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KickStarter BATTLETECH - turn-based mech combat from Harebrained Schemes

Jason Liang

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You also have to keep in mind that Jordan Weisman didn't come up with all of the lore details. That was other people like Bob Charrette, Bryan Nystul and Michael Stackpole.

Just a reminder that Michael Stackpole is the father of Wasteland -> Fallout -> Black Isle -> Baldur's Gate -> modern CRPGs
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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MCA Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
It's not really that bad. He's simplifying the shit out of things, but he's not trying to give people the entire history of the setting. The comment about no interstellar communication is correct, since he was explaining how the great houses formed, which was way before HPGs were invented. The battlemech factories comment is accurate since there are only a tiny amount when you consider how big the IS is (the vast majority of planets don't have any way of producing their own mechs, even though they're the most important part of the setting). His description of the Amaris coup sucks like you said, but it doesn't matter since that's just backstory and he gets the major point across anyway (that being that the Terran Hegemony gets wrecked and the SLDF falls apart). Him getting the amount of time until Revival starts wrong is bad, but it doesn't matter since all that's important is that it happens after this game. I think the worst part is him having trouble remembering the Capellan Confederation's name. Like, come on. They're not minor. You should be able to remember them.
Hanse was expansionist as hell, by the way. He invaded the CC (even if it was revenge for Max being a dick, he was still happy to do it). He invaded the DC in 3039 too, even if it didn't work out. He had his guys work on black boxes just so they could keep attacking even if Comstar interdicted them (for being too good at invading people). He didn't backstab the DC while they were busy with the Clans, but that's because he's not an idiot and he realised that letting the Clans take over the DC would be a really bad situation for everyone, FedCom included. What would he have had to have done to qualify as expansionist in your opinion? Invade the FWL too?
Man, stop complaining about everything. I feel compelled to defend things so I have this massive post defending the game and now I look like a dumb fanboy. Well, maybe I am a dumb fanboy for defending it. In that case you need to stop giving me opportunities to be a dumb fanboy so I won't embarrass myself any further.
I think there's a much better way to look at the issue:

These are imaginary things, they aren't real.
 

Jimmious

Arcane
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May 18, 2015
Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
God damn the game jumps in difficulty!
Got my first dead mechwarrior from a fucking vehicle that was shooting a billion rockets at once
:salute:
brh5kh5f.ayo.jpg
 

Bohr

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Nov 20, 2012
Messages
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srm/lrm carriers are no joke, if they survive long enough to fire - people get lulled into thinking of vehicles as unthreatening by all those poorly maintained light vehicles in the early game
 

Cael

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Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,294
It's not really that bad. He's simplifying the shit out of things, but he's not trying to give people the entire history of the setting. The comment about no interstellar communication is correct, since he was explaining how the great houses formed, which was way before HPGs were invented. The battlemech factories comment is accurate since there are only a tiny amount when you consider how big the IS is (the vast majority of planets don't have any way of producing their own mechs, even though they're the most important part of the setting). His description of the Amaris coup sucks like you said, but it doesn't matter since that's just backstory and he gets the major point across anyway (that being that the Terran Hegemony gets wrecked and the SLDF falls apart). Him getting the amount of time until Revival starts wrong is bad, but it doesn't matter since all that's important is that it happens after this game. I think the worst part is him having trouble remembering the Capellan Confederation's name. Like, come on. They're not minor. You should be able to remember them.
Hanse was expansionist as hell, by the way. He invaded the CC (even if it was revenge for Max being a dick, he was still happy to do it). He invaded the DC in 3039 too, even if it didn't work out. He had his guys work on black boxes just so they could keep attacking even if Comstar interdicted them (for being too good at invading people). He didn't backstab the DC while they were busy with the Clans, but that's because he's not an idiot and he realised that letting the Clans take over the DC would be a really bad situation for everyone, FedCom included. What would he have had to have done to qualify as expansionist in your opinion? Invade the FWL too?
Man, stop complaining about everything. I feel compelled to defend things so I have this massive post defending the game and now I look like a dumb fanboy. Well, maybe I am a dumb fanboy for defending it. In that case you need to stop giving me opportunities to be a dumb fanboy so I won't embarrass myself any further.
Complete rank BS.

Simplifying things doesn't mean you get things wrong. And he was wrong. All your so-called "defense" are nothing but bullshit excuses. "It is OK because xyz." Or "It doesn't matter because it is not part of the game."

The guy simply does not know his stuff and he was making things up on the fly. The thing is, he has history of doing so. This is not the first time he has spouted nonsense in interviews. It basically shows that he never did his homework. Here is the other thing: as a professional, there is no worse category I can put him in: He does NOT know the subject matter in which he is supposed to be THE expert. He made BTech. How can you not know BASIC stuff about the setting when YOU made it?

