MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries by Piranha Games - now on Steam and GOG

[Fedora Master]

Did they hotfix all the issues from the last patch yet?

 

[randir14]

MercTech was finally updated for the latest version of the game. It makes a ton of changes to the mech lab and combat. One of my favorite features is the "role" system that allows you to slot in different AI behaviors for your squad members. For example there's a dedicated missile boat role so you can have a guy stay back firing LRM's. https://www.nexusmods.com/mechwarrior5mercenaries/mods/48

 

[mck]

Sweet. Might actually try playing this again now

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i awaited this mod for months and now that i finally have it... wtf is this shit? this is worse than roguetech. with all the prefixes and suffixes browsing equipment is a pain, after shutting down a mech won't power up again by itself so you'll have to spam P for half an hour, the hud, as reflexion of the whole mod, is an incomprehensible overbloat of scattered informations. they clearly never heard "TMI".
it's cool to have all those settings on game creation, only i wish at least half of them would be understandable. "-wow, i can pick among 5 different damage models! what are the differences? -fuck if i'll tell you".

 

[thesheeep]

Played this for a while, and while I think the core of the gameplay - the combat and going through mech upgrades - is good, it's really the only thing the game has.

The missions are a game design disaster of the highest order.
Some bland small square map with random, but irrelevant terrain.
On which structures are placed almost entirely at random with no logic or world design in mind whatsoever.
On which enemies spawn at random positions with no logic or mission design in mind whatsoever.

There are different mission types, but they are all the same and play the same anyway.
Sometimes, there is a timer so you can't kill all the shit, only what your objective is.

The mission descriptions try to tell you some story, but none of that translates to the actual game at all.

Your lance's AI is... lacking, to say the least. The only commands you can give is "attack that target", "come to me" or "stay here".
The enemy AI is made to focus you - the player mech - down, which generally leads to your useless lance mates being in near mint condition, while you get to soak up all the damage.

Everything feels bland and pointless.
Your only motivation to play is to upgrade your mech/get a better mech. Which did actually motivate me enough for a while, but even that wears out.

tl;dr: What a waste of a good combat/mech system.

However, if you got friends to play this with, do it! I'd say it's actually worth it for that.

 

[Fedora Master]

The AI targets the mech that causes the most damage, actually. You gotta have your lancemates plink away at them for a few seconds before opening up yourself to prevent getting focused down.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

randir14 how the hell do you add ammo to mechs in merctech? or perhaps i should... cough cough... update because it's a known bug?

edit: found.
holy shit. autism with no limitism.

 

[randir14]

randir14 how the hell do you add ammo to mechs in merctech? or perhaps i should... cough cough... update because it's a known bug?

edit: found.
holy shit. autism with no limitism.

It is kind of autistic. I like many of the changes but it feels like the guy went overboard in some areas. Having a million different AC variants from all the different arms manufacturers is cool if you're a huge Battletech fan, but kind of annoying for actual gameplay.

One thing I hate is having to start a new campaign to turn on many of the options. I want to test the new damage models in Instant Action, but it doesn't seem like there's any way to. Instant Action is stuck with a dumb damage model where light mechs act like armor piercing AC/20 is just a tickle.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

the autisticest peak: weapons follow the usual 2/5/10/20 naming, ammo goes for caliber, with variants of the same autocannon having different calibers. you will NEVER know what fucking ammo you need, also because in the inventory is counted bu single bullet while during loot stage is for packet. you don't own packets of ammo, so it'll always show as 0.
also i loathe the ac rework. they fire just too fast and do shit damage, also raising clouds of smoke, fire and dust making pretty much impossible to chain fire on a moving target. it's like they never played their own game.

 

[Cael]

randir14 how the hell do you add ammo to mechs in merctech? or perhaps i should... cough cough... update because it's a known bug?

edit: found.
holy shit. autism with no limitism.

It is kind of autistic. I like many of the changes but it feels like the guy went overboard in some areas. Having a million different AC variants from all the different arms manufacturers is cool if you're a huge Battletech fan, but kind of annoying for actual gameplay.

One thing I hate is having to start a new campaign to turn on many of the options. I want to test the new damage models in Instant Action, but it doesn't seem like there's any way to. Instant Action is stuck with a dumb damage model where light mechs act like armor piercing AC/20 is just a tickle.

Especially when in the real game, the manufacturer names are just cosmetic.

