View source for 2023/12/22 - Patch v17.0

v17.0 (aka the "Merry Christmas 2023!" patch) has been released to the installer. This patch is actually quite chunky and is a Save-Breaking Patch, so be sure to read closely!!

'''IMPORTANT AS HELL READ THIS AT ALL COSTS:''' This patch is a *SAVE-BREAKING PATCH*. This means your old saves are not compatible and you *will* need to start a new career. This was a good time to cause a save-break as we've been storing up various changes that needed a breaking patch and figured that rounding out 2023 with a clean slate for everyone was a good time to do things. This is our fifth save-break ever and the only one in 2023 so I think we're doing just fine on that front.

'''ALSO HIGHLY IMPORTANT:''' You *do not* need a new installer for v16.8. Your current installer (which is v1.2.0) will work just fine. If you don't have the installer right now, be sure to go download it again from the wiki.

'''MERRY CHRISTMAS!!:''' As is tradition, there's a new Christmas event this year! Set to trigger on 12/24/3064, you'll get a shot at some stocking stuffers if you play your cards right. ;) Merry Christmas, one and all!

'''DROP SLOT ADJUSTMENTS:''' This one is a big one so it gets top billing. BTA has adjusted its drop slot configuration with this patch. Over the years, there's been a semi-regular sentiment among players that they'd like some more flexibility in the deployment slots so that all tank or all mech playthroughs are more supported. After great consideration, I've decided to accomodate this sentiment and make all tank or all mech playthroughs more viable. Starting with this patch, BTA's deployment slots now are the following:

* Lance 1: 6 mech/tank slots (start with 4, unlock 2 via Argo upgrades)
* Lance 2: 6 mech/tank slots (start with 2, unlock 4 via Argo upgrades)
* Lance 3: 4 BA only slots (start with 2, unlock 2 via Argo Upgrades)

'''NEW MECH:''' The Slagmaiden, a 55-ton mixtech Wolf-in-Exile arena mech, has come to play. Armed with a huge BattleMech Shield as well as an array of good duelist weapons (including Clantech and unique shield weaponry seen nowhere else), the Slagmaiden (and its hero variant, the Shieldmaiden) appears in the gameworld arenas as well as the mech foundries on Arc-Royal where it can be purchased.

'''NEW MECH:''' The Blackbeard, a heavily quirked pirate Atlas, complete with pegleg, cutlass, and ~~parrot~~Raven on the shoulder, has lumbered into play. This is a Black Market-exclusive design and must be purchased from the BM. It's a lot of fun to use, give it a shot!

'''NEW MECH:''' The Shankey and the Groovy, two quirky pirate light mechs based on the Commando and the Panther respectively, have come to party. These are both also Black Market-exclusive designs and have to be purchased from the BM. And yes, Groovy comes with his Boomstick.

'''NEW MECH:''' The Yeager, named for famous test pilot Chuck Yeager, has stomped into combat. This experimental test chassis mounts a mammoth Experimental Assault Gauss and brings it to bear with ruthless efficiency. You can buy it at Hesperus II (if you're friends with the Lyrans) or you can sometimes see it fielded by the elite 6th Lyran Guards.

'''NEW MECH:''' The Yazata, a 130-ton Word of Blake superheavy OmniMech and master of the Celestials, has hotdropped onto the battlefield. It is fielded rarely by the Word of Blake's Shadow Divisions and can be purchased from their faction store.

'''MAJOR MECH FIX:''' Thanks to a community member's persistence and dedication, we've now properly adjusted Clan Ferro-Fibrous to grant the correct free tonnage. We've also adjusted all mechs that use Clan Ferro to have updated proper loadouts accordingly. This was quite an undertaking and C337Skymaster was very helpful when doing it, so big props to him!

'''NEW VARIANTS:''' There are quite a few new mech variants floating around. The Gladiator and Phoenix chassis received some upgraded versions; there's a new Word of Blake Panther with a wacky af loadout; there's a Star League-era Stalker; a rare introtech Zeus; several new Warhammers; a new (very bad) Hatchetman that took *far* too much effort to get stats for; there's a Centurion/Crusader/Griffin/Longbow/Salamander/Valkyrie/Archer/Javelin set of variants to use some new weapons introduced this patch; there's a bunch of new Maulers.

