KickStarter BATTLETECH - turn-based mech combat from Harebrained Schemes

[Black]

The difference between those games and nuBT is that BT is choke full of your crew talking in italics, as if they had something well written to say. I don't remember X-Com rookies telling me how many doctorates they have.

 

[Deathsquid]

The difference between those games and nuBT is that BT is choke full of your crew talking in italics, as if they had something well written to say. I don't remember X-Com rookies telling me how many doctorates they have.

What the fuck, did we even play the same game?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

So, this shit any good? I don't expect a good writing from glorified mobile game developers of HBS, but I was hoping for some good TB romp at least.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

It's okay, but it's got the old cake dilemma holding it back. Plus the usual franchise vidya problem with limited viable approaches.

 

[sser]

JA2's writing is underrated.

 

[Cael]

I nominate Cael to write the Codex review.

Today's rage: Meaningless and uninformative displays that refuse to show the actual numbers anywhere. Fuck whoever thought this was good design, I hope all the professionals in his life also refuse to use measurements and just eyeball things.

Hell no! While I can write reviews that are absolutely scathing (did one for Steel Dawn for a class assignment back in high school), I would not want to put my computer through the torture of running the bloated, equipment melting shit that is the HBS game. Plus there is no way in hell I would be giving the frauds a single cent.

 

[Kalarion]

I finished the story campaign tonight. I'll write up something more detailed tomorrow, for now some of my biggest impressions (there's a lot of overlap with D_X here):

- The basic gameplay loop is pretty satisfying. Fight battle > collect salvage > fuck around in the 'mech lab > tinker with the Argo (while you still have upgrades to purchase) > find a star system that you think might have good weapons for sale > travel > take contracts > repeat. It only becomes stale once you're holding a lance+ of Assault 'mechs in bays/storage.
- Story is... well the story is ok. I could see being interested/invested in the storyline under different circumstances, but:
- I stand by my earlier assessment of the actual script. Godawful terrible just no.
- There is no real overarching tactical "space" in this game. More on this when I write up a more complete rundown, but basically they didn't include the scope necessary for it.
- The AI is a disgrace. With one notable exception, it has zero ability to account for its mission objectives, and consistently makes decisions that drastically reduce the chance for a kill or even for survival to the next round.
- I have to echo here what D_X said about money. By the time I completed the final story mission I had over 17 million C-Bills and max pre-mission morale, max Argo upgrades, 8 Assault 'mechs and maybe a dozen others combined in the rest of the weight classes. I could have had a lot more but I was constantly selling 'mechs rather than storing them (with certain exceptions). I felt zero financial pressure throughout the game, with the sole exception being the very beginning (pre-Argo), when a blown off limb meant a long hiatus and shitloads of cash that I didn't (yet) have. But seriously. It took me maybe 4 hours of gameplay time to get out of that condition.
- I retract my early impression of character progression. It gets old and very samey, very fast. Again, by the time I completed the final story mission, all of my primetime 'mechwarriors had 10/10/10/10. And my backups were all within 2-3 points of max as well.
- The 'mechlab really stands out to me. I absolutely adore getting a brand new 'mech chassis, going into the 'mechlab and fucking around with it for an hour so, trying to tweak it to my satisfaction. It was especially enjoyable throughout the early/mid game, when getting the heavier mediums (shadowhawk, griffin, wolverine) and my first heavies were true groundbreakers for my lance. HBS hit a vein of gold here, I hope they're smart enough to properly exploit it down the line.
- The UI remains another disgrace. Just awful. Vital information is obscured behind popup windows, or worse yet never explained at all. The knockdown system, hit calculations, how critical strikes work, readouts on 'mech loadouts and armor/internal structure (both pre- and mid-battle). A terrible mess. Needs a drastic overhaul.

 

[Cael]

- The 'mechlab really stands out to me. I absolutely adore getting a brand new 'mech chassis, going into the 'mechlab and fucking around with it for an hour so, trying to tweak it to my satisfaction. It was especially enjoyable throughout the early/mid game, when getting the heavier mediums (shadowhawk, griffin, wolverine) and my first heavies were true groundbreakers for my lance. HBS hit a vein of gold here, I hope they're smart enough to properly exploit it down the line.

This is nothing new. The whole of BTech is predicated on this and it is a major part of every MW and MechComm game out there. It is not a praiseworthy feature in that it is an integral part of the game. It is like saying the walking in Oblivion is hitting a vein of gold.

 

[Cael]

Then please be true to your cruel visage and savage them like an orc do.

*sigh* Fucking millenials...

That is a GOBLIN.

