MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries announced

[Destraex]

I agree. Once the story element of battletech (hairbrained schemes) ran out. I was not really interested in collecting mechs for the helluv it. I expect this will be the same. I might be better off just picking up some of the battletech novels I have not read.
Battletech\Mechwarrior needs a movie badly! Their are so many redux movies out their, why not Battletech! .... now the lawsuits are over especially.

[Yskonyn]

Great to hear Jarhead. For me the premise that there really isn't any narrative has kicked the wind right out of my sails, to be honest.
There are far more interesting games to spend my time on, but that's highly personal.
As a battletech fan I will keep tabs on MW5, however. Hopefully some good mods or perhaps expansions will grow the game enough.
But the rinse and repeat gameplay of what's in right now just doesn't do it for me.

[Jarhead0331]

There are campaign based missions that follow a narrative. Do they just abruptly come to an end st some point?

[Yskonyn]

I havent had one in ages now. I think you might be further along in the game at this point?

[Yskonyn]

Just listened to the DevUpdate podcast at No Guts No Galaxy.
They say that there indeed is a 'gap' from reputation rating 7 to 12 or so and the game will pick up again at around rep level 12.
Perhaps I should just continue playing again.

Are you still having fun Jarhead? Finished the campaign yet?
A quicker run can be 25 to 30 hrs, but most people will probably take double or triple that if they play the lance perfecting game. Or so they claim. That sounds pretty beefy.

[Jarhead0331]

Just listened to the DevUpdate podcast at No Guts No Galaxy.
They say that there indeed is a 'gap' from reputation rating 7 to 12 or so and the game will pick up again at around rep level 12.
Perhaps I should just continue playing again.

Are you still having fun Jarhead? Finished the campaign yet?
A quicker run can be 25 to 30 hrs, but most people will probably take double or triple that if they play the lance perfecting game. Or so they claim. That sounds pretty beefy.

I am at reputation 7 and still tracking campaign missions. I've been on 4 or 5 of the, so far, not counting two-parters. I am still enjoying it, but the missions definitely become repetitive. Raid, demo, assassinate, warzone, defend, repeat, etc. I like traveling to new zones and shopping for new mechs and advanced weapons, there are so many of them. The problem is, in order to make missions profitable and cover loses, you really need to have negotiating leverage with the employer. I find it hard to maintain my lance, while also turning a profit in space managed by houses other than Davion, where I have a lot of clout. The difficulty really ramps in zones recommending reputation level 6-7. My mechs really get beat up at this level and I'm fielding an Atlas, Warhammer, Thunderbolt and Archer when tonnage permits. Otherwise, its a mix of heavy, medium and light. Difficulty is more a factor of numbers, which I don't like. In the harder missions, its usually not that I'm facing heavier mechs. Its more that there are just more of them, as well as many more of the support vehicles.

I figure I have another 10 hours or so left in me before I start getting really bored and move on...we'll see. 

[Yskonyn]

Thanks. They also said that apart from demolition and a certain other mission type or event spawning of enemies is in fact not infinite (which I thoughtit was), so it might be wise to stay in cover using terrain and objects to plink smaller units before going into the brawl with enemy Mechs.

Also, when strafe circling you can almost always avoid damage from the vehicles, but against a Mech you have to watch out that it doesn't force you into an infinite circle strafe battle. You will have a disadvantage against faster Mechs and they will tear up your armor.

Use LRM or accurate long range weapons to get rid of flying units and always focus on the vehicles and helo's before engaging the Mechs. You'll reduce your incoming DPS significantly.

These are all tips from the podcast.

Seems like they have a patch in the work for late januari that'll address some AI issues.
But the reason your Lancemates are seemingly stupid and stomp all through buildings you should protect is because they try to stay in formation.
They tried a few things to fix this but that broke other stuff so they reverted it for release.

[Destraex]

Angry Rapid fire review gave it a 5 out of 10. One of the main things they hated was the brand new engine which should make the game look amazing, somehow making the game look dated, they presume that it is just lazy imports from MWO that made this happen.

[Jarhead0331]

I feel like the graphics are a real mixed bag, but overall, was expecting it to look much better. The cockpits are a joke and some of the textures are shockingly bad. The Mech models themselves are fair, but could have been much more detailed and immersive. Some of the terrain is impressive, as are a few of the effects from lasers and PPCs. The environmental destruction and damage that can be caused to buildings is pretty limited in a lot of ways. I think it was oversold as a feature and could also have been made much better.

[Destraex]

I wonder if modders will get a chance to completely overhaul this and make it shine. Hopefully by the time it comes to steam it will be ready and modded. Perhaps they always planned to let the epic games exclusive deal expire before the real release on steam ;)

[Yskonyn]

https://www.nexusmods.com/mechwarrior5mercenaries/mods/104?tab=description

Came across this mod. Really does make Lights and Meds behave better.
Lots of potential!

[JasonPratt]

The discussion by the mod author in the notes was interesting: "Unfortunately the vanilla AI routines are all basically just types of circles at different ranges with no response to the battlefield.  This is why the AI seems so basic.  I have increased the behavior tree by many hundreds of nodes to try to create more realistic behavior."

(He does praise the simplistic AI for its elegance and good programming, technically, btw.)

[Yskonyn]

Yes, I've seen more modder talk about very basic functionality in vanilla.
It's a shame on one hand that Piranha didn't flesh stuff out more, but it's great at least that the game has modding support to 'fix' this.

[Jarhead0331]

First DLC announced. Sounds good. Probably won't be released until after summer is my guess.

https://mw5mercs.com/news/2020/04/38-mw5-mercs-dlc-update

[Yskonyn]

Thanks for the notice!

Features look good, but there is one big flaw in the core of the game right now; it's AI.
The mod I linked earlier really does make a difference, so I sure hope PGI will get working on expanding on the AI behaviour as well.