'''NEW FACTION:''' The Deep Periphery has been expanded with the addition of Nueva Castile! This small faction corewards of the Hanseatic League can be worked for but not allied with as they don't track reputation. They serve as an OpFor in the Hanseatic League as well as performing third-party drop-ins. You might be asking "BD, why did you add them, these guys seem a little pointless?" to which I can only say "stay tuned". 

'''AMMUNITION UPDATES:''' A number of ammos have been updated: all Acid ammos now share an effect and stack correctly so that you don't get weird overlapping acid effects; ER LRM ammo was removed (see below for details on why); AC ammos were widely overhauled (Precision now ignores evasion and has smaller box sizes, Frag was buffed, Caseless now gives bonus range, and HEAP was entirely overhauled); Crude ammos were removed; Bee LRM ammo was mildly nerfed; Deadfire LRM ammo no longer does bonus stab damage; Flare and Suppressant Mortar ammo have a smaller AoE; Inferno Mortar was buffed slightly; half-ton boxes of Suppressant now exist; Inferno SRM was buffed with a heat-over-time debuff.

'''UNNSVIN NERFS:''' Sorry folks but it was warranted. The Unnsvins have been nerfed somewhat. The LAC/5 Unnsvin is now a LAC/2 Unnsvin and the MRM-20 Unnsvin is now a MRM-10 Unnsvin. Laser fans keep winning though, the Laser Unnsvin was untouched.

'''URBAN AMBUSH EXPANSION:''' There's a few new kinds of infantry who can ambush you on urban maps. One can call in enemy Rommel tanks as airdrops, the other can call down airstrikes against you. Ye be warned, the buildings are speaking airstrikes!

'''NEW GAMEWORLDS:''' At the community's suggestion, two new gameworlds have been added to the planets Gambier and Sawyer. Sawyer is in corewards Kuritan space and Gambier is hanging out in the midst of Davion space. 

'''NEW EVENT:''' In 3064 Tortuga will strike back against the Sanctuary Alliance and attempt to take back their worlds! All the major pirate bands have come together to take back the pirate homeworlds, go give the lads a hand, they could use it. Kick the Sanctuary out of the Dominions!

'''NEW CLAN WEAPON:''' The Clan AP Gauss has been created and brought into BTA. Right now it's quite rare, only being on a CC mech as well as in rarely in Clan stores, but it might be getting a little more action sooner than later. 

'''NEW INNER SPHERE WEAPONS:''' The Extended LRM (ELRM) and the Enhanced LRM (NLRM) both now exist. These are canon and available in our timeline so I added them in. The ELRM has the longest non-artillery range in the game (and almost matches the arty anyways) but has its own ammo type, can't take ArtIV, and has some other issues. The NLRM has a much shorter minimum range but can use standard LRM ammos (and ArtIV) and also is AMS immune. They are on a few new variants and are sold in the Davion (ELRM) and Steiner (NLRM) faction stores as well as at Coventry (ELRM) and Hesperus II (NLRM). The ELRM is also why ER LRM *ammo* had to die, I think the reason are self-evident.

'''"NEW" ANIMATIONS:''' KMiSSioN, the dark sorcerer AI, has dropped a brand-new feature on us: the ability to hijack animations from one assetbundle to another via gear settings. That's a technical way to say that now, any modded mech in BTA with a right-hand melee weapon (such as a sword or hatchet) now uses the HBS Hatchetman's right handed swinging animation. It will snap its arm out and then swipe downward with its weapon to smash its enemy. Note that this only applies to *right-handed* weaponry because that's what the Hatchetman uses.

'''NEW WEAPON ATTACHMENT:''' A community suggestion was to reproduce the proper TT Machine Gun Array system using the weapon attachment system BTA uses. This was a good idea so I did it. The old MG Array *weapon* has been deprecated and in its place is the MG Array attachment. This attachment connects to all Machine Guns (Light, Standard, Heavy, and even the Sanctuary Gatling Gun) in the attachment's location and increases their damage output as well as their individual damage clustering (so each MG's shots tend to group together now instead of all being scattershot). All MG Array using mechs and stores have been updated accordingly and several mechs gained hardpoints to account for their need of new Machine Guns.