Even in the days of the Star League, you didn't have 'mech factories everywhere. Read the 3025 TRO. Yes, some were destroyed, but more weren't. What was lost was JumpShip and WarShip production and high-tech items that were hard to produce en massed like ER lasers and LB-X autocannons. Most of those factories have been in use since the Star League days while some were actually built in the early 3000 (Blackjack, for example, was returned to production in 3022 by Hanse Davion).

Davion was more than happy to attack his enemies who had attacked him first. Takashi Kurita is one of those. It was Kurita who indirectly killed his brother (Yorinaga pulled the trigger, but the invasion was Takashi's thing). As I said: MORTAL ENEMIES. Look it up. Davion did not go after the CapCon after 3030 nor did he go after the periphery states next to him. He was more than happy to live and let live because he had other problems on his hands, one of which was ComStar. By Succession Lord standards, he was pretty darned mild. If you want expansionist, look at Sandoval, Takashi or the Anduriens.

I complain about things they got wrong because they were lazy. HBS has form in this. The fact that I can find so many things wrong with them should be an indication of the laziness of the entire studio. This is borne out by the quality of the game they tossed together.
 

Cael

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Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,294
srm/lrm carriers are no joke, if they survive long enough to fire - people get lulled into thinking of vehicles as unthreatening by all those poorly maintained light vehicles in the early game
Those carriers were never a joke in any BTech game. Even in MechCommander, they can strip you in seconds if you ignore them.

Canonically, LRM carriers had 3x LRM20 and SRM carriers had 10x SRM6. That would put a serious hole in any 'mech.
 

Jimmious

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Imagine that I didn't even ignore the bastard, I was fighting this LRM along with 2 more vehicles AND 3 mechs... as he proceeded to blast my shadowhawk to pieces within two turns :(
Fuuuu
 

Belegarsson

Think about hairy dwarfs all the time ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I had to restart Panzyr mission like 4 times because I kept messing up priority target on those SRM carriers and the control center part took a while to figure out. 4 evasion + cover status and my Centurion still lost 3 armor bars after eating one 10x SRM6 barrage. Luckily they are pretty easy to get OHK.
 

Bohr

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I know stuff like this was bound to happen, but had to chuckle at this one

WGxH3Q8B_o.png
 

Stavrophore

Most trustworthy slavic man
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Strap Yourselves In
I've played through tutorial missions, and game is pretty decent[apparently tutorial is pretty boring, and music in it is so repetitive and uninspiring, that's why i hated it in my earlier forum entry]. Plot is cheesy and cliche, bla bla bla you restore the good queen to power against ebul tyrant. Weapon selection so far is lacking[im after first real contract mission], they just differentiate by adding a suffix to a weapons name. Mech selection is decent. I completely don't mind the supposed SJW elements, you people are really looking for something that isnt there -leave your white supremacist fantasies to your dildo bedchamber with nazi gays shit. So far i hate the fact that i can't tell which enemy will act, there's no turn order queue. There's no indicator how much possible damage your attack can do, you have to add all dmg of your weapons by yourself.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria
That "no clear initiative order" thing is by design.

Potential damage to enemy is easy enough to calculate.
In game combat log would be nice though.


btw. Has anyone seen computer reserving its units for later phases?
 

Bohr

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Messages
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Ctrl + Shift + I Toggles the Debug / Fly Camera
Ctrl + Shift + U Toggles through All / InWorld / None for UI
Left Ctrl + K Takes a 4k screenshot with no UI (Note that screenshots will always be 4k regardless of current screen resolution.)
Left Ctrl + Left Shift + K Takes a 4k screenshot with the entire UI
Left Ctrl + Right Shift + K Takes a 4k screenshot with just the inworld UI (WIP)
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

Filthy Kalinite
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria
btw. Has anyone seen computer reserving its units for later phases?
hmmmm... id say "no" but i might have missed it... very rarely if at all
There are those coloured arrows that show how many units each side has for each initiative phase.
So far only times when I noticed AI units moving to latter phase was when they suffered initiative loss due to falling down.
 

Bohr

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Nov 20, 2012
Messages
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I think that was one of the first changes the AI modders made in the beta, allowing the AI to use reserve. I wonder if it's still turned off to give players an edge.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria
I think that was one of the first changes the AI modders made in the beta, allowing the AI to use reserve. I wonder if it's still turned off to give players an edge.
FFS.
They really need to add those options for tweaking difficulty sooner or later.
 

Elex

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Oct 17, 2017
Messages
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I've played through tutorial missions, and game is pretty decent[apparently tutorial is pretty boring, and music in it is so repetitive and uninspiring, that's why i hated it in my earlier forum entry]. Plot is cheesy and cliche, bla bla bla you restore the good queen to power against ebul tyrant. Weapon selection so far is lacking[im after first real contract mission], they just differentiate by adding a suffix to a weapons name. Mech selection is decent. I completely don't mind the supposed SJW elements, you people are really looking for something that isnt there -leave your white supremacist fantasies to your dildo bedchamber with nazi gays shit. So far i hate the fact that i can't tell which enemy will act, there's no turn order queue. There's no indicator how much possible damage your attack can do, you have to add all dmg of your weapons by yourself.
the game story is all about restoring traditional leadership and fight the rebels suffocating the rebellion with blood and getting rich by doing it.

it’s not the definitive nazi fantasy?
 

