KickStarter BATTLETECH - turn-based mech combat from Harebrained Schemes

[Alpharius]

The thing is, though, this is exactly how the live-action version of such games plays out, which is why things like MWO end up as such a trainwreck. The tabletop rules expected more of a random smoothing, and not the kind of clustered, spiky results that would realistically be produced by basically any manageable control scheme.

In MWO it rarely goes like this:

No, I picture the battletech fight as "I aim the gun reticle at my enemy and I pull the trigger. My guns, being activated by that one trigger pull, are released at that moment and that aimpoint". I'm not going to fire my cannons and hit the left leg, the right arm, and the upper torso all separately. I'm either going to miss everything or nearly everything is going to hit that one target zone.

unless you are boating something like gauss or er pcc and the victim is unaware of you and stands perfrectly still. Due to all the different projectile velocities, laser burn durations, recoil, missiles hitting all over the place regardless, target mech trying to dodge etc.

Also, i'd say in MWO the target mech's pilot has much more influence on where he is going to get hit compared the shooter mech's pilot. So ofc he is going to spread damage all over the place and not tank it all with one bodypart if he knows what he is doing.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

unless you are boating something like gauss or er pcc and the victim is unaware of you and stands perfrectly still. Due to all the different projectile velocities, laser burn durations, recoil, missiles hitting all over the place regardless, target mech trying to dodge etc.

this happens more often than you'd think esp. in PUG drops. Also, recoil is not modeled in MWO (unfortunately) last I knew.

Also, i'd say in MWO the target mech's pilot has much more influence on where he is going to get hit compared the shooter mech's pilot. So ofc he is going to spread damage all over the place and not tank it all with one bodypart if he knows what he is doing.

Most of the time you want to torsotwist to spread damage, yes, but some mechs can actually get away with things like armshielding (BNC, CN9 come to mind) and at times it may be preferable to show the enemy your shield arm rather than just twist to spread, mostly depending on your immediate environs and posiitions of any other enemies/what they're carrying in their loadout (not much point in trying to twist away PPFLD, after all).

 

[Alpharius]

unless you are boating something like gauss or er pcc and the victim is unaware of you and stands perfrectly still. Due to all the different projectile velocities, laser burn durations, recoil, missiles hitting all over the place regardless, target mech trying to dodge etc.

this happens more often than you'd think esp. in PUG drops. Also, recoil is not modeled in MWO (unfortunately) last I knew.

Ah right, only heavy gauss has recoil. I guess i've droped to often with my 2xheavy gauss annihilator lately.

Also, i'd say in MWO the target mech's pilot has much more influence on where he is going to get hit compared the shooter mech's pilot. So ofc he is going to spread damage all over the place and not tank it all with one bodypart if he knows what he is doing.

Most of the time you want to torsotwist to spread damage, yes, but some mechs can actually get away with things like armshielding (BNC, CN9 come to mind) and at times it may be preferable to show the enemy your shield arm rather than just twist to spread, mostly depending on your immediate environs and posiitions of any other enemies/what they're carrying in their loadout (not much point in trying to twist away PPFLD, after all).

Well if you have an open side torso, its a good idea to keep it turned away from the enemy as often as possible, regardless of what they are shooting at you.

Anyway, my point is that having you shots hit

the left leg, the right arm, and the upper torso all separately

in turn-based game makes sense if we look at MWO as a baseline for how this should happen in realtime.

 

[Norfleet]

unless you are boating something like gauss or er pcc

Boating is an extremely common thing in Mechwarrior, yes. It's something which annoys the BTech purists a LOT, but the first thing anyone does is boat something, often this, because all the various constraints of human operation. You don't WANT to have 3 lazors, a cannon, and a railgun, because it is impossible for you to simultaneously aim all of these weapons which must be operated separately.

and the victim is unaware of you and stands perfrectly still. Due to all the different projectile velocities, laser burn durations, recoil, missiles hitting all over the place regardless, target mech trying to dodge etc.

Even if I cut with something like a burning lazor, against a moving target that will try to get out of the beam, the result is going to be a single burn line as all the lazors aim at the reticle. The only reason you'd get the "damage all over the place" spread is if the lazors were somehow independently and autonomously firing, which means they'd have to be run by computer, which means they'd be a hell of a lot more accurate, because no human can perform this kind of firing pattern. If you fill a mech with lazors and fire them, you're going to still get a single burn line. If anything, with lazors, this will be even MORE precise, since lazors, unlike mechanical cannons, don't have mechanical component noise.

If you have multiple different projectile velocities on the same mech, you ain't hitting shit. As mentioned, it's basically a biological impossibility for humans to effectively track and aim two cursors independently. If you have weapons so different that they behave this way, you've created such an ineffective loadout that you're going to lose.

