slow mechs and low health/ whats the point?

[Brahm The seige Beast]

i swear this game has some serious balance issues

[White Rabbit Alice]

there are custom difficulty options you can set to ease you into the game as you get more comfortable with it, more money, or mechs, then crank it when you see fit.

[Guts]

You're building them wrong, if that's your experience. Or you're using one of the mechs that sucks, like the hunchback. I often leave missions with no damage taken. You're not in an all powerful gundam. You're in a tank with feet. You're supposed to avoid getting hit. And if you're slow, you'd better have enough firepower to take out any mech in a few seconds, before they get into range to fire at you. This isn't a casual arcade game. More like a combat sim with arcade elements added in. Keep in mind that the first few missions are rough, because you don't get a choice of equipment, the centurion is IMO not a good mech design, and the early missions spawn several enemies right on top of you, which makes the autocannon less useful than it would be if spawns weren't scripted to happen just outside your FOV. This changes as soon as the tutorial missions end.

How to build a mech for beginners:
1. Strip the mech
2. Hit max armor
3. Add your favourite weapons (and enough heat sinks to cover half your heat/second if you're using lasers). Longer range is better.
4. Fill up your tonnage with whatever else will fit. ECM and BAP are great ways to use tonnage if you have some left over, but not all mechs can use them.

You can afford to take a couple points of armor off the legs, if doing so would give you a half or full ton to work with.

[Explore]

Originally posted by N473:

You're building them wrong, if that's your experience. Or you're using one of the mechs that sucks, like the hunchback. I often leave missions with no damage taken. You're not in an all powerful gundam. You're in a tank with feet. You're supposed to avoid getting hit. And if you're slow, you'd better have enough firepower to take out any mech in a few seconds, before they get into range to fire at you. This isn't a casual arcade game. More like a combat sim with arcade elements added in. Keep in mind that the first few missions are rough, because you don't get a choice of equipment, the centurion is IMO not a good mech design, and the early missions spawn several enemies right on top of you, which makes the autocannon less useful than it would be if spawns weren't scripted to happen just outside your FOV. This changes as soon as the tutorial missions end.

How to build a mech for beginners:
1. Strip the mech
2. Hit max armor
3. Add your favourite weapons (and enough heat sinks to cover half your heat/second if you're using lasers). Longer range is better.
4. Fill up your tonnage with whatever else will fit. ECM and BAP are great ways to use tonnage if you have some left over, but not all mechs can use them.

You can afford to take a couple points of armor off the legs, if doing so would give you a half or full ton to work with.

Hey, I see you're back from your ban. Was it your unbridled rage, or did you go full racist?

[pete]

Originally posted by PoggerLich:

i swear this game has some serious balance issues

I swear that people should be required to pass a lore examination BEFORE being able to play

[Lord-Knight Fandragon]

Originally posted by PoggerLich:

i swear this game has some serious balance issues

Mech's die when their Center Torsos or head or both legs get taken out. You have to twist and move around to spread the damage all over your mech, even put your back in it. Generally, you want to try and keep your armor on. So long as armor is intact, you wont start losing internal components like weapons and heatsinks, so as you take alot of damage, you wanna twist, move, maybe let your lancemates get shot up a bit, etc.

Also, the Lethality setting in difficulty settings, set that to 0. The AI *love* to farm your arms off. I personally have my settings at 0 lethality and 0.8 enemy accuracy, helps my mechs not have thier arms farmed in every single solitary fking mission, which is actually infuriatingly annoying.

[Guts]

Originally posted by Explore:

Hey, I see you're back from your ban. Was it your unbridled rage, or did you go full racist?

Someone threw a tantrum because I called them a name. I'm not used to this new social media stuff. I'm used to the old internet, where you could call someone a phallus without getting banned.

[Cursed Hawkins]

Originally posted by N473:

You're building them wrong, if that's your experience. Or you're using one of the mechs that sucks, like the hunchback.

The Hunchback is a damn tank when it comes to the damage it can take, the only weakspot it has when it comes to the front is the mount for the main gun compartment, once that's gone then the Hunchback becomes weak.

[Capt.EO]

Originally posted by Cursed Hawkins:

Originally posted by N473:

You're building them wrong, if that's your experience. Or you're using one of the mechs that sucks, like the hunchback.

The Hunchback is a damn tank when it comes to the damage it can take, the only weakspot it has when it comes to the front is the mount for the main gun compartment, once that's gone then the Hunchback becomes weak.

yeah this ^^

now as the game progresses hunchbacks do get weaker and weaker compared to the bigger and better mechs you will eventually get a chance to buy / salvage but until about level 10 or so they are plenty badass and can take care of business just fine with the proper pilot of course.

[Guts]

Originally posted by Cursed Hawkins:

Originally posted by N473:

You're building them wrong, if that's your experience. Or you're using one of the mechs that sucks, like the hunchback.

The Hunchback is a damn tank when it comes to the damage it can take, the only weakspot it has when it comes to the front is the mount for the main gun compartment, once that's gone then the Hunchback becomes weak.