 

[Thane Solus]

I finished the story campaign tonight. I'll write up something more detailed tomorrow, for now some of my biggest impressions (there's a lot of overlap with D_X here):

- The basic gameplay loop is pretty satisfying. Fight battle > collect salvage > fuck around in the 'mech lab > tinker with the Argo (while you still have upgrades to purchase) > find a star system that you think might have good weapons for sale > travel > take contracts > repeat. It only becomes stale once you're holding a lance+ of Assault 'mechs in bays/storage.
- Story is... well the story is ok. I could see being interested/invested in the storyline under different circumstances, but:
- I stand by my earlier assessment of the actual script. Godawful terrible just no.
- There is no real overarching tactical "space" in this game. More on this when I write up a more complete rundown, but basically they didn't include the scope necessary for it.
- The AI is a disgrace. With one notable exception, it has zero ability to account for its mission objectives, and consistently makes decisions that drastically reduce the chance for a kill or even for survival to the next round.
- I have to echo here what D_X said about money. By the time I completed the final story mission I had over 17 million C-Bills and max pre-mission morale, max Argo upgrades, 8 Assault 'mechs and maybe a dozen others combined in the rest of the weight classes. I could have had a lot more but I was constantly selling 'mechs rather than storing them (with certain exceptions). I felt zero financial pressure throughout the game, with the sole exception being the very beginning (pre-Argo), when a blown off limb meant a long hiatus and shitloads of cash that I didn't (yet) have. But seriously. It took me maybe 4 hours of gameplay time to get out of that condition.
- I retract my early impression of character progression. It gets old and very samey, very fast. Again, by the time I completed the final story mission, all of my primetime 'mechwarriors had 10/10/10/10. And my backups were all within 2-3 points of max as well.
- The 'mechlab really stands out to me. I absolutely adore getting a brand new 'mech chassis, going into the 'mechlab and fucking around with it for an hour so, trying to tweak it to my satisfaction. It was especially enjoyable throughout the early/mid game, when getting the heavier mediums (shadowhawk, griffin, wolverine) and my first heavies were true groundbreakers for my lance. HBS hit a vein of gold here, I hope they're smart enough to properly exploit it down the line.
- The UI remains another disgrace. Just awful. Vital information is obscured behind popup windows, or worse yet never explained at all. The knockdown system, hit calculations, how critical strikes work, readouts on 'mech loadouts and armor/internal structure (both pre- and mid-battle). A terrible mess. Needs a drastic overhaul.

You forgot to add that you are limited to 4 mechs, no tonnage, no epic army of 6-8 lights, and those 30 secs loading times, maybe 10?15 for SSD. The mission level design is banal shit boring as well...

 

[LESS T_T]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...lt_an_engrossing_tactics_game_on_a_budget.php

How the BattleTech devs built an engrossing tactics game on a budget

As BattleTech has stormed out of its backer beta and out into the open, we at Gamasutra have been thrilled to see how it's aimed to hook players within its opening hours, and to peek under the hood of its mission generation.

But when you're a small company trying to put out a PC game that was backed with thundering success on Kickstarter, how do you keep your development process under control, and properly deliver on what your backers promised? What do you do when you realize some promises can't be kept?

Luckily, Mitch Gitelman and Mike McCain of Harebrained Schemes were game to answer some of these questions, and answer how they tackled these problems while working on a relatively small team. We've collected their responses in a Q&A you can read below.

Q&A Participants

Bryant Francis, Editor at Gamasutra
Alex Wawro, Editor at Gamasutra
Mike McCain, Game director of Battletech at Harebrained Schemes
Mitch Gitelman, Studio manager at Harebrained Schemes

Managing the Kickstarter budget
Francis: Harebrained Schemes was really transparent about, for each tier of funding you received, you would be able to develop more content. The first thing I'm curious about is, were you able to keep to that production pipeline? We have this much money to the bank thanks to Kickstarter, we are able to achieve this much content? Or did you find yourself having to go over or under those tiers because of that?

Gitelman: I'll start by saying that I'm very proud that the original vision of the game that we put on our Kickstarter was incredibly close to what we're actually delivering.

McCain: It's actually amazing, we're surprised every day.

Gitelman: Credit to Mike and his focus. What we said, by in large, we did. There's a notable difference that we need to call out. We had planned to do far more with our multiplayer when we started. That was our last stretch goal. We planned to do leagues and tournaments, the Solaris 7 setting and stuff like that. Based on time and all sorts of madness that comes in game development, we moved away from that and we're making different plans.

We're definitely shipping multiplayer, and it's a metric f-ton of fun, especially when people realize the customization, what that does to multiplayer, it's insane. We're having some great tournaments in the office. But that's the place where we deviated perhaps the most.

