Battletech

I'm on the other side of the fence, I welcome the acquisition. Before HS had to struggle for every game they released, be it kickstarter or seeking investors. Now that shouldn't be an issue. I loved Battletech and hopefully there will be more to come.
 
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
Messages
5,645
Location
Tardis
Oh, I've not passed judgement either way, not as of yet. It is far too early to tell exactly what changes we'll see, but I suspect it won't take very long to notice as more products are released in the future.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2011
Messages
18,799
Location
Holly Hill, FL.
knowing paradox, the NEW paradox that have shareholders, and love dlc, this is a sad day
 
Joined
Mar 23, 2015
Messages
113
Paradox is bad news in regard to the whole "lets release DLC for 5 years instead of a new game" but it's good news in terms of production costs. BattleTech jumped up onto the best sellers list in my region then dropped right back off again very quickly. IMHO, this game deserved far better. Maybe Paradox can do something about that.
Check your download region is set correctly. (right click tray icon, settings, downloads…)
It is. I've tried changing it around anyway and it doesn't seem to make much difference.

In other news...
https://www.pcgamer.com/battletech-...ng-multiple-accusations-of-sexual-harassment/
 
Joined
Aug 3, 2008
Messages
8,238
Location
Kansas City
Yeah, I read a couple of articles on this criminal a few days ago. Totally has me rethinking my love for the company, if the management had any knowledge about this conduct before he left. I suspect we'll be hearing more about this as people come forward and share what they know.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2011
Messages
18,799
Location
Holly Hill, FL.
So, it took me a while because I had started XCOM2 and I did not realise I had stopped just before the last mission. So I just finished the game now in the past 2 hours.

I think this is a really fun game. It is really just fun to blast mechs apart.
I just do not think I will be replaying it much unless they develop the side content more.

The sidequests got samey pretty quick to me, but all in all, still an amazing game, and I recommend it wholeheartedly if you enjoy turn-based combat.

I love all the customisation options on mechs and I found that I played very differently to a couple of YTers I watched for a bit. My Mechs were almost all glass cannons in comparison to those people although they could still take a bit of a beating, it was really more about positioning and using vigilance more often. I often could take down mechs pretty quickly.

Unfortunately that made the final mission way too easy. I had 2/3 mechs with massive autocannons and I killed Mechs like flies :D

Good night all.
 
Joined
Nov 13, 2006
Messages
9,177
Location
Manchester, United Kingdom
Yeah, that message about "you'll need multiple lances" put the scare in me. I came in with a King Crab, a Highlander, a BattleMaster, and a Stalker full of LRMs. Nearly all their weapons were ++ with cockpit mods and gyros. It turned out to be a cake walk. I didn't even need to swap out mechs for the second battle. (On the plus side, though, it didn't take too much more to get the achievement for having every type of mech in my inventory. ;)

I enjoyed the side missions a lot. There were some repeated maps but, by the time they repeated, I had vastly different mechs so the play had changed a lot. There's not much chance of me playing it again until the developers put a lot of changes in but, after 130+ hours, I think I got my money's worth.
 
Joined
Aug 3, 2008
Messages
8,238
Location
Kansas City
Yeah, that message about "you'll need multiple lances" put the scare in me. I came in with a King Crab, a Highlander, a BattleMaster, and a Stalker full of LRMs. Nearly all their weapons were ++ with cockpit mods and gyros. It turned out to be a cake walk. I didn't even need to swap out mechs for the second battle. (On the plus side, though, it didn't take too much more to get the achievement for having every type of mech in my inventory. ;)

I enjoyed the side missions a lot. There were some repeated maps but, by the time they repeated, I had vastly different mechs so the play had changed a lot. There's not much chance of me playing it again until the developers put a lot of changes in but, after 130+ hours, I think I got my money's worth.
Well, you seem to have played quite a bit longer than I have.

According to steam my time played is 45 hours. Still think it's worth it.

I think the side missions were fun but it felt like there was no real reason to do them.

In xcom the reason is to stop the aliens getting stronger through their dark events.

Here it's simply a way of getting new mechs.
I would have like the side missions to still have some other benefits and downsides.

For example succeeding in some of them should have helped the future main missions maybe by having a mech join the fight. Failing maybe could have resulted in some sabotage resulting in one random weapon doing half damage or something like that.

