KickStarter BattleTech Pre-Release Thread

[Alpharius]

Watched a bunch of streams and it looks like they've gone with game journalist difficulty on this one(at least for the strategic layer). Like, kill 5 tanks and get enough money to last a month or kill one tank and one medium mech to last 3 month etc. You can do multiple missions per month ofc, and ammo refills & armor reparis are free and instant. So you pretty much can't run out of money hence can't lose the game.

And the game will have only one difficulty level too, because the devs haven't had the time.

 

[PanteraNera]

To bad the Marauder isn't in, was always my favorite mech.

 

[Black]

Calling dibs on a mod that changes pronouns to sex.

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

nah old religions always survived but often in a changed form. iirc the Davions are Catholic, albeit a New Avalon based branch (I'd assume the split came during the Amaris occupation of Earth, since I don't doubt the Pope and all cardinals were murdered and replaced with puppets the FedSuns clergy would refuse to listen to). Hell, there were even Thuggee cultists floating around at some point. Muslims are meant to be less common bc they weren't as eager as others to fuck off of Earth during the first big round of colonization+exploration, but presumably they're around. new space religions are of course a thing too, most regrettably the Blakists

Cool. It has been a while since I played the games and read the novels. Speaking of the novels, I was on Sarna.net and refreshing myself on some lore when I saw one of the posts trashing Mechwarrior Dark Age. Then when I was reading a Battletech author's blog post he mentioned Mechwarrior Dark Age being a big sore spot among fans. The Mechwarrior Dark Age Novels were the ones I collected and read in high school since they were the newest ones at the time and jumped the timeline forward from the Fedcom Civil War/Word of Blake period in the video games.

What's the reason for all the hate for that era? Is that why they haven't set any video games like this one past the Word of Blake Jihad and keep going for the Forth Succession War?

 

[Bohr]

Watched a bunch of streams and it looks like they've gone with game journalist difficulty on this one(at least for the strategic layer). Like, kill 5 tanks and get enough money to last a month or kill one tank and one medium mech to last 3 month etc. You can do multiple missions per month ofc, and ammo refills & armor reparis are free and instant. So you pretty much can't run out of money hence can't lose the game.

And the game will have only one difficulty level too, because the devs haven't had the time.

The lack of difficulty levels is something I was surprised and disappointed by since they first announced it. Mitch's "we don't have time to balance for more than one difficulty level" is strange given they could even have put in a basic '+10%costs -10% revs' difficulty slider on the economic sim and called it expert or something. They'll obviously balance it so that new players don't ragequit and hence decent players will soon be rolling in cash. But some of the devs have already been talking about an ironman mode and more challenging difficulty levels so I'm optimistic that's something that'll come along after release. And given what's exposed in the JSONs it'll be easy for people to make mods that adjust the economic sim. In the beta someone even made a mod that improved the AI significantly so given time I think the game will definitely be made more challenging.

Another thing that's a bit strange is that if you salvage 3 pieces of a mech chassis and your tech puts it together, it comes with full, operational stock weapon loadout even if you didn't have those weapons to install on it. On the other hand some people are bitching that when you sell parts in the store you only get 10% of the purchase price. So they've obviously decided to make salvage something that is cool to use to build up your unit rather than something to grind to buy the best stuff. I would still hope that a more challenging game mode would have salvage chassis parts producing a mech with no weapons that you'd have to kit out with what you can scrape together, just seems to fit the idea of a scrappy little merc company a bit better.

 

[Bohr]

To add to the above, this was posted in the last 24hrs, indicating plans for difficulty options (although he was wrong about having to install weapons on salvaged chassis):

Spoiler

Would just need a couple of options to make the economic sim more difficult to add to these.

 

[Spark Mandriller]

What's the reason for all the hate for that era? Is that why they haven't set any video games like this one past the Word of Blake Jihad and keep going for the Forth Succession War?

The problem is that it's associated with Dark Age, the game. People who liked Battletech weren't happy to see Dark Age show up, since it was regarded as a competing product that might damage or even kill their game. Being associated with that isn't a good thing from their perspective, even though the DA game has been dead for like a decade now. It doesn't help that the fluff was designed to be easy to get into for people who wanted to play DA but hadn't played BT, either. The game is set like half a century past where BT was, so half the factions are changed, some are gone altogether, and there are these new Republic of the Sphere? Who are they? How did they get to this point? They didn't really say. It's bad enough when the writers decide to hurt/kill the faction you like, but it's a lot worse when it apparently happened off screen at some point and you don't even get told how. They eventually did catch up and fill out the timeline, but that took a while. For a long time a lot of people viewed the dark age era as the stupid one designed for the game they hate. Hard to get over that.

