Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

[RomanesEuntDomus]

That new "Marauder" looks like a gangly, pubescent Warhammer.

It looks like a special needs Warhammer built by Ikea.

 

[Splendid]

My beef with that game is that the mech designs mostly suck. They all look like blocky generic blobs.

You're talking about designs made for a table top game that started in 1984. Aesthetically, the have to look kind of ugly or they'll stand out.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

You're talking about designs made for a table top game that started in 1984. Aesthetically, the have to look kind of ugly or they'll stand out.

I think he's refering to the redesigns for the video game.

For instance, this is what a Centurion looks like in the classic TT game:

This is, what it looks like in the game:

I don't dislike this aesthetic, but it is kinda sad that all mechs use the same, making them all rather hard to distinguish from one another.

 

[Mooger Meng]

Picked this up during one of the steam sales for about ten bucks. I'm betting most of my current 20-odd hours have been spent hemming and hawing over loadouts and skill choices, in between catching 60+ LRMs per turn because you're almost always at 2-to-1 odds with every Tom, Dick and Harry on the OpFor has at least an LRM5, if not multiple 15's, because fuck you. I'd like to get a heavy or two worth a damn before going on the story mission that breaks you out of the fringes, but god forbid my dudes can swat all four Locusts on the map before the cavalcade of indirect fire fucks up my salvage chances.

Loving the soundtrack, though.

 

[Urbanmech]

Did the game ever nerf Sleepy mechs or are those still a thing? And did Heavy Metal advance the timeline or did they just add UAC as Lostech? Hoping the later we've had decades of post Clan shit and I was hoping for more Succession War stuff.

 

[robobobo]

I think he's refering to the redesigns for the video game.

For instance, this is what a Centurion looks like in the classic TT game:

This is, what it looks like in the game:

I don't dislike this aesthetic, but it is kinda sad that all mechs use the same, making them all rather hard to distinguish from one another.

I had missed this, but yes, you are correct. The original aesthetic for the mechs had a lot of very distinctive silhouettes, you had some that were kind of cookie-cutter but mostly you could tell at a glance which mech you were looking at. But now they're all a collection of blocks so that distinctiveness is completely shot.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

The videogame is overall not being too much in your face about stupid politics (pronoun choice including they/them and the lack of a white male crewmember aside), but holy fuck, if I could replace that muslim asshole with literally anything, I'd do so in a heartbeat. Even a sack of garbage, making fart noises, would be less annoying.
She doesn't pop up a lot, but when she does you can count on her moralfagging like crazy.

Holy shit, can she just shut up? This is the very definition of what a mercenary does, especially in Battletech.

There's a random event where you get contacted by some other ship that has sick people on board and one of your guys goes "we could sell them medical supplies" and that muslim piece of shit goes "How dare you?! It's an emergency, we have to help them for free!". The money is like 30k C-Bills, which is such a ridiculously low sum, I have no issue with not getting paid, but Murad makes me take the money on principle.

One of the most grating characters in games for me, not cause she's constantly annoying me, but cause it is obvious that she was only put there to tick off a diversity box and to act as the "moral compass", but she manages to be such a smug, moralizing asshole about it, that if I had a say in any of this, I'd space her and be done with it.

 

[robobobo]

Yeah, Battletech's universe was supposed to be pretty fucked, not grimdark like 40K but still portraying a humanity long-fallen from affluence rolling around in ancient technology they can't build and can barely maintain while living in a brutal feudalist society of regular warfare. Nobody in the Inner Sphere was overflowing with kindness for their fellow man, especially not a merc outfit operating in the Periphery on a tight budget. They'd blow up a woman over her political beliefs in a heartbeat if it meant getting paid.

 

[Snekposter]

Jesus, what a cunt. "That isn't mercenary work, its murder." What universe does this woman live in? Killing people in the name of the almighty C-Bill is exactly what mercenaries do for a living. Dear Lord, you're not wrong about the box-ticking there.

 

[Balr0g]

I like the Battletech universe. The game is also good though I get the Feeling that they didn't model the mechs after their Succession-Wars Counterparts but rather like the Project Phoenix mechs (which is Fedcom-Civil War time)
And to be honest Battletech has some progressive part in it. Take the Magistracy of Canopus a pure matriarchy where men are seen as the "lesser able". And their greatest Exports are Medicine and porn..oh wait.

