KickStarter BATTLETECH - turn-based mech combat from Harebrained Schemes

[fantadomat]

This took an interesting turn.

And then Cael decided to talk about the stupid game.

Wrong forum mate .

Back on track, bitch!

Sorry mate,i am slav!

You keep that up and you're a wreck, not a slav.

That is because he is using german or french car. Now you he was with a nice Lada Niva...

 

[Cael]

That is because he is using german or french car. Now you he was with a nice Lada Niva...

A Soviet tank is not a car by any measure...

 

[fantadomat]

That is because he is using german or french car. Now you he was with a nice Lada Niva...

A Soviet tank is not a car by any measure...

It is a great off road car tank,it is extremely cheap,easy to maintain,nearly unbreakable,all you have to do is shove a gas bottle in the back drive. I am surprised that people buy all those western trash and whine that it break after of a month off road driving.

 

[Cael]

A Soviet tank is not a car by any measure...

It is a great off road car tank,it is extremely cheap,easy to maintain,nearly unbreakable,all you have to do is shove a gas bottle in the back drive. I am surprised that people buy all those western trash and whine that it break after of a month off road driving.

Gas bottle in the back, eh?

 

[fantadomat]

A Soviet tank is not a car by any measure...

It is a great off road car tank,it is extremely cheap,easy to maintain,nearly unbreakable,all you have to do is shove a gas bottle in the back drive. I am surprised that people buy all those western trash and whine that it break after of a month off road driving.

Gas bottle in the back, eh?

Uhh gas tank to be exact,running on gas is a lot cheaper than running on fuel. Also if run out of gas you could just switch to fuel in mid driving. I am still to hear anyone explode,most cars here do run on gas.

 

[Bohr]

 

[PanteraNera]

Oh so much thought and detail, they shared a fucking white streak.
The depth of this story telling touches me ... not at all.

How did things get so bad between them. :[

No one fucking knows, probably because Kiva thought it was a "cool" idea to have a story about "betrayal" without further explanations.

These guys. Pathetic.

 

[Infinitron]

As far as story goes, Kiva is probably getting blamed for things that aren't his fault.

Personally I suspect the hand of Mitch Gitelman, who is credited as "Campaign and Story Producer". Throughout development he kept emphasizing how this game "wasn't an RPG", wasn't like Shadowrun, etc. Maybe that wasn't just because it had fewer dialogue scenes or fewer dialogue choices. I think after the text explosion of Shadowrun: Hong Kong, he may have erred too much in the other direction and told the writers to keep the story as simple and dumb as possible.

 

[Mark Richard]

They probably got an intern to write Victoria. Or maybe I'm just hoping someone who gets paid to write professionally wouldn't come up with a Battletech character who has the nuance of a Scooby Doo villain.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

This game is just missing too much. I wanted to like it but the environments are stale, missions are borked, Argo customization is meh, mechs are *too* customizable to the point where they don't have any individual character, and there isn't enough benefit to using a variety of mechs (goes to crappy mission/map variety).

The problem with Mech customization isn't really the extent of it, it's not as bad as when things go to the extent where the 'mech is just a skin and tonnage count because everything else is interchangeable. The problem is that there's always Just Better options (and as usual for the franchise games, it's Bigger = Better kind of deal, with most ton ranges just having superior alternatives to rest of their peers; actually this issue is kind of more pronounced than usual since alpha strike capacity and ability to withstand damage are most/only important qualities due to battles revolving around being outnumbered), even besides obviously bad ones like Banshee. Easy way to see it is to just look at the chart that lists things like effective free tonnage and the movement values.

As alluded earlier, the environment problem is just that they're random maps, it would have been a better idea to have a long linear campaign so maps could have more fun elements to them. Same problem with the Argo really (since the Argo is geared to be a feature for a nonlinear sandbox campaign), the upgrades are rarely worth the increased running costs unless you play a tremendously long amount of time for the morale bonus event options outweighing just paying extra wages to stay at desired value.

Well how does Xenonauts (at least with the CE) end up with usable random maps with a decent amount of variety for a ton of missions and yet it doesn't feel awful? Is it the difference between procedurally generated maps versus a large pool of maps (or at least map pieces) to randomize from?

