BattleTech - Reviews
 

Farflame spotted some BattleTech reviews and an interview:

Reviews:

PC Invasion: BATTLETECH Review - Score: 9/10

Gamegrin: BattleTech Review - Score: 10/10

Game Watcher: Battletech Review - Score: 9/10

MMO Games: BattleTech Review: Back in the Command Couch - Score: 8/10

Eurogamer: BattleTech review - long overdue turn-based spin on a strategy great

TSA: BattleTech Review - Score: 7/10

Interview:

Gamingbolt: BattleTech Interview: The Biggest BattleTech Game Yet

More information.

Haven't read the reviews but this seems like the kind of game everyone will get down on their knees and worship, and be very reluctant to criticize. I saw on the Steam forums that people were getting very upset that RPS dared to criticize it. And it *is* a good game (so far), but God. Damn. Is. It. Slow.

They very believably made the exact same mistake as XCOM: every action is bookended by two lingering pauses. Combat literally takes twice as long as it needs to. This is assuming you've already tweaked the sliders to speed up combat, and thank you devs for that at least.

There is a LOT going on in the mech management interface, very complex. There are a few places that could be improved but overall they did a good job conveying a ton of information.

Not my cuppa, but it seems to be a major winner.

I'm having a lot of fun with it.
I think it has many issues, but the fun is overriding those for now. That's my view at least

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

I'm enjoying and I still didn't feel it's slow (I've only played around 5-6 hours). But I'm the kind of guy that actually read those flavour info texts rather than the kind that is worried about stats, optimizing and trying to do the most in les time possible. I'm more tactical than stategic.

Anyway, my only problem with the game is that during battle, it makes my GPU go 100% all the time and the game doesn't have the looks that should push my GTX 1080 to it's limit. The consequence is that the fans run faster so it becomes noisier. My guess is bad programming. We can't blame on DRM and such, this time.

There is a hidden DRM scheme.
GOG reviews are not shy.

I like the animations and all, I saw they could be cut in the options, but hell if I'll do that, I want to see the glory of my mechs blowing the enemy to pieces in slow motion, rotating camera, flying Gandalf's eagle around it.

I have it on steam, but the game was released on GOG, so DRM free.

off topic. Are the winners of the rpg watch give away already known??

Yes indeed, Darkelves. I believe they were announced Tuesday.

Is there a thread/page where we can find give away winners??

10 out of 10 is getting a bit crazy but so far it looks like an 8 or 9 out of 10 to me.

BTW @Gwendo there are new drivers out from NVIDIA that should help quite a bit. There are a lot of reports about installation problems with 1060 cards but that ain't what you got.

I never understood all the hate for XCOM and the 'stop wasting my time' mod to speed it up.

Me neither.

After what they did with the Shadow Run games, I'm not surprised in the least at these reviews. These folk don't do mediocrity. When I get to this one, I expect to lose some real time.

I am also having fun with the game at the moment but I can already see this is not going to scratch my Xcom itch, this game has only one difficulty setting and it is too easy on it.
For now it is fun because of novelty factor, hopefully later it becomes more challenging or I might lose interest in finishing it.

I am certainly not going to play it again until they give us more difficulty settings.

According to GOG reviews, it was not.

SP is DRM free (unless you are a backer and want access to backer MECH skins), MP is not.

Most missions are easy, but a couple of story missions are actually difficult.
I have not had full wipes or anything like that, but I give myself one full reload per story mission, none on the standard ones.

My plan is to do a reload if mission ending NPC dies to some bullshit situation, otherwise I am doing self enforced ironman all the way. I really don't feel like restarting everything just because of one bullshit death.

My verdict not bad but combat quickly gets tiresome as every battle drags on. This will scratch my itch, and hopefully I'll have a proper Battletech RPG to play someday.

Something along the lines of a Space Opera Bethesda RPG with Real-time Mech combat.

I think that's because many people play very defensively.

I have all my mechs very weaponised and tend to kill at least one mech per turn.

Armour is there to survive a few hits :)



Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

I was checking another forum and most people were complaining that it was too hard :)

I don't believe that, sorry. Didn't buy the game (yet), but for all I know evasion stacks depend on movement so defensive style kinda seems fail - either you get hit easily or your fast units don't "abuse" evasion removing melee.
Another thing I don't believe, I mean, how hard it can be if people are expendable? Pilot dies, big deal, another one respawned as if pilots are trashmobs from MMOs only now are on your side. Why are they even in the game? They should have removed them completely since thir lives are irrelevant.
If however one's progress depended on staff "health" and "relationships", well, one would have to be very careful what to choose and where. For what I could understand so far, the game doesn't contain much of risk, maybe I'm wrong but I didn't see anyone on steam saying OMG I screwed everything up, no way to proceed after choices I made, have to restart from scratch.
Now this is something I do believe. But it's not this particular game problem, it's general problem in recent games. I'm blaming it on betatesters. If something is excessively dragged it's betatester's job to say "this part is boring!". Sadly, recent generation of betatesters are not betatesting anything but earning $ on twitch by streaming early game versions.

No, the evasion gets blown out pretty quickly and mostly useful to just evade a couple of hits. Very useful in early game, much less so in later game.

I use bulwark as my defensive ability which reduces damage taken by 50% when stationary. Much more useful when being hit by high damage weapons from 8 mechs than evasion, since evasion would simply reduce chance to hit, but you get hit for 100% of damage in many cases (unless in forest and similar spaces).

People don't understand this it seems and think it's better to move when sometimes, just putting a tank upfront with bulwark is much more beneficial.

Some people do play with high evasion and that works against low numbers, but against many attackers, it's a waste in many cases, imo.



