Octopus Overlords

Finally finished the ammo crate mission.
Partly due to changing my mechs and their loadouts, and partly because I let the trucks go. I think chasing them is what was throwing me off.

I also let them go. And chose to blow up one strategically placed ammo crate next to a light and behind a heavy.

Just finished and that was... anti-climactic. Didn't break a sweat on the last couple missions and the final mission was a cakewalk. Hopefully mods and DLC will fill in the gaps in what could be a great game but one that is just OK for me right now.

Much like their Shadowrun games. Once they don't have to work on the engine they can focus more on gameplay and story and the subsequent games were better than the first. Always expected the Battletech series to be the same. There will be sequels and/or DLC and they will better

IceBear wrote: ↑Mon May 28, 2018 7:47 pm Much like their Shadowrun games. Once they don't have to work on the engine they can focus more on gameplay and story and the subsequent games were better than the first. Always expected the Battletech series to be the same. There will be sequels and/or DLC and they will better

Tell me about the shadowrun games. Battletech is an awesome shell, so what you forecast is precisely what I hope for. If they already accomplished this with Shadowrun then maybe I need to take a look at something I had not interest in. Most RPGs do little for me but I really appreciated being a tool of a narrative strategy game for a tactical game that I loved. The universe wasn't supposed to be alive. I was just a pawn doing his job. It felt... right. Right enough that I wanted more and actually felt like pursuing more of the tactical game after the narrative was done would be pointless.

...off later to read up the shadowrun games...

There are a whole bunch of people working on mods for this left and right. I tried out a mod that adds a bunch of mech and tank variants to the game, and it's pretty sweet, but makes it super hard to actually put together a salvaged mech chassis. 'cause instead of just having two Hunchback variants, you have like 40. 'cause there's a 4G, 4P, 4N, 4-T-UK, 5-UP-UZ (don't know about those last couple). But it was pretty nice to see some variants of the Scorpion tank that aren't the crappy AC/5 version. Also, the Shadow Hawk 2K PPCs away just fine.

Anyway, after doing a couple of missions, I decided I'm not ready to go back there yet. Going to wait for the promised official content/balance patch and for the mod scene to stabilize.

Re: Shadowrun, I heartily recommend all three of the HBS Shadowrun games. My favorite was probably Dragonfall. Dead Man's Switch is a good time but very much on rails. Hong Kong is the latest iteration and a lot of fun, but I hated the music, which put it below Dragonfall. There's also a plethora of user-made campaigns, which range from cringe-worthy to amazing. I'd definitely look into the "Caldecott Caper" and the other stuff by its author.

NickAragua wrote: ↑Tue May 29, 2018 9:32 am I decided I'm not ready to go back there yet. Going to wait for the promised official content/balance patch and for the mod scene to stabilize.

Very much in the same boat. I loved going through the first time, but I'd really like some more meat on the bones before I sit down to play again.

Finished it tonight. Concur with 90% of the statements above. Loved being overprepared, can't stand playing with pilots less talented than my Front Four. Great storyline, which makes me think, couldn't they release story arcs for each of the main support characters like Yang, Darius, etc.? That would make for an entertainment and prolonged gaming experience. They have the backgrounds, how difficult would it be to delve into them and go take care of some past grievances?

My biggest disappointment (other than some annoying to infuriating issues with the engine and interface) is that all of the "choices" you make amount to exactly a hill of beans. Why bother to put lipstick on a pig? Anyone with a pulse can see it is a pig. The entire single player campaign is locked on rails.

Yeah, I hear ya. Well, at least they built a framework for in-depth conversations and decision making so theoretically they could expand it in the future.

That and a pretty damn good battlemech combat game.

DD* wrote: ↑Wed May 30, 2018 8:18 pm My biggest disappointment (other than some annoying to infuriating issues with the engine and interface) is that all of the "choices" you make amount to exactly a hill of beans. Why bother to put lipstick on a pig? Anyone with a pulse can see it is a pig. The entire single player campaign is locked on rails.

I think that was my assessment as well. It's not even that the game was linear. It's that this dialog of choice was a waste of their effort and my time. It didn't draw me in. Honestly what drew me in was art behind the narrative. The are caused me not to skip it. Listening to the narrative was good enough to make me attached the story line. The rest wasn't even dressing. It was... annoying... Like do I have to click through this? Do I have to make choices? Structure/Function. It's how we see work in the world and how gamer's game.

Heh

Pauses and UI aside, the only truly negative thing I have to say is that that the conversational narrative was literally useless. It didn't draw me in and as far as I can tell my "decisions" had exactly no bearing on what happens in the game. That seem like a waste of programing and scripting and QA hours.

