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[Redress]

The Good, the bad and the ugly of Battletech Advanced 3062:

The Ugly:
1: The performance hit. After you start up the game the first time, it will chug, with single digit frame rates. Shutting it down and restarting it will help, but it still is not great(I run 60 FPS no problem with Battletech vanilla, which is what I cap the framerate to due to monitor, 15 to 20 FPS with BTA). The first mission will have you right back down to single digits, though after that it kinda levels out. Restarting the computer helped some to, but I never make it about 25ish FPS.

The Bad:
1: I have 3 times now started missions with a mech without jump jets on a slight ridge it cannot walk off of. Very frustrating, I think it is because you can take more than 4 mechs.
2: Cannot save during missions. This is an all mods thing, as the save during missions won't save enough for the mod to work right after loading it kinda thing.

The Good:
1: 3062 means more tech, more weapons, and clans.
2: Oh so many mechs and loadouts. I started with a Griffon with, instead of the PPC it had a L Pulse ER Laser and several other lasers. Really powerful and fun to use.
3: Rework of melee. You can now kick or punch or charge. Punches fire weapons in the arms, kicks fire all the weapons and the kick itself hits one of the targets legs. Charge does a ton of damage(proportional to distance traveled), but damage your mech in the process(I cored myself once using a charge). Melee is really important early on because of number 4...
4: You can get higher levels of evasion on moves, and attacks do not remove evasion. Early on this is especially a big deal combined with your pilots poor gunnery skill. It makes tactics and using sensor locks much more important.
5: Clan mechs and clan weapons!!! 'Nuff said.
6: While there is a learning curve, it is not nearly as steep as with the other 2 big mods(Roguetech and Battletech Extended).
7: New models for new mechs(and some of the old ones) and they look good.

 

[Redress]

And I just got this new toy in BTA:



That is a brand new Blackjack with all clan weapons, including a clan Gauss. I managed to dump a small and medium pulse laser for a couple double heat sinks and max armor. The orange Endo-Steel lowers the weight of armor at the cost of a bunch of slots, but well worth it. Note the engine in the torso: it is the weakness of Omni Mechs, lose a torso and the mech is dead.

 

[jmotivator]

The Good, the bad and the ugly of Battletech Advanced 3062:

The Ugly:
1: The performance hit. After you start up the game the first time, it will chug, with single digit frame rates. Shutting it down and restarting it will help, but it still is not great(I run 60 FPS no problem with Battletech vanilla, which is what I cap the framerate to due to monitor, 15 to 20 FPS with BTA). The first mission will have you right back down to single digits, though after that it kinda levels out. Restarting the computer helped some to, but I never make it about 25ish FPS.

The Bad:
1: I have 3 times now started missions with a mech without jump jets on a slight ridge it cannot walk off of. Very frustrating, I think it is because you can take more than 4 mechs.
2: Cannot save during missions. This is an all mods thing, as the save during missions won't save enough for the mod to work right after loading it kinda thing.

The Good:
1: 3062 means more tech, more weapons, and clans.
2: Oh so many mechs and loadouts. I started with a Griffon with, instead of the PPC it had a L Pulse ER Laser and several other lasers. Really powerful and fun to use.
3: Rework of melee. You can now kick or punch or charge. Punches fire weapons in the arms, kicks fire all the weapons and the kick itself hits one of the targets legs. Charge does a ton of damage(proportional to distance traveled), but damage your mech in the process(I cored myself once using a charge). Melee is really important early on because of number 4...
4: You can get higher levels of evasion on moves, and attacks do not remove evasion. Early on this is especially a big deal combined with your pilots poor gunnery skill. It makes tactics and using sensor locks much more important.
5: Clan mechs and clan weapons!!! 'Nuff said.
6: While there is a learning curve, it is not nearly as steep as with the other 2 big mods(Roguetech and Battletech Extended).
7: New models for new mechs(and some of the old ones) and they look good.

Might have to check that out after the bugs are worked out.

 

[PoS]

The Good, the bad and the ugly of Battletech Advanced 3062:

The Ugly:
1: The performance hit. After you start up the game the first time, it will chug, with single digit frame rates. Shutting it down and restarting it will help, but it still is not great(I run 60 FPS no problem with Battletech vanilla, which is what I cap the framerate to due to monitor, 15 to 20 FPS with BTA). The first mission will have you right back down to single digits, though after that it kinda levels out. Restarting the computer helped some to, but I never make it about 25ish FPS.

