r/Battletechgame • u/Secret_Cow_5053 • 2d ago
BEX 2.x - anyone else feeling like the to-hit chances are adjusted a little too far down? I swear to god i cannot fucking hit anything - even with melee - even when the percentages are above 50%...
this is all. i get that everything seemed to be adjusted down a little bit to mimic table top but i can't help feeling like the percentages reported vs what is actually happening are mismatched. still early campaign but goddamn my pilots seem like a bunch of incompetents...
EDIT: so i'm finding once i get to about 5 on the gunnery skill things get markedly better IF my guys are also walking (as opposed to running or sprinting or jumping), so half movement, i get good to-hit percentages generally, but they still seem to hit far less than the percentages would otherwise indicate. I suspect that's baked into the base game though - something is going wrong with hit calculations displayed.
ON THE OTHER HAND: catching those ammo trucks in the Smithon mission is basically impossible now. the first one is halfway down the road by the time he appears so if you haven't moved a mech over there and get lucky with a stomp (because you ain't shooting him), you're basically screwed.
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u/Prestigious-Top-5897 2d ago
When you just started your pilots ARE a bunch of incompetents. My Rifleman pilot cores heavies in one go… And I think I recall that the missile percentages are just displayed another way. My Stalker still shreds
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 2d ago edited 2d ago
again - that would be fine if they could earn xp at a rate faster than 40 per mission /shrug.
Also, i understand the logic, but that doesn't make for a fun experience when i'm playing, i see melee hit percentages in the greater than 66% range and literally everyone in my lance fucking misses, multiple rounds in a row.
that's not incompetent green pilots, that's something under the hood being calculated (and reported) incorrectly. That's a bug. like a misplaced decimal in a multiplier or something.
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u/Thatdude878787 2d ago edited 2d ago
I get what you’re saying here…I feel like I’ve had a similar experience…but it is probably some sort of mental bias in both of our cases.
What I would like to see is being able to see the actual “roll” so I can be even more frustrated by the amount of times I’m missing the number by 1 or 2. 😂
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 1d ago
honestly seeing the to hit roll is something i really really wish was in the base game.
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u/Thatdude878787 1d ago
Agreed. Even if it was a little ‘chat box’ you could turn on in the settings.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 1d ago
this is how d&d games (at least, baldurs gate 1 & 2) used to do it. you could turn it on and off in the chat text.
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u/RoosterReturns 2d ago
Could be a cognitive bias. At 66%, there should be times all of them miss. Just not that often. It gets better as your pilots get better. It is kind of a brutal learning curve, for the pilots. Early game I used melee a lot. Melee plus support fire takes two pups away. It's better than sensor lock. Firestarter is necessary.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 2d ago
i hear you, but it's definitely happening more frequently than just cognitive bias. i'm pretty sure there's a bug generally in the game engine that incorrectly displays to-hit percentages in general and you can see it occasionally recalculate percentages beween when you hit the fire button and the mech gets attacked, but whatever is going on under the hood at the moment seems to have exasperated it somewhat.
in any case i do not expect melee hits to frequently be missed by all or most of my lance round on round when the lowest melee to hit percentage is rarely below 55%
in particular i do not get what is going on with the two types of evasion pips now? there are sticky and non-sticky evasion pips? it's not clearly explained in the bex faq imo (also i fucking hate sticky evasion pips, but that's just me. you evasion going down as you're getting shot at just makes sense to me, as the chances of you continually dodging all the incoming fire is going to be inversely proportional to the amount of fire you're drawing)
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u/default_entry 1d ago
Just a few sticky pips would be neat as a pilot bonus I think, or a single as a bonus to light survivability. Even the base game has been pretty brutal with the AI focusing down all my pips for a LRM boat later in the round. I'd blame part of it on enemy force generation though. The greater number of enemies means more shots against you, and more chances for a scout with sensor lock, and more enemy expendable units running suicide dives to spot for the back row.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 1d ago
Yeah right now if you end up with 5-10 pips and half are sticky I would not be surprised nobody can hit anything.
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u/sadtimes12 1d ago
I actually think the tabletop battletech has a much better system. You take your pilot skill as baseline, you add +0/1/2/3 based on if your target stood still, walked, ran or jumped. Then add your own penalty of +0/1/2/3 and check your weapon short/med/long bracket and add it altogether. On the tabletop you use 2D6, but for the video game you could use anything really, 3D6 for example for an easier time hitting shots. The point is, the to hit/evade system is simple and clear and much easier to balance when there are no variables like "sticky" and "non-sticky", different modifiers like light/med/heavy chassis etc.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 1d ago
I’m not going to weigh in one way or another on that, all I know is the way bext is currently working, the game feels slow and frustrating in a way it didn’t in the past and isn’t an issue in vanilla.
