KickStarter BATTLETECH - turn-based mech combat from Harebrained Schemes

[Drakron]

It's just an attempt to sell the DLC

You mean a mod that should been on the base game if they werent too busy putting scars and space hijab on female characters.

 

[Siveon]

I tried going into this game with an open mind, but I got hit with a lot of boring right from the start, and when I finished my character I got stuck on the loading screen for 2 minutes.

I'm kinda disappointed here, Harebrained.

 

[Cael]

I tried going into this game with an open mind, but I got hit with a lot of boring right from the start, and when I finished my character I got stuck on the loading screen for 2 minutes.

I'm kinda disappointed here, Harebrained.

You bought the game after all the comments here?

 

[Siveon]

I tried going into this game with an open mind, but I got hit with a lot of boring right from the start, and when I finished my character I got stuck on the loading screen for 2 minutes.

I'm kinda disappointed here, Harebrained.

You bought the game after all the comments here?

Free weekend.

EDIT: Bold of you to assume I'd read all of this shit

 

[Cael]

I tried going into this game with an open mind, but I got hit with a lot of boring right from the start, and when I finished my character I got stuck on the loading screen for 2 minutes.

I'm kinda disappointed here, Harebrained.

You bought the game after all the comments here?

Free weekend.

EDIT: Bold of you to assume I'd read all of this shit

Biggest furball at the time. If you weren't aware of it, you've been under a rock.

 

[Tweed]

Just play Cyberstorm instead.

 

[Country_Gravy]

You're better of just playing with yourself.

 

[Drakron]

I tried playing it, I have to say the system is "kinda" decent/good but its also kinda odd as enemies have a death wish and will melee perfectly fine mechs when they got their weapons blown off instead of being sensible and eject meaning the AI is kinda oblivious to the eject option making some fights just irritating.

As for the story, I guess people gone over it but I have to say it seems there was a good outline of the basic story that got rewritten with a agenda in mind without any actual competence, such as being given the leadership role of a mercenary outfit out of the gate because ... the player had to have control of a mercenary outfit because the reasoning is beyond shallow, also dont start a story with the ending because that only works when you SUBVERT it as otherwise its just *spoilers*, I would say it does something right but at the same time it also does the same things wrong storywise, unlike say Mechwarrior were you actually feel you have a impact as you tread along the slog, in this one you kinda are given a "one-of-a-kind-advanced-ship" as well other toys when the Sword of Restoration simply wins by Deus Ex and Deus Ex ... its just bad, down right to THE FINAL BOSS that quite frankly just shows who wrote this simply did it by connecting the dots.

 

[Trithne]

There's a mod to implement a panic system that sees the AI ejecting when their mechs take too much damage. I dont recall if it effects your pilots too.

As for the story, it sucks. I exclusively play career mode.

 

[Bohr]

New dev diary (Mitch this time) and some news on the game and future developments like Urban Warfare

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/dev-diary-10-spinning-plates.1155666/

Hey everyone!

It’s been awhile, so I thought I’d check in and give you a window into what’s going on around the studio. Even before we shipped Update 1.3 and the Flashpoint Expansion in November, the team has been pushing hard on a number of different fronts simultaneously. I call it “spinning plates” because it reminds me of an old circus act I saw as a kid:



As you may have read in Jo's Dev Diary, localizing BATTLETECH for Update 1.4 was a challenging and complicated undertaking that required a lot of intense focus from many team members across multiple disciplines for many months. While that work was going on, and while we were still working on Flashpoint, our Design and Technical Art teams held a series of lunch meetings to collaborate on the technical direction for our Urban Warfare expansion later this summer.

Nearly two full weeks of lunch meetings were required to give our artists the head start they needed to create new tools for the creation of city maps, a brand new pipeline for building destruction (which was required to support the scale of our new urban environments), and address a number of issues regarding the way that buildings affect unit movement. That was a huge change to our workflow but the process is now complete and in the iteration phase. The early results are very promising.

Beyond all that, the moment we shipped Flashpoint, we jumped into a large series of short retrospective meetings to evaluate our performance and look for ways to do better. From there, we entered full pre-production for Update 1.6 and Urban Warfare. The pre-production process involves a lot of pushing and pulling, during which, I chart an overall direction and list of desired features and content while our producers prioritize the bugs we want to fix. Then they work with the team to figure out which features, content, and bugs will fit the time we’ve allowed ourselves. Although there’s a lot of negotiation and balancing involved in the process, it’s always a positive interaction - everyone just wants what’s best for the game and for the audience. As of a few weeks ago, we have a clear plan for the update and the expansion and we are currently on track even though #seattlesnowmageddon19 heavily impacted our productivity for a week.

