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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1410 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 9, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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There is a new Mechwarrior 5 expansion! This time we got a full campaign focusing on the Ghost Bears. Which is a huge callback to the Ghost Bear's Legacy expansion for Mechwarrior 2. Some people have fond memories of that I guess. I mostly just remember a bunch of broken missions that frustrated me to death, even attempting to cheat through them when I was 12. Like the super buggy underwater level. The MW2 engine was just not up to the challenge that the mission designers threw at it.

Anyways, I'm told this DLC is 12 missions, I've complete 3, I'm super into it. Story is good so far, none of the characters annoy me, and the Rifleman IIC with a targeting computer replacing the small laser, and some extra armor instead of jump jets is awesome. Just a really solid sniper mech. Haven't unlocked the Kodiak yet though, so we'll see.

I think the difficulty starts a little higher than the base game, which is to be expected. The first mission was a bit of a wake up call for me, and I had to knock the rust off real quick. Especially since you don't get to change your loadout or get a sense of your unit's strengths or weaknesses. After that I felt better. I noticed only two or three of your pilots have the evasion skill, and I don't see reduced armor damage on the research panel. Either because they removed it, or the game was balanced around it being maxed out from the jump. I kind of appreciate this because evasion and reduced armor damage were OP paths that the original campaign was balanced around you maxing out ASAP. I literally saw the CEO of the studio saying certain missions were effectively gated behind you having maxed those out by then. Kind of bullshit IMHO to softlock you in a campaign because you researched the wrong tech. Then again, this was in 1.0 of the game, and I know they rebalanced a lot of the missions people felt were just way too fucking hard since then. What I'm trying to say is, early signs indicate the balance in this expansion is more promising.

I’ve never understood small lasers. They always felt like a terrible heat/damage ratio. And the range!

What’s the intended use? Or are they just there to fill slots for cheap?

I was heavy into battletech as a kid, but lacking friends with similar interests I spent a lot more time reading the books and designing mechs than I did actually playing the game. There's a lot of stuff in the crunch like this that I really don't get.

...I guess the idea is that it's a cheap extra chance at a critical hit once you've stripped armor?

There's a lot of stuff in the crunch like this that I really don't get.

I love the stuff in the lore that's canonically terrible. Like the Charger. I don't know how much the really old splat books described it as a total design failure but included it in the game anyways. But the recent printings of TROs shitting all over certain mech designs cracks me up.

The Charger kinda makes sense in-universe.

Designed a hundred years after the Reunification War and a hundred years before the Periphery revolts, it's clearly a pork project for contractors and a prestige mech for warriors who don't fight wars. "Oh, you pilot scout mechs, but you've kissed enough ass to get promoted high, and even though we don't fight wars you're still terrified that you'll get blown to pieces if a war starts and an opponent sneezes on you? How about if we give you a "scout" mech that's four times the tonnage, so you can still run around like you're trained to do but you can also take a few hits and run away if needed? Oh, wait, you also want to occasionally fight, in a mech that's only good at running? I guess... charge?"

Then actual wars start, and things go all Mad Max, and you'd think the Charger would be pointless ... except the things have already been mass produced, and in a setting where nothing high-tech is still getting mass produced there's actually some selection bias in favor of mechs where all the high-tech expense is in a well-protected engine and most non-terminal damage they take is just cheaply replaced armor plating. It's surely no longer going to be prestigious to pilot a mech whose primary mission capabilities are "overweight scout", "fisticuffs", and "distraction", but just having any mech is much better than not having one and beggars can't be choosers.

(It makes sense as much as anything else in-universe, anyways. They have affordable multi-thousand-ton continuous-1G-acceleration interplanetary DropShips, but their major battles are focused on destroying 10-meter-tall vehicles that move at less than 100kph? Have they considered just pushing a few guided tungsten rods out an airlock before they finish decelerating?)

Have they considered just pushing a few guided tungsten rods out an airlock before they finish decelerating?

My read is that they have, and there's a really strong taboo on orbital bombardment or other forms of weaponization of interstellar transport. The Succession Wars demonstrated that unrestrained conflict costs more than anyone can afford, so a huge part of the setting is finding ways to keep the violence to a survivable level.

Then actual wars start, and things go all Mad Max...

For those who haven't seen it:

Just when people thought mechs were about done, the charger showed up and punched them into the ground or died trying. I personally feel this crazy cycle kept Mach relevant in this era; it suggested that any Mech was potentially better than none, and if boldly piloted to near certain doom, it suggested that a Mech was a game changer in the right if crazy hands.

Because to some people, the rare few dreamers, those few charger Pilots, the 1 in 10,000, they don't see the world like we do. To them, well, the sky is the limit, and space is the place. They believe that anyone can be a real Warrior of the Wasteland, the ayatolla of rock and rolla, the cream of the crop, the hammer of Justice, the people's elbow, that your Noble Wasteland Mech Warrior can walk into the consecrated holy Battle of Mech Warfare like the third monkey on the plank up Noah's Arc and brother it's starting to rain...

Unleashed as such, the Charger is an assault Mech designed for getting in close and then reminding people that being beat to death with your own limbs is always a legitimate concern to have in a war zone. Without the encumbrance of weapons or any delicate anything to worry about, and being very fast and very big, the charger was in many ways almost perfect for this incredibly barbaric Age of War. The mech that was fast enough to chase down just about anything could absolutely, if the pilot were crazy enough, run around the battlefield punching things until they died or everything else did. It was a magic time to be alive in the inner spere, and by surviving long enough the Charger reminds studious Mech experts that survival isn't about being best but rather actually surviving.

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