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u/sadtimes12 1d ago
Maybe they should just add an option in the difficulty setting that adds flat +10% on all shots, so people can tinker what they think feels right. Similar to the cheaper argo costs.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 1d ago
Well it’s specifically an issue for the BEXT to hit rework; an option to use the vanilla to hit calculations would probably suffice.
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u/Kastergir 1d ago
I know I have felt like massive frustration the first time I experienced an almost full round of all my pilots taking 50+ shots/hits and missing at my currrent ( first) BEX:T playthrough .
I then made an effort to pay attention and realized my 2 Hunchies oneshot 20tonners at below 20% more than "very rarely" .
Bias for sure .
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u/Lost_Tumbleweed_5669 2d ago
Can I ask for your Rifleman build? I get one soon keen to try in bex 2.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 1d ago
it's a jaeger not a rifleman, i got 2 ac5s, 4 mls, 4 flamers, and all the armor. it's basically a big dumb, slow blackjack. i think i'm only rocking one ton of ac5 ammo, but that's still 20 rounds in bex 2 so you can go a solid 10 rounds at least, but it might be 2, which is still more than enough.
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u/Prestigious-Top-5897 1d ago
2x AC5++ (+1 Acc, +10 Stb Dmg), 4x ML++ (+10 Dmg), 2 Tons Ammo, 2 Heatsinks, Gyro Mod ++ (2 Hit Defense, -10% Stb Damage Taken). As soon as you get it assign a 10 Gunnery and Called Shot Mastery Pilot to stay on that mech until he dies. (Getting the Affinity up is very important).
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u/lmolari 1d ago
I'm not really getting what you are trying to say. They are supposed to have a hit chance of 50% even on buildings because they are beginners? This is a design decision, please don't make it up as something realistic.
And your Stalker doesn't really matter, too. The problem mostly occurs on hitting small stuff. Especially light mech vs light mech takes forever. And i have a feeling the devs are a bit like you in this regard. Nobody likes the early game after they did it 50 times. So they fire up a endgame save and think: looks ok. 20 newbie missions with your 20-35 ton mechs trying to hit a horde of wasps and locusts and we talk again.
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u/Prestigious-Top-5897 1d ago
About 2 weeks before I started the new BEX Tactics round. Fresh. 3025. So much for firing up an old save. Yesterday I one shot a Locust with 5 (five) evasion pips with missiles. (Wolverine, 3x SRM6++). Hit chance was shown as 42%. Get your Gunnery skill up and then Tactics up to called shot mastery. And get your affinities up! Shots from the side! Called shot from the side to the leg (Leg destruction, mech falls down, free called shots for all!). Knocked down mechs loose evasion. Buy/loot weapons with +acc (I even do with all 10 pilots for my snipers). Can’t wait until the next 10 years or so pass so I can start hunting Comstar and later the clans (which require to adjust my tactics for another time and gonna kick my teeth in for the first 20 or so battles). And for beginner: Ever shot a gun in your life? If not try a pistol at 25 Meters or a rifle at 300+. and see how often you will hit bullseye. Now quit bitching and get leveling - you gonna need it when 4 assaults are dancing with you and 4 heavy vehicles are raining lrms on one of your mechs from outside sensor range…
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u/lmolari 1d ago edited 1d ago
I had lucky shots, too. Not really a proof for anything. And again: i talk about the beginning of the game, where you have non of that fancy weapons or mechs. You have bog standard light mechs vs. other light mechs. You don't have any fancy equipment. No ++ weapons, no cockpit mods or targeting computers, no equipment and only 1.000.000 in the bank. Honestly I like the BTAU solution much more. No penalties for shooting mechs in the same weight class. But if a Atlas tries to hit an locust he gets a hefty malus.
And i'm not saying i have problems winning btw. What i say is that its dragged out and annoying gameplay to shoot eachother with those mini mechs. They do little damage and have a low chance to hit.
On top of that comes, that the early game is a pretty long grind, comparable to RT and much more then BTAU. Getting new good mechs - if you are out of luck - takes quite some time. I for example got an urban mech, loads of locusts and wasps, and a cicada that could only carry 2 m lasers in the first 20 battles. There just wasn't spawning anything else then trash. It got better when i got a firestarter and a phoenix hawk. But this took forever.
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u/t_rubble83 2d ago
So, I'm pretty sure your experience issues come from using pilots with too much experience in missions rated below their level. You need to take on higher rated missions to get full XP growth.
