RogueTech thoughts

[Panfilo]

I tried this out this morning, because it touched on a lot of ideas I had. So far I'm having a lot of fun with it. Apparently it is a somewhat controversial mod, and it does have its downsides.

The Bad
-There's so many modifiers to hit that you miss way more often, which can make the battle get kind of tedious depending on terrain. While the TT had this problem in similar situations, it was definitely something they didn't necessarily need to port over. Gunnery and accuracy mods feel more important as a result. Since you miss so much, it also really hurts ammo based weapons, particularly autocannon.

-Not sure if the AI is adjusted to take changes into account, such as how overheating affects mechs. With ammo explosions being a risk, expect to see many AI enemies with mixed load outs accidentally blow themselves up.

-The game is harder, which is good, but it's harder in a lot of ways that push the player to be risk - averse since you get nickel and dimed for everything. I'll have to play the campaign more to see if it manages to stay in that sweet spot between too easy (boring) and too hard (unfun).

The Good
-Great variety in gear and many new variants of existing mechs keep things interesting. Conversely there's also lo-tech equipment you might need to settle for like rocket Launchers and Rifles.

-Even though the AI struggles with it, I like the overheat effects since you can work around them in the right situation.

-Panic system is also neat and can potentially save the pilots rear end when they panic in a logical situation (getting almost fully dismembered) while you can also spook enemy pilots by alpha striking them from behind to try to encourage them to punch out early.

-There's a variety of ammo types that let you get a lot of of combinations of weapon effects and ammo effects. The only bummer is that they can't mod swapping ammo types so you have to commit to one type during a battle. Still, it allows for some interesting setups like having +stability damage AC/2s using live fire training ammo that trades some damage for even more stability damage to topple mechs from extreme range.

[Mohrrunkel]

Some additional thoughts:

TAG and NARC as well as the TAGGER are not stackable in itself, but don't share the same debuffs, so they are stackable ontop of each other which makes having all of them usefull. Also note that the last two mentioned are also twice as effective and have increased duration over the TAG, which makes up for their increased weight.

TSMs and Superchargers/MASC don't stack, you can only chose one type. Also note that while the MASC seems more effective when you have an evasion build it counts as a gyro and a critical componant both. This renders the MASC inferior to the other two once you obtain hit defense gyros. TSMs take up a lot of space though...

NSS are only worth it because the author restricted bulwark from the skilltree to melee builds and nerfed it. Bulwark is also removed when the target becomes unsteady through any kind of ranged weapons.The 3t for 1 hitdefense don't even come close to EWS (3t +2 hit def and no heatmalus), which is a musthave at this point for every kind of mech. NSS are made for sneaky mechs because they reduce signalsize, thus the name Null Signature System.

Don't forget shields, they reduce incoming damage by up to 15%, coupled with the DNI cockpit and the absorbing materials you mentioned they become very effective for your lancetanks.

Also note that melee attacks don't trigger flamers/S Lasers/MGs in RogueTech, there are a lot of more or less dedicated melee weapons/actuators.

In the current build 0.987 melee does not remove all evasion pips, but it counters guarded whether you hit or not. A score with your fists will most likely unsteady the foe and this is what erases the pips.

Moving gives you -1 accuracy and while you can sprint and fire this is an additonal -2, which makes Bulwark (NSS) good early on, because you still wanna hit something, but later on you ignore the mali and take evasive pips wherever you can. Evasion is a thing even with assaults, slap a supercharger and hit defense gyro (or partial wing system and JJs) on every mech and sprint every turn and you will be inclined to leave the shields at home, that's how good evasion has become.

[Mohrrunkel]

Ohh and LRM lances are history, at least early on. Indirect fire is way more inaccurate and TTS++ for missiles give +3 to direct fire and -3 to indirect, so you need an I3F to counter your TTS or you wanna be firing with line of sight every time you can.
Also sensorlock is now a tier 8 skill, so locked for the early stages. Tactics 10 is a musthave for LRMs, due to the need of reducing indirect fire penalties.