The Bad:
1: I have 3 times now started missions with a mech without jump jets on a slight ridge it cannot walk off of. Very frustrating, I think it is because you can take more than 4 mechs.
2: Cannot save during missions. This is an all mods thing, as the save during missions won't save enough for the mod to work right after loading it kinda thing.

The Good:
1: 3062 means more tech, more weapons, and clans.
2: Oh so many mechs and loadouts. I started with a Griffon with, instead of the PPC it had a L Pulse ER Laser and several other lasers. Really powerful and fun to use.
3: Rework of melee. You can now kick or punch or charge. Punches fire weapons in the arms, kicks fire all the weapons and the kick itself hits one of the targets legs. Charge does a ton of damage(proportional to distance traveled), but damage your mech in the process(I cored myself once using a charge). Melee is really important early on because of number 4...
4: You can get higher levels of evasion on moves, and attacks do not remove evasion. Early on this is especially a big deal combined with your pilots poor gunnery skill. It makes tactics and using sensor locks much more important.
5: Clan mechs and clan weapons!!! 'Nuff said.
6: While there is a learning curve, it is not nearly as steep as with the other 2 big mods(Roguetech and Battletech Extended).
7: New models for new mechs(and some of the old ones) and they look good.

This sounds really good but, the perma evasion worries me. It basically means you can take out a heavy or assault mech with a light just by going full throttle every turn.

 

[Redress]

This sounds really good but, the perma evasion worries me. It basically means you can take out a heavy or assault mech with a light just by going full throttle every turn.

It does add to the survivability of lights, but big mechs tend to have better pilots and systems that increase accuracy or reduce evasion. For example, if you look at the image I posted, the gauss ignores 2 evasion pips. And if that heavy/assault gets into melee range, one kick will take out one of the light mechs legs. The balance is actually pretty good all things considered.

 

[jmotivator]

I might have mentioned this before, but if I had to fault LAST EPOCH for anything it would be the sorry state of unique items in the game.

The unique gear both suffers from too few items, and items being mostly useless.

There are so few unique items at low level that after a few years of playing the game I know without looking what just dropped based on the item type "Oh yay, got the spoon... again"

The only think that makes uniques useful is the Legendary potential, but even then most unique gear doesn't really offer anything game changing, and it's still the purple stats you are adding that do all the heavy lifting.

If I had the authority to change some things in LAST EPOCH it would be this:

1) Replace Unique drop chance at low levels with Exalted drop chance.
2) Relegate uniques Boss loot tables
3) reduce the rate that low level uniques drop at high levels and on Maps.

 

[jmotivator]

For all of my complaints about LAST EPOCH's uninspired unique items, this sword that just dropped for me it really cool.

Don't really pay attention to the red stats, what is really interesting is that last stat... and how those red stats ended up there.

They need more uniques like this sword.

 

[jmotivator]

I took a break from leveling my Sentinel to go back and pick up my Mage again and try and get him over the wall he hit a few months ago.

I found after some review that my problem was clearly that I had a bad case of Glass Cannon vision. All of my gear was meant to boost my damage, with a very light touch on boosting Ward.

I respecced some/a lot of my damage bonus nodes in my skill tree to boost Ward retention, swapped out a lot of gear to boost Intelligence -- I was, before this, the world's dumbest mage -- and got my ward retention up to over 400%

At that point I put on some gear that I never really understood that sapped health for ward... but that gear never made any sense because I didn't have the ward retention to make it work.

I went from 1200 health/1500 ward to 80 health and 6500 ward. Ward now REALLY seems broken. at 80 health your ward regen is extremely fast, so if ever a enemy or group gets me down to low ward I just disengage for a few seconds and I'm back to 6000 ward.

The one funny thing about there high ward builds is that it is VERY bad to ever use a health potion. By using a health potion I greatly slow ward generation and do the exact opposite of what I intended. I can easily get killed in a hard fight by accidentally drinking a potion. I could, in theory, stack the suffix that makes potions heal ward instead of health, but I'm not sure what gear I could swap out right now to do that. I just need to not hit the 1 key or bind it to a number I'm not likely to accidentally click.

The odd thing I am finding as I develop my Ward generation is that the classes that use ward are far tankier than the classes that don't.

 

[jmotivator]

I've been playing around with a poison-based Beastmaster in Last Epoch on and off today and they seem rather powerful.

I think the one thing that I have found, at least with the Beastmaster tree, is that you aren't spoiled for skill choice if you want to go down the road of poison. Pretty much all beasts have a poison build.

