Dammit. Playing through for the second time and having a blast with the new 1.1 settings.

Lance is all mediums. 2 Kintaros refitted with SRMs and a couple of Medium Lasers, 2 Centurions refitted with LRM15s and a couple of Medium Lasers.

Bouncing around Taurian Space working on our rep. Got a good 3.5 mission with a chance for 4/22 salvage.

Set up on the backside of a hill and take out the first wave of enemy. Score a 3 part available kill on a Thunderbolt which I really want to replace a Kintaro. Take out the base defenses. Second set of enemy show up. Boom, a couple more Thunderbolts. Take out another one with headshots and knockdowns, to potentially salvage 3 more parts.

Mission accomplished, let the good stuff roll in...

Oh crap. AC 5 with +30 stability damage. And a +3 morale cockpit mod. Crap, crap, crap. What do I do?

C'mon, I've got 22 salvage coming my way. I'll take four Thunderbolt parts and I'm sure I'll get another Thunderbolt or two and the good +++ stuff...

Nope. Nothing but freaking heat sinks and medium laser.

Wow, that's whining for no reason. I could've taken them. There will always be more enemy to kill, but I may never see some +++ stuff that awesome.

Lesson learned. :)

correct a +++ anything is worth more than a mech part

Lesson learned, and for the low cost of a nice AC/5 (which you honestly won't use much past early-game) and a +morale cockpit mod (which you won't use much past mid-game). Not that high a price, honestly, though it certainly does suck to lose out on that stuff.

You'll get +++ gear again, don't worry. And if you're lucky it'll be on really good equipment, like LRM15s or SRM6s or AC/20s or injury resist cockpit mods. That stuff, you *will* use through endgame.

I've sort of been artificially keeping myself in Medium mechs because they are fun to use, so the AC/5 with +30 stability damage would have been a nice, low heat weapon when I finally kitted out a full Heavy lance or tweaked my Mediums.

Btw, I think in my first playthrough, I kept a +2 Morale booster in my LRM boat the entire time. Only put the injury preventers in the Mechs that regularly took shots. So a +3 would have been nice this time around.

Yeah, that makes sense. I just got so frustrated by pilot injury that I was left with either overprepare or ragequit and uninstall, and I didn't want to uninstall ;) Plus I liked knowing I could run my LRM boat out to tank for a round in those more drawn-out engagements on high-heat biomes where I might need to rest my lance while still facing a lance-and-a-half of reinforcements.

Just used up all my LRM ammo on a mission and had my boat boxing for the last couple of combat rounds. Amazing how much ammo you go through with multi-target and breach on that pilot. Never a reason not to shoot...

Damn, this game makes me smile. Even when I do stupid stuff like getting into mech combat in range of three sniper turrets that I didn't technically know would have line-of-sight. Did someone say retreat with tails between legs?

Been cruising the galaxy with my 3 Thunderbolts and a 40 LRM+++ boat having a blast. Two 5SEs with double Large Lasers, SRM6++, SRM4++, and a triple set of MG's for each lets them rack up the heat on the way to a nice punch to the enemy head during a cool down turn. 5SS is basically stock. Definitely didn't use Large Lasers at all during my first playthrough, pre 1.1 patch, but they sure are useful now.

Finally have enough Assault mech parts to make the switch to all Assaults, but where's the fun in that? Will keep cruising around the Taurian Concordant Empire. With "just" Heavies, I really have to monitor the AC20 equipped enemy which keeps it interesting.

Nice :) I'm trying to put together a few heavies for my second playthrough (started new with the patch, like so many others have done). Playing with 6 pieces per 'Mech makes it take *forever* to get enough salvage, though. I'm over 700 days in and the best I can field is one Thunderbolt (just got that), two Shadow Hawks, and the Centurion you always get from the first real plot mission. Just had a nail-biter of a Battle mission. Two Demolishers, a Shreck, and an Orion, then reinforced by a Thunderbolt, a Grasshopper, a Quickdraw, and a Highlander. Played quite the game of keep-away with those heavy hitters.

Even in Assaults, those AC/20s are no joke. One lucky head shot, especially if the enemy has Breaching Shot? Ugh.

You're tougher than me. I left the 3 pieces per mech option on. But I haven't sold any mechs for cash, so that makes me feel a little better. :)

I loved playing with multiple shadow hawks. Never any heat issues and they punch way above their weight class in melee battles. Two of 'em can knock over any Medium and set up the called shots nicely.

I think you chose wisely in keeping salvage at 3 parts to complete a chassis. I think the reason more salvage pieces makes the game so much harder is not strictly an economic one (though indirectly, yes), but rather that the game universe has difficulty progression that isn't tied to the story progression. So since the progression was originally designed for people who were getting new 'Mechs with 3/3, when you require 5 or 6 or 7 pieces, you can't improve your lance, so you can't keep up with the difficulty curve, so you start taking more IS damage and costing more in repairs (both in money and time) which then pushes you to take less salvage for missions - when you find ones you can do - because you need the credits just to keep the lights on.

Played several hours this weekend and now it's about game day 820. Can't find a mission under 4 skulls (except the plot mission, which I'm waiting on because it's the dropship assault one, which is quite hard for its rating), only have a 225 ton (bare minimum 3-skull lance), and with difficulty on hard, I can reliably expect to face 4-6 heavies, 2 assaults, and a vehicle or two on any of the missions I've got available. It's still just barely manageable (picking missions in Tundra takes down the effective difficulty a full skull, IMO) but the new options reveal a sort of recurring theme for this game, which I do like despite itself - Harebraned did an absolutely amateurish job with the mechanics of this game, so simple band-aids like they introduced in 1.1 can't really fix the problems, since they run deep.

Still, it's pretty rewarding to have a Thunderbolt, Shadow Hawk, Kintaro(5xSRM6++, holy damage output), and Centurion, and successfully beat an Orion, Banshee, Thunderbolt, and Schreck, which then get immediately reinforced with a King Crab, Cataphract, Catapult, and Demolisher. It's just a more nail-biting experience than it should be, if I could get just one more piece of any of the five heavy chassis I've got nearly complete in storage =D And, hey. Now I've got 2/6 toward a King Crab.

yes I have 2/3 of my Black Knight and just can't find another one to make the set ;(

Share more whining than that! Gotta live up to the thread title.

My current favorite is the RT with 9 structure surviving an LRM20 called shot that instead blows out the 46 structure CT and destroys the salvage that I really, really wanted. Yes, I know a small laser would have been a better choice, but the unit and weapon available was an LRM20!