The old topic was 24 pages, Please...do not nerf BAs.

[Iron Brain]

I think ive been shot more times on a descending jump than while on the ground

missiles should be able to lock on to BA.

the pack recharges about 1 second after you land. How is that to slow? Gimmem a fken brake.

An APC would not negate any of their advantages. I was wanting this im glad to hear about it on here  

They should show up on radar.

They arnt OP or UP but it would be more fun to play with this these challenges. Rite now it seems kinda "meh". It really feels like your just running around in a world dominated by giants and you have a laser gun.




How fun would it be to walk in to a tank battle with RPG? Well, the tanks are a thousand meters away and you have to catch up with them. Also their faster than you, but maybe you have roller blades or something. They wont pay much attention to you unless you harass them. You might feel kind of insignificant. Not UnderPowered or OverPowered. Its just sort of like your trying to make sure they notice you to. Like your trying to make sure you dont get left out of the fun because you forgot to bring your tank with you.

Thats sort of how i think of BA in this game. It needs something else. I dont know what but there has to be something. I dont think the answer has to do with increasing their JJs or giving them bigger guns. Or in making them easier to kill for that matter.

Sure, going into a tank battle with an RPG would certainly be intense. And the BA in this game is fun lets not confuse that that. Its fun! But lets isolate what makes it "fun" and then try to amplify that. Is it "fun" because the mechanics of the BA are just simply fun to play at an incredibly low level? Or is it "fun" because you feel like you have an opportunity to make a difference in the game?

Well for me, I think its fun because they are fun to pilot! Its grate jumping around in one of those things isnt it!?!! Yeah for sure!

Now lets try to reimagine the BA, but first, lets go back to that tank fight. Now imagine if you have that same tank fight. Two countries are squaring off with the elite of their tank cavalry forces. Say your there sans armor and youve got that RPG. Now what if instead of skating to catch up and taking pot shot at the other guy you have a more critical roll to play. Maybe instead of rollerblading(jumping) into action your dropped out of a VTOL cruising 4k feet above the battle. The strategic intel youve gained from you advantage in elevation is guuna let you make decisions you wouldnt normally be able to.

Maybe the thing the BA needs is some sort or extra game play. Not just bigger guns or faster jest. What if you had the option to be dropped into combat from an orbital mother ship. Since its int orbit maybe you can only drop in every 5 minutes or something...idk thats to specific for this exercise. Or maybe you can only dropped into the location of the planetary APC. So instead of waiting for every orbit you can only do it if theres an APC some where on the feild.

This could potentially give rise to a lot of other options. Say that in the future the death penalty is increased by rasing the min respawn time 20 or 15 seconds. The APC BA spawn point could be made more (seemingly) powerful by allowing BA to spawn more quickly. Use your imagination theres a lot of ways you could run with this.

Thinking about the BA only in terms of ZZZZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORMG THEIR OP or OMG NOOOO THEY ARE TO WEEK is kind of a closed minded way of going about it. It wont result in bringing anything really new to the table. Focusing on JJ and PPCs isnt exactly creative and  im afraid its certainly not productive.

[~SJ~ Tajin Nevversan]

BAs are not as fast as they seem to be. Most mechs any vehicles can easily outrun them. Ofcourse they'll keep getting hit for a while, simply because of the range an MPPC has but it is exactly the same thing when you run from an enemy mech. It's risky.

Limiting ammo is fine with me, I like the idea of using APCs or similar things as forward bases to rearm at.
I just don't think the JJs or their agility should be reduced.

and more than half of the encountered BA are close range vehicle bails.

Well see, THAT is the main problem. If the pilots can't carry any heavy weapons with them, this will no longer be a problem and then you'll really only have to worry about dedicated BAs closing in on you.

BAs are made for close combat. It is what they excel and all I'm trying to say that this is perfeclty ok in my opinion.
I cant stress this enough: If you got BAs near you and you're not able to fight them youself. Either make a run for it (you'll just have to decide early) or get an teammate to help you.
The latter works really well.


To be honest, when I play as BA (mostly with a friend) then our targets are mostly either enemy BAs or mechs that are moving around on their own. Really, they can't blame BAs for beeing overpowered when it is actually their fault to get seperated from their team.

When someone walks around alone in a mech and gets attacked by a group of enemy tanks or mechs he will also most likely have a big problem. Only in that case people do not tend to complain about it as much. Think about it.

[Flyingdebris]

iron brain, if you think BA don't influence a battle, then you aren't going for the rear armor sweet spots.  shooting at them isn't enough.  concentrating on 1 location is.

you can totally ruin the day of even an assault mech by simply making every effort to put your shots between their robot shoulder blades.  and when i catch slow wide mechs on their own, sometimes i even have the luxury to land on top of them, and just keep burning into them with my laser, again and again and again.  nothing spells out terror than being in a heavy gauss hollander and seeing 4 little figures buzzing around you like gnats.

[~SJ~ Tajin Nevversan]

Walking alone in an assault mech or in an heavyG Hollander is suicide if there are any good BAs around.

It is also suicide to charge in as BA when an LPL Huit is camping somewhere.

