MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries by Piranha Games - now on Steam and GOG

[MadMaxHellfire]

i'm not sure how i feel. some news are awesome, others are horrible.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The apparent approach of having the game use randomized missions is both good and bad. On the one hand, it means moar stuff to do overall. On the other hand, that stuff is very likely to get old real fast. Also much to my displeasure, I can't help but imagine "weak mech" does not refer to the stuff on the mech, but that it's a Light mech.

There's a reason why my dream mech sim that might actually come true is Armored Souls. Open world is a nice thing to try out with a mech simulator.

 

[warpig]

Just make a normal mechwarrior game, jesus fucking christ :/

 

[Black]

There won't be any Mech knockdowns.

Rofl, get out.

 

[karoliner]

If it sucks we can always go back to Living Legends.

 

[laclongquan]

Why dont people make a GIANT HUMANOID ROBOT simulation where we walking around squishing crunchies underfoot and terrorize nations into giving tributes?

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

Campaign wise this could go either way. No knock downs sucks. At least we're getting towards a new mechwarrior game.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.pcgamer.com/mechwarrior-5-mercenaries-hands-on-the-series-goes-back-to-its-roots/

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries hands-on: the series goes back to its roots

A kilometre from the harbour in Vancouver, on the second floor of a small shopping centre is the last bastion of the MechWarrior franchise. For six years, Piranha Games’ president Russ Bullock has kept the series alive with MechWarrior Online. But with MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, he’s ushering in the dawning of a new era of mech warfare.

"There’s a huge contingent of fans that have been wanting a singleplayer MechWarrior 5 for years," Bullock tells me as we walk through the Piranha Games office. "Of course we wanted to make one, but being a smaller developer we had say, 'Okay first things first, we need to succeed with MechWarrior Online and that will allow us to make a singleplayer game.' And it took a while—a lot longer than we thought—but we’re doing it."

As we pass by the main hub that connects Piranha Games’ various workspaces, I spy a map of the Inner Sphere, the cluster of some 3,000 star systems that make up MechWarrior’s universe. Each one has a name and a history etched into the stone tablets of BattleTech lore. And for those who have grown up living in that universe, it’s these little details that matter. Fortunately, Russ Bullock is all about the little details.

When I first saw MechWarrior 5 announced at MechCon 2016, the trailer sent the fans roaring. But when a dropship descended from the sky they lost their damn minds. At the time, I was a little confused. Then Bullock explained how so much of MechWarrior was caged inside the imaginations of players. They freaked out because that was the first time they had seen a dropship landing in-game and not just in their imagination.

Bullock is hoping to make MechWarrior 5 the catalyst that sets those two decades of MechWarrior fantasy free.

Mercenary culture
MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries isn’t just a sequel to MechWarrior 4. It’s a chance to re-establish the series and give its hordes of hardcore fans something that they’ve always wanted. "A significant part of our design philosophy is asking, 'What have players always wanted to do in a MechWarrior game?'" Bullock tells me.

That’s why Piranha Games is starting with Mercenaries first rather than a straight numbered sequel. "Traditionally, you’d make MechWarrior and then you’d make the Mercenaries offshoot,” he explains. "The first one is a linear, story-heavy campaign and then Mercenaries is more like a sandbox. But players want to live out the BattleTech lore, and the best way to do that is to own your own mercenary unit, so we’re going with Mercenaries first."

Instead of a series of linear missions, MechWarrior 5 puts you in command of a mercenary unit and gives you the freedom to either rise to mythic status or crash and burn along the way. Around 300 planets of the Inner Sphere will be open for business, letting you travel between the Great Houses while taking increasingly demanding contracts and building reputation with each faction as you also manage your lances of warriors and supporting technicians.

It's one part MechWarrior and one part Football Manager, Russ tells me. Every bullet you fire and every mech you lose will have a cost, and it’ll be up to you to make sure you're bringing in enough dough to keep your mercs on the payroll and their mechs in fighting condition. As you progress in prestige, the timeline also moves forward. Great Houses rise and fall according to the lore, new technologies are invented and sold, and eventually the ominous Clans come rampaging through the Inner Sphere like Genghis Khan and his Mongol horde.

