KickStarter BATTLETECH - turn-based mech combat from Harebrained Schemes

[Nathaniel3W]

nope.
appearances are copyrighted too.

Pretty sure appearances are trademarked, not copyrighted.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

The tranny raped the lore so hard, the motherfuckers had to invent new stuff that goes against established canon in order to asspull their way out of it:

If only that was the only wrong thing with the game. Lore-wise, it was much worse that mission where apparently a priceless bunch of archeotech is destroyed by the she-mudslime engineer for reasons I don't remember right now... But nothing happens. No immediate declaration of war by everyone in the star system, no punishment for destroying Star League tech, nothing.

The protagonists follow the MacGuffin to a a castle full of lostech. A cutscene implies that there are hundreds or perhaps thousands of working Star League mechs stored there. Unbeknownst to the heroes, the villain was following them. You escape out the back door with a lance of old mechs and blow the place up rather than allowing the villain to take the stuff. But yeah, apparently nobody ever finds out about it, or if they do, they don't care.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

nope.
appearances are copyrighted too.

Pretty sure appearances are trademarked, not copyrighted.

sorry, technical lingo in a foreign language.

 

[Jason Liang]

 

[Olinser]

I actually read a lot of the BattleTech books back in the day.

Until they turned into Proto-GW and burned it to the ground, skipped ahead 100 years, and every previous major character died a failure in the ridiculous crap that was Dark Age.

It successfully completely destroyed the book franchise.

 

[Cael]

I actually read a lot of the BattleTech books back in the day.

Until they turned into Proto-GW and burned it to the ground, skipped ahead 100 years, and every previous major character died a failure in the ridiculous crap that was Dark Age.

It successfully completely destroyed the book franchise.

They don't even call it Battletech. They call it Mechwarrior: Dark Age.

They should have called it Mechwarrior: Deviant Age, given the number of rape, incest and other psycho stuff going on in there.

 

[Dayyālu]

I'm extremely lazy and I don't want to read all the thread. Askin' very simple questions:

1) Is the basic game decent? I play a lot of Megamek but sometimes you want variety. With "decent" I mean "enjoyable", I understand this shit ain't perfect. I just want to see robbits burn and I don't care about SJW stuff (we already had fucking Canopus and the Clans, can't be worse)

2) There are essential mods, like stuff fixing basic developer incompetency and the like? Do they require DLCs?

I found "suggested lists" in other places, but I trust the Codex autists more. Thank ye all if someone bothers to reply.

 

[Lone Wolf]

1) Decent for burning mechs and pretty light shows. Only four mechs in action, though, unless you use the Mission Control mod (which expands your force to eight deployable mechs). Really annoying load times (I don't have it on an SSD) and very clunky. Little mission variety. Annoying terrain issues. Slow. Very slow.

2) With mods, you've got three major options:

a) Roguetech - changes an absolute shitload, adds a thousand plus mechs, greater mech customization, altered base mechanics, kitchen-sink type of mod

b) Battletech Advanced 3062 - adds a similar volume of content (mechs, vehicles etc) but doesn't change mechanics as much as RT. A sort of middle ground. Still quite different to vanilla.

c) Battletech Extended 3025 - also adds a similar volume of content, but has the fewest mechanics changes to vanilla.

All of these use the Community Asset Bundle and a collection of integrated sub-mods. And, as far as I'm aware, the DLCs are at least recommended for all of the above, if not required.

For the record, I preferred BE3025.

 

[Cael]

I'm extremely lazy and I don't want to read all the thread. Askin' very simple questions:

1) Is the basic game decent? I play a lot of Megamek but sometimes you want variety. With "decent" I mean "enjoyable", I understand this shit ain't perfect. I just want to see robbits burn and I don't care about SJW stuff (we already had fucking Canopus and the Clans, can't be worse)

2) There are essential mods, like stuff fixing basic developer incompetency and the like? Do they require DLCs?

I found "suggested lists" in other places, but I trust the Codex autists more. Thank ye all if someone bothers to reply.

Canopians were Amazons writ large. Think Wonder Woman back in the day.

The Clans were a bunch of class worshipping neoNazi facists. Woke, they are not.

