Mechwarrior Online: New Update. Artillery Strikes Out.

As is PGI's current schedule, a new patch shows up every other week.  This week was.. not so impressive.

But let's delve into it.  If nothing else its a neat way to see how a game evolves from a bare bones thing into a fully fledged game.

The first new addition is the most important.  (New Camo and Cockpit Toys don't really count.)  The Heavy Metal, the Hero class (aka GIVE US REAL MONEY FOR IT) Highlander that plays a tiny little tune whenever it gets a kill.  It is based on a mech used by Rhonda Snord of the Snord's Irregulars.  I am a bit of a BT fluff fan and I wasn't even really aware of her having this mech.  And I own a sourcebook for that unit!

In the base configuration (currently one cannot change paint on a Hero mech) our nearly bright pink Assault class mech has jump capability in a 90 ton machine.  Not the greatest weapons loadout and currently thanks to it having an XL engine it means I get kills on many of them when I blow open a side torso.  XL engines may be much lighter than normal, but the weight gained is offset by 6 slots taken up, and dying whenever either side torso is destroyed.

Here is a shot of it in game, piloted by House Liao's least favorite wanna be Starscream, Metro.  (He does not like the Word of Lowtax or our attempts to basically run House Liao via not caring and actually being interested in having FUN as opposed to taking the game and its setting too seriously.)

The weekend before this new patch we had a double XP weekend.  The XP numbers got doubled but the game really didn't tell you.  You just see BIGGER NUMBERS.  It started Thursday and went till Monday giving me two days to Elite my Jagermechs and Master the one I choose to keep.

And now that I got my little mechs done it means time to get back in my Magic Murder Bag, the Atlas D DC.  I got the best damage this match.  And also punished Word of Lowtax players Ohsh and Coolwhoami for betraying the Word.  You can note how Ohsh isn't properly in Liao like he should be (I got ragged on for about a month till I went from Davion to Liao just to shut it up.  It doesn't exactly MATTER right now anyway.), but our two errant birds were top players on their side.

The other big thing that is in fact not very big is another suite of consumables, Air and Artillery Strikes.  You have to spend CBills (or MC if you are nasty) each match and manually refit them.  They are activated using those 6 keys above your arrow keys nobody really uses much.  And are a PAIN to activate in match.  You have to have Line of Sight to your target then press the key.  Which leads to snipers sniping you and the effects are generally mild at best.  (You can have one of each.)

As we see, dropping 15,000 GXP improves the attack slightly, but weakens its' uses as harassment attacks to break up the sniper hell the game seems to be turning into.

Once you drop that sweet GXP that is so hard to earn you can also buy the Accuracy upgrade which isn't required to be mounted in a Hardpoint Slot.  See my above comment though.  Is it worth 4 million C Bills to hit a smaller location?  Right now I would say no.  But maybe once 12 a side drops happen and unified voice communications..

 Once you get your LOS and the little picture has charged to activate status you can use your once a match (unless you buy the same one multiple times I suppose..) attack.  A nice bit of locator smoke appears..

 Then the hammer drops.  Damage tends to be minor but every now and then it has a tactical use.

But the use doesn't involve making dummies go around lighting everyone on fire go away.  Teammates should not do this.  Even if folks like Metro are rumored to be using folks like this to get people to correct said attitudes with heavy firepower banned for "Team Killing".  

This upsets me because I love shooting people with canon names regardless of what side they are on.  It is like wearing a band's tee shirt to said band's concert.  IT IS GAUCHE AND SIMPLY NOT DONE.

Also if the game gets any role playing or event type stuff it is also killing immersion.  I am sorry you are not the Black Widow Natasha Kerensky nor do you run the Grey Death Legion.  And it will look silly if there are GMed type events with said NPCs involved.

Please stop it.  Please.  Do it for the Baby Jesus.  Or Raptor Jesus.  Hell, do it for Princess Celestia if helps. The King of Cartoons.  The King of all Media Howard Stern.

