KickStarter BATTLETECH - turn-based mech combat from Harebrained Schemes

[Stavrophore]

So like Battle Brothers? Wasn't one of the causes of codex discontentment with BB that it was too "aimless"?.

From what I read, the problem with Battle brothers is a lack of content after a certain point, didn't play the game but that was what I read, those sorts of games don't need to be aimless, you just need to have a series of challenge goals to test you if you can beat them and the fun of the game is to use the mechanics to beat those challenge goals, a non linear game onlu becomes aimless when there is no new challenge goals presented to the player so the player has nothing to work towards.

Then you've read wrong, or you've read people who had hundreds of hours from BB, so i guess it was well worth the money. Of course every singleplayer games that has no continuous updates will in some future have problems with lack of content, since you can only play a game so much until you know all the nooks and crannies. BB had plenty of content, and the challenge was progressing as the campaign went on, you could clock easily 100 hours until you completed all what the game can offer, all three crises, every legendary item, and then the black monolith. BT is far shorter game with higher price. I would recommend you to play BB and then made an opinion, especially when comparing it to BT. Sure it's more aimless, but BB was/is still slightly more enjoyable. Not to say that BB is a great game, since its not, its a gem with wasted potential. These types of games, i would describe as "combat engine" that you have as a base, that you then put a few years and add all of the campaign mechanics and story to make a fully fleshed game.

 

[DeepOcean]

Oh boy, I remember the first mission I got with one and a half skull after the main mission on the moon, was an enemy lance with an intact hunchback, two commandos with heavy lasers, a panther with a PPC, 3 locusts with SRMs and medium lasers, 01 spider, two galleons and two strikers. I sweat a little against that setup as a newbie player with shitty weapons loadouts, this was the best aspects of the game and they are going to "smooth" thing up, this smells like codeword for challenge dumbdown so scrubs won't cry.

So, tactics light game will be mind numb easy until getting to the last missions... oh boy, the joy that it is 2018 game design.

Dang. What did you have on your side? This sounds like a fun battle to re-enact on TT.

Had a Centurion, a blackjack, shadow hawk and vindicator, kept retreating from the hunchback as it just melt my front armor if I got closer with its medium lasers while the commandos and panther just bombarded me, in the end, I tried o focus fire LRMS from the centurion on the hunchback for stability damage then end it with focus fire on the torso as it was on the ground, dunno if it was the best strategy to take it first as the constant fire of the other mechs was wearing my mechs down but I didn't like the idea of letting it get closer. I only survived because I kept retreating behind hills and other terrain cover to not let the other mechs on my battered left flank to keep firing.

In the end I had a vindicator without the left arm and really heavily damaged left leg and torso, one shot away from a knockdown that would be deadly, a black jack with almost dead center torso with just one shot away from eject, a heavily damaged shadow walk that lost an arm and a centurion that was the only one intact because it was mostly a LRM delivery machine. All the money I got from the mission was to repair the damage.

I liked this fight, you had to assassinate a diplomat and the game loaded both his escorts and reinforcements at the same time so both groups united to buttfuck me, this theoretically is the "BUG" they are going to "fix", what is sad, many missions are unusually hard because reinforcements are loaded with the regular expected groups so you get real fights on your hands as both groups many times will combine numbers, this is considerated a bug by the developers, what is sad. If this mission only spawned the reinforcements after I dealt with the escorts or had them waiting on another part of the map, it would be a mind numbing easy mission.

With the developers considering challenge being a bug, well there is only hope in modding.

 

[DeepOcean]

So like Battle Brothers? Wasn't one of the causes of codex discontentment with BB that it was too "aimless"?.

From what I read, the problem with Battle brothers is a lack of content after a certain point, didn't play the game but that was what I read, those sorts of games don't need to be aimless, you just need to have a series of challenge goals to test you if you can beat them and the fun of the game is to use the mechanics to beat those challenge goals, a non linear game onlu becomes aimless when there is no new challenge goals presented to the player so the player has nothing to work towards.

