Worth picking up and required mods?

[DrDeath_MD]

I know when this came out the reviews were very poor. However with the expansions and patches, is this worth pickup up now? What/if any required mods are needed to really get the best out of the game?

[owen8964]

Game is pretty good these days. Not perfect, but pretty good.

No mods are necessary. Suggest you play for a while then decide what, if anything, you want to tweak.

Get a bundle if you can. All the dlc are worth it xpt arguably the melee one.

[[Lord] Vader]

Agreed. I was fairly disappointed at launch and dropped it after a couple hours. But after the first 2 DLCs, I finally got around to playing through the campaign. The updates and DLC really improved things and added to the procedural mission variety. Now I'm going through a career with all DLC but the 3rd (because I hate melee mechs). Good times.

[Tenebris]

I'd say to avoid any major overhaul mods until you've at least beat the campaign once, the vanilla game is more limiting, but it's still the intended experience that they devs made

[Triarii]

Personally I didn’t enjoy the Vainilla experience at first, and at the middle of the campaign I had to look for some mods to make it enjoyable.
The DLC improved the game, but I would still recommend at least to install and start with the basic YAML (Yet Another Mechlab), it improves greatly the mech lab, and includes a bit of everything else for the game (including the friendly fire options, as I soon found out most of my mech damage comes from my own lance), and it can be configure in many ways. There are also tons of additional mods designed for YAML, if you want more options.
I would also recommend the absolute necessary “skip jumpshit animation” or you would go nuts late on the campaing.
Of the other many other mods (more missions, units, higher difficulty, pilots, even more mechs and equipment, and so on), I would recommend to finish the campaign first.

[Paranoia]

yet another mech lab is basically required if you want to have fun. It lets you change engine sizes and offers other mechanics the older games had.

people used to say ai mods are required but i think the recent update made lancemates tolerable

[Sentient_Toaster]

YAML's great for the obvious mechlab flexibility (arguably too flexible if you want to be lore-friendly, but you don't have to abuse it if that bothers you), plus with adding other gear from the family of related mods, plus customization options (like, if you want to un-nerf vehicles, that's an option), plus various salvage changes etc.

I personally think 330's Pilot Overhaul is also an important mod to use, because it introduces such things as mech affinity and pilot quirks, and a way to invest in their training. These give at least some reason to try to keep a pilot over the long haul; while unmodded you don't want to keep any early-game pilots because they're maximum potential is hard-capped and you'll do better just to replace them with fresh but high-rank hires available with high Reputation.

The game is intrinsically quite repetitive, but Coyote's Misson Pack (Nexus only, no Workshop version) will help it be somewhat less repetitive by adding mission types. Plus, if you do add YAML or similar mods, you can create much more brutally optimized mech builds and you'll want the 'endgame difficulty' missions from this mod to keep things at least potentialy interesting when you have setups that ComStar and every Great House would happily murder you for.

[Atlessa]

Fair warning that there's no proper joystick/HOTAS support, so if you were playing on doing a full-sim setup I would think twice before getting the game.

There is a VR mod, but... well it's just not the same with mouse and Keyboard, is it?

[owen8964]

Originally posted by Paranoia:

yet another mech lab is basically required if you want to have fun. It lets you change engine sizes and offers other mechanics the older games had.

people used to say ai mods are required but i think the recent update made lancemates tolerable

...if changing engines is your idea of fun... (fine if it is but it's an irritating chore to me)

[Tenebris]

Originally posted by owen8964:

Originally posted by Paranoia:

yet another mech lab is basically required if you want to have fun. It lets you change engine sizes and offers other mechanics the older games had.

people used to say ai mods are required but i think the recent update made lancemates tolerable

...if changing engines is your idea of fun... (fine if it is but it's an irritating chore to me)

How so? For the most part you shouldn't need to change your engine core unless you want to sacrifice a bit of speed in exchange for a bit of extra tonnage, or if you have extra tonnage and nothing else to use it for, you can get yourself some extra speed.

And then L and XL engine addons (which is how they work in YAML now, instead of being individual engines) just give you a bunch of extra tonnage in exchange for your mech being more vulnerable (if a single side torso get's popped, you're dead/crippled)

[owen8964]

Originally posted by Tenebris:

Originally posted by owen8964:

...if changing engines is your idea of fun... (fine if it is but it's an irritating chore to me)

How so? For the most part you shouldn't need to change your engine core unless you want to sacrifice a bit of speed in exchange for a bit of extra tonnage, or if you have extra tonnage and nothing else to use it for, you can get yourself some extra speed.

And then L and XL engine addons (which is how they work in YAML now, instead of being individual engines) just give you a bunch of extra tonnage in exchange for your mech being more vulnerable (if a single side torso get's popped, you're dead/crippled)

Exactly. So unless you want to build mechs from the ground up, so any mech can be any other mech in its weight class, it's completely pointless.

