KickStarter BattleTech Pre-Release Thread

[anus_pounder]

Right ok. Not preordering this or paying zenny for after release purchase. I'm sailing the high seas, what a piece of shit.

 

[Cross]

Ammo and armour automatically replenished after battle at no cost: Supposedly 'abstracted' into operating costs, but operating costs do not vary from a Locust to an Atlas as they didn't want people to feel negative about getting bigger mechs

Sounds exactly like what they did in their Shadowrun games, where your companions replenish their consumables after every mission (or even during some missions) and it's abstracted into their salaries, which is always the same amount even if you don't use those companions or their items.

I don't know why anyone would have high hopes for this considering how shallow the mechanics are in their Shadowrun games.

 

[Infinitron]

Above all, the mechanics of the Shadowrun games were simple. Even with the sharp edges filed off, this game's various systems are obviously much more expansive and elaborate than Shadowrun's. Just look at those management screens, look at all the numbers. That's why people see the modding potential.

 

[Black]

- Ammo and armour automatically replenished after battle at no cost: Supposedly 'abstracted' into operating costs, but operating costs do not vary from a Locust to an Atlas as they didn't want people to feel negative about getting bigger mechs

The fuck??!!

People were asking about that since we saw this in the first PDX video:

Spoiler

Then in last Thursday's stream Kiva responded (timestamped link):
https://youtu.be/k0M0Nag4yuY?t=692

Atlas II has the same upkeep as Locust or Spider?
Now that's creative, I guess console port isn't that far behind.

 

[Vorark]

If it's a personal account, why the prefix HBS?

 

[GarfunkeL]

HBS should have made it an option for hard difficulty at least, along with hard difficulty itself.

Oh I agree with that. Lot of these things smell like catering to the lowest common denominator. I can understand why they're doing that, though it sucks for us. But like Infinitron, I'm hopeful for a decent base game that can then be modded to a more hardcore experience.

 

[Black]

But like Infinitron

This is where you should know you're in trouble.

 

[Cael]

IMO it comes down to the interaction between a number of factors, many of which seem reasonable on their own but need adjustment to come up with a more challenging game overall.
- Abstracted salvage, where one gets bits of mech chassis pretty easily, and need 3 pieces to make a complete mech: Tyler has talked about a harder difficulty level where 4 or 5 will be needed
- Once three pieces are obtained, they are assembled into full mechs instantly, at zero cost, with full weapons loadouts without requiring that you actually have those weapons to fit: Some debate as to whether this is working as intended, been asked for clarification on tomorrow's dev stream, but that's the evidence from the streams thus far. Would surely fit better with the scrappy merc company theme if one had to spend some time/money on getting these up to scratch, and maybe installing inferior or non-stock weapons if that's all one has
- CASE-equivalent on ammo to limit damage from ammo explosions, no reactor stackpoling, mechs never fully destroyed: All probably fine in a game like this, but in combination with the flow of new mechs from salvage means one just gets more and more mechs in storage: Devs thought mech destruction would be too punitive for new players, but Tyler spoke about allowing it in a harder/ironman difficulty mode
- PC mechwarrior can't die, story missions never expire so no limit on grinding other missions to build up for them
- Ammo and armour automatically replenished after battle at no cost: Supposedly 'abstracted' into operating costs, but operating costs do not vary from a Locust to an Atlas as they didn't want people to feel negative about getting bigger mechs

Unless there are serious money sinks in the late game we haven't considered, if I were HBS I would honestly make the harder difficulty options Tyler mentioned a priority, not a nice to have sometime after release. Would be a shame if any reasonably decent player (surely a high proportion of the backer population, at least) could just cruise through the campaign without breaking a sweat.

The whole FUN behind Btech, beyond the tabletop fighting, is the C-Bill management of the company. That was one of the things that made MechWarrior so much fun, at least in the beginning. Towards the end, you are swimming in so much C-Bills that it was merely a scorekeeping tool (over 120mill by the end of MW2Mercs was my record, you don't even want to know what the record was for MW4Mercs).

That has always been the fundamental flaw in the entire MW series. After the first mission or two, you are simply not challenged by resources other than what they artificially restrict in the "marketplace". "Not enough C-Bills" was never really a factor. It looks like HBS is making the same mistake in this one.

There are good reasons why my campaign salvage rules are different from the base rules (CT coring doesn't destroy, but requires additional C-Bills to fix due to the supporting "spine" getting cut, for example, but blowing out a reactor or ammo bin and you will end up with a couple of limbs and what's on them only). But even I have never made something as dumbed down as this "find 3 pieces and hey presto! new 'mech!" nonsense.

As I said before, after all the hype and good will, HBS seems intent on pissing on the IP for shits and giggles.

 

[Country_Gravy]

 

[almondblight]

oasis789 All I've seen ITT is a bunch of forum posts about individual features. Seems like it'd be hard to determine the overall difficulty of the game from that. You need to see how it all comes together in practice.

No difficulty settings pretty much confirms a mindlessly easy game. Pretty much every major game these days is insanely easy on the normal difficulty setting (and SR:HK was insanely easy on hard).

People are modding it, so I assume there will be some good difficulty mods. But not including difficulty settings is one of those weird HBS decisions where they end up neutering their base game for no good reason (screwed up saves in the Shadowrun games, only having a single class for Necropolis, removing Very Hard for SR:HK, etc.).

 

[Grotesque]

Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries will have a proper tuned economy system that will make you feel that those C-bills are truly earned.

 

[sser]

Kiva does seem like an SJW drama bomb waiting to happen.

On the other hand, sser has told me that his game design tweets are actually pretty interesting.