Missiles, obviously, fall into the case of "independent autonomous computer-controlled weaponry", since the user does not aim the missiles, he just points them at their target and they go off on their own.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

unless you are boating something like gauss or er pcc

Boating is an extremely common thing in Mechwarrior, yes. It's something which annoys the BTech purists a LOT, but the first thing anyone does is boat something, often this, because all the various constraints of human operation. You don't WANT to have 3 lazors, a cannon, and a railgun, because it is impossible for you to simultaneously aim all of these weapons which must be operated separately.

Getting mad over boating is actually fucking retarded because there are many (and I mean MANY) canonical boats in BTech. Bane/Kraken Prime, Hellstar, Komodo, Supernova, Nova/Blackhawk Prime, Glass Spider and Galahad, Awesome, Warhawk/Masakari Prime, Annihilator, Piranha. It's not a matter of constraints of human operation as per real life, even - you can run stock builds (which tend to be bracket builds) competently with no problem, even with unholy clusterfucks of different armament, in a MechWarrior game.

Why a neurohelmet-wearing mechwarrior in a fully functional cockpit in any other iteration of the BTech license couldn't do what a 12 year old can do with a mouse and keyboard, I couldn't possibly imagine. If anything even the MechWarrior games sell short what a human being could theoretically do given the correct technologies.

Boating is honestly just specializing, with all the upsides and downsides that entails.

 

[Bohr]

Worth remembering the inspirational team behind the game. HBS BT designer just celebrated an anniversary

https://tweetsave.com/persenche/status/1011048532545945601

 

[Quigs]

Well, that's *one* way to get rid of male pattern baldness.

 

[Hellraiser]

So what did they add in the 900 megabyte patch that I am downloading now? They fixed two typos and a line of code? Sure look like it judging by the update size.

 

[Bohr]

So what did they add in the 900 megabyte patch that I am downloading now? They fixed two typos and a line of code? Sure look like it judging by the update size.

Release Notes

Release 1.1.1 Notes, 6/27/2018

• Fixed an issue where the starter MechWarriors (Glitch, Behemoth, Dekker, Medusa) could occasionally also appear as hireable Ronin MechWarriors in hiring halls later in the game.
  
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause tooltips to fail to spawn in the Store under certain conditions.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where tooltips could sometimes appear truncated at the bottom.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where users could be unable to use Lance Configuration via the Multiplayer Skirmish Lobby if they had not yet played the campaign or single-player skirmish since updating to BATTLETECH version 1.1.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where loading a save game generated in the Axylus priority mission, right after securing the crash site, could result in a progression blocker.
  
  
• Fixed a bug that was causing attacks to hit 'Mech head locations more frequently than intended.

Makes me wonder about the head hit thing as there's been a lot of bitching about that, how much was a bug and how much is retuning

 

[ArchAngel]

I continued playing the game after this patch, did the story mission where you need to kill mechs and protect ammo crates. Fucking crazy mission, lost 2 pilots and got two mechs blown up and my main character is in hospital for 30 days (and his mech was left without a leg and arm). You get placed on one edge of the map, as soon as you put your head out you can get shot by 4 towers and 4 mechs with other 4 coming to kill you in 2 turns. And they got at least two PPC and missiles that shoot at your from outside your vision.
Since I am playing self enforced Ironman I just took the punches for 2 turns before I figured out that AI is really going to send everything on the map at me and then pulled back behind the hill to wait for enemy mechs to come to me. Even that tactic only worked half way as they would send one tougher mech and brace him and then use others to rain missiles at you. And you cannot move a lot as you reveal your mechs to others that are placed on hills that can target your guys directly.
Now I need to repair my mechs for many days and need to train 2 new people from almost nothing (I lost both my Bulwark-Multishot pilots).

 

[Galdred]

By far the most hilarious thing regarding the source material rules and their adaptation in the namesake vidya (seriously this bugs me more and more because now you can be speaking of FIVE different things when you say BattleTech) is that there is absolutely zero value in the existence of BattleMechs (much less as the dominant warmachine, which as far as the rules are concerned is a completely baseless and arbitrary status afforded to them). They have no genuine advantage over other forms of ground vehicles, much less over airpower. Within the rules of the vidya for example, the existence of any ground-based systems besides the missile carriers is a joke.

They have a better UI?

 

[Bohr]

From before the Solaris/arena aspects of PvP were cut:

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

From before the Solaris/arena aspects of PvP were cut:

>cutting Solaris 7 PvP from your BattleTech game

 

[razvedchiki]

is the game now good?

 

[Saduj]

is the game now good?

After the recent patch, most of the performance issues are gone for me. Still long load times going into missions though.

