Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

[BlackDragoons]

It's a death sentence even if you have god's own PC. I have a 7950X3D, 16 gigs of ram, big fucking SSDs (multiple), and a top of the line Nvidia GPU... and I can barely run Roguetech, and have to restart it every few missions cause of memory shit.

I've peeked at Megamek but it seemed to just be tabletop stuff, so 1 player vs another, yeah? I'm more interested in a campaign like the PC Battletech game + all the random content added to it from Roguetech than a tabletop simulator, sadly.

Megamek does that actually. Megamek HQ is a program that lets you run a campaign in any era you want.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

I dunno what the last version you tried was but if it was the old """stable""" release they kept on the website for way too long, it's moved way on from there.

Hmm, that's probably it. I'll redownload then because it has been a while.

Might be good for a forum game, honestly. I would definitely run one here if there was interest.

Considering how we were planning on making a MWO group which still hasn't happened, I doubt anyone will participate. I wouldn't mind trying though.

It's a death sentence even if you have god's own PC. I have a 7950X3D, 16 gigs of ram, big fucking SSDs (multiple), and a top of the line Nvidia GPU... and I can barely run Roguetech, and have to restart it every few missions cause of memory shit.

Yep, you'll need 32 GB of ram if you want to play for longer before restarting, and even then they straight up state that restarting every few missions is mandatory not just for performance but for the missions to actually function without completely breaking, as well as stating that it's strongly recommended to have 32 GB of ram.

Thanks to vanilla spaghetti code and other memory related unpleasantness in Unity engine, even massive amounts of RAM and PageFile will get filled quickly

Doesn't help with BT's normal issues on top of it (if you have more than like, 3 saves the game just slows down to a crawl) making it worse. It boggles the mind why Harebrained Schemes didn't switch to a Unity engine version that didn't have these issues, or even notice them until the game was released. Or maybe they did and just didn't give a fuck, their publisher is PDX after all, PDX sucks as a publisher unless you like multiple overpriced mediocre DLCs and questionable design decisions. There are no real fixes, there are no real ways to increase performance beyond having a better PC for it to fill your memory cache, there's no point. It's not a good mod for BT, not because it sucks but because it's way too ambitious and bloated even with the most bare minimum options. I wonder how strong the PC these streamers and YouTubers that play this mod are considering they're playing with barely any lag whatsoever, and after quite a number missions with no issues. Do they all have 64 GB ram? Do they all have top of line PC parts too? I'm pretty sure it's all just ram related anyway. I had 16 GB with a huge ass pagefile and it was borderline unplayable (even in the mechlab where I spend most of my time). Meanwhile BTA has very little issues for me. I remember having RT on my HDD just to see how slow the loading was, holy fuck it was not worth it.

I'm more interested in a campaign like the PC Battletech game + all the random content added to it from Roguetech than a tabletop simulator, sadly.

Yep, like I said it has almost everything I want, though I believe Megamek can do that too for a while now, but it's not the same.

Megamek does that actually. Megamek HQ is a program that lets you run a campaign in any era you want.

Well, there we go. Oh and sorry @Grayson Death Carlyle I had to uninstall MWO, my issues have not been fixed and of the 5.5 hours I had the game running I got about an hour, probably less, of game time and spent more time searching for a solution. The game is fucked (I mean it was for years which is why I avoided it but at least you could play it), the devs are probably just waiting for the server to die completely since there's absolutely no incentive to keep the game going beyond a few dedicated fans (I doubt many are paying buying Mech Credits and other premium stuff to keep the server running these days) so it's unsurprising that this server issue has persisted since at least 2021.

 

[BlackDragoons]

Well, there we go. Oh and sorry @Grayson Death Carlyle I had to uninstall MWO, my issues have not been fixed and of the 5.5 hours I had the game running I got about an hour, probably less, of game time and spent more time searching for a solution. The game is fucked (I mean it was for years which is why I avoided it but at least you could play it), the devs are probably just waiting for the server to die completely since there's absolutely no incentive to keep the game going beyond a few dedicated fans (I doubt many are paying buying Mech Credits and other premium stuff to keep the server running these days) so it's unsurprising that this server issue has persisted since at least 2021.

That might be something on your end. In my...One thousand hours of playing MWO I've had few server issues that forced me to disconnect at all.

 

[Grayson Death Carlyle]

Well, there we go. Oh and sorry @Grayson Death Carlyle I had to uninstall MWO, my issues have not been fixed and of the 5.5 hours I had the game running I got about an hour, probably less, of game time and spent more time searching for a solution.