 

[razvedchiki]

additional mechs on the maps really bog down perfomance and turn times keep in mind, if you have trouble with the games loading times with 10-12 mechs on the map imagine what happens with 25-30.

 

[Olinser]

I'm extremely lazy and I don't want to read all the thread. Askin' very simple questions:

1) Is the basic game decent? I play a lot of Megamek but sometimes you want variety. With "decent" I mean "enjoyable", I understand this shit ain't perfect. I just want to see robbits burn and I don't care about SJW stuff (we already had fucking Canopus and the Clans, can't be worse)

2) There are essential mods, like stuff fixing basic developer incompetency and the like? Do they require DLCs?

I found "suggested lists" in other places, but I trust the Codex autists more. Thank ye all if someone bothers to reply.

It's decent for what it is, a limited mech combat simulator. You can never field more than 4 mechs and no vehicles, so you are artificially limited while the AI has no such limit, but the AI also has no idea what is actually good, so missions are actually quite easy once you start building your own 'Mechs. Campaign is fairly enjoyable, although a lot of the missions start to get boring and repetitive, its still worth a playthrough.

Actual combat is quite good and fairly faithful to tabletop roots, its honestly pretty close to an animated tabletop game.

Multiplayer is shit, don't even bother if that's what you want.

There are no 'essential' mods like Glavius AI for Stellaris used to be, the most updated version has much better load times than the trainwreck at launch, so that's not nearly as big a factor.

You won't be playing it in 5 years, but its worth steam bookmarking and pick it up when it goes on sale, its not worth full price.

 

[Cael]

I'm extremely lazy and I don't want to read all the thread. Askin' very simple questions:

1) Is the basic game decent? I play a lot of Megamek but sometimes you want variety. With "decent" I mean "enjoyable", I understand this shit ain't perfect. I just want to see robbits burn and I don't care about SJW stuff (we already had fucking Canopus and the Clans, can't be worse)

2) There are essential mods, like stuff fixing basic developer incompetency and the like? Do they require DLCs?

I found "suggested lists" in other places, but I trust the Codex autists more. Thank ye all if someone bothers to reply.

It's decent for what it is, a limited mech combat simulator. You can never field more than 4 mechs and no vehicles, so you are artificially limited while the AI has no such limit, but the AI also has no idea what is actually good, so missions are actually quite easy once you start building your own 'Mechs. Campaign is fairly enjoyable, although a lot of the missions start to get boring and repetitive, its still worth a playthrough.

Actual combat is quite good and fairly faithful to tabletop roots, its honestly pretty close to an animated tabletop game.

Multiplayer is shit, don't even bother if that's what you want.

There are no 'essential' mods like Glavius AI for Stellaris used to be, the most updated version has much better load times than the trainwreck at launch, so that's not nearly as big a factor.

You won't be playing it in 5 years, but its worth steam bookmarking and pick it up when it goes on sale, its not worth full price.

It is not worth any price, not if you are a fan of the CBT setting. If you are a fucking idiot who goes "Ohh! Big stompy robots and My Little Pony Princess!", then yes, it would be worth a few bucks.

 

[Crispy]

In case anyone's interested, this is available through Game Pass as of this last Summer. So, if you went ahead and got Wasteland 3 for a buck like I did and decide to keep Game Pass active for a while, Battletech can be downloaded for "free".

The down side of going through Game Pass is that I don't think mods work. The functionality in the form of the Mods button on the game's main menu is still there, but following the instructions for installing a mod have no effect on the Game Pass version. I would imagine it's because of the drastically different file and folder structure necessary to have the game running as a trusted app as opposed to a Steam game.

Nevertheless, with the latest version of the game, most of the basic problems have been ironed out and it's quite playable. Once I disabled all the ridiculous drama action cameras and made it look and feel a little more like playing with miniature mechs on a tabletop, it's much more bearable. Adjusting the keybindings and camera rotation and zoom controls helps, too. It playes similar to an isometric RPG now in terms of combat, and its other RPG-like aspects are keeping me interested.

I appreciate the popup lore elements since I admittedly don't know much about the BT universe, and I haven't really noticed any of the supposed SJW aspects (yet). Then again, I simply don't look for those kinds of things and don't mind them if they're not shoved in my face. No pun intended.

