Alt Campaign Missions for Ironman mode

[Lord_Eol]

Campaign missions need a "backup mission" or some sort to tree branch if a storyline mission fails when in ironman mode. Replaying it simply doesn't make sense conceptually (i.e. ironman, the story keeps going if something fails) but there should at least be a alt-backup mission, i.e. "failed to destroy dropship" so alt-mission would be "some other mission that still moves story forward as a result of that failure", ditto dead key players (i.e. the princess. What if she caught cancer? I'm sure there is a royal sucesion rule of some sort). That or some fluff written in where "key players" don't get killed in mission at least. Wars don't end because of a single tactical loss nor (in modern times with nationstates) loss of figureheads.

Just played the SDF mission and the Atlas got headshotted long range no other damage campaign end hundred hours. That doesn't take any player feel good. The point of ironman is to "keep going and adapt to failure", you can't adapt to something like "random headshot" hence need some sort of alt tree branch for each mission, or even two. Something conceptually like "Mission 1, 1A (if previous failed), 1B (campaign failure if failed). Mission 2 ...". You can strategize and adapt to ironman tactics to minimize chance / conservative play, PPC headshot campaign end, well I don't know what to tell you. The valid tactic can't be "-1 mech and ensure key character never engaged in combat and just hides edge of map because I have to game poor campaign design"

 

[Hobbes__]

Andrew and Team HBS do touch on this when they have Lord Simon Karosas lose his daughter as she continued to support House Arano even as High Lady Arano secretly escaped into exile. A second example of the resistance House Espinos found across the Aurigan Reach is the filled to the brim Political Prisons on Panzyr. Taken together this connotes that while unsuccessful in toppling the Directorate, there was a broadly based and quite motivated segment of the population just waiting for the Spark that would lead to full scale rebellion,

And while High Lady Arano proved to the that Spark, there would have been an amazingly complex and oftentimes working at crossed purposes layer of Planetary and Regional Insurgency Leaders, Commanders and Power Brokers.

The Societal Fracture Points and Centers of Friction existed.

High Lady Arano tapped into them and organized them to a degree greater than anyone before her. But to assume that these Societal Fractures and Rebellious Population Centers would have folded like a house of cards with her death is just not historically supportable to any substantial degree imo.

Don't forget the support given by the Magistracy of Canopus to Lady Arano. Without House Centrella's C-Bills the Restoration would never happen and Kamea and Madeira would likely die in exile as the Directorate consolidated its power.

If you look at this from the Great Houses perspective, this is just a simple power play: Canopians realized that they could increase their influence in the Aurigan Reach at the expense of the Taurians by using an exiled leader who had a strong claim to the throne and could unite the opponents of House Espinosa. If Kamea had died during the restoration, I could be well possible that the Canopians decide to cut their losses and stop supporting the insurgents.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

Don't forget the support given by the Magistracy of Canopus to Lady Arano. Without House Centrella's C-Bills the Restoration would never happen and Kamea and Madeira would likely die in exile as the Directorate consolidated its power.

If you look at this from the Great Houses perspective, this is just a simple power play: Canopians realized that they could increase their influence in the Aurigan Reach at the expense of the Taurians by using an exiled leader who had a strong claim to the throne and could unite the opponents of House Espinosa. If Kamea had died during the restoration, I could be well possible that the Canopians decide to cut their losses and stop supporting the insurgents.

Buffer States have served a very important function throughout history, so High Lady Arano presented a valuable and unique opportunity to the Magistracy.

That is why it always struck me as shortsighted that once Canopus had helped return High Lady Arano to the throne, they seem to have walked away from her and the Aurigan Restoration without extracting a greater measure of recompense and ties that would bind it to the Magistracy as a stable market for Canopian goods and services if for no other reason.

But instead we get the following excerpt from the House Arano Sourcebook.:

An ascendent Power like the Magistracy of Canopus no doubt has a number of other surrogates, cat’s paws and false flags actively arrayed against Concordat interests in the Rimward Periphery and beyond.

To so help the Aurigan Restoration, only to leave it tottering on the edge of ruin, a near-Failed State, is to me at first confusing...

