Forum questions
Q. Will we get to see any new art in the future?
A. We'll see new art with the beta launch. In the meantime, we're focused on shipping the beta.
Q. Can you talk a bit more about the morale/inspiration system?
A. The "morale" system models positive effects on the Battlefield. As good things happen, your inspiration bar will increase. Once you’ve accrued enough inspiration, mechwarriors can become "inspired". This gives general buffs like taking less damage, being more accurate, etc. Paying your pilots more leads to faster accrual of inspiration. Paying your pilots less leads to slower accrual of inspiration. Also, when negative things in combat, that will have a negative impact on your "inspiration".
**It sounds like it's a way to further speed up the end phases of combat as the winning team becomes more inspired. Good game design here so if you know you're losing a battle, at least it will end more quickly for you. Doesn't sound like they've decided on the name of inspiration one way or another.
Q. Will Artillery/Airstrikes happen instantaneously?
A. Offboard asset strikes will take time to reach their target. As you upgrade your equipment, time to target will become less or have shorter cooldowns on use. Strikes can be used for area denial, kill downed mechs, flush mechs out, etc. No idea yet of how many turns it will take for shots to land as it hasn't been fully fleshed out yet.
**It sounds to me that you may be able to hit mechs with strikes if you're lucky and happen to land a shot on an enemy, but largely that it will be limited to mechs that are already stationary for one reason or another.
Q. Will stock mechs be a viable option, especially in multiplayer?
A. Yes. Our driving goal is to have stock mechs always be a solid choice. As a means to balance this, special equipment will always have drawbacks on top of their benefits. e.g. AC20 that does more damage might be easier to crit, or have less ammo. Multiplayer will not have unlocks. Multiplayer will not have special equipment as a game design decision. The SP campaign will have items unlock as you progress, as well as becoming available through mission salvage. [Tyler] There will definitely be a stock mech only option for multiplayer.
Q. Will HBS record another battle for us, but this time include some melee [so that we can see newer changes]?
A. Right now we're focused on getting the beta shipped, but there might be another video around beta launch. We reiterate that there will be no restrictions on sharing video players take during beta, so expect to see a ton of player generated video content around the release.
Q. Speaking of beta, what features won’t be in beta?
A. Single player campaign, open ended campaign will not be in the beta. The beta includes lance on lance skirmish vs. the AI or against a multiplayer opponent (only 1v1). We feel we'll have a good roster of mechs. Mechlab/Mechbay will not be available in time for Beta.
**This implies not all of the mechs from the official mech list will be playable in beta. It also sounds like it may be up in the air whether we'll be able to try Mechlab prior to the full game shipping, but I'm optimistic.
No beta announcement yet. A kickstarter update will give more info on beta launch, and can be expected somewhat soon (in the next month I would think).
BattletechGear.com – crowdfunded campaign – items only get made if they get funded. If we don’t hit minimum order quantity by the 15th, then the items won’t get made. Next wave is already being planned. Tyler is excited about it.
Q. Any further updates about the mech pipeline you can share?
A. Our Mech list has already been published. Vehicles will include: Striker, Swiftwind Scout Car, APC, Galleon light tank, Scorpion light tank, Long Tom Artillery, Mobile HQ, Bulldog, LRM and SRM carriers, Demolisher, Shreck PPC carrier, Manticore, Aerospace fighters. It's mentioned that some vehicles (specifically the Long Tom and Mobile HQ) will be more likely to exist as mission objectives. There will be no hovercraft released in time for launch - the movement model for hovercraft is a different set of rules that requires additional development – hovercraft will probably be reserved for a post-launch update. Vehicles will be encountered as enemies, but not controlled by the player. The player can bring along support craft that function offscreen however, presumably the Long Tom and Aerospace fighters.
**No mention of the APC motive type outside of not being a hover APC. No word on infantry still, and no word on whether the player will need to escort or provide general orders to friendly vehicles.
Q: Will the Hatchetman be in game?
A: No. There's a strong internal campaign though to get it built. Mitch (jokingly): They [the employees] need to cut that *** out or be fired.
Q: Are you guys adding deliberate plot hooks for expansions into the campaign story?
A: There’s plenty of stuff. We aren't adding plot hooks as a deliberate goal - our goal is foremost about having a good story. But good stories in themselves create lots of opportunities that can be leveraged in the future for expansions/sequels.
Q: Do you have any HR people at HBS?
A: (jokingly) Yes, it’s Mitch. (more serious) Usually at work people are more respectful – HyperRPG is a little more casual. Brian Pool(sp?) is director of HR, and does the heavy lifting. Mitch gets involved when there are problems. Usually there aren’t many problems though, which is nice.
Q: Can we expect dense urban areas or city combat?
