Battletech Kickstarter News.

As an old skool gamer, this title is an absolute godsend and everything I was hoping for in a new BattleTech, sans a few minor nitpicks (most of which will surely be resolved in future patches). I have been a fan of the BattleTech franchise since the first video game The Crescent Hawk's Inception.

Harebrained Schemes have done a fantastic job of melding together a plethora of mechanics and game systems into a deep, rich and rewarding title that has already become one of my favorite games in recent years.

So far I have logged 50 hours of gameplay and have only completed about 3 story missions, the rest has been the randomly generated mercenary contracts and I am having a total blast! The process of running missions and collecting 'Mechs like an intergalactic Pokémon Trainer is insanely addictive and constantly has me in the "just one more round" mindset.

It's incredibly satisfying as you gradually build up your 'Mech lance from the humble beginnings of low tier medium 'Mechs to the colossal assault juggernauts such as the infamous Battlemaster, Atlas and King Crab. Interestingly, in most cases, each 'Mech you unlock along this path will likely serve a purpose in your lance, at least for a short while as you stone step to the next bigger and better model.

While your resident 'Mech bay engineer will give you helpful hints for stock load outs, the real meat is customizing these metal behemoths to maximize their damage output potential and adapting them to your specific play style. There is a massive amount of customization possibility here.

Along with salvaging 'Mech chassis' during your campaign, you also have the possibility of gaining "Company" specific gear and weapons that offer special modifiers to improve upon the base item statistics. It's a great loot system that helps to expand upon the already lethal catalog of weapons of mass destruction. Just yesterday I discovered a "gyro" that gave me a +3 to melee damage, perfect for my Outrider 'Mech pilot who has a penchant for smashing other 'Mechs in the face with her 75T Orion - ON1-K.

Whether you have been a long time fan of the BattleTech universe or not, this well crafted turn-based strategy will likely keep both newcomers and seasoned veterans entertained for hours on end as you level up your 'Mech pilots and expand your ever increasing arsenal of walking metal death.

10/10 - Would curb stomp a locust with four heavy 'Mechs again...
 
Bought it just because this weekend. Enjoying the few hours in it I've had so far.

Performance is serviceable at 1080p, moving to 4K I got what felt like 0.5 FPS. Perhaps it's time to upgrade my GTX 770.
 
Honestly this is one of the best tactical turn based games i've played in a very long time. You don't have to be a fan of battletech or mechs to like it.

It has some performance issues - But the game itself is really well done and fun.
The game is built on Unity, I believe, which would be why performance is an issue. Most SJW-type developers have a love affair with Unity for some reason.
 
Bought it just because this weekend. Enjoying the few hours in it I've had so far.

Performance is serviceable at 1080p, moving to 4K I got what felt like 0.5 FPS. Perhaps it's time to upgrade my GTX 770.

I didn't find it particularly long (due to good pacing in the game), but that may depend on your rig. Turns went rapidly, more often than not. If anything, I thought it was on the quicker side of things. There are options in-game to speed up the movement actions, though.

As for bugs (besides the widescreen issue), I haven't had any.

I have been playing at 4k glory and it is nice, but I wouldn't say it is the best game to show off 4k. Probably best run at 1440. I ditched my 7680x1440 setup awhile ago for my current 4k. I find most games will work better in 4k than at 7680x1440.

I can see some of the complaints from the Rock/Paper/Scissors review, especially playing it for a long time through the campaign, all the extra movements can be annoying. But even with that and only playing it for a little bit so far, I have found it fun so far. Definitely some little bit of learning curve on positioning, tactics, and overall strategy to each mission.
 
The game is built on Unity, I believe, which would be why performance is an issue. Most SJW-type developers have a love affair with Unity for some reason.

It just runs.. Really poor for the general quality of graphics being delivered.

Almost every screen transition has a load time associated with it, and the random frame drops don't help either.

The art design and UI design is nice though, but I really hate how long it takes to do things when one is outside of a battle.
 
It just runs.. Really poor for the general quality of graphics being delivered.

Almost every screen transition has a load time associated with it, and the random frame drops don't help either.

The art design and UI design is nice though, but I really hate how long it takes to do things when one is outside of a battle.

