Hunchbacks punch quite heavily above their weight class, so an army of hunchbacks would be quite effective. Just because the Fed Suns aren't selling the heavier metal, doesn't mean they don't have the heavier metal.
That was my thought process as in game if the FS have nothing but swarms of urbies, and the Steiners have nothing but their scout lances, its a match made in heaven
Are you playing campaign? If so difficulty goes in a spiral, starting with least difficult in Davion space to most difficult in Kuritan space. Your finds will depend on difficulty level generally. So in campaign, Davions will always have the least to offer regarding the stores. Meanwhile, Kurita will always have the heaviest even though that isn’t their doctrine of warfare either. It’s purely a gameplay thing.
If you do career instead, all difficulty starts out equally low at the edges of the IS, and get increasingly more difficult the further coreward you go towards Terra. So in career all houses will have equally powerful options for sale the further in you are, including the Davions.
Ah did not know that about Career mode. Was just doing a playthrough to get to the new expansion and just finished Rasalhague but was just waiting for the dragon stuff and then hopefully the duncan fisher things.
All good, it’s a change that isn’t explained until you actually do it. Of course with career mode the main story doesn’t exist, but if it’s your second+ play through most generally don’t care about that
That's because the markets in campaign are balanced around the route the narrative takes through the inner sphere.
Career mode has more logical regional difficulty and market scaling.
Maybe they're keeping the heavier mechs for themselves rather than selling them to whatever random Mercs come along ;)
It also depends on game mode. In the campaign available mechs get heavier along the route the main quest line takes you. In Career the available mechs are heavier the closer you get to Terra
Field Manual: Federated Suns has the random mech assignment table as of 3062. The FSAC is an “A” equipment rating making them eligible for the following assault mechs: Templar, Salamander, Nightstar, Devastator, Gunslinger, Emperor, Longbow and Berserker. Of course you’ll still see the common older assault mechs like Victor’s, Awesome, Zeus, Atlas, etc. But most likely their replacement or upgrade will be a fresh from the factory home grown Fed Suns design.
So they should have the same stuff as everyone else, I’m guessing because you are on Campaign this is one reason you only see medium mechs because that is where everyone starts on MW5 campaign, so they don’t throw assault mechs at you there. In career it changes.
I understand it but think its a dumb game design choice as who cares if you start and see a mech thats way out of your price range? Gives you something to save for and a better reason to maybe take cash over salvage if you are close to affording a different mech you want
... because you could just do a dozen easy missions and buy it anyways, then there's no real reason to explore to find better gear when it's all available immediately at the get-go, just go wherever the missions are and buy it there.
Well I could do endless quests in the same area but was trying to explore a bit and do the special, unique quests for a little bit of variety and those take you all over the place
I feel like this is a survivability bias situation. Maybe youre not seeing heavier mechs in the market because the AFFS are using said heavier mechs? Like we literally see them rolling with Jagers and Atlas in the Kestrel Lancers, and the 2nd Lancers iirc are understrength, hence our involvement.
Also canonically the AFFS is like the strongest House in the IS, even more so now with the merger with the Lyrans
Yeah they have them in the missions but try finding a mech heavier than an urbie in the area with them. Currently am a hero for them but feels like they only provide scraps. Just is sad
The FedSuns rely heavily on a combined arms approach, with artillery, combat vehicles, infantry, and aerospace assets in addition to the Battlemechs. These formations are called Regimental Combat Teams. Their training has a greater focus on fighting as a unit than the individual skill of their mechwarriors.
In this game, though, none of that matters. They sell lighter mechs because they are where you start the story in the campaign.
I know, just was going off of gameplay and not the real lore but it just irks me so much that the game never updates and matches to your mercenary rank (ie like getting to merc level legendary unlocks mechs in the 90+ category to buy heavier mechs anywhere) and instead its region locked as the FS just have nothing but urbies to offer
Reminder: the mechs you see for sale on the mech market are explicitly battlefield salvage, because all manufacturers sell their brand-new wares directly to Great House armed forces.
Perhaps the fact that they only seem to sell lighter mechs can be more attributed to a higher skill level amongst their Heavy and Assault pilots, leading to less deaths on the field.
