KickStarter BattleTech Pre-Release Thread

[Stompa]

No shit MW Tactics failed, have you seen their designs? Shit's more awful than early BT original mechs.

Awful fucking mech

 

[Akratus]

puke.gif

 

[twincast]

Shit's more awful than early BT original mechs.

Well, I wouldn't go quite that far in my derision, but yeah... curious, too, considering that MWT started out as a sister project (later becoming kind of a cousin one) to MWO whose sole saving grace is its mech design.

 

[ArchAngel]

So, D:OS 2 KS announcement just killed this one?

 

[Infinitron]

So, D:OS 2 KS announcement just killed this one?

Killed what exactly? They announced it. Later on, probably after Shadowrun: Hong Kong is out and has gotten a few patches and hopefully positive reviews, they'll announce the Kickstarter date.

 

[ArchAngel]

Killed what exactly? They announced it. Later on, probably after Shadowrun: Hong Kong is out and has gotten a few patches and hopefully positive reviews, they'll announce the Kickstarter date.

Wasn't this KS also supposed to be this month or soon afterwards?

 

[Infinitron]

Wasn't this KS also supposed to be this month or soon afterwards?

No, they said "Fall 2015". That could be as late as November.

 

[Abu Antar]

Mike: And it actually is appropriate to what we’re doing, because we’re trying to bring BattleTech back to its roots, both fictionally and game play wise. We’re set in the 3025 era, Third Succession War is over, and the Fourth is just starting percolate. There’s peace, but it’s not really peace. So we think it’s a really cool era, the history of the Inner Sphere, and we can really tell the kind of stories we want to tell. We can explore the depth of feudal and political intrigue of the franchise. We’re really excited.

Nic: BattleTech has been in many forms since its inception obviously. From tabletop to PC to Virtual World to MechWarrior to MechCommander. What style game is this? How will the players be interacting? With a MechWarrior or a ‘Mech? Or both?

Mike: Both! We’re making a turn-based, tactical squad combat game. You’re going to command a lance of 4 ‘Mechs on the battlefield. It’s going to be a single-player mercenary-style campaign. MechWarrior 2 is a good reference for that. You’re going to choose which missions you want to take. You’re going to hire new MechWarriors, upgrade your ‘Mechs, get salvage. All that good stuff, from mission to mission.

Mitch: And develop your MechWarriors too.

Mike: Yes! MechWarriors will grow. We’re careful not to guarantee specific features here, but we’re looking at MechWarriors with different quirks, personalities, strengths and weaknesses that might manifest over time.

Nic: Single-player or multi-player?

Mike: The initial game we’re taking to Kickstarter is a single-player, open-ended campaign. We are hoping we’ll do well in Kickstarter, so we are talking about multi-player as a stretch-goal. We’ll have more details about that as we get closer to Kickstarter, in the next couple of months.

More at the link: http://www.sarna.net/news/interview...es-about-the-upcoming-battletech-kickstarter/

 

[Infinitron]

There was also some stuff about BattleTech in this podcast: http://arcologypodcast.com/episode-70-chat-with-mitch-gitelman/

 

[Agesilaus]

Given the awful job they did with shadowrun, won't somebody tell them to just slap a new paintjob on crescent hawks inception and call it a day? I don't want to quit another promising rpg because the piss poor writers put the player in a straitjacket.

 

[veevoir]

Pax Prime interview. Now we just need to wait for codex interviews with HBS from gamescom.

 

[Blackstaff]

^^ Interview says the KS will begin end of september.

 

[Infinitron]

Now we just need to wait for codex interviews with HBS from gamescom.

There are none. HBS wasn't at Gamescom.

 

[veevoir]

There are none. HBS wasn't at Gamescom.

What a missed opportunity.. for HBS

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.pcgamer.com/mechwarrior-creator-talks-microsoft-pc-gaming-and-battletech-game/

MechWarrior creator talks Microsoft's relationship with PC gaming, new game

Jordan Weisman's been making games for longer than almost anyone.

He's had a hand in almost all aspects of game development over his 35-year career, one that's spanned tabletop, ARGs, and digital games. Weisman is best known as the creator of FASA, and with it, Shadowrun and BattleTech. But he's also a veteran of Microsoft, serving there as creative director of Microsoft Games from 1998 to 2002, when he oversaw the launch of the original Xbox. He's contributed to game education programs, co-founding the Center for Serious Play at the University of Washington. And he was CEO of WizKids, best known for its HeroClix miniatures game.

Lately, Weisman has been running Harebrained Schemes, the studio behind the recent Shadowrun RPGs, Necropolis, and the upcoming BattleTech turn-based strategy game.

I had the opportunity to speak to Weisman at PAX last weekend, not only to get an update on Harebrained Schemes' projects but to get his perspective on Microsoft's most recent foray back into PC gaming, and what it means to be an independent studio in the midst of a PC gaming boom.

