Ha ha – I remember as a kid one time my dad brought home a jar of pickled pig’s feet. I was like, really, Dad? I still see the toes and everything!
I haven’t played it at all, but the Shadowrun games tasted like the first time you went to a Benihana.
You can Falcon Punch your way to victory…
Or just drop a flying headbutt off the top turnbuckle…
DFA’s are, in reality, always this totally awesome mix of failed pilot rolls, resulting in a smashed up DFA target and the DFA’er themselves rolling merrily down a hill, even if the DFA occurred nowhere near a hill.
I’m a native Pennsylvanian and Scrapple is not for me. People love that shit here though!
Thanks for Making This Thread Great Again!
Where’s my remake of Missionforce: Cyberstorm, dammit? That is all.
I ask that question every moment of every day. I did get the original running recently though, that was AWESOME.
You were the most recent. You can take my post to be aimed at e.g. Timex, Chowhound, and arrendek, too, if it makes you feel better.
Yes, actually! Before that, though, an old Kickstarter post which has some information on the DropShip which is your mercenary company’s home base. I’m a sucker for that sort of sourcebook writeup, and I don’t recall if it was ever linked here.
As for how it plays, I haven’t picked it up since the update which added multiplayer, but my first impression is that it’s in pretty good shape for how far along it is. It’s definitely a board-gamey take on BattleTech without being a full implementation of the tabletop rules, which I think is a good guiding principle. It’s nice graphically, and the UI already does a good job of explaining the rules to you without having to outright explain the rules.
That said, I’ve now spent a dozen or two hours with the tabletop rules thanks to Megamek, and there are a few points I think could use some touching up.
- Balance: not game balance, but my-mech-is-falling-over balance. Last I played, knocking over a mech is filling up a certain damage bar. In tabletop rules, it’s just doing a certain amount of damage on a turn. I kind of like the latter more.
- Jump jets: TT has an accuracy penalty for jumping and shooting in the same turn. The game doesn’t, and penalizes jump jets by adding extra heat generation. This means that it’s not feasible to jump a long way and attack very much in the same turn, which pushes jump jets more into a scouting niche.
I do like some of the line of sight conceits in the game, though. Light mechs are crucial for sighting and screening, because mech sight ranges are presently shorter than mech weapon ranges, on average. To get the full potential out of weapons with long range, you need scouts to light up the terrain well ahead. It gives light mechs a natural tactical role which isn’t as well represented in other BattleTech games.
The biggest omission so far is, of course, the mech lab. I’ll be a lot more interested once I get my hands on that.
I keep a Win 98SE VMWare Virtual Machine with MissionForce Cyberstorm (+ all patches) installed and standing by at all times. So I can launch STOMPY MECH LASER MISSILE SHOOTY FUN on demand!
I use to play SO MUCH Cyberstorm. My recollection was that their was a shield bug that never got fixed (right front shield, IIRC). The whole community would respect that you don’t intentionally go after that buggy shield. I’m assuming that bug is still there?
DFA’s are a real “hold my futureBeer!” moment that we didn’t really try much in the boardgame, because the results would always be spectacular, just not in the way you wanted.
In the most recent beta version of the game the AI is still a bit dumb, but won’t necessarily just outright rush your position only to fall into a cunning trap. I’ve seen the AI park a Panther on a distant hill and take long range PPC potshots and do the same with LRM boats too.
I’d like to see them work hard to flank with scout mechs to open up this long range indirect fire, rather than just run straight forward, but I’d expect that will come with later updates.
Overall I’m not too worried about the AI being dense because it can’t be worse than the Megamek AI and as you’ll be playing a mercenary unit, presumably fighting regular forces, you can expect to be outnumbered which will help to hide some AI limitations.
Outside of that, the feel of the game reminds me so much of the boardgame itself that I’m having flashbacks to arguments about heat management, that pull out poster I had of Natasha Kerensky, and that time a fried of mine swung at a Locust in his Thunderbolt, missed, overbalanced and toppled over, then got one-shot killed in the rear centre torso.
Also, it looks like this.
http://i.imgur.com/JJQmo96.jpg
Half my desktop wallpaper rotation is from this game already.
Hey, we actually have a thread for generic Mecha talk, maybe we take the Cyberstorm talk there?
I think more than that, HBS has revisited some of the core rules with an eye to making it easier for the AI to ‘understand’ the game. In tabletop BT, you really need to spend time counting hexes for optimal number of hexes moved to maximize to-hit rolls, looking at intervening terrain, watching your heat for to-hit penalties, etc. ‘Evasion’ and cover appear to be significantly simplified systems that, in theory, should make it much easier for the AI to play strategically.
The honor of scrapple must be defended, but out of respect for giant stompy robots, I have put this into one of the food threads.
Ha ha, now you want this even more!
Just about to post this. I can’t wait!
I do agree with one of the YouTube comments that there had better be an animation speed slider! These games tend to over-emphasize the delay before shooting way too much.
ohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboy
