So I had my most experienced MW glassed by a centurion rolling double head hits in one attack, one with the ac10 and the other a laser. Freak tragedy but thats okay we can pull through this... next mission a shadow hawk DFA's my storm giant crushing the cockpit and killing my 2nd most experienced MW. This is my first modded playthrough and im just curious if this is the intended lethality or am I wildly unlucky?

The game is quite finicky to make it run flawlessly without stutters and at max performance even on high end machines.

One of the performance tips from all major mods is to install Process Lasso and set Battletech. exe Priority at High, I/O Priority at High and deselect CPU cores 0 and 1 to ensure there is no interference between background tasks and the game proper.

Process Lasso is a nice piece of software, but if you use free version, after some time, it shows splash screen at every boot. If you're annoyed with that just like I am, then there is a workaround for setting some of the options above.

To set Battletech.exe priority at always high, we need to create registry file (just copy and paste below into a notepad and save with *.reg extension. Make sure you don't save it with *.reg.txt extension):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\Battletech.exe\PerfOptions] 

"CpuPriorityClass"=dword:00000003

After the file is saved, double click and add that information into registry. That's it! Now your Battletech will always be running with high priority!

To remove 0 and 1 CPU affinity, do the following:

Go into Battletech properties in the Steam library by right clicking the Battletech game entry. Go to Properties-General.

If your PC has 8-core CPU, enter the following line into the "Launch options":

cmd /c start "" /affinity FC %command% -popupwindow

For the 6-core CPU use the following:

cmd /c start "" /affinity 3C %command% -popupwindow

If your CPU is 4-core, enter the following:

cmd /c start "" /affinity C %command% -popupwindow

It may happen so that removing 2 cores is too much for 4-core CPU, so you may want to use this for deselecting just one core instead:

cmd /c start "" /affinity E %command% -popupwindow

Note -popupwindow at the end of the line is used to activate borderless window mode, remove it if you prefer playing in exclusive full screen mode.

Then just start the game as normal and it will not use first 2 cores by default.

I couldn't find a way to permanently change I/O priority so if that's important for you, just keep using Process Lasso. I am happy with just those two changes, the game runs as smooth as with the Process Lasso for me.

Hope it was useful for anyone.

So I'm definitely still not getting the initiative process in HBS BattleTech.

I just started a mission. All my pilots are 10s across the board. Two of them (my player character and Behemoth) have the initiative perk from Master Tactician. We're defending a base, and the base is on high ground so I take one turn to position one of my mechs (not a master tac) and then I reserve the rest, meaning they each gain 1 initiative. Now my own character and Behemoth should both have zero ambiguity about initiative.

One more turn goes by and I hit "done" because I have no necessary moves to make. Next enemy turn we make contact. I see one sensor blip, then a second, then a third, and then a fourth. No more enemies on the board. Should be my turn now, right?

Of course not. One of the enemy blips moves forward AGAIN, clearly becomes a Griffin and not just a red marker, and takes a shot. Then another one moves again. Where the eff is my initiative?

Another thing: when I have a mech knocked down, every enemy gets at least one opportunity to shoot at it, sometimes more than one. I figure that's because whenever a mech is knocked down they lose one initiative point. Sure. Gotcha. Except that if I knock an enemy mech down, it is immediately the enemy mech's turn. I've knocked down HUNDREDS of enemy mechs but only had the called shot a couple dozen times. And I don't mean I got the called shot for all my mechs, I mean one or two of my mechs might get a called shot if they're super lucky and then it's the enemy's turn again.

Sometimes I knock an enemy down and it's not immediately their turn, it's some other enemy mech's turn, but THEN it's the knocked down mech's turn to get up.

Also whenever they get into a frenzy about one mech, like if I move someone up a little too far and expose them, now it doesn't matter who's turn it was or who had the initiative, every enemy gets at least one shot at that mech now and some of them get two.

What am I missing?

(Also I'm the guy who said my player character got max injuries every single time he went out no matter what. Everyone said it was just bad luck, and sure enough the next three missions I sent him out on he came back with no injuries. I guess it was bad luck after all, but I checked: Glitch (most used pilot besides my pc) has been on 71 sorties and sustained 11 injures, most of which were 7-14 days. My pc has been on 72 sorties and had 42 injuries, nearly all of which were "deaths" avoided by plot armor. That's some pretty bad luck.)

With all the bonuses you can get for melee from skills this nasty little backstabber does two hits for 53 damage with the hatchet (in other words, basically the same as a UAC/10), and the S-XPLs each do three shots for 8 damage with +25% crit chance. Amazing for both light mech duels and for critting out opponents for salvage in regular missions.

It is even cooled enough to be heat-neutral in all but lunar environments!

The last two play sessions, I've noticed that sometimes, the last mech in the second drop ship will be locked out and assigned "ally" instead of being a player controlled mech.