The other thing was, with the tournaments and stuff, Battletech, a lot of it has to do with random number generating, and we felt like that a highly competitive environment was antithetical to that. So it's more friend-based.

Francis: So what you're saying is that you had to make a choice early on, to make a way more casual multiplayer experience rather than something that's more tightly focused? I mean, esports is a weird word, because everything's an esport if you say it is, but are you saying that you had to deny yourself the possibility of that kind of competitive scene because of this?

McCain: I think that, for me, it's more that the game did not seem like a great fit for that direction. We think it's an amazing game to play with friends. There's so many strategic options, but at the end of the day Battletech is and has always been...random number generation has been a critical part of the combat experience. The more we look at the game, the more our goals for multiplayer were to connect people and to allow, especially longtime fans of the franchise, to be able to have this sort of matches. It just seemed like us trying to make a multiplayer experience that was enforced, it wasn't the right direction to take the project.

Engaging the player early
Wawro: I wonder, how seriously do you take the idea of capturing a player's attention and keeping them engrossed. There's a comment in chat, sirbedwyr7 points out that the currency for games, in which they're measured, is changing, because there's so many games, from dollars to minutes. How much time someone spends with their game.

I don't know if I agree with that, but I think it's interesting that we're talking about trying to get people to explore games and learn about them, and that I think the risk there that a lot of developers feel is that someone will get turned off or frustrated and go to something else.

Gitelman: There's a business angle to this, that has changed within the past year or so, that is important to this conversation, which is that, on Steam, you can return for a refund within two hours of gameplay. If you're smart, that changes the first two hours of your game. Make sure that people are fully engaged past the two-hour mark so that they don't return it for a refund.

McCain: I feel like it's about what hooks the player, and that's not necessarily the same as explaining to the player. I played Kingdom New Lands, a side-scrolling kind of town building roguelike, and I had a great time. But I was on the internet to figure out what most things did. But it kept me coming back to it, I was compelled like, the game made me want to figure it out, so that, at that point, just because the game was choosing not to explain these things, because I think that's in vogue in roguelikes these days. Let the player slowly figure it out over time or Google.

So the game made me want to learn it, and I could solve that problem. I would hope that we're able to create an experience for people where, I'm sure there are some shortcomings in where we tutorialize them. I'm sure that excitement for the game and for what they want to accomplish carries them past that.

Gitelman: There's always something new to experience, some new bit to introduce along the way, it's a trail of mostly-positive breadcrumbs.

McCain: Also, I want to talk to the guy who beat Dark Souls without the internet.

Wawro: That guy's hardcore. Before we go on, I think it's interesting, let's talk about specific examples of how you guys, during development, refined the opening hours of the game. Because I imagine that it didn't look this way the whole time.

McCain: We spent a lot of time on the opening. And most of it was cutting! I don't mean that we ran out of time, it's editing. Those first couple of missions, they were way too long, or too narratively complex, to try to land the hook of our story. I hope it works now! (laughs) I hope it resonates with people. That took a lot of drafts, to succinctly try to introduce characters without distracting form gameplay too much. To introduce narrative beats, the political situation, and to do it all in a way that would land a narrative hook when certain things, that I'm actually not going to talk about, happen, because spoilers.

But there's no magic bullet. It was more like, "Nope! That still doesn't work."

Gitelman: It's the same thing we did with our Shadowrun games. We just repeated it again, it's all about iteration, iteration is the king.

Gitelman: Huh, with us? Rapid! (laughs) We knew it was rapid.

McCain: I would call it "just-in-time" playtesting. We do a mix of internal and external playtesting. The main thing that I try to be wary of is not to knee-jerk based on what you want. I don't mean this in a judgy way, but if you don't have the capacity to conduct a statistically valid playtest across hundreds of people, and consider it data, then you're in the land of ad hoc playtesting. You're testing with a dozen people and they're carefully curated. And who they are matters at that point.

I guess that's what I mean when I say I don't want to sound judgy, but I have to take into account, what other games does this player like, what are their proclivities for storytelling or whatever. Unless you can do a full, data-driven science experiment, then you're trying to react to ad hoc data and filter and understand it as best you can.

That's where we reached for friends of the studio, friends and family of our dev team, and put various drafts of everything from story missions to the entire campaign for the last couple of months before enough people that we get these stream-of-consciousness notes that we can filter.

Gitelman: Figure out what's behind what they're saying.

McCain: Try to find trends.

Gitelman: One of the things that often happens with playtesting, if you're not careful, is you're looking for the loudest voices, or the largest number of people all saying the same thing, rather than looking for what's really going on behind what they're saying.