If you know how to do it, there are numerous ways of making the life of enemy BAs hell. Its just that BAs don't complain about it as much. They either come back and try harder next time or they simply hop into a mech again. That simple.


There are alot things that can ruin the day of other things in this mod. Really I like that. Teamwork is the way to avoid this problem. Balancing the gamemechanics to make all units equal is not. In the event that teamwork is not happening you can still try to be flexible and chose something more suitable against BAs the next time you go out on the field.

[Uranium - 235]

well its kinda hard to claim its someone's fault for letting BA sneak up on them, especially since they don't show up on radar till you are tripping over them, and more than half of the encountered BA are close range vehicle bails.

another thing.  one of the things that are so annoying about BA is that unless your vehicle name ends in "arasser" or is a mech in the light category, you have no way in hell to break off a fight with them.  And if you made the choice of having a poor anti BA loadout, you are unequivocally screwed.  I know this because i have dogged loners relentlessly as BA myself, and sailed through barrages of lasers and ACs without dying, when i certainly should have.   If you let attrition affect BA like it affects everyone else, it may make rearming a pain in the ass, but its not that much more a pain than rearming a heavy or assault mech.  and it keeps them from dogging a target forever until they die or return to base.

A BA has trouble keeping up with a Warhammer, much less having any energy to actually maneuver around. You could almost say they're not agile enough in this regard.

People get tunnel vision amazingly easily in this game - I've had enemy mechs relentlessly pursue me (as a BA) even while teammates are pounding his armor to scrap. They die without doing any damage at all - or maybe not - maybe they do kill me, and get the pitiful award for killing a BA (as it takes no damage to kill one, you get few points). But then they've taken lethal amounts of damage and explode shortly thereafter.

The single best defense against BAs? Unless you're in an Atlas - just leave. Even the Mad Cat Mk 2 can outmaneuver a BA if piloted well. Once people learn how to handle them and what their weaknesses are, I predict BAs will be the exact opposite of overpowered.

[Stahlseele]

i don't know how often i've been killed by BA even while doing full tilt aweay in a partisan . .

[KSerge83]

I've already said all I care to say on the matter, but I will say that I find it annoying that the past few games I've played nobody even bought a mech at the start of the map. Now you'd normally think that meant they all took partisans, which is pretty much par for the course, but that wasn't it either.

On a server with 8 people on it, EVERYONE was in BA except for me. Even my team. I sometimes wonder if these people downloaded the wrong game by mistake, and meant to play tribes.

[Manfromx]

Hmm now that you mention it I think I like the feel of the BA in combat because it is similar to Tribes.

This game could stand to add a few Tribes features actually when you think about. Different classes, customized loadout, ability to save loadout presets (BA lab), ability to deploy ammo supply stations, turrets etc.
Those wouldn't hurt here. As long as it's all treated with a real Battletech feel.

I'm definitely not saying make this game Tribes. So don't go there .

(in regards to your point KSerge83 : Maybe you're right it's too much like Tribes. But how do we judge the first chance to play as a humanoid in a Mechwarrior game. We have no other standard to compare it with. I'd say if it feels a bit like Tribes that's a compliment  )

[Defender]

I've already said all I care to say on the matter, but I will say that I find it annoying that the past few games I've played nobody even bought a mech at the start of the map. Now you'd normally think that meant they all took partisans, which is pretty much par for the course, but that wasn't it either.

On a server with 8 people on it, EVERYONE was in BA except for me. Even my team. I sometimes wonder if these people downloaded the wrong game by mistake, and meant to play tribes.

I don't see that as a problem personally. I'm glad people like BA. I'd hate to see people find them useless and pointless and feel as though they'd be forced into vehicles. We intended them to stand on their own, just like anything else, and be just as much fun to play as a dedicated role as anything else, especially early on, or in groups. It means it's working as intended and that's a good thing.

[xInVicTuSx]

Keep the ejecting system.
Destroy their vehicle and leave.
Learn to use the brakes and anticipate where they will land so you have plenty of torso swing space when they do.
I like the fact they vanish from radar sometimes, I like the Ba clutter cleaned from radar in a brawl.
Seriously, I don't want to pull the L2P card here and I'm not, I struggled yesterday against a BA in an atlas for a full 2 minutes before finally hitting him with a PPC.
I missed a zillion times and he had my Atlas busting out in lord of the dance, it was scary.
But I'm really not seeing all of these fabled impossible to hit Ba's... seriously.. I'm not... I play on only 32 man servers where the lag on aeros and some mechs is bad sometimes.
Even there, if you are at a complete stop and are ready for them when they land or are ejecting straight up or jumping towards you from a distance... you can kill them...
I've killed Ba's with AC20s, Gauss rifles, SRMs, all sorts of stuff... and you need to learn that taking the Hollander heavy Gauss rather than the prime with the light weapons will make you a target for Ba's, if it didn't it would be horribly spammed. There are a few things that make me frustrated with BA's, the comical torso shake when they hit you with their SRMs or PPC, the total lack of success I've had killing them with AC2s and LBX5's, but these say more about the effectiveness of these weapons than anything about the cheapness of BA's.
I would just like to testify that I'm not seeing these fabled super BA's everyone keeps talking about.
They are scary if you're in an assault mech, or if you're in a light mech without light weapons or tank without light weapons, otherwise they're not that big of threat.

