Battletech by Harebrained Schemes (Shadowrun Returns)

So the Urban Warfare expansion is out today but I’m holding off for now. The “urban warfare” elements leave me underwhelmed. The only real draw is they claim “a wide variety” of new flashpoint missions but I was semi disappointed by the relatively sparse flashpoint offerings in the Flashpoint expansion. If this expansion actually does provide a decent helping of flashpoints that are interesting, I will probably pick it up. Otherwise, probably not.

Any impressions thus far?

So, we are still missing the ability to do combined arms and large battles? I remember that was the whole point of the Urban Box set, you could set up infantry ambushes in buildings, and set up turrets.

Our review won’t be ready till Friday unfortunately.

I will be playing this over the weekend, so I can chime in with some thoughts.

I thought there were not enough Flashpoints as well but I preordered all the expansions because I do love some Battletech.

I should mention one reason I am hesitant to pick up the new expansion is that patching up will overwrite all the custom balance changes I made to the .json files. I’ve been experimenting with many variations of balance changes off and on for a long time, based on that spreadsheet legowarrior made of the various weapon stats (AC2s and AC10s are too heavy, as are large lasers!, most arm/leg mods are too heavy/too big, the “big engine” weight cost on some mechs (I’m looking at you Banshee) are ridiculous, etc.) - I like trying my own custom fixes.

(For those interested, my current testing makes me feel a weight of 5 tons for AC2s and weight of 10 tons for AC10s is much more balanced. I’m not sure if a weight of 4 tons or 3 tons is best for Large Lasers yet. As for the arm/leg mods and the big engines, more testing is required.)

I liked the game a ton playing through it, but this is one of the general issues with Battletech itself for me. Loadouts are super unbalanced because the lore is basically that everyone is making due with the scraps that they have. AC/2’s are kind of dumb for mech vs mech battles but hey we have a plant that makes AC/2’s on one of our planets so fuck it this mech is getting one. So in theory a lot of the game is making due with what you have.

However, once you collect up all the best stuff, there’s no real reason to run other things except for nostalgia. I basically ran stock mechs for the first 20-30 hours just to get more of what felt like ‘Battletech’ to me vs other turn based strategy games.

I can see the idea of balancing out loadouts to make more variety compelling but (for me personally) at that point I might as well just play a game that is built around the idea of parity. For me it has to be an unbalanced cluster or it isn’t Battletech (of course I don’t think this needs to be the case for anyone else)

Bah. Even though I set my Battletech on Steam to “only update when I launch it” and I was it launching it using a non-Steam shortcut, it updated today anyway. Damn Steam Imperialism!

So, since my tweaks are overwritten I may as well buy Urban Warfare and start a new career. I will report back in a few days or so.

That setting has never worked in my experience. It’s one of Steam’s (many) failings. It’s also the reason I enormously appreciate devs and publishers who provide roll back support under the beta feature, which incidentally BATTLETECH has since it’s a Paradox game. RIght click it in your library and go settings → beta and you can roll back to whatever version you’d like.

Honestly I am totally burned out on this game. I loved it. But I’m not sure that this can bring me back.

Roll back does not help in this situation as the patching process overwrote my custom edits. I could simply re-edit all the .json files back to the way I had it but I will just go ahead and try the new content instead. (Then, I will probably edit stuff again later.)

Edit: I fired up a new game and hey it turns out this patch did not overwrite my changes (I’m guessing they made no changes to the weapon stats so they didn’t touch the base .json files with the weapon data). Which means I can continue to enjoy my self-mods.

I keep debating on the season pass. The DLCs just seem so overpriced, but at the same time I enjoy the base game quite a bit. I keep expecting some better discount, but it doesn’t seem to be coming. Any general thoughts?

I keep putting off buying the game. Maybe it’s unfair, but I figure that if I wait 18 months the game will be polished smooth as glass, and the performance issues will get ironed out. This is probably very unrealistic.

I just fired up a career. I just had my original campaign save before that I was playing when it originally came out. They seem to start you out with a somewhat decent lance in the career mode. It gave me a Centurion, a Vindicator, a Cicada, and a Commando. I ran a couple missions, but no urban fights yet.

I picked up Battletech soon after it won the Qt3 GOTY award and I ended up really enjoying it. I’ve logged 55 hours and counting, still working my way through the campaign and having a grand old time.

So thanks, Qt3! Y’all got good taste in computer games.

Just fired it up, played through an urban mission and read the patch notes.

I do not think this will change anyone’s mind. If you like Battletech then you this is more of it. Urban fights, a bit of ECM, a couple more flashpoints, more star systems and 3rd parties on the battlefield. There is more to enjoy here.

I played through a city fight and it was definitely a different tactical experience. You can make buildings collapse (probably a bit too easily) and I enjoyed bringing one down along with a Shadow Hawk that was on top of it. The Hawk took some major leg damage. Have a mech hiding behind a building? Use one of yours to collapse the building and another to take clear shots at the now-exposed mech. The map at night was very, very cool. It looked like a future city while still be recognizable as a city - a bit Blade-Runnerish if not as vertical. It did slow down my aging system in that map.

And because I do love this game I will start a new campaign from scratch. But I get the feeling that this expansion is a bit underwhelming much like the last one - good ideas but simply not enough content. There were only 9 or 11 Flashpoints last time I think and my guess is that there will only be a handful of urban maps and a couple more flashpoints. While there are a couple of new mechs, they are on the small size and Battletech does a lousy job of giving small mechs roles later in the game.

What the game really needs is a truly detailed mech painter, a mission editor, the entire Inner Sphere and a Solaris expansion.

So I played some tonight, overall impressions similar to the above: nice UI improvements on star map, nice urban flavor, some more flashpoints, some new ECM mechanics, seemingly more contracts per system, but nothing really wowing me. Good, but not great.

And then…

Read that pic closely folks. It’s not just everyone favorite walking trash can; it’s a walking trash can with an AC20.

Sold. Price of admission right there.

Did you clench up a little when you realized you’d brought flamers and a couple of medium lasers to an AC/20 fight . . . ?

You see, the core problem here is the Firestarter. A lot of people will complain about the Firestarter, and they have good points. But they always miss the big point. The real issue with the Firestarter isn’t heat management. Or the flimsy armor. Not at all. Any seasoned Mechwarrior will tell you that the REAL problem with the Firestarter is that the glove box isn’t big enough for a spare pair of shorts. And now you know why.

/thread

I actually earned the “Trash Can Fire” achievement in that battle: “Destroy an Urbanmech with flamers.”

I forgot to add earlier that the rng gave me an Urbie as one of the 5 starting mechs. I just had my first urban mission, and took it along. First shot with the ac/10 takes of the CT of the opponent. The Urbie continued to wreak havoc on the Taurian and Marik forces until the fight was over.