Leveraging an ambitious dynamic free market economy, stunning destructibility, and the kind of freedom and scale that hasn’t been seen since the first MechWarrior in 1989, Bullock is working to make MechWarrior 5 the ultimate realisation of BattleTech lore.

The invisible hand
When you begin a new campaign, your mercenary company is in a sorry state. With only a weak mech at your disposal, you’ll be scraping by and taking low-level missions from the periphery states of the Great Houses to keep money coming in. Little by little your business will grow, but it will be up to you to decide how.

"The free market is probably one of the biggest components of MechWarrior 5," Bullock tells me. Mechs, pilots, technicians, weapon systems—everything you need to form a mercenary unit will have to be purchased from MechWarrior 5’s market. "The market is totally dynamic based on what year it is. In the year 3015, for example, they didn’t have any pulse lasers or Ferro-Fibrous armour as all of that technology comes in later. And it’s also going to depend where you are in the Inner Sphere. If you are in one Great House’s space, you’ll see mechs common among that house. That’s going to provide a whole level of flavour to your play experience each time you start a new campaign."

Unlike MechWarrior Online, where players can customise their mech chassis in a variety of ways, MechWarrior 5 will stick to the lore and force players to choose between strictly defined roles. “It’s great for a PVP game because the level of customisation is huge,” Bullock tells me. “But if we allowed that in MechWarrior 5, you essentially negate the free market. There’s no need to keep your eyes peeled for that Jenner JR7-F that has Ferro-Fibrous armour if you take your JR7-D and just put Ferro-Fibrous armour on it."

To that end, MechWarrior 5 will feature an unprecedented number of mechs to choose from. "Most MechWarrior games have had maybe 12 to 15 different mech chassis," Bullock explains. “We’re looking at having upwards of 60 chassis with 300 to 400 variants. You could probably play the game multiple times within just one Great House’s space and see different combinations on the free market."

It’s going to be the same kind of action simulator that people have been wanting for 15 years.

Ross Bullock, Pirahna Games
But mechs are only as good as the warriors piloting them. Players will also need to be mindful of their mercs and technicians, who each have their own skills and specialties. Likewise, different manufacturers will make variations of weapon systems, giving players granular control over every aspect of their mechs. Profits made from mercenary contracts will be quickly eaten away by repairs, resupply, and the ever-present cost of replacing slain comrades. It’s a huge amount of freedom but also an equally large responsibility if you’re reckless on the field of battle.

Mech on mech
During my visit, I played an early build of MechWarrior 5. None of the overarching strategy of managing a mercenary outfit was available, but my demo did make it easy to see how the various systems will complement each other. Equally as important, I also got an intimate look at the technology Piranha Games is using to generate the hundreds of battlefields players will fight on.

From the very first blast of my torso-mounted lasers, it was clear that MechWarrior 5 benefits from Piranha Games’ extensive work on MechWarrior Online. I could immediately feel the heft as my 30-odd ton mech stomped through a forest, knocking trees down left and right like some mechanical Godzilla. Everything from the rhythmic thud of PPC cannons to the highly-specific location-based damage modelling feels fantastically heavy. But this isn’t just singleplayer MechWarrior Online, either. With the Unreal 4 engine under the hood, MechWarrior 5 has plenty more horsepower to put to work.

One thing MechWarrior fans will love is that damage modelling has been taken to a whole new level over MechWarrior Online. Each component now has multiple stages of disrepair, making brawls even more visceral as armour peels back after barrages to reveal the delicate mechanical skeletons underneath

"Mechs aren’t just these paper tigers," Bullock says. "You don’t just one-shot things. It’s all about a battle of attrition, of using the hills, rocks, and trees for cover and making sure that when you get your chance to shoot, you make it count. You manage your heat, your ammo, and your positioning and you win that battle."