On the blessings and challenges of being an indie dev
"It's the best of times, worst of times," says Weisman. "The access for independent developers to bring their games out to market is unparalleled. That's fantastic, right? The ability to get help in bringing those games to market through venues like crowdfunding is fantastic. And the tools that you need to create games have dropped in price so dramatically over the past decade and become so much more accessible."

"Now, the downside to all that is, there's a lot more product in the marketplace. And so your ability to make noise is hard. You really have to work, as an independent, as much on your community development as you do on your software development. It's something you've got to take really seriously. To be able to break out from a huge amount of content that's coming out."

BattleTech Centers, and then the MechWarrior series, the MechCommander series. But it's been, I'm embarrassed to say, 19 years since I've made a mech game," said Weisman. "I'm really excited to make another one now, I really want to dive back in and go back to the real roots of the game."

"The ability to take that universe and now do that in a modern tactical game where we can get into even more depth than we did in the old days as a pen-and-paper but make it fluid and fast playing so you're focusing on the strategy, not on the mechanics. But the mechanics are really deep there, great differentiation of the mechs and of the mechwarriors, deep skill trees for them."

"If you look at Shadowrun, Shadowrun's an RPG with a really strong tactical game underneath it. This is flipped, [BattleTech] is going to be a tactical game with a lot of really great storytelling underneath it. One of the things that I've been sad about in some of our Mech games over the years [is that] they haven't been really well situated within the universe, they haven't brought the story of the universe out to the forefront and that's something we're determined to do with this title."

BattleTech will hit Kickstarter later this fall.

On Microsoft's return to PC gaming
"I think what I've seen over the years is there's a bit of a cyclical nature, right? 'We're in PC games, we're out of PC games, we're back in PC games,' I think some of that is responsive to the market. There was a belief for a while that PC games were going to go away, that consoles were going to rule everything. I think we've seen that not pan out."

"I also think that they're starting to really embrace a larger vision about games, not just about platforms. The original games group [at Microsoft] was designed as a way to promote Windows, as everything at Microsoft is, it was about promoting Windows. But it's really moved past that, and I think Phil [Spencer]'s really doing a great job of looking at a bigger agenda that's really more fan oriented than it is platform oriented. And I think that's very exciting."

 

[Axe Father]

I hate being excited for things. I want to show enthusiasm because I am a huge BT fan and it is refreshing to see a new video game in the franchise that uses the "BattleTech" branding (which I don't think has been used since the Sega Genesis top down shooter), but skepticism is the best policy.

My main hope is that it actually feels like BattleTech, with all of the 'Mechs being fully customisable and having full subsystem simulation (ammo explosions, limb damage, heat, etc.) and pilots that are tracked separately with their own statistics. I also really like Battle Armour, so it'd be cool to see combined arms with infantry and vehicles thrown into the mix. If we go into dream territory, It'd be kickass if it had an overarching gameplay system that connects the missions and had full salvage and maintenance rules.

Fuck if that'll happen. It'll probably just be a safe, run of the mill tactics game with a BT flavour.

 

[Abu Antar]

Kickstarter is going live on September 29th.
http://catalystgamelabs.tumblr.com/post/129296692886/battletech-pc-game-kickstarter-alpha-strike

 

[Infinitron]

Right on the heels of the D:OS 2 Kickstarter.

 

[Athelas]

Well, of course. You want to call dibs before some other big company announce they're going to do a Kickstarter around the same date.

 

[Abu Antar]

Here's the actual website:
http://battletechgame.com/

 

[smileyninja]

What's the trust factor now-a-days for Harebrained Schemes? I saw a lot of negativity over their involvement with the Fig platform. Does that carry over to other kickstarters?

 

[Axe Father]

Reading the small blurb on the page gives me some hope for this. It makes a distinction between 'Mech and Mechwarrior management, mentions a Mercenaries style campaign, and the wallpaper image emphasizes 'Mechs, infantry, and tanks. Maybe my outline for this game isn't too far off the mark.

Really interested to see the Kickstarter now.

 

[Ulminati]

We'll see how it goes. I'm cautiously optimistic since it's made by the people who actually created mechwarrior. I just hope their brief fling with tablets in SRR is a thing of the past. No mention of tablet/console support is critical if I'm going to back for more than the minimum amount for a copy of the game.

 

[Infinitron]

What's the trust factor now-a-days for Harebrained Schemes? I saw a lot of negativity over their involvement with the Fig platform. Does that carry over to other kickstarters?

You're confusing them with another company.

 

[Jaesun]

I'm still expecting BattleTech Lite™, and at least it is TURN BASED and not another fucking generic fucking Fantasy game/setting....