In addition to all that simultaneous development, last Fall we began a serious hiring effort to fill a number of positions in the studio. Because game development is such a collaborative experience, Harebrained Schemes takes hiring very seriously and we put a lot of effort into the process of adding the right people to the studio. Interviewing a bunch of people was a heavy plate to spin but the effort was worth it. We’ve added some amazing talent to the studio including several producers and a loooong-needed full-time IT Manager to keep the plates connected to the sticks (or keep the sticks from breaking. Or something. You get the idea.)

Which brings me to Update 1.5. The plan is to ship 1.5 before our office move in mid-March, so that any technical issues we might encounter with the move don’t impact our ability to update the game. To that end, Update 1.5 is all about fixing bugs. Focusing on bugs has the added benefit of allowing the team more mental space for 1.6 & Urban Warfare pipeline, tools, and features. It also allows more time to execute, review, and iterate on our work. Now, those features... are a topic for a different day!

Thanks for reading! I can’t wait to hop on a live-stream with you, take some questions, and talk about what we’re releasing this summer. I’m guessing that live-stream will be some time in April - and from our new office!

Mitch

 

[thesheeep]

As you may have read in Jo's Dev Diary, localizing BATTLETECH for Update 1.4 was a challenging and complicated undertaking that required a lot of intense focus from many team members across multiple disciplines for many months.

What a weird statement. This only gives the impression that extremely little thought was put into the technical development of this.
Localization should be a near-automatic process, only requiring translation files to be put into correct folders and you're done. Well, some art might have to be replaced as well, but that isn't hard to do, either. Most engines I've worked with have enough tools in place for this, Unity cannot be an exception here.
Sure, it does take time (someone has to do actually do the translation, it has to be checked, etc.). But "challenging and complicated"? How?
To me, this sounds as if they were "surprised" by having to do a localization as nothing was in place to support that.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

As you may have read in Jo's Dev Diary, localizing BATTLETECH for Update 1.4 was a challenging and complicated undertaking that required a lot of intense focus from many team members across multiple disciplines for many months.

What a weird statement. This only gives the impression that extremely little thought was put into the technical development of this.
Localization should be a near-automatic process, only requiring translation files to be put into correct folders and you're done. Well, some art might have to be replaced as well, but that isn't hard to do, either. Most engines I've worked with have enough tools in place for this, Unity cannot be an exception here.
Sure, it does take time (someone has to do actually do the translation, it has to be checked, etc.). But "challenging and complicated"? How?
To me, this sounds as if they were "surprised" by having to do a localization as nothing was in place to support that.

Reading the dev diary, seems the issue was mostly just in making the GUI work properly, ie not resize text to microscopic because of some German wordmonster, while covering 300,000 words of stuff to translate. It seems to be more of a little piece regarding a field that isn't often covered, since translations tend to be seen as non-issues by the general public.

Though as far as translation goes, BattleTech the vidya (or the entire property, really) isn't exactly that hard beyond possibly localizing names of places or titles. It is fairly straightforward stuff and doesn't really do anything fancy, everyone speaks Queen's English and so on. It isn't asking you to do something like translate a Japanese pun (Japanese puns are probably overall the best example of a daunting localization challenge, because it's a kind of humour that CAN'T be translated and stay funny).

 

[Cael]

As you may have read in Jo's Dev Diary, localizing BATTLETECH for Update 1.4 was a challenging and complicated undertaking that required a lot of intense focus from many team members across multiple disciplines for many months.

What a weird statement. This only gives the impression that extremely little thought was put into the technical development of this.
Localization should be a near-automatic process, only requiring translation files to be put into correct folders and you're done. Well, some art might have to be replaced as well, but that isn't hard to do, either. Most engines I've worked with have enough tools in place for this, Unity cannot be an exception here.
Sure, it does take time (someone has to do actually do the translation, it has to be checked, etc.). But "challenging and complicated"? How?
To me, this sounds as if they were "surprised" by having to do a localization as nothing was in place to support that.

Reading the dev diary, seems the issue was mostly just in making the GUI work properly, ie not resize text to microscopic because of some German wordmonster, while covering 300,000 words of stuff to translate. It seems to be more of a little piece regarding a field that isn't often covered, since translations tend to be seen as non-issues by the general public.

Though as far as translation goes, BattleTech the vidya (or the entire property, really) isn't exactly that hard beyond possibly localizing names of places or titles. It is fairly straightforward stuff and doesn't really do anything fancy, everyone speaks Queen's English and so on. It isn't asking you to do something like translate a Japanese pun (Japanese puns are probably overall the best example of a daunting localization challenge, because it's a kind of humour that CAN'T be translated and stay funny).

These are hairy male landwhales trying to disguise themselves as females. Funny is probably something not even in their lexicon other than under the heading of "unintended consequences".

 

[Bohr]

These are hairy male landwhales trying to disguise themselves as females. Funny is probably something not even in their lexicon other than under the heading of "unintended consequences".