McCain: What is the underlying cause at the center.

Gitelman: And that can be really challenging and time-consuming.

This conversation was excerpted from our livestream of BattleTech with developers Mike McCain & Mitch Gitelman. For more giant stompy robot insight, watch the full archive here.

 

[Darth Roxor]

i have to say there's something endearing about knocking down a mech, then proceeding with a 4-man boot to the face as it lies on the ground

let's get ready to rumbleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

 

[Bohr]

Kotaku looks at all the BT artists and their contributions? Just what the thread was crying out for.

https://kotaku.com/the-art-of-battletech-1826280202

http://archive.is/EglNN

(not sure if that archive worked fully as the page was so big)

 

[Cael]

Kotaku looks at all the BT artists and their contributions? Just what the thread was crying out for.

https://kotaku.com/the-art-of-battletech-1826280202

http://archive.is/EglNN

(not sure if that archive worked fully as the page was so big)

Wait...

The Argo has the 'mech bay half way up the ship? How are the 'mechs supposed to get off? Jump?
And the catapult for the aircraft is right under the observation deck? That must be fun when the aircraft takes off at full afterburners and angle upwards just as it clears the Argo. I wonder how many windows they had to replace before they got that right...
And the aft armament in between all those thrusters designed to push several tens of thousands of tons of spacecraft out of a planet's gravity well. Well done doesn't even begin to describe that arrangement...
Mike McCain, you are a complete fuckwit.

Joel DuQue, do you even know the religious significants of the red dot you slapped on your toon, you cultural appropriating bastard?

And Marco Mazzoni: Tripod 'mechs? Really???

 

[Kalarion]

I finished the story campaign with 17 million in the bank, a fully upgraded Argo, and about a dozen 'mechs. My primary lance for most of the endgame was:
- modified Atlas designed as toe-to-toe slugger
- slightly modified Highlander (the story reward one) designed as a sniper/knockdown/killer
- modified Stalker LRM-boat
- a choice between a modified Battlemaster with AC/20 and some SRMs and a Firestarter with four flamers, two small lasers and some mods for melee.

I never got a King Crab

.

I had a Banshee, a couple Orions, an extra Battlemaster and some of my other old Heavies in storage as well if I ever needed them (hint: I didn't).

TLDR; I enjoyed my time with the game and may come back to it after they add in a lot more content. I was somewhat upset with some of the design decisions made, and angry/aghast at some others. There are a lot of flaws and some outright fuckery going on. Hardcore Battletech/resource-management strategy fans will rightfully sneer at this adaptation. My final impressions:

GOOD
- The gameplay loop. It is tight and focused, and kept my attention for a vast majority of my gameplay time. I was always taking contracts, hunting for new 'mech chassis' to salvage. Getting my first 'mech in each weight class was very exciting, especially Heavy and Assault. Some areas show definite signs of development starvation (the Argo is not a particularly exciting strategic layer past the first few upgrades, for instance), but overall as I said: decently engaging.
- The Mechlab. As I said above, it's a spot of gold in the gameplay. There are issues (mostly to do with the pervasively bad UI), but overall my absolute most fun in the game came from tinkering with different loadouts, working autistically to design a 'mech that fit perfectly for the role I had in mind for it.

This is nothing new. The whole of BTech is predicated on this and it is a major part of every MW and MechComm game out there. It is not a praiseworthy feature in that it is an integral part of the game. It is like saying the walking in Oblivion is hitting a vein of gold.

A point worthy of consideration. However not really bearing on what I was getting at. I'm aware that this part of the game should be expected, and should be good. My point was, HBS hit the mark. If they can come up with genuinely good refinements (especially as regards the UI and moving back towards TT as far as rules goes), I will be really happy.
- The upgrade system. Disclaimer: this is not canon to BT at all. TT upgrades come in the form of (1) working weapons :D and (2) new technology, such as Pulse, LBX, Ultra, ER etc. However for the sake of a computer game I don't think it hurts the experience too much. Basically you can have up to 3 positive modifications to each weapon. Most modifications are generic: increased damage, increased accuracy, increased stability damage etc. Some mods are unique to a specific weapon type; Flamers, for instance, can actually cause even more heat generation than they normally do on attack. There are also standalone items that may or may not take up tonnage, granting other effects (increased viewing range, resistance to stability damage, decreased DFA leg damage etc). It makes hunting for something other than 'mech chassis' during salvage somewhat more enjoyable (it is somewhat exciting to receive an AC/20 with +10 stability damage and +20 regular damage, for example).
- Jump Jets are allowed on anything. This is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay outside of canon, and I don't give two fucks. I LOVE being able to make all 'mechs jumpers.

MEDIOCRE
- The story. There's something here that, in different hands, may have been compelling and absorbing. HBS fucked it up really badly. The storyline didn't lend itself to making me sympathetic of the protagonists (mainly because I thought they were all retarded jackasses). Kamea had some actual character growth throughout the storyline, but all other NPCs may as well have been cardboard cutouts for all the development they received. I would have been much happier simply receiving remote and businesslike communiques to progress the game, never having to deal with listening to whatever inane chatter the HBS devs came up with.
- Character/strategy layer progression. It's not pure shit, but it's got to be somewhere over 50%. You spend experience directly on any of Gunnery, Piloting, Tactics and Guts, each of which maxes out at 10 points. Each line of spending comes with its own vanilla bonuses per point bought. You can also achieve specialization perks by spending on the chosen lines first. You can gain up to two intermediate specialization perks, and one master level perk. Each of the perks is fairly distinct and all are useful (with the possible exception of Juggernaut, but I didn't experiment much with it). The problem is (1) you're never locked out of a line once you achieve specialization... you just don't get anymore perks; and (2) you're going to have XP coming out your ears due to the nature of the game. As I said in my previous post, all 4 of my main mechwarriors were at 10/10/10/10 well before the storyline campaign ended. And my backup warrior was only two total points away from also being maxed out. Further, as the game progresses and your tactical space narrows more and more (more on this later), all the pilots start looking very samey in how they approach a mission, whatever perks they happen to have. Especially since some of the most important bonuses you can get have absolutely nothing to do with perks. IMO HBS should have locked you out of progressing past the first perk once you chose your two lines, and past the second perk once you chose your mastery. So if we think in terms of Gunnery/Piloting/Guts/Tactics, a fully advanced (maxed out) mechwarrior who specialized in Gunnery with a minor in Tactics would look like 10/4/4/8. This would have gone a long way towards differentiating your mechwarriors, and perhaps help force the player to look into hiring additional warriors to fill out the roster.
- Combat. IMO HBS got the feelz of stomping around and blowing shit up pretty good. The "battle cam" shots they came up with were annoying as hell, but thankfully it can be turned off completely if you so desire. I would have liked to see more variety in 'mech death animations, especially depending on how the 'mech was incapacitated (legged, headshot, ammo explosion, cored etc). If you're thinking that there may be a problem since all I'm suggesting for improvement right now is eye candy stuff, you're right. Beyond the very simple "make contact, slug it out, kill everything", combat has nothing else to offer. Some storyline missions have interesting objectives, but they are hampered by terrible AI that makes them easy to accomplish.
- Biome distribution. The storyline missions in particular are very bad about this. Basically, you can go the entire game playing nothing but Tundra/Polar maps (meaning, 50% increased heat dissipation). Which encourages alpha-striking and heavy reliance on energy weapons, and discourages heat management strategies and weapons loadouts (an important part of TT gameplay IMO). There are I believe two storyline missions that put you in a Martian/Moon environment, and another couple that are Desert, but other than that it's all golden. Really needs an overhaul.

BAD
- The script. I already said everything I needed to about it in my first post. It's just fucking terrible.

italics... well, that might be an italian way of speaking then because i see totally no issue in stressing multiple words in a phrase, if needed.