 

[thesheeep]

The AI targets the mech that causes the most damage, actually. You gotta have your lancemates plink away at them for a few seconds before opening up yourself to prevent getting focused down.

What's that going to achieve?
It just means they'll focus me down a bit later once I actually join the fight.
Or are they dumb enough not to change focus once they are already focusing on someone?

Either way, it's really stupid if it forces you to not play the game for a bit in order to play the game.

 

[Fedora Master]

The AI targets the mech that causes the most damage, actually. You gotta have your lancemates plink away at them for a few seconds before opening up yourself to prevent getting focused down.

What's that going to achieve?
It just means they'll focus me down a bit later once I actually join the fight.
Or are they dumb enough not to change focus once they are already focusing on someone?

Either way, it's really stupid if it forces you to not play the game for a bit in order to play the game.

It helps spread out damage between yourself and your lancemates, which is important especially during long missions. And it stops the AI from wrecking your precious arm weapons every single mission.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

long missions? once you skip beach head (which are just masochistic), there's no "long missions".

 

[thesheeep]

long missions? once you skip beach head (which are just masochistic), there's no "long missions".

Some missions consist of multiple missions in a row without getting a chance to repair mechs in-between.

I assumed that's what is meant with "long mission".

 

[Chippy]

Thanks for the info Codex. Every time a game comes out that might convince me to upgrade my PC to play it...it doesn't.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

long missions? once you skip beach head (which are just masochistic), there's no "long missions".

Some missions consist of multiple missions in a row without getting a chance to repair mechs in-between.

I assumed that's what is meant with "long mission".

yeah, you skip those too unless you're way too far into the game and own a crapload of mechs.

 

[thesheeep]

I do love how so many "workarounds" for this game just boil down to "don't play the game"

 

[Matalarata]

Bullshit. Game is far from being perfect but beach head are among the best procedural mission. Also, there are literally dozens of long scripted missions, if you have the expansion and even if you lack that, the campaign has some pretty long one too.

If you played this game more than 20 hours and consider beachhead a chore, maybe it's because you're far worse at the game than you think you are, just sayin'.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i just installed the official infantry mod, all excited i also went to swap some weapons to machineguns and misc lighter so my lance could fight it better. aaaand it's cosmetic. infantry does absolutely nothing. ai doesn't even aknowledge its existence.
i swear, this is the game which keeps on taking away.

 

[Chippy]

Even MW3 had infantry. They exploded impressively.

 

[Fedora Master]

The game really doesn't look or run too good for something made in Unreal.

Most of the issues stem around uninspired audio design, abuse of TAA and sharpening, lack of optimization and all around minimal effort ascribed to anything in the game. This is PGI's "minimum viable product" approach. They likely took zero input from beta testers, given their track record with MWO during the first near-decade of its operation.

Shitty Kitty was 100% accurate when he said its a "minimum viable product".

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Even MW3 had infantry. They exploded impressively.

well, no, that's not infantry, those are elementals, clan battle armors, fully capable of going toe-to-toe with mechs, that's why they explode so impressively.
still, having infantry who's just a gif floating above ground is insulting.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

did the map change in vanilla too? never noticed, but i doubt because i also remember vanilla never creating new missions while with merctech they keep popping out. shame it's only by script, and that as soon as steiner and davion fuse any progress with any is lost like tears in rain. now that i know, i have 10 years of waiting for the clans to come.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i'm the moth to the battletech flame.

the game is bad, but do you know what's its worst aspect? sound. other than the general bugginess, effects are dull, muffled, uninteresting and there's no audio cue when a weapon finishes the reloading cycle. last nail in the coffin, and this time i'm pretty sure i'll drop the game for good, finally: there're no clans. no clan mechs, no clan weapons, no clan tech whatsoever. i endured years and years, finally the news inside the game started to talk about lost expeditions and pirates stopping activity, i got ready to assrape some clone but... nothing. 3 years past deadline still nothing. so i went to check and no, the game has no clan stuff.

 

[Chippy]

So if somebody did a poll and asked whether this game lives up to he legacy of its predescessors, the overall impresson I'm getting is that it doesn't. And yet the marketing was: MW5: Mercenaries.

Here'sa question I may have asked already - but if you shoot an enemy in the face as per MW3 are you guaranteed that mech will be available fo salvage?. I don't think the gaming industry ever realised how awesome a mechanic that was.