Then you've read wrong, or you've read people who had hundreds of hours from BB, so i guess it was well worth the money. Of course every singleplayer games that has no continuous updates will in some future have problems with lack of content, since you can only play a game so much until you know all the nooks and crannies. BB had plenty of content, and the challenge was progressing as the campaign went on, you could clock easily 100 hours until you completed all what the game can offer, all three crises, every legendary item, and then the black monolith. BT is far shorter game with higher price. I would recommend you to play BB and then made an opinion, especially when comparing it to BT. Sure it's more aimless, but BB was/is still slightly more enjoyable. Not to say that BB is a great game, since its not, its a gem with wasted potential. These types of games, i would describe as "combat engine" that you have as a base, that you then put a few years and add all of the campaign mechanics and story to make a fully fleshed game.

Hummm... gonna check it out, I was very interested on the game and was about to play it, got discouraged when the developers pretty munch said they would abandon the game as it was a commercial failure and I just ended forgetting about it.

 

[Galdred]

So like Battle Brothers? Wasn't one of the causes of codex discontentment with BB that it was too "aimless"?.

From what I read, the problem with Battle brothers is a lack of content after a certain point, didn't play the game but that was what I read, those sorts of games don't need to be aimless, you just need to have a series of challenge goals to test you if you can beat them and the fun of the game is to use the mechanics to beat those challenge goals, a non linear game onlu becomes aimless when there is no new challenge goals presented to the player so the player has nothing to work towards.

Then you've read wrong, or you've read people who had hundreds of hours from BB, so i guess it was well worth the money. Of course every singleplayer games that has no continuous updates will in some future have problems with lack of content, since you can only play a game so much until you know all the nooks and crannies. BB had plenty of content, and the challenge was progressing as the campaign went on, you could clock easily 100 hours until you completed all what the game can offer, all three crises, every legendary item, and then the black monolith. BT is far shorter game with higher price. I would recommend you to play BB and then made an opinion, especially when comparing it to BT. Sure it's more aimless, but BB was/is still slightly more enjoyable. Not to say that BB is a great game, since its not, its a gem with wasted potential. These types of games, i would describe as "combat engine" that you have as a base, that you then put a few years and add all of the campaign mechanics and story to make a fully fleshed game.

Hummm... gonna check it out, I was very interested on the game and was about to play it, got discouraged when the developers pretty munch said they would abandon the game as it was a commercial failure and I just ended forgetting about it.

It never was a commercial failure, and they never said that.

100-200k units sold on Steam, so let's say 180k including gog. Let"s assume that 60% of the € did not go to the developers, but was eaten by promotions, VAT, Steam and gog commissions, that leaves roughly 2M of gross revenue.
Most indie teams would kill for such commercial failure (I sure would consider it!).

Basically, they hard coded too many things into their engine to make it simple to add DLC or rework the underlying mechanisms, so they said they would not do any DLC, but the game has very few bugs, and is really good for what it is (ie for a medieval skirmish generator).

 

[Modron]

Hummm... gonna check it out, I was very interested on the game and was about to play it, got discouraged when the developers pretty munch said they would abandon the game as it was a commercial failure and I just ended forgetting about it.

Developers didn't abandon the Battle Brothers they made constant progress, never went silent, and released it feature complete minus some stuff they scrapped early in development like city and fort battles because having large objects that restricted movement didn't really gel with the Hold the Line style combat and initiative system.

If you are okay with Mount and Blade games you can't really complain about bare-bones content in BB is my stance on the subject. BB was made by 3 people and sold what in the neighborhood of 120k units. I would say 30% would be an optimistic adoption rate if they went and made an expansion to quell the tarded masses and that probably wouldn't recoup the development time. No they pumped out some small patches producing a nearly bugfree game and the Lindworm dlc then did the smart thing and moved on to working on their next game.

I largely think the whole abandoned meme was started by tards who were incapable of understanding percentages and were shocked when the final 1.0 version didn't have hundreds of hour more content then .95 or whatever the last early access version was a month before release.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I checked and that thread is 100+ pages long, I'm not going to waste that much time.

