KickStarter BATTLETECH - turn-based mech combat from Harebrained Schemes

[Nathaniel3W]

I tried playing with some alternate builds just to force some variety into the game. Nothing I tried was really viable.

• Killer melee mech: I tried an Atlas, Black Knight, and Dragon (because it's the heaviest thing that moves at least 2 faster than an assault). I gave them whatever Arm Mods I had available at the time. Even with 100 bonus melee damage, they weren't worth it. They would get in one or two good hits, and then they'd get totally torn apart by enemy fire. And you can't even target the center torso, so those big hits usually just take off an arm or a leg.
• Medium with jump jets: For getting behind an enemy just like Olinser says. Not gonna lie. It saved my bacon a time or two, like during my first playthrough when I was stealing the Argo or escaping from the Star League castle. But the jumping mech just doesn't have enough survivability to stay in the fight. It takes a couple of hits and then you have to pull back.
• Flamers: I packed as many Flamer++s as I could onto a Banshee. I was hoping that every round I could keep one enemy assault mech shut down. Doesn't work because the flamers don't cause enough heat to instantly shut down a mech so the enemy always gets at least one round to fight back. And with how close you have to get to use flamers, your uber-Firestarter is going to get torn up.
• Light spotter mech: I built a Stalker with 4x LRM-20s, extra ammo, heat sinks, and no armor, then paired it with a spotter mech. Given weapon and vision range, this was just a waste of a slot that could be used to deal and soak more damage. There was nothing that the light mech could do that couldn't be done better by an assault mech just walking up and trading blows with the enemy. The missile boat is part of my A-squad though, and I just let an Atlas or King Crab spot for it.

Edit: I didn't think about the flamer build until I fought one battle that throws a bunch of Firestarters at you while heavy mechs pound you from long range. That tactic works for the computer because it doesn't have a lance limit, and it doesn't care if it loses the sacrificial mechs and pilots.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

85 pages show there is definitely a game here, but it is very flawed.

Higher tonnage will always fight better than lighter tonnage, until you start to pass that Medium-Heavy sweetspot where the mobility is too low to make use of the higher protection and firepower in a general situation. I don't think the game can change that and I also don't think it should. Is it a problem? It is realistic, but it just isn't fun to play with. The main advantage a Light mech have is not in mobility, is not in spotting or scouting, it is logistics, which doesn't translate well into a game where every mission you are 100% going into combat. The only fix beyond artifically boosting the numbers is to make the heavier mechs more expensive and difficult to maintain and keep running in top condition.

Like a lot of people have said, having a maximum of 4 mechs in a Lance hamstrings the whole system. Remove that and a lot of the games core problems are fixed. Everything else will fall into place with some tweaking.

 

[Riel]

I tried playing with some alternate builds just to force some variety into the game. Nothing I tried was really viable.

• Killer melee mech: I tried an Atlas, Black Knight, and Dragon (because it's the heaviest thing that moves at least 2 faster than an assault). I gave them whatever Arm Mods I had available at the time. Even with 100 bonus melee damage, they weren't worth it. They would get in one or two good hits, and then they'd get totally torn apart by enemy fire. And you can't even target the center torso, so those big hits usually just take off an arm or a leg.
• Medium with jump jets: For getting behind an enemy just like Olinser says. Not gonna lie. It saved my bacon a time or two, like during my first playthrough when I was stealing the Argo or escaping from the Star League castle. But the jumping mech just doesn't have enough survivability to stay in the fight. It takes a couple of hits and then you have to pull back.
• Flamers: I packed as many Flamer++s as I could onto a Banshee. I was hoping that every round I could keep one enemy assault mech shut down. Doesn't work because the flamers don't cause enough heat to instantly shut down a mech so the enemy always gets at least one round to fight back. And with how close you have to get to use flamers, your uber-Firestarter is going to get torn up.
• Light spotter mech: I built a Stalker with 4x LRM-20s, extra ammo, heat sinks, and no armor, then paired it with a spotter mech. Given weapon and vision range, this was just a waste of a slot that could be used to deal and soak more damage. There was nothing that the light mech could do that couldn't be done better by an assault mech just walking up and trading blows with the enemy. The missile boat is part of my A-squad though, and I just let an Atlas or King Crab spot for it.

Edit: I didn't think about the flamer build until I fought one battle that throws a bunch of Firestarters at you while heavy mechs pound you from long range. That tactic works for the computer because it doesn't have a lance limit, and it doesn't care if it loses the sacrificial mechs and pilots.

A few suggestion:

Melee. You can use support weapons such as Small Laser, Machine Gun and Flamer as part of your melee attack, every SMALL LASER hits for 20 damage, that's a LOT for very little heat. As a result the best mechs for melee are those that have decent Melee attack and plenty support slots. Also for melee you need manoeuvrable mechs to get into position, good mechs for melee are: Firestarter S and Grasshoper 5H, oher mechs are good but not as good. The thing is good melee mechs also need a reliable way to deal damage at mid range because you won't be able to melee your foe every turn or even use your small lasers, for secondary weapons you are looking at SRM batteries and Medium Lasers that you will use when you can't get close enough, HEat management isn't very improtant because you won't be firing all weapons at the same time most of the time, but the possibility to do an easily crippling Alpha Strike with MLs and SLs is there as a bonus, great specially in combination with JJs for surprise called back shots.

Suggested FS9-S build: 2ML 6SL 6 JJ + armor. I swear this little pest kicks ass and is reasonably hard to kill provided you jump long distances and stack plenty EVASION, this is the only light I use in a Medium mech lance, an I even carry within heavy mech lances often, though here is more arguable.

Forget Flamers, they are useless. And machine guns are meh, they are heavier than SL (need ammo) and they spread damage like crazy so they are only good for crit and pilot injury (mini head shot) seeking, I prefer the reliability of a 120 dmg 6 SL volley.

Imo, jumping medium mechs are useless, they aren't fast enough to stack enough EVASION to matter, the only usage of JJs is for getting into firing positions.

To spot you don't need a light mech, you just need the Sensor Lock skill, it is not a great skill, and Spotting is a very situational skill but being able to spot a turret or vehicle and then spam it with lrms into the ground is occasionally useful.

Honestly the game's stale, its tactics are very dull and are a repetitive exercise. DEtec enemies, get into cover to reduce damage, wait for them to come to you, focus fire, rinse and repeat.l You can play a few battle but it grows boring fast.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Machine Gun's better than Small Laser IMO due to the high critical hit chance. Those things cause ammo explosions like crazy.

 

[Riel]

There's is a saying in MWO (which I play a lot), you don't need to crit a component in a body part you destroy... or maybe the saying is mine? Probably, but it's still sound advice.

Don't take me to mean ammo explosions don't hurt, what I mean is that if a body part that has 50 hit points suffers 50 damage it's is down 100% sure, on the other hand causing an ammo explosion is based on luck even with Machine Guns.

 

[Infinitron]

BattleTech is officially over:



https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/webeharebrained/battletech/posts/2752749

CAMPAIGN COMPLETE - THANKS AGAIN!

Hey BATTLETECH Backers!

Thanks again for all your support for BATTLETECH over the last 4 years. That support allowed us to deliver the first turn-based, tactical MechWarrior experience in more than 20 years and we truly appreciate the opportunity to make it for you. Your support, along with some great press, awards, and accolades allowed us to continue supporting BATTLETECH with nine free updates plus our Flashpoint, Urban Warfare, and Heavy Metal expansions. Thanks again for making all of this possible!

Now, with our season pass at an end, HBS is going to focus on two brand new non-BattleTech projects. Our last free update, BATTLETECH Update 1.9, will release in late February. After that, BATTLETECH will continue to maintain customer support.

Here's a video of Mitch saying all this but with more "Mitch".

And before we go dark for awhile, we thought we'd leave you with these two historical artifacts. #1 is a bit of data...

#2 is a visualization of the BATTLETECH project over time from a file structure POV. (It's much cooler than it sounds.)

We look forward to seeing all the badass BATTLETECH mods y'all come up with. Talk to you again when we have something to announce!

- HBS

 

[lightbane]

The rape is over. Too bad they weren't able (or willing) to make the game less shit. Or let you use more than 4 teammates outside of mods.

 

[Xamenos]

I'm somewhat impressed they resisted the siren call to milk it with DLC for half a decade like other Paradox-owned games.

 

[Black]

That support allowed us to deliver the first turn-based, tactical MechWarrior experience in more than 20 years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaMek

 

[Riel]

If they had as much talent MAKING games as they have making videos and fun statistics....

 

[Infinitron]

I'm somewhat impressed they resisted the siren call to milk it with DLC for half a decade like other Paradox-owned games.

Well, it's possible that they will soon no longer have the rights to work with BattleTech.

But the DLC-milking has has always been mainly restricted to Paradox's flagship grand strategy titles.

 

[Xamenos]

I'm somewhat impressed they resisted the siren call to milk it with DLC for half a decade like other Paradox-owned games.

Well, it's possible that they will soon no longer have the rights to work with BattleTech.

But the DLC-milking has has always been mainly restricted to Paradox's flagship grand strategy titles.

Cities: Skylines begs to differ.

 

[Van-d-all]

Just slap a discount on the DLC pack already so I can grab them at a price they are closer to being worth.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Such promising setting wasted on Harebrained ...

 

[Lone Wolf]

No Clan expansion? Did the game sell like shit, or something?

 

[fastjack]

Too bad about no clan expansion imo.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Eh, without a total overhaul (as in, totally removing any traces of the baggage from tabletop) it'd just be a similar sort of mechanical nightmare as ClanTech always is.