By the way, fuck Unity. Argh.

 

[Cael]

In case anyone's interested, this is available through Game Pass as of this last Summer. So, if you went ahead and got Wasteland 3 for a buck like I did and decide to keep Game Pass active for a while, Battletech can be downloaded for "free".

The down side of going through Game Pass is that I don't think mods work. The functionality in the form of the Mods button on the game's main menu is still there, but following the instructions for installing a mod have no effect on the Game Pass version. I would imagine it's because of the drastically different file and folder structure necessary to have the game running as a trusted app as opposed to a Steam game.

Nevertheless, with the latest version of the game, most of the basic problems have been ironed out and it's quite playable. Once I disabled all the ridiculous drama action cameras and made it look and feel a little more like playing with miniature mechs on a tabletop, it's much more bearable. Adjusting the keybindings and camera rotation and zoom controls helps, too. It playes similar to an isometric RPG now in terms of combat, and its other RPG-like aspects are keeping me interested.

I appreciate the popup lore elements since I admittedly don't know much about the BT universe, and I haven't really noticed any of the supposed SJW aspects (yet). Then again, I simply don't look for those kinds of things and don't mind them if they're not shoved in my face. No pun intended.

By the way, fuck Unity. Argh.

Don't be a fucking idiot. Multiple people have told you that whatever "lore" is there has little to do with CBT and a lot to do with woke fuckery (like Spanish names in Greco-Roman FWL, Chinese CC, Irish/Scottish MoC, etc.).

 

[Jason Liang]

 

[Hellraiser]

I'm extremely lazy and I don't want to read all the thread. Askin' very simple questions:

1) Is the basic game decent? I play a lot of Megamek but sometimes you want variety. With "decent" I mean "enjoyable", I understand this shit ain't perfect. I just want to see robbits burn and I don't care about SJW stuff (we already had fucking Canopus and the Clans, can't be worse)

I think the best part is kitting out mechs since you have a pretty decent amount of options for that, including the ability to strip or add armor. I remember I stripped armor from some definitely too light for the job mech to fit in some overkill weapons setup like 2xAC20 or something else for the premium glass cannon experience. Who needs armor when you can do called shots crippling shit from really long range.

The tactical combat isn't particularly deep, it suffers from nu-xcom-itis adopting its "move+shoot or sprint" system. Melee is pretty much just a special attack with 1 range that also fires small weapons, with no additional mechanics such as attack of opportunity or whatever to give it additional tactical meaning. This means there's nothing stopping the other guy from walking behind you and alpha striking you.

Due to the retarded cap on the number of mechs deployed, light mechs are obsolete pretty much as soon as you get anything heavier. Stability damage was nice until story and random missions have you facing heavy or assault mechs, making stability damage-focused mech loadouts not really worth it at that point. Evasion is ok as a mechanic.

There is some decent use of terrain and environments (planets) impact heat management differently, so there kind of is some thought required to picking the mechs for the job sometimes besides what has the most mass and thus dakka. Furthermore terrain height and line of sight do matter.

In general the tactical part can be summed up as wasted potential. It is ok, but honestly you get the feeling more could be done and it does get repetitive.

Mechwarrior skill development is too simplistic and results in low variety between mechwarriors and not much room for specializations. I honestly had a lot more fun in the tactical area with nuXCOM and its sequel, make of that what you will. Mostly because nuXCOM introduced new tactical options as you progressed while here, not so much. Just gear with some better stats, with the exception of the new mechs I guess.

The lance management strategy side is passable as is the ship upgrading, not bad from what I remember, just mechanically inoffensive and thus forgettable. Choosing the salvage to cash ratio is kind of fun, but the salvage is heavily RNG-dependent despite employing tactics to maximize available mech parts. I really wanted to get some endgame mech parts and the RNG kept shafting me despite employing tactics to maximize available mech parts.

I got bored of the random missions eventually as while the tactical side is ok-ish (mostly due to the mech loadout options), it just gets repetitive and there's not much too look forward, despite some improvements in the random scenarios brought in by the DLC. It just feels like more of the same. Thus I couldn't be arsed to finish the game and I honestly don't know if I'll ever bother, there's just nothing motivating me to see the end of the campaign or even the flashpoint content, neither storywise or gameplay wise.

