KickStarter BATTLETECH - turn-based mech combat from Harebrained Schemes

[MadMaxHellfire]

no battletech game at all might mean that one day someone is going to use the license.
a shit battletech game today means "people don't buy battletech, i blame the name because the game is not shit at all, not at all, i even paid journos to say so. let's not have another one ever".

 

[Black]

So can MW4. Too bad HBS is too incompetent to match even a centuries old game.

 

[Norfleet]

Limiting number of units is a general dumbing trend in TBS nowadays. They try to appeal to casuals that lack the attention span to manage more. Look at nuXcom.

It isn't a dumbing trend intended to cater to anyone. It's a dumbing trend in programmers, who are unable to optimize systems such that they don't choke and die with more units in play. You see this across all games, or even the SAME game, where the number of units has steadily shrunk in games, or even the SAME game, as the programmers pile more badly written crap onto an engine, and as a result, the number of units available in an instance of map falls.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I read complaints like this so often, it makes me wonder why people keep making small-scale tactics games that don't give a good reason for staying small-scale. (And full disclosure: I want you all to buy my game.)

If you're going to limit the number of units you can take to battle, you need to have a good reason to keep your B-squad around. That's what Battletech fails at. It would make sense if it took time for a mech to get repaired, so you would bring a weaker mech to fill out the lance until the better mech is repaired. But because engineering fixes only one mech at a time, you start cluttering your repair queue with your crappy mechs. And eventually you learn to use only your good mechs, and wait for repairs. There's not even a good trade-off for using lighter mechs.

I was annoyed at Battletech for not letting me deploy multiple lances. They could at least have let me buy another shuttle and send lances on multi-day missions, and we could still stick to the 4-mech lance battles.

Small battles and useless reserve units. It's the same reason I wished for a bigger Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. In Tactics Ogre, I would tame another dragon and feel great, and then I would remember I would never bring the dragons into battle because they were weaker than my mains. Twenty years later, HBS is still making the same weak design choices that make your B-squad useless. In Battletech, I build a new mech from salvage, and unless it's heavier than what I'm already using, I immediately sell it. There's really no use in keeping it around. In FFT, you could at least send your crappy guys on tavern missions and they'd get a few gil and XP for it.

It isn't a dumbing trend intended to cater to anyone. It's a dumbing trend in programmers, who are unable to optimize systems such that they don't choke and die with more units in play. You see this across all games, or even the SAME game, where the number of units has steadily shrunk in games, or even the SAME game, as the programmers pile more badly written crap onto an engine, and as a result, the number of units available in an instance of map falls.

I think most programmers would gladly optimize the game, given the chance, to allow for bigger battles. If it is indeed a technical hurdle, and not a design decision, then I would have to believe that anyone who can program would be able to put the player in charge of more than four units. I'm a lone developer with no budget, and I could do it. Surely HBS could too. I'm suspecting the 4-mech limit is a design decision to keep the battles difficult, to make you feel like a hero for defeating a larger enemy force, and to keep the battles short.

 

[Norfleet]

If you're going to limit the number of units you can take to battle, you need to have a good reason to keep your B-squad around.

This is especially pernicious with RPG XP systems, because the B-Squad will get consistently outlevelled and thus become useless.

I think most programmers would gladly optimize the game, given the chance, to allow for bigger battles. If it is indeed a technical hurdle, and not a design decision, then I would have to believe that anyone who can program would be able to put the player in charge of more than four units. I'm a lone developer with no budget, and I could do it. Surely HBS could too. I'm suspecting the 4-mech limit is a design decision to keep the battles difficult, to make you feel like a hero for defeating a larger enemy force, and to keep the battles short.

I'd believe that were true if I didn't see it happening across the spectrum. It even happens in a SINGLE game. Take, for instance, the current game I'm in: There are some old 20-man missions designed and made during the early days of the game, some 8-10 years back. Today, if you put together a team to play those, the SAME mission, in the SAME game, the game will choke on its own shit. Yet those missions USED to be playable on a 10 year old computer, 10 years ago, while today, that same computer cannot even run the game without dying on the damn load screen, because coding has gotten THAT much shittier despite there being moar computar than 10 years back.

