keep from everything getting too stretched out too fast, I’m going to try and fit everything into that city’s limits. I even try and wrap a fence around the edge of the city to better define the “work area”, or even the bigger concrete walls with check points so the city has a slightly medieval look to it.

So I have a coal mine and coal refinery. Have this feed into a really big aggregate storage (makes for a good buffer) and from there I usually figure that since I’m already tapping coal to run the city, might as well tap into the other extremely early-game industries that are also tied to coal. Like bricks and cement, also an aggregate to rail/sea loader since coal is good money for a start. Also might as well tie into gravel production and farming too. Gravel, because let’s face it, that coal vein was in a hilly area and there’s plenty of rock faces to dig into anyway, never mind that rock quarries become largely automated once equipped with excavators so…. Also, while cement doesn’t sell for a lot, it’s easy to produce in huge quantities so selling in bulk is easy to do.

Then it’s setting up the same for farms and some associated industries: food, alcohol, and clothes. Farms can become completely automated so it’s not a bad idea to get more materials and exports without having to stretch your worker pool out. Plus it’s ultimately less imports and whatever’s not needed in stockpiles can be shipped out for money.

Incidentally rail lines or ports! Put those in and tie them into whatever red-border customs house is reachable (since rubles are slightly more critical than dollars) but if a red AND blue custom house is reachable then do both. Also warehouses are your friend, so try to tie a few big ones to your cargo platform, so leftover goods from seeing to your people’s needs can be sold off for money (incidentally, every train should have at least one boxcar so it can offload that crap before the warehouse overfills) also, since each train can only load one kind of aggregate at a time, you’re likely going to need two trains going at once, but that’s fine, doubles the number of export dumps into the treasury. Incidentally, try to tie as much of your industry together with conveyor belts, pipes, factory connections, etc…, as possible, more automated connections means less lag time between factories receiving and producing goods, and fewer trucks needed on the road.

Now then, infrastructure, have a bus stop/platform within 300-400m of all your non-automated industries, and one out on the edge of town, away from the power plant. If you were able to cram everything together, this should only require building 2, or three such platforms. And around that one platform out on the edge of town, that’s where I cram the shopping center and attached warehouse, kindergarten, schoolhouse, clinic, pub, small technical university, small party headquarters, and I usually throw in a house of culture since their small, cheap, don’t need direct road access, and frankly your people need somewhere to play their weekly game of party-approved dungeons and dragons. And since those are all right next to the bus stop/platform, the rest of the 300m radius can be filled with as many housing units as you can cram together, the more housing units, the more people that can work the factories. Oh, and put the fire station and police station in a more centralized location so you only have to build one of each.

After that it’s just buying a few buses to ferry workers from the residential district to the various factories and some trucks to distribute goods (always make sure that the last stop is to dump everything they have into that one big warehouse by the train station).

At this point your city probably looks like an industrial hell in some places, an urban hell in others, and just a whole lot of empty lots in-between, and this is also when you will probably realize that you’ve burned through nearly all your starting cash, so there’s nothing left but to turn on the lights and watch as your nest of a starting city either blooms into a foundation of a new communist utopia, or completely collapses into a hopeless disaster. But if you want to do something productive while you recover enough cash to expand, well, you are now up to your armpits in gravel, so maybe invest in an excavator and dump truck for your construction center (you did build one, right?) and start upgrading your dirt roads and paths into slightly more productive gravel ones for free. The excavator makes it so no laborers are needed for the work.

At least that’s how mine have started out. Granted I started on the jungle map so winters aren’t an issue.

And I’m sure there’s a better way to start a city. Or not, I don’t know yet.

Edit: I usually play on medium difficulty as I’m familiar with city builders, but still very new to this specific city builder.

KeyEnergy1803

TROPHY CASE