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Battletech Review: A Tactical PC Game That Will Mech Your Day. Reviewed on: PC; Battletech's brand of mechanized tactics is as deep as it is slow. But with patience and attention, its detailed. As a tabletop conversion to PC, BattleTech is the sort of game that requires a strong grasp of the fundamental mechanics if you want any shot at keeping your pilots alive, your mechs outfitted, and your merc company paid.
As a tabletop conversion to PC, BattleTechisthe sort of game that requires a strong grasp of the fundamental mechanics if you want any shot at keeping your pilots alive, your mechs outfitted, and your merc company paid.
This particular entry in the hallowed giant robot franchise can be unforgiving to new players, and the tutorials are buried in dialogue options that are easy to miss if you aren't exploring every nook and cranny of your drop ship.
Before you get started retaking the Aurigan Reach for the Arona Restoration, this is everything you need to know about strategy and mech maintenance if you don't want to be reloading every single battle.
BattleTech Mech Combat Basics
Navigating turn order and planning your upcoming attacks based on which enemy will move next is critical in absolutely any mission. The turn order goes in descending order of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 instead of ascending order, so pay attention to who is going to attack next and who can be Sensor Locked that turn and then still attacked by another mech in your group.
Best BattleTech Pilot Skills
You will quickly learn that Sensor Locking and Evasive Movement are two of the most important skills to have, but they aren't fully explained by the tutorial missions.
For instance, you don't need direct line of sight to Sensor Lock an enemy vehicle. They just have to be on your radar as the unknown red dots within sensor range. This is important for indirect missile fire over long distances before closing the gap and engaging in short-range laser fire or direct melee combat.
Your enemies will typically be either mechs or tanks, and it's these smaller ground vehicles like tanks that are extremely susceptible to mech melee assaults -- usually going down in one hit.
Choosing Attack Types
When engaging in ranged combat, always keep in mind that you don't have to launch the mech's entire weapon payload with every attack. You can click each weapon in the list in the lower right corner to remove or add before firing, which is important for managing heat. Switching to melee for a round is another excellent option for venting heat.
If a weapon has a low chance to hit but will increase your heat into the critical range, just turn it off for that attack. Remember that these settings are saved for every attack, though, so don't forget to turn it back on for the next salvo if you want to use all the weapons at once.
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Finally, while shooting ranged weapons like missiles and lasers, it's always better to try to hit enemies on their sides or from the back. Not only does this reduce their armor's damage reduction and overcome the Guarded state, but your chances of destroying a mech section with a Called Shot shoot up significantly.
Hitting from behind, your chances of taking out a mech's leg to knock it over will jump from 18% to the 50% range. Don't discount the center torso, though. While the percent chance will be lower, destroying the torso with a Called Shot incapacitates the pilot and takes the mech out of commission immediately.
Called Shot percentages go up drastically if attacking from behind or from higher ground
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Understanding BattleTech Mech and Weapon Types
There's a huge array of mechs, from Spiders to Dragons to Shadowhawks, Vindicators, Centurions, and many more. While each has a slightly different focus between movement range, heat distribution, ranged or melee combat, and so on, the primary differences will be in their weight category.
Best BattleTech Mechs and Weapons
In general, heavier mechs have more space for more weaponry, so heavy is a good way to go for both armor and attack strength. Each mech has different weapon anchor points, however.
Not all mechs can equip an SRM 5 or AC/10 on either arm for instance, while some can equip multiples of the same type of weapon on the same location for truly devastating volleys of fire. Highlighting a weapon in the equipment list will show you which locations on the mech can use that weapon.
You can get drastically different results in a mission just by swapping out weapon types and tailoring them to each pilot's skills. The PPC, for instance, is basically the mech rendition of a sniper rifle and is only useful at long range if you have a high Gunnery skill. Machine guns, on the other hand, aren't all that helpful against 50-ton metal monstrosities, and they're only useful for light mechs to deal a little extra damage and hope for a critical if the enemy is low on armor.
LRMs, SRMs, ARs, and MGs need to have their corresponding ammo types placed somewhere on the mech to be used (it doesn't have to be the same location as the gun itself), while laser and energy weapons don't require extra ammo to function.
Pay special attention to a weapon's minimum and optimal ranges. A mech outfitted with just a PPM and LRMs will be useless in short-range combat (and will need several heat sinks if you intend to fire every round).
When refitting weapons, make sure to finish your loadout with extra heat sinks or jump jets to get to that mech's specific ideal tonnage. If you have any leftover space -- even a single 0.5 of a ton -- you will always get an annoying warning box when entering combat.
