Battletech

So, turns out Hairbrained Scemes(the guys behind the new Shadowrun games) has partnered up with Jordan Weisman(the guy who CREATED Battletech) and launched a kickstarter for a new, tactical turn-based mech combat game(a la the Mechcommander series) set in the "Classic" era (specifically 3025). They've already got a base game funded by themselves, but they want money to flesh it out from a bare-bones mech skirmish sim to a full Battletech experience! Right now, they've been running for onyl 3 days but already have 1.4 mil, with 25 or so days left, so there's time to get in on the action.

Link to the Kickstarter

Personally, my only experience with Battletech is playing Mech Warrior 4 and messing around with Mech Warrior Online. Otherwise, I haven't played any of the tactical strategy games, but this project has me interested and I'll be keeping an eye on it. Thought also you guys might like to as well!

This is not really the first time they partenered with him since he is also the creator of Shadowrun. But most already knew that.

The project is well-made, the goals are reasonable and the concept art is pretty damn cool. I'm interested in seeing what they'll do, I liked the Shadowrun games especially Dragonfall and Hong Kong.

Double post but how is the actual BattleTech tabletop doing now?

Also, kudos to the developers on apparently having better art than most of the books

Unfortunately the answer was as professional as one goes.

edited 6th Oct '15 12:40:02 PM by YoKab

Well, popular enough to have people demo new stuff in a roleplaying(they had boardgames too for some reason) con I guess?

Just goes to show how much I keep up with when it comes to tabletops these days, except the ones I currently play.

edited 6th Oct '15 1:58:19 PM by YoKab

Battletech has had a roleplaying game (called MechWarrior) attached to it for years, almost since the beginning. (Granted, I haven't kept up with it myself, but I have some of the old sourcebooks.)

I'm pretty excited myself. I'm confident the guys behind the project can pull it off! Who knows, maybe it'll get some new blood into the community?

Also that concept art is sweet as hell.

As someone who enjoyed the hell out of MechWarrior 4 and Mech Commander 2, as well as HBS's Shadowrun games, I'm pretty hype for this.

Shame I lost my copy of MW 4 + Mek Pak

edited 6th Oct '15 2:14:28 PM by Balmung

Update! with 20 days to go, the kickstarter is closing in on that 1.85mil goal of the expanded mercenary campaign! It's at about 1.7 right now, so unless they simply stop receiving funding it's probably a given they'll get it.

Update:Stage 3 Funded!

Stage 4 funded!

edited 2nd Nov '15 8:34:33 AM by YoKab

New article from RPS about this one:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/11/15/battletechs-campaign-mode-is-a-robot-dark-ages/

Basically - nice open world, interesting campaign, varied missions. And a long term desire to do some grand strategy paradox style game in the Battletech universe.

Rather exciting!

Game launches tonight, so here's a brief look from Polygon. Haven't seen any reviews popping up yet, so will be interesting to see. Frankly, I think it'll be good - they did a great job with Shadowrun.

https://www.polygon.com/videos/2018/4/19/17256156/battletech-lets-play-video-harebrained-schemes

I was a fan of the cartoon, silly though it might have been at times. Also Davion and Davion (Deceased) was great lol.

Planning to pick it up if it isn't struck by the Paradox curse of Day 1 launch bugs.

84 on Metacritic so far. Seems pretty good, will try it tonight.

I'd be playing it after work today, but the Linux version won't be out for a few months yet.

So.... anyone played the game yet. If so, how was it?

Haven’t bought it yet. Waiting to get paid.

Makes sense then. May or may not gotta check it out sometime

Out of curiosity, I decided to take a look at the game's page on Steam, complete with early Steam reviews. I did learn two things:

1) The authentication/login process is borked to high hell, with it being basically a coin flip if you can even get into the game at all. So, definitely not a day one purchase.

2) Among the various character customization options, there is apparently an option to choose your character's preferred pronoun (from he, she, or they). Guess how well that went over with certain nice people.

Played it.

I'd give it a 7 out of 10? I am not the person with the biggest attachment tot he Tabletop to begin with.

Pros: It's got a nice tactical depth. Solid fundamentals. Looks nice. Presentation is fun, and does do a good job giving you a feel for the lore of Battletech.

Cons: The game lacks polish. The UI is terribad. Lots of gauges and bars the game never explains and who are unnamed. Weapon damage is a numeric value, but enemy health doesn't have such values so how good a gun is against a given enemy is hard to gauge. Even planning movement several turns ahead is rough as it's hard to gauge where you can move or not. The tutorial is minimalistic and expects you to really be a battletech player. It's really more a tutorial for BT players teaching them the controls of the videogame than a turtorial teaching you how to play the videogame. It's also SLOW as fuck. Movement is slow, shooting is slow. I know it's a tactical game, so it's not something you play in a rush, but after an hour I was sort of becoming annoyed and wishing for a "Fast mode" that just accelerates everything.

Oh, and the game's autosave are non existent, Pro tip: Manually save after every encounter in a mission. Otherwise you can lose an hour of progress if you fuck up a later objective as nothing you did since the mission starts gets saved.

Honestly, in an hour I've not even seen anyone refer to my character by pronoun. It's either "You" or your callsign. I mean, It's nice to be there (Also you get a lot of customization options for your character's look, which considering you don't see more than a portrait, is weird. W Ish they'd spent that time make the UI not suck)

edited 24th Apr '18 5:02:48 PM by Ghilz

Bit more play done. The Mercenary company management is pretty fun, feels like an extention of the way runs worked in the later two shadowrun, with the finances and stuff.

Game is glitchy. Got a mission where keyboard keys stopped working. Another where my mechs were untextured - just ghostly purple silhouettes.

Rockpapershotgun's review is pretty lacklustre - he likes the components but really focuses on how SLOW the game apparently is.

But PC Gamer see that as a plus, as each encounter carries weight. I have some Steam vouchers so going to give it a go. Need something slower paced.

So from what I gathered, good game but somewhat of an Obvious Beta. Right?