BattleTech - Season Pass Roadmap

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Spaceman
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HBS has announced the season pass roadmap for BattleTech which will be discounted 20 % until October 25th. Additionally the first expansion release date was announced for Flashpoint of November 27th.

Start your engines and grasp your hatchets as we're thrilled to tell you that BATTLETECH - Flashpoint will arrive to Mechwarriors all over on November 27th!
Pre-order TODAY!

If that's not enough with got a brand new video for you in which Mitch gives you four pretty compelling reasons not to miss it!

[...]

The BATTLETECH Season Pass includes all future BATTLETECH expansions at a discounted price. In addition to all the current game content, Season Pass holders will have access to three upcoming expansions.

Flashpoint

BATTLETECH's first-ever expansion adds new gameplay, depth, and over 30 hours of new content to your mercenary experience. Introducing Flashpoints: high-stakes, branching short stories that link together mercenary missions, crew conversations, special events, critical choices, and rare bonus rewards to take BATTLETECH's endgame and Career-Mode gameplay to the next level.

Urban Warfare

Combat drops into metropolitan territory, with explosive results. Fight through urban sprawl with new ‘Mechs and mechanics.

Third Expansion

To be confirmed.
Thanks Darkheart!

More information.
 
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typical paradox bullshit. beginning of dlc galore begins. season pass without even stating what you get (3 expansions but very little details on the second one and nothing on the third one). I liked the base game and am tempted on the season pass because the game really needs more content but this is really pushing it. Much prefer hbs had remained independent. They made a boat load off of the base game and would not have pulled htis milking bullshit given the history with the shadowrun games and success of the battletech. Screw paradox milking.
 
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I bought BattleTech as a backer. Best $25 I have spent for some time! Loved the game. First game in years that I have played to the end. Still playing missions even though the main storyline has ended. Looking forward to the DLC.
 
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I bought BattleTech as a backer. Best $25 I have spent for some time! Loved the game. First game in years that I have played to the end. Still playing missions even though the main storyline has ended. Looking forward to the DLC.
I also finished the game but only because I felt bad not getting my money worth. As soon as I did, I uninstalled it. I don't plan to come back until modders fix the mess that HBS made.
 
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I knew when Harebrained Schemes got gobbled up by Paradox that this game would wind up being riddled with extra content after the fact. So, even though I was a supporter of the kick starter, I've still not played the base game and now I'll likely wait until all the content is available before doing so.
 
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I loved Battletech. I just want them to make modding easy so I can play user-created campaigns.
 
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Bad lighting! Unappealing Bad Character Art hidden by Darkened Bad Lighting!
 
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I loved Battletech. I just want them to make modding easy so I can play user-created campaigns.

With the Flashpoint expansion it should be possible in general to have huge user-made campaigns and I'm sure we will see them soon after release. There has been talk to remake the campaign of the Crescent Hawk's Inception game for example.

On another topic: You can like DLCs or not, but I don't see a problem with the current structure for Battletech. Once Paradox would start selling music or emblem packs like they do for other of their games we'd have reason to cry (and everybody could decide for themselves to buy that or not since it is not relevant for playing). As long as the DLCs for Battletech are content DLCs I will certainly buy all of them and I say the more the better. So keep 'em coming!
 
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Well all I care about is modding,new mechs, and better weaponry. Good thing the mod community already does a better job of the last two. So just need mods tools now.
 
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I've played about 8 hours now, and am impressed by how good this game is so far. Its simply an awesome SRPG, but it does help being somewhat familiar with the Battletech rules. I know it had a rocky start, but I think a lot of the technical problems have been cleared up.
 
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I've played about 8 hours now, and am impressed by how good this game is so far. Its simply an awesome SRPG, but it does help being somewhat familiar with the Battletech rules. I know it had a rocky start, but I think a lot of the technical problems have been cleared up.
Start of the game is pretty cool and fun but by midgame you notice that the game is unfinished and badly balanced. All battles are same, there is not enough mission variety, bigger mechs basically play like smaller ones but with increased numbers and pilot abilities are not nearly balanced between each other or made that you feel like you got special builds or combinations you can do (like in new Xcom games).
 
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Yes, biggest complaint is sameyness (or is it the atrocious ship interface?) Played around 20 hours and put it down.
 
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Start of the game is pretty cool and fun but by midgame you notice that the game is unfinished and badly balanced. All battles are same, there is not enough mission variety, bigger mechs basically play like smaller ones but with increased numbers and pilot abilities are not nearly balanced between each other or made that you feel like you got special builds or combinations you can do (like in new Xcom games).

That is not wrong. The procedural generated contracts can become old at some point and small and medium mechs become somewhat obsolete once you have heavier machines.

I don't understand why HBS did not make the maps more interesting. All they needed to do was look at MechCommander. For example bases there had control towers you could take over or fields of explosive containers you could lure the enemy in. BattleTech really does underuse these simple things to make stuff more interesting. The story missions though are mostly very well designed.

I understand they were on a budget. What they delivered was already very solid for that, but I sure hope that future DLC or BattleTech 2 will deepen the game some more.

