Battletech - Kickstarter game pre release game play

Nody

All I can say OMG give me noaw!!1

And yes; I did happily back it on Kickstarter; for those who missed out go buy it!

It has been so long that I've waited for another proper Battletech game.

Kiith

Is this a turn based battletech game (having issues seeing the video in work at the moment)? That looks pretty amazing from what i can see.

Spear

Kiith wrote: »

Is this a turn based battletech game (having issues seeing the video in work at the moment)? That looks pretty amazing from what i can see.

Yes, it's fully turn based. And full release is April 24th too.

For those on Steam, here's the store page:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/637090/BATTLETECH/

Jayd0g

This looks really cool!

Potential-Monke

Spear wrote: »

Yes, it's fully turn based.

Aaaaaand I'm out. Pity, looks good.

Doge

Potential-Monke wrote: »

Aaaaaand I'm out. Pity, looks good.

Would prefer a proper mech game myself also, tis been a while.

_CreeD_

Doge wrote: »

Would prefer a proper mech game myself also, tis been a while.

it is a 'proper' Mech game, it's the original Board Game, Mechwarrior etc. were mutations .
I absolutely loved the board game, it just took too long to play. Back in college I designed approx. 20 custom mechs, completely from scratch since when they released the Clan updates none of the Inner Sphere units used the L3 computer system, all of mine did with a full 4x Lance mesh. Co-ordinating they could kick the living ****e out of an equivalent Clan force. Unfortunately that also meant no one would play me anymore .
I may have been a little obsessive...

Doge

_CreeD_ wrote: »

it is a 'proper' Mech game, it's the original Board Game, Mechwarrior etc. were mutations .
I absolutely loved the board game, it just took too long to play. Back in college I designed approx. 20 custom mechs, completely from scratch since when they released the Clan updates none of the Inner Sphere units used the L3 computer system, all of mine did with a full 4x Lance mesh. Co-ordinating they could kick the living ****e out of an equivalent Clan force. Unfortunately that also meant no one would play me anymore .
I may have been a little obsessive...

Ah i just meant a real time combat game in First Person and especially in VR.

Vox Machine looks promising but I'd rather see something bigger budget with cooler mechs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtHeHsBCSe0

Doge

Is the Battletech franchise anyway related to the Battletech Animated series?

I remember my jaw used drop at the "enhanced imaging" computer graphics scenes when I was a kid, now not so much!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-_-8D8R4CU

Would love to see a mech game in that environment in VR.

_CreeD_

Doge wrote: »

Is the Battletech franchise anyway related to the Battletech Animated series?

Yup they're related, there's a pretty hefty series of books also.

I agree the real-time action games would be a great contender for VR treatment.

degrassinoel

this is on my wishlist, haven't played a good mech game since MC/2 and MW3 nearly 20 years ago

Kiith

I loved MW4. Cheesy FMV's and all.

Jayd0g

It's live! Very tempted to pull the trigger.

Sephiroth_dude

Fairly hardcore gameplay wise is it? tempted here as well, looks awesome.

Jayd0g

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Fairly hardcore gameplay wise is it? tempted here as well, looks awesome.

Reading through a few reviews at the moment. Hardcore seems to be appropriate in this case. Lots of words like "slog", "waiting" and "boring" being used.

The technical detail, systems and need to think carefully about positioning and tactics look to be in place. Sounds like it needs a "skip to end of unit turn" feature to keep things moving along.

Personally I'm going to hold off for now and see what a few more patches bring.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/04/24/battletech-review-pc/

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-04-24-battletech-review-long-overdue-turn-based-spin-on-a-strategy-great

degrassinoel

it's awesome. mech pun intended.

imagine XCOM with less overwatch and more options on what weapons to fire, or alphastrike everything and blow yourself up for fun.

It's not for rookie TBS players at all.

The tutorials are almost non-existent, the game expects you to know basic stuff like group firing, single weapon fire, calling shots etc..