[KSerge83]

I can see your point that my post serves to illustrate that BA is effective and useful enough to consider in a match. What I was really dissatisfied with was that EVERYONE was in BA. Not only was there NO COMBAT AT ALL for the first two minutes of the game (because nobody could find eachother), when there was combat, it was just BA killing BA, earning very few c-bills and ranking in the process. My fighting in the mech got me two BA kills, but the pitiful amount of C-bills I earned for that didn't even cover the repair costs on my mech.

Again, I'm in full agreement with what KingLeer has offered as a solution to the BA debate, and I will support whatever decision the dev team makes on the matter. I just thought I'd bring up a situation that actually happen that ruined my play session.

[=CJW= Rad Hanzo]

It is also suicide to charge in as BA when an LPL Huit is camping somewhere.

Clearly a neg.....be swift as a strafing, jumping ghost of madness, as elemtals tend to be in the book-stories and the tank drivers will ABSOLUTELY HATE you as a BA even if they have multiple pulselasers at their disposal muhahaha

[Iron Brain]

well its kinda hard to claim its someone's fault for letting BA sneak up on them, especially since they don't show up on radar till you are tripping over them, and more than half of the encountered BA are close range vehicle bails.

another thing.  one of the things that are so annoying about BA is that unless your vehicle name ends in "arasser" or is a mech in the light category, you have no way in hell to break off a fight with them.  And if you made the choice of having a poor anti BA loadout, you are unequivocally screwed.  I know this because i have dogged loners relentlessly as BA myself, and sailed through barrages of lasers and ACs without dying, when i certainly should have.   If you let attrition affect BA like it affects everyone else, it may make rearming a pain in the ass, but its not that much more a pain than rearming a heavy or assault mech.  and it keeps them from dogging a target forever until they die or return to base.

A BA has trouble keeping up with a Warhammer, much less having any energy to actually maneuver around. You could almost say they're not agile enough in this regard.

People get tunnel vision amazingly easily in this game - I've had enemy mechs relentlessly pursue me (as a BA) even while teammates are pounding his armor to scrap. They die without doing any damage at all - or maybe not - maybe they do kill me, and get the pitiful award for killing a BA (as it takes no damage to kill one, you get few points). But then they've taken lethal amounts of damage and explode shortly thereafter.

The single best defense against BAs? Unless you're in an Atlas - just leave. Even the Mad Cat Mk 2 can outmaneuver a BA if piloted well. Once people learn how to handle them and what their weaknesses are, I predict BAs will be the exact opposite of overpowered.

Their not agile enough and your argument to back this up is that a relentlessly perusing mech cant catch you? And then they die without doing any damage to you at all?

[Stalker]

I've already said all I care to say on the matter, but I will say that I find it annoying that the past few games I've played nobody even bought a mech at the start of the map. Now you'd normally think that meant they all took partisans, which is pretty much par for the course, but that wasn't it either.

On a server with 8 people on it, EVERYONE was in BA except for me. Even my team. I sometimes wonder if these people downloaded the wrong game by mistake, and meant to play tribes.

That's not really surprising.  This mod is basically conceived as a battletech FPS, it seems consistent for the players to treat it as one in the units and tactics they select.

[Stormin']

well its kinda hard to claim its someone's fault for letting BA sneak up on them, especially since they don't show up on radar till you are tripping over them, and more than half of the encountered BA are close range vehicle bails.

another thing.  one of the things that are so annoying about BA is that unless your vehicle name ends in "arasser" or is a mech in the light category, you have no way in hell to break off a fight with them.  And if you made the choice of having a poor anti BA loadout, you are unequivocally screwed.  I know this because i have dogged loners relentlessly as BA myself, and sailed through barrages of lasers and ACs without dying, when i certainly should have.   If you let attrition affect BA like it affects everyone else, it may make rearming a pain in the ass, but its not that much more a pain than rearming a heavy or assault mech.  and it keeps them from dogging a target forever until they die or return to base.

A BA has trouble keeping up with a Warhammer, much less having any energy to actually maneuver around. You could almost say they're not agile enough in this regard.

People get tunnel vision amazingly easily in this game - I've had enemy mechs relentlessly pursue me (as a BA) even while teammates are pounding his armor to scrap. They die without doing any damage at all - or maybe not - maybe they do kill me, and get the pitiful award for killing a BA (as it takes no damage to kill one, you get few points). But then they've taken lethal amounts of damage and explode shortly thereafter.

The single best defense against BAs? Unless you're in an Atlas - just leave. Even the Mad Cat Mk 2 can outmaneuver a BA if piloted well. Once people learn how to handle them and what their weaknesses are, I predict BAs will be the exact opposite of overpowered.

Their not agile enough and your argument to back this up is that a relentlessly perusing mech cant catch you? And then they die without doing any damage to you at all?

The description of a "relentlessly perusing mech" is kind of ironic, considering the arguments presented about trying to find the little boogers.