In fact, an upcoming game by the same company, on the same engine, has apparently had to cut its maximum standard party size from 5 to 3 because of this.

 

[Chaosdwarft]

I have been having the same argument in the Xcom forums. Why do I have to limit the number of soldiers I control. If I have the manpower I should be able to field more units, giving more tactical options. But no you have to be Nelson+Hannibal+Caesar+[insert famous general] to defeat the opponent because they can't be half arsed to optimize their code. They say it is a design decision I call that bullshit.

 

[Cael]

I read complaints like this so often, it makes me wonder why people keep making small-scale tactics games that don't give a good reason for staying small-scale. (And full disclosure: I want you all to buy my game.)

If you're going to limit the number of units you can take to battle, you need to have a good reason to keep your B-squad around. That's what Battletech fails at. It would make sense if it took time for a mech to get repaired, so you would bring a weaker mech to fill out the lance until the better mech is repaired. But because engineering fixes only one mech at a time, you start cluttering your repair queue with your crappy mechs. And eventually you learn to use only your good mechs, and wait for repairs. There's not even a good trade-off for using lighter mechs.

I was annoyed at Battletech for not letting me deploy multiple lances. They could at least have let me buy another shuttle and send lances on multi-day missions, and we could still stick to the 4-mech lance battles.

Small battles and useless reserve units. It's the same reason I wished for a bigger Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. In Tactics Ogre, I would tame another dragon and feel great, and then I would remember I would never bring the dragons into battle because they were weaker than my mains. Twenty years later, HBS is still making the same weak design choices that make your B-squad useless. In Battletech, I build a new mech from salvage, and unless it's heavier than what I'm already using, I immediately sell it. There's really no use in keeping it around. In FFT, you could at least send your crappy guys on tavern missions and they'd get a few gil and XP for it.

It isn't a dumbing trend intended to cater to anyone. It's a dumbing trend in programmers, who are unable to optimize systems such that they don't choke and die with more units in play. You see this across all games, or even the SAME game, where the number of units has steadily shrunk in games, or even the SAME game, as the programmers pile more badly written crap onto an engine, and as a result, the number of units available in an instance of map falls.

I think most programmers would gladly optimize the game, given the chance, to allow for bigger battles. If it is indeed a technical hurdle, and not a design decision, then I would have to believe that anyone who can program would be able to put the player in charge of more than four units. I'm a lone developer with no budget, and I could do it. Surely HBS could too. I'm suspecting the 4-mech limit is a design decision to keep the battles difficult, to make you feel like a hero for defeating a larger enemy force, and to keep the battles short.

NW4 had you regularly killing dozens of 'mechs on a single map. And on maps far larger than the HBS crap. It is just rank incompetence that makes HBS fail at doing so.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

...In fact, an upcoming game by the same company, on the same engine, has apparently had to cut its maximum standard party size from 5 to 3 because of this.

Which one? Can a party of 3 even still be called a tactics game?

I have been having the same argument in the Xcom forums. Why do I have to limit the number of soldiers I control. If I have the manpower I should be able to field more units, giving more tactical options. But no you have to be Nelson+Hannibal+Caesar+[insert famous general] to defeat the opponent because they can't be half arsed to optimize their code. They say it is a design decision I call that bullshit.

I accept the small party size in XCom (at least, in Enemy Unknown, the only one I've played) because the Skyranger looks like it's only big enough to accommodate one squad. It would be more realistic if you had the option to build multiple Skyrangers, and then you could deploy multiple squads simultaneously--when you get to the point in the game where you're no longer scraping by to get just one squad in fighting shape. But then that would undermine the design decision where you have to choose which countries you save and which you have to abandon.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

a design decision nobody asked for.

 

[lightbane]

(And full disclosure: I want you all to buy my game.)

Finish the game already then. Isn't it still in Early Access?

Twenty years later, HBS is still making the same weak design choices that make your B-squad useless.

Because they're incompetent morons more worried about shoving politics than a good gameplay. Or plot. Or graphics. Or...

m a lone developer with no budget, and I could do it.

