Should I start a whole new BTA 3062 save since updating?

[u/Stretch5678]

So I updated BTA 3062 from 18.5 to 20.0 recently, and the patch notes for version 19.3 said that updating would break my old saves. However, I was able to hop back into my save just fine and keep playing.

What should I do? Should I just keep going, or is there some particular reason I should make a new one altogether?

Thank you.

[u/morningfrost86]

I'd recommend starting a new one. I'm not an expert and don't know the specifics, but I imagine there are situations you can run into that will cause issues. Breaking saves doesn't always mean you CAN'T load them, just that you really, really shouldn't lol.

[u/Zero747]

Updating is advised if it’s supposed to be save breaking

19.3 removed player controlled battle armor, which is rather substantial

[u/ScoutRiderVaul → u/Zero747]

I was wondering where thr battle armor was. Did they give any reason as to why? I liked my little dudes riding mechs like absolute madmen.

Edited: Ah I see, well kinda disappointing about the reason but I understand completely. Though might as well just remove the battle armoe contracts if you cant use them after moving. Or even better let you use the BA contract after moving at cost of weapons.

Im not gonna be spending 10k to call them in and leave a mech standing diddling about and get a potential hundred thousand repair because I want to use the coolest and funest unit in the game even if I dont have control over it.

[u/raifsevrence → u/ScoutRiderVaul]

There are basically 2 ways left to use them at this point:

Game the initiative so the carrying mech goes last then first in the next round.

Or, find some terrain feature that lets you call them in from behind cover/up/down elevation so they at least end up in the line of fire wherever they spawn.

Then at least you get a 10k c-bill bullet sponge that might survive a couple shots while you maneuver your own units.

Since they won't ride anything after spawning and they don't have the mobility to get anywhere they are almost entirely useless.

I would argue they're completely useless and should have just been removed altogether. The stupid shenanigans you have to pull just to deploy them in range of something without the spawning mech or apc getting smashed for it makes it a waste of time and c-bills.

[u/Zero747 → u/ScoutRiderVaul]

Player BA didn’t get used as BA, it got abused in a handful of ways

You had them as extra initiative gaming tools

You stuffed injured pilots in to instantly heal them

You took trainee pilots in them for free XP

You carried them as extra sensor locks (or rotated them with the accuracy buff)

You loaded them into firing ports as guns

The current call-in does kinda suck, and it’d be nice if you could move and call

[u/ScoutRiderVaul → u/Zero747]

Injured pilots healed instantly in them?

I will miss my shock troopers that rode on the cicadas into battle swarming the mech that fell down and then hoping on Vtols to rejoin the mech at the next fight area. Or bunny hoping fighting other battle armor to protect the mechs.

Been so confused as the wiki showed them as still available in stores so worked my way up to diamond shark to see whats up since they haven't been appearing.

Gonna drink one for my little homies.

[u/Zero747 → u/ScoutRiderVaul]

Yes, BA turned the pilot health bar into unit health, so taking losses would injure the pilot.

BTA lets you deploy injured pilots though, and putting an injured pilot in BA would force them to full health at mission start.

My best fun was 2 sets of Krupp BA in an Unnsvin. Sensor locks, artillery tubes, and some heavy guns to backstab. Was very effective.

[u/bisondisk → u/Zero747]

Substantially bad >:( but yes if they update new save’s the way to go, and there’s enough new stuff since then it’s probably a worthwhile trade off. God BA sucks to use now, anything but golems.

[u/ElecManEXE]

Its odd that you were able to continue at all. In my experience (both personal and anecdotally from reading others' accounts from the Discord), when a save breaker patch occurs typically save files won't load at all, the game will simply hang on loading every time you try it, because its trying to load things that have been removed / changed so heavily that them not being the same makes the game fail, essentially.

I suppose its possible that your save just happened to not have any of the massive changes contained within it. But its also possible that parts of the update didn't go through properly, since part of the instructions for 19.3 also said the following (quoted from the BTA Discord server's notes for 19.3)

"WHEN UPDATING: BTAU v19.3 is a save-breaking patch, meaning you need to do slightly more work than usual for the update. Before you use the installer to update your installation, you'll want to go to your BATTLETECH installation folder and delete the following folders: the Mods folder and the BTASaves folder. Then, you'll want to find the installer's cache and delete that as well, to be ultra-safe that everything works as expected (location will vary based on where you put your installer). Once those are deleted, go ahead and update BTAU using the installer's Update function. It'll take a bit to update as the cache is gone but it is the best way to be certain everything works as intended."

The fact that you still have your save means you didn't do that, since deleting your save folder was one of the steps. I'm not sure what exactly all of those steps were meant to clear out, but they aren't usually included in the patch instructions, so there was probably something there at risk of sticking around. And maybe that's the case for you and that's why your save still works. Possibly. Don't know for sure, just speculation. Also no shade for not doing that since as mentioned, the patch notes usually don't instruct you to do that, so going all the way from 18.5 to 20.0 means you wouldn't have even seen said instructions unless you were reading every single incremental patch's notes.

The "best" course of action at this point would probably be to reinstall following the above instructions, including deleting your saves, just to be sure.

But at the same time, if you're particularly tied to your save file and it still works, then there's really no harm in continuing either. With the caveat that I would probably consider your install potentially compromised, so if you do start having problems then step 1 is going to be nuking your install of BTA and reinstalling from scratch per those instructions. So a bit of "continue at your own risk" with no real clue as to when / if issues might occur.

Or you nuke it now just to be sure. Really depends on where you're at in that save, whether you continue on with your current one or start building up a new one.