I believe that's a memory leak issue -- if I play for over 2+ hrs (with lots of Chrome tabs open), then the chances of me crashing skyrocket (have crashed about 3-5x since release).

If I play for over 2+hrs without tabs open, the chances of me crashing also are high, but not as high as the previous example. Load times for battles also take longer.

In all cases of playing over 2+hrs, the game does tend to slow down considerably outside of battle.

I don't believe it's an issue with my rig, as it's quite modern (specs below).

Doesn't detract too much from the game, but is a minor (yet kinda irritating) annoyance.
 
The game is built on Unity, I believe, which would be why performance is an issue. Most SJW-type developers have a love affair with Unity for some reason.

No, its just a bug running on NV cards :rolleyes:

devs are aware and working on it.
 
I'm about 20 or so hours into the game so far, would be a lot more if I could swing it. Really having fun. It feels like a great mix of the old 1989 Mechwarrior (the merc/story side) and Mechcommander (combat). Never played table top so can't comment there and not concerned about digging into the bones of it. It has that "one more turn" feeling that's keeping me up too late. I've only completed one story mission though, so no Argo yet. I keep jumping around from system to system (range is still limited at this point) doing easier rated missions to build up pilots and just nabbed my first heavy. I really appreciate the sandbox style of the game and how you can control difficulty (to an extent- and early phase observations so far only). Want it harder? Run lighter or fewer mechs and rush the story. Want it easier? Putt-putt around and do odd jobs, scour the stars for better weapons and take assassination missions to score salvage.

Finally had my first scare last night. Upon legging my heavy mech I thought I would stick around and clear out his late-arriving helpers. Yeah, no. It wasn't 4 light mechs it was 4 mediums and the Thunderbolt I took out had already softened me up. So between the Hunchy and its AC20 and the Wolverine following it I went ahead and extracted with my new shiny and everyone in good shape. I could probably have won, and maybe the salvage would have been worth it, but I was probably only getting out of there with one mech left standing.

Other random stuff. The non-combat side of things I find just as interesting as the combat, though I'm sure that will change as time go on- it's definitely not as deep as XCOM since it's really just managing finances. I dug myself a little hole after a particularly tough mission where it was going to take over 40 days to get all my mechs back into action and over half of my mechwarriors were wounded. So that was a month of income lost that I had to deal with. So you look for a good system to travel to where you can hopefully find a good store and work with a faction worth building rep with. Took me a minute to figure out how salvage works. The morale system figures into salvage somewhat since you need morale to use the precision shot action to target legs or head or torso for a higher chance of salvaging your three 1/3 mech bits. Mech customization is fun, but if you want to refit that mech prepare for it to be down a few days/weeks and possibly not available for that next mission- this may not be as big of a problem once you have the Argo. Maps could be larger, but terrain is varied enough and figures into your moves based on bonuses or penalties. I don't have any problems with performance yet (no crashes here), and graphics are fine on my olden card. Battles can take a while though, so "one more turn" and 30 min have quickly passed. Can't ignore the vehicles, they can pack a punch and a simple mission against a combo of light mechs and vehicles can still send you home with 3 wounded mechwarriors so was the pay worth it? Don't ignore that Jenner on your flank. Don't let that Firestarter get close to you unless you're okay with that pilot spending some time in the medbay. I'm probably not fully taking advantage of the strategy side of things- evasion, reserving, stability, pilot perks, etc, but I'm getting there. Not very fair, but quite satisfying to walk up and melee a Commando or Locust in one smack from a Shadowhawk or Centurion. Do NOT overheat your mech unless absolutely necessary. It will return with structural damage and be out for repairs for a bit, plus the chance of a pilot injury. Seems like the Locust should be a lot harder to hit given its size and speed- maybe it is from a heavy/assault. Haven't tried the multiplayer; not really interested. The story seems a little cliche so far, but that's fine, and maybe that's because I've been reading the backer novellas. There's a lot of mechwarriors out there to hire and the few I've sampled have some decent personality. Gotta love Glitch's enthusiasm.

Bottom line: I'm quite pleased with my first kickstarter game, it's fantastic. I'll take my time with the story for now and I can't wait to see what people come up with for mods.
 
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I feel the time penalty for refitting mechs is too great ... let us arm our mechs how we want.
 
