KickStarter BATTLETECH - turn-based mech combat from Harebrained Schemes

[Lone Wolf]

Extended = more content

Advanced = more content, some mechanics

Roguetech = more content, many mechanics

 

[Lone Wolf]

FWIW, I found Advanced okay, but the to-hit changes were annoying early on.

 

[razvedchiki]

the flashpoint playable main campaign in advanced 3062 is 1on1 copy of the main campaign?
also hows performance compared to extended? (in advanced).

 

[Agesilaus]

the flashpoint playable main campaign in advanced 3062 is 1on1 copy of the main campaign?
also hows performance compared to extended? (in advanced).

Yeah I played through most of the campaign as Flashpoints in Advanced 3062. Basically, campaign missions appear in order as flashpoints. You activate them the same way you would any Flashpoint. You have to wait a while between missions for the next one to appear.

Performance seems fine at first, but as the campaign continues it gradually declines until you get frustrated with the performance or start to remember that, fundamentally, it's not actually a very good game.

 

[razvedchiki]

about knockdowns, are they even worth it? being replaying vanilla campaign with extended and it doesnt seem worth the turns to take to knock down one mech because most of the time the called shots dont do any crit dmg.
had some hilarious turns where i punced some light then it got up, got begind me and rekt me.

 

[Cael]

about knockdowns, are they even worth it? being replaying vanilla campaign with extended and it doesnt seem worth the turns to take to knock down one mech because most of the time the called shots dont do any crit dmg.
had some hilarious turns where i punced some light then it got up, got begind me and rekt me.

The power of knockdown is that it allows you to core any 'mech on the field in seconds with the hilariously broken called shots.

 

[Calthaer]

about knockdowns, are they even worth it? being replaying vanilla campaign with extended and it doesnt seem worth the turns to take to knock down one mech because most of the time the called shots dont do any crit dmg.
had some hilarious turns where i punced some light then it got up, got begind me and rekt me.

The power of knockdown is that it allows you to core any 'mech on the field in seconds with the hilariously broken called shots.

Or you can target the legs if you want a copy of that mech for yourself. Knocking out both legs (but nothing else) will get you 2/3 scrap in one go, whereas coring will only give you 1/3. Best way to build up your arsenal...or collection. Not going to lie - I kind of played this game like Pokémon, gotta collect 'em all.

 

[thesheeep]

about knockdowns, are they even worth it? being replaying vanilla campaign with extended and it doesnt seem worth the turns to take to knock down one mech because most of the time the called shots dont do any crit dmg.
had some hilarious turns where i punced some light then it got up, got begind me and rekt me.

The power of knockdown is that it allows you to core any 'mech on the field in seconds with the hilariously broken called shots.

Or you can target the legs if you want a copy of that mech for yourself. Knocking out both legs (but nothing else) will get you 2/3 scrap in one go, whereas coring will only give you 1/3. Best way to build up your arsenal...or collection. Not going to lie - I kind of played this game like Pokémon, gotta collect 'em all.

It's been a while since I played - the overall slowness of the game just wore me out.
But I definitely remember doing the exact same.

Shitty mech? No chance I'll ever use it? Yeah, gimme dat!

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Good mech is always nice.

 

[Lone Wolf]

The thing that killed this game for me was just how sluggish and unresponsive everything was. From clicking around the UI, to the camera, to the many loading screens... everything is ponderous. Also, being stuck between single lance battles on a normal map and (mod derived) multi-lance battles on a huge map that required 5-6 turns of movement for any contact was just shit.

 

[zapotec]

Meh i refunded this piece of crap, my cpu was almost always at 95°C degree.
I even anticipated my pre-summer computer dust cleaning

 

[Tytus]

Meh i refunded this piece of crap, my cpu was almost always at 95°C degree.
I even anticipated my pre-summer computer dust cleaning

What shit PC do you have?

 

[Average Manatee]

Don't worry, we just need to wait until we have CPUs and GPUs of 2050 and then we can go back and play the timeless classic that is the BATTLETECH PC game as smoothly as it was meant to be played.

 

[zapotec]

Meh i refunded this piece of crap, my cpu was almost always at 95°C degree.
I even anticipated my pre-summer computer dust cleaning

What shit PC do you have?

I have a laptop (asus x571gt), but the performance are fine:
50-60 FPS in non urban-areas and around 40-50 in the urban scenarios.

I don't see any reason why my laptop reaches the 95°C degree with 4 mechs around but it doesn't reach them when there are thousand of entities in total warhammer 2.

 

[razvedchiki]

do you use throttlestop/ intels program for undervolting?
with throttlestop and manually setting the cpu to 3ghz(from 4ghz) i get 65-70 max with multiple lances.

 

[Cael]

Meh i refunded this piece of crap, my cpu was almost always at 95°C degree.
I even anticipated my pre-summer computer dust cleaning

What shit PC do you have?

I have a laptop (asus x571gt), but the performance are fine:
50-60 FPS in non urban-areas and around 40-50 in the urban scenarios.

I don't see any reason why my laptop reaches the 95°C degree with 4 mechs around but it doesn't reach them when there are thousand of entities in total warhammer 2.

Shills will always shill. The burning CPU problem has been known since the abomination first came out, but the fucks still blame the computer rather than the utter shit tranny programme.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

What drives me insane is that Unity can ABSOLUTELY BE OPTIMIZED. Slime Rancher is a Unity game. It has NOT ONCE turned my computer into a blast furnace.