'''AMMO FEED REBALANCE:''' Here's another crack at the ammo feeds. This time the jamming *should* work properly and destroy the common and easy to acquire weapons and not the expensive and fairly rare ammo feeds themselves. We'll see if this works properly.

'''APM REBALANCE:''' The APM change from last patch has been wildly successful but also made the weapon too good. It's received minor nerfs to several modes to bring it back in line with its intended use-case.

'''DUELS ADJUSTED:''' The duel missions that have drop slots with maximum tonnage now also have minimum tonnage on those slots, which forces the player into using those slots. The exploit of "use a different slot to ignore the tonnage limit" has been closed. Sorry folks, it hurt me to do it because I cheated too but there it is.

'''NEW FACTORY WORLDS:''' There are new factory worlds to be found, on Helbrent, Horatius, Marantha, and Tyrlon. These are scattered throughout the Periphery and offer a variety of Periphery toys for sale.

'''COMMUNITY CONTENT:''' Lots of good new Community Content this patch, including: an update to the Battlehammers to equalize their prices; a few CC mechs had their loadouts updated at commissioner request; there is a new Battlehammer and two new Hunchback IICs that use the new Clan AP Gauss as well as a new Stormbreaker variant and a new armor type, Ferro Reinforced Heavy Plating; there's a King Crab Omnimech (it's what it sounds like); Mack's Dustball has seen a lot of inventory improvements; the Battle Armor Bus UrbanMech was added.

'''NOTE FOR SUB-MODDERS:''' I know you're out there and have your own sub-mods and such. As a heads up, BTA has changed some of its internal naming on some gear to standardize item names. This includes engines, armors, and structures that you may be using on your custom units. You'll want to check and update your mods for those items. I'll provide a list in #modding-technical for you to check.

* The Scattershot Railgun now uses an artillery hardpoint and benefits from artillery FCS and artillery skils.
* Chainsaws got a minor combat buff.
* Thanks to a community member, we've updated many of our pilot portraits for our ronins. These now use much less disk space and look just as good as ever, so congrats, we saved you some tonnage on your hard drive!
* There have been a lot of very minor mech adjustments, usually via minor gear changes or armor adjustments, across more mechs than I can possibly name here. If a mech looks a little different than before, it's because it probably is.
* The Experimental Assault Gauss has received an overhaul and is a much more interesting (and usable) weapon now.
* ATM ammo now shows up in the proper place.
* The Clan Nova Cat and Clan Snow Raven stores have gotten a bit of a boost, now having an additional few weapons added from a random list as well as random Clan-specific ammos available as well. It's not a huge boost, but it's notable as a way to possibly get some rarer Clan weapons.
* The Sanctuary Alliance has changed their icon in order to free up their icon for Nueva Castile (who it originally belonged to).
* Possible fix for the underground spawning ambush units on urban maps! Hurrah!
* The "All" category for the ammo page in the mechbay was removed.
* Ridgeline properly works with all LAMs and even says so in combat when flying a LAM.
* Fixed SearchAndRecovery missions for Johann's Jaegers.
* Christmas events now fire at Christmas (3062-64 each have a different event)
* Agamemnon's missions might be fixed??
* Several core mods were updated for better performance and features.

'''IMPORTANT:''' v17.0 is an "update" update. In this case, clear your Mods folder manually and then run the installer, it'll do the work for you.

'''IMPORTANT:''' v17.0 is a save breaking update, your old saves do not work anymore and are not compatible. They cannot be used in with this patch, don't waste your time with them.

'''REMINDER:''' This update, and others like it, are made possible by my Patreon and Ko-Fi supporters. Without their support, updates would come slower and be less impactful. If you feel like being a part of the support for BTA, you can find me on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/bloodydoves) and on Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/bloodydoves)

'''REMINDER:''' Custom mod commissions are still available if you're interested. If you'd like to get your own community content added to BTA DM me, bloodydoves, and we can work something out. 


== BTA Light ==
v16.5.0.lite has been released for BTA Light. This is a very minor patch. It adds the ELRM/NRLM (information above in BTA Classic's notes) to the factory worlds at Coventry and Hesperus II. It also includes BTA Classic's ammunition changes as well as a settings change to compress floaties akin to what BTA Classic has done in order to fight floatie spam.