I feel the time penalty for refitting mechs is too great ... let us arm our mechs how we want.

The point is you literally can't mount certain weapons on certain types of vehicles, this is true in real life as well.
 
The point is you literally can't mount certain weapons on certain types of vehicles, this is true in real life as well.
That's not what I'm talking about at all. When you refit a mech the time until it is ready is too great often 1, sometimes even 2, financial reports long.
 
That's not what I'm talking about at all. When you refit a mech the time until it is ready is too great often 1, sometimes even 2, financial reports long.

Yeah, I was surprised when I had to repair/refit 4 mechs and each one took 5-10 days. I thought "no problem", but they get worked on in order, not sequentially, so I was down for a while. I'm okay with it, that's managing your resources so you need to consider that when you are in combat and if you have to travel, etc. That's when you look for a travel contract. I think that when you get the Argo you can upgrade it so that things finish sooner.

I think also you need to look at your damaged mechs, and then fix the easiest one 1st and worst one last so that you get more mechs back in action sooner. Learned that lesson.
 
That's not what I'm talking about at all. When you refit a mech the time until it is ready is too great often 1, sometimes even 2, financial reports long.

Again...this is just like real life, it takes so many man hours to repair or fix a vehicle. If you don't have enough staff, you can't always do 2 jobs at once.

All of these issues are specifically part of the game. The point is that life is hard out there, they don't have the same high level of technology or resources they did when they first started designing and rolling mechs out.
 
The Argo upgrades are very helpful. Just be careful of the cost. Most are cheap but some have a big price tag. I almost ran out of cash at one point because I didn't pay attention to the two million+ upgrade.
Fully upgraded it takes a lot less time to refit a lance. The mech bay repair upgrades are more important than the mech bay space imo. 90% I use the same mechs so having the extra space for readied mechs doesn't do much for me.
 
Also, when you expand your mech bays you are paying upkeep for every mech that is in a bay as opposed to storage. Your costs can rise pretty quickly.
 
Dev did a AMA yesterday. Link.
Lot of good questions and answers, imo.

"You should definitely expect a lot more content for Battletech, yes. So far, it has been a very good success for us. I saw 35 THOUSAND concurrent players. For reference, the most I saw for Shadow of Mordor after I launched that one was like 65, and that had a HUGE-ass base. So we're doing good."
 
Dev did a AMA yesterday. Link.
Lot of good questions and answers, imo.

"You should definitely expect a lot more content for Battletech, yes. So far, it has been a very good success for us. I saw 35 THOUSAND concurrent players. For reference, the most I saw for Shadow of Mordor after I launched that one was like 65, and that had a HUGE-ass base. So we're doing good."

That is good to hear, I would like to see a lot more of these turn based tactical games come out. Seeing more support for them makes that far more likely. XCOM really was a great ambassador for the genre which had seen a decline from previous generations. Having another success with different style will hopefully pave the way for more.
 
After my many hours of play, I can honestly say there are only a handful of quality of life enhancements I'd really like to see:
  • Loadtime improvements (because I am a dirty save scummer)
  • Drag and drop mech bay. Having spaces between my mechs is killing my OCD.
  • Allied units moving in unison outside of combat (just like your mechs do). Allied turns during convoy missions are painful!
  • Menu rollovers on the argo are a bit janky. Needs a slight fade delay or bigger hitbox.
  • Skippable system jump cutscenes - Gets tedious after the millionth time.
  • Tidy up / speed up some of the combat animations / delays.
  • Prevent weapon / item list resetting to top when refitting equipment in the mech bay
If these things are addressed, it's a damn near perfect game for me.
 
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After my many hours of play, I can honestly say there are only a handful of quality of life enhancements I'd really like to see:
  • Loadtime improvements (because I am a dirty save scummer)
  • Drag and drop mech bay. Having spaces between my mechs is killing my OCD.
  • Allied units moving in unison outside of combat (just like your mechs do). Allied turns during convoy missions are painful!
  • Menu rollovers on the argo are a bit janky. Needs a slight fade delay or bigger hitbox.
  • Skippable system jump cutscenes - Gets tedious after the millionth time.
  • Tidy up / speed up some of the combat animations / delays.
  • Prevent weapon / item list resetting to top when refitting equipment in the mech bay
If these things are addressed, it's a damn near perfect game for me.

