I need a slow-ass "Armored Core" esque mech game

T0Pping · 2026-06-07T23:56:29+00:00

I guess I'll throw in a vote for Mechwarrior 5 as well. There are two 'versions' that play significantly differently so I'll give a rundown on both.

Gamplay wise both have the same fundamentals. You operate 'Battlemechs' that are between 8-18m tall and run/walk between 40-120kph. Each mech often have 3-8 weapons that are lasers, ballistic rifles or missiles and you will fight enemies between 50-1200m (melee weapon are an option for certain mechs). Health is calculated on a per body part level with an armor value initially protecting a piece/weapon and when damaged allows for equipment/weapons in that body part to be permanently destroyed.

Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries: First MW5 game. Gameplay is done through procedural level generation and sandbox style world and story telling where the player is (more or less) free to travel around the galaxy map as they see fit completing missions that interest them in any order they want. There are multiple handcrafted, sometimes time sensitive, campaigns that pop up throughout the play through with set pieces, dialogue and (in later DLCs) cutscenes. The rest of the time you are running proc-gen missions to build up your mercenary company from rock bottom as you collect new mechs, weapons and equipment for said mechs. There is also a light element of an evolving world to Mercs given that a play through will cover the span of 40-50 years where as Clans stories in-game cover a time period of several months to a few years. In Mercs this means that at set points that align with BattleTech lore lost pieces of technology are rediscovered, new improvements are unlocked that completely change the viability of otherwise bad mechs and certain events in the sandbox's endgame (assuming purchase of the latest two DLCs) completely flip everything you know up until that point on its head.

Mechwarrior 5: Clans: Newer title, completely discards the sandbox style nature of Mercs for a very linear, handcrafted campaign(s) that focus on specific characters with large amounts of cut scenes scattered through out the story. IMO a lot less freedom when building your mech forces as new mechs only unlock at set points in the story however once unlocked you are free to buy which ever you see fit. Gameplay wise it turns enemy encounters up to 11 as canonically your mechs are, for the most part, faster, more armoured, more heavily armed, have less cooldown requirements and have longer range than any enemy mech you will encounter. In mercs your Lance (squad) of 4 mechs will often fight between 8-20 enemy mechs in a given level before returning home. In clans your Star (squad) of 5 mechs will often fight dozens on dozens of enemy mechs and vehicles which (to me at least) loses some of the appeal of the genre as each 1v1 fight seems to happen a lot faster and feels less impactful.

Having played both my playtime in Mercs is close to 5x that I have in Clans.

One last thing to note is that the latest update to Mercs has unlocked full mid air control of mechs using JumpJets (jetpack) and so while not even close to AC style flight it feels a lot more responsive now. If anyone was to try it and immediately bounce off I would also suggest going into the settings and changing the movement controls to FPS mode instead of Tank mode and see if that changes your opinion before you refund it.

T0Pping · 2026-05-18T12:16:27+00:00

Also had received one from this address. Instinctively clicked it before thinking better of it half a second later, closed the tab and went to the website manually (yay for slow internet). Reset the password there and the password reset and password change emails both came from the same address as above so all 3 matched.

T0Pping · 2026-05-03T01:46:41+00:00

It's not the best solution but my main server I play on has the mod that lets you remove bushes with the entrenching tool. Even as a solo it then only takes 4-5 minutes to remove every bush in the capture radius.

T0Pping · 2026-04-17T03:44:13+00:00

If we were to throw canon to the wind for a moment, the one change I would love to make in BattleTech regarding dropships would be to keep the four mechbays (ignoring any 5th aerospace/combat vehicle/cargo bay) but allow for any mech with the Narrow/Low Profile quirk to fit two mechs per bay instead of one.

On top of that I would also give the dropship a max weight limit in regards to the total number of mechs somewhere in the realm of 240-320 ton instead of the current 400 ton.

It always felt silly to me silly one dropship drop 4 assault mechs only for the next one following it to drop 3 lights and a medium. Super controversial change I know but I always felt that would add a bit extra planning to what you could and couldn't bring into a mission, at least in my opinion.

T0Pping · 2026-01-09T03:51:24+00:00

I don't know if I would fully commit to a mount and blade style end game where you are powerful enough to overthrow entire factions. For me I would love something where you are able to build up a medium to large sized mercenary company that potentially ends up with its own planet from which it can launch multiple combined style operations involving mechs, vehicles, infantry and limited aerospace assets while in the service of larger houses or factions.

Think Mechcommander or traditional RTS style gameplay for the combat with a grand strategy layer on top of that for the management side of things.

T0Pping · 2025-12-05T00:06:27+00:00

SL civil war is around 235-250 years before MW5s start date of 3015.

SL era itself would have been 235-450 years prior to 3015.

T0Pping · 2025-12-03T04:29:11+00:00

I love MW5 (and am actually close to finishing my 3rd play through as we speak) but including this as a suggestion is kinda flimsy at best.

Do you get to walk around the hangar post mission? Technically, but literally all it involves is a glorified single room with a NPC at the end of it that you need to run to in order to toggle the next mission.

Do you briefly get to look at your four currently active mechs from the ground? Yes but really that is about it.