You'll pick it up easily enough but there's a harsh learning curve for that and for customising your mech's loadout - it's pretty hard to fail at it but it will cost you valuable days and potentially months of ingame time to repair and refit a mech or recuperate a wounded mechwarrior. So your fcukups in battle do have enormous repercussions as well as you messing up a fitting job on your shiny new mech.

runs reasonably well with an SSD - load times are 20 seconds maximum between battles, i imagine it's longer with mechanical drives.

Looks good, bit janky on action cams ala XCOM with terrain spoiling the view of the mechs etc.. to be expected though.

The gameplay and tactics are very very well done.

There's a feel of RPG to the game which is nice, it's not strictly that way, but you skill up various piloting trees and gain benefits from those, so thats nice.

There's an actual decent story to it! Imagine that?

9/10 from me

Patser

Pulled trigger, agree with all DeGrassiNoel has to say.

Really missing a sort of xcom pedia or research lab - if only to explain what each weapon is, it's strengths and weaknesses, and this coming from someone that played the table top game (briefly years ago)

It's more a case of here's mech, go fight, figure it out along way.

Spear

If anyone hasn't realised, hover the mouse over any yellow text to get an explanatory tool tip on the lore after a few seconds.

Canis Lupus

I feel it could be prettier...... Such a shallow thing but it's a bit dull to look at.

The game feels too fast once you do an action. I want more lumbering behemoths and slower shooting/lasers etc.

The 'action/cinematic' camera is a bit off as well. I've watched the side of a mountain whilst my mechs did an action.

Seems like the game will be fun though.

The turn options are strange to me. I somehow get to action Mastiff on his own then Kamea and then my own mech as a pairing or I can reserve a unit??

EDIT: and yes it badly needs an encyclopedia to tell me what each mech is and what weapons do etc.

Dcully

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wymN7O2CvEY

Nody

Canis Lupus wrote: »

The turn options are strange to me. I somehow get to action Mastiff on his own then Kamea and then my own mech as a pairing or I can reserve a unit??

Every turn consists of 4 phases; depending on your (or the enemy!) pilot & mech you get to take action in phase 1, 2, 3 or 4. If you and the enemy are both in one phase you take turns to complete all moves etc. in that phase and then move on to the next phase.

If you reserve a unit that means you skip over your phase and get to wait out one phase to see if the enemy will come close enough etc. (you can reserve all the way to phase 4 if you want) but at the risk of being shot before you get to act.

As far as game play; yea it's unforgiving and no cushy "here's a few easy games for ya" but I love it. If you like Mechwarrior/Battletech universe and/or games and don't need first person shooter version this is something to pick up.

Sephiroth_dude

Can you adjust the difficulty to make it easier or is just on setting? ACG said the few mission are easy and after its gets hard?

Nody

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Can you adjust the difficulty to make it easier or is just on setting? ACG said the few mission are easy and after its gets hard?

Did not see any settings for difficulty when I started the campaign but that does not mean it might exist as I've not looked for it.

TheValeyard

Heard it seriously bugged. Ill wait for a couple patches then buy

Patser

And with TalkingSkulls timely contribution, looks like I'm out.

Can't get by 2nd mission - 3 years later - due to a crash, that seems to be affecting quite a few. Yes my graphic card isn't great, but should make minimum. What's frustrating is that the game plays alright, then I get post mission debrief, mech review annnd crash. Same as others.

What's so special after that that kills the gpu that game can handle..... bugger

Canis Lupus

Yeah I'm getting a lot of crashes as well. Pain in the hoop. Despite not being terribly pretty the game really stresses out the gfx card. I'm downloading the newly released Nvidia drivers to see if that possibly helps.

SeantheMan

Canis Lupus wrote: »

I feel it could be prettier...... Such a shallow thing but it's a bit dull to look at.

