What does all the stuff in the lower left of the HUD mean?

[FroBodine]

Many of the things down there have no tooltips. Please add tooltips to EVERYTHING!

1. What is the large hexagon with a number inside it?
2. What is the meter with the red bar starting from the left and increasing to the right?
3. What is the threshold marker inside this meter with the red bar?
4. What is the meter below that, with the five segments in it?
5. And, what is the threshold marker in this meter, too, please?
6. What is S: and what is A: above the paper doll of your mech in the lower left? Shields and armor? Or something else? How do you distinguish between the two by looking at your mech's paper doll?
7. What are all the dots in a grid directly below your mech name, e.g. Centurion, in the lower left?

Why don't these things have tooltips, and why didn't you explain what all this is in the tutorial?!?

[lockinhind]

Originally posted by FroBodine:

Many of the things down there have no tooltips. Please add tooltips to EVERYTHING!

1. What is the large hexagon with a number inside it?
2. What is the meter with the red bar starting from the left and increasing to the right?
3. What is the threshold marker inside this meter with the red bar?
4. What is the meter below that, with the five segments in it?
5. And, what is the threshold marker in this meter, too, please?
6. What is S: and what is A: above the paper doll of your mech in the lower left? Shields and armor? Or something else? How do you distinguish between the two by looking at your mech's paper doll?
7. What are all the dots in a grid directly below your mech name, e.g. Centurion, in the lower left?

Why don't these things have tooltips, and why didn't you explain what all this is in the tutorial?!?

i only knowone of them is a eject buttion, i think its the top right in the lowerleft hud, theres no shields, but probably armor, internal, and weapons or other objects, i need to boot the game to find out and at the moment im cooking, everything has a purpose though.

[Evol_Prodigy]

1. Initiative
2.Heat
3.Heat overload
4. Mech Balance
5. To mark when you're unbalanced. Full means you fall over.
6. White is your outer armor, red is the health of the internal pieces of the section (before it blows up)
7. ... i'll update once I load up, unless someone gets in before (edit: Actually I still don't have a clue. Is it in one of the steam guides maybe?)

[Dewar]

For #2 & 3, the red bar is your current heat, and the threshold is where you'll start taking internal damage.

For 6, Armor is White and structure is orange. On the paper doll, white goes to grey as armor is damaged, then turns orange when structure is exposed.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Originally posted by FroBodine:

Why don't these things have tooltips, and why didn't you explain what all this is in the tutorial?!?

Because they are all explained at lenght both in the tutorial mission and if you take the time to chat with your mechtec?

[Silamon]

Originally posted by FroBodine:

Many of the things down there have no tooltips. Please add tooltips to EVERYTHING!

1. What is the large hexagon with a number inside it?
2. What is the meter with the red bar starting from the left and increasing to the right?
3. What is the threshold marker inside this meter with the red bar?
4. What is the meter below that, with the five segments in it?
5. And, what is the threshold marker in this meter, too, please?
6. What is S: and what is A: above the paper doll of your mech in the lower left? Shields and armor? Or something else? How do you distinguish between the two by looking at your mech's paper doll?
7. What are all the dots in a grid directly below your mech name, e.g. Centurion, in the lower left?

Why don't these things have tooltips, and why didn't you explain what all this is in the tutorial?!?

1. This is the speed of the mech, which decides which phase the mech's turn will go into. A 3 means it will go after a 4 but before a 2 for example.
2. This is heat build up. Energy weapons generate more heat but dont take ammo, ballistics are limited by ammo but make less heat.
3. if you hit the first indicator you get an overheat warning, if you hit the second one your mech shutsdown. If you max the bar it starts taking overheat damage.
4. Stability. If you take too much stability damage your mech will become unstable, meaning it moves slower and loses evasion charges. If it gets maxed your mech falls over and pilot takes damage, all mechs firing at it have called shot bonus, and they cant move as far on their next turn.
6. S is structure, if this hits 0 on a part it is considered destroyed and it costs you credits to restore structure damage. A is armor, you lose nothing when it gets damaged but it will not regenerate in battle.
7. Fairly sure that is just fluff.

[jamesc70]

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

Originally posted by FroBodine:

Why don't these things have tooltips, and why didn't you explain what all this is in the tutorial?!?

Because they are all explained at lenght both in the tutorial mission and if you take the time to chat with your mechtec?

And yet other things that were explained have tooltips.

I'm with the OP, in games or software; everything should have a tooltip. It's just plain lazy not to implement them, when adding them is so simple. Every object has a 'onmouseover' or 'tooltip' property... just add in the text for that property and you are done.

[Harkonis]

Originally posted by jamesc70:

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

Because they are all explained at lenght both in the tutorial mission and if you take the time to chat with your mechtec?

And yet other things that were explained have tooltips.

I'm with the OP, in games or software; everything should have a tooltip. It's just plain lazy not to implement them, when adding them is so simple. Every object has a 'onmouseover' or 'tooltip' property... just add in the text for that property and you are done.

both the developer and the user are being lazy in this example since all the info can be had by asking the npcs that know the answers.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Originally posted by jamesc70:

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

Because they are all explained at lenght both in the tutorial mission and if you take the time to chat with your mechtec?

And yet other things that were explained have tooltips.

