Battletech by Harebrained Schemes (Shadowrun Returns)

I’m getting used to the cut scene. I don’t even mind it all that much.

I do wish there was a way to speed the clock up. Games that have a real time with pause element (which the clock is) have options to speed things along, such as Crusader Kings and Stellaris, ironically both also under the Paradox umbrella (yeah HBS is a seperate developer, I know, I saw them and listened in on their chats. Cool guys. The CEO of Haemimont games - Surviving Mars iirc- now that guys likes to party!) and also games like Battle Brothers.

That inclines me to think it isn’t challenging to program in, and really has no detrimental effect other than dev time.

That also means it’s probably low priority.

EDIT: moving back onto more positive stuff, I unlocked my first Panther. I like it much more than the Spider. I know it’ early days, but I love this aspect so far.

This game is, of course, not perfect. BattleTech itself is, um, a hot mess, really, a glorious hot mess, but still a mess. Any game trying to do it justice on any significant level is going to be messy. I do agree there are a lot of quality of life things that can (and might well be in the future) fixed, and a few that leave me scratching my head as to how they got through design reviews or QA, but in the whole, it’s a great, fun, game.

It’s also a great foundation for future stuff. I’d dearly love to see this core system expanded so that we get not only more “stuff,” but more situations and contexts. And of course, Clan invasions…

The clan invasion! That sounds like madness.

I would love to citytech added.

Also, someone suggested a prequel, setting during the Glory days of the civil war.

They could do first succession war. You start with a full lance of assault mechs and copious supplies, and at the end of the campaign you have 4 light mechs each missing vital components.

Weird issues in the refit screen; I keep getting items seemingly “stuck” on screen while dragging them over (this is display only) and occasionally when stuck, the item from the list becomes unselectable. I need to dump my changes and start again.

Anyway; it’s a great game, and sort of reminds me of chess with mechs. Okay, maybe checkers, but still great fun!

I had an assassination mission in the highlands, and I got a map where my target was up toward the top of a hill. “Oh, I’ve done this one before - I think it was a Shadowhawk and then a couple of Hunchbacks came lumbering up as reinforcements. It’s only 2 1/2 skulls, so probably a replay of that with maybe a little variety.”

I swung left and started going up a road on the side. There were some trees and some big boulders I knew I could use for cover by the time I got within contact range. First surprise; it wasn’t a 55 ton Shadowhawk, but rather a 75 ton Orion-V. “Oh, no worries; alpha strike a leg a couple times and then take out the other leg while it’s down.” But a second mech showed up as well; a Locust. I almost laugh and ignore it in favor of focus-firing on my main target. I mean, c’mon - that’s all you’ve got? Puh-lease. The Orion goes down as planned, and the Locust had already fired off it’s wimpy medium laser and MG’s with predictable results and scampered off to a more defensible position.

Then comes the rain of LRMs. Not one, not two, but THREE freaking LRM carriers from out of view using the Locust as a spotter. I’d brought my mechs out of their defensive positions to finish off my main target, leaving them exposed. One of my own Orions falls under the staggering flurry of missiles and another is destabalized. In a fit of rage on my next turn, I chase down and alpha strike the Locust. It goes up in a pretty burst of flame and metal bits. I apparently knocked off its arms and legs, earning me the “Let’s call it a draw” Steam achievement. I chuckled a bit at that, reminding me of how the developers seem to “get” my sense of humor and the kind of game which can keep me engaged. It’s worth the bill for repairing my Orion and waiting on the pilot to heal up (Medusa). Without a spotter, the LRM carriers are dangerous but not nearly as deadly. They have really low initiative, so I just have to approach carefully and pop them as they appear before they can get off another volley or spot for their teammates.

Then the second wave of mechs comes in, and I realize this mission was NOT a true 2 1/2 skull rating. I’m going to have some words with a certain someone when I get back to the ship. With a smirk, I notice the mechs appearing are a Shadowhawk and Hunchback - my originally anticipated opponents. Another mech stumbles and falls thanks primarily to their autocannons. Behemoth will be in the sickbay again, although her mech is at least operable. Then the rain of LRMs comes again.

I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. I light up the Hunchback, knocking it down and then finishing its second leg. The remaining Shadowhawk means more LRM’s, and they don’t disappoint. Or miss. Behemoth’s mech goes down for the count, and the rest go after a thankfully bulwarked mech and it manages to stay standing with somewhat shredded armor. My remaining forces knock out the Shadowhawk the next round and I then slowly, deliberately hunt down those #$%^ing LRM carriers with Sensor Lock paired with my own missiles and eventually finish off the mission.

But that surprise? Love it.

It definitely does a great job at creating experiences like that.

yes it does

Yes, those desperate struggles like that are what really makes this game so remarkable.

