The game is not as brutal/hard as it may first seem. There is just a learning curve to go through and learn the tactics. If you're having a hard time at the start don't worry, that's natural, you're kind of supposed to unless you already know what you're doing from either watching streams or just knowing basic battletech rules and conventions.
Some tips for peeps:
Get the Bulwark perk, on every pilot, always. It is the single most OP perk in the game and only gets stronger as you get into later stages with bigger slower mechs. If you don't move it's 50% damage and stability reduction. This is better then all but the fastest evasion maneuvers on small mechs. All other perks are marginal, and situational at best. Bulwark is always useful for everyone. Trust me. You could write a whole manual on the usability and effectiveness of Bulwark. Other perks wish they were Bulwark in their wet dreams. Evasion charges will get stripped quick, bulwark normally wont and it's more dmg absorption then 5 or less evasion. Honestly i'm kind of on the fence whether its too good and breaks the game or an essential tactic to running missions efficiently.
Try doing as many contracts per planet as possible, 2-3 is ideal, before moving on. And doing mech repairs/upgrades and pilot healing as you're traveling to a new place. Bettwe ship engines can help with that actually as you will get to a planet faster thus theres less chance contracts will expire.
Just because a planet/system has no current contracts doesn't mean you shouldn't travel to it, the game usually generates missions when you get there.
If you are having difficulty with the missions being currently presented to you by the game, travel back on the star chart to towards the starting lower difficulty planets and you can do lower difficulty missions to farm up some cash, parts and repair/heal up and get back in shape.
It pays to have around 6 pilots and 6 mechs in early-midgame so that you can swap things in if they get damaged or destroyed. Any less then that and you're risking not being able to go on missions too much. Any more and you will be eating into your bottom line early on while money is tight. You can move on to the luxury of having more pilots and mechs then that when your're more money comfortable.
Missions take 1 day. This is ideal for repairing simple structure damage on a mech as that only takes 1 day no mater what. (not part replacement or lost limbs). This way when you're doing multiple missions per planet you can essentially bring back a damaged mech online right after another mission.
More armor is better. This is generally a not who one shots who type of scenario game. For the most part its about attrition. The more armor you have taking hits, the less your internals are getting shot, less chance of component damage, limb destruction, and less repair cost/time. Don't skimp on armor.
Strip bullshit from the default loadouts. Like support weapons for example. That extra one or two tons can mean extra heatsinks or extra armor. The only exception to this are dedicated super close range brawler/melee mechs (like firestarter(L), shadowhawk(M) or grasshopper(H)).
Make mechs for specific roles. Or rather weapon ranges. A close range fast mech doesn't need that LRM or that AC2. A dedicated long rang fire support mech like a catapult or a jagermech don't need SRMs or medium lasers necessarily, since they shoul'd be in th back line far from the enemy anyway. Dedicated brawlers (like the ones mentioned above), can normally run hotter safely, since when heating up they can switch to melee and dump heat while still being effective.
Customizing mechs heat performance for specific heat conditions is great in theory but impractical for long time (until you're swimming in cash and mech bay slots essentially). So a good average median for heat efficiency is about 3 bars off maximum. This way you will never overheat in a cool climate, and in a hot climate only a few weapon rotations will keep you fine.
ROTATION will save you enormous amounts damage, destruction, money and repair. Rotation of both mechs from the back to the front line to bait the enemy into shooting them instead of damaged teammates and torso rotation. Torso rotation can be done in place, meaning the mech will stay in the same spot, thus comboing with Bulwark, since it technically didn't move. Since damage is positional presenting first one side to the enemy then another can double your survivability or more. Torso rotation + Bulwark can absorb unholy amount of damage on a well armored mech. For example I went up against a and assault lance in a head to head, then during that got ambushed by a heavy/assault mix from the side, but my Catapult which was in the back as dedicated fire support stalled that entire lance for several turns, by simply activating Bullwark every turn and rotating the torso to spread the damage. It got banged up but allowed me to clean up the first lance and move on to the second, thus winning a 4v8 vs heavier mechs then mine with only minor structural damage.
@seikenfreak: Try to quit and restart the game from time to time, it seems to have a memory leak issue for quite a few people and the game starts to slow down in terms of loads. This helped me a bunch.
@mike said:
@hayt: Placement doesn't affect efficiency for anything, whether it be a jump jet or a heat sink.
Not Strictly true, there are exceptions. Any weapons slotted into arms have a bonus +1 to hit. Heatsinks slotted into legs will allow the mech to dump way more heat when they're standing in water.
For choosing salvage vs. money. It can vary from missions to mission. Some missions naturally offer you way more money and less salvage and visa versa. For example a mission can give 1 million credits and 3/14 salvage max, or 0.5mil and 4/21 salvage max breakdown. Generally the sell value of goods will not make up for the money on high paying missions if you're just selling them. It is however more profitable compared to the buy cost. Even full mech salvage teeters on that edge, a full mech can sell for 300-500 on average lets say in the midgame, that's 3 parts, 3 parts in a 1 mil paying mission can be less then money sometimes. Also consider the mission difficulty and what mech tier you're at. Lets say i'm running an all Heavy lance, going into a 2 tier difficulty mission i would only ever go for 0 or 1 pip of salvage because i just don't need the parts and they would sell for less then mission payment anyway. But same Heavy lance and going into say a 4th difficulty mission tiers, i know that is likely to have heavy/assault mechs so i will likely boost the salvage to max or near max to get as many parts as possible, because that's the next step to upgrading my mechs.
(edit): One of the most useful salvage/shop gear items people would want to look out for are cockpit mods, they cost no tonnage and will prevent 1-3 pilot injuries (depending on quality), whether they are from head hits, torso explosion or plain falling over.
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