Battletech by Harebrained Schemes (Shadowrun Returns)

Coincidentally, Battletech came out around a time when it became more widely known GM and others had been experimenting with super high-mileage vehicles.

Relatedly, the Battletech fluff lists General Motors as one of the organizations behind the invention of fusion power in the distant future (2020).

$31 USD on GMG w/ key voucher code GMG22. I’m tempted…

Preloading now, steam says 8.6gb.

Yes!!

A possibly important note about this that I ran into a while ago:

If you try to initiate a remote download of a game via the web interface to your account on a machine other than the one you’re downloading to, it tries to install to the directory where Steam is installed rather than to the default directory configured within Steam on the target machine.

It was pretty confusing because I started a remote download and got home to discover that I didn’t have enough disk space. I deleted a bunch of stuff and I still didn’t have enough disk space. This was because the game was trying to download to the wrong drive and I couldn’t find a way around this until I tried aborting the download and restarting, when I could choose the correct default directory.

I submitted this to Steam Support and they reproduced it but don’t have a fix at this time.

Wow that sucks. Thanks for the info.

Why don’t they just search for lostech on derelict starship fortresses like everyone else?

I’m pressing the download button in my Steam app. It looks pressed but nothing happens. I got this to work one time before. I guess technology is hard for Steam.

Can anyone explain how the mechanics (math) work in this system? For example, I have seen a few folks mouse over a weapon and get details like “shot accuracy” and I wonder because it looks like positive numbers are … bad?

I hadn’t noticed, lol - that’s awesome.

The blurb there for Precision Strike talks about “-4 Difficulty”. Maybe all those numbers are modifying the Difficulty of the shot rather than the success chance, and that’s why they seem inverted?

Exactly my position. No matter how brain dead it is I’m sure it’ll provide me a challenge!

image

I don’t… let’s not talk about this

#EasyAISettingsShame

hehe, I embrace my shame.

It’s also why I get so much amusement out of reading the standard steam forum threads complaining about how streamers who either suck at the game or don’t know the lore should not be able to play the game if I a tactical and strategic genius with shelves groaning under the weight of all my books on this can’t play it…

edit: btw, pre-loaded and awaiting tomorrow…

Well, the one big advantage of this learning blindspot is that games like Jagged Alliance 2 and XCOM 2 are endlessly entertaining, since one never gets around to figuring out the AIs weaknesses :)

The way the board game works is basically you start with the pilot gunnery skill and then add modifiers to it. If it got over 12 then you would automatically miss. So an elite shot would have a base skill of 2 while a green pilot would be a 5. Then you add modifiers based on weapon range (inside minimum, short, medium, long), target movement, and such. It’s a different numbering convention than the D&D -X system but it gets to the same place.

Page 23 of this pdf shows how the basic way works in the board game. I know that they don’t use the exact same system but it explains the general idea:
http://www.darkagepress.com/files/BTIntroductoryRules.pdf

Okay, that makes sense, and is along the lines of what @Thraeg was thinking, too. I know the original creator helped make this so I would expect the mechanics to be a fairly direct translation.

Will there a manual, anyone heard?

I wouldn’t necessarily expect a direct conversion. The same guy was one of the original Shadowrun designers too, and their Shadowrun games are definitely not direct conversions.

Is there any good BattleTech book to try to read? I remember being pretty wary of the Warhammer 40k universe, then someone gave me The Horus Heresy and I just adored it. Is there a similar BattleTech book that might get me really invested in the intricacies of this universe?

I’m still playing the game for sure. Turn Based Tactics is where it’s at! However I find I enjoy everything much more if I can also get into the lore of the whole ordeal.

Chris Woods