 

[StevieLasVegas]

Been replaying the game after putting it down for like a year and I got to say that the game holds up well. Only thing I have done differently was get a mod where you can get multiple weapons/equipment after a mission. Really helps you keep a good stockpile of weapons/gear in case you getted your mech fucked up in a mission without breaking the in-game wallet. I also got the urge to buy the boxset to start playing the wargame too. Just need to get some Atlus models so I can make a Steiner Stealth Squad

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Been replaying the game after putting it down for like a year and I got to say that the game holds up well. Only thing I have done differently was get a mod where you can get multiple weapons/equipment after a mission. Really helps you keep a good stockpile of weapons/gear in case you getted your mech fucked up in a mission without breaking the in-game wallet. I also got the urge to buy the boxset to start playing the wargame too. Just need to get some Atlus models so I can make a Steiner Stealth Squad

I'm playing it every now and again and the unmodded basegame does a lot of things right, but at times, the mission design is pretty unfair. Not even "challenging" or "hard", but outright bullshit. Stuff like protecting a base from several waves of Mechs that all spawn on opposite ends of the map, and unless you intercept them right in front of their spawn, they attack the base directly. There's one mission type called "Target Acquisition", where you have a limited amount of rounds to reach 3 waypoints and either the enemies outnumber you by the start 3:1 or there is an endless number of spawning enemies.

It would be really neat if the game allowed more than one lance and if missions more often demanded using lighter Mechs. All I can get are 5-skull missions, so my best bet is to go as many AssaultMechs as I can muster with my Lance... I'd really like some 3-skull missions to level up my rookie pilots in lighter Mechs. Would be nice to command vehicles, too.

Also: Gauss Rifle on a Marauder with a good pilot is fucking bonkers. Dekker decapitates a Mech every two or three rounds on average.

 

[StevieLasVegas]

I'm playing it every now and again and the unmodded basegame does a lot of things right, but at times, the mission design is pretty unfair. Not even "challenging" or "hard", but outright bullshit. Stuff like protecting a base from several waves of Mechs that all spawn on opposite ends of the map, and unless you intercept them right in front of their spawn, they attack the base directly. There's one mission type called "Target Acquisition", where you have a limited amount of rounds to reach 3 waypoints and either the enemies outnumber you by the start 3:1 or there is an endless number of spawning enemies.

It would be really neat if the game allowed more than one lance and if missions more often demanded using lighter Mechs. All I can get are 5-skull missions, so my best bet is to go as many AssaultMechs as I can muster with my Lance... I'd really like some 3-skull missions to level up my rookie pilots in lighter Mechs. Would be nice to command vehicles, too.

Also: Gauss Rifle on a Marauder with a good pilot is fucking bonkers. Dekker decapitates a Mech every two or three rounds on average.

Remember seeing a mod that limits the difficulty curve spike after doing story missions and moreso tries to make it varied from planet to planet. Might give it a whirl.

And you're right. Those base protection mission can be utter bullshit with its wave placement. I agree on the loadouts too. Like a challenge for a 4-man squad is nice, but having me go against 12 mechs and multiple support vehicles while I get no additional support can fuck right off.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Remember seeing a mod that limits the difficulty curve spike after doing story missions and moreso tries to make it varied from planet to planet. Might give it a whirl.

And you're right. Those base protection mission can be utter bullshit with its wave placement. I agree on the loadouts too. Like a challenge for a 4-man squad is nice, but having me go against 12 mechs and multiple support vehicles while I get no additional support can fuck right off.

I think I'll have to check out some mods, like Roguetech seems to be popular. I really don't get the game design, though. Having the game allow two Lances would be perfect to allow drop-in/drop-out jolly bro-op. It would also be nice to have a mission system for the planets, where you have small campaigns similar to how Flashpoints work.

What I envision: you arrive at a planet with a conflict of some sort, you pick a side, make a contract for payment and salvage, then you have a few random missions, maybe a rigid system of missions that go down in sequence, but the absolutely best would be a tiny campaign hex-map with objectives and troops placed and the player decides which way to go and where to attack.
You land your troops in one hex and then move from hex to hex to get to objectives or intercept hostile troops. Different hex types could have different effects on missions and the campaign map. Such as Outposts that send in reinforcements to nearby fights, industrial or economical hubs that act as mission goals, spaceports that allow allied troops to land and so on. By putting several of these tiles on a small campaign map at random, every planet would become its own little campaign and even with the same layout, it would shake up things when you do the objectives in a different order.
This would increase the replayability a thousandfold.

Anyway, I played the Tabletop version more than a decade ago and this game got me back into it. I bought like 30 Mechs and I'm still planning out Lances and shit. I recently got a wild hair up my ass, so no I want to put together 2 Lances of SLDF/Royal Black Guard and 2 Lances of Amaris troops, so I can re-enact the Battle of Unity City with my bros...

