Preview BattleTech Basics Video #3: Story + Mercenary Campaign Streams

[Infinitron]

Your side in Dragonfall is Monika Schaefer's antifa-like cell, whose mission is defending a literal anarchist commune. Busting open a fascist beerhall is exactly the kind of thing I'd expect them to do. So I'd argue it actually was good flavor, although I didn't think about it like that at the time.

Personally I thought that mission was mostly just hilarious. I mean, Humanis Policlub aren't really Nazis. They don't have a problem with non-white humans. Seeing elves and orks madlibbed into Stormfront .txts made me lol - and it was also actually kind of thoughtful.

 

[Zeriel]

I actually didn't mind the theme in the moment-to-moment stuff. As usual, it's when NPCs start preaching that it gets annoying. There's nothing wrong with street agitating in a Cyberpunk game, kind of comes with the theme, it's just about how on the nose they get with tying it to the present. People generally like escapism more than they do parallelism in their entertainment.

 

[Agesilaus]

The game itself actually looks really good.

 

[aweigh]

I dunno I played thru Dragonfall twice and never picked up on any preaching or politicizing. I think people are too politicized nowadays and look for it everywhere.

 

[Zeriel]

I dunno I played thru Dragonfall twice and never picked up on any preaching or politicizing. I think people are too politicized nowadays and look for it everywhere.

That may be, but we're politicized because it's been shoved down our throats. People have become more sensitive to this stuff because gaming journalists and the developers they handpick obsess over it.

 

[Black]

there is actually a sub-group of feminists who disavow males who sex-changed into females. Google "transphobia in feminism". Interesting reading.

Makes sense, I wouldn't welcome a female who chopped off her tits and attached a dildo to our tribe. If female to male was a thing, that is.

 

[Shin]

maybe some of you are overthinking it though

I mean back when I played games such as Daggerfall, Fallout or even totally different shit like Theme Hospital you didn't have any information on who the heck was developing what or which publishers pushed which agenda's or anything. For all I know Sim City was made by a tranny only team; it was still pretty good. Same with the HBS SR games, I didn't notice any obvious SJW scenario's there either. Tim Cain is gay but doesn't make gay games.

On the other hand, it's not the 90's anymore and I guess there might be pandering in some form or another.. it's just hard for me to spot when not actively looking anymore. When someone broke down the whole X-men's message was actually about gay people it blew my mind, never would've figured that out myself (really). I guess I'm not the brightest of the bunch but a lot of these discussions about trannies ruining games seems to be a tad bit presumptuous when the dev doesn't have a bad track record in that regard.

 

[duanth123]

I guess I'm not the brightest of the bunch but a lot of these discussions about trannies ruining games seems to be a tad bit presumptuous when the dev doesn't have a bad track record in that regard.

You misunderstand the causal relationship.

This pathological fixation on identity by some of these devs suggests them to be diversity hires devoid of the talent or passion to make good games, the antithesis of the meritocracy that brought us good games once like those you cite.

It's not simply because they're trannies that the game might be shit.

It's because that's everything and only what they are, their entire net contribution to the putative goal of making a good game true to the spirit of the battle tech franchise

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

https://archive.li/idvTy

I have a feeling the lack of rough edges might be the least of this game's concerns, particularly if certain like minds were also responsible for making thematic/narrative decisions and/or the simple act of accurately portraying various actors in a complex universe.

This fucking... cancer-thing is one of the reasons I'll never give a single cent to Harebrained.

I'll see your cancer and raise you an AIDS:

Well what do you expect me to do, bomb their office? :D

 

[Fenix]

I get that every company has a free reign over the stuff they choose to produce, but why does everything nowadays have to get a social/racial agenda attached to it.

I think, that financial mechanisms involved. Some kind of investor could come and say - hey, you doing that and we invest you.
Something like Rockefeller foundation, who financed feminism movement from early 20 century.

And that obviously wasn't aliens.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

maybe some of you are overthinking it though

I mean back when I played games such as Daggerfall, Fallout or even totally different shit like Theme Hospital you didn't have any information on who the heck was developing what or which publishers pushed which agenda's or anything. For all I know Sim City was made by a tranny only team; it was still pretty good. Same with the HBS SR games, I didn't notice any obvious SJW scenario's there either. Tim Cain is gay but doesn't make gay games.

On the other hand, it's not the 90's anymore and I guess there might be pandering in some form or another.. it's just hard for me to spot when not actively looking anymore. When someone broke down the whole X-men's message was actually about gay people it blew my mind, never would've figured that out myself (really). I guess I'm not the brightest of the bunch but a lot of these discussions about trannies ruining games seems to be a tad bit presumptuous when the dev doesn't have a bad track record in that regard.