You really should.
Good stuff starts at page 8 and HE keeps delivering.

 

[Jimmious]

Stavrophore yes like BB but I'm not very... impartial:

But of course this is what I mean to develop a deeper "open ended" campaign. They got the basis there already, there are proceedurally generated contracts and missions, enemy lances etc.
Instead of putting in a boring story (which does contain some cool missions combat wise though) they could just expand on these and add some "life" in the universe. I'd play that non-stop honestly, I already like the game enough...

 

[PanteraNera]

Sarissofoi they are having a party about one of your favorite topics, and no one invited you

Spoiler

So like Battle Brothers? Wasn't one of the causes of codex discontentment with BB that it was too "aimless"? Campaign would be good, but in a real mercenary way -like your goal is to duel/compete with the best merc company in battletech world, and you take contracts for better reputation, better gear and better crew that your reputation would attract. In your campaign you would skirmish and compete with many mercenaries/merc bands along the way outcompeting them, with better prices, making assignments faster etc, until you got on the top and fight with very best of the best. You would have to deal with sabotage, backstabbing, derailing. You could engage in politics to gain a sponsor/patron from one of the houses, to get to the position faster at the expense of paying levy for protection and more reputation/recognition. This would be an awesome game, with LOTS of replayability, with different factions/paths providing unique challenges, providing resources like different houses giving different bonuses, different parts, like better autocannons/equipment. But no, we got the very bland white-horsey campaign, that completely drop the replayability out of the window. In one playthrough you can train all classes and combinations, have all mechs, have all contracts, there is no reason to pick this game again after completing it, unless they introduce some very drastic changes and second wave alike options akin to what long war did to XCOM. And the game isn't that long, because you can easily finish it in 30 hours if you factor out all the slowing animations and loading times. Hell with fast loading you could do it even in 20 hours, since the last boss fight is laughable, you only need some mix of medium and heavy mechs, assault mechs are completely unnecessary. So is the game worth 40 dollars? Hell no, i would pick it for 20 if you can.Too few hours of gameplay to pay 40 dolla.

The problem of BB was not that it lacked story, but that it lacked campaign progression:
Jagged Alliance has virtually no story either, but you have a clear goal for the campaign. Same with X-COM.
That is the limit of a pure mercenary game actually: the end goal is not very engaging (save enough money to retire!).

From what I read, the problem with Battle brothers is a lack of content after a certain point, didn't play the game but that was what I read, those sorts of games don't need to be aimless, you just need to have a series of challenge goals to test you if you can beat them and the fun of the game is to use the mechanics to beat those challenge goals, a non linear game onlu becomes aimless when there is no new challenge goals presented to the player so the player has nothing to work towards.

Then you've read wrong, or you've read people who had hundreds of hours from BB, so i guess it was well worth the money. Of course every singleplayer games that has no continuous updates will in some future have problems with lack of content, since you can only play a game so much until you know all the nooks and crannies. BB had plenty of content, and the challenge was progressing as the campaign went on, you could clock easily 100 hours until you completed all what the game can offer, all three crises, every legendary item, and then the black monolith. BT is far shorter game with higher price. I would recommend you to play BB and then made an opinion, especially when comparing it to BT. Sure it's more aimless, but BB was/is still slightly more enjoyable. Not to say that BB is a great game, since its not, its a gem with wasted potential. These types of games, i would describe as "combat engine" that you have as a base, that you then put a few years and add all of the campaign mechanics and story to make a fully fleshed game.

Developers didn't abandon the Battle Brothers they made constant progress, never went silent, and released it feature complete minus some stuff they scrapped early in development like city and fort battles because having large objects that restricted movement didn't really gel with the Hold the Line style combat and initiative system.

If you are okay with Mount and Blade games you can't really complain about bare-bones content in BB is my stance on the subject. BB was made by 3 people and sold what in the neighborhood of 120k units. I would say 30% would be an optimistic adoption rate if they went and made an expansion to quell the tarded masses and that probably wouldn't recoup the development time. No they pumped out some small patches producing a nearly bugfree game and the Lindworm dlc then did the smart thing and moved on to working on their next game.