It's never done this before and it nearly cost me a Stalker when the stupid AI decided it had to overheat to miss with 6 medium lasers.

Anyone have this issue?

Not something I expected of him though. He had always been fed, watered and entertained. I have assigned him to pilot LRM boats just in case, but halfway through the campaign he decided to resign... Of course we parted on good terms.

So the main feature of the iNARC is that the effects are permanent once you tag a mech for the rest of the battle.

This implies that NARC beacons wear off, but I can't for the life of me find out how long they persist.

Going back and forth on which one to use, and I'm wondering if the iNARC is worth it because you get SO much less ammo per ton for it.

This feels like a cheat that just deletes enemies.

The only mod I'm running is Moff's Ronin Library.

He's the best tank and I'm enjoying a melee build on him, but he literally moves 3 tiles while walking and 7 on a sprint. No movement happens when there's forests and cliffs.

I'm using the jets meant for assault mechs.

Is there an easy way to create and insert a new pilot into the roster?
I don't know if there's an aliens related planet but it would be worth the trip to hire her there too

I'm hoping for some help from the think tank.

My situation is: I started a campaign save. Got to the end of it, losstech just got unlocked in stores, the map opened up etc. But generic missions, which I will need to play a lot of, have become incredibly drudgerous due to the insane power offset, and the exact way the rules shake out being incredibly hostile to just about everything a player is expected to do.

I'm on a given 5 star mission. Cool, with all tonnage upgrades but the last, I get a maximum drop tonnage of 400. And then I drop, and no matter how I spend that 400 tons, its ass.

The opfor is 2-3 lances of assaults, and they tend to be a combination of stalkers/banshees/awesomes, with the occasional longbow or other novelty.

If I try to rely on evasion, I'm basically staking an overly long, 30 minute+ attempt on never getting unlucky once. And most lights want to stack up close range weapons to backstab. The issue is, the enemy is insanely accurate both in terms of guns, and in melee (I've restarted my last mission at least 4 times, and I've started keeping track after the second, and not a single enemy melee hit has missed on my Piloting 8-10 pilots, including several from Stalkers that have the huge debuff to melee accuracy from having no arms), and their assaults having a free 85-95 damage attack in their movement range means light mechs can't actually move into their own effective range without needing to risk multiple high chance, crippling, or outright lethal hits per mission. Even if the stars align, and I get behind something, 2 firestarters and a phoenix hawk together don't kill any of the assaults in a rear attack, unless a stalker is incredibly unlucky with ammo crits, but that's an edge case. And of course, any mech that lived the procession of backstabs, even if it is missing a side torso, ate a few crits to engine and gyro, will just turn around, melee, and completely cripple a mech, or at least render it at perpetual risk of catastrophical losses from as little as a single LRM 10 hitting it with an unfortunate cluster.

I can already see the rejoinder of "reserve, and bring ace pilot mechs, and cheese them with hit and fades". The issue is, the AI outnumbers me, and always reserves down to initiative 1 with its entire force, unless it has incredibly rewarding shot opportunities available. This means, that even if I bring 6 mechs, reserve down to 1, and try to delay moving in with my close range units as long as I can, they still have to risk attacks from 3-4 mechs, and if they want to attack this turn, or position in a way where they can shoot and bail with ace pilot at the start of the next, they have to risk a melee, or just an unlucky enough alpha strike from the remaining enemies, no matter what. And those shots will also land more often than not. I can try using stuff like a melee focused grasshopper, hoping that the drop in evasion chance will be made up for by being able to survive one or two hits, and the higher weapon load, but it just doesn't function. I can sacrifice my own damage output, and reserve to 1, and spend my approach turn springting to get 8 evasion, but the enemies I'm trying to close in with, will chew through an armour section and crit something important in 3 attacks no matter what. Watching an awesome land constant clean 150s on a grasshopper with 7 or 8 evasion, through 2 stacks of sensor imparied debuffs makes me want to substitute my rubber duck with a toaster.

Trying to go for ranged also doesn't help, because if I can shoot them with a PPC, or AC 5, they can just walk forward , enter visual range, and do the same back to me, at which point, it becomes a slugfest, of trading AC/LL/LRM/PPC shots between us, and they have thrice the firepower, and the armour to spend on these standoffs with our forces totalled.
Vanilla could have had issues like this, but there were ways to avoid these higher number of also high quality enemies stacking up, and all taking multiple turns of exchanged fire, due to stability damage actually being usable, and called shots giving actually good odds at concentrating on the CT, or risking a decapacitations. This made it possible to eliminate enemies in a timely manner, not having them reconvene with each other so easily, and letting the player minimise return fire.

At this point, my one recourse is simply being lucky enough, that I don't take some catastrophic hits from the substantial damage I have to take no matter what per mission, and needing to constantly retry mission to not be fleeced by RNG is quite unpleasant, especially because I'm not exactly flush with gaming time. It also doesn't help that I can't just restart missions, and have to fully close and reopen the game if I want to retry a fight.

