Management / Sim Mech Engineer (Early Access). Russian + Micropose old style Simulation Strategy Management Pc Game

[DesolationStone]

STEAM
I discovered this game a few weeks ago, and it is a very strange and complex one, but actually its problem is the complete absence of a real manual (the one in the game is not so well written) and an explanation of many mechanics and values. These are the same issues of Highfleet, another videogame from Russian developers published by Micropose.

By the way, in this game the world is doomed by an alien invasion, you control the resistance, made up of a sentient city that moves around the Earth. Your goal is to find a way to escape the planet while defending yourself from the aliens with a squadron of mechs that you design and repair.

You have to design each mech from the minimum details: reactor, engines, modules, cockpits, etc. Your pilots need rest and you have to monitor their blood pressure, stress and even heart rate.

The UI (as for Highfleet) is amazing, with many references to the masterpiece of the late 90s. It's still in early access, but there's plenty of room for improvement, so let's keep our fingers crossed.

 

[agris]

this looks like pure 100% weapons grade autism that was smuggled over the tijuana border to be cut and stepped on with a mix of rat poison and eastern european methamphetamine. i can hear the electronic dance music in each and every screenshot.

i like it, probably need to buy it...

 

[agris]

Cael I think your autism would appreciate this

 

[agris]

this game deserves an effort post, but it's gonna get a shitty photo embed instead.

for the tweakers out there, here's the mission selection screen - you can see the grid-based worldmap that you move your city on, as well as a mission analysis summarizing the difficulty as well as my current squad of mechs and some pilots assigned to them

edit: a few more images

(mobile) base upgrade screen

mech outfitting & electrical configuration

 

[Joggerino]

Just saw it here


I'm trying the game out now, it looks extremely interesting and promising.

 

[Joggerino]

Game is quite hard, although I suspect it's much easier for someone who knows what they're doing. Think I died and restarted 8 times at this point.
Aesthetically it reminds me of HighFleet with all the analogue button pressing which is nice. Just to control the camera in battle you need to plug some wires into the overhead drone so it's pretty immersive. Overclocking your mech components involves going to the electricity menu, clicking a button to open the reactor and then dragging wires around.

Gameplay loop is most similar to x-com but some big things are missing. Research is too simple for example, doesn't expend any resources and the research tree is very short. The main thing about fighting aliens (bugs) in order to get resources to upgrade your moving city, build new weapons, mechs, etc is there. Majority of time will be spent customizing your mechs though and it seems to me that the most important part of it is actually the weapons customization. There are many options and mods for weapons (not many weapon types themselves) but it falls down to adapting to the enemies you expect to encounter. And very importantly, making sure you don't end up reloading all your weapons at the same time so some rate of fire and ammo storage tinkering is required... You're also expected to make sure your mech doesn't overheat which heavily depends on their ambient temperature and again, the kind of weapons you're using.

Combat itself is fun, seems to center mostly about pre-planning and positioning. Won't go into more detail, my impression of the game is that it's very much an early access game still.

 

[Retardo]

what next, the monster breeder gets released?

 

[Joggerino]

Nice, I'll play it again after it's released.

 

[Darkozric]

Mech Engineer 1.0 released

 

[Haba]

This game gives me PTSD simply by existing.

 

[Serious_Business]

I bought this thing just to support it, and out of principle, because it looks fucking rad. Not sure when I'll ever get to play it. Lots of complains about how obtuse the game is, which is probably a good sign overall, I like the obtuse, I am myself pretty obtuse, however the low hours count on the steam reviews is unfortunate. I want to see autists with 500h+ tweaking around their little mechs, that's how it has to go, autism is a sign of quality and success.

 

[Retardo]

I bought this thing just to support it, and out of principle, because it looks fucking rad. Not sure when I'll ever get to play it. Lots of complains about how obtuse the game is, which is probably a good sign overall, I like the obtuse, I am myself pretty obtuse, however the low hours count on the steam reviews is unfortunate. I want to see autists with 500h+ tweaking around their little mechs, that's how it has to go, autism is a sign of quality and success.

check the discussions and guides, there are ppl with multiple playthroughs
and they say that the game allows for variety of builds

 

[Retardo]

my impressions so far are that the game is pretty rad, and the interface is decent - I'd like to have some QoL like storing multiple mech loadots or putting names on wpns to discern between different configs, but the interface's not as bad as they say. Difficulty is high tho.

 

[Darkozric]

I bought this thing just to support it

Yeah I also want to support this guy, analogue interface looks deliciously autistic, and the desperate cries from steam fags are a good sign.