It's too slow. By the time it gets into range, it's ammo has already been cooked off. It's one of the easiest mechs to headshot, and even if you miss, you hit it's shoulder. Where the ammo is stored, by default. Default only has 60 points of armor on the arms. That's not much for a mech that only goes 65kmph. Of course, it gets better by customising it, but I've never found a build that makes it stand out vs other medium mechs. The laser version is marginally better, but once again it needs more mobility to protect itself. Adding ECM would be a good idea, if the vanilla game allowed that. It's an all rounder that excels at nothing.

[Guts]

Originally posted by Capt.EO:

Originally posted by Cursed Hawkins:

The Hunchback is a damn tank when it comes to the damage it can take, the only weakspot it has when it comes to the front is the mount for the main gun compartment, once that's gone then the Hunchback becomes weak.

yeah this ^^

now as the game progresses hunchbacks do get weaker and weaker compared to the bigger and better mechs you will eventually get a chance to buy / salvage but until about level 10 or so they are plenty badass and can take care of business just fine with the proper pilot of course.

I may be biased, because I go straight to an industrial zone in Draconis territory as soon as I have 30m cbills, and there's usually an assault mech there at the start. But I've also used a lot of medium mechs as scouts, and they don't die because they're fast enough to not get hit. Not a good idea to tank with a 50 ton medium.

[Sentient_Toaster]

I do tend to fall along the lines of viewing most stock configs as having too much tonnage on weapons, too little on armor.

Pilots with high Shielding skill also somehow make their 'mechs take less damage when hit. *shrug* Not sure how that's supposed to be happening, in-universe, but that's what that skill does.

[Elite]

i think he is referring to the fact that the lancemates are ONLY there to give you a mech to switch to, as they are completely useless in their damage output, even when put in the best of mechs. (i ran a firestarter and gave my lancemates ALL stalkers, i did 12x the damage they put out COMBINED. the firestarter did go down, as its not mean to be taking on back to back medium/heavy mechs) The AI in the base game are garbage, both enemy and friendly. I've played games from the late 90's with better AI.... the coding for ALL the AI in the game is basically

if Player within X range then engage nearest target
if Mech doing most damage is within x range then engage ONLY that mech
if PLAYER mech is dealing rapid damage then increase accuracy and fire rate to nearly 100%
if no mech inside X range then do nothing
if all mechs outside X range and own mech receiving damage then pace 50 feet back and forth.
If player outside X range, and enemy mech is within x range then engage enemy mech with 20% fire rate and 40% accuracy
(notice the x is smaller than the X)

I literally watched an Orion and a hunchback fight for nearly 3 minutes.. they hardly damaged each other. when i walked up with my Marauder II and engaged them, SOMEHOW their DPS went from like .1 to 15.... I took 3x easily more damage in that 20 second fight, than both of them had received combined in their 3 minute fight against each other.

[Sentient_Toaster]

There's always https://www.nexusmods.com/mechwarrior5mercenaries/mods/269 to help out AI. That'll improve the behavior of enemies, too, ofc.

[Guts]

Originally posted by Elite:

i think he is referring to the fact that the lancemates are ONLY there to give you a mech to switch to, as they are completely useless in their damage output, even when put in the best of mechs. (i ran a firestarter and gave my lancemates ALL stalkers, i did 12x the damage they put out COMBINED. the firestarter did go down, as its not mean to be taking on back to back medium/heavy mechs) The AI in the base game are garbage, both enemy and friendly. I've played games from the late 90's with better AI

Your lancemates will use your fire groups. Priority goes to the lowest numbered group. They use group 1-2-3-4. If group 1 or 2 has a rapid fire weapon, they keep firing it. But they engage targets using the same rules as the enemy AI, so you need to tell them to hit a target to make them deal their max damage. Keep in mind that they stop firing if they reach high heat levels, and they wait for it to cool down almost all the way before they resume using weapons. Cooling is important for AI mechs. And the pilot's skills count for a LOT. If you don't give orders, your results will be poor.

Also, about the enemies doing no damage to each other: They usually have T0-T2 weapons, badly grouped, and not optimised. Then you roll in with T4+ weapons, and alpha strike, which is something the AI never does unless you trick them into doing it by putting every weapon on group 1. Of course you wreck things faster.

[phfor]

Originally posted by N473:

Originally posted by Elite:

i think he is referring to the fact that the lancemates are ONLY there to give you a mech to switch to, as they are completely useless in their damage output, even when put in the best of mechs. (i ran a firestarter and gave my lancemates ALL stalkers, i did 12x the damage they put out COMBINED. the firestarter did go down, as its not mean to be taking on back to back medium/heavy mechs) The AI in the base game are garbage, both enemy and friendly. I've played games from the late 90's with better AI

Your lancemates will use your fire groups. Priority goes to the lowest numbered group. They use group 1-2-3-4. If group 1 or 2 has a rapid fire weapon, they keep firing it. But they engage targets using the same rules as the enemy AI, so you need to tell them to hit a target to make them deal their max damage. Keep in mind that they stop firing if they reach high heat levels, and they wait for it to cool down almost all the way before they resume using weapons. Cooling is important for AI mechs. And the pilot's skills count for a LOT. If you don't give orders, your results will be poor.

Also, about the enemies doing no damage to each other: They usually have T0-T2 weapons, badly grouped, and not optimised. Then you roll in with T4+ weapons, and alpha strike, which is something the AI never does unless you trick them into doing it by putting every weapon on group 1. Of course you wreck things faster.

This is incorrect and has been debunked.