Also the canon storyline is kinda dumb anyway (and I say this with the recognition that all the basic ingredients are there, they're just all implemented badly), as Rich Evans correctly summarized in disdain "HONOR WARRIOR MAKE HONOR," tho a lot of the bullshit is baked in the way the setting is sort of stupid in a general sense (tl;dr as usual, the way AeroSpace is *constantly* conspicuously absent because they didn't have the balls to just Macross more).

 

[Trash]

What bothered me mostly was how samey the missions outside of the main storyline and flashpoints were. The recent MW3 despite its many flaws did have quite a few genuinely memorable missions. BT hardly had any and the open campaign felt pointless and boring because of it. The amount of boring maps and lack of helicopters and infantry only made it worse. Missed opportunity that even the mods have done little to improve upon.

 

[AdamReith]

Man, playing this for the first time was such a total let down. The fact that they won't even improve it is the icing on the cake.

Still, they managed to make giant robots blasting each other, salvaging mechs and mech modification somehow uninteresting which is an acheivement in itself. Hopefully whoever picks up the mantle for a turn based MW game does everything completey opposite.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Did HBS give any hints about their next project?

 

[fastjack]

A lot of people are hoping for a new Shadowrun or Crimson Skies, but I believe their license from MS expires(ed?) in 2020 and I'm not sure they will renew it since Harebrained was bought by Paradox, and with MS being more heavily into PC than they were when the license was granted that makes them a competitor now (imo). Also I'd look for Weissmann to jump ship as soon as his contract wit Paradox allows since he is historically something of a serial entrepreneur who seems to found companies, increase their value, sell them and start the process over again. I also wouldn't be surprised if he went back to microsoft to head a studio focused on FASA properties for PC again though.

 

[Infinitron]

Did HBS give any hints about their next project?

I guess you didn't see this? https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...hemes-are-making-a-horror-themed-game.131344/

But now we know that's just one of them.

 

[DeepOcean]

Really looking for my tranny vampire with haitian/arab/polynesean background on the next Vampire: The Masquerade game they will make.

 

[Average Manatee]

Picked this up, gave it a whirl. My god its amazing how poorly designed it is.

4 unit cap, really? Firaxis figured out that even nuXCOM needed an unlockable 6 unit cap back in 2012.

Not having a tonnage-limited deployment, or some kind of deployment limit/cost, is insanely stupid. There's even a deployment tonnage counter on the deployment screen but its just fucking irrelevant. Presumably the devs' suffered from their IQ temporarily skyrocketing to the room temperature level required to figure out that a tonnage limitation was needed but then forgot to actually implement it.

This game accomplishes an incredible feat of becoming dumber and less strategic as the game goes on. The first few missions are the best because you can actually flank and shit and use something other than just standing and firing till things die. Running around and jump jetting behind things with a Panther to snipe from behind with an LRM and PPC was cool. Skip ahead 10 missions and you'll just get chewed up instantly, because for some dumbfuck reason being shot at makes it easier for other things to hit you and you'll have 8+ AIs shooting per round. Loadout becomes progressively less interesting as you play, because where there's lots of options when you have 3 weapon slots and 12 tons available, when you have 3 weapon slots and 30 tons available you just fucking pick the biggest weapons because no one is loading small, short-ranged laser pointers to shine on enemy assault mechs surrounded by 6 other enemy mechs.

Who the fuck decided on this targetting system? i.e. not having a targetting system at all unless you spend magic?. All I've played is Mechwarrior where angling your body is fairly useful to hide your weakened side. Here? Only cardinal directions matter and its a pure dice roll unaffected by the mech structure or relative position other than cardinal direction. This makes orientation fairly useless as you always need to be positioned at least a little bit forward-facing because you need to fucking shoot things, yet the damaged arm that should be 95% hidden behind the entire rest of the mech's body has the exact same chance to be hit as the opposing arm that is directly in front of the line of fire. I don't know tabletop rules but I'm going to guess this is some dumb shit they took from there because no one could think that the current system makes sense for a game. Due to how you have 8 separate targets to hit from the front it becomes highly random whether you get enough repeated rolls to hit the same thing and actually disable the enemy, and its also random whether you took out an arm that has literally nothing or the central torso that kills the mech. I also don't recall having 3 separate armor levels for the torso in mechwarrior, it's really fucking obnoxious. The targetting spell itself is a joke, it only adds like a few % to target a specific part which makes it useless and irrelevant that fixes none of the problems with the dice system... until you level tactics and suddenly you have a 35% chance for every weapon to hit the head, utterly breaking the game. What is even the point of shooting at any other point than the head then? Also why does DFA not hit the head? Isn't that the whole point of the maneouver?