You may have seen it already but the mech bay org was a frequent request in the AMA. Apparently the UI engineer claims that it is broken "because Reasons". So they are aware and hopefully that comes through in the first patch. I've only just gotten to the point that I have enough mechs to fill out my five Leopard slots (locust etc just went straight to storage) so I haven't had a problem with the mech bay being too full yet. Can't disagree with anything else in your list either.
 
You may have seen it already but the mech bay org was a frequent request in the AMA. Apparently the UI engineer claims that it is broken "because Reasons". So they are aware and hopefully that comes through in the first patch. I've only just gotten to the point that I have enough mechs to fill out my five Leopard slots (locust etc just went straight to storage) so I haven't had a problem with the mech bay being too full yet. Can't disagree with anything else in your list either.

Yeah I did notice that in the AMA. I'm sure they'll fix it up pretty quick. Probably one of those seemingly trivial issues that is being roadblocked by another feature behind the scenes. No doubt they will find a workaround soon enough.
 
FYI, saw a thread on Paradox forums where people are saying that clearing out the save files improves load times.
 
I think that if I had to complain about this game I'd join others who have voiced concern about the downright suicidal actions of the enemies you face. Really, little Locust? You're the last of your group- are you sure you want to tangle with a 220 ton lance? You are either very brave or getting paid way more than me. Or you three little tanks? Maybe it's better to just utilize your speed and bug out with your equipment and your lives, assuming I have already taken down the bulk of your side.

However, this is a game and games need to be fun so the devs likely chose fun > reality. It's Battletech and you need something to shoot and missions probably aren't going to be as fun if you blast 2 baddies and the rest run off. Salvage would certainly be affected and that would have to be play balanced so more complicated.

Still, something that hopefully HBS looks into in the future. I've seen the suggestion that morale could also go the opposite, similar to the panic that your squad can be subject to in XCOM when teammates are killed. Additionally, the player has access to the eject button, maybe the AI should too. Enemy eject question was asked in the AMA but not answered. I would guess that eject = full salvage, and the devs didn't want to go and gift mechs to the player every mission seeing as how once you collect your 3 mech pieces you are magically given a shiny new mech instead of a "yeah, it's gonna take me 26 days to repair and refit the mess you created".

Very minor gripe, game still 5/5 skulls.
 
FYI, saw a thread on Paradox forums where people are saying that clearing out the save files improves load times.

Nah, it doesn't speed up general load times, but it does speed up how fast your save games will display on screen. When you have a lot of saves, it takes quite a while before they appear in the UI.

I counter this by placing the save games in a backup sub folder.

PS - Saves are located here "\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\[steamID]\637090\remote\C0\SGS1"

PPS - Here's a speed fix for some of the battle animation delays https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/05/02/battletech-speed-fix/
 
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Nah, it doesn't speed up general load times, but it does speed up how fast your save games will display on screen. When you have a lot of saves, it takes quite a while before they appear in the UI.

I counter this by placing the save games in a backup sub folder.

PS - Saves are located here "\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\[steamID]\637090\remote\C0\SGS1"

PPS - Here's a speed fix for some of the battle animation delays https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/05/02/battletech-speed-fix/

I'll be trying those shortly. Patch just hit as well.
 
Played a lot yesterday and been having a blast. I didn't have the fatigue that some others have had playing for hours on end. I think they must have made some improvements to a lot of the performance issues and speed of the game for the full release. There is some annoying slow portions during enemy/ally moves and the jump scenes. It seems all games that have jumps have the same issue with always requiring the jump scene. It is quite tedious as mr_zen256 pointed out. There are still some things I am trying to figure out. I had a mech that had an arm blown up, and I had 1/3 parts for that mech in the storage, I thought I would be able to repair it, but it wouldn't let me. I ended up scrapping the mech and just buying a new mech. Wasn't a big deal as it was just a spider.

I have only done a little bit up to just past the first main story mission for my path. My current setup is to use a Jenner-D as my scout/spotter and then a bunch of medium mechs with long range/damage setups (LL/LRM/SRM mech, AC20/LRM mech, PPC/LRM mech, base Jenner-D). This seems to be fairly good until I get rushed. What strategies is everyone employing for their games?
 