But even then - it's not *just* the randomization that makes the maps suck. They're also just... same-y. The only difference is whether it's washed out grey, green, brown, or red.

 

[Cael]

This guy is sounding a lot like a 3 year old crushing on My Little Pony.

"Oh, she has a white streak just like Fluttershy!"
"She is so cool looking, and brave, and-and-and she's a QUEEEENNN!!!"

No, son. She is a Princess. YOU are a queen.

 

[Galdred]

'Mechs are powerful, but not invincible, and much of their power comes from the fact they have many more hit locations than conventional vehicles. You can take an arm off a 'mech and it will keep fighting. If you take a turret off a tank, it is toast. It also has an edge in all-terrain mobility in TT and most BTech games, especially MechCommander. And in TT, you can instant-kill a vehicle far easier than a 'mech, but that relies on luck more than anything else.

Not surprised this mentality is in the setting, overvaluing the utility of an individual mech or vehicle instead of looking at things from a wider perspective- Yamato Thinking.

A good case of that was before and during WWII when people were worried over the vulnerability of aircraft carriers in bad weather if they encountered a battleship or cruiser that they'd be defenceless to, since their aircraft couldn't launch. Those with the previously mentioned mentality focused too much on the problem and came out with silliness like this:

When the proper solution was less fancy and needed no major design alterations from anything, just have more fast BBs and cruisers around to escort carriers thereby keeping warships specialized and preventing utility from diminishing their capabilities.

In the case of Mechs, you say their power comes from more hit locations making them more versatile, where I'd rather say that is a severe weakness, and it is why tank design has always pushed towards minimization - keeping the tank as low to the ground and as small a target as possible. What is better? To be hit and keep on fighting partially disabled, or to not be hit at all?

In the case of Mechs, the unavoidable problem with all those hit locations (and Mechs as a universal type) is that fact that two are critical and losing one disables the entire Mech, the legs.

The battleship carrier doesn't work because of another problem:
WW2 navy guns ended up useful mostly in smaller naval skirmishes, and as ground support. A carrier should never be close enough for any of them.
Actually, What they ended doing was more or less removing BB entirely, and turning CA into missile launchers.

 

[Bohr]

Servers down for 6+ hours, once again illustrating the joys of having single-player elements tied to being logged in to the server

 

[Haba]

In the case of Mechs, you say their power comes from more hit locations making them more versatile, where I'd rather say that is a severe weakness, and it is why tank design has always pushed towards minimization - keeping the tank as low to the ground and as small a target as possible. What is better? To be hit and keep on fighting partially disabled, or to not be hit at all?

A tank is an utilitarian design. It aims to be maximally effective while minimizing the cost and complexity. A mech is the complete opposite. It is quite difficult to have a rational argument for mech design of any kind. You just have to accept that it makes no sense.

 

[fantadomat]

Servers down for 6+ hours, once again illustrating the joys of having single-player elements tied to being logged in to the server

He should have used the superior version of the game....aka the pirated one.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

This game is just missing too much. I wanted to like it but the environments are stale, missions are borked, Argo customization is meh, mechs are *too* customizable to the point where they don't have any individual character, and there isn't enough benefit to using a variety of mechs (goes to crappy mission/map variety).

The problem with Mech customization isn't really the extent of it, it's not as bad as when things go to the extent where the 'mech is just a skin and tonnage count because everything else is interchangeable. The problem is that there's always Just Better options (and as usual for the franchise games, it's Bigger = Better kind of deal, with most ton ranges just having superior alternatives to rest of their peers; actually this issue is kind of more pronounced than usual since alpha strike capacity and ability to withstand damage are most/only important qualities due to battles revolving around being outnumbered), even besides obviously bad ones like Banshee. Easy way to see it is to just look at the chart that lists things like effective free tonnage and the movement values.

As alluded earlier, the environment problem is just that they're random maps, it would have been a better idea to have a long linear campaign so maps could have more fun elements to them. Same problem with the Argo really (since the Argo is geared to be a feature for a nonlinear sandbox campaign), the upgrades are rarely worth the increased running costs unless you play a tremendously long amount of time for the morale bonus event options outweighing just paying extra wages to stay at desired value.

Well how does Xenonauts (at least with the CE) end up with usable random maps with a decent amount of variety for a ton of missions and yet it doesn't feel awful? Is it the difference between procedurally generated maps versus a large pool of maps (or at least map pieces) to randomize from?