The main difference is: You're not a danger-hair dev with no experience in the setting you wish to create, no coding skills, no imagination, that identifies xirself as a special snowflake, look positively ugly IRL and demand respect from anyone, and then call bigot and racist to anyone that makes the slightest criticisms toward your product, right?

 

[Dickie]

I was annoyed at Battletech for not letting me deploy multiple lances. They could at least have let me buy another shuttle and send lances on multi-day missions, and we could still stick to the 4-mech lance battles.

I was wondering why they didn't make missions take time for the career version where you're trying to get as many points as possible in 1200 days. If missions took up mechs and pilots for a day, you'd be running your B, C, and D teams to get as many missions knocked out in a day as you can. It'd be more interesting trying to decide if I wanna bring all four supermechs on one mission or split them up, at least.

 

[Cael]

(And full disclosure: I want you all to buy my game.)

Finish the game already then. Isn't it still in Early Access?

Twenty years later, HBS is still making the same weak design choices that make your B-squad useless.

Because they're incompetent morons more worried about shoving politics than a good gameplay. Or plot. Or graphics. Or...

m a lone developer with no budget, and I could do it.

The main difference is: You're not a danger-hair dev with no experience in the setting you wish to create, no coding skills, no imagination, that identifies xirself as a special snowflake, look positively ugly IRL and demand respect from anyone, and then call bigot and racist to anyone that makes the slightest criticisms toward your product, right?

Don't forget buy off moderators of games websites with blowjobs and tranny buttsex.

 

[thesheeep]

a design decision nobody asked for.

I'd rather have a limit to how many soldiers I can field on a mission than no limit at all.
Though that limit could be a lot higher than what we currently see in many games.

Because no limit at all will simply turn any game into "get moar soldiers ASAP". And then by end of the game you'd have to micromanage 50-100 (or more) soldiers and... yeah, no thanks. The battle times alone (especially in TB games) would be a nightmare.

 

[Van-d-all]

I'd rather have a limit to how many soldiers I can field on a mission than no limit at all.
Though that limit could be a lot higher than what we currently see in many games.

Limits like that should have a reason. Direct one like craft capacity in XCom. Or indirect one like economy of having to pay the upkeep for unnecessary units, that simply makes deploying so many of them unprofitable.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Mount & Blade handled that better than any game I can think of. The graphics were primitive 12 years ago when it was released and the graphics are comically awful today. But their army-building mechanics were rock solid and no one has done it better since:

You have a hard cap on your army size determined by your leadership and fame. You have a soft cap on your army size with how much you have to pay them each week. Having a small army means you can move faster, so you can catch small bandit armies and run from large noble armies. Having a bigger army means you move slower, so you have a hard time catching (and therefore making money from) bandits and raiders and the like.

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

The problem with the limit is that mech power correlates to tonnage. By making the number of mechs absolute you are pretty much forced into using the highest tonnage. A tonnage limit really is all they need to do to fix the game.

 

[Chaosdwarft]

After reading this thread, I feel like re-installing MW4 Mercenaries, putting some Pendulum album while smoking a cigarette and play the campaign...

 

[SerratedBiz]

M&B did good, but in a Mercenaries game you can (should) afford for a little more complexity.

You don't field 3 Atlas to go take down a handful of light mechs, not because it would be overkill but because it'd be too expensive and would directly cut into your profits. An imposed tonnage limit is the inferred consequence of this fact.

Employers post contracts and the reward for them should correlate with the equipment necessary to complete the mission, and it should be up to the player to gauge whether they would rather field heavier mechs in order to make things safer, or run with decreased costs in order to maximize profits.

The implication is that heavier mechs are not necessarily the best for every mission, so that 85-100 tonners aren't eventually the only mechs you'll ever need, but that having a diversity of options to choose from will enable you to optimize your overhead depending on the mission.

I think the original Mercenaries had something like this in the form of tonnage limits. In any case, I would think a Mercenaries game would place a larger emphasis on the economic aspect.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

or maybe make lighter mechs effective at their roles, but that'd require some serious mechanics reworking instead of just a couple of numbers shufflings.