I'm tearing through the campaign with no trouble and I don't even have and poison or DOT bonuses on my gear yet.

My initial plan was to make a cold build because I have a lot of cold damage gear in my stash, and all of my booster gear was pointing in the Lightning/Cold direction but I decided to spend a bit of time trying all the different damage types for a few levels, and poison was just kind of insane. Once I start crafting some poison and minion gear and unlock the scorpion this build is going to be insane.

It's still early, but Beastmaster minions just seem way more powerful than Necromancer.

 

[jmotivator]

As I keep building this Poison based Beastmaster the ting I find most interesting is how different the build theory is for this class build.

None of the skills I use scale with any stat. No INT, STR, VIT or DEX requirements. Everything is Physical, Area and Poison pretty much. It makes gearing, and gear filters pretty straight forward. I'm going to stack Vitality, I guess... but mostly just poison damage and AOE buffs.

Also kind of weird is that most poison based attacks have an AOE element. I'm used to poison in ARPGs being mainly a CC or Boss but not both, but when all of my pets poison, and my attack causes direct and AOE poison, I end p excelling at both CC and boss fights.

My main attack also costs 0 resources, so the only time I use mana is in summoning which is rare since pets in this game are extremely durable.

So I like the beastmaster is what I'm saying. He's ramping much faster than my other characters. I'll probably start tackling maps around level 40.

 

[Moon]

Im bringin libertea to the bug world in helldivers 2 lol.

Played that for the first time last weekend. Launching on my first mission and some level 27 suddenly appeared and launched as well. Killed me twice, or maybe three times. After we completed the mission and got back to the ship I logged out. Might pick it up again, but I’d rather play solo.

 

[SayMyName]

I am thinking of finally delving into actual game play, thanks to a Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok) App that allowed me to morph a selfie of myself into a character as if actually part of the game. My life aspirations finally being realized. At last, life as a hood in the hood.

 

[PoS]

I got bored with Last Epoch and uninstalled it. Tried playing Dune Imperium but I just couldnt internalize the game mechanics.

Now playing Slay the Spire after my son recommended it. Simple yet somehow addictive.

 

[Redress]

View attachment 67503861

I got bored with Last Epoch and uninstalled it. Tried playing Dune Imperium but I just couldnt internalize the game mechanics.

Now playing Slay the Spire after my son recommended it. Simple yet somehow addictive.

Slay the Spire is truly awesome. One of my all time favorites.

 

[jmotivator]

I've decided to give Diablo IV Season 4 a try, after having skipped Sean 3 entirely. There are two reasons:

1) Blizzard has finally made some meaningful changes to the inventory system that makes storing legendary gear fairly pointless and makes the affix search a one-and-done prospect so you won't need to hold onto various copies of the same affix for future weapons.

2) Blizzard's claim that they now embrace absurdly overpowered builds, and some of the upcoming insane builds, appear to make min/maxing fun again.

3) The new crafting system seems to essentially make the Legendary gear grind more dependable.... though this will probably lead to a steeper grind wall in late game.

It's worth a try. I should reward Blizzard a little bit for moving the game in the right direction.

 

[jmotivator]

View attachment 67503861

I got bored with Last Epoch and uninstalled it. Tried playing Dune Imperium but I just couldnt internalize the game mechanics.

Now playing Slay the Spire after my son recommended it. Simple yet somehow addictive.

I bought Slay the Spire back when it came out but I only played it a few times. I'm not sure why, I will have to try it again.

I recently started playing Monster Train again, which is a lot like Slay the Spire... I have a lot of hours in Monster Train so, in theory, I should like Slay the Spire.

 

[PoS]

I bought Slay the Spire back when it came out but I only played it a few times. I'm not sure why, I will have to try it again.

I recently started playing Monster Train again, which is a lot like Slay the Spire... I have a lot of hours in Monster Train so, in theory, I should like Slay the Spire.

SoS is hard as nails! I raged quit multiple times. Augh.

 

[jmotivator]

SoS is hard as nails! I raged quit multiple times. Augh.

So I remember. Also, I can't remember what platform I purchased SoS on, but it wasn't Steam. It isn't on any of the game platforms I have on my PC at the moment, so I'm stumped. It sucks too because I had all the characters unlocked.

I don't know that I want to go through that process again.

From what I remember, the same rules applies in SoS as every other card battler: 1) Keep your deck size to a minimum 2) Only have good cards in your deck.