You have lost your MOTHERFUCKING mind. There is NO WAY you can find this mode of speaking out loud to be acceptable, MUCH LESS as a method of writing a script.
The fact that HBS have stated all future installments will come with a storyline attached, full stop, made me pretty depressed. I don't know what kind of koolaid they're on but it seems to have lobotomized everyone in the studio. As a start they should just fucking fire every single one of their writers and pay MCA whatever he charges. Or something.
- Tactical and strategic space. Ideally you want tactical space (IE, meaningful tactical choices available to you) especially to expand as you progress through the game. HBS has achieved the fantastic feat of doing the exact opposite. Everything about their combat design decisions plays into this. Essentially, near the beginning of the storyline, you have a lot of options you can successfully use to win fights. Light 'mechs can buzz in and out of kill range, throwing out MLaser salvos or popping out some SLaser-backed punches. Mediums can engage at medium-to-long range with AC/5s or AC/10s, or with an LL/PPC. The occasional heavy is dangerous but can be carefully managed for the win. But as the campaign progresses, the pervasiveness of heavier 'mechs with loads of firepower, combined with HBS' method of increasing difficulty combine to give you only one viable option: field only 'mechs that can take a massive beating and dish out hundreds of damage per round... IE 70+ tons only. This has consequences on all layers of the game as well, not just the actual combat. Fully half of the Argo's possible upgrades are completely forgettable. Why? Because you never need more than the one 'mech bay you start with. If additional bays weren't required in order to purchase MechTech upgrades (to increase 'mech refit speed) I wouldn't have bothered with them at all. Same with living space for additional warriors. I bought them solely to unlock upgrades to MedTech (to decrease recovery time for mechwarrior wounds). The abundance of Morale-increasing events meant that I never had any reason to buy the multiple lifestyle upgrades either. I ended up purchasing them solely to save money for several months through Spartan expenses (this causes a -2 morale penalty per month, which was then instantly negated by one of the lifestyle upgrades, all of which grant 2 morale on completion). The way HBS' decisions regarding rules modifications and focus on casual-oriented difficulty affected all gameplay should really be the subject of its own post. Well I mean it has been already obviously :D
- Lethality, for lack of a better term. There are four options to incapacitate a 'mech: knock the pilot out with repeated wounds, blow its head off, leg it, or core it. Unfortunately only two of them are really viable, especially late game when you're dealing with 150+ armor per section: you either core a 'mech with a massive alpha strike, or you leg it over the course of 2-3 rounds with repeated called shots using a combination of morale and knockdowns. I can see why mechwarriors as a rule are so resilient in this game, given HBS' attachment to casual players who become (wrongly) invested in individual mechwarriors; if they followed TT rules, mechwarriors would be dropping like flies and the forums would be shitting blood from the cries of butthurt. But IMO increased mechwarrior lethality would have much better suited the game than what we ended up with. It would have the benefit of opening up some of the in game options that are never really of use, such as hiring additional mechwarriors. HBS should have played, and paid attention to, games like original X-Com and JA/JA2. Or Battle Brothers, if the thought of playing those icky old games was just too much for them. All of those classics got the idea of "men as a part of resource management" right (or at least, much closer to right than this game does).
- The AI. My God. It's obvious to me that HBS couldn't get the AI to behave in even a remotely competent manner. Their solution seems to be throwing more and more 'mechs at you at a time as you progress through the storyline and/or gain lance tonnage. All of my challenge in outside-storyline contracts came from being outnumbered 2- or 3-to-1, with 'mechs that met or exceeded the weight of mine. This ties into tactical space, above. When your sole method of increasing challenge is "send more guns", combined with a strict fielding limit of 4 'mechs, the only solution to the problem becomes to have more and more armor, along with higher and higher per-turn damage. Meaning, you guessed it, 4 Assault class 'mechs. All of HBS' retarded design decisions keep turning back on each other in some kind of negative feedback loop.
- The UI. Another my God. Just absolute garbage. Kevin talks and talks and talks and talks about how the game should teach you to play itself organically, through gameplay. Well he fucking sucks at making that happen. Vital gameplay rules and mechanics are hidden or deliberately obfuscated. Important information on items is screened behind popups that take annoyingly long to actually, you know, pop up. 'Mech loadouts, weapon tiles, the firing table... the list goes on and on. Interacting with the game is a chore at best, and infuriating at worst. You know what would have been really fucking awesome to go along with this game? An instruction manual. Where you know... the rules would be clearly laid out. Thankfully my having been a TT enthusiast over a decade ago allowed me to pick up on a lot of stuff, but I pity the poor fuckers that are playing this out of the box, TT unseen.
- The restriction to one lance. This and the method of increasing difficulty more than anything else combine to forcefully narrow the tactical space. In TT, light 'mechs are not just annoying little shits. They are extraordinarily dangerous because they are performing in a combined-arms environment, where they can tag areas and enemies for artillery strikes and LRM salvos, or zip around the battlefield being nearly unihittable while popping to the rear of enemy 'mechs for quick blasts. See Cael's excellent rundown on how lights perform in TT play earlier in the thread. Not so here. There is zero room for a light 'mech when you've only got four slots and you're going up against double that in assorted heavies and assaults. It's not necessarily that the light can't cause serious problems in the enemy team... my Firestarter for instance can selectively disable another 'mech with repeated flamer blasts, forcing shutdowns and possibly blowing off limbs from internal damage. But it just can't take any fucking hits later in the game. When it's getting focus-fired by 4 heavies, each packing at least 100+ potential damage, and steadily losing its evasive power over the course of the turn through a combination of Sensor Locks and multiple salvos, well. You start to wonder why you brought that instead of your souped-up Battlemaster, which can take 3-4 rounds of beating and still pop off 6 Medium Lasers and an SRM 4 in return.
- The economy. It's non-existent. Once you get the Argo especially, you will never worry about money again unless you deliberately take retarded risks (such as spending 30+ days traveling into hostile territories with reduced contract payouts, for instance).
- Load times. I figured out on my own that keeping my saves to a minimum helps a great deal, but I still struggled with keeping mission load times below 2 minutes. Really sucked.

