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

Nylah Lemon Karate 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 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.