I like that trailer. Just about everything about this game looks cool. Why am I not playing this? Probably those dozen or so other games that also want my time.
It takes a little getting into, but it has taken over from Red Dead 2 as my XboX couch game. And it’s still good, despite nearing the end game in it. For some reason the Rasalhague mission chain didn’t show up in my game. Perhaps the in-game date is too far past it’s intended timeline?
That is likely. The start time of the Rasalhague missions is sometime in 3031 if I recall.
Or at least that is the time you start if you pick that option in career mode.
Oh wow, that’s kinda nuts. You can lock yourself out of the DLC if the game clock has advanced past when it should start?
For Career mode (just pick where you want to go and who you want to work for) they expect you to start over after reaching your personal end goal.
The story campaign starts in 3015, with the career you choose a start point that can be several different times.
Since the dlc chains are tied to canon story events, and the in-game news reports follow the established canon time line, having them happen at other times would feel out of place.
I do get the feeling that they expect most of the people buying the dlc to be playing career mode, not the story campaign.
If you start a new career (or campaign) with all the dlc you can take part in some of the historical events in the Battletech universe personally. While still developing your own unit.
The Kestrel Lancers mission chain was really fun for me personally because I’ve read the books that deal with fourth succession war and it was neat to take a personal part in it.
You can import your unit from the story campaign into the career mode if you want to play all the content, but keep your mechs/pilots.
Oh really?! Sweet! I gotta try that!
I reinstalled this with the DLC, and man, I suck. Starting a new campaign, after my first mission my Centurion was in the shop for 48 days. The next mission, in a light mech of some sort, I finished in such bad shape it was in the shop for 44 days or something like that. So, I spent more money on repairs than I made, and had to fast-forward seven weeks just to have two workable mechs. I gotta figure out how to be a better pilot I guess. The old MW2-4 games I was good at, but I also used a HOTAS system mostly.
Important things to know about your opponents: They will focus on the mech doing the most damage. This is usually the player since the ai is much more conservative about their fire rate.
You can let the heat draw off a bit by ducking for cover or not firing at maximum rate for a few seconds. usually allows your mech’s heat build up to drop a bit as well.
I don’t know for a fact, but, it definitely feels like the ai will also target your most expensive weapons… especially if they are on arms.
I’ve had some success with telling my lancemates to ‘move to’ a location like a hill top/ridgeline and then moving up to draw out an enemy response. Then drag them back to your friends.
If you have ordered the friendlies to a specific location they will stay within a range of that location and engage any enemies they see.
Edit: Also important is that your pilots have an evasion stat. As long as you are moving the AI has a penalty to hit you. If you are stationary that is not in effect and they will rack up the damage in a hurry.
Good info, thanks. Sadly, at start it’s just me, so I can’t blame my team mates!
The higher level AI definitely target specific components on your mech. They will shoot you where your best weapons are or they will shoot you where you are most damaged.
Definitely can be very challenging.
I like that. Took a headshot kill the other day even! Still, most fun is still to be had running around in a 4 machinegun Raven making pew pew at anything and everything while being utterly untouchable. I find it funny that the hero raven has no provisions for ECM, even though that is supposed to be the ravens’ special trick. And even without ECM the hero raven is a fucking monster. Often on raids or assassinations, I park three atlasses or king crabs behind a hill, go poke the bees’ nest and run back to them if things get too hot. They rarely do, and most often I do about six times as much damage in my stupid little rabid light mech than the three 100-tonners do. heh. Get some!
I enjoy the game a lot, but found I much preferred being a hired gun for Jarrod over the strategic layer of the game. Found that surprising since I typically love the strategy stuff in these games.
Game just boughtened on Steam. I lurve the older Mechwarrior games and have played through Battletech a few times. For some reason I thought this on was a super dumbed down version and didn’t have the sweet progression and customization that Battletech provides. Watching a few recent reviews, it would appear that I am mistaken. Pretty much every tickbox, from traveling between systems to faction ratings to granular mech customization to pilot stats,etc. looks to be included. The screens actually looked very similar to Battletech in these regards.
Now switching from turn based strategy to first person action is going to be a massive adjustment for me, and no doubt I’ll suck bad. I’ve got the hotas all wired in, so may start with that, but suspect I’ll end up playing with mouse/keyboard or a controller. I’ve found Hotas isn’t really about twitch targeting. It’s about precision flying and controlling systems.
Wait till you mod it, then you can really customize like a mad man. I have Yet Another Mechhlab running with about 15 other mods. Good stuff!
Do these mods work with the Gamepass version, or just Steam?
They work on Gamepass too, but you have to get them from Nexus or some other source, whereas in Steam you can just hit “Subscribe” on the workshop.
I played the Gamepass version for a bit and then uninstalled it when I found out it doesn’t come with the Inner Sphere DLC, which means no career mode (just campaign).
Added it to my Steam wishlist and two days later it went on sale on Steam. Fortuitous timing there.
Mods too!? FanTASTISH.
Boy oh boy. Work just ended and installing. Gotta go to the store and make dinner for the family and help son with Algebra and daugher with an essay and spend some time with the wife, but can’t wait to turn it on and fall asleep at the load screen!
With my favorite genres of games being so damn good these days it is just a cruel timeline to be a fully engaged father with a demanding career.
And as expected very rusty with the whole throttle / legs / body control scheme. Mouse and keyboard seem to be doable for now while I get oriented.
But oh fuck. Missions are long and you can’t save in the middle. That’s going to be quite painful, and maybe a deal killer. Off to see if there is a mod for this…
…nothing on the nexus. Well, fuck. I’ll probably keep it, but my gaming chunks aren’t so big to afford redos so I may have to shelve it until vacation or something. Nice thing about Battletech is the missions are short.
This might help:
It adds new missions types etc. Very well done, custom voice overs/etc. The Duel and Recon mission types cane be pretty quick ones and I would say overall they “seem” to be quicker on the whole with less check points/etc. That could change though as I have only played a couple hours with it so far.
Oh crap I totally forgot about the workshop. Even my lazy ass can handle that. Worth buying on steam just for that.