KickStarter BattleTech Pre-Release Thread

[Grotesque]

why the fuck mechs in mechlab don't have their respective stylized frontal representation like in the upper left corner in that picture?

 

[Kem0sabe]

A lot of people assuming the game will have a healthy modding community.

It's apparent they are releasing the game half baked. An enhanced edition is a certainty down the line.

 

[Bohr]

Well they've obviously seen the long threads in the forum about how people are going to change the game for more challenge, as there was apparently a tweak to the economy today as this long Twitter thread explains, starting here



Lot of stuff about how reloading must be avoided at all costs and a bit of a fixation on Dark Souls:



But this sounds more promising:





(insert Sawyer smiley here)

 

[veevoir]

The whole twatter chain sounds actually reasonable. My favourite part is:

Frankly, as originally designed, TT is self-contradicting. There is simply no way to reconcile irreplacable artifacts of a previous era with their astonishing disposability.

Gods be cursed - this is a lore issue for most of TT games, where everything is rare and elite.. and at the same time world is full of conflict so there is a setting that will happy accept a campaign pretty much anywhere - but in battletech it is the most glaring. Mechs are something priced enough to be passed from generation to generation yet they die quickly and in a very violent way. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that it leads to "no mechs other than cheap light shit" in a short timeframe.

 

[Alpharius]

Well, better than nothing i guess, but this

* I increased the per-mech maintenance cost. By a lot.
* And then I reduced the Leopard's maintenance cost by the same amount.
* And then I increased the Argo's maintenance cost slightly.[.quote]

Doesn't sound too promising. It probably means that per month maintenance will still be around 200k-300k as long as you don't have more than 6 mechs(one mechbay) operational at a time.

 

[veevoir]

Yeah, but then you have no more than 6 mech slots at one time. Which locks down your options a bit (you cant swap a mech from/into storage if damaged).

I also would love to see a repair cost bump for structure damage and actual cost for replacement of ammo / armor, even if the time for it is instant.

 

[Bohr]

 

[ArchAngel]

Claiming games should have no difficulty options and comparing your easy game to something like Dark Souls is the most retarded thing I read in a while.

 

[Alpharius]

"Dark Souls of strategy games" - Kotaku (9/10)

 

[Viata]

I fail to see the connection of Kevin to Caoimhin. Not denying it, btw. Wikipedia says they are related. Still weird.

 

[Cael]

Frankly, as originally designed, TT is self-contradicting. There is simply no way to reconcile irreplacable artifacts of a previous era with their astonishing disposability.

That is because the fucktard doesn't know the lore. There were 'mech production facilities. They are not irreplaceable. They just cost a ton. In a universe where the average wage was in the region of several hundred C-Bills for 'Mechwarriors, a 'mech costs tens of millions. If he has read the books, he would have known that the biggest headache for merc companies is the ammo and repairs, not the wages of the 'mechwarriors. This was alluded to in Wolves on the Border, where the WOLF'S DRAGOONS had problems getting ammo and parts, and Wolf was worried about THAT, not about paying his staff. A ton of SRM ammo, for example, costs 27000 C-Bills. That means every single time you fired your SRM4, you spat out over 1k C-Bills in operations cost. A ton of LRM ammo is 30000 (from memory). A single LRM20 shot costs 5k C-bills. THAT is the problem when you have triggerhappy, unskilled Sir Miss-a-lots in your company.

What was lost is producing things like WarShips, JumpShips and the factories themselves. The really BIG ticket items. And the advanced tech stuff like ER Lasers and the like.

Once they got hold of the Helm Core, things started changing, and the IS was advancing so fast because of the Core that the Clans got worried and launched their invasion. That was one of the reasons for the Invasion in the first place.

The game is officially FUCKED when you have idiotic twats like that in charge of writing for it.

 

[Grunker]

The reason there is no difficulty in Dark Souls is that it is designed to let you complete the game inelegantly (like me, a stumbling buffoon) or elegantly (naked with a pike taking not a single hit). IE you can sculpt your own experience within the game’s framework.

Few games are freeform enough to do this, Battletech certainly won’t be, so what the fuck is she on about? It’s not “DS did it so it’s right for all games,” ffs. You don’t pour bearnaise sauce on your vanilla ice cream ‘cause you had it with your steak yesterday and it was great

 

[veevoir]

Interestingly, on BT forums Kiva commented there is one easy moded variable for destroyed mech recovery chance. Setting it to 0 will make your cored mechs unrecoverable.

 

[Cael]

Interestingly, on BT forums Kiva commented there is one easy moded variable for destroyed mech recovery chance. Setting it to 0 will make your cored mechs unrecoverable.

Well and good, but shouldn't it be that the base game follows the rules of the game and if someone wants 'mech recovery to be easier, that is up to him to change the variables? Why is it that we have to change the base game to put it back to the original rules?

Once again, HBS is showing contempt to the existing fanbase.

 

[ArchAngel]

Interestingly, on BT forums Kiva commented there is one easy moded variable for destroyed mech recovery chance. Setting it to 0 will make your cored mechs unrecoverable.

Well and good, but shouldn't it be that the base game follows the rules of the game and if someone wants 'mech recovery to be easier, that is up to him to change the variables? Why is it that we have to change the base game to put it back to the original rules?

