MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries announced

[Jarhead0331]

Anyone figure out if you can use jump-jets to do death from above attacks, on other mechs? So far I have only found them useful for jumping up ledges, where you will get quickly toasted by any enemy who can see you. At this point I just might take off all jump jets and beef up the armor on my light mechs.

As far as I know there is no collision damage, so you can't run into smaller mechs and damage them, or use jump jets for a "death from above" type attack. Another missed opportunity.

The best part of the game is that it made me want to play the older, more tactics oriented Battletech game that came out in 2018. From what I understand this has a new open world campaign, as well as a bunch of new stuff with expansions. At this point I wish I would have just spent the money I spent on Mechwarrior,  on Battletech instead, to bring the game up to date with the expansions.

Don't get your hopes up on this one either. Although I enjoyed it immensely on release, I soon released that the game was also devoid of any real tactics. The only useful tactic was to get larger and heavier mechs and weapons and concentrate firepower on one enemy mech at a time until they are disabled or destroyed. The DLCs were ok and tried to add a few things here and there, but ultimately they did not change the underlying mechanics which are just flawed. There are some great mods for it though, like Rogue Tech. So if you do get Battletech, definitely check that mod out.

[JasonPratt]

Just gonna say, as little as I play MWO right now (due to all the shiny cat toys elsewhere), you may have dumb or smart opponents and allies, you may have like only ten maps to play on, but you can DAMN WELL COLLIDE AND STOMP SOMEONE IN THE HEAD FROM A JET JUMP! 

[Yskonyn]

Collision damage is in fact modelled. You can stomp on vehicles and you can damage smaller Mechs bij ramming them.
DFA however, I am not sure.

[SirAndrewD]

I'm still having fun with it but I agree with some of the above complaints.

The biggest problem is that they need to tweak the procedural generated mission spawning system.   It's absurd to have vehicles and mechs keep spawning in, sometimes right on top of you and behind you.  It makes taking any kind of intelligent approach to a mission virtually impossible.

I like the way the combat feels, I just feel there should be less of it and some time to breathe and engage in tactics like long range sniping and managing frontage and engagement ranges.

Having tanks spawn right behind my mech and shoot me in the back armor, and there being nothing I can do about that, gets old.  Best make sure you spend those points on insurance. 

I'm sure this will get tweaked by either the devs or mods.  Too many people are rightfully griping about it.   

As I said before, this is probably going to be one of those games that gets tweaked and refined over time and ends up becoming a gem.   The feel of the mechs and the mercenary company management sim is pretty strong, so it's got enormous potential to build around those.

[SirAndrewD]

As an added note, PGI said on their Discord they are releasing a spawn behavior patch, probably after the weekend. 

So, they are at least listening.

[Destraex]

Cool. So collision damage is in for particular things. That's better than nothing. Did PGI ever introduce close combat to MWO?
I seem to remember they had major problems with the sync when they tried it so they thought it best not to.

[JasonPratt]

Okay, good, some collision damage is better than nothing.

I have to wonder how spawning enemies out of thin air in close proximity got through any kind of QA, though.

[SirAndrewD]

A patch to fix the spawning issues dropped today, and I've noticed a marked improvement on engagement ranges.

Apparently the devs say this fix is a bit of a bandaid though, and there's something under the hood wrong with the spawning system and they're going to have to address it with a full patch soon.

Some on Reddit report the patch made the issue worse for them, not better.  That hasn't been my experience so I guess YMMV.   

I'd like to see a better and wider community discuss it rather than a Reddit thread, but PGI has paradoxically decided to keep all game and technical discussion limited to Discord and have no official forums or message boards running bug reporting.

I agree, I'm not sure how the issue made it through QA. 

[Yskonyn]

Well tbh I don't see much difference when playing several missions in succession. The one seems to have enemies spawn in out of sight (which is perhaps what the patch did) while others still spawn enemies at weird locations.

I am starting to get a rinse and repeat feel with this game the more missions I play. The story has pretty much stopped being a thing in my game as well.
I am just making loops from a safe haven to some contracts back to safe haven to keep cost under control.
While the combat is still fun, the game is starting to feel generic at this point for me.

[bboyer66]

Have uninstalled at this point. Very repetitive, non tactical, its kind of shit at this point. Will keep an eye out on here, as improvements are made.

[Gusington]

 :'(

[Yskonyn]

Have any of you had the fortitude to play past 3028 at this point to see wether the discovery of the Helm
Memory Core is in the game? I don't feel like playing all the way to there at the moment.

[SirAndrewD]

Have any of you had the fortitude to play past 3028 at this point to see wether the discovery of the Helm
Memory Core is in the game? I don't feel like playing all the way to there at the moment.

There are no historical events in the game.   

Modders are going to take a look at it when the dev tools come out next week.

[Yskonyn]

Pfff. Really ? 

[Jarhead0331]

If I'm going to be honest, I am actually enjoying it much more now. It is still certainly repetitive, but I'm getting hooked on the drive for more money and heavier mechs. The game starts off slow, but once you earn the trust of one of the great houses, and you start to spread out, it really opens up. I'm now a "trusted hero" of House Davion and am able to negotiate tremendous bonuses on missions for them. Each op typically earns me between 600,000 and 900,000 C-bills in cash, plus 8 to 12 salvage points and between 175,000 and 350,000 in damage coverage. With that amount of salvage and cash, I've been able to recover from the field or buy in industrial zones a Hunchback, rare Blackjack, Jaegermech, and a Griffon. Of course, most missions so far in the 4 to 5 renown warzones only allow a max deployable tonnage of 160T, but the more difficult missions permit greater weights on deployment.

Like Battletech, I think eventually i will get bored and the weaknesses of the system will get to me...but for now, I'm sinking most of my game time into it.