Bad news, House Arano sourcebook delayed until late April "due to the need for additional development time, and key personnel working on other products set for later this year."



Previous details:

House Arano (The Aurigan Coalition) was announced by Catalyst Game Labs as an upcoming product with a tentative release date of 1 March 2019.

A callback to the old FASA-era Housebook series from the 1980s, this product is expected to cover House Arano and the Aurigan Reach periphery nation just after the conclusion of the Arano Restoration storyline from the BattleTech computer game by Harebrained Schemes.

As a CGL publication, this product meets all criteria for canon. It is expected to canonize the worlds, realms, characters and conflicts from the (technically apocryphal) game fully or at least to some degree.

---
Primary writing:
Andrew McIntosh
Kiva Maginn

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

That's just CGL for you. Everything gets delayed and very very limited print runs. Too busy skimming funds to keep on schedule, a shame really because some of the stuff they've put out has actually been pretty awesome.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I thought the guy who was skimming funds got sued by rest of the company like in 2013?

 

[Cael]

If it ain't FASA, it an't canon.

Other publishers may build on what is already in a FASA publication (e.g., Mechcommander and the invasion of Port Arthur), but things that are made up wholesale can only be cannon, not canon.

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

I thought the guy who was skimming funds got sued by rest of the company like in 2013?

Nope, Coleman and Bills are still there running the show.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I thought the guy who was skimming funds got sued by rest of the company like in 2013?

Nope, Coleman and Bills are still there running the show.

The hustle continues!

 

[roshan]

Can someone explain why this game sucked?

 

[Drakron]

Can someone explain why this game sucked?

Bad performance and considering this is Unity you have to be some kind of very special person to have performances issues in Unity and that is despite the small numbers of units and maps not being very big (MechCommander is it not).

Balance issues, anyone will say that dont bother with Light Mechs after getting heavier mechs because they did not put any kind of tonnage limits on deployments so you have no reason to not deploy the best mechs you have, people have issues with only 4 mechs but a Lance (4 Mechs) been standard but other games allowed to deploy more that one Lance and even allowed to deploy supporting units. It seems Flashpoint DLC created even more problems looking at Steam reviews (when DLC have mixed receptions and it not just cosmetic DLC you know there are problems).

Terrible story, I think this is were the game shat the bed ... they do offer contracts so you could just have unlimited gameplay but those are random generated (or at least pulled out of a pregenerated list with some random elements involved so they dont end up the same) but the story mode is something players will go over and its simply not appealing meaning by the time people are done they are done.

Also the game visuals are dated, I know its Unity but the game simply looks something from 5 years ago ... character models are something from the PS2 generation, they look bad and considering how you can have nice visuals with just spritework (that it even uses for "cutscenes") I fail to understand why on Earth they gone with those 3d models.

 

[Country_Gravy]

I really wanted to like this game. It had some potential.

Too bad it sucks. That story was worthless and it just didn't "feel" Battletech enough.

Do we just need to accept that all of our childhood IP's are being redone for tards?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Suck may be a bit too strong a word, since it has a lot of stuff going for it, but as I said in my review after finishing it the game starts off strong and at around 30-50% point turns into a slog of attrition where all sense of progression is immediately invalidated since the progression is simply scaled to and negated (while tactically everything is forced to attrition). It simply doesn't feel gratifying anymore when every encounter just feels less like a puzzle and more like unfair odds (since that's what it really is, you're just fighting a larger group of enemies that has otherwise the same abilities as you, plus vehicles which since this game follows TT formula more closely hilariously break the notion that 'mechs are important). Additionally the game doesn't play to the strengths of HBS, basically putting story and campaign on a backburner in favor of a procgen "merc sim" (which I'd say is always a bad idea, even if you aren't HBS), so you end up with a filler party (by far the biggest offender is not having a premade Lance with the PC), a less than barebones story, and no sense of place and intimacy.

 

[Cael]

That story was worthless and it just didn't "feel" Battletech enough.

Battletech was space Brits fighting space Japanese with space Germans, Chinese and Greeks cheering on the sidelines.

The HBS game has black and hispanic trannies fighting for empowered wymmyn whose sole defining feature is how pretty she is.

No shit it doesn't feel BTech enough...

 

[True Ukrainian]

Anybody who was not inspired by the story of a brave womyn fighting for her right to life of privilege and her band of transgendered, trans racial heroes who for some reason can only deploy four at a time is a racist, fascist and a nazi.

Anybody who complains that this epic story takes away all player agency and makes faction relationships completely irrelevant is a privileged bigot.

Anybody who complains that the player is limited to 4 mechs despite the dev touting that combined arms are going to be a thing is a racist who is trying to take away the limelight from our transgendered heroes.

Anybody who complains that the game performs like ass despite looking like ass should check their privilege.

REE.