I don't know really, just throwing ideas around but that's what I mean by samey too. It's not just the fights themselves but the aftermath thereof.

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk
 
Joined
Nov 13, 2006
Messages
9,177
Location
Manchester, United Kingdom
The basic mechanics are a lot of fun but the actual missions and campaign could use a lot of work. I'm ok with the initial product but I would iike to see a real rpg'ish campaign developed as an add-on.
 
Joined
Oct 20, 2006
Messages
7,758
Location
usa - no longer boston
So, there's a new mod which makes the game more sandboxy and adds a lot of gameplay elements if you still want to play:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ubDlmQ_Yqs
https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/mods/79

RogueTech

RogueTech has as goal to provide new challenges and a harsher simgame experience. You have to survive by all means, the enemy's will do their best to kill you and no one gives a rats ass about some merc dying

The timeline for this mod is at the start of 4th Succession and the War of 3039, when the the first technologies of the Helm Core appear around the sphere.

THIS MOD IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE EASY, ENEMIES ARE DEADLIER AND THAT'S INTENTIONAL!

I mean, how fair would it be to just have the player have all these fancy toys?

Highlights

Big, RogueLike, Sandbox Experience
Rebalanced Sim and Combat game, to give you a harsher world.
More Mech's: From the pirate commando with infernos, to the Massive KingCrab-0001 with twin Gauss rifles, face off against all kinds of enemy's.
With the great houses scrambling for superiority and unlocking the secrets of Helm, new weapons arrive on the battlefield, but nothing is cheap.
 
Joined
Nov 13, 2006
Messages
9,177
Location
Manchester, United Kingdom
Looks very cool! My only worry is that the game is still pretty young so patches could mangle it. If that thing is still around in a year, though, it would make for an awesome second play-through.
 
Joined
Aug 3, 2008
Messages
8,238
Location
Kansas City
Old people playing a video game that has mech toys.
There's a joke in there somewhere. :p
 
Joined
Jun 5, 2015
Messages
3,898
Location
Croatia
I finally started in on RogueTech. Eeesh, I don't know about this. Installing it was rough but the first battle I did was fun with interesting, new weapons and mechs.

Then I went off to a different planet and the easiest mission there was 2 skull when I can only muster up one skull. So I try to re-load and… can't. It seems you have to quit all the way out of the game and restart it, which takes extra long, to load your game again. I went back to the same system and got similar missions. Finally, I went to a new system and found a 1.5 skull.

I go in and find myself facing some big, 50 ton vehicles. Before I can do more than scuff the paint on one of them, reinforcements show up. Somebody puts a sensor lock on me and, before I can even move, the reinforcements slaughter my Blackjack. Sigh. Re-load… oh wait… but it's too late. I have to sign out of Windows because RogueTech can't load a save game except from the main menu.
 
Joined
Aug 3, 2008
Messages
8,238
Location
Kansas City
The basic mechanics are a lot of fun but the actual missions and campaign could use a lot of work. I'm ok with the initial product but I would iike to see a real rpg'ish campaign developed as an add-on.
I have this feeling too, that is the campaign design is pretty bad. I don't request a RPG, just much better designed missions, and probably a better story telling.

There's the other side of this game, the mercenary company, alas, when I played it, this aspect was very empty but the random missions was really well done, with a ton of variation, alas it's the only aspect very well done.

Otherwise mech refit and combats and random missions are quite on top, I found the random missions quite more diversified than those of XCOM2 despite the lack of procedural generation of terrains, and certainly less missions types. I'm more reserved for the ultra heavy mech aspect, that penalize too much movements.
 
Joined
Oct 14, 2007
Messages
3,258
Tried again the same mission again, again the reinforcements showed up on round 3. I did a good bit better but the outcome was never in doubt.

I tried a completely different mission. This time I was up against actual mechs which were a good bit easier. The reinforcements showed up on round 2 but took a round to get closer. I managed to down one (1) enemy mech but then I was facing 7 to 4 odds with nowhere to really hide.

The easiest mission I've seen anywhere is 1.5 skulls. I have yet to see one where I'm at even odds, never mind being at an advantage.
@Darkheart;, any comments?
 