 

[Redress]

I am graduating from Battletech Advanced(which is great and I highly recommend) to Roguetech today. It is installing now. Installation process is fairly easy it seems so far. I have been watching a few videos on Roguetech, and I am going to love it I think.

Installation

This page provides an overview of the installation process for the RogueTech mod. Please note: This is not a support forum, please talk to us over on Discord for support. Latest launcher is always posted to Discord. Really, you should use Discord. Discord Invite - https://discord.gg/93kxWQZ...

roguetech.fandom.com

 

[Redress]

So I remember. Also, I can't remember what platform I purchased SoS on, but it wasn't Steam. It isn't on any of the game platforms I have on my PC at the moment, so I'm stumped. It sucks too because I had all the characters unlocked.

I don't know that I want to go through that process again.

From what I remember, the same rules applies in SoS as every other card battler: 1) Keep your deck size to a minimum 2) Only have good cards in your deck.

Deck size is best to keep low, but alot of cards exhaust after you play them, so it is not as bad as you would think. Chances to remove cards are nice, but not essential kinda thing. Depending on the character some, but I tend to be around 30 card decks by the end, sometimes higher.

I love the very different playstyles for the different characters. You start out with the Ironclad, which has 2 primary builds(and lots of other builds that can work), strength builds which increase damage done, and block builds which reduce damage taken. Block builds are a ton of fun as you can within a couple turns of a boss fight just ignore their attacks as you will have so much block it won't even touch you. Then you get the Silent, with a potential block build, poison builds which apply poison damage at the end of your turn, and shiv builds(shivs are free to play exhausting cards that do minor damage and are added into your hand from other cards). Then there is The Defect, with a completely different playstyle involving orbs with various effects, but ironically there strongest build involves ignoring orbs(claw build). And then there is the Watcher, a martial artist type who changes between an offensive stance and a defensive stance.

I just looked, and I have over 1000 hours playing and almost all achievements.

 

[Redress]

Well, two missions in and I am somewhat impressed. In starting my career, I selected the origin that gives a random Bushwacker mech. I got the one with the LBX-10. Not bad, not the best. First mission, first thing I noticed was selecting your spawn point, which was kinda cool. It was a battle against 2 mechs, 3 vehicles, and fairly straightforward. I managed to burn down a whole forest with a swarm of missiles. Having a mech with AMS(anti-missile system) was kinda nice to avoid missile damage, but when it fired it kinda lagged things a tad. Loot was very meh. Second mission was to protect a group of allies. All told faced 4 lances of 5, each 2 mechs, 3 vehicles except the last one that was 2 mechs, 2 vehicles and a power armor. They had several units with AMS, plus my AMS, and that slowed things down alot. A ton of enemies in fast mechs and fast vehicles meant lots and lots of misses, ammo getting low to out, and the whole thing took about an hour. Salvage was not good.

All things considered, I really like Roguetech, but it will be a big adjustment. Hundreds of weapon systems, tons of sensor, ECM, ECCM stuff that all matters alot(for example, you start out not knowing what weapons and systems the opposing force has in their mechs/vehicles until you pass sensor checks, and a failed sensor check applies a big debuff to hit chance), lots of new mechs, vehicles, VTOLs and power armor(and I hate power armor already). Just a lot to take in to start, even coming from Advanced, which had alot of it.

 

[Redress]

Mission 3: did I mention that until you pass sensor checks you do not know what weapons an enemy mech has? Well, I ran into an enemy mech that had what turned out to be 3 Rocket Launcher 20's. RL20s fire 20 rockets that do 6 damage each, but they can only fire once per mission. Yeah, my Bushwacker and my character did not survive that meeting...

 

[Redress]

So after another day, I went back to Battletech Advanced. Roguetech is great for some people, but apparently not me. I like alot of things about it, but the super long missions that take forever, the slowness running it with all the calculations it is doing for sensors, AMS, and much more complicated hit chances, plus ECM, ECCM, just waiting for allies and enemies to get done so you can make your move is frustrating. Alot of it is cool in theory, but adds up to just be too much. Plus some frustrations with difficulty, such as doing a 1 skull mission, and the cost to replace armor(yes, you must pay to replace armor and it takes time, it is not free in Roguetech), pay for ammo(every missile and AC shot costs money), plus pay for coolant used, that all added up to more than the mission payed. I could sell salvage, but that kinda defeats the point...

So anyway, if you want a great Battletech conversion mod, try Advanced.