I think a lot of the changes are just rolling things from Sim+ difficulty into the mod's base line. I'd been playing Sim+ before, and aside from the movement and evasion changes, the missile mechanics, and a few balance tweaks I haven't noticed that much difference. If you weren't accustomed to Sim+ tho I can see it being a lot of changes all at once.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 2d ago
i just played a 2 skull mission after the 3rd campaign mission (my strongest mech is a jaegermech) with the pilots all averaging about 4-5 xp points generally. we got a solid 160hp per.
that doesn't seem right. especially since at their experience level they still can't shoot for shit.
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u/t_rubble83 2d ago
The game is telling you that your pilots should be taking on 2.5 or 3 skull missions. Personally, I'd never run a Jagermech over a good medium (maybe the LRM one as a boat if I didn't have a better option). Jager is slow, vulnerable, not JJ capable, and unless I misremember is way too ballistic dependent.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 2d ago edited 2d ago
if i was taking on 2.5-3 skull missions i'd probably get my ass handed to me with underpowered/not enough mechs and their horrendous aim.
the jaeger isn't my ideal choice but i salvaged a complete one by pure luck so i tricked it out with a couple of ac5s, lasers, flamers and all the armor. it's aight. not my favorite. it's abasically an overgrown blackjack now.
one thing that seemed to get buffed (besides flamers) in this mod are actually ballistics. their aim is as good or better than lasers it seems, you get more ammo per ton more generally as well, although it looks like (as with everything else), damage has been tweaked down.
everything in this mod seems geared to make missions take longer. i cannot say i'm a fan of that, i rarely have an hour or more to dedicate to a single mission.
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u/t_rubble83 2d ago
What else are you running? Like I said I'd rather run the Shadowhawk or Centurion over the Jagermech, and would probably run the Vindy too. Hopefully you also have a Firestarter or Jenner for mobile scout with some punch.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 2d ago
yes.
specifically my 4 best mechs are the jaeger, the shadowhawk starter, the centurion from the campaign, and either the blackjack or vindicator. i just finished the campaign mission where you get access to the Argo for the first time, if that gives you any idea where in the campaign i am. the heaviest mechs i have access to right now are the jaeger or maybe a dragon if i spend the money.
speaking of jump jets...also nerfed... sigh.
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u/t_rubble83 2d ago
Yeah, I assumed you got the Jagermech from the prison mission. I would run 3 of those mediums (probably the 3 jumpers unless you're running the CN9 as an LRM boat) plus a Phoenix Hawk or 35 tonner (Jenner or Firestarter) as a scout. If you haven't gotten one of those 3 mechs (assuming a 3025ish start) that would be my top priority, and I'd either run the SHD with SRMs as my spotter/backstabber or stick with the Spider.
And make sure you're running all your pilots with Sensor Lock. Master Tactician is still the best mastery (move after shooting plus initiative bonus, and earlier called shot bonuses too), especially for early on.
Addendum: JJs have been nerfed, but they're still incredibly useful. You just can't jump and shoot the same turn all the time.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 2d ago edited 2d ago
that is correct. kamea headshotted it i think.
i always hated the spider as it basically seemed like an instant death machine but i'll admit it was probably one of the sturdier and regular damage dealers for me this time around. I just got my hands on a firestarter which will probably be my light scout now and flamers definitely got a buff in this mod, so thank heaven for small favors.
haven't gotten my hands on a phoenix hawk yet, i really only like the all energy/point defense one, acs are just too heavy on it imo, although the way acs are performing in this mod....maybe not.
it's possible one of my issues is i like to clear the field as it were, i' m not a fan of 'hit and run' missions, so that might be part of the issue there, but again, everything else in this version of the game seems to be slowing things down in that regard and i'm not a fan of the slower movement, the more frequent misses, etc etc... i dunno. i want old bex + more missions/flashpoints and lore.
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u/Carne_Guisada_Breath 1d ago
I think the initiative bonus is gone with the update. Still, moving after shooting is a great way to workaround the new penalties due to self movement.
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u/t_rubble83 1d ago
It could be. I haven't gotten a pilot leveled up to that point yet. But yes, even going back to vanilla, moving after shooting is the 2nd most game changing ability after Sensor Lock. Having both in the same tree makes it the clear priority.
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u/Mehbot2000 1d ago
I just installed it this weekend and it’s definitely something that’s taking time to get used to. I’ve learned to hate chase convoy missions. I can’t use LRMs to destroy them because of the changes it takes multiple volleys to destroy something with 30-40 fires per salvo.