It doesn't help that going from system to system takes so fucking long, with so many animations which cannot be skipped. Also it runs like shit for who knows what reason, urban maps especially. And it loads so fucking slow. I would blame it on Unity but even compared to other Unity games (Wasteland 3 for example) it runs and loads fucking slow, period.

No clue about mods.

General recommendation - wait for a price cut and at least a 66% discount if you really are thinking of buying it. It also has the issue of being a typical paradox game where you can swear the DLC should have been in the base game in the first place, but they are nickel and diming you, because paradox. Also no kickstarter backer discount for DLC is a dick move.

 

[Average Manatee]

The thought that the current level of performance and load times are "vastly improved" from some previous version fills my programmer heart with panic and fear.

Aside from that it's just really basic and simplistic. The gameplay never really develops much past the tutorial missions.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

In case anyone's interested, this is available through Game Pass as of this last Summer. So, if you went ahead and got Wasteland 3 for a buck like I did and decide to keep Game Pass active for a while, Battletech can be downloaded for "free".

The down side of going through Game Pass is that I don't think mods work. The functionality in the form of the Mods button on the game's main menu is still there, but following the instructions for installing a mod have no effect on the Game Pass version. I would imagine it's because of the drastically different file and folder structure necessary to have the game running as a trusted app as opposed to a Steam game.

Nevertheless, with the latest version of the game, most of the basic problems have been ironed out and it's quite playable. Once I disabled all the ridiculous drama action cameras and made it look and feel a little more like playing with miniature mechs on a tabletop, it's much more bearable. Adjusting the keybindings and camera rotation and zoom controls helps, too. It playes similar to an isometric RPG now in terms of combat, and its other RPG-like aspects are keeping me interested.

I appreciate the popup lore elements since I admittedly don't know much about the BT universe, and I haven't really noticed any of the supposed SJW aspects (yet). Then again, I simply don't look for those kinds of things and don't mind them if they're not shoved in my face. No pun intended.

By the way, fuck Unity. Argh.

Don't be a fucking idiot. Multiple people have told you that whatever "lore" is there has little to do with CBT and a lot to do with woke fuckery (like Spanish names in Greco-Roman FWL, Chinese CC, Irish/Scottish MoC, etc.).

...Someone with a Spanish name in Marik or Liao turf is far, FAR from the dumbest thing ever. The only successor state that really gives a good god's damn about where your name hails from on ancient Terra is going to be the Dracs, and they STILL ended up with a bunch of Swedes and Arabs in their territory. CC honestly doesn't give a damn what your name is (as long as it's not Davion), they're all about service to the Confederation as a requirement for being a citizen proper. Ruiz? OK, what have you done to serve the Chancellor and the people of the Capellan Confederation today? Free Worlds League is already an ungodly clusterfuck of loosely American ideals with strong representation from a number of callbacks to old Terra. Fucking Camacho's Caballeros are FWL folks. Like, what the fuck are you smoking where you think anyone but the Kuritans give a single solitary fuck, and even THEY don't care about your name as much as they care about how hard your dick is for Space Japan.

 

[oldmanpaco]

They should have called it Mechwarrior: Deviant Age, given the number of rape, incest and other psycho stuff going on in there.

Well shit just got interesting!

 

[Shitty Kitty]

They should have called it Mechwarrior: Deviant Age, given the number of rape, incest and other psycho stuff going on in there.

Well shit just got interesting!

Yeah there's a thing in Dark Age lore where one of the current Clan Wolf bigshots is the incest-clone vatbaby daughter of two scions of the Steiner-Davion bloodline.

Idk, if any factions in the universe were gonna do that, it'd definitely be the FedSuns/Davion and the Clans. Steiner military officers just ACT inbred.

 

[Cael]

They should have called it Mechwarrior: Deviant Age, given the number of rape, incest and other psycho stuff going on in there.

Well shit just got interesting!