You forgot to add that you are limited to 4 mechs, no tonnage, no epic army of 6-8 lights, and those 30 secs loading times, maybe 10?15 for SSD. The mission level design is banal shit boring as well...

Thanks for reminding me :D

 

[Cael]

This is nothing new. The whole of BTech is predicated on this and it is a major part of every MW and MechComm game out there. It is not a praiseworthy feature in that it is an integral part of the game. It is like saying the walking in Oblivion is hitting a vein of gold.

A point worthy of consideration. However not really bearing on what I was getting at. I'm aware that this part of the game should be expected, and should be good. My point was, HBS hit the mark. If they can come up with genuinely good refinements (especially as regards the UI and moving back towards TT as far as rules goes), I will be really happy.

I don't think so. They allowed crit padding like crazy in the CT and all sorts of other shenannigans that basically meant that some of the usual ways of disabling 'mechs are virtually taken out of the game, which you lamented later.

- The upgrade system. Disclaimer: this is not canon to BT at all. TT upgrades come in the form of (1) working weapons :D and (2) new technology, such as Pulse, LBX, Ultra, ER etc. However for the sake of a computer game I don't think it hurts the experience too much. Basically you can have up to 3 positive modifications to each weapon. Most modifications are generic: increased damage, increased accuracy, increased stability damage etc. Some mods are unique to a specific weapon type; Flamers, for instance, can actually cause even more heat generation than they normally do on attack. There are also standalone items that may or may not take up tonnage, granting other effects (increased viewing range, resistance to stability damage, decreased DFA leg damage etc). It makes hunting for something other than 'mech chassis' during salvage somewhat more enjoyable (it is somewhat exciting to receive an AC/20 with +10 stability damage and +20 regular damage, for example).:D

Son, allow me to introduce you to this game that has exactly this thing you are looking for. You see this sword? Well, this other sword here is slightly better and gives you a +1 to everything. And this other, other one? +2 to everything. We call this game "Dungeons and Dragons".

- Jump Jets are allowed on anything. This is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay outside of canon, and I don't give two fucks. I LOVE being able to make all 'mechs jumpers.

I don't know where you got this from. There are examples of 'mechs in canon that mount jump jets even when the normal chasis didn't have them. A prime example is Aidan Pryde's Timberwolf/Madcat. Another is the Thunderbolt SE which is a special modification by the Eridani Light Horse that adds jump jets to the normally ground bound Thunderbolt.

I think you are influenced by the MechCommander and Mechwarrior 4 games where you can only mount jump jets on certain 'mechs? Note that all previous Mechwarrior games allowed you to mount jump jets on any 'mech. It is a MW4 quirk that you can't.

 

[Cael]

I never got a King Crab

.

Too bad. A modified King Crab is one of the most devastating command 'mechs in the SL to 3025 era:

Rip out the 5 extra heatsinks, upgrade the remaining 10 to DHS (-5t)
Switch FF armour and CASE for normal armour and increase it to 19 tons (+2t)
Use freed FF crits for Endo-Steel (-5t)
Switch out AC20s for Gauss Rifles (+2t)
Add 1 extra ton of Gauss ammo for each gun (+2t)
Upgrade Large Laser to PPC (+2t)
Add 1 extra ton of LRM ammo (+1t)
Add Artemis FCS to LRM (+1t)

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I finished the story campaign with 17 million in the bank, a fully upgraded Argo, and about a dozen 'mechs. My primary lance for most of the endgame was:
...
I never got a King Crab

.

I started encountering random enemy King Crabs after the final storyline mission (though I didn't keep playing for long after salvaging one).

 

[Bohr]

 

[Cael]

Worth a shot when it goes on a 75% discount depending on how much you enjoy watching giant robots smack each other around. After 45 hours this is what keeps me going forward along with a sunken cost fallacy the likes of which God Himself has never seen.

No, son. You sell God short. You haven't built the Great Wall yet

 

[aratuk]

It's a little surprising how few multiple-choice "scripted encounters" there are. You very quickly start running into the same ones and memorize the answers that produce the best outcome. Not to mention the paucity of mission types, or tactical options available to the AI.

A lot of it feels like a token, partial implementation, so far. Kinda reminds me of the criticism Shadowrun Returns received for being a limited implementation of the game's systems, that also offered little meaningful choice in story progression. So they patched SRR a little, and did a much better, more complete job with Dragonfall.