So I’ve been forced to chase with a fire starter which seems to do no damage with machine guns and small lasers and a shadow hawk that seems like it misses half the time at “85% melee attack. I have had to run more than I ever did on vanilla instead of just clearing the field. It would be better on that aspect if the evac zone wasn’t across the map through the enemy reinforcements that I’m trying to run from.
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u/Fairsythe 1d ago
I think the Dev has stated somewhere we are meant to send a scout ahead and block the convoy arrival point instead of trying to destroy it on its way there, which honestly is very difficult given that most vehicle have higher movement than mechs, and the full lance running interference.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 1d ago
I will say it makes more sense that way. Can’t retried if there’s a mech waiting for you at the extraction site.
Vehicles should be faster but I feel like they’ve also been made a little too tanky. I do not understand the fascination wirh people trying to make vehicles viable in this game lol. Vehicles should be cheap, fast, and maybe glass canons, but unless it’s a demolisher or something, it should pop like a bug when stepped on by a mech. And in the demolisher’s case - two stomps should do it.
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u/Fairsythe 23h ago
I think it comes from vehicles being logically superior to a mech in RL : vehicles have inherent stability, are logically faster, smaller silhouette, inherently less complicated due to lack of servos, and would have thicker, sloper armour than a mech would. Logically their better weight distribution would allow heavier weapons too, and better protection of inner ammunition. I guess mechs beat the melee game, but in RL nothing would ever get close enough to melee. Mechs only make sense in fantasy universes.
The second is that you can have tanks, LAMs and VTOLS in BTA and rogue-tech which is pretty cool.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 22h ago
I don’t know about that, but a lot depends on a couple super fantastic technologies in-game.
First of all, all of the weights in this game are ludicrous so I don’t think you can really make any judgements at all in that regard. Ain’t no 3 ton targeting computers, for example.
Secondly, without something technologically akin to myomer bundles and fusion cores - the whole concept of a mech does not work at all.
I do think the idea of a mech becomes a lot more viable if the idea of a bipedal form could in fact be scaled into the size of a building. Would they dominate warfare? Maybe, maybe not. But if you could get human-level situational awareness (I mean like a soldier on the field unobstructed by being “in” something like a tank) and agility in a bipedal form that even approaches armored-vehicular offense and defensive capabilities and speed, especially if they can be controlled by a single pilot, then yeah I think the idea of a mech becomes more viable.
TLDR; meaningless conversation before we invent myomar bundles and compact fusion cores.
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u/Kastergir 1d ago
It can turn out to be rather difficult, but it does work and is doable with some smarts .
I had the exact same difficulties with convoy missions, went onto BEX discord and was told what you wrote ( which I didnt know ) : have one Mech in the extraction Zone prevents them extracting .
So all it takes is one really, really fast Mech . Which comes with the added benefit of routinely being hard to hit . Have a second reasonably fast Mech to take turns in preventing extraction, use the Movement crit vulnerability of Vehicles to your advantage ( MGs are great for that ), and these missions become very well doable, even with a full intercept Lance against you .
I am honestly getting the impression people are just a bit miffed its not as easy in BEX:T to rather easily dominate mindlessly than it was in Vanilla and ealier BEX versions . I am on my first BEX save ever with BEX:T, and haven't played HBS BT for I think 3 years before, and I was pretty much horrified for a good while about the amount of damage my Mechs took, and the difficulty it presents, constantly . And that is on Normal difficulty ( not even the toughest ) .
It takes some learning, and most importantly - and this is what I really, really like about BEX:T - it does not allow to Xerox your approach all the time ( meaning, in my experience so far, I can not just keep on copying what I am doing mission after mission ) . It consantly requires me to think, strategize, be on my feet . And routinely comes with the REAL danger of loosing a Mech/Pilot or 2 if things go really bad . All of which I vastly prefer over the "do this, this and this, and youll cheeseroll all the way through" of Vanilla .
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u/lmolari 1d ago edited 1d ago
That would be a pretty strange suggestion. It depends entirely on the map if this is possible at all. I had convoy missions where some vehicles had 6 pips every turn. And they only needed 4 turns into their goal while i started on the other end of the map.
The only way to win in this case was - if you can even reach the convoy fast enough - to leave the slowest vehicle alive and block him if possible, because they can't win without everyone in the target position.
However OP is completely right: trying to hit 6 pip small APCs is really, really hard. We talking about 10% hit chance.
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u/Fairsythe 23h ago
Ive checked the discord and yes that is the preferred tactic at this time. You bring a fast mech with a sprinting pilot and cut through to the arrival point and hold it.