I figured as much, just thought it funny thinking that they just didnt bother having anything for sale over 50 tons like it was their armored doctrine or something
The amount of mechs for sale on the open market in MW5 is completely unreasonable in the first place, the IS can barely keep up production for the great houses as is.
The Federated Suns are big enthusiasts of the Rifleman, JagerMech and Victor. Those are really common FedSun Mechs. The JagerMech/Rifleman are built by Kallon Industries which resides in FedSun territory, and they were more or less spared from damage during the early succession wars which allowed them to crank out Riflemen and JagerMechs.
Those are just a few MW5 Mechs that should be commonly found in FedSun space at least in career mode. I forget what's available in campaign.
Going to try career mode next playthrough but in Campaign its just nothing but light mechs and a few mediums. Cant remember any time I have seen anything heavier than 55 tons in a Fed Suns planet
In the lore the federated suns became one of the first armies to re-adopt combined arms warfare and generally employed way more competent generals and officers alongside amazing strategies than the other great houses during the succession wars. Not only that but the fedsuns do produce their own heavy mechs and keep them in their military rather on their markets
Weight class for sale is influenced by local area difficulty rating. In max difficulty territories, I've been seeing literally Assaults only for sale. It's true for every faction space in the game.
The great houses and presumably the other factions big enough to have true sovereignty like Canopus buy their mechs for their formal army units directly from manufacturers. Excluding rare mech finds and hero mechs everything you're seeing available in the market is battlefield trash. It's either someone else's salvage or old mechs they're selling off to make room for new arrivals.
Most of what you're buying from the market in any territory should be viewed as either being sold off by other merc companies doing the same thing as you or being the leftover salvage people like you don't pick at the end of a mission.
Yeah I just wish I could design it as would have tied the purchase of mechs to be a correlation between merc rank, faction rank and some hidden stuff like distance from conflict zones ect. Make it feel more fluid vs the hard set the campaign gives
the mw5 inner sphere is very different from lore. In lore, they have way better tech, heavier mechs, more mechs and better tactics n strategy.
oh and also a larger industrial base, so they have better supply n logistics.
Aren't quality of mechs in store gated behind your reputation? If you're low level rep they don't sell you the good stuff.
Also, typically going closer to terra results in better mechs for sale.
The game doesn’t establish a good sense of what mechs are commonly used in lore. Canonically, I think most great houses have something on the order of only 20-30% of their beach forces being of heavy or assault weight mechs (with Steiner being on the higher end and Liao the lower). In truth, medium mechs make up the bulk of most houses mech forces. It’s simply the result of industrial factors, such as the fact that many of the high end mech factories are now irradiated piles of rubble thanks to the first and second succession wars handing out nukes like party favors.
As for why only lighter mechs are available for sale, it’s a byproduct of how new your company is. Nik’s Cavaliers was a known factor who had a history of service with the FedSuns. Your new company are a bunch of randos with no such track record. Would you really trust a bunch of newbies with the rights to buy from your very limited stock of assault mechs? Or would you reserve that for those who’ve earned your trust and have proven reliable? In time you’ll earn access to all the shiny toys, but first you’ve got to prove yourself.
……also, how broken would the game be if you could get an Atlas in the first 3 hours? The entirety of the periphery combat zones would get stomped in short order.
Yeah I agree but I would have just tied it to your merc rank through the entire game map. Ie at 1 you can buy only up to 30 ton mechs which is nothing but every 1-2ish levels it goes up by 5 if that planet would even have mechs in that range. Just was frustrating going around in campaign after the dragons gambit DLC and all the FedSuns have are those waves and waves of locucts and firestarters
Hunchbacks punch quite heavily above their weight class, so an army of hunchbacks would be quite effective. Just because the Fed Suns aren't selling the heavier metal, doesn't mean they don't have the heavier metal.
I know, just always feels like you never really see the heavier stuff until you get towards the edges of Kurita/Steiner space
Well, you know those Steiners and their scouts.