Sorry to hear that. I've thrown 12 whole hours into the game so far and had no such issues, but I might be lucky.
If anyone else wants to try for it let's add each other in game? My in game name is SneedCarlyle1427. Yes it is supposed to be easily identifiable.
Megamek looks cool too, I like that it looks like it runs on Linux without any fuckery.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

That might be something on your end. In my...One thousand hours of playing MWO I've had few server issues that forced me to disconnect at all.

It seems to be sporadic, I've seen several people have this issue and it usually fixed itself only to immediately start again. I did every solution I could find but like I said, no dice. And they had this issue for-again-years, they even made it a front page highlight on their website, and yet it still persists. If the devs said "yeah some DNS/ISPs seem to have some issues, here's a list of them that seem to cause this issue the most" I'd understand. But it's radio silence on whether or not they even acknowledge this issue anymore.

I like that it looks like it runs on Linux without any fuckery.

Glad to hear, I plan on dual booting Linux (which one I haven't decided yet) with Windows in the future and I'd like to run simple things on Linux.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

Double post to separate topics, don't smite me:

Great video on Megamek if anyone is interested.

 

[not william stenchever]

Double post to separate topics, don't smite me:

Great video on Megamek if anyone is interested.

I saw this recently. Very informative on MegaMek despite the furry avatar.

 

[Grayson Death Carlyle]

Great video on Megamek if anyone is interested.

Good video, reminds me of Sseth.
Try mint on a virtual machine, I like how it runs coming from Windows.

 

[Gan Ying]

I've peeked at Megamek but it seemed to just be tabletop stuff, so 1 player vs another, yeah? I'm more interested in a campaign like the PC Battletech game + all the random content added to it from Roguetech than a tabletop simulator, sadly.

Yeah, as others have said Megamek is fully playable singleplayer with a detailed campaign system adapted from the tabletop campaign books, plus a lot of original stuff. It generates scenarios, OpFors, maps, contracts, a hiring pool, a unit market, pretty much everything. They've recently expanded the personnel model too, now you can send off your guys to basic training, officer school, and a variety of war colleges for XP. They can randomly marry and have children too if you're interested in playing a multigenerational campaign. The map doesn't change dynamically, but factions appear and disappear and planets change hands according to the timeline. I played from 3035 to 3052 and the Clan Invasion happened exactly on schedule with all the same results.

The battle AI is pretty good for an amateur project too. It can't handle double-blind, but they've added an option for single-blind gameplay against the AI, so its units are hidden but it knows where all yours are.


Here's an example of a 3 month Objective Raid contract I did in my last campaign. With StratCon enabled, there's a decent variety to the scenarios. They are tailored to your force to a degree as well, for example I wouldn't have gotten the low atmosphere and space scenarios if I didn't have an Aerospace wing. Some scenarios are absolutely incompletable though, especially early on, and sometimes you absolutely have to just take the L rather than lose your whole force on a suicide mission.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

I saw this recently. Very informative on MegaMek despite the furry avatar.

Considering their older videos involving an actual...er...Harpy limb, I'll take the poorly animated Harpy drawing. Also, seems they're more a Monster Girl fan than a furfag. They are a femboy as well seeing their Twitter (why do I do this to myself), if the voice wasn't obvious enough I mean. Doesn't seem like they're a tranny but we'll see.

Yeah, as others have said Megamek is fully playable singleplayer with a detailed campaign system adapted from the tabletop campaign books, plus a lot of original stuff. It generates scenarios, OpFors, maps, contracts, a hiring pool, a unit market, pretty much everything. They've recently expanded the personnel model too, now you can send off your guys to basic training, officer school, and a variety of war colleges for XP. They can randomly marry and have children too if you're interested in playing a multigenerational campaign. The map doesn't change dynamically, but factions appear and disappear and planets change hands according to the timeline. I played from 3035 to 3052 and the Clan Invasion happened exactly on schedule with all the same results.

The battle AI is pretty good for an amateur project too. It can't handle double-blind, but they've added an option for single-blind gameplay against the AI, so its units are hidden but it knows where all yours are.
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Here's an example of a 3 month Objective Raid contract I did in my last campaign. With StratCon enabled, there's a decent variety to the scenarios. They are tailored to your force to a degree as well, for example I wouldn't have gotten the low atmosphere and space scenarios if I didn't have an Aerospace wing. Some scenarios are absolutely incompletable though, especially early on, and sometimes you absolutely have to just take the L rather than lose your whole force on a suicide mission.

Ooo, nice. I really have to see if anyone shared any good campaigns, probably on their Discord.

 

[JJLiautaud]

it would be super neat if we could presuade Josh to run a megamek server, and this thread could do a big multiplayer campaign.

 

[Grayson Death Carlyle]

it would be super neat if we could presuade Josh to run a megamek server, and this thread could do a big multiplayer campaign.

What do we need Josh to do that for? The kiwi station 2024 guy runs his own server independently of Josh just fine, and I'm sure he's got plenty else to worry about with his own projects involving the forum and everything else. I'm sure one of us could use his computer skills to get something working. Would be cool though.

 

[not william stenchever]

it would be super neat if we could presuade Josh to run a megamek server, and this thread could do a big multiplayer campaign.

Supposing that this or something similar did happen would we each be commanding a mech or a whole lance as part of a company or larger unit?

 

[JJLiautaud]

Supposing that this or something similar did happen would we each be commanding a mech or a whole lance as part of a company or larger unit?

Each person running a whole lance as part of a company would be pretty neat but lots of options are possible each one one of us runs a Merc company for however many years and the company with the most assets wins, we split into teams and run a full campaign for capturing a planet, rerun Tukkyaid, etc.

 

[Gan Ying]

Ooo, nice. I really have to see if anyone shared any good campaigns, probably on their Discord.

There are some good ones out there, a guy called SilentK has a long running one up on Youtube. Not the most charismatic streamerman but a decent showcase of what an indepth playthrough looks like.

it would be super neat if we could presuade Josh to run a megamek server, and this thread could do a big multiplayer campaign.

There's no need (or possibility?) to run a server, one guy would just run the campaign essentially singleplayer and others could just join directly whenever he did a scenario. As long as he has forwarded ports. He'd be doxing his IP though lol.

Supposing that this or something similar did happen would we each be commanding a mech or a whole lance as part of a company or larger unit?

It could go either way but if everyone commanded their own lance, every scenario would be super massive, or super easy.

I would be down to run just a Let's Sperg/Walkthrough here in the thread or separately, if everyone wanted to see what a campaign looks like and how to use the software. There are some unintuitive aspects to it but once you have it down it runs smoothly. Could just name the pilots after people in the thread and ask for input on contracts and other decisions.

 

[JJLiautaud]

I would be down to run just a Let's Sperg/Walkthrough here in the thread or separately, if everyone wanted to see what a campaign looks like and how to use the software. There are some unintuitive aspects to it but once you have it down it runs smoothly. Could just name the pilots after people in the thread and ask for input on contracts and other decisions.

Can Megamek do the Inner Sphere at War rules?

 

[Gan Ying]

Can Megamek do the Inner Sphere at War rules?

No, it just uses Campaign Ops, with the option to use the older Field Manual: Mercenaries Revised rules. That said the whole Inner Sphere is simulated according to the rules in Interstellar Operations, so if you wanted to participate in some kind of historical battle, you can kinda fudge it by hanging around a certain area at a certain time. You won't be able to make a difference in the outcome though. For example in my last campaign which started in 3035, the senior members of my mercenary unit were Andurien, and so I decided to only take contracts for Andurien, Liao, and MoC as the crisis was ongoing, when Andurien inevitably lost we fucked off to another part of the Sphere and never returned to the FWL area.


The campaign system is geared mostly towards running a mercenary company. You can play as a House (or Clan) unit if you want, though in practice it just means that you have a limited selection of contracts.

 

[JJLiautaud]

That said the whole Inner Sphere is simulated according to the rules in Interstellar Operations, so if you wanted to participate in some kind of historical battle, you can kinda fudge it by hanging around a certain area at a certain time. You won't be able to make a difference in the outcome though

Does it not have some sort of GM system? I've only really played around with megamek's skrimish system never could find the time to poke around the software or RTFM.

 

[Gan Ying]

Does it not have some sort of GM system? I've only really played around with megamek's skrimish system never could find the time to poke around the software or RTFM.

It does, a relatively extensive one. It used to be possible to change ownership of planets manually using the GM tools, but it kind of broke shit so they removed it.
I used the GM tools to create a contract where I participated in the Battle of Luthien.

This contract wouldn't have generated on its own. I wanted it to be the end of my campaign more or less, so I pretty much created it from scratch using the GM tools to name it, ensure the dates lined up, the enemies and allies were sufficiently equipped and elite, and other stuff. The salvage rights are probably a little unrealistic but I stopped playing after this anyway.

 

[BlackDragoons]

Did a whole campaign that went from the Star League Exodus and to the end of the Jihad.

By the end of it my Mercenary Company started as a lone Company of mercs and ended up on par with the Wolf's Dragoons.

Tis great, hold many memories and frustrations.