I got that from the videos I watched too. I was very unimpressed.
For me personally it looks like something from 7-8 years ago, maybe longer.
Starcraft 2 and Company of Heroes, which came out 8 and 12 years ago respectively look better than this tbh.

degrassinoel

streaming a new campaign there now if ye wanna take a look

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhsqInc18As

I don't quite understand the mechanics yet. The yellow bar is a mystery to me. It seems to go up when you get damaged. You have two HP bars by the looks of things. Sometimes I one-shot tanks, sometimes I don't. I have no idea what the effectiveness of each weapon is. Interesting that you have to sprint to increase evasion. It's like its trying to add RTS elements to turn-based strategy.

Spear

Deleted User wrote: »

I don't quite understand the mechanics yet. The yellow bar is a mystery to me. It seems to go up when you get damaged. You have two HP bars by the looks of things. Sometimes I one-shot tanks, sometimes I don't. I have no idea what the effectiveness of each weapon is. Interesting that you have to sprint to increase evasion. It's like its trying to add RTS elements to turn-based strategy.

The yellow bar is stability. Maxing it out causes a knock down of a mech. Kinetic energy weapons provide more instability.

Spear

Spear wrote: »

The yellow bar is stability. Maxing it out causes a knock down of a mech. Kinetic energy weapons provide more instability.

What are the two hp bars? I've done a bit of googling and came up with nothing about the HUD.

Spear

Deleted User wrote: »

What are the two hp bars? I've done a bit of googling and came up with nothing about the HUD.

Red is structure, white is armour.

It really isn't friendly to beginners. You'll see DFA listed in the attacks from the very start, but I haven't seen it explained that it's Death From Above, which is a jump jet attack landing on an enemy, hence the self damage in red in brackets.

Canis Lupus

I'm lucky that I've played Mechwarrior online so I understand some things

Shiminay

So I've been pretty much stuck into this since it was released and I've learned some things.

First of all, it is somewhat unstable, but I found moving to windowed mode instead of fullscreen has been a big help. There's some optimisation work to be done for sure as I get pretty fierce framerate drops at times. I'm just going to install the latest Nvidia drivers now to see if I get any improvements.

As for the game itself - it's challenging, bordering on properly hard. The cinematics accompanying the story looks great and gives it a real space opera feel. The mix of managing your business and stomping all over things is done very well and now that I'm also managing upgrades to my ship, it'll be more of a challenge. You have a monthly bill to be paid and from there you can determine how much you're paying out for the next month (you can save money at the cost of team morale).

I've already started a second attempt which has been a much happier time after getting brutalised in my first attempt). Take some time to do 2 or 3 additional missions before advancing the story (there are 3 significant missions that start the story off, they're the same every playthrough with some minor variation depending on your chosen backstory). Doing this will let your pilots learn some skills, let you find some useful salvage and learn what sorts of ways to play your individual mechs. Sensor Lock is great against light mechs as it removes 2 Evasive which will make your subsequent shots against that target more manageable and as an added bonus, you'll be able to launch LRMs at the target from pretty much anywhere. I have a modified Centurian medium mech that has 3 LRM10's including an upgraded one I bought in a shop, so I'm shooting 30 missiles which will take most mechs to Unsteady which will leave some others to finish knocking it over. I put a guy with Evasive and Sensor Lock in a light mech to spot for the artillery Centurian and it punishes Light and Medium mechs hard.

There's a cover mechanic that isn't terribly clear (scenery acts as an obstruction for direct fire, but not for missile salvos if you've been spotted) and it's important to keep your Evasive stat up unless you've got Bulwark on your pilot. Try to pick individuals off from the pack if you can, I'm sure that goes without saying, but if you get ganged up on, you can be in real trouble, even with mostly light mechs stripping your armour away. Heat Management takes a bit of getting used to, but once you remember where to look on the screen (middle of the left edge of the screen), you'll be grand. Remember to spend your morale out on the field; Vigilance will keep you alive and Precision Shot will make the baddies dead

Canis Lupus

One thing I'd like to get a bit more understanding on is optimal weapon ranges. Is there any indicator in the game? Or is my chance to hit with certain weapons just based on the landscape/cover of the enemy?