Did the patch open up wide aspect ratios?

I get grumpy when I pay full price and can't use my display real estate.

It's 2018 ffs.
 
Another note that I forgot to mention is the difficulty for the game seems to be all over the place. I think someone else here mentioned that occasionally missions have similar "difficulties" but completely different mech amounts. I think they sort of addressed this in the story saying that pre-mission information is sometimes off. I have had a lot of missions so far that were more or less cakewalks and then a few that were far more difficult. I will say I hope the difficulty ramps up a little more in the game, because right now it has mostly been a cakewalk. I did just complete one mission that took me awhile to get the hang of, which was a lot more fun and a little bit frustrating compared to some of the other missions. I hope there are more like it soon.

Did the patch open up wide aspect ratios?

I get grumpy when I pay full price and can't use my display real estate.

It's 2018 ffs.

The patch information is here. Does not seem they have updated anything for wide aspect ratios. I probably wouldn't hold my breath for a kickstarter title to do that. Even AAA games seem to have been shying away from the wide aspect ratio lately. It is the main reason I switched from my 7680x1440 setup to a single 4k screen.
 
For those of you that finished the campaign, how many hours did it take you? Trying to gauge how much his much play time to expect.
 
Another note that I forgot to mention is the difficulty for the game seems to be all over the place. I think someone else here mentioned that occasionally missions have similar "difficulties" but completely different mech amounts. I think they sort of addressed this in the story saying that pre-mission information is sometimes off. I have had a lot of missions so far that were more or less cakewalks and then a few that were far more difficult. I will say I hope the difficulty ramps up a little more in the game, because right now it has mostly been a cakewalk. I did just complete one mission that took me awhile to get the hang of, which was a lot more fun and a little bit frustrating compared to some of the other missions. I hope there are more like it soon.

From my early play experience I agree that there is a generous amount of randomness to mission ranks, probably on purpose to keep things interesting. Since I am taking my time and being cautious I have kept to no higher than 2 skull missions so far, and bringing tonnage between 2 and 3 skulls. Sometimes higher skull missions only have a few vehicles and lights. Sometimes it's a lance of lights. Sometimes 1 skull seem to be way tougher than they should be, but that could be due to lucky shots by the AI or me underestimating a vehicle's punch (SRM carrier = bad).

I've stuck around and wiped out the map for all but one mission so far. Can't remember the rank, but it was the assassinate where I got my heavy. The 1st iteration all I saw was an Orion with a Firestarter and a Jenner, but I reloaded when that Jenner blasted the arm off Glitch's mech, taking my AC10+ with it. The reload gave me a Locust guarding a Thunderbolt, and after I handled them that's when what I think was a lance of medium reinforcements showed up. I didn't want to risk a tangle with the Hunchback and Wolverine and their two friends so I took advantage of the evac zone.

A discussion on reddit seemed to imply that your point within the campaign and planet location might also influence adversary amount/difficulty. For example, a small poor planet might only have vehicles and lighter mechs, while a rich manufacturing world might include more and heavier mechs. So a 2 skull mission might be different between the two planets.

For me a lot of the difficulty, at least early on, stems from repair time. Returning beat up from a hard won battle means you might not be able to fight for another month due to repair/refit, and that means less money coming in. So I've been pretty conservative in contract selection until I can get more mech bays.

For those of you that finished the campaign, how many hours did it take you? Trying to gauge how much his much play time to expect.

I haven't finished yet, but am probably 25 or so hours in and only 2 story missions out of- I'm not sure, 12ish? My guess is if you focused on the campaign and hit the story missions as they pop it's 30-40 hours maybe.
 
From my early play experience I agree that there is a generous amount of randomness to mission ranks, probably on purpose to keep things interesting. Since I am taking my time and being cautious I have kept to no higher than 2 skull missions so far, and bringing tonnage between 2 and 3 skulls. Sometimes higher skull missions only have a few vehicles and lights. Sometimes it's a lance of lights. Sometimes 1 skull seem to be way tougher than they should be, but that could be due to lucky shots by the AI or me underestimating a vehicle's punch (SRM carrier = bad).