 

[jmotivator]

I've been bouncing around trying to figure out what game I wanted to play, and after making the mistake of buying the sequel to the KING ARTHUR: A KNIGHTS TALE (a good game), and being disappointed at how bad it was (and getting a refund) I decided to pick up CHAOS GATE again since I hadn't really tried the expansions.

I've been enjoying the game all over again.

A quick recap of the game and the Expansions:

CHAOS GATE - WH40K take on X-COM, essentially. You play a squad of GRAY KNIGHTS (Space Marines with Psycher powers) fighting a sector wide outbreak warp incursion

Graphics are great and stylistic, story is pretty cool, and there is a wide range of mission types and enemies. Missions can range from simple to utter ball busters and your team can get exceptionally powerful with the right gear and skills... maybe TOO powerful? I mean, after a few ball buster missions you grow to appreciate the feeling of turning hard missions into routine, I guess.

DLC 1: DUTY ETERNAL - This DLC adds two Story missions to the game, the first has you rescue a Grey Knight Dreadnaught with the reward being you get to recruit Tech Marines (Space Marine + Dr. Octopus arms), the second mission unlocks the Dreadnaught.

While unlocking a dreadnaught seems really cool in theory, usually be the time you unlock him he isn't all that useful. He is limited to only certain missions, and on most missions he isn't really needed with the right team. He can ge fun, and he hits like a Mack Truck (and looks like one too!) but for reasons I will go into at the end, he has a key weakness.

Tech Marines, on the other hand, get rather powerful in late game after you unlock their high level gear.

Probably the most powerful weapon characteristic in the game is "Armor Piercing" ... most heavies in the game have high levels of armor, a resource that refills every turn and acts as a damage sink. The most common mitigation for armor is "Armor Break" which prevents a unit from recovering their armor between turns, but you still need to take out that armor before doing health damage. "Armor Piercing" just bypasses armor all together. Most heavies have high armor but only moderate health.

The Tech Marine high level melee gear, being purchased and standard rather than randomly rolled as a reward, has guaranteed Armor Piercing, making him a devastating unit against Chaos Marines and Mechanical enemies.

DLC 1: EXECUTION FORCE - This DLC adds a squad of fast, lightly armored assassins as usable units. The 4 units are specialists that can get fairly powerful, especially the Calidus Class, a female assassin with a ranged Armor piercing attack and a cloaking device.

I don't really find myself using these units all that much though because they are fairly situational and the best unit is still rather frail.

So DLC 2 is interesting, and might be powerful with the right build, but there also really isn't "builds" per se, since each one of the units has a linear development and will always have the same skills. Meh.

Finally, the most powerful unit in the game is still the Librarian, and it is for one specific skill. If you specialize in it, they have a teleport ability that allows you to transport the Librarian and everyone on your team, to a spot on the map, no matter how far away the rest of the squad is. Once you luck into a Librarian unit for your team (it's random and not guaranteed!) you will run most missions just letting your Librarian travel around the map alone and when they encounter a group of enemies teleport himself and the rest of the squad behind the enemy. You bypass pretty much every defensive skill the enemy has to offer, and late game you can expect to take out even the most powerful squads without taking damage.

It's that Librarian skill that exposes the one weakness of the Dreadnaught (other than the conditional deployment) and it's that the Dreadnaught doesn't teleport with the rest of the squad, so once you have a Librarian you can expect that the Dreadnaught will never leave the deployment area as the rest of your team teleports around the map offing chaos scum.

So the game is still fun, and the DLC can be good to great with some very powerful units, but it's still rather expensive for a fairly old game at $45 for the base game.

 

[jmotivator]

So I played a bit of Diablo 4 s4 last night and early this morning and I have to say, I like it...

Things that are improved:

* Helltides now operate a lot like the Season 2 vampire events with special battles that drop legendary gear
* The s4 quest line also has a s2 style reward progression that gives you access to so very early uniques. It comes so early I can see people farming new characters to optimize the drops.
* Leveling is fast. In about 90 minutes of play, mostly running helltides, I hit level 30.

Things that are greatly improved:

* Crafting is so much cleaner and progression is so my clearer that end game build experimentation will actually be fun.
* Moving the affix system to a pseudo RNG progression rather than pure RNG and stockpiling means the storage issue is basically solved. It seems that even in end game you won't need more than 1 tab to collect a specific classes gear.

I haven't found anything to complain about, with the biggest issue being that the new system my end up capping your power too early? I don't know, that is a worry for endgame.