I'm with the OP, in games or software; everything should have a tooltip. It's just plain lazy not to implement them, when adding them is so simple. Every object has a 'onmouseover' or 'tooltip' property... just add in the text for that property and you are done.

I might agree with you if it wasn't of the fact those things are so straightforward they'd get in my way because I certainly didn't need tooltips for that.

And I'm not even a BattleTech fan. Played a few games back in the day... This is so straightforward as long as understanding how the concepts of this game goes. Unless I'm mistaken it is an adaptation of the board game so it's not hard at all to understand why those concepts would be easy to grasp in the first place.

[FroBodine]

Thank you for all the detailed answers and help. Much appreciated.

If they were that straightforward, I wouldn't have had to ask. I had ideas about some of them, but I don't want to assume and play the game wrong.

It's ok to ask for help here in the forums . . . it's what they're here for. None of those things I asked about were explained in the tutorial. I haven't gotten back to the mechbay yet, so maybe they get explained later. But, I'm in the second mission and they have not been explained yet.

Anyway . . . thanks for the help!

[phexter]

You all beat me to it, but in a little more detail:

1. Initiative

This is just the rnitiative round you're in. As a rule of thumb the order of movement is:
light mechs
medium mechs
heavy mechs
assault mechs

2. Heat Meter

Firing weapons and using jump jets heat up your mech, while heat sinks in your mech cool it down each round. Environments like deserts or frozen planets and standing in water can also affect your heating.

3. Heat Threshold

Once the accumulated heat passes the threshold your mech takes internal damage (i.e. taking structure damage - see below).

4. Balance Meter

Your mechs current balance. If this bar gets full your mech is knocked down.

5. Balance Threshold

I am not 100% sure of this, but I believe once the stability passes the balance threshold, stability damage (from incoming projectiles or moving over unstable ground) you have a chance of falling over (i.e. get knocked down), which will damage the mech and the pilot.

6. Armor

A is your armor value and S is the structure. The mechs structure is it's skeleton which the armor covers to protect it. Once the armor is gone you begin to take structural damage and once the structure is gone the body part is blown to pieces. Taking structural damage can also cause modules installed in that part to get destroyed. If a ammunition module is destroyed it explodes and causes further damage. A mech is destroyed when a) it looses it's head or center torso or b) both legs are destroyed (or c) if the pilot takes too much damage).

In the paper doll a fully functional, armored part is white. Taking armor damage turns the body part more grayish. Once your into structure the body part becomes stripped and orange/red. If the body part is blacked out, it's gone. The left paperdoll is the front armor, the right one's the rear armor. Since arms don't have separate front or back armor their back armor part is always blacked out.

7. The Dots

Again, I am not 100% sure of this, but I believe they serve no purpose.

-----

These things are explained, for the most part, when you talk to Yang, your MechTech in the Mech Bay.

I also think there's no real need for tooltips here, they would probably only get in the way as most of these things are pretty straight forward. But i think having the tutorial explain those basics better and having an ingame guide accessible all the time (with pictures explaining the different things) should have been included from the start.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Originally posted by FroBodine:

It's ok to ask for help here in the forums . . . it's what they're here for. None of those things I asked about were explained in the tutorial. I haven't gotten back to the mechbay yet, so maybe they get explained later. But, I'm in the second mission and they have not been explained yet.

I understand that. Please take note how I didn't "flame" you on my first reply. The second one was intended for someone else, I didn't target you specifically.

[FroBodine]

Thank you very much, Phexter! Yeah, I'll check out the explanations when I get to the mech bay for the first time. But, holding back explaining it until AFTER the mission wasn't the best choice for teaching new players how to play. Just my opinion.

[phexter]

Originally posted by FroBodine:

Thank you very much, Phexter! Yeah, I'll check out the explanations when I get to the mech bay for the first time. But, holding back explaining it until AFTER the mission wasn't the best choice for teaching new players how to play. Just my opinion.

Like I said, I totally concur with that. The mechanics in the game aren't too hard to learn and pick up, but nevetheless the game does a very bad job helping newcomers picking them up. Especially those not coming from the battletech background have an understandably hard time figuring some of the things out.

[Darke]

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

Originally posted by FroBodine:

Why don't these things have tooltips, and why didn't you explain what all this is in the tutorial?!?

Because they are all explained at lenght both in the tutorial mission and if you take the time to chat with your mechtec?

As someone who had to suffer through that tutorial multiple times due to crashes; no it isn't. For the most part it instructs you to do things, and you have to pay attention to how the screens change to work out what the UI means. There's no overlay to explain the UI elements like previous mech* games had in their manual.

[Chameleon_Silk]

whyyyy must developer hand hold, why cant somethings be emergent from the gameplay itself. god I hate zero install biggots and kids who think games are apps nowadays.

feel like I'm getting to old for video games, if the quest arrow doesn't point you directly to GO you won't know how to collect 200 dollars... (do you even know what Monopoly is) cmon, think.. use your brain! its a strategy game ffs.... you can figure out how to move without a tutorial, at least I can. I could figure out how to play pong without it telling what the paddle was and that this round things was a ball. I guess I must be super human intelligence in comparison?!? obviously not!!! I refuse to believe people are this dense.... no no it cant be.... whyyyyyyyY! ammunition level critical, weapon depleted.*end communication* alpha assault this is HQ what is your situation please comply.