I largely think the whole abandoned meme was started by tards who were incapable of understanding percentages and were shocked when the final 1.0 version didn't have hundreds of hour more content then .95 or whatever the last early access version was a month before release.

 

[Shadowfang]

Still having fun although i am not very far in the game. The story is the worst from all the HBS games. Full of cringe moments and necessary world references. It feels like the world has not it's own setting and history, and keeps on relying on real events. From Auschwitz to Chemical Attacks? Gee i wounder what i will find out next.

 

[Stavrophore]

Still having fun although i am not very far in the game. The story is the worst from all the HBS games. Full of cringe moments and necessary world references. It feels like the world has not it's own setting and history, and keeps on relying on real events. From Auschwitz to Chemical Attacks? Gee i wounder what i will find out next.

Some dictator from Periphery named Mashar Bassad will gas his own people at planet Gouma. Trumpian Concordat will retaliate along with Commonwealth Worlds League and French Confederation ,but Hillary Arano will complain that it's not enough since Trumpian Concordat is in cahoots with Russian Combine who are bankrolling and supporting Mashar Bassad.

The fact that story tries to mimick real world politics of our current world, is because...battletech universe is based on human civilization. So it's obvious the same rules,logics and deeds apply. So yes, you will have space hitlers, death camps, gassing of people etc.

 

[Theldaran]

Nope, Trump is the Free Worlds League.

 

[Thane Solus]

So wait, there is just one path, to help that retarded wayman and her SJW ideology?

 

[Stavrophore]

So wait, there is just one path, to help that retarded wayman and her SJW ideology?

Yes.

 

[Ezeekiel]

So like Battle Brothers? Wasn't one of the causes of codex discontentment with BB that it was too "aimless"?.

From what I read, the problem with Battle brothers is a lack of content after a certain point, didn't play the game but that was what I read, those sorts of games don't need to be aimless, you just need to have a series of challenge goals to test you if you can beat them and the fun of the game is to use the mechanics to beat those challenge goals, a non linear game onlu becomes aimless when there is no new challenge goals presented to the player so the player has nothing to work towards.

Then you've read wrong, or you've read people who had hundreds of hours from BB, so i guess it was well worth the money. Of course every singleplayer games that has no continuous updates will in some future have problems with lack of content, since you can only play a game so much until you know all the nooks and crannies. BB had plenty of content, and the challenge was progressing as the campaign went on, you could clock easily 100 hours until you completed all what the game can offer, all three crises, every legendary item, and then the black monolith. BT is far shorter game with higher price. I would recommend you to play BB and then made an opinion, especially when comparing it to BT. Sure it's more aimless, but BB was/is still slightly more enjoyable. Not to say that BB is a great game, since its not, its a gem with wasted potential. These types of games, i would describe as "combat engine" that you have as a base, that you then put a few years and add all of the campaign mechanics and story to make a fully fleshed game.

Hummm... gonna check it out, I was very interested on the game and was about to play it, got discouraged when the developers pretty munch said they would abandon the game as it was a commercial failure and I just ended forgetting about it.

IMO you had it right originally, but whatever. The game is quite enjoyable for a while before it just kind of fizzles out when you realize how little there really is to it. You should be able to get your money's worth out of it especially in these lean times.

And if you're one of those low-standards people like Jimmious or Stavrophore then it might even become an all-time favorite of yours or something

 

[Stavrophore]

And if you're one of those low-standards people like Jimmious or Stavrophore then it might even become an all-time favorite of yours or something

Lol where'd you found i've said it was my all time favourite?
This

Not to say that BB is a great game, since its not, its a gem with wasted potential. These types of games, i would describe as "combat engine" that you have as a base, that you then put a few years and add all of the campaign mechanics and story to make a fully fleshed game.

is hardly all-time favourite praise.
I've never clocked more than 80 hours in BB, didn't even finish the black monolith hunt. Yep, the game bored me before checking all what it has to offer. There are people though who played it for hundreds of hour, mastering expert ironman. I have no such desire, as its like a second work, and not fun at all.

