2022/3/10 Patch v13.2

v13.2 (aka the "Someone's Gonna Dislike This One..." release) has been released to the installer. This is a relatively regular-sized patch, there's some new gear, some new mechs, some updated mechanics, lotta good stuff, let's get to it.

NEW MECH: The Grigori, a 60 ton Word of Blake OmniMech, has lumbered into play. This is another member of the Celestial series of WoB OmniMechs (along with the Archangel, Preta, and Seraph that we already have). You can get it from, who else, the Word of Blake (as well as in their faction store).

NEW MECH: The Ymir, a 90 ton Age of War Lyran mech, has sprinted to battle. This tall, lanky, very weird mech can be found with the Lyrans as well as in their faction store.

NEW MECH (kind of): The Clint IIC exists. All the Clans field it. It uses the standard Clint model since, well, it's basically exactly a Clint.

NEW BATTLE ARMOR: The Simo BA has come to BTA. This BA is purpose-built to snipe at range, using its Heavy Sniper AC to do long-range piercing damage to enemies. This BA can be found in the House Liao faction store.

NEW VTOL: The Utakke Transport VTOL has arrived. This is a light BA carrier VTOL, specialized for fast raids and capable of ferrying one battle armor squad basically anywhere in a hurry. It appears in Periphery general stores like normal vehicles do.

NEW VTOL: The Dakota Gunship VTOL has arrived. This is a light BA carrier VTOL capable of permitting the mounted battle armor squad to shoot out the window at enemy targets. The Dakota exists to ferry BA around but also to form a sort of flying customizable gunship. It appears in Inner Sphere general stores like normal vehicles do.

SIGNIFICANT UPDATE: Contract salvage amounts have been overall standardized. For a long while we've noticed that salvage is always better than c-bills and that's been something we wanted to do something about. Part of that is that, at higher skulls, you get *more* salvage rights, further encouraging salvage over c-bills since the salvage just scales so much better than cold hard cash. To address this, we've reduced max salvage to around 4/16 on the top end on regular contracts (flashpoints and unique contracts are exempted from any changes). I know this won't be popular but the intent is to encourage sometimes looking at the cash option. We're talking about increasing c-bill payouts in general as well, to further encourage the debate between cash and salvage.

NEW FEATURE: The Compact Fusion Engine, the Fuel Cell Engine, and the XXL Fusion Engine all received some moderate edits. The CFE now, in addition to weighing more, also increases your walk speed by 25%. The Fuel Cell, though it can only use SHS, flat out removes 20 heat a turn automatically just for showing up. The XXL/cXXL now generate a flat 20 heat at all times. The goal with the CFE/FuelCell is to make them more interesting options for unusual builds. The goal with the XXL is to make it more table accurate rather than the kludged together 20% generation they used to have.

NEW FEATURE (sort of): A few factions on the starmap should be significantly more aggressive. St. Ives and Clan Nova Cat have had their general aggression dialed up significantly to try and encourage them to actually attack their neighbors a little. Also, the Ives-Liao war should be a little more bloody now since they both had their aggression against one another turned up 50%. Hopefully, this will lead to more combat between the factions.

NEW WEAPON: The Mech Taser now exists! Thanks to some Dark Wizardry we can now instantly shut someone down with a taser. Yeah, have fun with that one. You can get it on two brand new hero mechs in Gameworld duels (the Osprey Nap Time and the Firefly Tazerface) or you can buy the Taser and its ammo from the Davion faction store!

NEW EQUIPMENT: The Heavy Duty Gyro now exists. It reduces incoming stability damage by a significant amount but also weighs a lot.

NEW HEAT SINK: The Freezer Heat Sink has been added. This is a unique style of heat sink. It's a special heat sink that only functions with SHS kits (and does not have its own kit). The Freezer sinks 8 heat and is 3 crits. It exists both as an interesting historical curio and also to help encourage unusual SHS builds. To go along with this, several kinds of heat sinks have been added into stores, including the Freezer, the Double-Strength (what was once called the Proto-Double Heat Sink or pDHS), and the Mini Heat Sink, all of which should be more available now.

UPDATED MECHS: Every mech that features a melee weapon now has all the actuators in the relevant arm fixed in place. We've received a number of reports from people saying that the physical weapons don't work when, in fact, they'd just removed the actuators, thus deactivating the weapons. This was suboptimal, so we've now resolved the issue by just welding the actuators in place so they cannot be removed. Voila, problem resolved.

UPDATED MECHS: The Marauder MAD-4X and the Super Griffin GRF-2N-X have both been updated to proper TT-compliant stats to reflect the fact that we have true Freezer Heat Sinks now (see above). The Marauder is now available in the Marik faction store and the Super Griffin (and Super Wasp!) are available in the Davion faction store.

COMMUNITY CONTENT: Bunch of new CC has been added, such as a new Bombard, Banshee, Lynx, Thug, and Hunchback, several new pilots, and a new planet (Astral Australis).

COMMUNITY CONTENT (again): An entirely new techbase exists in CC now, the 3rd Generation techbase. This comes to BT from an April Fools product, ``Free Tai- St. Ives``, put out by Catalyst Game Labs some years ago in their traditional April Fools manner. Included is tech from a hypothetical "3rd Generation" of technology that is, frankly, pretty absurdly powerful. As of writing, only a few mechs using this tech exist, including the UrbanLord, Celestial Champion, and Riesigenwaffenkampfer (seriously, that's the name). The tech is largely fixed in place on the mechs to keep it from getting too crazy. If you want the tech, go beat on St. Ives for it, as they're the only ones who field it.

• Ok, this time, maybe the Clans won't god damn melee anymore. We'll see though, it may not work, hard to say.
• You can use BA Handholds on Easy to Maintain mechs, whoops.
• Fixed the Goliath hero, the Gesen.
• Fixed the issue with Careful Maneuvers and Battle Armor.
• VTOL Propulsion has gotten a few edits, mostly reduction of their absurd sensor range bonuses as well as general reduction of their bonus evasive pips generated (from +2 to +1).
• Jump Jets now have their proper bonus descriptions... which I'd somehow just neglected to do for like two years. D: Thanks Turtrus!
• We standardized rocket launcher ranges. They all have the same ranges across all the variants now.
• You can now roll Battle Armor in convoy crates! Yay!
• The Heavy Duty, XL, and Compact Gyros now all are actually more regularly in stores.
• The COIL Griffin and Ostsol have been moderately edited and are now more dangerous. Additionally, COIL mechs have largely been removed from most factions except Local Govt, Pirates, and House Liao.
• A few things were removed from the Mack's Dustball store. Specifically, the Alpha Strike, Svalinn Energy Shield, and the Tarnkappe Target Jammer were all removed by request of the person who commissioned them all.
• Juggernaut, the skill, was fixed so that it works properly again. Sorry about that.
• Lots of dll updates!

IMPORTANT: v13.1 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: v13.1 is not a save breaking update, your saves are compatible and will work fine.

IMPORTANT: You can see v13.1's patch notes, as well as any BTA patch notes, on our wiki on this page: https://www.bta3062.com/index.php/Patch_Notes

REMINDER: This update, and others like it, are made possible by my Patreon 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 here: https://www.patreon.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.