KickStarter BattleTech Pre-Release Thread

[Lhynn]

Codex featured character should totally be Cleve. He should drive a Swiftwind or something. Or be the best Charger/UrbanMech pilot ever.

He should be the self proclaimed best mechanic ever, but unavailable for anything as hes working on his magnus opus.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

He should be the self proclaimed best mechanic ever, but unavailable for anything as hes working on his magnus opus.

"Oh no. You're one of those mercenaries..."

 

[lurker3000]

Only 1.6 million more until the game gets interesting.

Seems unlikely though.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

That was quick!

 

[m_s0]

Wow, that is pretty fast.

 

[DeepOcean]

It looks for me that they already have a core of missions they are calling skirmish game, the 1 million stretch goal is just to add fluff like a story, the 1,85 million is to just add some side missions for the game to not feel too linear. It appears with a Dawn of War 2 single player but inclined by TB, you go on a series of maps killing stuff with four squads and following a linear story that happens on a bunch of planets with maybe a few side missions just to make things look less linear. It could be fun.

 

[J_C]

Only 1.6 million more until the game gets interesting.

Seems unlikely though.

I think they can easily achieve it. They will have 1 million in 2 days max, and they will have a month tho gather the remaining money.

 

[prodigydancer]

Well it is game for combatfags first (storyfags get their due after 1 million $)

Am I the only one who sees a potential problem here? HBS excels at storytelling and their writing is also quite good. Combat, though good enough, was easily the weakest link in their Shadowrun games.

 

[khavi]

Creator Harebrained Schemes LLC 8 minutes ago

@rgreat:
Turn-based allows for more depth of tactics!

Hah, when asked why turn-based over RTwP :D

 

[lurker3000]

I think they can easily achieve it. They will have 1 million in 2 days max, and they will have a month tho gather the remaining money.

I don't know. I badly hope they get to 1.85 but 1.0 - 1.2 seems more likely.

 

[khavi]

Current list of included mechs is basically everything Inner Sphere from MWO. Read: everything artwork and a 3d model exists for.

Hi, Vox -

BATTLETECH is in pre-production, so many decisions, like the final 'Mech roster, are not yet determined. Below is the list of 'Mechs we're currently planning to include and each of them will have their own variants.

LIGHT: Locust, Commando, Spider, Firestarter, Jenner, Panther, Raven, Urbanmech

MEDIUM: Cicada, Blackjack, Vindicator, Centurion, Enforcer, Hunchback, Trebuchet, Griffin, Kintaro, Shadowhawk, Wolverine

HEAVY: Dragon, Quickdraw, Catapult, JagerMech, Thunderbolt, Cataphract, Grasshopper, Orion

ASSAULT: Awesome, Victor, Zeus, BattleMaster, Stalker, Highlander, Banshee, King Crab, Atlas

Hope that helps - Robin

In looking at these, the Cataphract has a manufacture date of 3025 and the Raven is 3024, so I'd expect those chassis to be very rare depending on theater of operation.

 

[Lucky]

It needs to have either story or multiplayer, as a minimum. Who wants a single-player skirmish game?

Skirmishes being the core goal is what is making me hopeful about this game being good. It suggests that combat will have a much higher priority this time around, compared to the Shadowrun games. Now I had a good enough time with them as a whole, but the combat by itself was dull, plodding and one-dimensional. Having that in a game like this would, to me, not make it worth playing, so I'm cautiously optimistic about what looks like a pledge to create a game with fun combat.

Am I the only one who sees a potential problem here? HBS excels at storytelling and their writing is also quite good. Combat, though good enough, is easily the weakest link in their Shadowrun games.

Jordan Weisman was one of the designers of the original BattleTech tabletop-game and HBS should be more than aware of their current reputation for boring combat, plus the way they are representing themselves now as making a combat-heavy game hardcore gamers, so I expect them to do all they can to make the combat as good as possible. It would be a pretty stupid gamble otherwise to choose this particular IP for their next kickstarter.

 

[ArchAngel]

430k already wow. And with no early bird tier I can wait until last day :D

Oh and, which stretch goal is going to be MCA?

 

[SausageInYourFace]

First Update:

>>>DISPATCH FROM HBS_HIGH COMMAND:
>>>ALPHA STRIKE A SUCCESS. FUNDED IN 53 MINUTES.

>>>MAINTAIN SUPPRESSION FIRE.

>>>CALL IN FRIENDS AND FAMILY FOR REINFORCEMENTS.

>>>NO PRISONERS.

GO! GO! GO!

Spoiler

Yes! Physical attacks and Death From Above are in the game!

I hope they keep this style in future updates.

 

[undecaf]

Did my responsibility.

 

[ZoddGuts]

They need to take a look at Front Mission game series for great turn based Mech combat. Hopefully Harebrained steps it up with their combat AI in their games.

 

[Lord Andre]

I really liked the tagline "OF NOBLE BIRTH AND MERCENARY MIND" that they originally had on the Atlas wallpaper. They should have kept that a central motif in the pitch. I found it to be quite evocative.

 

[LESS T_T]

USGamer interview: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/battletech-kickstarter-7-things-you-should-about-the-game

Deep and complex system, MechWarriors permadeath, travel time.

Mechs and MechWarriors Will be Deep and Complex
BattleTech will be a turn-based title for modern PCs. This means Weisman and company have the chance to render the game's mechs in far greater detail than was previously possible. This isn't just from a graphics standpoint though. Instead, Harebrained wants your mech design choices to directly affect your gameplay.