EDIT: Ah ok so when I move, depending on what weapons I have turned on the brightest part of the arc is the optimal range for all those weapons. That helps.

TerrorFirmer

Doge wrote: »

Ah i just meant a real time combat game in First Person and especially in VR.

Vox Machine looks promising but I'd rather see something bigger budget with cooler mechs.

I didn't realise there was a newer version of that out. I played the original demo on the DK1 and DK2 and even then it was one of the best demonstrations available (though a little boring).

degrassinoel

Canis Lupus wrote: »

One thing I'd like to get a bit more understanding on is optimal weapon ranges. Is there any indicator in the game? Or is my chance to hit with certain weapons just based on the landscape/cover of the enemy?

EDIT: Ah ok so when I move, depending on what weapons I have turned on the brightest part of the arc is the optimal range for all those weapons. That helps.

ye cant see it very well if at all on snow maps though

Kirby

Canis Lupus wrote: »

One thing I'd like to get a bit more understanding on is optimal weapon ranges. Is there any indicator in the game? Or is my chance to hit with certain weapons just based on the landscape/cover of the enemy?

EDIT: Ah ok so when I move, depending on what weapons I have turned on the brightest part of the arc is the optimal range for all those weapons. That helps.

There is an Arc as you say that will be different shades of grey to tell you range. Also, after you have clicked to move somewhere but before you confirm it, you can mouse over enemy mechs and it tells you in the bottom right the percentages to hit.

There is also the chevron system so you can tell at a glance. As you mouse over move locations with your own mech, the enemy mech will have 1 to 4 chevrons on either side of him....each of these chevrons represent your weapons. The chevrons turn from grey, to white, to yellow etc. which tells you at a glance what the best range is for your particular weapons.

So for example if you have a mech with 1 Large laser and 4 medium lasers and you look at the ENEMY mech.....at long range the enemy will have one chevron.....for the large laser. When you move closer, he will now have 2 chevrons as your medium lasers are in range. They change colour to indicate the best range.

Canis Lupus

Is there a time limit/penalty for delaying the priority/storyline? missions or will I just run out of side contracts?


I remember on my first playthrough of Xcom taking my time and then reading that the longer you take you get sh*thard enemies in a really tough level that you could have avoided by speeding through the storyline instead. Just assuming something like that won't be happening here.

Anyone mess with the default mech loadouts yet?

Negotiating contracts. Do you prioritise anything in particular or leave as default?

degrassinoel

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Is there a time limit/penalty for delaying the priority/storyline? missions or will I just run out of side contracts?


I remember on my first playthrough of Xcom taking my time and then reading that the longer you take you get sh*thard enemies in a really tough level that you could have avoided by speeding through the storyline instead. Just assuming something like that won't be happening here.

Anyone mess with the default mech loadouts yet?

Negotiating contracts. Do you prioritise anything in particular or leave as default?

There's no penalty for delaying, you're actually encouraged to do this in one of the early story missions.

loadouts are fun when you customise them!

Contracts, depends on what you need more, cash or gear, always handy to have 1 priority salvage incase you run into a badass mech you dont have yet, or a rare (+++) bit of gear

Canis Lupus

degrassinoel wrote: »

There's no penalty for delaying, you're actually encouraged to do this in one of the early story missions.

loadouts are fun when you customise them!

Contracts, depends on what you need more, cash or gear, always handy to have 1 priority salvage incase you run into a badass mech you dont have yet, or a rare (+++) bit of gear

That's good to hear. Took a contract there and whilst I won I got fairly rekted. Repairs and healing was over a month. Learning with each battle though.