Correct. Kiva actually has a separate Twitter handle for her personal-life stuff, IIRC. She mostly posts design-related things. Occasionally threatens to block if you refuse her reality, which is fair enough, but otherwise she seems focused. As I mentioned when maneater Kassandra (sic?) made the cannibalistic poem, you have to understand what Twitter is as a platform. Minimalist dialogue options makes everyone snarky buttholes and I'm almost convinced that there's a countdown timer and you have to make sure everyone knows you're level with dissing dudes before it hits zero. That is a common theme across virtually every single designer I follow, the sole exception being Josh Sawyer who mostly posts about bikes, but he's never doing wheelies so I think I got a feel for where his loyalties lie.

 

[Black]

Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries will have a proper tuned economy system that will make you feel that those C-bills are truly earned.

Mechwarrior 5 is still being made by PGI.

 

[Alpharius]

- Ammo and armour automatically replenished after battle at no cost: Supposedly 'abstracted' into operating costs, but operating costs do not vary from a Locust to an Atlas as they didn't want people to feel negative about getting bigger mechs

The fuck??!!

People were asking about that since we saw this in the first PDX video:

Spoiler

Then in last Thursday's stream Kiva responded (timestamped link):
https://youtu.be/k0M0Nag4yuY?t=692

Damn, what is 6k cbills per month when you can do multiple 1kk cbills contracts per month in early game? Its as if the devs haven't got around to work on economy stuff at all. Its not the case of tweaking a few numbers here and there, the moders will have to pretty much redo the whole system from scratch.

 

[ArchAngel]

- Ammo and armour automatically replenished after battle at no cost: Supposedly 'abstracted' into operating costs, but operating costs do not vary from a Locust to an Atlas as they didn't want people to feel negative about getting bigger mechs

The fuck??!!

People were asking about that since we saw this in the first PDX video:

Spoiler

Then in last Thursday's stream Kiva responded (timestamped link):
https://youtu.be/k0M0Nag4yuY?t=692

Damn, what is 6k cbills per month when you can do multiple 1kk cbills contracts per month in early game? Its as if the devs haven't got around to work on economy stuff at all. Its not the case of tweaking a few numbers here and there, the moders will have to pretty much redo the whole system from scratch.

Yes but if you do missions poorly you will spend more money to repair mechs than you got from the mission. Replacing lost body parts and weapons seems to cost a lot.

 

[veevoir]

For scale - rebuilding a destroyed Locust/spider was +-300k and around the time those were still used by Cohh in his streams - missions paid pretty much the same.

But lack of ammo cost is also a balance issue, it should be an extra con for balistics, as currently it seems balistics of all kinds》lasers

 

[Spark Mandriller]

It seems to me like the problem with this game is that salvage is way too generous. There's no need to buy anything since you can just get loads of mechs/weapons as salvage, so of course you end up with too much money. If you had to spend money to buy good mechs instead of just getting them free after shooting their legs off then maybe you wouldn't have so much.
Then again, maybe you wouldn't. It's hard to judge right now.

 

[Alpharius]

- Ammo and armour automatically replenished after battle at no cost: Supposedly 'abstracted' into operating costs, but operating costs do not vary from a Locust to an Atlas as they didn't want people to feel negative about getting bigger mechs

The fuck??!!

People were asking about that since we saw this in the first PDX video:

Spoiler

Then in last Thursday's stream Kiva responded (timestamped link):
https://youtu.be/k0M0Nag4yuY?t=692

Damn, what is 6k cbills per month when you can do multiple 1kk cbills contracts per month in early game? Its as if the devs haven't got around to work on economy stuff at all. Its not the case of tweaking a few numbers here and there, the moders will have to pretty much redo the whole system from scratch.

Yes but if you do missions poorly you will spend more money to repair mechs than you got from the mission. Replacing lost body parts and weapons seems to cost a lot.

Someone on paradox forums calculated that its something like 300 c-bills for repairs and 1200 c-bills replacements per point of internal structure. So not that much unless you get multiple dead mechs after the mission.
Also i watched the stream where that cohn dude was getting his mechs destroyed pretty often (because ) and was still swimming in money. I expect to not lose a single one doing the same missions.

Anyway, if the only increase in expenses comes from repairs the economy doesn't "work". You will always spend less on repairs after doing a misson with 4 atlases(likely 0) than after doing the same mission with 4 locusts. And you can also do a "kill 5 tanks for 200k cbills" mission after which even locusts would be undamaged.

There needs to be some other money sink, like increased maintenance for heavy mechs compared to lights, increased salary for veteran pilots compared to rookies, increased expenses due to spending more ammo using more guns etc.

 

[ArchAngel]

For scale - rebuilding a destroyed Locust/spider was +-300k and around the time those were still used by Cohh in his streams - missions paid pretty much the same.

But lack of ammo cost is also a balance issue, it should be an extra con for balistics, as currently it seems balistics of all kinds》lasers

Missions that he played better (or savescummed). But if you do a couple of bad missions you are in trouble. You should get into position of needing to think about repairing mechs or paying monthly bills.

Now if the tactical missions are too easy then the blame is not the in cbill department.

 

[Bohr]

 

[Cael]

... did... did they put a mobile phone tower on top of that Catapult???

 

[ERYFKRAD]

a mobile phone tower on top of that Catapult???

See, that way, you'll receive your orders more clearly.

 

[Bohr]

Gotta put your fishing rod somewhere

 

[Cael]

a mobile phone tower on top of that Catapult???

See, that way, you'll receive your orders more clearly.

 

[Infinitron]

Mech Bay stream: