PC How’s BattleTech?

[Spork3245]

Debating on grabbing it while it’s on sale at GMG. How’s it compare to other TBS games like XCom?

[Mr.Vic20]

40 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

Debating on grabbing it while it’s on sale at GMG. How’s it compare to other TBS games like XCom?

Its good! HBS knows TBS games and the switch to Battletech hasn't changed that fact one bit! It has an enjoyable campaign, dig in with confidence! 

[Keyser_Soze]

I'd like to start it one of these days. I hear it's a very serious sim.

[Greatoneshere]

I will be playing it myself soon - been looking forward to it ever since it came out. Harebrained Schemes' Shadowrun games were fantastic, and I expect this to be no different. 

[Greatoneshere]

It took me awhile but I finally started this game eagerly a few days ago. It is excellent. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in hard sci-fi and strategy RPG's. What Harebrained Schemes did for Shadowrun across three games they have now done for BattleTech. I'm loving the entire feel of the game, and you really do feel like a mercenary outfit traversing a much larger universe. The length of the campaign and how much you can choose to micromanage everything can seem daunting at first but for the patient player willing to put in the work, it really pays dividends. I'm about 10 hours or so in.

[TwinIon]

I might have to pick this up. 

 

It's $14 on GoG right now.

 

Looking at the top reviews, a lot of people complain about load times and crashes and stuff, but those are mostly from release. Did it seem stable enough to you @Greatoneshere?

[Greatoneshere]

1 hour ago, TwinIon said:

I might have to pick this up. 

 

It's $14 on GoG right now.

 

Looking at the top reviews, a lot of people complain about load times and crashes and stuff, but those are mostly from release. Did it seem stable enough to you @Greatoneshere?

 

Shit, I paid $40 on Steam.  

 

I'm on a powerhouse PC, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I haven't had much in the way of long load times or crashes. The load times are longer than a game like this should be, but it's still between 10-20 seconds on my PC. As for crashes,  the game has bugged on me in the mech menu screen on occasion but I'm usually able to get out of it without crashing - I think a lot of the patches/updates since release have fixed a lot of the issues people in reviews had mentioned. Regardless, so far for me the game is very stable, but not 100% so.

 

I should note the soundtrack is also really good (as good as the Shadowrun games) which helps a lot with a slow, methodical game like this, and the atmosphere of the space sequences really sells the Mass Effect like feel of traveling a large universe (in some ways, the game is very Dune-esque). I love how real it feels. You have to pay for everything, the in-universe mythology makes sense and is consistent, and getting to places takes days, weeks, and months and an in-game clock tracks that as you prepare and travel between star systems for missions. It's a very all-encompassing game. I only knew of the BattleTech universe tangentially, I imagine someone who is a deep fan of it must love this game. 

 

@TwinIon, if you do get it let me know, as I have some suggestions to make things easier when people first load the game up! It's a longer game, so be prepared for that if you jump in. But if one is in the mood for this type of game, this is the pinnacle of it. 

 

[Keyser_Soze]

4 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

Shit, I paid $40 on Steam.

 

I got the digital deluxe on fanatical for $24 2 years ago

[TwinIon]

On 3/25/2020 at 12:41 PM, Greatoneshere said:

 

@TwinIon, if you do get it let me know, as I have some suggestions to make things easier when people first load the game up! It's a longer game, so be prepared for that if you jump in. But if one is in the mood for this type of game, this is the pinnacle of it. 

 

I can only stomach about an hour of Alyx at a time, so I went ahead and bought it. Bring on the tips.

[Greatoneshere]

4 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

I can only stomach about an hour of Alyx at a time, so I went ahead and bought it. Bring on the tips.

 

That's awesome! Let me know what you think of the game as you play. Some of my suggestions will seem obvious, others not so much. 

 

1. Get used to save scumming unless you want to deal with the consequences of real bad turns. The game bases everything off of a somewhat random algorithm in terms of what connects attack-wise and what doesn't, so it's better to save periodically throughout a mission and reload a save if you suffer a particularly unfair turn because an enemy got an incredibly lucky shot and took down your whole mech and killed your pilot, etc. 

 

2. Play on the recommended difficulty settings when you boot up the game. Simplest, I think. 

 

3. Never lose a pilot - reload a save if you do - healing them up takes forever and especially early on you don't want to hire outside pilots when you've been leveling up the original five you start with - I'm still using the original five they give you because they end up pretty high level before the game opens up.

 

4. If a mission isn't a "priority" mission, then it's considered a side mission and those are randomly generated. Always do a priority mission when one finally comes up to move the story along unless you feel underleveled and need to go grind. The side missions are fun and take you to lots of different places, and you have to do a few before the next priority mission unlocks anyway, but I didn't realize they were randomly generated and keep coming back until I was a few priority missions in. To be fair, this made me overleveled and overly rich for awhile, which was nice.