 

[Drain Todger]

The videogame is overall not being too much in your face about stupid politics (pronoun choice including they/them and the lack of a white male crewmember aside), but holy fuck, if I could replace that muslim asshole with literally anything, I'd do so in a heartbeat. Even a sack of garbage, making fart noises, would be less annoying.
She doesn't pop up a lot, but when she does you can count on her moralfagging like crazy.

View attachment 1345859
Holy shit, can she just shut up? This is the very definition of what a mercenary does, especially in Battletech.

There's a random event where you get contacted by some other ship that has sick people on board and one of your guys goes "we could sell them medical supplies" and that muslim piece of shit goes "How dare you?! It's an emergency, we have to help them for free!". The money is like 30k C-Bills, which is such a ridiculously low sum, I have no issue with not getting paid, but Murad makes me take the money on principle.

One of the most grating characters in games for me, not cause she's constantly annoying me, but cause it is obvious that she was only put there to tick off a diversity box and to act as the "moral compass", but she manages to be such a smug, moralizing asshole about it, that if I had a say in any of this, I'd space her and be done with it.

At least she has the funniest line in the fucking game, in the Heavy Metal DLC:



I've got some bad news for you, Murad.

 

[More AWS-8Q Than You]

I love the shit out of the game, I mean obviously, except I have to find a mod that restores weapon balance to table top or near it. It's not so much that whoever designed the balance is an obvious Fed Suns player what with their hard-on for autocannons and tweaking their damage up. The absolute hash they make of energy weapons balance is the dumbest shit in the game. 3025 era doesn't have the spare heat capacity for their original 33% increase in heat on the energy weapons. I makes designs that are canonically solid energy boats, like the Wolverine-6M you can make out of the 6K, the Banshee-3M, or my beloved avatar dogshit because they were all designed around table top heat curves. I get that AC/5s suck, AC/5s are supposed to suck. That doesn't mean you nerf an entire class of weapons because you're a Fed Suns fanboy and, like all members of the Federated Suns, are functionally illiterate.

Seriously though, the game's been around for 40ish years and 3025 era weapons balances is still very highly regarded. The tweaks just tell me that their balance team doesn't understand why the heat/weight/damage numbers are what they are. It also hurts that the game only has a long and short range band, not a medium one, even though it can. The whole purpose of the AC/2 is the huge medium range band and it's ability to plink fast moving light mechs, the AC/5 is for when a mech has lots of tonnage and space left and has to make a trade off for heat. It's maddening.

 

[White Devil]

All I wanted was MegaMek with good graphics, instead I got Troontech where you can only have one lance, literally every mission is 2 to 1 odds against you, if not more on a lot of the story ones, the main campaign was utter garbage, almost every campaign character was insanely unlikable and like someone said before, just ticking diversity boxes, and there is absolutely no lance diversity by end game. It's four assault mechs or bust unless you want to make it harder for yourself intentionally.

Not only that, but the avatar thing went out of its way to make it difficult to create a white pilot, which we all know was intentional. I loved HBS prior games, I loved FASA, and I even loved a couple games Kiva did before he went mentally ill and got the cock chop. That being said, Battletech was one of the games I regret kickstarting despite BT being one of my most beloved franchises.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

I love the shit out of the game, I mean obviously, except I have to find a mod that restores weapon balance to table top or near it. It's not so much that whoever designed the balance is an obvious Fed Suns player what with their hard-on for autocannons and tweaking their damage up. The absolute hash they make of energy weapons balance is the dumbest shit in the game. 3025 era doesn't have the spare heat capacity for their original 33% increase in heat on the energy weapons. I makes designs that are canonically solid energy boats, like the Wolverine-6M you can make out of the 6K, the Banshee-3M, or my beloved avatar dogshit because they were all designed around table top heat curves. I get that AC/5s suck, AC/5s are supposed to suck. That doesn't mean you nerf an entire class of weapons because you're a Fed Suns fanboy and, like all members of the Federated Suns, are functionally illiterate.

Seriously though, the game's been around for 40ish years and 3025 era weapons balances is still very highly regarded. The tweaks just tell me that their balance team doesn't understand why the heat/weight/damage numbers are what they are. It also hurts that the game only has a long and short range band, not a medium one, even though it can. The whole purpose of the AC/2 is the huge medium range band and it's ability to plink fast moving light mechs, the AC/5 is for when a mech has lots of tonnage and space left and has to make a trade off for heat. It's maddening.