The issue is back in the 90s you would never see a developer going around blasting fans for being "cis het white males" or "misogynists" or "entitled man-babies" or accuse them of "racism" or "mansplaining" or "excluding people" or "heteronormativity" or "microaggresions" or "perpetuating harmful stereotypes" or "implicit bias" or any of the other unbelievable garbage behavior that game devs not only do now, but feel entitled to be able to do and STILL *demand* gamers buy their games. It's outrageous. You would never see some insufferable SJW tranny gloating about "pissing off the right people." Even if people at the company felt that way they would never say so or even let them come across publicly as being hostile to the fans.

Harebrained Schemes is handling this tactfully-- they aren't taking the bait and making it worse by blasting the fans more or complaining to game journos (that would cause a backlash). I'm guessing someone at the company told Kiva to pipe down while they pretend like nothing is happening. That's probably a good thing for them but history shows us once the poz sets in it always gets worse unless it is forcibly excised. There is a difference between making games you enjoy with interesting cultural themes (such as X-men = societal outcasts) and creating entertainment for the specific purpose of social engineering, which is the MO of self-professed SJWs like this Kiva person.

I can't financially support a company that hires noxious mentally ill men-in-wigs and pays them to trash talk and insult people like me.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Entryism like this always proceeds in the same pattern:

Step 1: Fitting In "I am a huge fan just like you guys let's all be fans together."
Step 2: Accommodation "We should be more inclusive to others, after all we're all fans right. Here sign this Code of Conduct."
Step 3: Shaming "Your behavior is gross how dare you I am so offended I don't feel safe."
Step 4: Purging "We need to get rid of the toxic people it's just following the Code of Conduct. Rules are rules."
Step 5: Consolidation "This belongs to us (SJWs/feminists/trannies) now you don't belong here go away."

The key is you don't notice what is happening until step 4 or so but by then it is too late to stop it. That's why you simply have to purge them ASAP.

 

[Darkzone]

I give no fuck about the SJW shit and will play it in an good old reactionary way:
First of all i will choose a nice white male picture and name the character after someone who fought victorious against the invading muslim hordes. Then i will only hire white males and my mercanary unit will be called either SS Terranische Kreuzritter Orden or Liga świętej Husarii Christusa or whatever that is 100% european. And if the enemies have mixed race pilots it will follow with a death from above.
HBS is SJW since their first product and it was clear that they will only follow up with their "progressiv" shit.

 

[Junmarko]

I think, that financial mechanisms involved. Some kind of investor could come and say - hey, you doing that and we invest you.

"We support being a nuisance to functioning society via compulsory pronoun adoption(sorry Canada)." - There's something you want on your CV

 

[Fenix]

Remind me how it was inprevious games with trophies.

 

[Elex]

https://archive.li/idvTy

I have a feeling the lack of rough edges might be the least of this game's concerns, particularly if certain like minds were also responsible for making thematic/narrative decisions and/or the simple act of accurately portraying various actors in a complex universe.

Checked the twitter account of that guy.

Pretty funny someone that arrogant, insolent and idiotic has the gall make a fuss about other people being potentially unpleasent co-workers.

also is totally false: we learned from KCD that even if half internet and 70% of the “gaming press” call you a nazi, people don’t really care about that but care about the game and in particular about the save method of the game, fps and optimization.

 

[Bohr]

While some things can in principle be adjusted relatively easily (AI decision trees and weights, differentiated maintenance costs, mech permadeath, economy rebalancing) in text config files, I'll add that there are some abstractions HBS made to the mechanics that are very unlikely IMO to be moddable without nontrivial surgery. e.g. differentiated AI profiles, ammo and armor replacement costs, mission structures where ammo limitations become relevant etc. Particularly, the "kill 3 of the same mech, get one free" abstraction where killed mechs become undifferentiated parts, however it is you came by them, instead of specific parts that you the player made a conscious decision to avoid damaging.
snip

Agreed, there are some things we're unlikely to see modders 'fix' in the foreseeable future, and I would have preferred a different salvage system and a different way to handle ammo/armour. I can understand why they went the way they did in these areas though, I guess, in trying to appeal to new players even if it isn't to my personal taste, unlike their decision on difficulty levels which I don't understand at all. Having said that, I think I'm more optimistic on the game that's left and its potential. It's not close to perfect, but they've managed to capture some of the addictive appeal in traveling to different systems, building up a mech stable and engaging in the combat system where they haven't ripped out too much of the complexity. I think all of these will be better even with just a few tweaks to the JSONs to make it less of a cakewalk, economically.