AI is awful, as soon as combat starts it just sort of blindly walks towards you until it can see and shoot you. It seems to merely be walking towards the center of your group of mechs, which means if you space them out into four corners the AI flat out breaks, letting you abuse initiative to peak out and take potshots then get back into cover by their next turn, where they'll just walk around in the center of the map. As far as I can tell in 95% of random missions getting in combat with any AI effectively aggros the whole map towards you, and the 5% is usually the AI bugging out on cliff wall.

Why is there no recon or even a general force estimation for 90% of maps? Why are we bidding on salvage when we don't even know the enemies? I did several missions where I bid high on salvage and there weren't even fucking mechs that showed up! The mech salvage system is atrocious. Getting 2 or 3 "wrecks" for a kill rather than just 1 is pure luck until you get the game-breaking headshot ability, which means taking any more than 1 salvage pick is basically just praying to the RNG gods. Why do you have to pay multiple times for different parts of the same whole mech you just headshotted anyway? Was King Solomon summoned on-site to make the three cuts into the completely whole mech? Furthermore how are players expected to estimate their ammo requirements based on the expected number of enemies? Oh right, just get a bigger mech so you can carry 480 LRMs. There's not even a damn map of the area to see where you are deploying before you deploy.

This game has the most godawful performance I've ever experienced. I've dealt with shit loading times, fine, whatever, I can leave it windowed on one monitor while I fuck around on another. But how does the game lag for a second every fucking time I bring up the UI element to fire a weapon, or dismiss said UI? How does the most COMMON FUCKING ACTION OF THE GAME REMAIN BROKEN? I could literally pay some pajeet programmer $50 to create a game UI for me, and he could create an in-game chrome browser that loads twitter photos of the UI element on-demand, and it would still be more responsive than this sack of shit.

I'm sure all this and more has been thoroughly discussed at this point.

Random question for whoever here might actually know a lore more about the Battletech lore than I do: Isn't the scale of combat for the universe completely fucking off? Like with battles where whole worlds are taken by low hundreds or even dozens of mechs? Shouldn't any reasonably normally advanced planet with a billion or so people be maintaining forces of hundreds of thousands of mechs? I mean I get that at this specific point in the timeline mechs are supposed to be really high tech and hard to reproduce well for the inner sphere in a sort of dark age, but even still mechs literally weigh 25-100 tons, quite comparable to modern tanks, so anything that could produce them should be able to churn them out at least as fast as we can churn out tanks in the 21st century if needed (btw this is really weird, why are 100 ton tanks microscopic next to 25 ton mechs?). Is there an explanation for this lack of large armed forces or is it all sort of just ignored for the purpose of allowing small level tactical fights to win wars?

 

[Olinser]

Random question for whoever here might actually know a lore more about the Battletech lore than I do: Isn't the scale of combat for the universe completely fucking off? Like with battles where whole worlds are taken by low hundreds or even dozens of mechs? Shouldn't any reasonably normally advanced planet with a billion or so people be maintaining forces of hundreds of thousands of mechs? I mean I get that at this specific point in the timeline mechs are supposed to be really high tech and hard to reproduce well for the inner sphere in a sort of dark age, but even still mechs literally weigh 25-100 tons, quite comparable to modern tanks, so anything that could produce them should be able to churn them out at least as fast as we can churn out tanks in the 21st century if needed (btw this is really weird, why are 100 ton tanks microscopic next to 25 ton mechs?). Is there an explanation for this lack of large armed forces or is it all sort of just ignored for the purpose of allowing small level tactical fights to win wars?

Yes, the scale of combat has always been ludicrously off in the universe. At absolute peak the biggest clans only had a few thousand 'mechs each.

They never gave exact numbers, but the 'standard' large unit in the Inner Sphere was the Regiment, which is approximately 100 to 200 mechs (depending on tonnage, composition of non-mech units, and organization), usually averaging about 150 mechs. A Regimental Combat Team was basically a Regiment of mechs with support units, and they would be responsible for a decent sized sector consisting of possibly dozens of worlds.

Smaller non-strategically valuable inner sphere worlds had at most a Company of mechs on them, which was typically 3 Lances with possibly a support Lance (~12-16 mechs). Larger non-strategic worlds rarely had more than a Battalion, which was 3 Companies (~36-50 mechs).

At their absolute peak the Com Guards were the single biggest military force in the entire universe, able to fight 7 clans at once in the Battle of Tukayyid, and they consisted of if I recall correctly 12 Armies, with an Army being somewhat variable but averaging about 1000 mechs (plus or minus a couple hundred).

So the single biggest unified military force in in the setting by a huge margin had about 12,000 deployable mechs at peak, and they had the capability to easily conquer the entire Inner Sphere if they wanted to.

THEORETICALLY they hand-waved this away by saying the RCTs and up had large units of infantry, but in practice they never told you the details of those units.