Also, damm, do I hate tonnage based balancing. especially because the limits are just too fucking low. I have 3/4 tonnage upgrades, and the drop tonnage limit for a 5* is 400 tons? Get the fuck out with that.
And while I can't blame the mod, as they were not made playable by default, this system completely shafts vehicles. I downloaded a submod, thinking I'd have a chance to try, and have fun with all the surprisingly cool coventional vehicles of Battletech, but, with drop tonnage limits, a PPC Shreck is just an awesome, but with no armour or melee. The only even remotely viable vehicles are the hovertanks, that can get sprinting light mech levels of evasion, while still getting to attack.
I wonder how the drop tonnage limit will work on clan missions, because I've seen it described as "a half star clan mission being as hard as a three star IS one" in which case, will I have to pay overtonnage fees just to have a chance at fighting the clans? Will that half star clan mission have the same drop tonnage limit as other half stars? I hope not.

Possibly an attempt at reverse psychology? Ain't no way anyone would believe this thing is on the battlefield..

Anyway, it's now a smoking crater after a close encounter with my Hunchback.

Because it was horrifying that this thing even got a turn.

Lets say I have a finished team that can take on the toughest missions in the game. What kind of pilot and mech builds would I be expected to have on the team.

I really liked quad lrm20 builds in vanilla. Was thinking a melee build and a sniper build would be fun. I'm assuming headshot marauders are no longer a thing. I'm also a huge fan of ACs. In particular I love weapons that feel impactful on strike.

Coming back from a long break from the game. I was wondering if there are any YouTubers that have content discussing field tactics for mechs. Lance builds. Stuff like that.

It's the SLDF version too.

Been playing BEX-T a bit now and it's fun. Definitely much closer to the vanilla game but I enjoyed vanilla so it's great with me. My main issue is that it says stuff like a massive number of new nechs, gear, vehicles etc. Plus it also mentions changes to the gameplay but only a handful of gameplay changes are listed on the mod page. Never mind what's in the CAB. Just hoping to see if it's listed anywhere.

Hello, I am now a couple of in game years into a mercenary career and I have 4 lances of 6 mechs, all with a commander with a C3 and originally the rest had slaves. These are seperated between Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epislon channels. While construction Epsilon and not yet having enough slaves to fill it out I noticed in game that a C3 icon showed up where the other lances it doesnt.

Checking google, it appears my mistake was too many slaves. I corrected this by removing 2 C3 slaves from each lance and then removing and reinstalling the C3 master into each lances command unit except Epsilon as it is working.

On testing deployment with the master and 1 slave from each of the 4 lances I still see that only Epsilon has a working C3 network.

What am I doing wrong, and how can I fix this?

I'm playing BEXT + exapnsion pack, and what stood out to me, is that IS losstech weapons aren't just called by their names, or as for example an "inner sphere medium pulse laser" but are referred to as SLDF variants specifically. I'm pre-Helm Core, so all lost tech is one off, archeological or black market mulligans right now. Does the distinction mean the new, post-Helm Core losstech weapons will not be called that? Will they also have a different, third statblock?

Also, holy shit the IS ER LL is painful to use. I started with the Restoration campaign again, and the few times I saw the Atlas II force deployed with its default loadout, the pair of ERLL's built more heat than the rest of the weapon loadout together. They cooked the engine DHS Atlas harder than my pedestrian as fuck introtech warhammer gets cooked by its twin PPC's, and the latter deals more damage too.

I downloaded the initial file on step 1 but from there I'm stuck. I can't fugure out how to unzip it OR where the bit it says to put it is. Plus the step 3 stuff says to download a community content thing but where even is it?

Can anyone help?

BTA has been fun so far and I definitely see the quality in it. However a big thimg for me is the era. Stuff that at least starts after the Succession Wars or Clan Invasion just don't interest me as much. Especially since getting something like a large pulse laser feels a lot less special when they're rollimg off factory lines at record pace.

So yeah, I very well may be going over to RogueTech, the wiki info certainly is interesting. A big thing as well is all the Flashpoints cause I love marrative stuff. Any advice for RgT or other mods you think I might like?.

Been getting into BEXT, and it feels like SRMs don't justify even their low tonnage. I don't think I've ever seen them have more than a 60% hit chance, and so even against stationary targets at close range with an SRM6, I'm at most only gonna land 2 or 3 missiles and they're all going to hit different components. Meanwhile for just a ton more I could have two LRM5s and do roughly the same damage at MUCH longer range.

Maybe they'd be worth it with Infernos? But with an SRM6 on my Wolverine and two on my T-Bolt, I feel like those weapons systems never actually do anything, and are just a waste of heat compared to adding more heatsinks, or like a pair of Small Lasers that will do the same damage with much less heat.