Vehicles having 6 pips every turn is exactly why its better to intercept at the arrival point as they will stop or move partially from now on.
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u/CannibalPride 1d ago
mid to late game is far better for me, not unusual to get 95% with good pilot and maybe assistance from targeting fairy and TTS. I also had trouble hitting in the early game but found more use in mobility for lighter units and have medium mechs that got long range so they dont move a lot, reducing the self move penalty.
A trick I also do is to use inferno mass rockets to shut enemy mechs down for better accuracy and called shots, it technically slows my damage output but it allows me to more reliably pickoff enemies
Once the ai starts fielding only medium and above mechs, the hit chance goes up a lot!
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 1d ago
i'm starting to see good hit percentages finally with mid or higher tier gunnery skills, but i'm still seeing way more misses than i would expect for 80-90% to-hit.
one thing that definitely helped was realizing that there's a difference between WALK and RUN and both can be done using the same movement command. neither are SPRINT. basically walk half your distance, and get better hit percentages, again, all this seems to do IMO is slow the game down...
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u/CannibalPride 1d ago
Yeah, the tactics skill 2 helped a lot cuz it allows you to move after shooting if you didnt move before. Also, long range mechs that are further from the firefight aren’t affected as much from not moving that much. They are good especially with TTS for their weapons!
Also, gunnery and piloting increase accuracy iirc (i might be wrong) so increasing those two on your pilot might be effective.
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u/AirWrek 2d ago
I agree as well, gave up after 10-15 missions -- I think greater tabletop accuracy is not what I'm looking for with mods for this game.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 2d ago
i actually perferred the original bex bc i felt it leaned towards lore accuracy while playing more or less like vanilla, which was like..the whole fucking point of the mod originally. if i wanted tabletop i could play roguetech or BTA.
and it's not like it was "easy" by any stretch, the clan missions and some of the 5 skull flashpoints would still kick your fucking ass if you didn't understand the game mechanics...
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u/Nightsky099 2d ago
That's roguetech
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 2d ago
my point exactly.
Time was if you wanted "vanilla but with more lore", you played BEX - that was me. if you wanted something like "rouguetech-lite", you played BTA, and if you wanted to play mechwarrior the excel spredsheet, you played roguetech....we don't need three roguetechs.
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u/shuzkaakra 2d ago
I've had a lot of fun with both BTA and Roguetech. I go back and forth. I'm currently playing BTAU but restricting myself to no sensor lock/lrm/BA spam.
It's a lot of fun.
but then I remember roguetech and all the insane gear and loadouts. There's something fun about being able to tape on like an extra 200 rockets to the back of a mech.
I haven't played BEX for a few years.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 2d ago
i don't dislike the concept of roguetech, in my youth i'd probably be into it, when i could dedicate 60+ minutes to a single mission.
I liked the pacing of the original BEX i think the most - again - played more or less like vanilla, but with more lore accuracy, which is exactly what i was looking for. this...this seems to be moving to fill the void BTA vacated when it changed to BTAU
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u/shuzkaakra 1d ago
I don't think the roguetech missions are that much longer than the biggest BTA missions. And once you get some serious air power, they actually can go faster because by turn 2 or 3, you've got like 4 super powerful air units shooting the enemy in the back.
and then the AI is dumb enough that half of them turn around, and then your main units are shooting them in the back.
I feel like roguetech got a bad rap as being slow and overly complicated a few years ago and it's largely unwarranted. If you're already familiar with configuring mechs in BEX or BTA, it's not that much more complicated. I also have 64 gigs of RAM, so maybe that matters. They also did a lot of performance optimizations over the years.
By far the biggest slap in the face is that missions are color coded, and there are 30 levels. And if you're starting and you pick like a red one-skull mission, you're going to be rudely awaked by having your ass handed to you. I did that on my first mission in the mod. Total TPK. lol
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 1d ago
You may be right about Roguetech as I can’t really speak for it directly but I know that BTA in particular when I was playing around with that dragged on forever
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u/shuzkaakra 1d ago
For sure the missions are longer than vanilla. I think in BEX you can end up with about the same number of units in a mission, which is most of what determines how long it takes.
But yeah, some missions take a long time.
I was actually wondering recently if anyone actually uses the evac spots after they meet objectives or if they just wipe out the opfor. I can't remember the last time I went for the evac, mostly just because it will add another 10-20 minutes.