Not that far into it but so far I'm enjoying it. If it looks like something you'd like and you don't care about the grossly exaggerated ideological issues that have crapped up the threads about this game, you'll probably like it.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well the new patch's balance changes I think do skew things again too heavily towards 75+ tons or go home, but that's really just par the course for the franchise. Can't have a weakness on the Assault mechs like stability was. Well more of a "weakness" than a real weakness, it was just something tonnage didn't scale up to just be better at like it does with every other thing (aside from how far you move, but that's never been an issue with the franchise vidya).

is the game now good?

It's decent enough. Still feel the biggest issue is just that the game doesn't play to HBS' strengths and wastes potential going with the random merc jobs instead of elaborate linear campaign in the style of Dragonfall or Hong Kong.

 

[Country_Gravy]

Needs branching merc missions. Multiple drops or multiple missions without repairs. Also, you should be able to control 3 lances.

 

[ArchAngel]

Well the new patch's balance changes I think do skew things again too heavily towards 75+ tons or go home, but that's really just par the course for the franchise. Can't have a weakness on the Assault mechs like stability was. Well more of a "weakness" than a real weakness, it was just something tonnage didn't scale up to just be better at like it does with every other thing (aside from how far you move, but that's never been an issue with the franchise vidya).

is the game now good?

It's decent enough. Still feel the biggest issue is just that the game doesn't play to HBS' strengths and wastes potential going with the random merc jobs instead of elaborate linear campaign in the style of Dragonfall or Hong Kong.

Actually the problem is that they put too little effort into those random missions. Best you can get from those is a bit of money and some scrap. They should have been way more varied. There should be missions that offer a whole mech as reward that you cannot get otherwise, special weapons, special pilots, unique ship upgrades, access to other connected missions that are not a main mission, some hidden content and lots more.
The potential is there but they didn't reach it.

 

[razvedchiki]

i was primary concered about its difficulty,people wrote it was too easy and the game economy wasntt tight enough to provide a challenge.though the newest patch notes seem to give the options to tailor your game as you like it.

controlling only 1 lance is also a bummer,guess mods will fix it?

 

[Trithne]

i was primary concered about its difficulty,people wrote it was too easy and the game economy wasntt tight enough to provide a challenge.though the newest patch notes seem to give the options to tailor your game as you like it.

controlling only 1 lance is also a bummer,guess mods will fix it?

Mods can't fix that part. Game was hard coded that way. The closest I've really seen to addressing it is mods that add a drop fee based on drop tonnage to discourage taking 4 Atlai on a milk run.

 

[Saduj]

So I just started telling people the game works now and deleted my negative review that says the game doesn't run and..... 20 hours of game play later, the game has decided to crash during every mission. Doesn't matter if it is a story or random mission or which save game I load. Turned the video quality to low with lowest resolution and that just slightly delayed the amount of time it will take to crash. Pretty sure my video card just isn't compatible with this game.

 

[ArchAngel]

I don't know if the patches upped the difficulty but now after I returned to the game I keep losing pilots and mechs. I got 3 medium (55T, 55T and 50T) and 1 heavy mech (60T) and missions keep spawning multiple heavy mechs from 60T to 75T along with medium mechs and others. I regularly fight from 6 to 8 mechs now... At best if I spend all my money I can get a few more 60T mechs to join my squad but that is a huge waste of money.

Also more I play, more I notice how badly both tactical and strategic parts are designed.

Most missions have secondary objectives that are optional but mechs from those objectives join the main fight always and if it is some area you need to capture it is behind all the mechs you need to kill on the map and you win automatically anyways. Basically all missions come down to deathmatch with fake secondary objectives.

 

[Country_Gravy]

I like this game, but I wanted to REALLY like this game. Don't think it will ever come close to its potential.

Sort of sad.

 

[Saduj]

Question for one of our technically competent members: Is it true that the number of save games one has can affect the performance of Unity games? And if so, WTF?

I was reading the Battletech Steam forum and in a thread about the game's memory leak problem, someone responded by saying having too many save games affects how this game runs. Sounded like nonsense but I deleted over half my save games and I've been able to run a few missions since then with no crashes. The game was crashing reliably during every mission before this and the only other change I had made is to defrag my hard drive. I've Googled it and there is a Reddit thread where someone says this is an issue in Unity in general and the responses indicate that people are seeing this game run better after deleting saves. I don't know shit about coding but intuitively, I would think save files just sit there inert until the user tells the game to access one and this should not be a thing.

 

[Bohr]

Posted about this back in April. The other bit of advice for people who found the game getting more sluggish as they progress is to clear out inventory as too much crap also slows things down. They're supposed to still be working on improving things like this, but there are plenty of discussions out there about how poorly the game is coded.