I'll wait for a GOG release, but if it takes those GOG degenerates too long, I'm gonna sail to the high seas.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Downloaded the demo to give it try. It took a bit of fiddling with the buttons to figure out the UI but it isn't all that difficult to navigate. Like 10-15 minutes should help you find your way around it. There are some tooltip problems but not to the extent that players are complaining imo. The only thing that's still obscure to me is how city damage is calculated and what I can do to reduce it, but it could be that it's just a doomsday clock that you need to cope with until you upgrade enough of your facilities that it starts to go down. The setting and overall ambiance of this game is perfect. It combines BattleTech with X-COM and Syndicate and wraps it up with an immersive Amiga inspired art style and lofi / downtempo electronic music. And while the main meat and potatoes of the game is on the strategic layer where you tinker with your guns, motor and mech designs, the tactical combat layer is nothing to sneeze at either. It is very simple how you play in combat, basically all you do is give movement commands and artillery support, but positioning matters a lot and your characters can panic and start doing their own thing so you don't want to give them suicidal commands. This is a game that knows what it wants to do and succeeds at it. If you have even a passing interest then give the demo a try and ignore the mass negativity. It's not entirely baseless but there's is also a strong element of people thinking they are more skilled at games than they actually are and just can't deal with this one.

Instant buy for me.

 

[CryptRat]

I played a demo of this a long time ago, didn't leave me a strong opinion either way yet the strong presentation, uniqueness, supposed obtuseness, opinions of people here and cheap price are enough good reasons for me to buy it at some point.

 

[agris]

It’s good, if Hobo Elf ’s description interests you at all you should buy it

 

[Darkozric]

Also available on GOG
https://af.gog.com/en/game/mech_engineer?as=1649904300

 

[Joggerino]

Downloaded the demo to give it try. It took a bit of fiddling with the buttons to figure out the UI but it isn't all that difficult to navigate. Like 10-15 minutes should help you find your way around it. There are some tooltip problems but not to the extent that players are complaining imo. The only thing that's still obscure to me is how city damage is calculated and what I can do to reduce it, but it could be that it's just a doomsday clock that you need to cope with until you upgrade enough of your facilities that it starts to go down. The setting and overall ambiance of this game is perfect. It combines BattleTech with X-COM and Syndicate and wraps it up with an immersive Amiga inspired art style and lofi / downtempo electronic music. And while the main meat and potatoes of the game is on the strategic layer where you tinker with your guns, motor and mech designs, the tactical combat layer is nothing to sneeze at either. It is very simple how you play in combat, basically all you do is give movement commands and artillery support, but positioning matters a lot and your characters can panic and start doing their own thing so you don't want to give them suicidal commands. This is a game that knows what it wants to do and succeeds at it. If you have even a passing interest then give the demo a try and ignore the mass negativity. It's not entirely baseless but there's is also a strong element of people thinking they are more skilled at games than they actually are and just can't deal with this one.

Instant buy for me.

What's the negativity about? Game being too hard?

 

[Hobo Elf]

Downloaded the demo to give it try. It took a bit of fiddling with the buttons to figure out the UI but it isn't all that difficult to navigate. Like 10-15 minutes should help you find your way around it. There are some tooltip problems but not to the extent that players are complaining imo. The only thing that's still obscure to me is how city damage is calculated and what I can do to reduce it, but it could be that it's just a doomsday clock that you need to cope with until you upgrade enough of your facilities that it starts to go down. The setting and overall ambiance of this game is perfect. It combines BattleTech with X-COM and Syndicate and wraps it up with an immersive Amiga inspired art style and lofi / downtempo electronic music. And while the main meat and potatoes of the game is on the strategic layer where you tinker with your guns, motor and mech designs, the tactical combat layer is nothing to sneeze at either. It is very simple how you play in combat, basically all you do is give movement commands and artillery support, but positioning matters a lot and your characters can panic and start doing their own thing so you don't want to give them suicidal commands. This is a game that knows what it wants to do and succeeds at it. If you have even a passing interest then give the demo a try and ignore the mass negativity. It's not entirely baseless but there's is also a strong element of people thinking they are more skilled at games than they actually are and just can't deal with this one.

Instant buy for me.

What's the negativity about? Game being too hard?

A lot of numbers and mechanics are kind of obscure and is left for the player to "feel" them out. But since the game's theme is tinkering with the mechs and trying new loadouts to find your winning strategy I think it works for the game on a thematic level.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Grabbed the demo. At first blush the game looks really cool, tons of variables to play with. Sadly, despite being a 100MB download, the thing brought my potato to it's knees during the first battle, so it'll need to wait till I get back home to try it for real.