 

[Ezeekiel]

And if you're one of those low-standards people like Jimmious or Stavrophore then it might even become an all-time favorite of yours or something

Lol where'd you found i've said it was my all time favourite?
This

Not to say that BB is a great game, since its not, its a gem with wasted potential. These types of games, i would describe as "combat engine" that you have as a base, that you then put a few years and add all of the campaign mechanics and story to make a fully fleshed game.

is hardly all-time favourite praise.
I've never clocked more than 80 hours in BB, didn't even finish the black monolith hunt. Yep, the game bored me before checking all what it has to offer. There are people though who played it for hundreds of hour, mastering expert ironman. I have no such desire, as its like a second work, and not fun at all.

I think I added your name just because I was reading your post in-between typing mine or something, weird. Definitely not quite what I intended. Fixing now.

Edit: Fixed. Also, I think it was actually because I disagreed with some of the first part of your post and somehow got my wires crossed, adding your name to the line instead of actually addressing your post in a new quote as I intended. Weird!

 

[Cael]

Still having fun although i am not very far in the game. The story is the worst from all the HBS games. Full of cringe moments and necessary world references. It feels like the world has not it's own setting and history, and keeps on relying on real events. From Auschwitz to Chemical Attacks? Gee i wounder what i will find out next.

CHEMICAL ATTACKS? WTF??? Seriously?

One of the BIG things about BTech is that all WMD are banned heavily. That is why the whole Inner Sphere AND the Clans went berserk against the Word of Blake in the Jihad because the Wobbies did use WMDs. That a minor Periphery power would dare use it with THREE Great Houses next door is so out of whack to the setting that they might as well call it Macross.

 

[Cael]

Oh boy, I remember the first mission I got with one and a half skull after the main mission on the moon, was an enemy lance with an intact hunchback, two commandos with heavy lasers, a panther with a PPC, 3 locusts with SRMs and medium lasers, 01 spider, two galleons and two strikers. I sweat a little against that setup as a newbie player with shitty weapons loadouts, this was the best aspects of the game and they are going to "smooth" thing up, this smells like codeword for challenge dumbdown so scrubs won't cry.

So, tactics light game will be mind numb easy until getting to the last missions... oh boy, the joy that it is 2018 game design.

Dang. What did you have on your side? This sounds like a fun battle to re-enact on TT.

Had a Centurion, a blackjack, shadow hawk and vindicator, kept retreating from the hunchback as it just melt my front armor if I got closer with its medium lasers while the commandos and panther just bombarded me, in the end, I tried o focus fire LRMS from the centurion on the hunchback for stability damage then end it with focus fire on the torso as it was on the ground, dunno if it was the best strategy to take it first as the constant fire of the other mechs was wearing my mechs down but I didn't like the idea of letting it get closer. I only survived because I kept retreating behind hills and other terrain cover to not let the other mechs on my battered left flank to keep firing.

In the end I had a vindicator without the left arm and really heavily damaged left leg and torso, one shot away from a knockdown that would be deadly, a black jack with almost dead center torso with just one shot away from eject, a heavily damaged shadow walk that lost an arm and a centurion that was the only one intact because it was mostly a LRM delivery machine. All the money I got from the mission was to repair the damage.

I liked this fight, you had to assassinate a diplomat and the game loaded both his escorts and reinforcements at the same time so both groups united to buttfuck me, this theoretically is the "BUG" they are going to "fix", what is sad, many missions are unusually hard because reinforcements are loaded with the regular expected groups so you get real fights on your hands as both groups many times will combine numbers, this is considerated a bug by the developers, what is sad. If this mission only spawned the reinforcements after I dealt with the escorts or had them waiting on another part of the map, it would be a mind numbing easy mission.

With the developers considering challenge being a bug, well there is only hope in modding.