Huh. I guess this means no more HBS kickstarters, if nothing else.

Paradox Interactive to acquire Seattle-based Harebrained Schemes

Paradox Interactive, a global publisher and developer of interactive entertainment, today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire 100% of the shares in Harebrained Holdings Inc, sole owner of Harebrained Schemes, LLC, from Harebrained Bag of Holding Inc. Paradox pays a fixed purchase price of US$7,500,000 at the time of acquisition plus an additional purchase price corresponding to 25% of the acquired business’ earnings before publishing costs over the next 5 years to the extent such earnings exceed the fixed purchase price. The deal is expected to close by Thursday, June 7, 2018.

I'm not too enthusiastic about the Paradox business model (WHOO $400 worth of DLC!), but I guess we'll see how it goes.

If it's quality DLC, I'll pay up. So far with Paradox it's been hit and miss.

I can get behind CK2 like DLC. Tons of inconsequential cosmetic DLC (ignore) and a steady flow of improvements and additions that more or less stand alone and can be purchased on sale for $4.99.

Thankfully, Paradox hasn't owned them since the beginning. It's likely at least one DLC package is rolling in the works and may survive "As Intended" before anyone starts seeing if it can be squeezed harder for cash.

Well, HBS put out the beta 1.1 patch today.

Paradox forums post

Includes performance and gameplay speed improvements, and balance adjustments, as well as a good amount of bug fixes. It sounds like it's the promised "quality-of-life" patch. Among other things, it gives the large laser and ER large laser some much needed love.

I still don't think I'm ready to come back yet. Need more content. Mechs, missions, something.

Digital Deluxe for $10 on Amazon. I guess I'll bite.

NickAragua wrote: ↑Mon Jun 18, 2018 8:43 pm I still don't think I'm ready to come back yet. Need more content. Mechs, missions, something.

That's the way I feel too. Gotta believe that Paradox is preparing a boatload of DLC.

Jag wrote: ↑Thu Jun 21, 2018 9:00 pm Digital Deluxe for $10 on Amazon. I guess I'll bite.

damn no longer in stock.

I've hit a wall with this game.
All of a sudden, almost every job I am offered or take, ends up having at least 8 on 4.
Maybe it's my lance setup, but I've tried a few different ones and no matter what, I end up getting my ass handed to me.

Yeah after the latest patches this game is much closer to the unforgiving tabletop game. My peeps are near the top levels of the skill trees but they can get stomped by some lucky hits.

Now it's all about running around like your ass is on fire! Or as the saying goes: "speed is life".

I have a 35% off code for Battletech via Steam.
PM me and it's yours.

I played a couple of rounds of this over the last weekend, heavily modded.

My list of mods includes:
JK_Variants - Adds many more mech and tank variants to the game (a variant has the same graphics but different weapon loadouts/hardpoints and movement profiles)
Vehicle Improvement Project - Adds more tanks to the game, reusing existing models. This includes a bunch of hovercraft and some middle-weight tanks. Still looks fine since nobody seems to field hovercraft normally, and I don't look closely enough at the crawlers to be able to tell the difference between one or the other.
Hangar of the Disposessed - Adds the Marauder and Warhammer chassis to the game.
Pilot Fatigue - Makes your pilots tired after they deploy and requires them to have down-time before next deployment or risk injury
Merc Deployments - "Travel Contracts" are now "Deployments" instead. You go to a planet and stay there for X days, and each day you have a random chance of getting a mission, and you get paid per month rather than per mission, with small bonuses for completing secondary objectives.
Inner Sphere Map - Instead of being in the backwaters of the Periphery, the entire inner sphere is the sandbox. Also eliminates the storyline stuff.
Some kind of mech salvage mod - instead of being recovered, your mechs that get blown to bits are returned as salvage. Sometimes.

RogueTech and DZ Company Commander are mod packs that include all of those, but I'm not really a fan of their balance changes or the additional equipment and mechanisms that they introduce. BTML/Modtek makes installing all my mods a cinch.

I spent the whole time barely treading water, with almost no money, at this point I have to set salary levels to Spartan. Those 1.5 skull contracts are "my speed" in terms of my mechs can handle it, but don't pay enough.

NickAragua wrote: ↑Mon Jul 09, 2018 2:55 pm
Hangar of the Disposessed - Adds the Marauder and Warhammer chassis to the game.

Those are in single player campaign?

According to the mod's description, yes. I haven't seen either, since the test campaign I started is still in the "putzing around with light mechs" stage.

