battletech video game mech designer

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#1

Greetings Mechwarriors

In this thread please share your opinions and experiences with my program, both positive and negative.

Last edited: May 27, 2019

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#2

Your MechDesigner for Battletech looks really cool. I'm definitely going to share this with the design team to see if they can get some use out of it for Heavy Metal.

Nice work @MasterBLB!
- Eck

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#3

A while ago I was designing a bunch of custom Mechs for my mod (at least 1-2 for each specific tonnage bracket) and had to do that using the in-game MechLab and exported them with the help of MechEngineer.

Even if MechDesigner doesn't support MechEngineer functionality (yet? ), if I had used MechDesigner instead it would've taken me around half a day at most compared to two days of work I put it. (Not having to stare at loading screens for minutes at a time is a definite bonus, too!)

So yeah, I imagine now that it's available it'll help a lot of people, especially those into designing new missions and flashpoints with custom Mechs. The only reason I'm not using it for everything is that most of my custom Mechs are dependent on MechEngineer features, which I gotta add manually anyway.

tl;dr MechDesigner is great and if you haven't tried it yet you should! :cool:

Edmon

TheEdmon on YouTube

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#4

This is really great and just what the community needs . Keep up the good work.

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#5

Had a quick look at 0.74. I like that the cost of individual items is now being displayed as well. Every bit of information counts.

Speaking of cost, is there any progress on the Mech cost calculation front? From what I understand the formula is rather convoluted?

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#7

0.74 has cost calculator implemented, and working - base cost from chassisdef + equipment cost + MechStatisticsConstants.json::CBILLS_PER_ARMOR_POINT * totalArmorPoints, rounded up to 10k alignment results the same value stored in mechdef.json, as I tested. So, after exporting a loadout to .json internal game mechanics should process it further properly.
To observe this run Mech Designer in advanced mode, expand the right side to show "Tags and Description" data, and watch "Mech Cost" field.
I left possibility to manually edit the cost in case of someone would make a mech cheaper/more expensive.

Ah, that makes sense! Didn't have time to switch to advanced mode earlier, so I missed it.

That's great, thanks for the hard work implementing it!

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#8

OK guys, I need you to chime in on this feature.

Now, that we have a cost calculator to figure up the total cost of the mech, I would like to have an additional button that replaces the rarity slot, since that is no longer used. This button would be used to calculate the mech part cost. The reason for it to be a button and not automatic, is that not every modder may want to modify the mech parts or for that matter even the total mech cost.The percentage can be put in the setup.ini (and later options)

For instance, I will put the mech part cost at 25% of the total mech cost. This would eliminate the exploitation of a cheap mech (that could be fully loaded) though stores that technically could cost as little as 25% (3 parts @ store discounted price) of the value of the mech. By changing these prices, this eliminates the need for people to play games that have up to 8 mech parts, so they don't feel like they are cheating.

By having a button that can instantly calculate and fill in this blank. I would be very happy to have this, anyway. Yes, I can do it manually now at least! But a button makes it sooo much easier!

Last edited: Jun 18, 2019

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#16

@mjbroekman
You have invalid CombatGameConstants.json so you are 30 heat/turn short of cooling. Also, heat and distance for JJ's calculations don't work correctly.
Well, probably you have issues with Panther 9R too.
Go to my download thread, there, aside Mech Designer.rar, are corrected CombatGameConstants and mechdef_panther_PNT-9R. Replace the erroneous files with these provided by me.

This is how it should look like:

GHR-5H with correct CombatGameConstants.json.png