Enemy mechs won’t be the only thing melting under your alpha-strikes either. MechWarrior 5's battles will feature combined arms of infantry, artillery, and both land and air vehicles. During my demo, flyers swarmed above me, whittling away my armour while I focused down the more dangerous mechs. Meanwhile stationary turrets tracked me as I trudged through a copse of trees, their shots quickly obliterating my cover with each salvo. When you consider that your own lance of mechs will accompany you into battle, I'm excited to see how MechWarrior 5’s missions will turn into frenetic firefights as both sides whittle away the other.

Any veteran MechWarrior player knows that it isn’t just about how well you’re able to shoot, but also how you use the terrain to your advantage. And with 300 planets, each needing their own battlefield that feels distinct, Bullock says finding a way to generate fun but unique terrain was easily one of Piranha Games' biggest challenges. "We needed to create a level generator system that wouldn’t be overly complex," Bullock explains, adding that since MW5's announcement the team has dedicated much of its time to solving this one complex riddle.

What they devised is an elegant system that takes ingredients, like different military bases, and places them together with various groupings of terrain. It’s like playing an instrument: you have several notes to work with, but how you arrange them can create vastly different songs. After my demo, Piranha Games’ senior game designer David Forsey give me an opportunity to peek behind the curtain at the development back end of MechWarrior 5 to toy around with making different kinds of maps.

Similar to creating a new map in Civilization, MechWarrior 5’s map tool lets you dictate the density of foliage, terrain patterns, weather, time of day and more. Now, all of these might not sound like they matter, but in the brutally strategic world of MechWarrior, they absolutely do. Wind storms on a Mars-like planet might blind you, forcing you to rely purely on thermal vision to see enemy mechs through the tempest. Likewise, dense forests can now cover the battlefield since Piranha Games doesn't have to account for all the challenges of syncing up 24 different players over the internet like in MechWarrior Online.

Another big feature that Bullock can’t wait for players to experience is the destructible environment. "Of course, plenty of games have had destructible environments," he says. "But this is the first time it’ll be in a MechWarrior game, and that’s going to be awesome." Players can stomp full speed into buildings and tear them down with all the force of a 35-ton walking tank. During my demo, it was so satisfying to cleave through walls and airplane hangars like they were butter. "We really wanted players to walk anywhere they want," Bullock elaborates, adding that destructible environments will also present new strategic options. "You can imagine plenty of scenarios where an enemy mech is hiding behind a building and you just take it down to get rid of their cover."

With such an emphasis on freedom, MechWarrior 5 is harkening back to the first MechWarrior, before the series became entrenched in the linear stories of Great Houses and their political games. But 15 years is a long time, and MechWarrior 5 will undoubtedly be many players’ first robot rodeo. "It’s important for us to try and be as mindful as we can about a new generation of PC gamers," Bullock says. "But we understand who our community is and who we’re making the game for."

Bullock says his hope is that by digging deeper into the series roots than ever before, newcomers will begin to understand why so many care so deeply for this universe—why the names of those 300 planets of the Inner Sphere matter. “This isn’t going to be some watered-down MechAssault made partially for consoles,” Bullock says. "It’s going to be the same kind of action simulator that people have been wanting for 15 years."

That’s not just because Bullock thinks it’s what MechWarrior fans want, but because it’s what they deserve. "We’re dedicated to the core MechWarrior fanbase. They’re the ones that supported us with MechWarrior Online and now we’re making a game for them."

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I've often talked about the problem of total customization, but having no customization at all is just worse in every respect when the mech simulator genre stands out by its gameplay tradition of customization.

And it only adds insult to injury when you consider that they're adding hundreds of mildly altered clones of mechs to make up for the removed customization.

It is quite a pity since there is some potential in a concept like Not Sid Meier's MechWarriors!

 

[Black]

lmao, they allow for full customization in MWO, a "competitive" multiplayer game and restrict customization in single player.