 

5. Always exhaust all dialogue, including tutorial dialogue, as soon as it unlocks - the tutorials aren't totally helpful and it makes the beginning of the game daunting, but it's worth it to plow through so the game goes faster for you later as you don't get bogged down with minutae.

 

6. During dialogue, some terms are in yellow. If you hover your mouse over these yellow "key" terms, you will get further text explaining what the term means, history, etc. It helps a lot to understand the story, especially since it can get daunting remembering who everyone and everything is. You should particularly do this when you are creating your profile/character, so you can get the backstory of the game, the multiple warring houses, etc. Even non-yellow terms and symbols, if you hover the mouse over them (both in dialogue and in combat), you will often get additional explanations that help.

 

7. Especially at the start, when negotiating your contract for each mission, just max out your money for awhile - money is much more important than salvage or anything else, especially early on. 

 

8. Create a well-rounded and diverse team of four for your load out, as if it was an RPG party.

 

That covers a good bit of it I think, if you have questions as you start and play just post here and I'll help if I can.

 

[Greatoneshere]

Also, one key thing I forgot @TwinIon, despite the game being a very hardcore strategy game, play aggressively with a strong offense. The game does not favor defensive play, and an aggressive offensive playstyle has worked pretty well for me by comparison, even though that's not typical for SRPG's.

 

Another key strategy is make the enemy come to you. Once you've found the enemy (or completed the objectives), pull back and make them come to you one by one, and you can concentrate on killing each mech as they come to you, rather than be in the middle of a giant firefight.

 

Edit: Also note that after every priority mission you complete, a little bit of new dialogue unlocks for the characters, depending, so always at least check.

[Greatoneshere]

@TwinIon, have you played it? What's your take?

[TwinIon]

1 hour ago, Greatoneshere said:

@TwinIon, have you played it? What's your take?

Had to work most of the weekend, so I've only had the chance to play the first two intro missions and one optional mission.

 

My first impression is mostly that there's a whole lot going on, even from the outset. I definitely haven't figured it all out, but there's clearly a lot to dump time into, if you want to.

 

 

When it comes to combat, the thing that I feel like I really need to figure out is optimal distance. I know weapons have different optimal distances, but I don't know how to judge if moving to a given point will put me into a good range for my weapons. I also feel like I get flanked a bit too easily. I run towards the enemies until I can get my mechs in range, but they just charge at me and run right up behind me. I suppose I should be backing up?

 

The other thing about close combat is that those hit %s seem silly low. Something runs up to me and then I have like a 25% chance to connect with my weapons, so I end up melee attacking.

 

The randomness and difficulty to hit a mech that seems like it should be in an ideal range really makes X-com seem perfectly fair by comparison.

 

I imagine once I get a few more battles under my belt I'll figure things out a bit better.

[Greatoneshere]

31 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

Had to work most of the weekend, so I've only had the chance to play the first two intro missions and one optional mission.

 

My first impression is mostly that there's a whole lot going on, even from the outset. I definitely haven't figured it all out, but there's clearly a lot to dump time into, if you want to.

 

When it comes to combat, the thing that I feel like I really need to figure out is optimal distance. I know weapons have different optimal distances, but I don't know how to judge if moving to a given point will put me into a good range for my weapons. I also feel like I get flanked a bit too easily. I run towards the enemies until I can get my mechs in range, but they just charge at me and run right up behind me. I suppose I should be backing up?

 

The other thing about close combat is that those hit %s seem silly low. Something runs up to me and then I have like a 25% chance to connect with my weapons, so I end up melee attacking.

 

The randomness and difficulty to hit a mech that seems like it should be in an ideal range really makes X-com seem perfectly fair by comparison.

 

I imagine once I get a few more battles under my belt I'll figure things out a bit better.

 

You're right on all points - the game gets easier as you get a handle on things, if that helps any. As for the hit %'s, you'll want to level up your mechwarriors, and the "gunnery" trait is the one that improves hit %'s, so it's definitely something you want to level up for your character and at least one other. If you're an XCOM guy, you'll get a handle on the game quite quickly I think. Just save frequently and often!

 

Positioning is pretty important, I also felt like I got flanked a lot early on - sometimes I restarted missions after I knew where mechs would spawn so as to better help with that.  

[Greatoneshere]

Just beat the game. The campaign story was pretty great, and I really enjoyed the game overall. It will be missed, I hope we get a sequel from HBS, though I'd take a new Shadowrun game even more.