The game doesn't explain this at all, but if you don't need jump jets or heat sinks, you can increase the tonnage by paying to increase armor on each individual location with the small white + buttons, which can be much more useful.
A solid mix of long- and short-range weapons will keep you alive in more situations
Using Light Mechs Effectively
When outfitting mechs for your lance, those fast-moving, lightly armored mechs seem useless at first -- but they absolutely aren't. While they become less useful as you need heavier mechs in later missions that can take more damage, in the beginning stages, these are cheap ways to get easy wins.
Use light mechs for scouting to know which direction enemies are coming from, and reposition them quickly with their long-range sprinting and jump jet abilities to quickly take out vehicles with melee attacks.
Adding the Evasive Movement skill to a mechwarrior who uses light mechs can make them extremely difficult to effectively hit in ranged combat. You should also make use of the Reserve action to hold these highly mobile mech's actions for later in the round. Since they can cross larger distances, light mechs reserved for the end of a round can mop up heavily damaged mechs or vehicles after your heavy hitters have launched their payloads.
The bewildering number of mech and weapon options will be daunting at first
Mastering Movement During BattleTech Missions
Now that you know the basics, it's time to get into the nuts and bolts of how to win a mission. First and foremost -- stay mobile! Evasion is critical to staying alive against long-range attacks. The more points of Evasion you can generate, the better. While moving across the map, use forest terrain and the Entrenched condition to your advantage against superior numbers.
Moving to get a point of Evasion and then using Sensor Lock to remove an enemy mech's Evasion is usually more useful than standing still and unloading a bunch of ammo on a mech who isn't going to take any damage anyway due to those Evasion points. RNG is a strange mistress, though, and there's always the possibility you get a lucky shot and blow off a critical component.
Right-click a mech to see how many points of Evasion it currently has (these are the >>> marks beneath the black box at the top of the screen) as well as getting an overview of the enemy's weapon loadout. Be on the lookout for enemy turrets to Sensor Lock your lance, which exposes them to indirect missile fire every round, even if they are nowhere near an enemy mech.
BattleTech Formations
In general, the old D&D adage of 'never split the party' holds true. There are only a few missions where it's worthwhile to break into small squads of two mechs and hit from different directions. You don't have to worry about large-scale area effect attacks that hit multiple mechs simultaneously, so staying clustered together for defense is usually a better option.
There are possible exceptions to that rule. For instance, one strategy is to send a mobile, melee-focused mech ahead to engage the enemy (using jump jets to get out of harm's way when enemies swarm around) while the three other mechs in your lance use long-range attacks from a distance.
This is a particularly risky strategy, however, as your nimble melee mech is probably going to take enough damage to make the mission a bust, unless you get incredibly lucky. More likely, you will RNG yourself out of a good, solid mech.
Don't split the party!
Spending Money on Mech Repairs/Ship Upgrades
There's a subtle but important focus shift in BattleTech from other turn-based strategy war games. You are a mercenary company, not a fanatical military devoted to a particular purpose or plot of land. Your job is to make enough c-bills to keep operating, not to win wars for other people at all costs.
If you are going to end up spending more money on repairs, re-buying destroyed weaponry, and recruiting new pilots than the job is going to generate, then it's time to withdraw from the mission. So long as you killed at least one enemy, you won't even take a hit on your rating with the Mercenary Review Board.
Each job is negotiated ahead of time, with sliders used to decide whether you are going to get more money, more guaranteed salvage, or less of both in exchange for a reputation bonus.
Salvage can be better than money, especially if it means you don't have to re-buy expensive weapons after a mech is damaged, but having money on hand at all times is always a good idea, especially when those random events pop up during space travel. In general, if you are flush with cash, you may want to go with the salvage or the rep boost, while in lean times, you should move the slider towards the high end of the monetary payment.
When you finally have a surplus of cash and get your hands on the Argo drop ship, don't rush to buy all the ship upgrades immediately as soon as you have enough c-bills available. Besides their initial investment, they cost money every month to maintain, which can add up quickly. If you do poorly on several missions in a row, you may end up running out of cash unexpectedly.
Expanding the Argo gives more event options, but not all of them are worth the investment cost
Those are all the BattleTech combat and negotiaton basics you need to know to play the game. Have any other BattleTech tips and tricks or awesome mech loadouts we should try? Let us know your best mech combat strategy in the comments below!
