MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries

131 ratings
Better Cantina Rewards
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
File Size
Posted
Updated
4.648 MB
23 Dec, 2023 @ 5:28am
20 Feb, 2024 @ 5:59pm
2 Change Notes ( view )

Subscribe to download
Better Cantina Rewards

Description
**Update (Feb. 20th, 2024)!**

Notable Updates:
- Significantly increased C-Bills rewarded for the ‘Mech Collector Career Path
- Increased C-Bills rewarded for the ‘Mech Hunter Career Path
- Improved distribution of C-Bills for the Equipment Collector, Treasure Hunter, Wardog, and Weapon Collector Career Paths
- Re-balanced and improved C-Bill distribution for various weapon and equipment types (Standard, RetroTech, and LosTech)
- Fixed progression errors NATIVE TO THE VANILLA GAME for the ‘Mech Collector Career Path
- Re-balanced progression for the ‘Mech Collector and ‘Mech Hunter Career Paths

As usual, please keep in mind that this mod is supposed to try and balance rewards between vanilla and YAML playthroughs (along with any other playthroughs that may benefit).

Enjoy! ^-^

- Masters

--

This mod is a complete overhaul of Cantina rewards; offering FAR better rewards overall; improving upgrade progression scaling; and fixing mistakes.

--

Overview:
Rewards for this mod have been adjusted so that there is a greater focus on receiving rare weapons and LosTech, along with a lesser emphasis on rewarding C-Bills (as they are so easy to come by in a vanilla playthrough).

For general rewards, Primitive Weapons (being Rifles and Chemical Lasers) and Double Heatsinks get a particular boost to how commonly they are awarded due to how rare they are in the game, while Pulse Lasers, Extended-range Weapons, LBX Autocannons, and the Ultra Autocannon 5 – along with other LosTech – are also more likely to appear as rewards (though less than Primitive Weapons). In addition, MASC, Guardian ECM, and the Beagle Active Probe are equipment that is significantly more likely to appear (like Primitive Weapons – for the same reasons), while other equipment (such as EWECM, and the EW Active Probe) is more likely to appear as well (though, again, less likely than MASC, G-ECM, and the BAP).

--

Specific Changes:
In particular, the Weapons Collector tree has been re-done so as to allow players to trade-in low-tier weapons for fewer, but better weapons across the board; acting as a sort of upgrade/recycling system. The higher the Cantina mission level, the greater the weapon requirements, and the greater the mission rewards (weapon tier level, and other applicable rewards (such as ammo and/or C-Bills).

For the ‘Mech Hunter and ‘Mech Collector trees, there have been various adjustments, as well. An example is that Crusader and Longbow have both been added, as they were both not included. (For those without the required DLCs for these ‘Mechs (4 and 5), you can skip these missions if they pop up.) Two notable ‘Mechs were removed from the ‘Mech Hunter tree: those being the Nightstar, and the Marauder II. Certain rare ‘Mechs have also had their requirements scaled down due to how rare they are, or when they spawn for the given Cantina mission difficulty (late game versus early game): such as (or certain variants of) the Flea, Commando, Raven, Wolfhound, Assassin, Champion, Cataphract, Black Knight, Hatamoto Chi, Annihilator, King Crab, and more. Lastly, certain ‘Mechs have been added for more variety in what ‘Mechs to collect or hunt down, as they were either omitted (when they would make fine choices to add), or they were common variants (a mistake).

--

Note:
I highly recommend that many people – if not EVERYONE – installs this mod – not for my sake, but for the sake of the balance and utility of Cantina missions being improved. There are no perceivable drawbacks, and both vanilla and modded playthroughs will benefit from its improvements – the very least being the “weapon trade-in rewards/program”.

Also, this mod appears to be compatible with YAML; including one of its most – if not most – recent additions: its upgrade system. I have done testing and have seen no issues, although I have not done extensive-enough testing to know whether it is flawless or not. (Please let me know if there are any issues.)