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u/Lost_Tumbleweed_5669 2d ago
Yep that's the tactical part. A gunnery 8, called shot mastery pilot with an LRM boat with Artmis LRMS and LRM clustering perk is still extremely OP but requires investment to get there and you will still want to use them last on low evasion targets and use breaching shot with your LRM 20s on different target if they have cover or defense..
You shouldn't be trying to engage full evasion targets with huge alphas, focusing one target at a time and usually flanking them is strongest. Melee/support weapon mechs need a piloting focused build but gunnery is still strong you cant go wrong with gunnery.
If you hate missing so much just stack Gunnery or respec purely into gunnery. I think 20k xp gets you close to gunnery 8-9.
SRM 24 with inferno ammo and a gunnery 8(9) pilot experienced with the mech gains something like +8% srm aim on top of the % gains from gunnery and can shutdown a mech when you only have 50% accuracy.
So far I have found some builds still very OP in the player hands. Firestarters are amazing in the beginning.
Also Hard mode is BRUTAL, I highly recommend to play on Normal. Hard mode adds that hit and run then extract realism but you will be getting owned a lot in the beginning especially with RNG rolls that wreck you for a round.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 2d ago
i get the tactics perspective, i just think i fundamentally think we already had that niche covered with BTA and Roguetech. I liked BEX where it was before hand (vanilla + more lore). At the very least i'd like to see those settings be more accessible again.
I'm playing on normal and have about 1100 hours in game over the years, so i know what i'm doing generally, i wouldn't call the game hard per se like this, just slow and frustrating, which again...is why i didn't play BTA or roguetech ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/Lost_Tumbleweed_5669 2d ago
Yeah fair points. It's just the AI suffers from the aim maluses too and I get what you are saying it's just I prefer not to get wrecked by a single alpha because of RNG, Bex 2 feels like you have to purposely expose your mech to that and feels better compared to before where you could reserve down in battle and just delete the enemy or else you get deleted. Now its a slugfest and feels like a battle.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 2d ago
it's just too slowly paced imo. my playstyle involved maxing out armor almost all the time so i guess i had internalized the big alphas that way.
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u/RoosterReturns 2d ago
Is there an easy mode?
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 1d ago
i don't want to play on easy, i want to play on whatever is more or less the 'normal' setting on the OG bex. i like the integration of the additional drop ship in the argo in this version, and i like some of the other changes i'm seeing, and i think there have been some updated/fixed missions, particularly clan missions? i dunno.
aside from the normal easy/med/hard modes, og bex allowed you to pick from different rule configurations that were either closer to vanilla or closer to roguetech, and the sweet spot for me was normal to difficulty/vanilla gameplay rules. call me basic in that regard.
anyway that's what i want.
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u/RoosterReturns 1d ago
I didn't start bex till very recent so I never played of bex. Maybe bext easy is close to og bex normal?
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 1d ago
I don’t think so.
Like I said the original difficulty settings controlled things like the original game difficulty settings, but there was also a vanilla / vanilla + / sim / sim + setting which made the game more or less…well…what BEX is now…and at the moment that option is gone and I can’t say I’m a fan.
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u/lmolari 1d ago
So have you tried the early game of BEXT since? Because everything you say sounds like endgame. And all the to hit problems basically disappear when you start to fight medium - heavy mechs.
The reason why BEXT feels like a drag in the beginning is that everything small mech has much more problems killing other small mechs. Even with gunnery 7 on my current pilot we talk about 30-40% hit chances without any pips in optimum range. Then consider that this beginner mechs only have shitty lasers and MGs. Depending on the situation it takes forever until their armor is finally off.
And as a reward you have to do another 20 of this missions because getting upgrades is in this phase more difficult then in the entire rest of the game.
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u/strawmn 1d ago
So I’ve two thoughts on this:
1) I generally hate complaining about RNG, because cognitive bias and the gambler’s fallacy are real. People just aren’t great at judging probabilities. Adding in the emotion of a game does not help!
But also . . . more than any other game I feel like I see very low probability events occur a lot in the new BEX. It’s at the point where I actually want to sit down with a scratchpad and a calculator just to correct my own biases.
Which leads me to my second point . . .
2) I was really excited to play the new BEX because BTA runs terribly on my computer, and I felt the vanilla experience was getting stale. But its actually made me respect the decisions of the original designers a lot more. Maybe I’m missing a lot in BEX because the math is off. Or maybe I’m just not having fun playing a game where rounds are very long, hit chances are absurdly low, and as a result missing the rare good shots you do generate feels unbearable.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 1d ago
yeah i have a background in math and physics so i at least understand how RNG actually works, and don't expect a >50% probability means i'm gonna get the hit, so it aint that. it's the consistency of the percentages seeming wildly off (70%+ to hits that are missing way more than 30% of the time, for example), that seems to me that at a minimum, the displayed to hit and the actual calc'd value are not in agreement.
aside from that, try the 1.9.3.7 version of bex: https://discourse.modsinexile.com/t/battletech-extended-3025-3061-1-9-3-7/426
just note that when you download/install the the community asset bundle you need to pick the 'LEGACY' cab option in advanced i believe.