 

[Cool name]

Cool. It has been a while since I played the games and read the novels. Speaking of the novels, I was on Sarna.net and refreshing myself on some lore when I saw one of the posts trashing Mechwarrior Dark Age. Then when I was reading a Battletech author's blog post he mentioned Mechwarrior Dark Age being a big sore spot among fans. The Mechwarrior Dark Age Novels were the ones I collected and read in high school since they were the newest ones at the time and jumped the timeline forward from the Fedcom Civil War/Word of Blake period in the video games.

What's the reason for all the hate for that era? Is that why they haven't set any video games like this one past the Word of Blake Jihad and keep going for the Forth Succession War?

Easiest explanation if you're familiar with more recent tabletop setting butthurt is that at the time it was the equivalent of Warhammer Fantasy becoming Age of Sigmar, if End Times hadn't been a thing and they just said ''yeah uh stuff happened in between what you know and this but they're the same universe".

On the tabletop side: New game with new and very different rules replacing the old one, catering to current trends to grab a bigger demographic. Mech designs people thought look more like stuff from different franchises or just plain odd and ugly.

On the fluff side: Big timeskip coupled with what amounted to a total setting reboot. New characters, new or massively changed factions, tech level suddenly all kinds of different, a lot of other familiar setting elements gone or altered. At the time the only explanation for all this was "Yeah so during the time skip that group you thought was just a tiny splinter organization lead a massive war throughout human space and also 80% of interstellar comms are down because reasons. No we aren't going to go into any detail". It didn't help that the whole use of the word ''jihad" seemed like an attempt to jump on the just-after-9/11 boogeyman of the moment. The WoB jihad only got expanded and fleshed out into something resembling a reasonable bridge between the end of the FedCom Civil War and start Dark Age well after the fact.

TL;DR: Massive game changes alongside massive setting changes, all with little warning or explanation. Even when the changes are uniformly good that's going to cause fanbase strife, and most seem to be of the opinion that these changes were not.

 

[Bohr]

In the beta someone even made a mod that improved the AI significantly so given time I think the game will definitely be made more challenging.

I'd like to hear more about this

He's started a thread on the new forums, not sure the current status given it started as some tweaking for the backer beta, but he's going to do it for the release too:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...2-still-building-a-better-mouse-trap.1075322/

Apart from being well received by most who tried it, I think one of the well-known BT LPs also switched to it with apparently good reports ( https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3848299 ).

edit: I'm sure HBS have worked on the AI themselves since the backer beta, but at least people can tweak this stuff to try different approaches.

 

[ArchAngel]

Watched a bunch of streams and it looks like they've gone with game journalist difficulty on this one(at least for the strategic layer). Like, kill 5 tanks and get enough money to last a month or kill one tank and one medium mech to last 3 month etc. You can do multiple missions per month ofc, and ammo refills & armor reparis are free and instant. So you pretty much can't run out of money hence can't lose the game.

And the game will have only one difficulty level too, because the devs haven't had the time.

The lack of difficulty levels is something I was surprised and disappointed by since they first announced it. Mitch's "we don't have time to balance for more than one difficulty level" is strange given they could even have put in a basic '+10%costs -10% revs' difficulty slider on the economic sim and called it expert or something. They'll obviously balance it so that new players don't ragequit and hence decent players will soon be rolling in cash. But some of the devs have already been talking about an ironman mode and more challenging difficulty levels so I'm optimistic that's something that'll come along after release. And given what's exposed in the JSONs it'll be easy for people to make mods that adjust the economic sim. In the beta someone even made a mod that improved the AI significantly so given time I think the game will definitely be made more challenging.

Another thing that's a bit strange is that if you salvage 3 pieces of a mech chassis and your tech puts it together, it comes with full, operational stock weapon loadout even if you didn't have those weapons to install on it. On the other hand some people are bitching that when you sell parts in the store you only get 10% of the purchase price. So they've obviously decided to make salvage something that is cool to use to build up your unit rather than something to grind to buy the best stuff. I would still hope that a more challenging game mode would have salvage chassis parts producing a mech with no weapons that you'd have to kit out with what you can scrape together, just seems to fit the idea of a scrappy little merc company a bit better.

I was planning to do self imposed Ironman anyways just like I do when playing Civ games.

