MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries by Piranha Games - now on Steam and GOG

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Release date set for September is what happened. Maybe NVidia is holding them at (ray)gunpoint to make that ray tracing self-hype they did work out.

 

[someone else]

Really looking forward to this, wish there are more mecha games.
Where is my dynamic campaign X-Com-like-defense against kaijus by piloting transforming into planes so they fly fast Mechas with big guns and chainswords and airstrikes and ultraman and research and money and level-ups.

 

[Grotesque]

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I am rather amused how almost all of their bonuses are really there to hawk MWO.

 

[Black]

This is a scam.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I'll give them due credit, they don't have any sort of feature stuff locked behind the editions (unless one counts the camo). This is downright quiant compared to something like the special edition labyrinth of the latest Assassin's Creed or the way Red Dead Redemption 2 threatens to keep a heist to itself if you don't give it more money.

This merely tries to hawk another game to you.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

So apparently PGI is going to drastically decrease MechLab functionality - no engine swaps, no structure or armor upgrades that aren't stock with the variant you're working with. I have mixed opinions on this, but I think that overall it's fucking stupid.

 

[shihonage]

lol this game is still not out lol

 

[Black]

So apparently PGI is going to drastically decrease MechLab functionality - no engine swaps, no structure or armor upgrades that aren't stock with the variant you're working with. I have mixed opinions on this, but I think that overall it's fucking stupid.

They got it ass backwards, instead of allowing all of that in a single player game where balance doesn't matter that much they allowed and kept it in a multiplayer game and that's why you have so many brilliant design decisions such as ghost heat in MWO.
Truly big boy thinking right there.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

So apparently PGI is going to drastically decrease MechLab functionality - no engine swaps, no structure or armor upgrades that aren't stock with the variant you're working with. I have mixed opinions on this, but I think that overall it's fucking stupid.

They got it ass backwards, instead of allowing all of that in a single player game where balance doesn't matter that much they allowed and kept it in a multiplayer game and that's why you have so many brilliant design decisions such as ghost heat in MWO.
Truly big boy thinking right there.

Russ Bullock and Paul Inouye have got to be the biggest retards ever. Seriously. The only upside to this is that someone will probably mod in full MechLab functionality.

 

[Grotesque]

So apparently PGI is going to drastically decrease MechLab functionality - no engine swaps, no structure or armor upgrades that aren't stock with the variant you're working with. I have mixed opinions on this, but I think that overall it's fucking stupid.

so from where you have this information?

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

So apparently PGI is going to drastically decrease MechLab functionality - no engine swaps, no structure or armor upgrades that aren't stock with the variant you're working with. I have mixed opinions on this, but I think that overall it's fucking stupid.

so from where you have this information?

Summary of one of the Discord-hosted MW5 AMAs, I'll see if I can dig it up.




Currently combing through them to see where (or if) he mentions it

EDIT: Skip to 25:00 in Part 1 for MechLab functionality discussion

I'll be honest I would rather have NO MechLab than a half-assed MechLab. Russ' excuse for the gimped ML in MW5 is retarded.

 

[Grotesque]

https://www.reddit.com/r/OutreachHPG/comments/agoprb/mechwarrior_5_ama_1st_hour/ee7uddm/

first AMA transcript

 

[Cael]

This is a scam.

WTF? A digital manual costs $70??? I am banning this game.

 

[J1M]

Will HOTAS be the best way to play this, or just an inferior input mechanism for larping?

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

Will HOTAS be the best way to play this, or just an inferior input mechanism for larping?

M+KB will likely be the best way to play it. There is no way PGI is SO STUPID they will risk making their niche product even more niche by effectively gating it behind expensive input options. It will likely be serviceable with a gamepad if only because I'm pretty sure Microsoft is going to demand an XBox One port be made, but M+KB will be the gold standard.

 

[LESS T_T]

MechWarrior 5 in a special episode of Ars Technica's War Stories series (special because this series is usually about old games). Featuring Jordan Weisman:



https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019...hine-that-was-mechwarrior-5s-level-generator/

Video: Taming the player-murdering machine that was MechWarrior 5’s level generator
This episode of War Stories focuses on giant robots blowing things up.

First things first: No, you haven't been caught in a time warp and zapped six months into the future (at least, not that we know of). The subject of this "War Stories" episode is the unreleased MechWarrior 5, which is still on track for a September 2019 debut. This is the first time we've done a war story on a game that hasn't come out yet, but it also came with the opportunity to interview Jordan Weisman, the guy most directly responsible for the BattleTech universe and its giant stomping robots.

So we packed up our gear and flew off to beautiful Vancouver, where Mech5 developer Piranha Games is headquartered. Usually, pulling together a "War Stories" video involves a lot of brain-wracking and memory-hunting by the developers, especially for older games; this time, since we were interviewing developers still actively battling through the development process, all the wounds were still fresh and the memories vivid. We got to see a bit of the game in progress and hear some interesting tales about how one wrangles building-sized BattleMechs—and more interestingly, how one builds a world that can accommodate them.

The world’s the thing
MechWarrior 5 will see players hopping freely among a large number of planets in the Inner Sphere. As with many other games, developers at Piranha turned to automated tools in order to create those planets and populate them with realistic biomes and gameplay spaces. And, as with many other games, the quirks and features of those automated tools—and the levels they produced—ended up in turn defining a lot of the gameplay's shape and feel.

