BTA 3060 lethality

[u/MuffinSpectacular]

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?

[u/Fafyg]

The latter one. Unless you have really low evasion, then it can happen way more often just because of amount of enemies. BTW, the balance is skewed towards evasion, since it is not removed after shots

[u/MuffinSpectacular → u/Fafyg]

Damn okay. Yeah I've been taking advantage of evasion and get through most of my missions without taking any internal damage so it really caught me off guard having 2 instant kills back to back. RIP Witness & War Dog o7

[u/Amidatelion]

To put this in perspective, you have described two encounters.

Before a BTAU release goes live, approximately 12 careers are played for testing.

RNGesus just didn't like your face.

[u/RiftandRend]

You just got horribly unlucky.

You can buy armored cockpit modules from stores, which increase head armor & structure, or install a torso cockpit.

[u/JereRB]

I was getting hit with bullshit like that. A lot. Like, "Matchstick Phoenix Hawk, last enemy unit, DFA's my commander's pristine Atlas and cruches the cockpit" type bullshit. There's a particular setting under Gameplay in Settings: Enemy Scaling. It gives the enemy damage reduction and accuracy the more you win. You've probably been winning a lot. So, the enemy gets scaled up a lot. To straight bullshit levels. Personally, I disable Enemy Scaling altogether. After that, it actually plays like Battletech to me.

[u/maringue → u/JereRB]

I think enemy scaling just means you don't face rookie pilots when yours are close to maxed out in skill to keep the game balanced.

[u/JereRB → u/maringue]

No, it has very, very particular effects. And those effects have nothing to do with pilot skills. From my google search:

How Enemy Scaling Works

• Initial Enemy Scaling: Set permanently at the very start of a career, determining the starting SAD points for the AI (-5 for Easy, 0 for Normal, and +5 for Hard). [1, 2]
• Dynamic Enemy Scaling (SAD): Can be adjusted or toggled on/off at any time in the settings. [1, 2]
• Win/Loss Tracking: For each mission you win, the AI gets progressively harder; for each mission you lose a mech or fail, the AI scales downward to give you breathing room. [1]
• Stat Adjustments: Winning streaks grant the AI cumulative bonuses like damage reduction, Area of Effect (AoE) damage reduction, and bonus hit chances. [1]

[u/maringue → u/JereRB]

Honestly, with out these the AI is too easy to trick. Once you get a good feel for how it picks targets and makes movement decisions, you can game it, and these help offset that some.

[u/Real-Comfortable6812 → u/JereRB]

Are those effects really noticeable? Are they from a recent update? I haven't played BTAU in months, but I've never lost a mission in years.

Never lost in vanilla, RogueTech or BTAU. Have had a mech crippled once or twice due to bad decisions on my part, but have always completed missions successfully.

Edit: I have lost multiple BTAU Rattler Challenges, though, until I learned how to use inferno artillery from the first person to complete that challenge.

I've never really noticed a difference in OpFor pilot ability, though, but I always play with all the difficulty settings cranked to max.

[u/b100darrowz]

Little bit of both. I feel like stock BTA has a bit too much DFA so I tune it down, but sometimes the stompy murder robots do the stompy murder

[u/maringue → u/b100darrowz]

I've played probably too much and I've never had a pilot die from a DFA. Punches are a totally different story.

Honestly the worst in early game when your pilots have low guts are the random LRM head hits that lay up your pilot for two weeks

[u/MuffinSpectacular → u/b100darrowz]

How did you tune it down?

[u/Ok-Patient-6209 → u/MuffinSpectacular]

He wussed. :D

[u/b100darrowz → u/MuffinSpectacular]

I searched DFA in the mods folder and edited the values in the files associated with it. There are three files to edit iirc.

Do note that if you edit any of the files it does mean the discord might not help you with tech support if things crash.

[u/jrockcrown]

Time to do some job interviews. There are so many good pilots. Once you relax a bit and accept your fate. I'm trying to find the sweet spot and get a balanced opfor. It's either all lights or all heavy and I'm looking for medium mech salvage on 2-3 skull with 800k max payouts. You can adjust enemy scaling in options to reduce the unlucky factor if you need

[u/bisondisk]

Unlucky, I’ve never even had an enemy hit me on a dfa, only many misses. Sometimes they do just blow your head shmoov off tho.

[u/peanutch]

what did you do to piss off rngesus? being efficient is usually enough.

[u/Real-Comfortable6812]

The closest I've ever come to a mech getting taken out by a headshot was years ago in RogueTech. This was back when I was still using the 55-ton Dervish armed with max jump jets and SRM6 launchers as an ambush backstabber.

I'd just decided to upgrade my mechs' heads with max modular armor, and right after that I pull a moon mission chasing a convoy. As we're going after them, a Schrek gets two lucky hits in a row on my Dervish's head in the same turn, and it was literally a few structure points away from taking it off. Was definitely glad that I up-armored it right before that mission.

[u/CaleanKnight]

Sadly, both big Expansion Type Mods have subscribed to the "Punish the Player hard for not playing the one approved Way" Philosophy of Game Design and "Unnecessarily Hard Difficulty is the only real Way to play Games, Casuals are not allowed".

So you better memorize the appropriate Guides and follow them to the Letter or this will be your Go-To Experience...

[u/LigerZeroPanzer12 → u/CaleanKnight]

Elaborate

[u/CaleanKnight → u/LigerZeroPanzer12]

Unless you follow a guide or ask reddit for specific tips, you're gonna have a bad time...

Like for example this and other threads that continously pop up and always have the same exact "Do play like this, do this, do use these tricks to stack evasion infinitely" etc.

If you just drop in, all casual like, just wanting more big stompy Mechs, you will mostly face situations like OP describes... sure the words "Bad Luck" get thrown around a lot here but if there's a thread about "incidents" like this every few days... it really can't be just that, now can it?

And it's undeniable that there's a general increase in difficulty with all the changes to accuracy & evasion as well as number of enemies that both mods do... especially with things like hard capping accuracy because apparently it would be too easy and boring to not miss every second or third shot even if at the end game.

[u/LigerZeroPanzer12 → u/CaleanKnight]

I have like 800 hours in BTA and I have no idea wtf you are talking about.

[u/maringue → u/CaleanKnight]

The mods just max the axiom "A slow mech is a dead mech" more true.