Battletech might be more suited to expansions than sequels, but maybe not. Expansions don't sell as well as sequels, do they? Maybe next year we'll see the Dragonfall iteration on Battletech.

 

[DiverNB]

While I enjoy the mechlab in the game, it creates a lot of balance problems against stock mechs. I don't think giving the AI the same 1 turn CT destroying machines would be any fun either.
Also, they need to balance the LL, PPC, and LosTech energy weapons better.

 

[Cael]

While I enjoy the mechlab in the game, it creates a lot of balance problems against stock mechs. I don't think giving the AI the same 1 turn CT destroying machines would be any fun either.

That would be because HBS threw game balance out the window when they made up their own shit rules (chief of which is the ability to make call shots). It is not the mechlab that is the problem. It is HBS fucking up the combat rules.

Also, they need to balance the LL, PPC, and LosTech energy weapons better.

In what way are LosTech energy weapons better than the normal energy weapons?

 

[DiverNB]

While I enjoy the mechlab in the game, it creates a lot of balance problems against stock mechs. I don't think giving the AI the same 1 turn CT destroying machines would be any fun either.

That would be because HBS threw game balance out the window when they made up their own shit rules (chief of which is the ability to make call shots). It is not the mechlab that is the problem. It is HBS fucking up the combat rules.

Also, they need to balance the LL, PPC, and LosTech energy weapons better.

In what way are LosTech energy weapons better than the normal energy weapons?

Let me clarify, I'm referring to it's use in-game. It's hot (literally) garbage, and the accuracy bonuses mean nothing when taking into account gunnery skills. LL's and PPC's are also bad because sight range is so short, and they generate truck loads of heat. I'm assuming it's not like that in the table top?

 

[Cael]

While I enjoy the mechlab in the game, it creates a lot of balance problems against stock mechs. I don't think giving the AI the same 1 turn CT destroying machines would be any fun either.

That would be because HBS threw game balance out the window when they made up their own shit rules (chief of which is the ability to make call shots). It is not the mechlab that is the problem. It is HBS fucking up the combat rules.

Also, they need to balance the LL, PPC, and LosTech energy weapons better.

In what way are LosTech energy weapons better than the normal energy weapons?

Let me clarify, I'm referring to it's use in-game. It's hot (literally) garbage, and the accuracy bonuses mean nothing when taking into account gunnery skills. LL's and PPC's are also bad because sight range is so short, and they generate truck loads of heat. I'm assuming it's not like that in the table top?

Oh. Well, you get some of the same problems with regard to LosTech energy weapons in TT.

For example, the Large Laser does 8 damage for 8 heat at a maximum range of 15. The ER Large Laser does 8 damage for 12 heat at a maximum range of 19. It may seem ridiculous that you generate 50% extra heat for less than 25% extra range, but in TT, you have range brackets, and the ER Large increases the short and medium range brackets by about 40%, which is pretty substantial when you are in a medium range engagement (dropping a range bracket is a bonus to-hit of 2 on a 2d6 scale, not insignificant).

However, the HBS game doesn't take range brackets into account, so most of the advantage of the ER Large is lost. Also, the accuracy bonus doesn't mean anything when the idiots have taken out a massive component of the to-hit calculation: the movement of the 'mechs involved. When you have extra penalties for movement of both your 'mech and the enemy 'mech, on top of penalties for terrain and range, you'd want every accuracy bonus you can get. Even more so when TT Gunnery is only a range of 0-4 (and to get a Gunnery of 0, you'd probably have to be named Natasha Kerensky or Kai Allard-Liao).

I don't know if the HBS game implements minimum range restrictions, but the ER PPC in TT does not have a minimum range while the normal PPC does. Of course, it doesn't really matter if you have designed your 'mech's loadout for bracket fire. If the enemy is within the PPC's minimum range, you should have a battery of medium lasers to shred him for 50% more damage than the PPC can do and for less heat.

In general, though, my personal opinion is that LosTech energy weapons aren't worth it in most cases. LosTech is good for other things like ES internal structure, XL engine, double heat sinks, gauss rifles, LB-X autocannons and streak SRMs.

The way I play TT is over a map of several kilometers on one side. Range matters. A lot. 'Mechs like the stock Hunchback generally gets shredded before it can get into firing range. LL and PPC are the primary long range weapons. Ballistic weapons, because of ammo cost and possible resupply issues, tend to be used at shorter ranges than maximum to ensure they hit and ammo is not wasted. The HBS game has none of this, which is why there is a general feeling of the uselessness of LL and PPC as well as the massive number of SRM boats running around.

I repeat: HBS fucked the real BTech rules in the eye socket.