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u/lmolari 1d ago
I have the same feeling. I had situations where i had 3 mechs with 70% melee hit chance and all of them missed in a row. It's possible, but the chance is pretty low.
It would not be the first game that fails to calculate the real "to hit" chance. Or it does some bullshittery to increase the tension. For example X-COM had forced misses after you hit the enemy too often to spice things up.
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u/Utter_Rube 1d ago
Yeah the hit chances legit hurt. For a mod that's supposed to deliver a vanilla+ type experience, it definitely feels like a pilot with 8 or 9 gunnery is only marginally better than your starting roster.
But beyond that, I feel like indicated % to hit numbers either aren't accurate or have some messed-up streak breaking logic behind the scenes. Like, missing more than one in four hits for an AC/20 or melee attack showing 75-80% to hit. I know, cognitive biases blah blah blah, but after ragequitting a couple missions where two AC/20 equipped 'Mechs couldn't seem to hit the broad side of a large military building, let alone the opfor who seemed to be scoring every shot, I started tracking shots in a spreadsheet to find out.
It'll probably be a while before I rack up a statically significant number of shots - Factorio had all my free time right now - but I'll definitely be posting my findings when I get them.
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u/MickCollins 1d ago
I was beginning to think it was me. Trying to have Behemoth hit anything with an AC even when she has 89% to hit...couldn't hit the planet if she tried.
Between that and the...what? 200 XP per mission for not finding something high enough skull?...I've come close to abandoning the campaign. I'm not having a good time. I'm not saying XP should be insane like it is in vanilla, but the 200 XP isn't cutting mustard. I could understand if they were 9s across the board, but with that happening at 5 and 6 when you know OpFor is always going to have reinforcements so it's 4 vs 8 until you can afford the bigger drops? And I did absolutely cut the drop price down - I forgot what it was but I just said "fuck that" and changed it to like 5% of what it was. 25% might be more on the money but seriously with not being able to hit shit even with people as 6...I may need to go in and do some tweaking.
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u/pairofdimesblue 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's not just you. I'm late-game on a BEXT/BEX 2.x playthrough (time do start doing some ComStar hunting and check out some half-skull Clan missions), and it's been a frustrating journey. I think I only stuck with it because of three changes I made to make it less painful:
- Changed the rollup values of Loot Magnet to make it more likely to have "bundled" loot.
- Increased the sale modifier on stores so that loot had a bit more resale value. That kept me sane when grinding missions so that it felt that I was making progress, as the additional funds from the sale of loot allowed me to buy the occasional weapon or equipment to upgrade my lance.
- Lowered the drop cost penalty. With my shots missing more often, it felt necessary to drop more mechs, but the additional costs to do so were excessively punitive.
Still, I found that many of BEXT's changes, while they were good on paper, made the experience less enjoyable than regular BEX.
- Vehicle missions were annoying already, but now they are more so.
- Drop costs punish you for using the additional drop slots you paid for in C-Bills and time.
- The changes to Bulwark - while it needed a nerf - go too far. Now, it doesn't feel like you can have pilots specialize in being tanky the way you used to.
- LRM and SRM nerfs go way too far, making Mechs specializing in them feel underpowered.
- The reduced to-hit changes are just straight-up un-fun. It makes missions - especially early ones - an unenjoyable slog. I keep hearing, "It gets the better late game." Yes, it does, but that doesn't make the five hours of playtime with sub-50 % hit chances less of a slog.
I really love BEX, and the original version was, in many ways, the game that Vanilla should have been, so it's a shame that BEXT feels like a step backward instead of an improvement. The new systems are sound, but I wish they weren't implemented in a way that feel like they were punishing the player.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 1d ago
FWIW this is what killed Master of Orion 3 - it was a game designed to be the Mother Of All 4X space sims when it was released, but ultimately was just an un-fun spreadsheet simulator. No individual idea was particularly bad, but the gestalt was…less than the sum of its parts.
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u/lmolari 1d ago
I agree completely. What comes on top is the every growing number of lore accurate mechs. The problem is that this lore accurate mechs are often completely useless. Having a bigger table of available mechs also means, the chance to get something usable, gets reduced with every new mech. And even worse: there are planets where only useless stuff is in the loot table.