...it almost speaks of an insidious “long-con” on the part of Houses Centrella and Arano to spread discord and discontent from the Aurigan Restoration back along High Lady Arano’s new-found influence and backchannels within the Concordat, given the deaths and destruction and National Disgrace caused by the late Taurian Commodore Samual Ostergaard.

Now I am left hoping HBS_TheBaron and HBS_Kiva are given the chance for an encore performance and we see a House Arano ERA Report! : )

 

[Lord_Eol]

It would be possible to write the story such that this is not the case. An alternate path could make Kamea a martyr who inspires another leader, but that is not how the story was written and it would not be easy to rewrite it to accommodate such failed missions. The amount of work required to make a branching campaign, as awesome as that would be, is substantial.

Fair but in that case it still doesn't answer why, upon storyline failure, it doesn't just kick you into career mode with no further storyline missions. That requires no real code changes, it's simply oversight I feel. And second maybe they should have made that more clear in game that on ironman storyline mission failure is both campaign and career failure as that isn't intuitive. You could also add optional campaign start logic where "ironman optional exception: allow replay of failed storyline missions". Valid low effort options IMHO.

 

[Lord_Eol]

More importantly, she's our employer. Without out her, who do we send the invoices to? The story ends if she dies as far as I'm concerned, if you're in Ironman mode that's a risk to accept.

In code terms every branch you add down a chain grows the code complexity exponentially. The testing effort added is even worse as you need to test both positive and negative outcomes as you go. Limited side branches could be do-able with enough resources as these can be constrained, but branch after branch rapidly becomes impossible in campaign terms.

I can accept that hence why I proposed other low effort solutions to the problem of "100 hours in you lose to a random headshot at max range other than simply quit playing with the key players and park them at map edge out of combat"

 

[Timaeus]

And second maybe they should have made that more clear in game that on ironman storyline mission failure is both campaign and career failure as that isn't intuitive.

Campaign story mission failure has always been campaign failure it's just that the player is able to reload before the failure in a non-ironman campaign.

 

[Lord_Eol]

Campaign story mission failure has always been campaign failure it's just that the player is able to reload before the failure in a non-ironman campaign.

Correct hence making it effectively a non-issue / non-game ending. I'm simply not seeing the difficulty level here in either dumping into career mode after that or (more ideally) making an optional ironman exception for storyline missions. Maybe it's moot as has been suggested two years into the game and not worth the dev time at this point and I won't argue against that but it's "new" to me given this is the first time I played since v1.0 as I tend to only play games near the end of their life as I prefer to incorporate all patches and DLC's before investing into it given the extremely limited single player storyline content devs tend to sync into game (including HBS) and SP low replayability. So while many people are seeing these as "old" issues, they are literally new to me as if BT came out yesterday. Season Pass was completed so here I am playing it. Won't touch it again after I complete teh campaign one more time until after the end of season pass 2 (not saying that is real, just making the point)

 

[Prussian Havoc]

Correct hence making it effectively a non-issue / non-game ending. I'm simply not seeing the difficulty level here in either dumping into career mode after that or (more ideally) making an optional ironman exception for storyline missions...

Context here is important:

- BATTLETECH’s Campaign was introduced at Launch.
- Later, in Update 1.1 HBS introduced Ironman.
- Still later, in Update 1.3 HBS introduced Career Mode,
- As Ironman was introduced to the Campaign there was no Career Mode to drop into.

Here, at this late a date... yes, a linkage between Failed Ironman Campaigns and Career Mode would be very interesting,

But let’s not underestimate the very high costs of taking the “Special Forces” Outfit from a Failed Kingmaking Attempt and dropping them into an in-progress Ironman Career Mode.

There would need to be a bridging-effort, Storyline Adjustments, text, Transition Event pop-ups, MRB Event pop-ups as we lose MRB Rating due to the death of our Employer, Bank Event pop-ups as our original creditors try to claw back their investment in us now that Aurigan payments and guarantees have lapsed, and not doubt other transition requirements and all the coding and graphics and Art that would be required to do it all right.

Because let us not fool ourselves, doing it “on the cheap” would reflect poorly on HBS and open it up to criticism.


So, good idea and has all the makings of a Suggestion Thread entry. :bow: