Battletech Kickstarter-campaign started

[Spartakus]

Hi folks, I hope this doesn't count as spam, but since other announced videogames make threads here I think it's fine.

Harebrained Schemes recently started a campaign to bring Battletech as a tactical turn-based game to the PC. If you are like me and enjoyed the MW-series and the tabletop-game as well you have been waiting for this for years.

Kickstarter-link (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/webeharebrained/battletech)

[VexingFool]

Someone did make a post about it in the crowdfunding thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19898301&postcount=58) but I was hoping there might be another thread in which to discuss this game(or other Btech games) without cluttering up that thread.

I'm a huge fan of Battletech/Mechwarrior/Mechcommander and I love turn based tactical games. I am really excited for this game, I think HBS did a great job with the Shadowrun games and hopefully they will deliver again. It looks like the expanded campaign stretch goal will be easily met and it's sub-tier should be met as well. I don't know if the PVP stretch goal will be achieved, but I hope it does. I'm not one for PVP'ing that much but I might like to play some over-the-internet arena duels with my old Battletech wargame buddies.

I haven't yet backed it, I just can't decide what level to back. I like the flight jacket but I probably would not wear it so I'll probably just go for the House banner level. Then comes the decision of which house... If they had a Comstar banner I'd go for that, my next favorite house is Davion followed by Liao but that Kurita banner looks really-really good.

This Kickstarter campaign got me nostalgic for some Btech so I loaded up Mechcommander 2 this past weekend. The HBS guys had mentioned that one of the mechwarrior's from the game was working at HBS. I believe they said it was 'Dagger' so I decided to do a Valkyrie company and concentrate on leveling the female mechwarriors. So far i've got Dagger, Flash, Longshot, Shadow and Jinx at Ace levels with 4-5 missions to go, I think I can get the rest to Ace by the last mission.

[Gnoman]

This Kickstarter campaign got me nostalgic for some Btech so I loaded up Mechcommander 2 this past weekend.

You could try a Mekwars server - those provide matchmaking and campaign for Megamek, a nearly-perfect (and officially tolerated) reproduction of the board game.

[VexingFool]

You could try a Mekwars server - those provide matchmaking and campaign for Megamek, a nearly-perfect (and officially tolerated) reproduction of the board game.
Thanks for the suggestion. I've toyed around with Megamek before but never really tried to play a match with it. As I said before I am not into over the internet PVP with anonymous strangers so I'm not sure I could overcome my social anxiety. Same reason I could not bring myself to join the Blood Bowl league on these forums. I love Blood Bowl and own the game on both my PC and my iPad but I've never played an online match. But if the Mekwars server has a single player campaign I might give that a shot.

[Drasius]

I backed this to the flight jacket level. The only thing I would have wished for is the option to get another funding level where all the house banners would be available. Don't get me wrong, House Steiner is best house, but having the whole inner sphere would have been cool.

[Gnoman]

But if the Mekwars server has a single player campaign I might give that a shot.

It doesn't, which is just as well - the Mekamek AI is minimally functional, and only really useful to learn the interface.

[Icewraith]

I backed up to the level for Beta access.

I don't want a bunch of extra stuff cluttering up the place, I'm limited on storage space, I don't like wearing pseudo-military gear as a civilian, and backing to the next level would probably result in my wife using the "Justifiable Homicide" defense in court.

However, the digital copies of old sourcebooks thing might be worth taking a look at. I'm a sucker for their fluff. An extra $10 to pick up the original take on Comstar and Mercenaries in general might be nice. The original Dropships & Jumpships book might be worth a glance, too.

Last time I messed around with it, the Megamek AI was pretty good (but not great) at staying in a group, optimizing to-hit bonuses (movement, cover), and regulating weapons fire/heat. However it has no strategy and the amount of time it takes to make decisions increases exponentially with the number of units on the field, friendly and enemy. You'll get faster results using several AIs each controlling a lance but then they REALLY won't coordinate well. Also it works noticeably faster with slower units.

IMO as long as you don't get too ambitious with your battles in terms of scale you can get an entertaining game out of the AI. Take a Clan Star (say, two mediums, two heavies, one assault) in against two lances of heavier IS mechs (say two mediums, four heavies, two assaults) controlled by the AI in the 3055+ timeframe on some maps with decent cover and you'll get shot up and may even lose some units.