A: We're shooting for it - but we’ll see what we end up with. We've yet to fully prove out destructible buildings. There will be a very large industrial complex in at least one map because Tyler wants it.
Q: After seeing some gifs of melee, can you expound on the stability system?
A: Mechs can fall down. As your mech takes damage (pilot abilities can augment this), you get stability damage until you fall down.
**Mitch refers to them as "jifs"...wtf?
On stability, I personally would have loved some additional detail here. They answered the question, but not with any new information beyond what we already know. Maybe we'll see them reuse the mech health bars as "stability" meters? That would be super cool.
Q: What improvements have been made to AI?
A: Example – During a recent match an AI controlled mech deliberately kept jumping out of range to shoot at Tyler's mech with it's PPC. Tyler said that the mechcon demo didn’t really have real AI so to speak – enemy mechs would just move forward and shoot. AI is now working with decision trees – the AI mechs now evaluate heat levels, move into cover, evaluate damage states, etc. We're very focused on complex AI functionality and will continue on it up until the game ships.
Q: Will pilots talk a lot? How much battle-chatter can we expect?
A: Yes. On top of that, we have 3x the pilot chatter possible in this game. We have a very robust system, with lots and lots of triggers. Please note that this doesn’t mean constant chatter from your pilots, but it means a lot more breadth and depth to the chatter which you do end up hearing. There will be lots of procedurally-generated mechwarriors, and a lot of personalized voice sets that we can assign to our pilots. One point of interest is that our pilots won't have fixed personalities, as we will customize their voices and names (at least we should be able to, but this functionality has not yet been built).
We're not sure how mechbay works, because it’s not coded yet. We have ideas already on how the Mechlab will function, but don’t want to comment until it’s code-complete.
On a side note, there's nothing more exciting or nervewracking for a dev than allowing people to play the beta (Mitch et al talk about how excited they are for the beta launch).
Q: Will there be an Ironman mode?
A: Yeah.
Q: Will there be any DFA achievements?
A: [Tyler answering] This is our intent, but it hasn't been made yet.
Q: Any chance of seeing a mech not in the official roster make the release date?
A: In success all things are possible. [Mitch adding] And no, we're not saying what success means – we're not sharing financial data.
Chat questions
Q: Can we use 2 Leopards from the Argo to embark on multiple missions simultaneously, or use one to bring in late-mission reinforcements?
A: We'd would love that, not sure if it’s possible yet.
Q: BattletechGear.com - will items get a second chance if not funded?
A: I think they said yes here. More info to come later this week.
Q: Will there be clans in this game?
A: [Mitch] Success is needed. Make sure 10 of your friends buy the game with you. Then maybe clans can join us during post-launch updates/expansion/sequel. Also, Mitch says he hates clans and never ever wants to see clans in a game ever. (j/k)
Q: Will the DFA mercs be available for hire? Will they voice their own characters?
A: We can’t guarantee it regarding voice acting. With that said, there are plans for some DFA characters to appear in the game, but they aren't in yet.
Q: Any plans to get George Ledoux as a voice actor?
A: We *always* get asked this question. [Mitch]I've met him - he's a lovely guy. Is there a chance? Yes. Will it actually happen? [Was too busy typing to see the response, but I'm assuming Mitch or someone juts shrugged].
Q: Will the DFA Mech armor app that AJ created ever be released to the public?
A: That's a really good discussion to have. We're currently working on 2.0.
**No real answer here.
As a heads up, it's not too late. New players can still back the game.
Q: Since we're not getting the Hatchetman, can we at least have Hatchy’s helpers?
A: No.
Q: Will the Von Luckner MBT make an appearance?
A: Nope. We'd like to have one later. It’s all gravy.
Q: Can a player's commander specialize in light mechs in the campaign, and have that be a viable choice throughout the game?
A: Players can totally choose to do this. You may not want to take a locust on a mission where you attack and hold a base against a bunch of assault mechs, but you can tweak your commander to be better in light mechs. [Mike jumps in] Specializations are not severe enough to prevent yourself from piloting other mechs. So for example, your commander might be a good spotter, which makes more sense for a light mech, but wouldn't hinder the pilot from piloting an assault mech.
Q: Will any HBS employees appear in game as OpFor pilots?
A: (jokingly) that sounds fun. PM Mitch later.
Q: Will there be another Shadowrun game after Battletech?
A: Mitch would love it. Tyler would love to make another one as well. There are currently no plans surrounding a new Shadowrun game, but in the future it sounds like it will be a yes. in Tyler's words, Shadowrun will never die, it's just dormant.
Q: Any chance of custom portraits for pilots?
A: [Mike] Nope.
There will be no mission editor. Building one is a massive undertaking. It also breaks future-proofing the product since expansions and the like will need to work with the mission editor as well.
Q: Thoughts on importing .mul files to expand number of mechs in game?
A: The Mech data is shared in a .json format. [Some technical jargon here I wasn't fast enough to type down]. Say if you take a Firestarter and strip it, and then rebuild it with a different loadout, you could export that mech and share it with a friend, and that friend could then play with that mech. There will not be new mech models, however.
Q: Unity as a game engine? How do you feel about it?
A: The grass is always greener. When Unity works, it does things really well. When Unity doesn’t work as planned, it’s like being in a garbage fire while simultaneously getting devoured by piranhas. Unity is better suited to some games than others. Battletech is a reasonably good fit for the engine.
**I thought this was a really good explanation of Unity. Hah!
Q: Will you be able to offer the enemy a chance to surrender?
A: This is unlikely. We've discussed enemies proactively surrendering but offering surrender, from an emotional standpoint, doesn't seem to have a lot of benefit. [Mitch] Focus equals quality.
The team at this point talk about Sizzler for a bit. Yes, the restaurant. Basically, an analogy is made. Sizzler has a ton of food options, but they all taste like ***. A good steakhouse on the other hand only has a few options on the menu, but everything tastes incredible. They want to be the game developer equivalent of a luxury steakhouse. Fair enough.
Q: Can we expect to use all of the most recent mech variants from MWO?
A: A decent number of variants are planned. Some mechs will have variants available and some will not.
**Hopefully they're making this decision based around game canon.
Q: Will missions get randomized optional objectives?
A: There will be some optional objectives in missions. [Mitch] It's difficult to answer this question based on phrasing. Some missions will have optional objectives and some won’t.
**Not really answered about randomized. I think the asker meant procedurally generated optional objectives, but it wasn't clear.
Q: Can we get a re-enactment from HBS of the Davion/Steiner wedding?
A: [The team starts imagining] Perhaps Mitch as Hanse and Lauren from HyperRPG as Melissa.
**Doesn’t sound like it.
We ate backer bagels this morning. Thank you.
Q: Will there be Quad mech piloting skills, even without quads in game?
A: All mechwarriors will be able to pilot quad mechs, but no quad specific skills.
Q: Will there be an option to randomize enemy forces in skirmish?
A: Yes.
Q: Don’t die, Tyler. [request for Tyler not to die since the asker believes Tyler will be the force behind a future-Shadowrun game].
A: [Team confused here]
Q: Will the Commander ever make an appearance?
A: You mean the Lord Commander? [Talk of DFA.] There might be some info about him in game.
[Team gets off track here] Yes we made Shadowrun Returns and sequels. Shadowrun's mission editor made it so that the sequels couldn’t move too far away from the tech used in the original. Some of the tech was starting to fall by the wayside by the third title.
Q: Will the AI ever try to bribe us as players?
A: We don’t think so. They’ll shoot at us, and that's kind of like a bribe.
Q: How long is the campaign in hours?
A: No idea yet.
Q: If you could go back in time to fix something about the game, what would you fix?
A: [Tyler] Engine-based double heat sinks shouldn’t be free!
Q: Will the enemy ever decide to run away?
A: The AI will temporarily retreat, but not leave the battlefield. They will potentially do this during particular mission parameters, or when they need to bleed off some heat, etc.
Q: Will there be environments like we saw in Mechwarrior 4 cities with limitations?
A: We're seeing how it feels. We do expect cities to appear as occasional set pieces. As this game takes place in the periphery, most planets are more backwater in nature so large cities aren't as common.
Q: Can we acquire trophies from fights with which to decorate the Argo?
A: We don’t know; seems like a neat idea, though. There will be some type of Argo customization available, but Mitch says decorations sound like a feature in discuss, which makes him "pissy".
**Assuming that means a no.
Q: Is there a background for the setting?
A: We've already provided a bunch of background in the Kickstarter updates.
Q: How will the game save player progress?
A: [Mike] Good question. Of course it will save progress, but I don’t want to answer out of turn...
**I got the impression that there are some ongoing talks regarding saving player progress, so final decisions may not have been made yet on how it will work.
Mitch accidentally breaks the chat tool at this point, but thankfully already had another question ready to run with.
Q: What has been the most challenging gameplay system [to build] and why?
A: [Mitch] The pipeline for creating maps is very complicated. [Tyler] Combat on combat balance. That's basically the core of the game, and without it we would just be playing Oregon Trail in space. [Mike] Solving for intuitive movement.
Q: Has the DFA animation been made for the King Crab yet?
A: No.
**Assuming this is referencing a particular DFA moment, but I haven't watched the whole series so I'm not sure.