Joined
Aug 3, 2008
Messages
8,238
Location
Kansas City
Tried again the same mission again, again the reinforcements showed up on round 3. I did a good bit better but the outcome was never in doubt.

I tried a completely different mission. This time I was up against actual mechs which were a good bit easier. The reinforcements showed up on round 2 but took a round to get closer. I managed to down one (1) enemy mech but then I was facing 7 to 4 odds with nowhere to really hide.

The easiest mission I've seen anywhere is 1.5 skulls. I have yet to see one where I'm at even odds, never mind being at an advantage.
@Darkheart;, any comments?

Installing the mod is not that hard, but I recommend to always verify your Steam files before installing a new version. Also use the option to remove the recommended folders in the installer. Also disable Steam cloud synchronization, since it messes up the files.

While installing you can choose to have difficulty by planet (which I prefer) or your own company strength, where difficulty will always be the same on every planet depending on the net worth of your 4 top mechs.

When starting out everything above 1-skull missions is a big no-no. Once you have some better equips (and armored up your mechs!) you might start to eye 1,5-skull missions. There is a bit of a leap in difficulty in 2-skull missions, so beware.

Your starting mechs are mostly random, so I recommend to restart if you get too many lights. Your starting mechs will have a certain accumulated weight, but it is random if that consists of a heavy, 2 mediums and 2 lights or 2 mediums and a bunch of lights. If you are lucky and get high-tech lights it might be worthy to use them for parts (and not risk them in battle if possible). A good start is always at least one heavy and a good melee mech (more on that later). To make things a bit easier you can also choose a Clan background which gives you superior Clan tech.

Many mechs are over-gunned and under-armored or have severe heat problems. So I suggest to take the time (and money) to make them relatively heat neutral and armor the front parts up (!!!). Melee capabilities in RT are nerfed for many mechs. But there are dedicated melee mechs. If you are new to the mod I recommend to reroll until you get one of these (i.e. a Vindicator 6, Vindicator Butcher, Hatchetman, Firestarter 0, Spider P). They will kill a tank each round by stomping (2x damage) and can take out many mechs in one hit from the back. With dedicated melee equips like claws, hatchets or swords, triple strength myomer, talons, etc. a medium can kill fully armored assaults in one hit from the back if you are a bit lucky. Since tanks are incredibly dangerous in RT, but are killed easily in melee not having a dedicated melee mech is hard when starting out.

Evasion pips are permanent for each round no matter how often you are shot at. So they are your best defense. Things that give you evasion are always top priority. This means Defense Gyros and especially ECM and stealth armor.

In the beginning your main handicap will be your unskilled pilots. They will not hit often and are easy to be hit. I recommend to increase Gunnery on every pilot to at least 5 or 6 and then concentrate on Piloting which gives you extra evasion. With the recent changes every skill line is important, but these are the once I recommend for early survival.
My line-up usually is 2 dedicated gunners with 2x gunnery special skills and 1 Piloting special. 1 dedicated melee pilot with 2x guts specials and 1 piloting or tactics special. 1 scout with 2x tactics specials and 1 Piloting special.

Always remember to use the terrain, cover, line of sight and angle to your advantage!

The Flashpoint DLC messed pretty hard with the mod because of how HBS decided to handle things, so it is still (but steadily) recovering. In-mission-loading should be fixed with the latest version but might be still a bit wonky. If you are not playing ironman I recommend to restart the mission when things go South instead of reloading. This can also give you a different enemy setup.

Feel free to ask if you have any further questions!
 
Joined
Feb 21, 2015
Messages
2,164
Location
BW, Germany
Thanks @Darkheart;!

I think my mechs might have been downed a bit because I picked the background option of being a discredited noble house. That gave me a nice stat boost but it might be why I got a couple of mediums (BJ and Enforcer) and a bunch of lights.

The planet ranking really sounds like the way to go.

Installing IS a pain! You've got to remove your save directory (or, better yet, just rename it) and clean out a directory in AppData, too! When there is a problem, you don't just crash out, either - the dang thing just spins and spins as you're trying to load without any error indication. If the window is full screen, you can't get out of it and have to sign out of Windows to get the program to stop. Still, it's small potatoes compared to the time you get in game.
 
Joined
Aug 3, 2008
Messages
8,238
Location
Kansas City
Back
Top Bottom