This is a sponsored post courtesy of Paradox Interactive.BattleTech is a turn-based tactical game that has you command a lance of mechs bristling with cannons, missiles, and lasers in combat against an enemy with the same arsenal. In the hands of a novice, these battles can be a gruelling slugging match, with each player whittling down the armour of their opponent’s mechs until something explodes. But, once you’ve got to grips with BattleTech’s nuanced systems, you can carve through your enemy’s machines with a surgeon’s skill.We’ve written a beginner’s guide to BattleTech to ease you into those systems and give you a few tips on how to get ahead. Assembling your lanceThe group of mechs you take into battle is called a lance, and while you can take up to four mechs with you, there is nothing stopping you from taking fewer. The main restriction is the carry capacity of your dropship – it having a limit to the sheer tonnage of mechs it can hold. This is to stop you from taking four towering assault class mechs into battle. If you want to take in an assault mech you’re going to have to fill out the rest of your lance with lighter classes.There are four mech classes in all: light, medium, heavy, and assault.
Though, it’s not as simple as light mechs being recon units and assault mechs being heavy hitters. You can kit a light mech out with a suite of flamers so it can dance around heavier mechs torching their pilots. You could also have a heavy mech that’s low on armour but heavy on support weapons that you have to keep behind the battle lines. Taking turnsAs soon as you enter combat in BattleTech your mechs and the enemy’s units are alloted a phase in the turn order, dictating when they can take their actions. A rule of thumb for this is the heavier the mech, the later in the turn it gets to move.
This is particularly useful to know when you come up against assault mechs, because you can throw your entire lance at it before it gets to make a strike against you.However, mechs don’t have to move when it’s their turn. You can order a mech to reserve, telling it to hold its go until the next phase.
In this way, you could have a light mech that has an initiative high enough to take its turn in the first phase of combat, but reserve it all the way into the last phase.There are a number of reasons why this can be the best move to make. If the enemy mechs aren’t in your line of sight, or they’re out of range, you could reserve your mechs’ turns, letting the enemy come towards you, revealing themselves without you having to move ahead and potentially leave your mechs in a bad position. Another reason is that if you hold a light mech back to the last movement phase then they can effectively go twice in a row – acting in the last phase of one turn and the first phase of the next. Shoot what you seeLine of sight is a key part of BattleTech and is a little more complicated here than in most other tactical games.
At its most basic, if you can see an enemy in BattleTech you can shoot at it. This doesn’t just go for the mech with eyes on the target, but every mech on your team.Say you’ve sent a light mech scouting ahead and they get sight on the enemy. If any of the mechs further back are equipped with long-range missiles (LRMs) and are in range, they can fire at the enemy target, even though they can’t see it themselves.It’s also handy to know that you might not need to be directly looking at a mech to ‘see’ it. Every mech is kitted out with sensors that can detect enemy units within a wide radius around them – detected mechs appear as red outlines on the battlefield.If a pilot who has the Sensor Lock skill detects an enemy mech then they can reveal it to the rest of the lance even if they can’t see it with their eyes. Put a pilot with Sensor Lock in a light mech and you have a scout that can sprint ahead and spot targets without even showing themselves to the enemy. Pilot skillsWhile on the subject of skills, there are a wide range of abilities your mech pilots can learn as they gain experience in battle.
Sensor Lock, for example, but also the ability to fire at multiple targets in a pilot’s firing arc, or to gain defence bonuses whenever you choose to keep a mech standing still for a turn.One of the more powerful abilities you can learn is a passive skill that lets your pilot advance one initiative phase. In practise, when two assault mechs are sizing each other up, if one of the pilots has Master Tactician then they get to shoot first, an advantage that could win them the battle. Structure and armourEach mech has an internal skeleton of individual limbs wrapped in thick armour. Your initial attacks will peel away at its outer armour, exposing the more vulnerable structure beneath. If you hit a limb’s internal structure enough then you can destroy the limb – and any weapon systems attached to it.While you can disable and destroy a mech with an all-out general attack it’s not as effective as a targeted assault.
And keep in mind that a mech is dangerous to you as long as it is still standing. Even if you shoot off both its arms, its shoulder cannons, and one of its legs, it can still cause massive damage to your mechs with melee attacks – damage that will take time to repair or heal, both of which cost you money.Even if you’re not targeting specific limbs with Called Shots and Precision Strikes, try to make sure your mechs are hitting the same side of an enemy. Each time one of your weapons hits a mech, where it lands is calculated. So a rain of missiles on the left side of a mech will hit its left arm, left torso, and left leg.
Keep it up and those limbs will be destroyed first. Heat managementYour biggest enemy in BattleTech is, obviously, the mechs you face off against in the battlefield. But second to that is heat. Every time you fire one of your weapons, particularly large energy weapons like a PPC or pulse laser, your mech generates a huge amount of heat. If you’re not careful, you can roast your mech from the inside out, causing huge internal damage and forcing the machine to shut down until it has cooled off, leaving you vulnerable to targeted attacks.You can manage heat buildup by fitting your mech with heatsinks – a piece of equipment that soaks up heat and expels it into the atmosphere.