Can anyone point me to a good resource to learn all about morale? It’s unclear to me what actions/events generate morale, and how much. Right now, I basically use a morale-costing action on occasion, but I’m no good at planning out that use throughout the mission.

One tip for the morale consuming actions, sometimes bumping your guy up one phase or lowering an enemy’s action phase is more valuable than the attack or defense bonus. Especially in the early to mid game before assault mechs come into play (since you can’t lower their phase below 1).

Article on Gamasutra.

From the Battletech Wiki:

Morale
The blue meter to the left of your MechWarrior portraits represents your Lance’s overall morale on the field. Morale is continually gained, primarily by positive actions (damaging and destroying enemy ‘Mechs) increase your Morale. Regardless of events, your lance also gains some Morale at the start of each turn.

When the Morale Bar fills completely, you can inspire one of the MechWarriors at any time. A MechWarrior is inspired for the turn’s duration, attacks ignore COVER, GUARDED, and EVASIVE bonuses, and all attacks gain a 95% chance to hit, except for long-range weapons that are inside their minimum range.

Each time either player​ uses Inspire, the rate of Morale gain for both players increases - Morale Bars fill quicker. This effect is cumulative.

Thanks, Ironsight. It seems like I can’t fully scratch the itch for precise numbers in this game. In addition to morale, I’m a little puzzled as to the exact math behind things like how the addition of a marginal jump jet affects the jump distance and how much base heat my mech nominal dissipates and generates with movement types (which makes it hard to judge if that marginal heatsink is worth the tonnage). I’m okay with some trial-and-error testing, but the refit time makes it a bit of a pain if you have to rework a bunch of other parts to try out having one or two more jump jets or one or two more heatsinks.

Jump jets is 5 heat plus the distance. The mech dissipates 30 heat per turn.

It’s almost never worth it to be break even with heat. I usually build my mechs to generate slightly more heat then I can deal with, because I don’t often shot every gun, and your mech can deal with a bit of excess heat.

Sorry, I’m not sure if I understand what the above means. It’s 5 heat (base, regardless of # of JJs?) + some value of heat that is based on the distance? Do you know what that value per distance is?

Like you, I aim to have a bit (~1/4 or 1/3 of the bar before damage) of heat generated by a “max” turn (e.g., move + alpha strike). I just don’t know what it takes to dial that in. Thanks for the base number of 30—that really helps.

I’m frankly surprised at how little a heat a single HS dissipates. 3heat/turn is really crappy, when even a medium laser generates 10 heat. That seems really off from my vague recollections of the boardgame.

Wohooo! My saves were in the Steam cloud so I don’t have to restart after a failed Windows Update killed my install.

I’ve been looking at that wiki that Ironsight linked. A lot of the stats on there seem really poorly balanced. Take for example the medium laser compared to the pulse:

medium laser (1 tons, 25 damage, 10 heat)
medium pulse (2 tons, 30 damage, 20 heat)

Double the tonnage and heat for 20% more damage?! There are a lot of other examples in the weapon stats.

Pulse lasers have a to-hit bonus. Granted in the game it probably doesn’t matter because you’re going to have high gunnery pilots anyways. The super high gunnery is part of the big issue here. Is basically you’re almost always able to get to ML range and when you are there you’re going to have 95% hit anyways or stay at very long range and rain LRMS. In the table top it can make a big difference if you’re at the long range modifier for the ML instead of a medium range modifier for the LL. You pretty much have to force yourself to try and play a style that makes anything other than ML, LRM, and AC/20 viable. Maybe multiplayer is better.

Battletech weapon balance doesn’t really make raw sense but that’s part of the theme, Mechs are more cobbled together from available parts and based on relative cost (and so factories that can create high end parts matter too) vs being made from the absolute best options.

Obviously it breaks down in this format where you just have access to all the weapons and can swap them all in and out whenever. In that case Large Lasers are just garbage.

I run mechs stock for a while before I twink them out for nostalgia and challenge fun but that definitely doesn’t make the balance issues not a problem.

I’d understand if the stats were for ML vs. LL standard vs. pulse, because of the range issues. But the stats were for two medium lasers, with the exact same range. And, according to that wiki, both of them have the same in-game accuracy modifier, to boot. Which, by the way, is another question I have—what does +1 ACC mean in game terms?

The pulse medium just seems incredibly bad when stacked against the basic ML.

On LLs (and PPCs, too) I think in addition to the range benefits (which I agree could be made more significant in-game) the bigger guns have the benefit of not spreading their damage all over the place (compared to a comparable plurality of smaller guns), which tends to help with scoring some component damage.

It’s slightly better than tabletop. One single heat sink in the tabletop is one heat per turn, and a medium laser is 5 damage and 5 heat.