Warhammer Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus - now with Heretek expansion

[Hellraiser]

I'm underwhelmed by this game. I can't shake the feeling it's too downsized.

Not sure why you think so, the scope and campaign IMO are fine. The biggest problem with it was the balance/difficulty making the game pretty brainless and boring after the first 1/4th or 1/3rd due to so much OP shit at your disposal. But that was before they introduced difficulty settings.

 

[Dickie]

Is it still a breeze on very hard + ironman/permadeath? I have a tactical itch but unless it offers a proper challenge I won't touch it with a stick no matter how good the atmosphere is...

I played it on very hard and found a bit easy, afterwards I made a suggestion for what I thought were good options for a first playthrough

If you've played the game before, you probably want to increase the difficulty. But I highly recommend the increased CP movement cost, unique tech and revenue modifier. I dislike hp bloat so I lowered those from the very hard default.

I haven't playtested it though, so it is kinda theorycrafting.

The way you say you turned down the HP default makes me wonder if I misunderstand how this works. If you have Very Hard, I thought that was +50% on top of whatever the number to the right is, so +0% would leave it at +50%, +25% would make it 75% and so on.

Same with number of extra fights. I thought if you picked 3 there, that would add to the +1 from difficulty for a total of 4 extra fights.

Anybody know for sure how this works? It's not a big deal, but I'm curious.

 

[Jaedar]

Is it still a breeze on very hard + ironman/permadeath? I have a tactical itch but unless it offers a proper challenge I won't touch it with a stick no matter how good the atmosphere is...

I played it on very hard and found a bit easy, afterwards I made a suggestion for what I thought were good options for a first playthrough

If you've played the game before, you probably want to increase the difficulty. But I highly recommend the increased CP movement cost, unique tech and revenue modifier. I dislike hp bloat so I lowered those from the very hard default.

I haven't playtested it though, so it is kinda theorycrafting.

The way you say you turned down the HP default makes me wonder if I misunderstand how this works. If you have Very Hard, I thought that was +50% on top of whatever the number to the right is, so +0% would leave it at +50%, +25% would make it 75% and so on.

Same with number of extra fights. I thought if you picked 3 there, that would add to the +1 from difficulty for a total of 4 extra fights.

Anybody know for sure how this works? It's not a big deal, but I'm curious.

Pretty sure that the stuff you pick in the custom screen overrides everything else (so my 0% hp is easier than very hards +50%). I think you can still get achivements as long as your custom difficulty is strictly harder than the preset one. I was a while since I made this recommendation, but I think reducing hp totals and extra fights was to reduce the tedium of the lategame. Not sure why I reduced the number of enemies.

I'm underwhelmed by this game. I can't shake the feeling it's too downsized.

I think I liked this game more than most, perhaps more than it deserves. In truth, it had me from the moment of "from the moment I understood..." in the intro.

Only parts that really disappointed me where the difficulty (especially after the early game), the dlc missions (I honestly recommend skipping them, because they're all awful) and the bosses (although this ties into the difficulty problems). But I still finished it with minimal complaints, although I am not sure if I would ever replay it.

 

[Dickie]

Pretty sure that the stuff you pick in the custom screen overrides everything else (so my 0% hp is easier than very hards +50%).

What does it do to set the difficulty to Very Hard if you put extra enemy unit(s) modifier to +0%, enemy HP modifier to +0%, and number of extra fights in a mission to 0, like you have there?

 

[Jaedar]

Pretty sure that the stuff you pick in the custom screen overrides everything else (so my 0% hp is easier than very hards +50%).

What does it do to set the difficulty to Very Hard if you put extra enemy unit(s) modifier to +0%, enemy HP modifier to +0%, and number of extra fights in a mission to 0, like you have there?

It counts as normal for achievements afaik.

 

[Arthandas]

What happens if you disable AoE weapons in the difficulty settings? Are they simply removed from the game or changed to be single target only?
Does it remove AoE weapons from enemies too?

 

[Lazing Dirk]

This is currently 80% off by the way.



Figured it was worth a go at that price. Playing it on very hard after seeing people in here saying how easy it is, and I think I'm just starting to reach the tipping point where I'm unlocking all the good stuff, my techs are reaching the end of their first tech trees, and I can start combining various equipment and skills together to slurp up tons of points and deal a load of damage. It's pretty decent fun, if a bit annoying at times (e.g. how the LoS works).

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

The combination of industrial with organ pipes and church choirs is something I haven't heard before anywhere, but the composer hit the spot.

There's no industrial here*, more like a dubstep wobble bass, sometimes with snares, and sometimes pitched down into a drone like sound, with yes, synthetized choir and organ sounds for a more ambient result.

Sounds good indeed.

*funny to read mention on the dex about a musical genre whose seminals are an american satanist owner of the largest barbie doll collection in the world, a british ultimate tranny and a bunch of aussies inspired by the socialist patients' collective

yes you can tell they are satanists because they even did the 'one eye' thing where they covered up one eye on the skull in the above artwork

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I'm playing mechanicus right now. It's probably one of the better 40k games out there, but I see what people mean by it being too easy.
I was expecting something highly lethal, I mean we're talking about necrons and the magos even talk about how dangerous gauss weapons are, but nope, all it takes are 3-4 Tech priests and you can wipe out absurd numbers of necrons. So far the only real dangerous unit I've encountered are gauss blaster immortals because they actually pack a punch and have a lot of health.