Heatsinks are essential if you’re planning on arming a mech with a lot of energy weapons. Though, if you’re leaning more towards ballistic weapons and missiles, they produce far less heat and so you can give the heatsinks a miss and save the weight.The environment also plays a big role in heat management. Arctic battlefields will help keep your mechs cool, letting you fire your lasers more frequently – though, the same is true for your enemies. However, on planets without an atmosphere, where the heat has nowhere to escape, your mechs can boil unless you’ve installed a tonne of heatsinks.Watch out for certain types of terrain, too.
If you stand your mech in water it gets a massive boost to heat dissipation. The inverse is true if you stand on a geothermal vent. StabilityBattle mechs are massive machines, standing taller than multistory buildings, and with that grandeur comes a high centre of gravity – something a canny tactician can exploit. If you can hit a mech with enough high impact attacks you can knock it off balance, making it unstable and unable to sprint or use its jump jets.
Keep shooting at it and you can even tip it over, causing a knockdown, which is sometimes enough to kill the pilot inside.To hit a mech’s stability, you want to use high impact weapons: ballistic weapons and missiles are best, though some energy weapons like the PPC can also work.When you attack a knocked down mech you can make Called Shots, focusing your attacks on particular parts of the machine. This is a great way to take a mech out quickly – knock it to the floor with a flurry of missiles and then blow off its legs so it can’t get up again. You have to be quick about it, though, as mechs are only knocked down until their next turn.
Hardpoints and weight limitsThere are two major restrictions when it comes to outfitting mechs – hardpoints and weight. A mech’s chassis determines what kind of weapons you can install and where you can install them. You can’t stick a giant rack of long-range missiles into a mech’s head, for instance, but you might be able to fit a small machine gun in there. In this way, hardpoints can determine the sort of role a mech can play on the battlefield – a chassis with lots of missile slots is likely to be better placed in support than close combat.Weight is what stops you from fitting every one of your mech’s hardpoints with a weapon. A mech chassis can only support so much raw tonnage. So, while your mech might have three different ballistic hardpoints, you can only install one AC/20 because they’re so damn heavy. Light mechs simply can’t carry some of the heavier weapons, at least not without taking off all their armour plating – which is not advisable.Always fit your mech to its maximum tonnage, even if it’s just by adding more armour plating, as there is no benefit to fielding an underweight mech given that it moves as fast as a full-weight mech.
Managing your mercsMuch of your time in BattleTech is spent on the battlefield but there is a whole other side to the game that is, essentially, a management sim. You’re the manager of a mercenary outfit, and like any manager you have to keep the company solvent, finding clients, negotiating contracts, keeping your employees happy, and maintaining your offices.
It’s just your clients are battling nation states, your employees are hardened soldiers, and your offices are a giant spaceship.All your decisions come down to one number: your monthly outgoings. Each month you have to pay your pilots’ salaries and maintenance costs for their mechs and your ship. This can easily run to more than half a million credits – though, if you’re running short of cash you can pay your mercs less at the cost of lower morale.
You’re going to have to take on contracts to earn the money to keep everyone paid. These are offered up by clients in need of a little muscle – miners wanting an escort, governments looking to put down a rebellion, traders wanting to scare off pirates.When you take a contract you can negotiate your rate, spreading your payout across three different resources: credits, salvage, and reputation. If your bank account is looking empty and you need cash then you can prioritise credits, meaning you’ll get less salvage from the battlefield, and no bonus reputation. Or you could take less cash in favour of more salvage.
Or you could choose to take less of either for a reputation boost.You can imagine the uses for credits. It goes to wages, buying merchandise in the shops, and the cost of flying your ship between systems. Salvage is anything usable left on the battlefield after a mission. It could be parts of a mech chassis, weapons, or equipment. Salvage is the best way to grow your lance because it costs a lot of cash to buy mechs outright in a shop but nothing to pick the pieces up from a battlefield. Reputation is more abstract, but it can earn you credits in the long run. As your reputation with a faction grows they begin to trust you more, meaning they tell you about higher paying jobs, they give you bonuses for completed objectives, and discounts in any shops you visit in that faction’s territory.What rate you negotiate is always going to be determined by your needs at the time but something to keep in mind is how frequently you see yourself running jobs for a particular client.
If it’s not that often, don’t sacrifice credits and salvage for reputation.
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