But even then - it's not *just* the randomization that makes the maps suck. They're also just... same-y. The only difference is whether it's washed out grey, green, brown, or red.

A big part I figure is that due to the chosen style of graphics and presentation (2D square-grid instead of 3D terrain) Xenonauts can create such a system with much lower initial investment and make much more efficient use of development resources available to realize the goal set.

I'm also pretty sure that the maps in BattleTech aren't random, there's a certain pool of them for each climate type. Seeming randomness is actually just the map being rotated to start at a different position.

 

[Bohr]

I'm also pretty sure that the maps in BattleTech aren't random, there's a certain pool of them for each climate type. Seeming randomness is actually just the map being rotated to start at a different position.

Yep, maps aren't random but they're big (much bigger than the bit used in each mission) and the area used/starting positions/conditions are changed to provide variety

 

[Bohr]

Like the look of what some of the modders have done already, like rebalancing economy and salvage, making bigger mechs cost more, adjusting stability... and then there's some early glimpses of more ambitious stuff

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Battletech is a garbage setting, any setting where one type of military vehicle is magically the ultimate ruler of the battlefield and everything revolves around that one type of vehicle is stupid.
Hell, in all its over-the-top silliness even Warhammer 40K makes more sense, because you have different military branches and combined arms and the spes mehrins are "just" highly effective elite troopers.

 

[Beastro]

The battleship carrier doesn't work because of another problem:
WW2 navy guns ended up useful mostly in smaller naval skirmishes, and as ground support. A carrier should never be close enough for any of them.
Actually, What they ended doing was more or less removing BB entirely, and turning CA into missile launchers.

It was night fighting and inclement weather that they shone with the advent of radar.

NGFS wasn't the strong suit for BB guns, it was found that the smaller, more numerous 5 and 6 in guns on destroyers and cruisers were more effective at providing it.

 

[Beastro]

Battletech is a garbage setting, any setting where one type of military vehicle is magically the ultimate ruler of the battlefield and everything revolves around that one type of vehicle is stupid.
Hell, in all its over-the-top silliness even Warhammer 40K makes more sense, because you have different military branches and combined arms and the spes mehrins are "just" highly effective elite troopers.

Space Marines are actually more akin to what I was thinking about with regard to the central role knights played and how prestigious their position was in European warfare despite being one of many tools in a Medieval military leaders box.

 

[Bohr]

Some bugs are lulzy enough that they should be left in

 

[PanteraNera]

As far as story goes, Kiva is probably getting blamed for things that aren't his fault.

Maybe, honest question: wasn't Kiva the "Lead Designer" of Battletech. If so, didn't Kiva had a saying in the story?

Personally I suspect the hand of Mitch Gitelman, who is credited as "Campaign and Story Producer". Throughout development he kept emphasizing how this game "wasn't an RPG", wasn't like Shadowrun, etc. Maybe that wasn't just because it had fewer dialogue scenes or fewer dialogue choices. I think after the text explosion of Shadowrun: Hong Kong, he may have erred too much in the other direction and told the writers to keep the story as simple and dumb as possible.

All fair and sound, my gripe is not that it has less text than Shadowrun: Hong Kong or Dragonfall. Or that it is not an RPG.
My gripe is that the story is really really REALLY bad, bad character designs (one dimensional), bad story arc, boring story, story parts that make no sense.

Reading that tweets that got posted here from the 2D artist are just, infuriating!

 

[Cael]

Maybe, honest question: wasn't Kiva the "Lead Designer" of Battletech. If so, didn't Kiva had a saying in the story?

It is not Kevin's fault because he gave Shillatron a free game. You should know that by now, dude.

And yes, as project lead, he has ultimate responsibility and blame. Same with any project lead.

I guess he was more interested in giving jobs to his alphabet soup caricature mates than actually wanting to do a good job at his job.

 

[Cael]

Some bugs are lulzy enough that they should be left in

Now I am getting mental pictures of a tank turret falling down from the sky and swishing a car with cartoony crushing sounds and car bits flying everywhere... There goes the steering wheel!

The Monty Python crowd would be proud of these guys. They are to BTech what The Holy Grail was to Le Morte d'Arthur.