 

[what am i doing]

I'm playing mechanicus right now. It's probably one of the better 40k games out there, but I see what people mean by it being too easy.
I was expecting something highly lethal, I mean we're talking about necrons and the magos even talk about how dangerous gauss weapons are, but nope, all it takes are 3-4 Tech priests and you can wipe out absurd numbers of necrons. So far the only real dangerous unit I've encountered are gauss blaster immortals because they actually pack a punch and have a lot of health.

Best thing you can do for difficulty is set the discipline unlock tree mode to Disciplined as it effectively puts a level cap on your Techpriests and also locks out build combinations, which are where the worst of the difficulty issues come from (going Lexmechanic + Tech-Auxilium on all your techpriests leads to you having endless amounts of cognition and thus being able to spam the more powerful weapons, manoeuvre too easily, heal too much and too easily, etc). Setting wargear to only be equippable once also helps a lot, but IMO the big thing is Disciplined tree unlocks.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, I noticed that you get a lot of options for new game start, and I was pretty pleased with it.
Are mission rewards always the same, or are they different across playthroughs?

Also, apparently there's a permadeath mode? If you lose a tech priest in this mode, do you get a level 1 replacement or are you permanently down a tech priest?

 

[what am i doing]

Yeah, I noticed that you get a lot of options for new game start, and I was pretty pleased with it.
Are mission rewards always the same, or are they different across playthroughs?

Also, apparently there's a permadeath mode? If you lose a tech priest in this mode, do you get a level 1 replacement or are you permanently down a tech priest?

Randomized, but from the same pool of items.
No replacements, and if you lose all of them you get a game over cutscene.

 

[Axel_am]

I concur with everyone - normal is too easy. The whole atmosphere crumbles to pieces when the Necron Lord who was just telling me there is no place in the universe for my species can die in one turn.

Hopefully, in the sequel the leveling and exploration are improved. They felt pretty stale when reaching the endgame. I also had too much Blackstone with which I just had nothing to do. I ended up just throwing it at my Tech Priests which felt really unnecessary since they were already walking technical gods.

I'm planning on playing this on a higher difficulty when getting the Heretek expansion. The Warhammer estetik and the fun factor are strong here.

 

[ind33d]

i just started Mechanicus (hard) after a lot of Iron Man XCOM and the fact tech priests don't die permanently is really bizarre not only from a gameplay but a lore perspective

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

i just started Mechanicus (hard) after a lot of Iron Man XCOM and the fact tech priests don't die permanently is really bizarre not only from a gameplay but a lore perspective

There is a game mode for that, but yeah its not great. It feels really easy. Its a cool game and I love the soundtrack, but gameplay wise its babby xcom. Still better than Chimera squad though.

 

[ind33d]

like are the admechs being pushed out in a shopping cart and adam jensened back to life? it's really weird

 

[NorwegianWolf]

I finally played it. It was my first ever exposure on Warhammer franchise. It was fun, and it is a good tactical turn based game.

A few talking points:
* I was led to believe it was an AAA game, but it does have some jank. The base price is too high for the general quality of the game.
* The optimization is terrible. Bad performance, fans running top speed.
* Awesome soundtrack.
* Memorable characters.

 

[Axel_am]

* I was led to believe it was an AAA game, but it does have some jank. The base price is too high for the general quality of the game.

That seems to be a thing with most Warhammer stuff.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Almost no 40K game is AAA and Mechanicus certainly isnt one. Its the usual low budget adaptation by what at the time was a no name studio, however it did turn out better than most.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Mechanicus was pretty cool, yeah.

 

[Spectacle]

I finally played it. It was my first ever exposure on Warhammer franchise. It was fun, and it is a good tactical turn based game.

A few talking points:
* I was led to believe it was an AAA game, but it does have some jank. The base price is too high for the general quality of the game.

Dude, AAA games haven't been priced at 40 bucks for a long time.

 

[Lacrymas]

How would one get the impression this game is AAA?

 

[NorwegianWolf]

I know, I know, my fault. I almost never watch gaming videos, I prefer going in blind. Some reviews were claiming it's the game is on par in XCOM. And some Reddit users were praising it as if it were second coming of Christ.
It's a good game of higher-than-most-indie quality, though.

 

[Spectacle]

I know, I know, my fault. I almost never watch gaming videos, I prefer going in blind. Some reviews were claiming it's the game is on par in XCOM. And some Reddit users were praising it as if it were second coming of Christ.
It's a good game of higher-than-most-indie quality, though.

Going a bit off topic here, but bro, have you tried TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children yet? If you like XCOM and Mechanicus then it should be right up your alley.

 

[NorwegianWolf]

I haven't. How much of visual novel does it have, and how much of turn based stuff. I don't have anything against J aesthetics, but I don't like visual novels. I enjoyed Valkyria Chronicles if it helps.