Started playing this about a week or so ago when I could sneak in some time, still running with the mechs you get at the start of the game, plus the Centurion you acquire early. Ran into an enemy lance of an Orion, Hunchback 1P (The ML laser boat) and a Shadowhawk.

That hurt. Fortunately nobody died, but no missions for like a month or two.

Picked this up on sale for $26 and man I'm loving it. Not my normal cup of tea, but the backstory is great (first time into this universe) Managed to get the dropship off the moon, but lost Delek.

What do you do when you reach a wall and can't pass a level. Mission advises to bring indirect weapons. Unfortunately most of mechs don't have the capability to use that layout and those mechs that do can't carry much

It's a priority mission and I have no other missions to select instead. And to top it off I don't have other mechs to use and don't have much money.

The difficulty level shows 2 skulls but I get tore up.

I watched someone play it and they have ton of indirect weapons and loads of armor..

Seems my only choice is to restart the campaign which is tedious.

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You can always travel to a different system (you'll have to pay for the travel yourself, but that's ok). Chances are, there will be contracts there you can take to beef up your force, then you can travel back to the priority mission system later.

Are we talking about Smithon? I'm at that mission in my second playthrough. You could always camp my twitch stream until I play it and let me show you how to accomplish it........

Rip wrote: ↑Tue Jul 31, 2018 11:20 pm Are we talking about Smithon? I'm at that mission in my second playthrough. You could always camp my twitch stream until I play it and let me show you how to accomplish it........

I believe so. Do I have to watch it live, or does it keep an archive? I've seen one video already, the problem is I don't have the right tools for the job...

NickAragua wrote: ↑Tue Jul 31, 2018 11:14 pm You can always travel to a different system (you'll have to pay for the travel yourself, but that's ok). Chances are, there will be contracts there you can take to beef up your force, then you can travel back to the priority mission system later.

Hmmm I guess I can travel "manually" I always used the contracts page to travel from one mission to another. Forgetting that there's a map

naednek wrote: ↑Wed Aug 01, 2018 12:40 pm

Rip wrote: ↑Tue Jul 31, 2018 11:20 pm Are we talking about Smithon? I'm at that mission in my second playthrough. You could always camp my twitch stream until I play it and let me show you how to accomplish it........

I believe so. Do I have to watch it live, or does it keep an archive? I've seen one video already, the problem is I don't have the right tools for the job...

It maintains videos for some time. I will be going it with 4 of the five mechs I currently use. Shadowhawk, Vindicator, Blackjack, Centurian, Jenner. That said my guys are fairly leveled up. I'm playing Ironman with 5 parts required to salvage a mech. My plan is to make a run at that mission Thursday evening. My twitch handle is Rip4Ever btw.

As I recall the key to that mission is to go left right away and not worry too much about the escaping trucks. You can let a couple get away without penalty.

naednek wrote: ↑Wed Aug 01, 2018 12:41 pm

NickAragua wrote: ↑Tue Jul 31, 2018 11:14 pm You can always travel to a different system (you'll have to pay for the travel yourself, but that's ok). Chances are, there will be contracts there you can take to beef up your force, then you can travel back to the priority mission system later.

Hmmm I guess I can travel "manually" I always used the contracts page to travel from one mission to another. Forgetting that there's a map

Yeah, that contracts page tries to subtly herd you toward harder missions and the general area of the next story mission, but you're also able to roam around to different regions or difficulty levels if you choose.

wonderpug wrote:

naednek wrote: ↑Wed Aug 01, 2018 12:41 pm

NickAragua wrote: ↑Tue Jul 31, 2018 11:14 pm You can always travel to a different system (you'll have to pay for the travel yourself, but that's ok). Chances are, there will be contracts there you can take to beef up your force, then you can travel back to the priority mission system later.

Hmmm I guess I can travel "manually" I always used the contracts page to travel from one mission to another. Forgetting that there's a map

Yeah, that contracts page tries to subtly herd you toward harder missions and the general area of the next story mission, but you're also able to roam around to different regions or difficulty levels if you choose.

Ya I don't really like the interface too much. I realize they want you to feel like you're on a space craft but there's too many sub menus and some are pointless.

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I will be streaming that mission in a few minutes.

https://www.twitch.tv/rip4ever

Made it through the mission but I took a beating. Dekker was killed and Glitch is out for two months.

Looks like we got ourselves an expansion. Chained missions, three new mechs, new biome and a new mission type to put some of those lighter mechs to use. Sign me up!

I see a Hatchet. Mmmm...