Perhaps my optimism when it comes to modding also stems from what I saw people do with just the skirmish beta, so it'll be interesting to see how easy it is to make/adjust campaigns. Imo a good way to replicate some sort of time pressure would be to make a campaign consisting of a few groups of mission chains, where one couldn't just head off and farm procedural missions while the universe waits in the middle of a string of missions. Otherwise maybe someone will be creative by adjusting procgen mission availability at certain points to replicate the effect.

When it comes to AI I had very low expectations as I can't imagine it would be easy to make an AI for a game with so many options, and AI in general is always so exploitable in games like this. And I've now seen it do some retarded stuff, as expected. But the comments of the AI modder give me hope here, particularly considering what he managed to achieve with the beta. It seems they made the AI less ruthless than it needed to be and there's potential for better differentiating unit roles too.

Spoiler

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...eve-seen-so-far.1087625/page-13#post-24087566
There certainly was such variables in the beta AI. One big one is "Float_OverkillFactorForReserve" which sets the level at which the AI won't reserve if the enemy can do X % of their hitpoints (so set to 100 for 100%) so they can act before being killed to either move defensively or get one last attack in before destruction. There are a number of those kinds of things that use the total amount points remaining or how damaged specific locations are, like protecting a weaker side.

I see a lot of the same ideas or requests in this thread. Most of the time the beta AI already considers these factors and even calls them out specifically in the files. Thing is, it's set to be beatable by a below average player, as I have stated many times before. Is it the right call by the devs? Could it "act smarter" without actually being harder to defeat? Is the cost of an immersion breaking move greater than the cost of turning off a significant segment of new players? Is it better to have fewer but smarter enemies? All of these are valid topics for discussion. But the framework for a competent AI is there. It's just not tuned to be that in the betas we have seen.

It's not that the AI is poorly written, it's written to do poorly.

***

Dynamic 'Mech roles is probably in. It was working and active in Beta 1 and disabled in Beta 2 for funky actions like the KTO never entering brawl if it was the only unit with any LRMs or long range weapons. I've just started playing with these in preparation for release, but haven't had the time to test things like I did with my initial AI dive many months ago. The last build I posted here is a test build and the roles are very, very obvious. Brawlers come barreling down to establish LoS and want to punch you, snipers flee like cowards and snipe from range, scouts... I'm working on. But those are the 3 roles we have somewhat active in beta without diving in to adding whole new tags in the database for user created ones, if that's even possible.

I hope all the hooks for roles, factions and personalities get left in the code. That's the kind of long term project modders can pick up on with our practically infinite time and manpower if the community wants to come together contribute a lot of testing and editing.

 

[Elex]

Isn't this the plot of Jagged Alliance 2? Rightful leader's throne gets usurped and they hire a bunch of mercenaries to recover it in a turn-based strategy campaign?

That other turn-based strategy game (Blackguards 2) did the same thing.

It's basically the plot of every mercenary band story. Nothing wrong about it.

why i can’t support the not legittimate leader? i’m a mercenary for a reason.

 

[Septaryeth]

maybe some of you are overthinking it though

I mean back when I played games such as Daggerfall, Fallout or even totally different shit like Theme Hospital you didn't have any information on who the heck was developing what or which publishers pushed which agenda's or anything. For all I know Sim City was made by a tranny only team; it was still pretty good. Same with the HBS SR games, I didn't notice any obvious SJW scenario's there either. Tim Cain is gay but doesn't make gay games.

On the other hand, it's not the 90's anymore and I guess there might be pandering in some form or another.. it's just hard for me to spot when not actively looking anymore. When someone broke down the whole X-men's message was actually about gay people it blew my mind, never would've figured that out myself (really). I guess I'm not the brightest of the bunch but a lot of these discussions about trannies ruining games seems to be a tad bit presumptuous when the dev doesn't have a bad track record in that regard.

I'm still on the fence for this one.

At least they keep the their personal twitter account separated and this "gaming industry" account looks clean enough.
It has that troll pinned post yeah, but that's the only thing I can find. The rest are mainly Q&A posts about the game.
It's not on the same level of stupidity as Manveer Heir.

Yeah I know Heir is at the bottom of the barrel but I mean the game looks okay so far.
I'll still watch for bullshit like "keeping track of a no-longer-mattered ancestry so we can pat ourselves in the back and tick off the "diversity" checkbox".
SR games had some of that vibe but it didn't take over the whole game like Dreamfall, ME: A, and Torment.

At least, not yet.

 

[almondblight]

unlike their decision on difficulty levels which I don't understand at all.