Just gimme an "I win" button at the start of each mission so I don't have to bother pulverising any of the standard mechs I meet - which cannot possibly compete!

[vine]

Originally posted by owen8964:

Originally posted by Tenebris:

How so? For the most part you shouldn't need to change your engine core unless you want to sacrifice a bit of speed in exchange for a bit of extra tonnage, or if you have extra tonnage and nothing else to use it for, you can get yourself some extra speed.

And then L and XL engine addons (which is how they work in YAML now, instead of being individual engines) just give you a bunch of extra tonnage in exchange for your mech being more vulnerable (if a single side torso get's popped, you're dead/crippled)

Exactly. So unless you want to build mechs from the ground up, so any mech can be any other mech in its weight class, it's completely pointless.

Just gimme an "I win" button at the start of each mission so I don't have to bother pulverising any of the standard mechs I meet - which cannot possibly compete!

you misunderstand, bro. you will meet edited/updated mechs on battlefield just as well, when you YAML mod it. you're talking from point of disrespect, ignorance or plain misinformation.
but all can be remedied. YAML suite is as easy as it can get with steam workshop. and if you crave some serious spanking, just crank the YAML difficulty bars full and enjoy.
then come back and talk to us about I win button. thank you.

[Sentient_Toaster]

YAML still has mech chassis choices matter, because there are still hardpoint limitations and there are per-chassis quirks.

And yeah, you can increase the difficulty significantly (e.g. un-nerfing vehicles and turrets, making 'cold storage' mechs still cost maintenance, what-not) using it, enabling friendly fire, w/e.

[owen8964]

Originally posted by vine:

Originally posted by owen8964:

Exactly. So unless you want to build mechs from the ground up, so any mech can be any other mech in its weight class, it's completely pointless.

Just gimme an "I win" button at the start of each mission so I don't have to bother pulverising any of the standard mechs I meet - which cannot possibly compete!

you misunderstand, bro. you will meet edited/updated mechs on battlefield just as well, when you YAML mod it. you're talking from point of disrespect, ignorance or plain misinformation.
but all can be remedied. YAML suite is as easy as it can get with steam workshop. and if you crave some serious spanking, just crank the YAML difficulty bars full and enjoy.
then come back and talk to us about I win button. thank you.

Yeah? Ok bro! So you change everything and it stays the same, bro? So you did all that to change nothing, bro? Oh bro!

What a bro you are! Thanks for letting me know, bro!

Hohoho, bro!

[Blue]

Worth picking up? depends how desperate you are for a new mechwarrior game, and whether big stompy robots are your idea of fun. It's decent fun vanilla, but not the best thing since sliced bread

as for "required" mods, I wouldn't say any are required, as someone mentioned earlier I'd go through the game Vanilla and see what, if anything, you'd like to change. although some nice QoL changes are the ones to show the missions and their difficulty, faction, and tonnage limit on the map screen so you don't have to individually click "Q" on every single system with a mission to check it

"Remove jumpship animation" as it gets old real quick, and isn't even necessary

and depending on how you feel about screen shake, the mod to remove screen shake on artillery and orbital cannons. as it gets to be a bit excessive at times

is also sound mods like "Sounds of the Succession Wars" and mods to change the voice of the cockpit Ai, mods to make the cockpit glass react to weather, further mods to make it crack when hit, things to change the HUD. All things to alter the experience while keeping the core of Vanilla alive.



Past that it's down to how you want to tailor the experience. I have a whole modlist I personally use if you wanted recommendations, can vouch for quite a few things

[Mentally Unstable]

I would suggest that you try playing vanilla(ie without mods) first. You do not need to complete an entire game without it, just long enough for you to figure out what YOU really want more out of it. That's to say, play the game without mods to see what the deficiences of the base game are for you, then find the mods that address them in the manner of your liking, if any. There are no "required" mods. It's very subjective. Things that might be essential to another person could be a non-issue for you, you might even end up disliking the mod more than the vanilla version of that particular aspect of gameplay. The larger mods also come with a sweeping range of changes so while you might want certain changes in a particular mod, you might not like the others in the same mod. Some mods could introduce new bugs like those terrain ones that could result in you falling through or getting stuck inthe ground. This is something you have to weigh up.

Same warnings apply if you want to use mods. You run the risk of them breaking upon a new patch(even with the beta rollback method) and will have to wait for the mods to be updated by their respective creators, assuming that they need to be updated or that the creators can still be bothered to update them. If you have something like a 100(nearly every mod will have someone vouching that they are "needed") of them, it goes without saying how vulnerable it is.