Expanded Arsenal adds 500+ new mech variants, new weapons, vehicles and turrets ranging from the Star League to the Jihad era. This modpack is the spiritual successor to the old Vanilla Plus mod by Mattyxr, and includes 99% of the content from that mod. The aim is to vastly expand the selection of units that you can encounter on the battlefield, giving you new enemies to fight and new loot to collect.
Expanded Arsenal is unique among the major modpacks in not changing the core gameplay mechanics at all. If you know how vanilla HBS BattleTech works, you know how EA works. Of course, that doesn't mean everything plays exactly the same -- that would be boring. By providing new mechs and new gear, EA changes the tactics and strategies that you can employ, which keeps things fresh. In particular EA bundles a number of mods that are specifically intended to provide you with extra challenge, and extra rewards for meeting that challenge.
As a relatively lightweight mod, Expanded Arsenal can be used in either campaign or career mode. It can also be dropped into a game in progress; you don't have to start a new game to play it.
Expanded Arsenal has two major prerequisites that are not included in the modpack. See the following links for download and installation instructions.
- The Community Asset Bundle is required and can be found here: https://discourse.modsinexile.com/t/community-assets-bundle-cab/115
- ModTek version 3.0 or higher is required. Get it from GitHub: https://github.com/BattletechModders/ModTek/blob/master/INSTALL.md.
Expanded Arsenal can also be installed as an upgrade from Vanilla Plus; after doing this, delete the VP mod folders to avoid any clashes. However, it isn't meant to be used with other large modpacks, and doing so will most likely break your game.
With the amount of new toys that EA provides, things can get a bit stale after a while. The following mods are intended to provide extra challenge -- and extra rewards to go with it.
Elite Forces adds over 80 new mech variants and vehicles, using ++ and +++ weaponry and upgrades from the vanilla game. Piloting them are 60-odd new NPC mechwarriors with higher skill levels than the default opfor pilots. The best elite pilots are aces, with unique abilities that make them tough opponents on the battlefield.
Elite Arsenal adds several features to build on the core Expanded Arsenal + Elite Forces gameplay:
- + and ++ variants of Expanded Arsenal weapons and gear. If you've run out of things to buy and loot, this is the upgrade path you're looking for.
- 250+ new variants of Expanded Arsenal mechs, which are deadlier than even those from Elite Forces.
- Elite contracts and repeatable flashpoints. Fight the Word of Blake's Jihad for the ultimate endgame experience!
By default Elite Arsenal is disabled, so as not to overwhelm you at the start of a game. The recommended approach is to play with only Elite Forces enabled while you get your team established, then enable Elite Arsenal. In addition, Expanded Arsenal provides an introductory flashpoint to give you a taste of what Elite Arsenal combat is like.
LAMs and Superheavies add mechs of these types to the opfor. Both of these mods build on Elite Arsenal to add more content to the endgame. Land-Air Mechs (LAMs) are fast, agile, and nearly unhittable, while superheavies are juggernauts boasting incredible levels of protection and firepower.
In addition, the following included mods are optional: you don't have to use them, but they make the game just a little more fun.
- Panic System
- Skip Intro
- Repair Bays
- Mech Affinity
- Pilot Fatigue
This modpack includes the contributions of many people: mattyxr/crackfox (Vanilla Plus), Haakon the Viking (several weapons and other items), tokan511 (Elite Forces), CWolf (Mission Control), m22spencer (BattletechPerformanceFix), janxious (FYLS), ice raptor (Loot Magnet, IRTweaks), gnivler (Panic System, Pilot Fatigue), mpstark (Skip Intro), tbone (IRTweaks), Amechwarrior (Better AI), Jamie Wolf (Mech Affinity), Don Zappo (Repair Bays, Pilot Fatigue), Asimov (Drop Tonnage Reward and Limit on Difficulty), mcb (Simple Mech Assembly).
In addition, many thanks to Amechwarrior, tbone, Jamie Wolf, CWolf and others on Discord who helped me come to grips with the HBS flashpoint system.
The best place to provide feedback is on Reddit, at r/BattleTechGame or r/BattleTechMods. If you think you've found a bug, you can also open an issue at the GitHub repo: https://github.com/hongooi73/ExpandedArsenal
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