[Panfilo]

TSM isn't that much of a space Hog, it's only 6 slots and you can spread it out. I actually like having NSS on a Marauder kitted out as a sniper because what little return fire it takes is at extreme range. But you're right evasion is king.

As for ammo types:

Inferno: Haven't tested it much, but considering overheats can trigger ammo explosions you can try to get certain mechs to self destruct or at least cripple them.

Dead fire: I found the penalties were worth SRMs that do 50% more damage,especially on a fast mech that can unload on a targets back.

Hot loaded LRMs: Seems like the worst of both worlds for LRMs. You might as well use SRMs at that point.

Precision: Good for counteracting recoil penalty.

Armor piercing: not bad, but not that amazing either I think.

Live fire: I like the idea of these, especially on AC/2s. Stability damage is really useful in RogueTech , and anything that knocks over mechs is welcome.

Caseless: I like these because more ammo is always welcome, especially on an AC/20.

[Mohrrunkel]

Ohh, it's 6 now, I see. Still had 10 in mind from the previous iteration of patch .987 or just had it confused with spikes. Thinking about it, this is stronger than the Supercharger then, you remove it and 1 advanced material and place 5 of them so you get better heat for more sprintdistance while having equal weight/slots.

[Panfilo]

Spikes don't seem worth it because they actually weigh something and melee resistance is kind of situational. All I can think of is spikes+TSM to try to maximize melee damage. Claws are great, there's a legendary Crab chassis that's excellent for melee and its hilarious to OHKO light mechs.

[Mohrrunkel]

Well, not too long ago they had universal damagereduction (up to 30%) instead of meleeresistance, hence the weight for balancing reasons. Combined with the L Shield and DNI cockpit that was a total of 55%. When I met my first Porcupine with all theese installed it was simply ridiculous.

After the latest update you can only mount 1 meleeweapon per arm, so the Behemoth I believe you are talking about is no better in melee combat than the Kraken or the Marauder II series. Technically they do less damage then Banshees or AS7s but they do have the melee accuracy going for them, which is nice. Hate to say that melee accuracy overall went down the toilet, but had to be nerfed.

[Panfilo]

Pretty funny how suicidal the AI can be about overheating. Saw an undamaged stalker blow both torsos clean off in an ammo explosion simply by shooting too much.

[Mohrrunkel]

By too much you mean one salvo? xD Happened way to often.

[Panfilo]

Yeah, Light and Heavy PPCs are major heat makers and mixed armaments become kind of a liability.

[tavin44]

I enjoy the idea of RT..i like all the new stuff it adds..but for casual gamer like me that isnt a master strategist and plays for fun its to hard ..i dont like the beginning ..battles take me way to long cuz i miss all the time even meelee hits are like 13% at beginning..i love the new mechs tho wish i knew how to remove them and use for personal use lol.

[Panfilo]

You need to really play on your strengths, it gets easier as time goes by and the low accuracy makes things forgiving for you as well.

[tazzy4u2]

Beauty of this mod to me is it’s not a single mod meaning you can actually pick what suits you. I didn’t want all the new mechs weapons and tech just yet but did want the new map, merc deployments and war tech.
So I installed those plus a few others.
Really liking Tonnage limit by mission difficulty as well.
Actually finding sandbox a challenge without the money and mech story boosts that made campaign too easy.

[Panfilo]

I like how much of a dilemma money vs salvage is. In the stock game, I focused a lot on salvage because it ends up making you good money. Here, you're scraping by even with max money, and the times you opt for money are the times you miss out on advanced tech, and the times you go for salvage are when you get stuck with a bunch of lousy Pirate Locust parts.

Once you upgrade the Argo a bit and get a decent stable of Mechwarriors, the long term contracts become very lucrative. You have to be very careful with your better mechs, though ;one pyrrhic victory could have your MVP mech out for a month in repairs.

[rubyismycat]

this is why we need a workshop for battletech why dont we have one?

[tazzy4u2]

I’d believe no workshop due to copyright issues of mechs etc. They can’t officially support it.