Agesilaus

Antiquity Studio
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Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex USB, 2014 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
How are people finding the higher level missions? I've had some real nailbiters around the level 4 difficulty. I haven't used the ejection option yet, but I also see that it's there for a purpose; all my original mechwarriors are dead now except for the player character, and I'm noticing that the repair bills can be pretty stiff.

Also, what mechs are people seeing/salvaging? Assaults are still a rarity in my game; I just saw my first one outside of actual plot missions. It was a highlander, which I singled out and salvaged by knocking it down and targeting its torso slots so the pilot died. Now I have 2 types of highlanders. In the plot missions, I've seen
Atlas II, Awesome, Zeus, Battlemaster, and Highlander
. No sign of any stalkers, banshees, or anything else (assuming there's something else). I also haven't seen a single, normal catapult in the game. I just keep seeing those dual ppc catapults.

Also, SRMs are my immortal enemy. One spawned next to me during the mission where you have to stop the APCs entering the spaceport, and I didn't see it. Next thing I knew, it blew the arm off my highlander costing me the only
gauss rifle
I've seen in the game (I don't think you can buy them?). Vehicles are brutal and the larger ones have a huge amount of armour, although I have a special hatred for SRM and LRM trucks because the animation is just one long "boom boom boom boom" as ten thousand little missiles ruin your day.

Anyone seen good special equipment or lostech for sale? I like the stuff that costs 0 tonnes, like the rangefinder, morale booster, and gyros. I found some arms that do +40 damage and legs that increase DFA, too, and lots of targeting computers.

Favourite load-outs? My favourite highlander is currently packing 2 ac10s on the right arm, small lasers in the right torso, lrm 20 in the left torso, lrm 10 on the left arm, and plenty of ammo. I have two orions that each pack an ac20 and a mix of srms and mlasers, which I find to be very effective.

In terms of lighter mechs, I am a big fan of two mediums: trebuchet and centurion. I usually take a trebuchet with 4 mlasers and 1 lrm20, it's very effective and cheap to fix. For the centurion, I gave up on packing an AC20 and now I just take an AC10, large laser, and med laser. I use it for sensor lock, and the AC/10 is perfect damage for head shots.
 
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Bohr

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Nov 20, 2012
Messages
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One of the devs (actually a backer who ended up moving across the country to work on the game) taking on the AI modder in pvp - if anyone is interested

 

Alpharius

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Mar 1, 2018
Messages
585
How are people finding the higher level missions? I've had some real nailbiters around the level 4 difficulty. I haven't used the ejection option yet, but I also see that it's there for a purpose; all my original mechwarriors are dead now except for the player character, and I'm noticing that the repair bills can be pretty stiff.
It seems that difficulty rating is bullshit more often than not. Had 5-skull assasination mission recently where i had to kill one heavy vehicle and then a lance of 3 mediums and one heavy with half armor using my 4 assaults. Though all missions are easy when you have 4 assaults or even 4 heavies.

Also, what mechs are people seeing/salvaging? Assaults are still a rarity in my game; I just saw my first one outside of actual plot missions. It was a highlander, which I singled out and salvaged by knocking it down and targeting its torso slots so the pilot died. Now I have 2 types of highlanders. In the plot missions, I've seen
Atlas II, Awesome, Zeus, Battlemaster, and Highlander
. No sign of any stalkers, banshees, or anything else (assuming there's something else). I also haven't seen a single, normal catapult in the game. I just keep seeing those dual ppc catapults.
Same here, though i've got two stalkers on one mission.

Anyone seen good special equipment or lostech for sale? I like the stuff that costs 0 tonnes, like the rangefinder, morale booster, and gyros. I found some arms that do +40 damage and legs that increase DFA, too, and lots of targeting computers.
Also saw some targeting computer(+1 to hit for missles) and a cockpit mod which allows to ignore injuries.

Favourite load-outs? My favourite highlander is currently packing 2 ac10s on the right arm, small lasers in the right torso, lrm 20 in the left torso, lrm 10 on the left arm, and plenty of ammo. I have two orions that each pack an ac20 and a mix of srms and mlasers, which I find to be very effective.
I just pack everything full of srm6 and med lasers and get lots of heatsinks. For assaults and heavies packing max jumpjets seems useful too, cause they are pretty slow otherwise. Also i usually bring one dedicated lurmboat.

Btw, it seems there are more than 10 story missions, more like 15 or 20, and they are mostly not so shit. So i'm raising my rating for this game from shit+ to mediocre-.
 
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Country_Gravy

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Wasteland 2
I just pack everything full of srm6 and med lasers and get lots of heatsinks. For assaults and heavies packing max jumpjets seems useful too, cause they are pretty slow otherwise. Also i usually bring one dedicated lurmboat.


Don't fucking do that.
 

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