They multiplied the damage of all non-missile weapons by 5 and all missiles by 4, equally, they multiplied Hitpoints of Armor and Internal Structure by 5. Cockpits have 45points of Armor and 16 points of Internals, though, so headshots regularly leave the unit standing with 1HP, which is annoying to say the least. But god knows what they did to weapon heat and heatsink mechanics... It's really wonky.

My greatest pet peeve when it comes to equippement, though, is how they implemented TAG. They made it so any unit automatically spots for everyone else (which I am fine with in the video game tbh), but that left nothing really for the TAG to do... or so I thought. TAGging now gives bonus damage to energy and ballistic weapons and does nothing for guided missile systems, which is just plain weird.

All I wanted was MegaMek with good graphics, instead I got Troontech where you can only have one lance, literally every mission is 2 to 1 odds against you, if not more on a lot of the story ones, the main campaign was utter garbage, almost every campaign character was insanely unlikable and like someone said before, just ticking diversity boxes, and there is absolutely no lance diversity by end game. It's four assault mechs or bust unless you want to make it harder for yourself intentionally.

Not only that, but the avatar thing went out of its way to make it difficult to create a white pilot, which we all know was intentional. I loved HBS prior games, I loved FASA, and I even loved a couple games Kiva did before he went mentally ill and got the cock chop. That being said, Battletech was one of the games I regret kickstarting despite BT being one of my most beloved franchises.

For me, the game is fine for what it is, but it doesn't hold up a candle to real CBT, that's for sure. I actually like the storyline about the Arano-Restauration, even though the plot is fairly standard (but admittedly, it's not any worse than the plot to MW4, for instance). Where they really drop the ball, though is the Argo, as a certain youtuber pointed out. No way would ComStar allow some random merc unit to just grab something like that and piss off into the Periphery, they'd be way too paranoid about it containing any kind of data that might lead you to a Castle Brian or contain any other kind of stuff that ComStar wants to remain LosTech... which brings me to an even bigger issue: I haven't yet played through all of the Flashpoint Campaign, but it starts out with strange new weapons showing up (ie: LB-X ACs, Ultra-ACs, TAGs and so on) and everything seems to point to some SLDF-era spaceship choke full with LosTech weapons and equippement, that someone found, salvaged and is now selling off all stockpiles that it holds. And maybe I just misread, but it sounds like it's a jump-capable ship. If that turns out to be a WarShip . . . holy fucking hell, would that be a fucking stupid idea. I mean, the "someone found a stockpile of LosTech weapons" is a neat explanation for where the DLC weapons came from, but if HBS ties that into someone finding a fully functional WarShip, I don't even know what to say about that. ComStar would vaporize that thing and everyone that laid eyes on it with nukes before the newly-discovered ship even fired up all reactors. They did it with the Tripitz, a ship that was discovered in the Taurian Concordat, so being in the asscrack of the Periphery is no protection against a bunch of white ships jumping in at a Pirate Jump Point and fucking up everything and everyone with SLDF-era top-of-the-line hardware.

As for the power-creep: The game really poorly progresses into higher difficulties. My lance is made up of one Marauder (for that -10% damage and the aimed shot bonus), one Atlas II, one Highlander and an Awesome 8R acting as my missile boat and there is basically no reason to ever change that. I would like to go for a heavy lance and take a Warhammer out for a spin every now and then, but the game gives me no chance to do that. In order to stay a challenge, you just face insane amounts of opposition and I feel there would have been better ways to solve that.

When it comes to the avatars, go to any hiring hall and look for female pilots, they all look really weird. Not one of them is attractive. I guess that is due to the avatars for regular pilots being randomized, but sheesh. Would it have hurt the devs to make assets that don't make every women look like a horse-faced freak?

I wouldn't mind a sequel that addresses some of the more annoying aspects of the gameplay, that allows combat on a larger scale (ie: Adding another lance, vehicles for the player and maybe VTOLs, planes, artillery and infantry), that handles the missions a bit differently (like I described above as randomized mini-campaigns)... but if it doubles down on the diversity shit, no thanks.
When a random mission mentions that Murad is involved or I know that she's going to blather on over comms, I simply don't take those, that's how much I am annoyed by her presence. Unfortunately, Flashpoint Missions drag her back out of her menu, so I can't completely ignore her.

 

[White Devil]

Supposedly if a sequel gets made, it's going to be during the Clan Invasion. I don't know how HBS/Paradox will handle that since they could barely handle a pre Third Succession War game. I don't know if you remember, but this game was super unstable during launch and a lot of people had crash problems. It really pushed the Unity engine to it's limits I think.

I don't want to imagine the games normal 2 to 1 odds against Clan Stars while I'm in held together with spit and wire century old Battlemechs.

 

[Urbanmech]

They multiplied the damage of all non-missile weapons by 5 and all missiles by 4, equally, they multiplied Hitpoints of Armor and Internal Structure by 5. Cockpits have 45points of Armor and 16 points of Internals, though, so headshots regularly leave the unit standing with 1HP, which is annoying to say the least. But god knows what they did to weapon heat and heatsink mechanics... It's really wonky.

My greatest pet peeve when it comes to equippement, though, is how they implemented TAG. They made it so any unit automatically spots for everyone else (which I am fine with in the video game tbh), but that left nothing really for the TAG to do... or so I thought. TAGging now gives bonus damage to energy and ballistic weapons and does nothing for guided missile systems, which is just plain weird.


For me, the game is fine for what it is, but it doesn't hold up a candle to real CBT, that's for sure. I actually like the storyline about the Arano-Restauration, even though the plot is fairly standard (but admittedly, it's not any worse than the plot to MW4, for instance). Where they really drop the ball, though is the Argo, as a certain youtuber pointed out. No way would ComStar allow some random merc unit to just grab something like that and piss off into the Periphery, they'd be way too paranoid about it containing any kind of data that might lead you to a Castle Brian or contain any other kind of stuff that ComStar wants to remain LosTech... which brings me to an even bigger issue: I haven't yet played through all of the Flashpoint Campaign, but it starts out with strange new weapons showing up (ie: LB-X ACs, Ultra-ACs, TAGs and so on) and everything seems to point to some SLDF-era spaceship choke full with LosTech weapons and equippement, that someone found, salvaged and is now selling off all stockpiles that it holds. And maybe I just misread, but it sounds like it's a jump-capable ship. If that turns out to be a WarShip . . . holy fucking hell, would that be a fucking stupid idea. I mean, the "someone found a stockpile of LosTech weapons" is a neat explanation for where the DLC weapons came from, but if HBS ties that into someone finding a fully functional WarShip, I don't even know what to say about that. ComStar would vaporize that thing and everyone that laid eyes on it with nukes before the newly-discovered ship even fired up all reactors. They did it with the Tripitz, a ship that was discovered in the Taurian Concordat, so being in the asscrack of the Periphery is no protection against a bunch of white ships jumping in at a Pirate Jump Point and fucking up everything and everyone with SLDF-era top-of-the-line hardware.

As for the power-creep: The game really poorly progresses into higher difficulties. My lance is made up of one Marauder (for that -10% damage and the aimed shot bonus), one Atlas II, one Highlander and an Awesome 8R acting as my missile boat and there is basically no reason to ever change that. I would like to go for a heavy lance and take a Warhammer out for a spin every now and then, but the game gives me no chance to do that. In order to stay a challenge, you just face insane amounts of opposition and I feel there would have been better ways to solve that.

When it comes to the avatars, go to any hiring hall and look for female pilots, they all look really weird. Not one of them is attractive. I guess that is due to the avatars for regular pilots being randomized, but sheesh. Would it have hurt the devs to make assets that don't make every women look like a horse-faced freak?

I wouldn't mind a sequel that addresses some of the more annoying aspects of the gameplay, that allows combat on a larger scale (ie: Adding another lance, vehicles for the player and maybe VTOLs, planes, artillery and infantry), that handles the missions a bit differently (like I described above as randomized mini-campaigns)... but if it doubles down on the diversity shit, no thanks.
When a random mission mentions that Murad is involved or I know that she's going to blather on over comms, I simply don't take those, that's how much I am annoyed by her presence. Unfortunately, Flashpoint Missions drag her back out of her menu, so I can't completely ignore her.

Honestly who knows what Comstar would do at that point. The Tripitz affair was almost 50 years before the Hatchetman went online and they voted not to do anything even though Battlemech tech came back. But then they went to "Purging" to try and silence the Helm Memory core. Maybe it would depend on which org is acting on the info, I mean Comstar was already suspicious someone was out there with SLDF tech due to Wolf's Dragoons.

Supposedly if a sequel gets made, it's going to be during the Clan Invasion. I don't know how HBS/Paradox will handle that since they could barely handle a pre Third Succession War game. I don't know if you remember, but this game was super unstable during launch and a lot of people had crash problems. It really pushed the Unity engine to it's limits I think.

I don't want to imagine the games normal 2 to 1 odds against Clan Stars while I'm in held together with spit and wire century old Battlemechs.

I really hope not the Clan stuff already got covered in the Mechwarrior/Commander series. Just would be nice to have a few more games set in the 4 Succession Wars before going stupid.