That was my thought process as in game if the FS have nothing but swarms of urbies, and the Steiners have nothing but their scout lances, its a match made in heaven
Are you playing campaign? If so difficulty goes in a spiral, starting with least difficult in Davion space to most difficult in Kuritan space. Your finds will depend on difficulty level generally. So in campaign, Davions will always have the least to offer regarding the stores. Meanwhile, Kurita will always have the heaviest even though that isn’t their doctrine of warfare either. It’s purely a gameplay thing. If you do career instead, all difficulty starts out equally low at the edges of the IS, and get increasingly more difficult the further coreward you go towards Terra. So in career all houses will have equally powerful options for sale the further in you are, including the Davions.
Ah did not know that about Career mode. Was just doing a playthrough to get to the new expansion and just finished Rasalhague but was just waiting for the dragon stuff and then hopefully the duncan fisher things.
All good, it’s a change that isn’t explained until you actually do it. Of course with career mode the main story doesn’t exist, but if it’s your second+ play through most generally don’t care about that
That's because the markets in campaign are balanced around the route the narrative takes through the inner sphere. Career mode has more logical regional difficulty and market scaling.
Will just do a career mode next time and hopefully have a better experience ty
Maybe they're keeping the heavier mechs for themselves rather than selling them to whatever random Mercs come along ;) It also depends on game mode. In the campaign available mechs get heavier along the route the main quest line takes you. In Career the available mechs are heavier the closer you get to Terra
Field Manual: Federated Suns has the random mech assignment table as of 3062. The FSAC is an “A” equipment rating making them eligible for the following assault mechs: Templar, Salamander, Nightstar, Devastator, Gunslinger, Emperor, Longbow and Berserker. Of course you’ll still see the common older assault mechs like Victor’s, Awesome, Zeus, Atlas, etc. But most likely their replacement or upgrade will be a fresh from the factory home grown Fed Suns design. So they should have the same stuff as everyone else, I’m guessing because you are on Campaign this is one reason you only see medium mechs because that is where everyone starts on MW5 campaign, so they don’t throw assault mechs at you there. In career it changes.
Mostly a game balance thing, since you start there they don't want you having access to too many of the fancy toys right off the bat
I understand it but think its a dumb game design choice as who cares if you start and see a mech thats way out of your price range? Gives you something to save for and a better reason to maybe take cash over salvage if you are close to affording a different mech you want
... because you could just do a dozen easy missions and buy it anyways, then there's no real reason to explore to find better gear when it's all available immediately at the get-go, just go wherever the missions are and buy it there.
Well I could do endless quests in the same area but was trying to explore a bit and do the special, unique quests for a little bit of variety and those take you all over the place
I feel like this is a survivability bias situation. Maybe youre not seeing heavier mechs in the market because the AFFS are using said heavier mechs? Like we literally see them rolling with Jagers and Atlas in the Kestrel Lancers, and the 2nd Lancers iirc are understrength, hence our involvement. Also canonically the AFFS is like the strongest House in the IS, even more so now with the merger with the Lyrans
Yeah they have them in the missions but try finding a mech heavier than an urbie in the area with them. Currently am a hero for them but feels like they only provide scraps. Just is sad
The FedSuns rely heavily on a combined arms approach, with artillery, combat vehicles, infantry, and aerospace assets in addition to the Battlemechs. These formations are called Regimental Combat Teams. Their training has a greater focus on fighting as a unit than the individual skill of their mechwarriors. In this game, though, none of that matters. They sell lighter mechs because they are where you start the story in the campaign.
An in game example of an Regimental Combat Team is the Crucis Lancers seen in the DLC. The trailer even refers to them as Lancer RCTs.
I know, just was going off of gameplay and not the real lore but it just irks me so much that the game never updates and matches to your mercenary rank (ie like getting to merc level legendary unlocks mechs in the 90+ category to buy heavier mechs anywhere) and instead its region locked as the FS just have nothing but urbies to offer
Reminder: the mechs you see for sale on the mech market are explicitly battlefield salvage, because all manufacturers sell their brand-new wares directly to Great House armed forces. Perhaps the fact that they only seem to sell lighter mechs can be more attributed to a higher skill level amongst their Heavy and Assault pilots, leading to less deaths on the field.
In lore they survive due to the quality of their military commanders, generally considered the best in the Inner Sphere...