OK. The way I see it, your greatest threats are the Commandos, the Locusts and the Spider. They have the long range weapons and/or the speed to backstab. Forget about the rest. Try to lure them away from the rest with long range weapons. PPCs, LRM, AC5, AC2, Large Lasers. Once they are out of mutual coverage, kill them FIRST. Concentrate fire on Commandos first, then deal with the Locusts and Spider. Then, whack the Panther if it had strayed from the pack. Otherwise, hit the Strikers then go after the Panther. Once that is down, the rest are all short-range stuff. Just use long range fire to take them out. They can't touch you.

Never get into a knife fight if you can avoid it. That is why I see all the SRM-boat builds and laugh. In TT, they are nothing but glorified targets. And hence why I consider the Demolisher the dividing line between retarded noob and someone with half a brain cell.

 

[newtmonkey]

I thought Cael was overreacting in this thread, but I bought the game and put an hour in, and it really does not feel like playing Battletech at all. I played BT all the time as a kid (still even have my boxed set, but have not played since middle school), and I really had a hard time adapting to the changes in the computer game. I'm not saying they had to be 100% faithful to the board game (though it would have been nice if they were ), but I felt like I was playing some other game influenced by BT.

 

[DeepOcean]

I thought Cael was overreacting in this thread, but I bought the game and put an hour in, and it really does not feel like playing Battletech at all. I played BT all the time as a kid (still even have my boxed set, but have not played since middle school), and I really had a hard time adapting to the changes in the computer game. I'm not saying they had to be 100% faithful to the board game (though it would have been nice if they were ), but I felt like I was playing some other game influenced by BT.

Really sad that even the creators of the thing don't give it proper respect.

 

[DeepOcean]

well call it Macross.

Well, they really wanted but that desperate battletech grognard money was too tempting to miss.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Hey Cael, do you by any chance know how the underlying mechanics in Mech Commander 1 worked? I remember being unable to make my mechs do alpha strikes or anything, there was no heat gauge etc... Put all light lasers on an Atlas for fun and he just kind of cycled through them slowly, barely did much for his fire rate etc.
I ended up with nothing but PPC/ER PPC boat-ish mechs I think, but I also knew fuck-all about Battletech at the time until I finally looked into it.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Spoiler

^LOL

But...but... it’s only a pronoun you can choose at the beginning! Why are you so angry? Are you are nazi?!

 

[Jenkem]

I got that event and it said "four women, three men" for me.. I should have taken a screenshot to prove it for you CACs

 

[Cael]

Hey Cael, do you by any chance know how the underlying mechanics in Mech Commander 1 worked? I remember being unable to make my mechs do alpha strikes or anything, there was no heat gauge etc... Put all light lasers on an Atlas for fun and he just kind of cycled through them slowly, barely did much for his fire rate etc.
I ended up with nothing but PPC/ER PPC boat-ish mechs I think, but I also knew fuck-all about Battletech at the time until I finally looked into it.

The fire rates are fixed. They tell you what the fire rate of the individual weapons in MechCommander is. I don't know why you think more would make them first faster...

MechCommander basically defaults to alpha strikes. The second anything comes into range, all weapons of that range bracket will open fire on it. After that, it is dependent on the fire rate to see what fires next.

Heat is not overtly implemented in the game, but it is sort of taken into account in the weapon weights. That is why most of the weights of the weapons are what they are (weight of weapon + weight heat sinking required (in lots of 0.5t) + ammo (if any)).

PPC and ER PPC boats are pretty standard in TT, depending on the faction you are playing. Clanners would be crazy NOT to play ER PPC boats (unless they are greenies, then go with Large Pulse Lasers). PPCs are a very good balance of heat, range and damage, and most 'mechs armed with PPCs in ANY era are respected beasts (except the Banshee; it sucks big donkeys).

In both MechCommanders, ER PPC/ER Large Laser boat is the way to go. You want the range and striking power. Use LRM to fill in the weight/space/heat holes. The shorter the range of the weapon, the less you want it on your 'mechs. PPC, Large Laser and ER laser are acceptable alternatives, but anything else should be seriously looked at.