And spread this philosophy.  Together we CAN make a difference.  We cannot do anything about that fat nutbar in North Korea.  But we can do this.

The other bit of updating is drastic changes to Night Vision (seen here and below) and Heat Vision modes.  Night Vision is now almost useful outside of certain maps.

 Like Frozen City where it is nearly unusable in some parts.

 And Heat Vision which now had it's range reduced from the entire map to a VERY short range, and the awesome blue to red heat signature of mechs turned into this world of grey.

The path is grey.

You see before these changes, Night Vision was basically ignored and Heat Vision was almost never turned off no matter the visibility.  You could see clear across most maps and even take pot shots at a kilometer plus of range (handy since unlike stock tabletop Battletech weapons have reduced but not eliminated damage past their normal effective ranges) turning the game into a giant camping festival.  Like Burning Man but with more ER PPC and LRM spam as opposed to stinky guys hitting on 16 year old girls.  (Chris Hansen cannot be everywhere you know!)

I am a tad disappointed in the Strike modules but I am pleased at the changes to the vision modes which should improve overall gameplay.

The game is STILL a work in progress and PGI STILL hasn't fixed the lock ups and HUD errors that occur randomly, but it keeps improving. 

Hell, it is fun enough I have even made use of MWO in tabletop:

You would think this kind of heat would bring all the mechaheads to the yard but no.  And then they missed out on this:

 Battletech players and Connecticut people make for a VERY antisocial combination.  As always.

:(

Mechwarrior Online: I got three problems and the Jagermech is only kind of one.

This fortnight's patch brought us the Jagermech, a 65 ton mech that in tabletop is mostly known for being super sucky and ugly.  In MWO it is improved!

There were other things too so let's get up in it!

 A note on winning:  Wins require kills.  Equal kills but time running out will be a tie even if one side has more captured of a point than the other at least in Assault.

Still pimpin the X 5 Hero Cicada and showing the new camo type plus more silly cockpit toys.  But there are 3 big changes.  Control options which make the game play like a terrible console game such as the Mechwarrior 2 PS1 port.  

Trust me.  Go into the Options and unclick both those bottom checks.  Throttle Decay means you have to hold throttle down or you slow and stop, and Arm Lock keeps your arm weapons locked to your torso which is also bad.  The whole benefit of arm weapons is the extended traverse they have.

The new map, the utterly awesome Tourmaline Desert.  Kind of warm but so pretty to look at and so many places to hide and fight.

A big feature of this map is the crashed ships you find laying about, the wreckage strewn across the field.

Downed mechs.

Crashed ships.

But what was LURM DAY?

LRMs weren't working right for 2 days or so with this patch, again becoming unstoppable avatars of head destroying explosive death.

Many matches went like this.  Some for me, some against.

Too much damage.

You see, the current MWO metagame is long range sniping and shooting.  LRMs were made super powerful even beyond the usual overwhelming power and popularity of PPC and Gauss weapons.

The Jagermech is the other big update (besides PGI's odd programming.. deficiencies) this time.

The A is overall the best, though they are all decent.  Not great, but... decent.  The problem is their stock builds are all terrible.  Even in tabletop the Jagermech was awful.  Though PGI continues to make every mech look light years better.

Some beauty shots including in cockpit views.  And a terrible build with an XL engine.  Note me being my usual jerk in MWO self but in a way that is pointing out terrible things large organizations that are supposed to be in the public interest have done, or hidden others' doings. :(

You will also note the Jagers are all showing new weapon mounts.  This is another change.  They are starting to show mechs equipped with the loadouts they have.  Right now only the Jager and Catapult have this feature but apparently PGI is gonna add this to as many mechs as possible.  Eventually.

And the final most controversial addition is CONSUMABLES.  "Pay to Win" items some of which are RL money, others you can use C Bills for.  Also with GXP uses to make them work better.

These are the two GXP modules.