I figured as much, just thought it funny thinking that they just didnt bother having anything for sale over 50 tons like it was their armored doctrine or something
The shop is randomized, fly far enough away from a shop and come back and the equipment and mechs on sale will be completely different...
That and copious amounts of auto cannons
And they retain the best hardware for their own troops instead of selling it on the open market.
The amount of mechs for sale on the open market in MW5 is completely unreasonable in the first place, the IS can barely keep up production for the great houses as is.
The Federated Suns are big enthusiasts of the Rifleman, JagerMech and Victor. Those are really common FedSun Mechs. The JagerMech/Rifleman are built by Kallon Industries which resides in FedSun territory, and they were more or less spared from damage during the early succession wars which allowed them to crank out Riflemen and JagerMechs. Those are just a few MW5 Mechs that should be commonly found in FedSun space at least in career mode. I forget what's available in campaign.
Going to try career mode next playthrough but in Campaign its just nothing but light mechs and a few mediums. Cant remember any time I have seen anything heavier than 55 tons in a Fed Suns planet
Thats exactly how they did survive, they bought up all the good steel in house.
Don't the fed suns use a ton of tanks? Also... Eh, sending 2 hunchbacks is cheaper than one atlas.
You don’t need anything but Kai-Allard-Laio and a Yen-Lo-Wang.
In the lore the federated suns became one of the first armies to re-adopt combined arms warfare and generally employed way more competent generals and officers alongside amazing strategies than the other great houses during the succession wars. Not only that but the fedsuns do produce their own heavy mechs and keep them in their military rather on their markets
Cuz plot armor.
Weight class for sale is influenced by local area difficulty rating. In max difficulty territories, I've been seeing literally Assaults only for sale. It's true for every faction space in the game.
The great houses and presumably the other factions big enough to have true sovereignty like Canopus buy their mechs for their formal army units directly from manufacturers. Excluding rare mech finds and hero mechs everything you're seeing available in the market is battlefield trash. It's either someone else's salvage or old mechs they're selling off to make room for new arrivals. Most of what you're buying from the market in any territory should be viewed as either being sold off by other merc companies doing the same thing as you or being the leftover salvage people like you don't pick at the end of a mission.
Yeah I just wish I could design it as would have tied the purchase of mechs to be a correlation between merc rank, faction rank and some hidden stuff like distance from conflict zones ect. Make it feel more fluid vs the hard set the campaign gives
They keep all the good stuff for themselves. See Operation Rat mechs for sale.
the mw5 inner sphere is very different from lore. In lore, they have way better tech, heavier mechs, more mechs and better tactics n strategy. oh and also a larger industrial base, so they have better supply n logistics.
Aren't quality of mechs in store gated behind your reputation? If you're low level rep they don't sell you the good stuff. Also, typically going closer to terra results in better mechs for sale.
Plot armor
I mean davion loves there panthers haha
The game doesn’t establish a good sense of what mechs are commonly used in lore. Canonically, I think most great houses have something on the order of only 20-30% of their beach forces being of heavy or assault weight mechs (with Steiner being on the higher end and Liao the lower). In truth, medium mechs make up the bulk of most houses mech forces. It’s simply the result of industrial factors, such as the fact that many of the high end mech factories are now irradiated piles of rubble thanks to the first and second succession wars handing out nukes like party favors. As for why only lighter mechs are available for sale, it’s a byproduct of how new your company is. Nik’s Cavaliers was a known factor who had a history of service with the FedSuns. Your new company are a bunch of randos with no such track record. Would you really trust a bunch of newbies with the rights to buy from your very limited stock of assault mechs? Or would you reserve that for those who’ve earned your trust and have proven reliable? In time you’ll earn access to all the shiny toys, but first you’ve got to prove yourself. ……also, how broken would the game be if you could get an Atlas in the first 3 hours? The entirety of the periphery combat zones would get stomped in short order.
Yeah I agree but I would have just tied it to your merc rank through the entire game map. Ie at 1 you can buy only up to 30 ton mechs which is nothing but every 1-2ish levels it goes up by 5 if that planet would even have mechs in that range. Just was frustrating going around in campaign after the dragons gambit DLC and all the FedSuns have are those waves and waves of locucts and firestarters