Battletech

I think they've avoided the unseen mechs altogether (HB is using a bunch of assets from Piranha IIRC).

MWO/Piranha tried to get around that with re-designs, but I'm not sure what's going on there with Harmony Gold.

 

skip the unseen lol
that's a bad place to go

 

It is incredible we have not seen any big budget films based upon the Battletech world, especially with some of the books that had good content/concept.
You would think Hollywood would jump at something like this, instead of doing Pacific Rim freaking 2.

 

I think it'd be difficult to do it justice given how extensive the lore is. It'd probably be better suited towards a series (Netflix? SyFy etc. ).

Something along the lines of Frank Herbert's Dune mini-series might be fine depending on the scope.

I dunno. I feel like the Pacific Rim movies (& Bayformers) are pretty dumbed down because it's the only way to get people to head to the theatres for that explosive experience to unwind for a couple hours. /cynic

 

I was thinking the same thing, but about Gundam. LOL!

 

Actually Piranha has been sharing art assets with Hairbrained Schemes according to both developers. The two companies have been cooperating together. I wonder if that cooperation is what has prompted Piranha to develop a single player MechWarrior game. IE - after seeing fan hype for Battletech and talking with the Hairbrained Schemes guys, they started to get interested in a single player version of the game.

Also, wrapped up all my work for the day and about to start Battletech. WOOOOOO. So excited. This is currently high on my watchlist for Game of the Year. I'm hoping it lives up to my expectations.

Regards,
SB

 

After Cresent Hawks battletech games, I was sold on the Kickstarter after finding out it was the same designer.

Looking forward to booting it up as well today. Gotta shut off my mining rig LOL

 

Looking forward to Mech5:Mercs too, but I hope they create some sort of PvE wave survival mode.

 

OK, only done the tutorial mission and introduction mission so far, and the game feels great. Comparing how I did in the intro mission (first one with you as part of the mercenary crew) to how one of my favorite streams did in the same mission shows just how important good solid tactics are.

Watching CohhCarnage when he played it for the first time, his mechs took heavy damage which meant large fees to repair and refit his mechs. But then he's new to Battletech (boardgame ruleset which this game uses) while being a fan from the old OLD MechWarrior games on PC. So he rushed in without regard to effective weapon distance, cover, and planning out an effective tactical approach to the battlefield, and a whole lot of other considerations.

Having played both the tabletop version of the game as well as previous strategic title on PC, I came out of the mission taking minimal damage and incurring very minor repair costs. While this is early in the game and the mission was meant to be easy, it's good to see that the tactical aspect of the game is most definitely there.

The enemy AI is generally good, but can fall apart sometimes. IE - it'll focus fire to try to take down a mech like a player would, but sometimes it's choice of mech target prioritization leaves me scratching my head.

Also really loving how much lore they've packed into just simple conversations. They provide highlighted words and phrases in conversation that you can hover your mouse over to get more detail on it (events, places, important characters in the Battletech lore, etc.) which fills out knowledge of the game world. It's a very nice touch to get new people into the fascinating lore in the Battletech universe as well as a nice reminder for experienced players who may have been away from the universe for a long time (like me ).

And best of all. Without a console version, nothing feels overly consolified. Mouse and KB works as you'd expect. Keybindings actually work correctly unlike most console ports. There are, of course, the expected graphics options.

So far, a very good impression of the game.

Regards,
SB

 

weird realization that everyone in this thread is also on my xbox friends list. haha

 

I got focus-fired on the intro, and lost an hour. I think I'll shelve this until the weekend. Combined with long loading times, I'm not sure I want to tackle this until I can binge it.

 

Ended up playing until 2 in the morning before i forced myself to go to bed to be ready for work.

Really enjoy the game so far, gotten as far as having located the Argo, and so far all my mechwarriors are still alive, though a couple have been dinged up abit.

A couple of tips.

1) Evasion pips are good, so try to keep moving as much as possible to get as many evasion pips as possible.
2) Cover is also nice, i always try to end up in a forest or similiar for bonuses.
3) There is no shame in pulling back a mech if it starts getting focused.
4) Sometimes reserving down to a later phase so you keep your evasion pips/cover/bonuses, or until enemy moves to a better spot for you is smart.
5) If one side of your mech is badly damaged, make sure you move so you face your uninjured side to the enemies (while you are still able to shoot)

 

Short break from playing this way too long. Multiple hours already, and I'm loving it.

This is definitely more along the lines of a simulator. Even the business side of things is simulated and if you don't make sure to take care of your finances, you can quickly enter a death spiral. Not doing at least relatively well in combat will just accelerate that process.

Trying to balance creds, salvage or reputation for a mission is almost maddening sometimes. You need creds to make sure you keep everything repaired and running. You need salvage as that's the best way to get better mechs and weapons. You need rep for, well, I'm not sure what you need rep for yet. Someday I'll find out. Right now I'm just trying to balance creds vs. salvage.

Occasionally I'll get it completely wrong. For example one mission I went for 2/8 salvage (2 you pick and 6 random) which meant only 1 notch of 4 for creds (so low creds). What happened? 5 total pieces of salvage were salvageable. ARGH. Another time I went low 1/4 salvage but high 3 notches for creds. What happened, ARGH, so much good salvage and I could only pick 1 and then I got unlucky with the 3 randoms...ARGH!!!

I love it.

Regards,
SB

 

Game keeps crashing on me, so.......... yeah.

 

Strange ? Steam ? If so, try to verify game files.

Or if you have a very slow computer (or slow disk), i've heard people say the OS things game has crashed, but if they just wait a couple of minutes it's ok.

 

Steam. It was a hard crash with error logs - they even have a window come up to say to submit them, but I don't know how to do that unless they meant signing up on their forums. It crashed right after the end of the intro mission, so now I gotta redo it for a 3rd time, but I probably won't until it gets a director's cut that fixes everything next year if they do such a thing. I've got enough other things to keep me occupied, tbh. Dealing with PC problems ain't on the checklist.

The game's just buggy - even alt-tabbing causes instability.

 

Guess it varies from setup to setup. I played for 8 hours straight last night without a single crash or hickup.

 

Yeah, fair enough. I can already tell there are some things they could improve with the UI anyway, so I hope they eventually address things like they did with the Shadowrun games.

Oh well.

 

i went 1.5 hours to get through the first mission. damn. lol. way longer than I thought.
pretty good, can't wait to start the next set of missions and really start to get into the mech lab.

 

Ouch that's unfortunate. I almost played for 24 hours straight. I haven't done that since the 90's. Damn. I did have to restart the game once as it seemed to get kind of sluggish around 12 hours into the game. Weird hitching at times during gameplay, slow level loading, etc.

Going to have to try to control my desire to play this game.

If this keeps up, this will easily be my game of the year. But it's definitely not a game for everyone.

Ooof, and Pillars of Eternity 2 is coming out soon. Good-bye life.

Regards,
SB