Yeah there's a thing in Dark Age lore where one of the current Clan Wolf bigshots is the incest-clone vatbaby daughter of two scions of the Steiner-Davion bloodline.

Idk, if any factions in the universe were gonna do that, it'd definitely be the FedSuns/Davion and the Clans. Steiner military officers just ACT inbred.

That is Katherine Steiner-Davion's last act of revenge against her brother, who died without ever knowing she stole his genes to make a boy. Typical totalitarian sjw shithead gaining "revenge" on someone who doesn't even know or care she exists.

If you want to look at other "fun" stuff, look up Danai Liao-Centrella, and who her father and mother are, and she, err... "relationship" with Caleb Davion.

 

[Cael]

In case anyone's interested, this is available through Game Pass as of this last Summer. So, if you went ahead and got Wasteland 3 for a buck like I did and decide to keep Game Pass active for a while, Battletech can be downloaded for "free".

The down side of going through Game Pass is that I don't think mods work. The functionality in the form of the Mods button on the game's main menu is still there, but following the instructions for installing a mod have no effect on the Game Pass version. I would imagine it's because of the drastically different file and folder structure necessary to have the game running as a trusted app as opposed to a Steam game.

Nevertheless, with the latest version of the game, most of the basic problems have been ironed out and it's quite playable. Once I disabled all the ridiculous drama action cameras and made it look and feel a little more like playing with miniature mechs on a tabletop, it's much more bearable. Adjusting the keybindings and camera rotation and zoom controls helps, too. It playes similar to an isometric RPG now in terms of combat, and its other RPG-like aspects are keeping me interested.

I appreciate the popup lore elements since I admittedly don't know much about the BT universe, and I haven't really noticed any of the supposed SJW aspects (yet). Then again, I simply don't look for those kinds of things and don't mind them if they're not shoved in my face. No pun intended.

By the way, fuck Unity. Argh.

Don't be a fucking idiot. Multiple people have told you that whatever "lore" is there has little to do with CBT and a lot to do with woke fuckery (like Spanish names in Greco-Roman FWL, Chinese CC, Irish/Scottish MoC, etc.).

...Someone with a Spanish name in Marik or Liao turf is far, FAR from the dumbest thing ever. The only successor state that really gives a good god's damn about where your name hails from on ancient Terra is going to be the Dracs, and they STILL ended up with a bunch of Swedes and Arabs in their territory. CC honestly doesn't give a damn what your name is (as long as it's not Davion), they're all about service to the Confederation as a requirement for being a citizen proper. Ruiz? OK, what have you done to serve the Chancellor and the people of the Capellan Confederation today? Free Worlds League is already an ungodly clusterfuck of loosely American ideals with strong representation from a number of callbacks to old Terra. Fucking Camacho's Caballeros are FWL folks. Like, what the fuck are you smoking where you think anyone but the Kuritans give a single solitary fuck, and even THEY don't care about your name as much as they care about how hard your dick is for Space Japan.

It is when the entire game is filled with the Spanish shit. It is not a "few" characters. Half your fucking hireables have Spanish names. Kevin "Fatboy" Maginn was obsessed with Spanish names, probably because his tranny idol in real life has one.

 

[Spark Mandriller]

Yeah there's a thing in Dark Age lore where one of the current Clan Wolf bigshots is the incest-clone vatbaby daughter of two scions of the Steiner-Davion bloodline.

The most offensive thing here is the idea that Kat could ever get into the warrior caste.

 

[Cael]

Yeah there's a thing in Dark Age lore where one of the current Clan Wolf bigshots is the incest-clone vatbaby daughter of two scions of the Steiner-Davion bloodline.

The most offensive thing here is the idea that Kat could ever get into the warrior caste.

She had Vlad helping her. On every front.

 

[Spark Mandriller]

She had Vlad helping her. On every front.

Even with Vlad support it should be impossible. And I don't see why he'd even want her there. And then I'm not sure why she wouldn't get trialed to death as soon as he died, and how she could get involved in the breeding program, and how she could somehow get Victor's genetics in there too, and how nobody apparently noticed.
Whatever, fuck it, it's Dark Age. They fucked everyone else up, they can fuck the Wolves up too. Wolf's always been a boring clan anyway. Or two clans.