 

[Haba]

Customization of Mechs is what makes Mechwarrior Mechwarrior.

Was about to say that without customization mechs become just implausible tanks... but then I realized that even in tank games those days you can change engines and turrets...

 

[udm]

That’s not just because Bullock thinks it’s what MechWarrior fans want, but because it’s what they deserve.

What did we do to deserve non-customizable mechs?

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Who cares? It's just some slow-ass shooter.

Battletech is the real deal.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

And whatever Miyazaki is secretly cooking up for Armored Core 6.

Which speaking of customization, while it would obviously be a huge break from tradition with MechWarrior, the system of building the mech from ground up in Core games is really the way one should do total customization. Rather than being defined by tonnage, the mechanics should be defined by performance and interplay of various parts from generator and sensors to limbs, boosters and weapons.

 

[jungl]

Fuck mechwarrior. There only so much fun gameplay you can get out of a shooter. Most of it comes with messing with mech loadouts with friends in online play. I rather see a modern mech commander game. But nooooo all we get is trendy shit like nu xcom games like battletech and fps mechwarrior. Mech genre in gaming COULD be revived in popularity easily with steam and the likes of twitch shilling.

I mean look at original sin 2 the game has godawful rpg mechanics like the diablo loot and armor system that turns normal rpg players away from games. But larian has a shit ton of fans shilling the game on steam reviews and twitch to sell copies.

 

[Cyberarmy]

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

So it sounds good, and the missions look like standard MW fare, but my god couldn't they have chosen someone better to show off the gameplay? I guess it's good to know that you can spam jumpjets and flail around. A proper one on one mech duel would have been nice to see.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Yeah, he is worse than me in a FPS game. Kinda feels nice actually for me

 

[Cael]

What the hell is that? Did he just solo charged into a city and started shooting anything that moves and then tried to take on 3 enemy 'mechs, 1 of which looks to be at least a heavy if not an assault, and 2-4 helos at the same time? That's suicide...

And the beginning part where the camera weaves around as the pilot was getting into the seat was nausea inducing. No literally. Something about the way the camera was moving made me react like I was in one of those rides at an amusement park that was designed to make you throw up. But once the pilot settled down and the 'mech powered up, everything was fine. Weird.

Anyway, the idea of no customisation will be a problem. That is the major fun of Battletech, even the tabletop. You can have a whole ton of different chassis and variants. Even the 3025 source book had a ton of different 'mech chassis and each one had 1-5 variants. But customisation is a must. You can restrict it for non-Omnimechs, as I did in my Battletech tabletop campaign, but customisation should be allowed.

 

[Cosmic Bane]

It sounds like they are at least aiming in the right direction. Every mech warrior since MW 2: mercenaries has been utter garbage, and they seem to be smart enough for once to realize this one and the original are the ones to copy instead of adding new retarded stuff and general making things that are shit and halfassed.

Also MW 4 was especially shit, especially in regards to the hard point nonsense.

Either make it so that mechs are standard, make them easy to swap around, or make it like in the old crescent hawk game where there are just a few upgrades available in certain places for certain mechs.

Some convoluted and constraining bullshit is the absolute worst option.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Oh hey it's Polygon showing off their renowned gameplay skillz again.

 

[tsiforb]

Oh hey it's Polygon showing off their renowned gameplay skillz again.

It was a guy from Piranha.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Also MW 4 was especially shit, especially in regards to the hard point nonsense.

Either make it so that mechs are standard, make them easy to swap around, or make it like in the old crescent hawk game where there are just a few upgrades available in certain places for certain mechs.

Some convoluted and constraining bullshit is the absolute worst option.

"Total customization" or standardized mechs, that is just being able to slap in anything at all within the tonnage limit, is in truth the worst possible system of all.

At the most basic level, all it does is reduce each 'mech chassis into nothing more than a set of hitboxes and choice between humanoid and chickenwalker walking animation. This is a system which renders the mech itself essentially meaningless, and even if one has a more interesting level of underlying mech customization like in Heavy Gear 2 you will end up with a completely discarded cosmetic layer.