My guess is that they didn't want anyone to select hard and then complain about how it was broken/unfair/the RNG was bugged/etc. I remember some of that in Dragonfall (you can even find some Codexers doing that), and then "Very Hard" got removed from Hong Kong (with the same weak excuse - "We didn't have time to balance Very Hard"). It doesn't make much sense, which is why the excuses people are making for it on the official forums are so incoherent ("It's too difficult for HBS to add a hard mode"/"It will be simple for players to make their own hard mode if they want").

 

[Sloul]

I find their decision to remove difficulty options a wise one.
But this decision must come with a set of design decisions to make it more interesting.
Imo, one common difficulty setting becomes part of a game identity.
Look at Gothic 1&2 to understand this concept.
But to make worth it, you NEED to have difficulty content in your game.

This is actually something that I thought would be a lost cause in today's world, I am extremely surprised they came up with this idea and picked it.

 

[Zeriel]

"We support being a nuisance to functioning society via compulsory pronoun adoption(sorry Canada)." - There's something you want on your CV

This has been said before, but I think the crux of it is ruthless corporate entities that people would hate searching for something to distract people from hating them. That doesn't really apply to small indie studios, but it does seem to explain why big companies do this shit across the board.

The calculation is something like "okay, we hire a bunch of token crazies, and then people will think we are on their side", it's the same reason corporations went in hard on "corporate responsibility", going green, etc, it's something they can throw some money and positions at to provide a shield for their core moneymaking activities.

I think in the case of social justice and race-baiting this ends up being counter-productive in the long run, we are starting to see a trend where companies that fall prey to this entryism lose their talented staff and get hollowed out. So I'd say this has proven to be a lot less effective than the corporate responsibility/eco-friendly/we are philanthropists spiel that actually worked out really well for corporations bottom line.

 

[Morkar Left]

Isn't this the plot of Jagged Alliance 2? Rightful leader's throne gets usurped and they hire a bunch of mercenaries to recover it in a turn-based strategy campaign?

That other turn-based strategy game (Blackguards 2) did the same thing.

It's basically the plot of every mercenary band story. Nothing wrong about it.

why i can’t support the not legittimate leader? i’m a mercenary for a reason.

Because the not legitimate leader hasn't employed you. He has enough troops of his own. The princess is the underdog here without much choice than hiring you. Both of you must be pretty desperate to do this contract btw. because you can field only 4 mechs...

Yeah, but that's the thing about social justice. It's not about BEING multi-ethnic, it's about the cause. A bunch of white people loudly decrying their "privilege" and wanting to go out and punch "nazis" is more social justice than a jap, a korean, a chinese dude, and a maori bro fucking shit up together.

Maybe there was something in HK, but I don't remember it. I do remember the "we're all about fighting nazis" lines in Dragonfall, because they stuck out like a sore thumb. Its that whole schtick of superimposing current political awareness on a setting that's supposed to be far in the future, far in the past, or in an entirely different world (hello Dragonspear).

It makes perfect sense to me that a foreigner who has to make a game with a German setting is thinking about racism because it's just part of our history (which affected the whole world cu,minating in WW2 and its aftermath). But besides Nazis nobody gives a fuck about Nazis in Germany. We don't like them, we don't want them. Even more conservative people don't like having Nazis in Germany. Besides that I don't know what else there could be in the game regarding sjw.


The game could be good but it could suck as well. In the end we have to wait and see. Personally I expect some solid game with a good setting but nothing groundbreaking. For really satisfying gameplay I could fall in love with I would expect at least more lances to field (not to mention tanks and airforce) and more JA2 stuff regarding logistics and holding ground. But we will see.

In the video that Kiva gal comes around like one of the guys who likes more hardcore gameplay instead of simple clicky-clicky gameplay. Looking back at the SR games which had very simplified gamemechanics I think if there are more complex gameplay mechanics it's probably that gals merit. I give her the benefit of the doubt regarding game design, no matter ifI like her face, name or twitter account. Even if the later comes with a bit of too much sjw-vibe for me.

 

[Fenix]

I don'y get this thing with twatter, what do they mean?
Some kind of not so disguised attempt to shut some mouthes?

 

[GrainWetski]

In the video that Kiva gal comes around like one of the guys who likes more hardcore gameplay instead of simple clicky-clicky gameplay. Looking back at the SR games which had very simplified gamemechanics I think if there are more complex gameplay mechanics it's probably that gals merit. I give her the benefit of the doubt regarding game design, no matter ifI like her face, name or twitter account. Even if the later comes with a bit of too much sjw-vibe for me.

At least you got it right once.