MechCommander – Mercenaries

Oh man … vor zwei Wochen wurde an anderen Stellen bereits darüber berichtet, aber wir hatten in dem Moment keine Zeit und haben es dann auch vergessen (okay, ich, die News sind derzeit allein meine Aufgabe) … Dabei ist das wirklich eine großartige Neuigkeit: MechWarrior 5 – Mercenaries bekommt einen MechCommander Mod.

Ja, ihr habt richtig gelesen: MechCommander – Mercenaries steht bei Nexus Mods zum Download bereit oder kann über das neue Mod-Feature des Epic-Stores direkt zu eurer MechWarrior 5 Installation hinzugefügt werden.

ACHTUNG: Derzeit funktioniert die Tutorial-Mission zum Beginn der Kampagne nicht. Für die müsst ihr das Spiel also kurz „normal“ spielen und dann kann es als MechCommander losgehen.

Ein Video direkt aus dem Spiel gibt es hier:

Nicht ignorieren sollte man, natürlich, dass es sich um einen Fanmod handelt und sich der Mod auch noch ganz offiziell in der Beta-Phase befindet. Bugs sind zu erwarten und werden hier gesammelt.

Die Liste an Features liest sich dafür aber bereits beeindruckend:

New in 1.1:

• New campaigns automatically skip Tutorial through the mission where Freeman is acquired while the mod is installed to avoid missions that don’t work with MCM
• Added a force move command to alt + right click.  This is a beta implementation to help with Demolition missions, will be refined later
• Additional bug fixes

Basic camera controls:

• WASD pans the camera around the level
• Mouse scrolling to the edge of the screen will pan the camera in that direction
• Holding the middle mouse button will rotate/tilt the camera with mouse movement
• Mouse scroll wheel zooms the camera in/out.
• Double clicking any unit tile will pan the camera to the unit and follow it until panned again.
• Holding shift increases pan speed

 

Unit Selection:

• Left clicking a friendly unit will select it
• Left click and drag will select friendly units in a selection box (highlighted units will be selected)
• Holding shift while selecting a unit will add them to the current selection
• Holding control while left clicking a friendly unit tile will remove them from the selection
• Clicking on empty terrain or selecting no units with the selection box will clear the current selection
• When selected units have combat targets previously assigned by the player, all of the targets will have their unit tiles displayed.

Control Groups*:

• Ctrl+[1,2, …, 0] will add the current selection to a control group
• Shift+[1,2, …, 0] will add the control group to the current selection
• [1, 2, …, 0] changes the current selection to the designated control group
• Double clicking a control group tile will pan the camera and follow a random unit in the group

Unit Commands:

• Right clicking a location will order the selected group to move to location
• Alt + right clicking a location will order selected group to force move to a location (ie, smash through building)
• Right clicking an enemy unit will order the selected group to attack
• Right clicking a friendly unit will order friendly units to guard the selected unit
• Pressing J activates jump jet mode.
• While jump jet mode is active, right clicking a location orders all selected units with jump jets to attempt to jump to location**.

Miscellaneous Commands:

• H activates thermal/heat vision (if implemented by another mod***)
• N activates night vision
• F6 toggles between RTS and FPS mode****
• F7/Space Bar toggles slow-mo time (may only be bound to space in current build)
• Alt-K hides HUD (bound to the base game keybinding)
• Mousing over a friendly unit tile reveals a small command bar with a range control tool and eject button.
• The range control tool sets a unit’s preferred fighting range between Short, Medium, and Long range.  When in combat, they will gradually try to move into the selected range bracket.
• The eject button takes 2 clicks, one to open the cover, one to trigger the pilot to eject.

*: Only control group 0 is working due to a bug in how mod keybindings are handled by the game.  Reported to PGI and they are investigating.

**: Jump jet mode has each unit attempt to find a point to start their jump based on how many jump jets they have equipped. Takeoff points will be marked on the HUD shortly after the order is issued.  There are several bugs and edge cases that just don’t work well.

***: The base game doesn’t have a finished heat vision mode but had links in that allow it to be implemented by mods. Mechcommander has the keybinding for it in case other mods in use have it (Reloaded, for example).  The unfinished base version is not useful, but will display if no other mod has implemented a better version.

****: This was a development tool but is useful for circumventing certain bugs.  It also has its own quirks when coming in and out of the cockpit view.  Don’t expect it to work flawlessly every time.

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Mod Compatibility:

Mechcommander should work with most mods, and is set to override conflicting assets by
loading last.  While we can’t say exactly which mods will or won’t work with it, the following may help:

• Any mod that relies on modifying the player controller will most likely not work, or experience some additional bugs
• AI mods may have issues, especially with friendly AI mods.  Mechcommander expects that certain inputs to the AI will result in certain behaviors running.  This may not be true with other AI modifications installed.
• Mods which change the main menu won’t show up while Mechcommander is active.  Mods like the Campaign Start mod can be used to get a save file set up before activating Mechcommander.
• Some UI mods may have anomalies if they change target paper dolls or the minimap/battlegrid.

Known Issues:

 

• There is no option to change keybindings.  Options menu will be added at a later time.
• Tutorial mission in campaign does not work with this mod active. It is highly recommended to use a save game from AFTER act 1 with this mod.
• The minimap will sometimes fail to load the base map.
• Minimap icons are missing or all black. Waiting for DLC 1’s patch to see if it is easier to fix with sensor improvements.  This is currently due to a workaround of the minimap being centered on the camera’s view instead of being linked to the player’s mech.
• Commander Mason’s AI is…not good.  While he still shoots at targets, he does not output the full damage potential of mech builds. This is likely due to how the player character is spawned in the base game.  Only recommendation so far is to attempt using different weapon groups to see if he manages to be more useful.
• Commander Mason’s comms chatter is a random pilot each mission.
• Commander Mason can not trigger objectives.  This is due to a limitation of the mod editor.  Needs PGI to add access to the squad component.
• Commander Mason’s death still triggers end of mission.
• Jump jet mode sometimes causes mechs to get stuck toggling jump jets after completing a move
• Jump jet mode sometimes fails to work after first jump
• Pathing for jumping up/down cliffs may result in poor choices of liftoff point
• Camera’s ground collision pawn for panning may occasionally cause it to go underground when colliding with odd geometry.  Double clicking a unit tile or control group or using F6 will fix this issue.
• The camera itself doesn’t have collision and can float into objects/terrain.
• Defend orders are ignored when enemies are present
• Occasionally, unit status bars (doritos) may linger after unit death.
• Sometimes a target unit tile stops displaying the target paper doll.
• Units set to long range may end up falling back an extreme distance over the course of a fight.
• When issuing a move order after an attack order, units may not stay locked to the original target.
• Mech run animations sometimes show an odd leg position while zoomed out.  This is a bug in the LoD animations in the base game.
• Unit paper dolls may be missing information in the mechbay and market.
• Unit range control has minimal impact on unit engagement ranges.  This was a temporary work around to avoid units turning their backs to targets to gain range.
• Hiding the HUD does not hide unit status bars or objective markers.
• When entering the esc menu, the player is put into the cockpit (intentional behavior to avoid bugs), but stays there when the menu is closed.  Press F6 to return to RTS mode as a work around.
• Potential issue with alt-tabbing and returning to game causing a missing mouse (unclear, one report of issue)
• Only tank hulls are target-able.  As in, right-clicking on an enemy tanks turret will not issue an attack command.