And these disposable modules.  Now "Mastering" a mech is important for the extra module slot to utilize.  

Still lots of random bugs in the odd match.  Map issues, HUD issues.

A cool picture of incoming missile fire plus the Tag/Narc bonus you can get for using said deviced.  Even if Narc is terrible in every way.  (Speaking of which the "Savior Kill" from last update:  you get this by helping to kill an enemy mech while it is fighting one of your teammates the enemy player has gotten to the internal structure.)

I am overall happy with this patch even with the temporary LRM superboost that they removed today.

PGI needs to fix a LOT of these random bugs that are still popping up on us though.

Warhammer 40K: A Rogue Trader Styled Campaign Battle Report: Mission 1 Part 1

Sadly the time to set up and get teams made only left time to play the first half of the first scenario.  But it helped me see a few things I may need to tweak in the campaign rules and was a good introduction to classic 40K in the days before Games Workshop became the enormous choadmonglers they are today:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnPpfs120DA 

But on to the show:
(PS: Click for large if you would like.  Especially if you are from #tinypewtermen on irc.synirc.net and don't realize my pictures get bigger.)

 Next week shall hopefully be more shenanigans!

Warhammer 40K: A Rogue Trader Styled Campaign Part 3: Mission 1 and 2

One thing to do when setting up your campaign is to have fun missions full of fluff for the PCs to go on.  Being a semi RPG players may, can, and WILL mess up all your plans with backstabbing, machinations, bad die rolls, or being ingenious SOBs who ruin everything you carefully set up because of inspired ideas.

So these missions have to generally be a rough guideline and have options as to what to do if the glorious band of idiots you will love to hate known as YOUR PLAYERS ignore the obvious.

NOTE TO MY PLAYERS:  DON'T YOU DARE READ THIS BLOG POST.  SHOO!  SHOO I SAY!

Which they will.

It is part of the fun.  No, really.

To be sure if the players choose to not go on the missions you assign them there is little you can do, but most RPG campaigns have enough of an unwritten social contract where they will at least try to work with you.

So let's get on with the first 2 missions!  I have a Player side and a GM side so things like background events, secret things happening, and ideas on how to proceed if the script gets scrapped when your Plot Train gets derailed happens have a place.  Show your players the Player side and keep the GM side for your own evil ends...

I haven't listed the basic plot of these early missions because this would give people options to make it their own.  But in general this is my rough layout:

1-6:  PCs get together to train.  Mad Arbite commander decides to rebel and most planetary forces join him.  PCs fight to get to Techmarine Landale who will lead them out of the training fortress through some tunnels as a presumably loyal Arbite screws them over.  They will then escape the planet in a dropship to get to the Revenger of Vengeance.

7-11: PCs retake the Revenger.  Make a beachead, free loyalists on board, capture weapons, engineering, and then the bridge.

12-24: Planets in Need: Two different planets ask for help against other rebellions.  One by what will be found out to be a Genestealer Cult, the other Chaos.  If the GS Cult is taken on first, it means the Chaos rebellion ends up having to be fought second as Chaos Marine and Demon forces.  If Chaos, the GS Cult is instead Tyranids.

25-30: Retake original planet:  The Arbite commander needs to be stopped, as does the Imperator Titan he will be unearthing.  The final fight should be in the Titan's control room.  Defeating him should lead to his puppetmasters arriving and making things miserable/letting players know they didn't really accomplish anything.  Your choice based on what sorts of minis you have access to.  Tau?  Eldar?  Dark Eldar?  More Chaos?  Incredibly clever Orks?  A powerplay by a couple loyalist Marine factions to take over the Ultima Segmentum for its own good?

Oh yeah.  Scenario 1 and 2.  In image form so you get a sweet 40K type font for the fluffy bits.  (Casablanca Antique)

I am guessing my first two scenarios will make for an evening's play.  Hell, the first one alone might do it!  But just to be sure I have the second ready to go.  I might even get 3-4 written tomorrow just to have them ready.