 

[Nutria]

Don't worry, we just need to wait until we have CPUs and GPUs of 2050 and then we can go back and play the timeless classic

Maybe it's like one of those games that was really shit on release in 1994 but you can actually enjoy it in DOSBox now.

 

[FreshCorpse]

What drives me insane is that Unity can ABSOLUTELY BE OPTIMIZED. Slime Rancher is a Unity game. It has NOT ONCE turned my computer into a blast furnace.

Yeah but the question is can the HBS devs manage it. After 5+ messy Unity releases the answer is clearly: no.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I think at this point the question is "How much more money will HBS make by optimizing BattleTech?" The answer is none. Maybe if more of the early streamers made a big stink about it, HBS would have fixed it. But it's not going to happen now.

 

[Cael]

I think at this point the question is "How much more money will HBS make by optimizing BattleTech?" The answer is none. Maybe if more of the early streamers made a big stink about it, HBS would have fixed it. But it's not going to happen now.

The early suckers did. They were ignored in favour of putting out more tranny shit.

 

[FreshCorpse]

I think at this point the question is "How much more money will HBS make by optimizing BattleTech?" The answer is none. Maybe if more of the early streamers made a big stink about it, HBS would have fixed it. But it's not going to happen now.

The early streamers/reviewers did make a stink about it and Battletech's performance was improved a bit, just not greatly.

I personally don't think it's about money as Unity performance seems like something you can get right the first time if your devs know what they're doing. HBS should really employ a couple of these people: there are many Unity games that work fine on release without any special after the fact rework.

Other times, yes, a game makes a lot of money (Disco Elysium) and they are able to bring in a specialist contractor to correct all the mistakes. But it's worth noting that Disco Elysium performed better at v1.0 then Shadowrun:HK does as of it's final patch. So there's something to just doing it right the first time.

 

[Average Manatee]

Shadowrun games also used unity and had poor performance (though nowhere near as bad as Battletech), so there's no excuse about being unused to the engine. Didn't play Necropolis, how did it perform?

It's absolutely 100% about programmer competence. Unity just attracts a lot of shitty programmers because it's cheap and therefore low risk.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

I think at this point the question is "How much more money will HBS make by optimizing BattleTech?" The answer is none. Maybe if more of the early streamers made a big stink about it, HBS would have fixed it. But it's not going to happen now.

The early streamers/reviewers did make a stink about it and Battletech's performance was improved a bit, just not greatly.

I personally don't think it's about money as Unity performance seems like something you can get right the first time if your devs know what they're doing. HBS should really employ a couple of these people: there are many Unity games that work fine on release without any special after the fact rework.

Other times, yes, a game makes a lot of money (Disco Elysium) and they are able to bring in a specialist contractor to correct all the mistakes. But it's worth noting that Disco Elysium performed better at v1.0 then Shadowrun:HK does as of it's final patch. So there's something to just doing it right the first time.

I have zero faith in HBS to do anything but halfass their work and I consider them making a good game to be a matter of "in spite of their obvious shortcomings" rather than "they are very good at what they do". Shadowrun and Battletech being enjoyable at all is a happy accident. Shadowrun and Battletech's atrocious performance is not an accident, it's the end result of creatives with middling-to-poor talent at anything but the creative angle. They clearly don't have anyone who knows or cares about things that aren't shiny story and pretty artwork and messaging/narratives.

I can write a great novel but if I don't have an editor or similar go through it and make sure there aren't any glaring mistakes or oversights and don't have it properly printed and bound it's not much of a novel, is it?

 

[FreshCorpse]

I think at this point the question is "How much more money will HBS make by optimizing BattleTech?" The answer is none. Maybe if more of the early streamers made a big stink about it, HBS would have fixed it. But it's not going to happen now.

The early streamers/reviewers did make a stink about it and Battletech's performance was improved a bit, just not greatly.

I personally don't think it's about money as Unity performance seems like something you can get right the first time if your devs know what they're doing. HBS should really employ a couple of these people: there are many Unity games that work fine on release without any special after the fact rework.

Other times, yes, a game makes a lot of money (Disco Elysium) and they are able to bring in a specialist contractor to correct all the mistakes. But it's worth noting that Disco Elysium performed better at v1.0 then Shadowrun:HK does as of it's final patch. So there's something to just doing it right the first time.

I have zero faith in HBS to do anything but halfass their work and I consider them making a good game to be a matter of "in spite of their obvious shortcomings" rather than "they are very good at what they do". Shadowrun and Battletech being enjoyable at all is a happy accident. Shadowrun and Battletech's atrocious performance is not an accident, it's the end result of creatives with middling-to-poor talent at anything but the creative angle. They clearly don't have anyone who knows or cares about things that aren't shiny story and pretty artwork and messaging/narratives.

I can write a great novel but if I don't have an editor or similar go through it and make sure there aren't any glaring mistakes or oversights and don't have it properly printed and bound it's not much of a novel, is it?

I give them slightly more credit. I think their creative abilities are outright good - they can write dialogue for the most part and while all their games that I've played have used existing settings their worldcrafting within that setting is of a good standard.

On gameplay design I think they are weak and this is why their attempt at a proper strategy game is rubbish. Shadowrun's "light" (and fluffy) XCOM-style physical combat and godawful decking are able to coast because ultimately Shadowrun is an RPG and while combat/economic mechanics are important they are not central. For strategy games those mechanics are central and this is the fundamental reason why Battletech is so underwhelming.

And then you have their technical ineptitude. They are terrible at getting their shit to run and you just have to wade through and try to enjoy the rest of what they have made. For Shadowrun it's worth it. For Battletech, it isn't.