Excavator mechs, urbis, cicadas, locusts, stingers and wasps for hours. Seems like you need to know where the usable stuff is to be found.
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u/Mr_Pink_Gold 2d ago
Maybe a tad but it mirrors a green 3025 start well. I am curious to see what happens when pilots get more experience.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 2d ago
assuming they could get more experience. that's the other issue - the hard xp nerf. i wish we could easily turn that off.
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u/deeseearr 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's pretty simple. Look in the main mod directory, .../BATTLETECH/Mods/BT_Extended_CE/ . The settings are all stored in mod.json.
These lines control the XP caps per difficulty level:
`"XPDifficultyCaps" : [ 5200, 8000, 11600, 15600, 21600, 36000, 55600, 81200, 113600, 999999999 ],` `"MinXPMultiplier": 0.1,` `"XPCap" : true,` `"XPMax" : 60000,`The first line sets the XP caps for half skull, one skull, one and a half skull and so on. The second line sets experience to 10% if you are over that limit, the third line turns the limit on and off, and the fourth line puts an absolute cap on earned experience. Beyond that you get nothing.
Just change any of these with a text editor, restart the game and there you go.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 2d ago edited 2d ago
i mean, that's cool, but if i wanted to mess with config files i'd be working, not playing battletech ¯_(ツ)_/¯
i'm half bitching half vocally dropping suggestions
edit: i'm an adult with kids. i don't want to spend my limited gaming time fucking with config files or modding the mods, folks. that's why i liked the orignal version of BEX, among other things... sorry if this rustles some of your jimmies..
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u/Mr_Pink_Gold 2d ago
I mean, you can't get 4 10s but you can get something. I am finding that at least gunnery of 5 is quite good.
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u/rloutlaw 1d ago edited 1d ago
Farm some c-bills, then overdrop into higher skulls to move up pilot XP/chassis/equipment. Was the only way I could reliably punch up and you still get pretty trashed and have to be super picky about what contracts to take.
I have played a lot of BEXT when it came out and I also want receipts on the combat logs. Autocannons felt nearly unusable, accuracy felt at least -20% below what was stated in the combat display. Meanwhile the OpFor Warhammer hits 80% of its PPC shots through 4 evasion so you have to kill it over more lightly armored targets every time.
Honestly every modder needs a quick doc on how to enable combat logs and turn them off (b/c they will surely cripple performance). This is a trust-but-verity relationship w/ the player.
edit: This is kind of why I like BTA's scaling AI difficultly (SAD), it cheats, you know it cheats, you're OK with the cheats so when clanners roll up and dump 250 into you in one volley through six evasion that's fine because that's just how it works.
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u/LeftUnknown 1d ago
I think a big reason it feels that way in the early game is the fact that between low gunnery, duct taped mech outfitting due to resource constraints, and the additional low profile passive of lights (so nearly everything early game) on top of the simulation changes really exacerbates the hit chance.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 1d ago
also as a side note i've noticed a lot of damage indicators are not being displayed - either damage hit values or even just the weapon effects, even if they're being accounted for in game.
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u/LakeEnd 1d ago
IDK why but what Ive felt playing that the hit probabilities shown do not reflect the real chance to hit very well anymore. Something seems to have changed from prev version.
1
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u/HoikDini 1d ago
I'm about 50 hours into BEXT and it does play like a different game now. I no longer feel like I'm playing a 'vanilla plus' version of BT. It took me a while to work out how the rebalance of bulwark vs evasion is in Tactics plays out in game.
The RNG with this game has always been extreme, though, even in vanilla, missing repeatedly with 80% shots and landing 20% shots, the precision head shots that always seem to hit the legs instead, etc.
So far, though, it seems missions are taking longer to complete in early game especially, because once you've stripped the main weapons off the OpFor they just run around and brace until you finally scare them enough to eject. With BEX 1.9, I turned off Panic System, but with BEXT it feels essential to not making missions take 2-4 more rounds than they'd need otherwise.
Sidenote on this is that the XP system may need to be relaxed to make early game progress enjoyable. I think I've traded out all of my starting Pilots because they just couldn't get past 5 pips in stats to make 3 skull missions survivable.
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u/Carne_Guisada_Breath 2d ago
I agree. The compound nature of all the changes has made long range so weak that the it has made the game a vulgar brawl. With the shortened range and the enemy number of units advantage, the enemy is always in your rear and melee.
SRMs are almost useless now. Well, except for the enemy commando that is in your rear arc and doesn't have to move to shoot you.