 

[underground nymph]

Can anybody enlighten me which overhaul mod is currently the best to enjoy the up to date game? I remember only Roguetech, but as far as I understand there’s at least one more publicly acclaimed mod called Advanced 3062. What are the main differences between them, are they both utilize all available DLCs?

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

Can anybody enlighten me which overhaul mod is currently the best to enjoy the up to date game? I remember only Roguetech, but as far as I understand there’s at least one more publicly acclaimed mod called Advanced 3062. What are the main differences between them, are they both utilize all available DLCs?

I would highly recommend Battletech Extended 3025 - Commander's Edition

It features dynamic wars between the great houses influenced by your contract results, the entire inner sphere, more mechs and a lot of other features designed to extend and enrich the career mode and make it more open ended. The massive problem with RT is that it just pushes you to a weird point in BT lore, gives everyone and their mother expectationally overpowered and lore breaking lostech weapons and in general is just not very well balanced or feature rich compared to any of the overhauls. It's also the least stable.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

or maybe make lighter mechs effective at their roles, but that'd require some serious mechanics reworking instead of just a couple of numbers shufflings.

Agreed, the core problem is fundamental to the entire IP. Tonnage correlating directly with power is a huge problem and it's something that should be serious reworked.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i liked how multiplayer battletech 3025 (ea shall never suffer enough) managed it: light mechs were small, shorter than a tree, trees blocked radar signals and there were *lots* of trees, and damage values were very close to the tabletop, thus an unchecked panther was as scary as it should have been.

 

[DeepOcean]

Can anybody enlighten me which overhaul mod is currently the best to enjoy the up to date game? I remember only Roguetech, but as far as I understand there’s at least one more publicly acclaimed mod called Advanced 3062. What are the main differences between them, are they both utilize all available DLCs?

I would highly recommend Battletech Extended 3025 - Commander's Edition

It features dynamic wars between the great houses influenced by your contract results, the entire inner sphere, more mechs and a lot of other features designed to extend and enrich the career mode and make it more open ended. The massive problem with RT is that it just pushes you to a weird point in BT lore, gives everyone and their mother expectationally overpowered and lore breaking lostech weapons and in general is just not very well balanced or feature rich compared to any of the overhauls. It's also the least stable.

Did they fix the uselessness of the light mechs? RogueTech is better than vanilla but it is kinda messy as you said. I'm still after an overhaul that turns this thing on a real tactical game instead of the dumb who has more/bigger lasors and LRMs is the winner.

 

[Olinser]

or maybe make lighter mechs effective at their roles, but that'd require some serious mechanics reworking instead of just a couple of numbers shufflings.

Agreed, the core problem is fundamental to the entire IP. Tonnage correlating directly with power is a huge problem and it's something that should be serious reworked.

The problem is the gameplay is so limited that you simply can't improve most of the lighter mechs.

Heavier mechs have much heavier weapons and armor. That's true of the series since it started and never going to change.

Lighter mechs are much more mobile/agile, and can bring things like spotting and scouting to the part.

The issue with this game is the main functions of lighter mechs are either useless, or cannot override the negative that you can only take 4 mechs to begin with, replacing one with a significantly weaker combat light model is not worth scouting or speed.

If you had 16 mechs (or even 8), it would almost certainly be worth it to have a light scouting/sensor mech. When you've only got 4? FUCK no.

That's not to say lighter mechs can't be hugely useful. Last time I played the campaign I actually used a Griffin all the way through. Jump jets, 3x Medium Laser with +10 damage (35 damage each), 3x SRM-6 with +4 damage (72 damage each), and you have a damage potential on an alpha strike of 321 on a medium mech with jump jets. Jump rear arc, target center and you can core out any Assault in the game in 1 turn. Heck front arc target center torso and you can core out most heavies in 1 round even with some misses. Now you don't want 4 of them, but 1 is really good.

But light mechs? Useless. Heavy mechs? Speed tradeoff is pointless as you're simply not faster enough than Assaults to warrant it, and when you only have 4 mechs.

The gameplay is simply too shallow to have any kind of actual speed/maneuverability that overrides straight firepower.