The alternative of rendering every mech into stock+upgrades is too restrictive, and limits possibilities of mech design to what the developers added in.

Within the context of the MechWarrior series alone, hard points were by far the best solution to presenting 'mechs with unique flair and design possibilities. Despite being 100-tonners, Atlas and Daishi were distinct from each other beyond simply hitboxes and walking animation.

However, by far the ideal implementation of mech customization is that done by FROM in Armored Core games: Completely custom built mecha where design starts at chassis construction and generator capacity. When mech design is decoupled from hard defined weight classes and tonnage and instead shifted into a free floating purpose and capability defined design and classification the end result provides for a much more involved and interesting game experience. In this sense there's a fundamental flaw in BattleTech as an IP as it will never be able to shake itself from the constraints of its board game roots and needing to have 'mechs presented as per their counterpart units from the tabletop game. It has no option but to structure itself around including iconic 'mechs like Mad Cat.

 

[Cael]

The problem is, customisation is enshrined in canon, not just the rules. During and after the Clan invasion, Marik was selling retrofit kits to all and sundry, for example. So not only was customising canon, it was actually not all that hard because those kits were issued to units in the field.

However, Mechwarrior has never been too faithful to the boardgame rules, with each iteration moving further and further away from those rules. For example, if you tried to run a Large Pulse Laser in MW4Mercs using 5 double heat sinks, you'll overheat in 2 seconds flat. This is a problem even in MW2. In the boardgame, you can fire that LPL until the heat death of the universe and you will still have zero heat built up.

MW4 did an acceptable compromise in terms of restricting customisation, in my opinion, which kind of hurts as it means praising Microshite for something.

In my boardgame RP campaign, I restrict by type and number. For example, take the bog standard Orion. 1 autocannon, 1 SRM, 1 LRM, 2 lasers. My restrictions are simple: autocannons and gauss cannons are interchangeable. Therefore, you can mount any AC or gauss cannon where that original autocannon is. But only 1. Lasers and PPC are in the same group, and you can mount 2 because there were 2 lasers originally. SRM and LRM are in the same group and max 2. Jump jets, engines, ammo bins, internal equipment (active probes, TAGs, targeting computers, etc.) and armour can be freely exchanged or installed.

Omnimechs get to change whatever the hell they want with no restrictions. That is their hat, after all.

Note: I did this long before MW4 came along.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Generally speaking the canon restrictions are rather vague since they require extensive reconstruction of the BattleMech which makes them more akin to heavy-duty repairs. OmniMechs had a distinct advantage in this because not only could individual parts be replaced quickly as means of repair they could also fit in different weapon pods that were designed for the particular OmniMech. I would say the issue is really that canon is somewhat contradictory on the matter of customization and the rules on customization since boxed edition have always struggled with representing it in any fashion (Config A/B/whatevers and Variants aside), with Battle Value devolving into a hopeless mess when customization is allowed.

Personally I think in case of the boardgame itself it's book only or no-go, custom mechs completely wreck even the slightest semblance of balance and only worse the more advanced tech is available. A good example of this is how heat, pulse lasers, and called shots can be gamed (then again I also tend to be kinda heavily puritan 3025 technical readout only). It's very clear the games have either a very different algorhytm for handling the heat sink calculation (this is probably the case in for example MW3 where it seems heat sinks are based around cooling speed) or the root mechanic is altered (MW4 where it is rather mysterious how exactly it works except the stated level of heat efficiency is highly noticiable). In case of RP I'd probably just use a different system since BattleTech is not really that suited for the job without extreme welding.

(EDIT: Also it seems your RP solution does not count critical space in a normal manner for the example Orion)


PS: You can always point out that Mektek did a much better job on expanding the mechanical end of MW4Mercs, and then blame Microsoft's flip-flop on the game's freeware status for nuking Mekpak 4 when it would have greatly improved core gameplay by redoing radar and aiming among other things.