EDIT: Are light mechs really worth keeping around? I put my scout pilot into a medium mech and the lack of view distance was negligible vs increased firepower/armor although it is early days I suppose. I have just picked up an Locust 1s that will be packed with SRMs that might make me change my mind otherwise the starting light mechs are a bit puny.

degrassinoel

When i do use them, i use them as scouts. A mechwarrior with sensor lock and piloting can do a lot of good in one.

Personal preference though, they tend to have a few stacks of evasion if you can keep them out of combat as opportunistic scouts, try to back them up with LRM carriers or AC snipers.

Canis Lupus

Canis Lupus wrote: »

That's good to hear. Took a contract there and whilst I won I got fairly rekted. Repairs and healing was over a month. Learning with each battle though.


EDIT: Are light mechs really worth keeping around? I put my scout pilot into a medium mech and the lack of view distance was negligible vs increased firepower/armor although it is early days I suppose. I have just picked up an Locust 1s that will be packed with SRMs that might make me change my mind otherwise the starting light mechs are a bit puny.

They are essential for using long range weapons. Sensor lock removes all evasion from a target. Then bomb them with LRM's and PPC.

Shiminay

I now have a pair of Assault mechs and a handful of Heavies. I haven't used a Light mech since I was able to field all Medium (and now I mostly 1-shot them as soon as they appear). Sure, it's nice to be able to run around, but when you're facing 12 other mechs and support vehicles, I'd rather have 4 mechs and not 3.2.

But that's just me :P

VinLieger

Deleted User wrote: »

What are the two hp bars? I've done a bit of googling and came up with nothing about the HUD.

Great vid that explains the entire UI here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QckUSyYM2Fw

Kirby

Deleted User wrote: »

They are essential for using long range weapons. Sensor lock removes all evasion from a target. Then bomb them with LRM's and PPC.

Doesn't. Only removes 2 chevrons.

Canis Lupus

Running a mission. Long enough one, placed everything well, took out the enemy mechs really nicely keeping my damage to a minimum, lrm'd turrets to death just had to shoot some buildings. PC locks up.

UGH... dis game...

Kirby

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Running a mission. Long enough one, placed everything well, took out the enemy mechs really nicely keeping my damage to a minimum, lrm'd turrets to death just had to shoot some buildings. PC locks up.

UGH... dis game...

Running a mission. Long one. Played everything beautifully. Kill last mech. Dropship arrives for evac...……………..and lands on Dekker killing him instantly.

:mad:


I don't normally reload but that was such bullsh*t I had to.

Canis Lupus

Kirby wrote: »

Running a mission. Long one. Played everything beautifully. Kill last mech. Dropship arrives for evac...……………..and lands on Dekker killing him instantly.

:mad:


I don't normally reload but that was such bullsh*t I had to.

bwahahaha Isn't there an indicator on the ground that shows when there's the danger of that happening? Sure I've seen it :P

Is there a way to speed moves up in the game? I was doing an escort mission and having to watch the fecking AI move 4 trucks slowly was enough to drive me mad.

Also as just a general comment the missions can be a bit unclear at times. I've had missions where I think I'm just clearing some initial mechs before moving onto the meat and so I play conservatively, saving my armor etc then once those mech die I find that was it and I could have just blitzed it.

Jayd0g

Canis Lupus wrote: »

bwahahaha Isn't there an indicator on the ground that shows when there's the danger of that happening? Sure I've seen it :P

Is there a way to speed moves up in the game? I was doing an escort mission and having to watch the fecking AI move 4 trucks slowly was enough to drive me mad.

Also as just a general comment the missions can be a bit unclear at times. I've had missions where I think I'm just clearing some initial mechs before moving onto the meat and so I play conservatively, saving my armor etc then once those mech die I find that was it and I could have just blitzed it.

Looks like you're not the only one craving a speed up button, reports that this will be present in Update 1

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/05/03/battletech-patch-plans/

degrassinoel

official blurb is that they're rolling out that fix as well as unexpected DLC - it actually sounds like they werent expecting the warm reception the game is getting.

as seen on their steam announcement yesterday:

BATTLETECH: What's Next?
First of all, to our Backers and new players alike - thank you for your incredible outpouring of love and support last week following the launch of BATTLETECH, and for sharing so many of your amazing game experiences with us. As a small developer, these stories mean the world to us. It's why we do this.