Once again, HBS is showing contempt to the existing fanbase.

Because this is like Dark Souls.. except for noobs LOL

 

[Bohr]

Interestingly, on BT forums Kiva commented there is one easy moded variable for destroyed mech recovery chance. Setting it to 0 will make your cored mechs unrecoverable.

Yes, it's one of the variables Tyler was talking about adjusting for his "ironman" mode and hopefully exposing to the player as settings post-launch.

Spoiler

They're easily modded by just changing a text file too, but I don't really understand why there couldn't be a couple of toggles at launch. Even just one to make your cored mechs only recoverable as a piece of salvaged chassis, one to adjust the economy in a more challenging direction, maybe one to make mechs rebuilt from salvaged chassis parts no longer come with full, pristine weapons loadouts... these settings alone would allow people to craft an experience more to their liking without having to mod the game out the box. The idea that everyone should learn to play on the same difficulty level just doesn't seem realistic given the variation between experienced parts of the playerbase and those who may pick it up because they want to blast some giant robots and don't have the patience or inclination to worry about making optimal moves. Not all the latter would want to turn into the former and finding one level of difficulty that challenges both seems unlikely.

Fortunately between modders and the settings Tyler is talking about this should get resolved in time.

 

[Cael]

Fortunately between modders and the settings Tyler is talking about this should get resolved in time.

The fact that HBS (or any other game developer) is aiming to rely on modders to fix the game instead of trying to get it right the first time round is a good reason to never buy any of their stuff. I didn't buy a new car so that I have to install an engine before it can run.

 

[ArchAngel]

Interestingly, on BT forums Kiva commented there is one easy moded variable for destroyed mech recovery chance. Setting it to 0 will make your cored mechs unrecoverable.

Yes, it's one of the variables Tyler was talking about adjusting for his "ironman" mode and hopefully exposing to the player as settings post-launch.

Spoiler

They're easily modded by just changing a text file too, but I don't really understand why there couldn't be a couple of toggles at launch. Even just one to make your cored mechs only recoverable as a piece of salvaged chassis, one to adjust the economy in a more challenging direction, maybe one to make mechs rebuilt from salvaged chassis parts no longer come with full, pristine weapons loadouts... these settings alone would allow people to craft an experience more to their liking without having to mod the game out the box. The idea that everyone should learn to play on the same difficulty level just doesn't seem realistic given the variation between experienced parts of the playerbase and those who may pick it up because they want to blast some giant robots and don't have the patience or inclination to worry about making optimal moves. Not all the latter would want to turn into the former and finding one level of difficulty that challenges both seems unlikely.

Fortunately between modders and the settings Tyler is talking about this should get resolved in time.

Because if you put these settings in the game and players turn them on and get a unbalanced game that destroys them, they are going to blame HBS for not testing it. At least that is how I would look at it in their place.
Other option is to put it in the game and actually test how the game works with them and if one can finish it in reasonable time and attempts. But they might not have manpower for that atm.

So option #3 is to leave these in some ini file and let only the enthusiasts use it that understand it might completely unbalance the game to the point of not being able to finish it and they will not blame HBS for it.

 

[Bohr]

Well I was thinking of them as 'advanced' difficulty settings but given what happened with AoD and tards insisting on playing hard and then bitching the game was too hard.. you're probably right about their point of view. Still think the nature of the game and the playerbase needs more than one difficulty level though.

Anyway, if anyone is interested in weapon balance this is some sperging someone put together on the forums, 'beta 2' is the the settings by the end of the backer beta and 'beta 3' is what is currently seen on the streams. Reminder that damage and armour were adjusted up by a factor of 5, as a starting point, allowing more granularity when adjusted from there.

Spoiler

When the backer beta started the idea was to give ACs some love so energy boating wasn't always the go-to strategy. AC/10s were then bumped down slightly to 60 and head armour bumped up to just above that so Urbies were no longer headcapping everything. A lot of people then settled on Kintaros with SRMs so those have been nerfed a bit now. Looking at the above people are questioning the heat on the SRM 4s and the ongoing bitching about the large laser's heat hasn't gone away. It has a bit of range over the medium laser but when kitting out a mech a new player may not immediately realise the price one is paying for that range.

Thread here if anyone is interested
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...en-in-the-latest-pre-release-streams.1086943/

 

[ArchAngel]

Oh I do agree that the game needs more than one difficulty level and I got no idea how and why HBS didn't put that as part of the design and testing process. I never heard of a tactical turn based game that didn't have multiple difficulty levels.

This way they are either going to get complaints that the game is too hard or too easy (or even from both groups if they manage some middle of the ground difficulty).

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

You all know the game is doomed, stop deluding yourselves. Tweaking a setting here and there, adjusting some small details - what does it matter anyway when the baseline is „Toodlers first iPad game“?

 

[Infinitron]

It's not a toddler's iPad game. It is in fact...a Paradox game. Lots of complexity, not very hard.

 

[Grotesque]

Lots of complexity, not very hard.

If it's not hard, it's not complex

 

[Grunker]

MY PENIS BEGS TO DIFFER

 

[Grotesque]

Can you manually eject at any time a mechwarrior during battle?
Is there an ejection animation like in MechCommander?