Regarding pilots, I think that's only the case at the start. It's a bit like XCOM in this way. Losing a rookie or low level pilot is fine, however, if I lost one of my experienced pilots I would be in trouble now, since I would lose access to key skills like multi-targeting, bulwark and others - in addition to the additional health, evasion, accuracy…

You forget this is a mercenary group game. You can lose a lot of money even if you win a mission (but win it poorly). Say you have 500k credits. Get a mission, two mechs down, two pilots die, you now have to repair/refit those mechs, rehire new pilots (with lesser stats which will make the following missions even harder until they catch up), and you have to wait a month or two for repairs, and each month you have to pay 300k in maintenance/salaries… kaput.

This may be an early game problem, maybe later you'll be swimming in money, and time doesn't matter so you can take 1 year just chillin' in the ocean, I haven't reached that part, but at least in the beginning things can be nasty.

Actually, it is probably more detrimental to lose a pilot than not. Pilots must be replaced with equivalent pilots as there is a progression system.

After watching streams for some time now, if players happen to lose a pilot, that must be because of carelessness. Losing a pilot is quite rare for players who pay as little attention as streamers do. Streamers also did not know the product before they started to play.

People might reveal creative when it comes to find ways to fail. Streamers must keep to a certain level though, and it tells that losing a pilot is a rare occurence.

No. Betatesters are for this type of products backers, pledgers. That was one core of the motivations behind the whole crowdfunded movement: participating to elaborate the product.

Streamers might happen to be backers, and as such, have an access to early release versions. That said, the product must be mature enough to support their activity in streaming and the marketing going with it: streamers sell themselves being seen as having fun while playing a product.

Streamers played before others a very mature version of this product.

As to combat dragging on: the observation was made time ago now. UgoIgo is lenghty by nature, and it is also out of phase with the current level of technology.
To keep denying, UgoIgo products add lavish animations that load up the resolution time. Those lavish animations belong to a real time product as it can convey information about the ongoing fight. RT is a succession of adjustements.

UgoIgo, the result could be delivered just like that: validation of the option, result. No needs of an in between.
In this product, validation of the option, pause, lengthy animation (that brings no information), pause, result, snipets from characters, pause, hand given back to players.

All this because the technology of animation/voice over is available even though it brings nothing to UgoIgo.

Issue with that is that playing vid product is a cultural thing now, it is a sign of belonging to certain segments in populations, all this associated to standards of life, welfare etc

People play vid products because they must, as they are ordered by their support group.

Claiming that an activity is hard is a convenient way of bailing out of an imperative, forced, unwished task as it flatters the others who somewhat feel superior: they succeed in something considered hard.
Those players use a diplomatic card: instead of telling it as it is, they do not want to play the product, which would question their belonging to the group (and those guys are usually nothing outside their support group), they declare the product hard, which buys them a forgiving path out.

Nothing new, people in the middle ages were also not interested in christianity and used to buy indulgence stuff from people of authority in their group.

Can we talk about the game again?

I'm having fun with it…it is a bit hard at first to stay above water.

Yeah, do you want any tips ?
I have been having an easy time mostly.

Do you have trouble understanding anything or is it the actual battles ?

Edit:
Maybe you should follow this general rule of thumb regarding payout or salvage:
-Keeping the sliders in the middle unless otherwise specified
-Go full salvage on assaination missions (target is likely to have a very reasonable mech to salvage)
-Lean slightly more on salvage during battle missions (good mechs are possible, but not extremely likely)
-Go for slightly more money during escorts and base attacks/ captures (especially in the beginning, lots of your opposition here will be light mechs that you likely do not need and sell for very little or vehicles/turrets) .

What does it mean when a weapon or item is red? You can't seem to use them, I assume that it means they are destroyed? This is in the mech bay.

Also why can't I sell of the mechs I get from missions? It looks like they may be a part of a mech?

The mechs you salvage are actually parts, you need 3 of the same mech to automatically build one mech (though I think you still need to retrofit it not sure). I haven't tried selling them but they are in the storage area.

Yes, if a weapon is red it means it has been hit by a critical hit (critical hits in this game do not necessarily mean more damage - they mean an item has been broken).
On your Mechs, at the end of missions you should click the Refit button (not simply the Repair button) to review what's happened to a Mech. Press Repair all first, it will dismount any broken weapons or equipment and repair broken limbs or parts of Mech.

Then you will see what you can replace and how much tonnage you have free to do so.



The salvage you get from missions is never full Mechs, but only parts. You need three parts of the same Mech and it will do one of the following after mission completion:
- Add it to your Mech bay if you have space, or
- If you have no space, it will ask you if you want to scrap it (essentially sell it) for some C-Bills or replace one of the Mechs in your bay with this new one.


In essence, you should (usually) grab the heaviest mech parts you can find and use the heaviest mechs you have. They will usually be able to carry heavier (an as such better) or more weapons as well a be better armoured.

Hope this helps. Keep questions coming if you have any.

Oh, and as wolfing says, when you get a new Mech, it is good to Refit it a bit to match your playstyle and add to anything you need for your battle lance.

For example, if you have 3 heavy Mechs and the only Mech you have with LRMs is the Vindicator, which is a Medium (as at the start) and you find a heavier Mech, even if its standard fit is not LRMs, but it has hardpoints for them, you can refit it to include LRMs too and probably better ones than the Vindicator.

When talking about a product actually is talking about yourself.

Just found out that having a load of saves slows down the game allot!
So for anyone who likes to save often and are far into the game, try and move most of the save files into a backup folder for a large improvement to both loadtimes and general fps.
Just remember that cloud saves will by default download it all again.

Or you can like me delete saves one by one :)
You do that from Load game screen, there is a X there for deleting them.