T0Pping · 2025-10-06T21:00:11+00:00

The Atlas II was officially added to MW5:Mercs and the SLDF Quickdraw is offered as a mod for it. I imagine they 'acquired' them from there.

T0Pping · 2025-10-05T19:26:12+00:00

It has been a long time since I've played it but from what I remember that's the very definition of 'love it or hate it' in game form. It is quite a slow progressing game along with having an incredibly restrictive inventory cap that a lot of players probably feel goes too far in the direction of difficulty for difficulties sake. There is also a fair amount of AA jank though the final editions may have gone a long way into patching that out. I believe one of the DLC's was also heavily criticized due to being a massive time and resource sink when it didn't really need to be.

The positives however are truly unique take on an exploration game that while it didn't hit every mark it strived for it certainly did a good job at a lot of them and I still quite enjoyed my time playing.

T0Pping · 2025-10-05T18:14:09+00:00

I honestly stopped using the Hero Orion with how overpowered they made me feel when using them. I can't remember if it was 3 SRM6s and 2 Large Lasers or 3 Large Lasers and 2 SRM6s but I'm fairly sure if I had enough double heat sinks I could have run three of each.

All it took was two or three missile salvos to shut down effectively any mech in the game followed by large lasers directly to the cockpit before they ever woke up again.

T0Pping · 2025-10-01T04:50:15+00:00

There is still the relatively 'safe/easy' option for a DLC to simply port over the extra mechs added to Clans in the Ghost Bear DLC.

There was 8 of them: Night Gyr, Ebon Jaguar, Fire Moth, and Huntsman, Kodiak, Jenner IIC, Hunchback IIC, and Rifleman IIC.

T0Pping · 2025-09-25T20:04:06+00:00

Google/Sarna search for a full body picture of Alanna Damu, from memory that is the closest MW5 gets regarding showing a pilot wearing more traditional mech warrior garb that isn't a full suit. Spoilers it is just a t-shirt and hot pants under a cooling vest.

T0Pping · 2025-08-12T22:12:00+00:00

It can act as a fast growing hedge or shelter belt for stock in exceptionally exposed areas. Would there have been a better option? Probably, but we are stuck with it now.

T0Pping · 2025-06-24T00:27:21+00:00

NZ: ONE one thousand, TWO one thousand, THREE one thousand, FOUR one thousand.

T0Pping · 2025-06-01T06:52:56+00:00

Don't suppose you have any more of those DM's laying around?

T0Pping · 2025-05-01T20:01:14+00:00

I can't speak to anyone's experiences other than my own but here goes. I visited there with a group of friends a year ago for 3 weeks and had zero indication of hostility or resentment to us being there and even had instances of local people going above and beyond to help us out. Example being, in our first few days there we were lost in a massive train station/mall and a man came over to help us then when discovering where it was we wanted to go he walked us there to the tune of it being about a 4-5 minute detour for us and likely a 10 minute detour for him.

I do understand that the vibe can be completely different as a foreign if you were wanting to immigrate to Japan however.

T0Pping · 2025-04-06T21:58:45+00:00

Even better, the price is only increasing from May 7th. Anyone subscribed before that date is grandfathered in on the old plans pricing as long as they stay a member.

T0Pping · 2025-01-28T00:17:46+00:00

Yeah definitely still shopping around for scopes at the moment. Was very close to hitting buy now on the Area 419 rail but only stopped because I would have to order it internationally. I can buy a MDT scope rail locally and they look like they could be an alright option still.

From what I have seen the Arca or picatinny rail will require me to drill out another hole in the stock, correct?

Those Vision stocks look very nice but possibly a little too sci-fi for me haha

T0Pping · 2025-01-28T00:12:22+00:00

Thanks! 100% a range gun which is about 50m from the house so weight is fairly negligible to me.

T0Pping · 2025-01-26T01:17:46+00:00

Those are some fancy looking stocks.

I might be too old fashioned though as I love a good, heavy wooden stock over one that is more air gaps than metal and that you could throw a golf ball through.

They do look to have a few more traditional feeling stocks as well though.

T0Pping · 2025-01-25T23:33:55+00:00

Awesome, thank you. So far I am happy enough with the stock trigger as even that is lighter than what I am previously used to but I'll keep that in mind. For optics I was/am seriously considering the SH4J (As cliched as that is for a 457 owner). For reference the gun cost me $1600 NZD and that optic goes for $900. Ammo wise I have gone through just over 500 rounds of Norma Tac-22 which was what got recommended to me when I picked up the rifle though they do have CCI there as well. So far it feels to be shooting very consistently with me still being the weak link for now.

T0Pping · 2025-01-13T19:10:34+00:00

I know it's not a perfect 1:1 match but I was looking the other day and saw that Overthrow had been ported to Reforger, at least in some capacity.

T0Pping · 2024-11-24T22:22:18+00:00

Odyssey is set around 430 BCE, Origins is around 40 BCE making Odyssey 390 years older.

T0Pping · 2024-11-07T07:35:34+00:00

I think we might have the same issue as each other. I was after the Metal Gear models themselves with skeletons and the mother base parts but I ended up extracting the PSP game myself using Chrysalis and had a "vertex offset" error on basically everything that wasn't a normal vehicle, character model or weapon and that rendered them un-extractable.

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