As I said above, if you like the base game, but wish for more depth all around (like a stress system for pilots or ability to change internal components like engines) I recommend to try the mod RogueTech. They even have integrated some unseen (Warhammer, Marauder) and new Mech models (Bushwacker, Annihilater, Assassin).
 
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Start of the game is pretty cool and fun but by midgame you notice that the game is unfinished and badly balanced. All battles are same, there is not enough mission variety, bigger mechs basically play like smaller ones but with increased numbers and pilot abilities are not nearly balanced between each other or made that you feel like you got special builds or combinations you can do (like in new Xcom games).

Hmm. Okay, I'll brace myself for the midgame then.
 
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I don't think balance is much of an issue. Aside from the missions that drive the plot, you pretty much get to choose the difficulty level of the missions you accept. My crew members are all max'd out on their stats and I have all assault mechs, and even so, the highest difficulty missions are still a challenge.

The game is a lot tougher during the first half. Mainly because in the beginning there aren't many missions with assault mechs (and when there are, the battles are so tough they are hard to win). But once you complete a certain mission you will receive a special assault mech as a reward, which makes it easier to handle more difficult missions and to start collecting more assault mechs. The downside to the "special" mech is that it has special heat sinks and weapons that you can't replace (or at least I haven't found anyplace I can buy them) so you sometimes need to restart missions if you lose the special parts/weapons/ammo (or just let them go - but they are really good to have and I doubt you'll want to lose them). (The mech itself is not special, but the heat sinks, weapons, and ammo on it are).

There -is- repetition in the missions though. By the time you reach the end, you'll notice things like repeating landscapes. And with some minor variations, you really only have a few different types of missions - 1) destroy all enemy mechs, 2) stop the convoy from escaping, 3) defend the base until reinforcements come, 4) kill the rouge/pirate/boss mech.

Still a fun game though. Well worth the $25 I spent. Great for casual playing. You can load it up and do a mission or two, and come back to it later.
 
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Mid and late game were fun because I could do so much more mech modding! I loved my grasshopper covered in flamers. It wasn't as good as many mechs but it made for much more interesting gameplay.

I played the campaign all the way through then kept playing until I got the Complete Roster achievement and got friendly with House Steiner.

I think they've already done a balancing pass on pilot abilities, didn't they? (checks) Nope, but it's part of a free update that should be showing up. From the Steam topic:

In addition to BATTLETECH's first expansion, Flashpoint, our next free update for BATTLETECH will also launch on November 27th! Update 1.3 adds and improves a bunch of stuff in the base game, including:
  • An all-new Career Mode - Career Mode challenges you to begin the game with the Argo in a random system, with a random group of MechWarriors, with no story missions to rely on for big payouts. You wander the Periphery, taking contracts (and Flashpoints, if you have Flashpoint!) and managing your mercenary company to earn a final score. Career mode is played in Ironman mode by default, so it is also possible to “lose” this mode unrecoverably.
  • Revamped MechWarrior abilities - We heard a bunch of feedback about the Bulwark ability and how you HAD to take it to finish the campaign and it got us thinking… and then revising Bulwark… and realizing that we should just rebalance the whole dang thing. Then we put it out as an opt-in Beta and got some great feedback - thanks! We’ve been working on it ever since and we’ll release the revised abilities in 1.3.
  • Revisions to the Reputation System - We’ve increased the rate at which reputation rises and falls so you can really feel the effects of your actions. When you reach the maximum possible reputation with a faction, you become eligible for an Alliance. By entering into an Alliance, you mark yourself an ally of that faction - and an enemy of that faction's enemies. In addition to making higher difficulty contracts and salvage available, Alliances also allow you to access faction-specific stores containing items you might not find anywhere else.
  • Black Market stores - If you play your cards right, criminal elements will allow you to buy access to the Black Market, where you’ll find some equipment that fell off a transport…
  • More Events, including cameos from two Legendary MechWarriors (these were part of our social sharing Backer reward from the Kickstarter, and we expect the other two cameos to make it into the next free update.)
  • New mercenary contracts - now you can take jobs from Pirates!
  • New inventory items, including rare LosTech from before the fall of the Star League!
  • And lots more bugfixes and quality of life improvements (like the ability to drag & drop ‘Mechs in the Mech Bay!)
If you haven't played in a while, also check out all the new features and improvements we've already added to the game in our free 1.1 Update and 1.2 Update. And we'll be continuing to release free updates at a similar cadence next year.
 
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@Zloth;
The most important changes in the past patches were the way stability works on heavier mechs and the heat rebalance which made energy weapons much more viable.

For me, I will not go back to vanilla. RogueTech is just so much better. I had 100 h in the vanilla game and now more than 100 h in RogueTech (still ongoing).

The next big patch in November will rework some of the Mechwarrior skills. Here I also like more what RogueTech already changed.
 
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That career mode sounds good. I stopped playing when I finished the campaign, waiting for user-created campaigns down the road, but I'll probably try the career mode to check it out.
 
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That career mode sounds good. I stopped playing when I finished the campaign, waiting for user-created campaigns down the road, but I'll probably try the career mode to check it out.

To me it just sound like more of the same boring missions that made me hate the game after first 30h.
 
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