Life is Hard

Current version: 5.2

Feature List:

- Improved version of vanilla BattleTech campaign which is now much harder to complete.
- Basic tutorial skipped.
- Missions are harder.
- Your income is lower and your bills are higher.
- Starting mechs are smaller and weaker.
- You can choose your own starting mech. Urbanmech is an option!
- Argo upgrades are costly.
- Pilot salaries are smaller.
- Change of financing level affect morale dramatically.
- Much less salvage. Money or Salvage? Choose wisely.
- New evasion system. You will be struggling to hit fast and small mechs.

• Fast and light mechs get much more evasion ticks. Mediums get a boost too.
• Forests are slower to move through.
• Changed initiative to favor lighter mech and vehicles.
• Legged mechs are slow and prone to fall down.
• Forests reduce accuracy for both mechs instead of granting damage resistance.
• Many small changes to evasion system to make a whole new experience.
  

- Running reduce instability a bit.
- Sprinting does not reduce instability.
- Jumping increase instability.
- Guarded gives 25% damage resistance, bulwark provide 30%, tops  (down from up to 60% in vanilla game).
- Guarded only give 25% to stability damage resistance  (down from up to 50% in vanilla game). 
- Heat generated for walking or running. 
- Called shot now have penalty to hit instead of bonus.
- Increased visibility and engagement distances.
- New sounds and music.
- AI improvements.
- Historic and lore based game tips.
- Stores assortment give more variance, based on significance  of star systems. 
- Backwards words will only sell basic equipment and only a little of mech and parts
- Ammo explode when hit or overheat.
- You pay for armor repair, and it can takes few days if damage is severe.
- Headlights cosmetic improvements.
- Visual clarity and fidelity improvements.
- Camera improvements.
- No camera auto-focus on ingame events. You can now fully control camera yourself.
- Smaller vehicle 3D models and a bit of tweaking of Mech sizes (some are smaller too).
- Interface delays and wait times removed where possible.
- More pilot portraits.
- Pilots get less experience with time.
- Injured pilots lose some skills temporarily.
- Cored mechs (both yours and enemy) can not be salvaged. Some equipment can still survive though.
- You can move if you are in melee.
- Mission Control mod integrated. More diverse and action packed missions with more enemies and friendlies involved.
- Bigger Drops integrated. You can drop up to 8 mechs with Argo upgrades.
- Panic system integrated. Pilots can lose morale and even eject in mission.
- More variety of Tanks on a battlefield.
- Turrets are much more armored.
- Less annoying reminders from crew.
- Repair multiple mechs per pod after Argo upgrades.
- Damage stay on the ground and did not disappear.
- Skip intro and dropship travel cutscenes.
- Mechs revised:

• Removed ability to install Jump Jets with mechs which did not have that ability in lore.
• For every energy or ballistic slot added one support slot.
  

- Weapon rebalance:

• AC2/5/10: fire bursts (cosmetic improvement)
• AC2: weight: 4 (-2) tons, 20 (-5) damage, 2 (-2) heat, 45 (+20) ammo/ton, 90 m (-30) minimum range.
• AC5: 60 m (-30) minimum range, 20 (+5) ammo/ton.
• AC10: 10 (+2) ammo/ton.
• Large Lasers: 45 (+5) damage and 25 (+7) heat, 0 (-1) recoil.
• Medium Lasers: 10 (-2) heat, 0 (-1) recoil.
• Small Lasers: 15 (-10) damage and 3 (-3) heat. 
• PPC: 55 (+5) damage,  30 (-5) heat, 5 (+5) heat damage, 2 (-1) recoil.
• Lost Tech weapons are on pair or better compared to top tier normal weapons.
• Pulse Lasers ignore 2 evasion points.
• Most weapons will be more accurate at close range and less accurate at long range.
• Half ton ammo bins added.
  

- Many options could be adjusted at the start of the Campaign.  

Installation instructions:

Mod adapted for BattleTech 1.9.1 and configured to be fully stand-alone.

1. Clean BattleTech install is recommended.
2. Unpack archive into into BattleTech game folder. Overwrite files.
3. Play.

To Uninstall:

1. Verify integrity of game files from steam.
2. Remove mods from BattleTech\mods\ folder.

Known Issues:

• Loading save games made in battles is not recommended. Mission goals could broke and game could hang at the debriefing.
• Hit probabilities are not computed according to movement. If you move before fire you will get lower hit chances than shown.
• Descriptions of Guarded and Bulwark abilities in battle are incorrect.