 

[veevoir]

Without ironman one way or another this game loses a lot of sense. Can't have a fight with attrition without attrition.

 

[Hellraiser]

So I guess I'll wait until the patch that adds Ironman or difficulty options before playing the campaign. Luckily Frostpunk comes out around the same time, so I'll play that between rounds of multiplayer.

 

[ArchAngel]

So I guess I'll wait until the patch that adds Ironman or difficulty options before playing the campaign. Luckily Frostpunk comes out around the same time, so I'll play that between rounds of multiplayer.

I will use the time before that patch to learn how UI and putting together of MECHs works. I can do another playthrough when they make it harder.

 

[Haba]

Battletech just went to the prestigious "toxic waste" category. Won't even buy from a bundle.

But hey, at least you get those inclusivity points from people who don't actually play games.

 

[veevoir]

You can be a tranny and one person on the crew is muslem. Boo hoo, codex got its finger hurt. Retreat to the safe space! Seriously, some folks here are triggered whiners on the SJW level or higher

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

You can be a tranny and one person on the crew is muslem.

So progressive. This is just what the Battletech franchise needs in order to successfully compete in the Current Year. I for one cannot wait to have my privilege checked by a multi-story tall robot driven by a trans womyn of color.

 

[Black]

Battletech, to me, was always about mechs, eternal conflict and combined arms as SECONDARY things. The very first thing that comes to mind was always: what countries of Earth do the pilots have roots in (even tho many of them were never in any proximity to Sol)? What are their prononus? Would a great house composing only of trannies and black wxmin be easily the most powerful house?
If 2 years ago you had told me that Battletech would be the first game to have pronouns selection I'd believe you, we were already far too gone then.

=

 

[GarfunkeL]

They were talking of timer at an early stage, no idea if it has remained.

 

[Bohr]

Yep Mitch said the way the story development was handled had 'changed during development', no confirmation but hints that the story missions now just wait for you to deal with them and the restoration can't fail.

And the devs aren't exactly shooting down this line of reasoning:

 

[Infinitron]

There's been some confusion about this. Gitelman said these two conflicting things in an interview last year:

He also says that BattleTech "isn't an RPG, there's no branching plots, there's not even multiple endings". But right before that he also says that if you choose not to participate in the main plot of the campaign by assisting the deposed queen who is trying to reclaim her throne, then she'll lose the civil war, so I dunno.

I'd guess that there is no timer. But given how vague they've been about the entire campaign aspect of the game, who knows what we'll find there.

 

[ArchAngel]

No timer, no ironman... it's like battle brothers without an end game crisis.

Timer is your money. If you run out of money to cover monthly costs, it is game over.

 

[Jimmious]

No timer, no ironman... it's like battle brothers without an end game crisis.

But with an actual story to finish

 

[Haba]

You can be a tranny and one person on the crew is muslem. Boo hoo, codex got its finger hurt. Retreat to the safe space! Seriously, some folks here are triggered whiners on the SJW level or higher

Go eat a dick, you degenerate dumbfuck.

While it might be difficult to comprehend for your gonorrhea addled mind, some people might actually be turned off by degenerate game design. You know developers who need modders to add a god damn difficulty setting to their game. And have weapon firing ranges represented by fucking bar charts.

But while we are at it, mind telling me how you picture an Azami within Draconis Combine practicing Shia islam looks like? Or what kind of a portrait of Ahmad Al-Hasar they have up in Thala. Hijabs and Turbans, right? In the year 3000.

And Infinitron, fuck off already, you don't even play games.

 

[veevoir]

Now that is someone properly triggered.

There is a difference between degenerating game design as a very valid argument vs omg she arab / there is a tranny pronoun option (which is cosmetic stuff)

Who said she is moslem anyway? Wearing a rag over head might be the only thing remaining of arab traditions by that time. Havent seen in the streams anyone talking to her on the ship, if she has no dialogue about killing infidels - who are you to asume her faith shitlord!

 

[ArchAngel]

Now that is someone properly triggered.

There is a difference between degenerating game design as a very valid argument vs omg she arab / there is a tranny pronoun option (which is cosmetic stuff)

Who said she is moslem anyway? Wearing a rag over head might be the only thing remaining of arab traditions by that time. Havent seen in the streams anyone talking to her on the ship, if she has no dialogue about killing infidels - who are you to asume her faith shitlord!

I didn't see any Tranny pronoun options. But there was a neutral pronoun option to nice fit my gender of Mech.