From the heartfelt reactions of our Backers, to the kind words from reviewers, to the epic marathons on YouTube, to the hysterical reactions on Twitch, to the goofy memes floating through social media, this week has been a whirlwind and we are thrilled to be on this ride with you.

Extra kind words and fun clip links:
Waypoint[waypoint.vice.com]
Polygonurl]www.polygon.com[/url
GameWatcherurl]www.gamewatcher.com[/url
Twitch Clip 1[clips.twitch.tv]
Twitch Clip 2[clips.twitch.tv]
Twitch Clip 3[clips.twitch.tv]
We could easily fill this entire post and more just rounding up press and fan reactions to the game - but we'd rather talk about what's next. From the start of this project, we've viewed launch not as the end of the road, but as the birth of a living product. Over the course of development, you might recall that we often answered speculative questions about post-launch features or content with, "in success, all things are possible."

Well - thanks to you, this is the success we hoped for. And many things are now possible! We're working with Paradox on a roadmap for the next year of BATTLETECH development. This will include regular bugfixing, quality-of-life improvements, and free Updates adding new features to the game. Here's a look at the next few months of that roadmap.

****BATTLETECH Post-Launch Roadmap****

1. Compatibility / Performance Investigations
Our launch last week wasn't perfect. A subset of players are experiencing hardware/system compatibility and performance issues that our team is working hard to investigate. Solutions for critical issues are always our top priority, and will be released as soon as they're available and tested. Typically, we will release patches to our public_beta branch on Steam for a few days for testing before we push them to the default branch.

On that note - last Friday we released our first patch to the public_beta branch for testing. Today, that 1.0.1 Patch went live - you can read the full changelog here. We expect to release more patches to public_beta in the coming days and weeks.

2. General Bugfix (Late May)
We expect to release at least one general bugfix/improvements patch later in May.

3. Localization (French, German, Russian) and Linux support
These are both Kickstarter commitments and high priorities for our post-launch roadmap. (Along with a couple other Kickstarter commitments that didn't make it in for launch.) We don't have a more precise ETA yet for these items but will update you as soon as we do.

4. Update #1: Customization & Player Options (June/July)
We're already beginning work on our first larger free Update to BATTLETECH. This Update is all about customization and reacting to common pieces of feedback that we've received from you on the game. Here's a list of items we're currently looking at for Update 1 this summer:
Accelerated combat options - We're working on options for players who would like to accelerate the pace of combat missions.

MechWarrior customization - We know that many players would like to change the appearance, callsign, name, and voice of all their MechWarriors, not just their Commander. This didn't make it in for launch but we'll be adding it in Update 1.

Granular difficulty settings - A set of discrete options for players to customize the challenge level of the game in different areas.

MechLab / Store / Salvage quality-of-life improvements - Interface additions to reduce friction when buying and salvaging new items.

Tutorial-skip option - Allowing players who have already played the prologue missions to skip those missions when starting a new campaign, and get right to the Leopard.

Addressing difficulty spikes - We'll be working on smoothing out some issues with unexpectedly hard (or easy) content. Not to remove all difficulty variance, but to address clear outliers.

Live-streaming quality-of-life improvements - Audio persisting when alt-tabbed, for example.
It's important to note that the exact contents of Update 1 may shift during development. Please consider these general directions and priorities. We'll post a more detailed and updated list of what's in the Update closer to its release.

5. More BATTLETECH!
The above is just the beginning! We'll be continuing with more free Updates after Update 1, and we'd also love to release a larger paid content Expansion or two - but right now we're staying focused on bugfixes and immediate reactions to launch feedback. With your support, we could not be more excited to continue making BATTLETECH even bigger and better.

Thank you,
HBS