--

In Closing:
Surprisingly (or not), there are many mistakes: from experience not being rewarded; to Faction Standing not increasing; to upgrade progression giving improper levels of experience; and more. Re-balancing also had to be done to every reward, with every one being built from the ground up. (There are *hundreds* of entries. I made more than what was there originally, too, in order to improve things.) As a result, this mod took MANY TENS of hours to complete – possibly around fifty (50). It was a lot of (tedious) work, but I figured it was important enough to do in order for players to no longer have to experience some of the terrible balance the Cantina can have, in addition to having (hopefully) many strong improvements.

I hope you enjoy this mod if you choose to use it. May your Cantina missions and rewards be great if you choose to use this!

- Masters

--

Instructions:

Using this mod will cause all previous Cantina missions to show up in a bugged state. This is normal, as all Cantina missions are new, and have no vanilla data to draw from.

In order to receive the new missions, simply delete all old Cantina missions, and travel to a new star system that has spawned with a new Cantina. All new missions can be selected from there, and will function correctly.

--

Other mods by me!:
Alternate Flamer Visuals: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2948400310
Dimmer Loot Beam: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2940186998
Enhanced Critical: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2940640271
Enhanced ‘Mech Traits: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2983473695
High-damage Critical: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2953761510
Improved Airstrike: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2940220051
Increased Enemy Difficulty: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2953775337
Increased Treefall Animation Rate ("The 'Timber' Mod!"): https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2940172839
Increased Warzone Rewards: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2948334069
Increased Warzone Rewards (Light): https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2949647321
Party Critical: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2955735109
Projectile-based Machine Guns: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2871120748
Re-balanced and Expanded Jump Jets: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2953691075
Re-balanced and Expanded ‘Mechs: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3085013956
Re-balanced and Expanded Weapons (My main mod): https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2869025156

--

I now have a Ko-fi!

Contribute here if you’d like to: https://ko-fi.com/altamasters1011 :)
46 Comments
Alan 8 Jun @ 8:07pm 
As with others, I appreciate the intent of this mod, but I think it fails to reach that intent due largely to rewarding massive amounts of low tier items. Additionally, it often requires massive amounts of items for collection quests. This is both not useful as well as detrimental to game performance, since storing large amounts of items decreases game performance.
MovingTarget 6 Feb @ 5:21pm 
First of all, Great Mod
I can't do it myself, so this is not criticism; consider this a respectful request.

Can the rewards be adjusted to be more useful?
So many of the rewards are for far too many small things I will never use.
I have no need of 48x SRM2 with Artemis.
And i just can't get practical use of 32x Flamers.
Few items of high value would be better.

None of the Mech Collector offers are worth the trade. Ever.
I get Cantina offers like Collect one [specific variant] mech for one tier zero medium laser, one heatsink a small cash payout and 4 reputation points.
That's a really bad trade by any standard, and the reputation boost is just because every other mercenary company out there is laughing at you.
(it's even worse when playing under YAML salvage rules V2.)

These should offer some premium equipment or high-value losttech; otherwise I'll just sell off the mech and buy lots of tier 0 medium lasers and heatsinks.
Naylind 7 Dec, 2024 @ 2:09am 
Hi, don't understand why there's so many reward as chemical lasers and Rifles tier 5, i mean practially i get 90% of these as reward and in great quantities. At some point i started to tweak some battlemechs since i possess thousands of the stuff.
Swanky 1 Oct, 2024 @ 8:36am 
This isn't Warzone Rewards, this is Cantina. So it should work?
SPEEDRUNNER - Z 21 Sep, 2024 @ 5:26am 
damn. compat patch in the works?
[TAW] Derisat Hartfelt 20 Sep, 2024 @ 8:57am 
sadly it has hard conflicts with coyote, as listed in coyotes nexus page.
coltace45 7 Jul, 2024 @ 10:25am 
I can confirm this still works with the most recent patch
ChuToy_89  [author] 12 Jun, 2024 @ 10:10pm 
@dem22 - See previous comments for details. (Everything should be fine.)
dem22 12 Jun, 2024 @ 8:49pm 
Hello. After installing most of the Cantina mission options now just say Blank Text with a 0 zero rewards. Perhaps the last DLC changed something? Thanks for your efforts this was what I was looking for.
Ryllian 1 Apr, 2024 @ 4:06pm 
Fair enough, thanks for the reply, still the only thing that makes cantina worth using.