The trick, though, was tuning the tools to actually do what designers intended for them to do. Interestingly, the level-generation tools took a page from BattleTech's board gaming rules and created play areas using a system of tiles. The tiles each had programmatic rules to ensure that they connected to each other in ways that made visual and thematic sense (so no forest tiles on an airless moon, for example, or no city tiles in the middle of a mountain range).

Further, when left to its own devices, the level generator seemed as if it were addicted to murdering the player. Each generated level required time and effort in order to, say, stop a hundred enemy mechs from barreling straight through buildings and other obstacles to dump PPC fire on a single player-controlled mech; cities filled with autocannons and turrets would lock onto and melt player mechs in an apocalyptic alpha strike the moment the player crossed their borders.

Taming the level generator was a time-consuming process that is still somewhat ongoing. The lesson here is somewhat the same lesson that developers of other games leaning on procedural generation have learned—filling up the universe with places to go is only part of the work. The game's not done until it's fun.

Parting shots
We bookended this video with some opening and closing thoughts by Jordan Weisman, who is to BattleTech what Stan Lee was to Marvel Comics. His thoughts on how to make a long-lived franchise are insightful, and the wisdom behind his words is self-evident because here we are in 2019, still talking about new games in a PC gaming franchise that stretches back into the 1980s.

As for Mech5 itself—it's been a long time since I've strapped into a BattleMech and locked my LRMs on target. I don't do multiplayer games and I'm not terribly interested in turn-based titles, so there hasn't been a MechWarrior title that really grabbed my interest since 2002's MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries. But a single-player campaign-oriented game in the BattleTech universe, done up properly with modern visuals and gameplay? Sign me right the hell up.

(Also, "War Stories" is currently up for a Webby award! It would mean a lot if you'd be willing to pop over and vote for us—this kind of recognition raises our profile within the Condé family and puts us in a position to ask for more resources to make even better videos.)

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

it's been a long time since I've strapped into a BattleMech and locked my LRMs on target.

Fucking lurmers. Real men use fucking direct fire weaponry.

 

[Country_Gravy]

This is going to be as shitty as MWO, right?

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

This is going to be as shitty as MWO, right?

We're talking PGI, the kings of Minimum Viable Product. You bet your fucking ass it's going to be at least as shitty.

 

[Black_Willow]

So apparently PGI is going to drastically decrease MechLab functionality - no engine swaps, no structure or armor upgrades that aren't stock with the variant you're working with. I have mixed opinions on this, but I think that overall it's fucking stupid.

We had "stripped" mechlab in MW4 and it worked fine.

 

[Optimist]

Whenever I see this thread's name, my first thought is always 'wait, the Gothic guys are making a Mechwarrior game?' Two piranha-based studios is one too many.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

So apparently PGI is going to drastically decrease MechLab functionality - no engine swaps, no structure or armor upgrades that aren't stock with the variant you're working with. I have mixed opinions on this, but I think that overall it's fucking stupid.

We had "stripped" mechlab in MW4 and it worked fine.

The diminished functionality of MW4's mechlab didn't really matter much to me because it kind of felt like most things were heavily simplified (if not oversimplified).

Immediate issue I can think of with what PGI is doing here is that on pretty much ANY class of mech having Ferro-Fibrous INSTEAD of Endo-Steel is generally not worth it. FF gives you better protection per ton, but I don't remember seeing a MW game yet that didn't have a cap on armor points related to tonnage regardless of armor type. FF's weight savings is strictly inferior to ES, and the number of crit slots obviated by either is identical IIRC. Then you get into not being able to swap out engines. Standard engines are absolutely a boon for heavies, assaults and some mediums, as they can generally afford the weight and benefit greatly from the survivability. Standards in lights are much more dicey. Tonnage is usually a much more limiting factor than crit space or survivability with lights. Lights reap much more benefit from an XL, simply because while XLs are fragile they theoretically allow the light to capitalize better on their speed while minimizing tonnage issues. A STD light is absolutely playable but I would say it's far from optimal. The Jenners make some substantial sacrifices in order to run decently-sized (for their tonnage) STD engines - namely armor protection and heatsinking. The heat issue is something you can work around simply by not being an idiotic alpha-monkey, but the armor issue gets tricky and the only time in a MW game I've ever substantially shorted a mech on armor was when I was carrying such good firepower that threats simply wouldn't have much time to ablate my armor. Jenner-D's 4 MLAS and SRM4 are reasonably potent for the tonnage but they're not massively so.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

MW4 MechLab limited function for a positive effect, since it was the first MechWarrior where the 'mech was not just a skin of hitboxes because tonnage was the only real factor. This is in general an issue that is more of a problem inherent to how the franchise classifies mecha conceptually than anything else. Tonnage as a system is itself the problem (because it's a fundamentally crap system), not how MechLab works around it.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

MW4 MechLab limited function for a positive effect, since it was the first MechWarrior where the 'mech was not just a skin of hitboxes because tonnage was the only real factor. This is in general an issue that is more of a problem inherent to how the franchise classifies mecha conceptually than anything else. Tonnage as a system is itself the problem (because it's a fundamentally crap system), not how MechLab works around it.

This is actually a good/salient point. There are a number of things in BT/MW that are kind of silly, and one of the worst offenders is actually the whole tonnage thing. It's possible to work around it as a player, but when you look at everything from the scale of mechs to how they would interact with their environment, you start noticing how little it makes sense.

Still, I mean, doesn't keep it from being fun. Usually.