"Those mechs are going to be rendered in great detail from a system standpoint," said Weisman. "One of the things I want to do is make sure that Mech Lab/Mech Design components have a stronger causal link between the design and the performance of the mechs. Obviously, you've got weapons and armor, but I want to dive deeper than that."

"The gyro and actuators you put in should have an impact on your performance," he explained. "I want to get into things like turning radiuses; the sharper your turning radius, the more the mech has a chance of falling over. Having your gyro have an impact on not just your turning radius, but also your chances of falling over when you take hits, which depends on your gyro-to-mass ratio. With a turn-based game, we can really express more axes of performance than we could in MechWarrior as a real-time sim. We can get to that kind of depth without it being cumbersome."

The MechWarriors themselves are also becoming a larger part of the process. Each character you recruit has a skill tree, allowing you to specialize that character to perform different operations. If you have a light mech, you need a pilot that can handle a light mech.

"We want to make the skill trees for the MechWarriors really deep now." said Weisman. "You're in charge of those MechWarriors' careers. As you build up your mercenary unit, you're guiding those MechWarriors through a career path that allows them to specialize. You can take a guy and have him specialize in heavy mechs. If you then tell him, 'I need you to drive this light mech,' he's going to be like 'What? I don't know how to do that! I'll die doing that!' It's like taking a great truck driver and saying 'Go race formula one.' Balancing that with the fact that it's a deadly place out there and you've got to keep your MechWarriors alive. "

Perma-Death Stalks Your MechWarriors
That last statement is important. Your MechWarriors can and will die if you're reckless. If they die, they're gone forever and you've just lost a character who's career you've been steering for a long time.

"Our game is primarily a single-player campaign," said Weisman. "Within the context of the campaign, perma-death is there. I think we need to have those kinds of consequences. It's not simply alive or dead. If a guy gets his ass kicked, he may survive, but be in the hospital for two months. You have to figure out who you put in his place until he gets back in the rotation. Time is factor in the campaign. Travel time and combat time."

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

They have reached Expanded Environments stretch goal.

 

[vonAchdorf]

It took then half the time to reach 500k compared to D:OS2. Not bad.

 

[Lucky]

From that interview it sounds like they're anticipating reaching the campaign stretch-goal. Makes sense as a minimum, since only Golem Arcana earned less than a million and that one doesn't really compare to settings like Shadowrun and BattleTech. I wonder though if they're also expecting to reach the multiplayer stretch-goals.

The customisation options sound good. Hopefully they'll also work well in practise.
No planned mod support.
A campaign that revolves around contracts for the bigger and smaller factions.


Interesting bit:

Harebrained Is Keeping the Game's Scope Manageable
One of the reasons that Kickstarter games frequently don't deliver is that creators over-promise. They say they could deliver the moon, but when it's all said and done, all they could really make with their planned funds is a mountain. The reason Harebrained Schemes has been successful on Kickstarter is limiting the scope on their projects to what the studio can handle.

"That's one of the good dynamics in our studio, we do play as checks and balances for each other," said Weisman. "When I laid out 'Here's all the things I want to do with BattleTech,' Mitch and Mike were like, 'Okay, well that's game three in the series. This is in game two. Let's just deal with this stuff in game one.' My hope is the game is embraced and that allows us to continue down the line to explore all the things I really want to do."

"One of the things we've been really careful about is biting off what we can chew. We just shipped Shadowrun: Hong Kong, our third Kickstarter title. That's because we exercise self-restraint. We're not a Bungie or a Valve, we don't have 600 people. On the Shadowrun: Hong Kong Kickstarter, when we hit the $1 million total, fans asked 'What's the next stretch goal?' We came back and said 'There is no more.' We were worried about how they were going to respond to that. They respected that there were limits."

If I'm reading that right, if this game does well enough they're planning on turning it into a trilogy.

 

[Ulminati]

Stretch goals are retarded.
Multiplayer is the one thing I wanted from the game, and it's at $2.5 million.

Meanwhile, Golem Arcana got $518k, SRR got $1.8mil and SRHK got $1.2 mil.
On top of that, their previous games had a $15 buy-in minimum if you wanted a digital copy. Now they're asking for $25.

It's a shame, because I was pumped for this game until I saw how they prioritized the goals. I set a reminder for when there's 48 hours left. If they've broken $2.5 mil by then, I might buy in at minimum price. Otherwise this thing is bundle fodder.

 

[Infinitron]

Stretch goals are retarded.
Multiplayer is the one thing I wanted from the game, and it's at $2.5 million.

Meanwhile, Golem Arcana got $518k, SRR got $1.8mil and SRHK got $1.2 mil.
On top of that, their previous games had a $15 buy-in minimum if you wanted a digital copy. Now they're asking for $25.

It's a shame, because I was pumped for this game until I saw how they prioritized the goals. I set a reminder for when there's 48 hours left. If they've broken $2.5 mil by then, I might buy in at minimum price. Otherwise this thing is bundle fodder.

They made clear in an interview well before the campaign that multiplayer was going to be a more distant stretch goal.

Most of the established HBS fanbase here and elsewhere is probably okay with that.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yay Urbie is in.

 

[Ulminati]

And if they want to be okay with a skirmish vs HBSes up until now decidedly mediocre AI, that's their business.

I want to murder other people. And I'd have been fine with it being a $1 million stretch goal. Making it more than twice as much as their last kickstarter got and more than any of their previous kickstarters got is dumb. And pretty unlikely to succeed given their previous KS totals and Shadowrun being a more popular IP than mechwarrior right now.

If they somehow surprise me, I'll put in a minimum pledge. but if they can't deliver what I want, I'm not going to pay full price.