I can confirm the mission I had the most difficulty was the first full skull mission I did, in which it had 2 lances, each with 2 light, 1 medium, 1 tank. The first tank also had both a PPC and an LRM 10, which was very annoying. Before that I normally ignore the tanks for the large part to take care of the mechs.

I've stuck around and wiped out the map for all but one mission so far. Can't remember the rank, but it was the assassinate where I got my heavy. The 1st iteration all I saw was an Orion with a Firestarter and a Jenner, but I reloaded when that Jenner blasted the arm off Glitch's mech, taking my AC10+ with it. The reload gave me a Locust guarding a Thunderbolt, and after I handled them that's when what I think was a lance of medium reinforcements showed up. I didn't want to risk a tangle with the Hunchback and Wolverine and their two friends so I took advantage of the evac zone.

Most of my reloads have had the same mechs, the only difference was which lance would show up first in which region. I have generally wiped all the boards out without having to do too many reloads though. I have really only reloaded if I failed a mission or someone died which has only been 2 specific missions so far.

A discussion on reddit seemed to imply that your point within the campaign and planet location might also influence adversary amount/difficulty. For example, a small poor planet might only have vehicles and lighter mechs, while a rich manufacturing world might include more and heavier mechs. So a 2 skull mission might be different between the two planets.

Interesting, I will have to keep that in mind. That could seem to make sense except you would think that would be factored in. Obviously the crew seem to be aware of the disparity between wealthy clients and poor clients and would include that in their report on the difficulty.

For me a lot of the difficulty, at least early on, stems from repair time. Returning beat up from a hard won battle means you might not be able to fight for another month due to repair/refit, and that means less money coming in. So I've been pretty conservative in contract selection until I can get more mech bays.

Yeah, I did have a long wait time after the first main story mission. I sort of messed up though since I had to travel anyway, and I waited for my mechs to repair before I traveled instead of including the travel time in my estimates. Made me almost short the next month, but I got it figured out. Currently I am maintaining 5 mechs with 1 in storage and I have 6 crew. That seems to be enough to pretty much keep cranking through missions for these early tasks. I have not figured out how to upgrade the ship yet though to get more bays, is that an option that is opened up later?


For those of you that finished the campaign, how many hours did it take you? Trying to gauge how much his much play time to expect.

I have only done the first story mission. There are 13 story missions I believe in the campaign. If you pretty much just stick to the campaign and don't take a lot of side missions then you are looking at around 30-40 minutes as mentioned. Apparently you don't have to do the storyline and you can continue playing after the campaign just running from contract to contract until you run out of money.
 
Played a lot yesterday and been having a blast. I didn't have the fatigue that some others have had playing for hours on end. I think they must have made some improvements to a lot of the performance issues and speed of the game for the full release. There is some annoying slow portions during enemy/ally moves and the jump scenes. It seems all games that have jumps have the same issue with always requiring the jump scene. It is quite tedious as mr_zen256 pointed out. There are still some things I am trying to figure out. I had a mech that had an arm blown up, and I had 1/3 parts for that mech in the storage, I thought I would be able to repair it, but it wouldn't let me. I ended up scrapping the mech and just buying a new mech. Wasn't a big deal as it was just a spider.

I have only done a little bit up to just past the first main story mission for my path. My current setup is to use a Jenner-D as my scout/spotter and then a bunch of medium mechs with long range/damage setups (LL/LRM/SRM mech, AC20/LRM mech, PPC/LRM mech, base Jenner-D). This seems to be fairly good until I get rushed. What strategies is everyone employing for their games?

For repairing the mech you don't need the salvaged mech parts, you just need to hit Refit since it had lost an arm. If it takes internal structure damage but nothing falls off it will let you hit repair and that's that, but if it takes structural damage and weapons are destroyed and things like that, you have to do Refit and attach everything again.

LRM's are very good in this game, it can be a nice tactic to have one mech in the back with more long range weapons and less armor. Large lasers seem kind of crappy to me, so I stick to LRM's and PPC's for my long range mechs. Make 1 or 2 long range and low armor, then the other 2 or 3 max armor and load up on medium/small lasers, SRM's, and have them get in close range.
 
I can confirm the mission I had the most difficulty was the first full skull mission I did, in which it had 2 lances, each with 2 light, 1 medium, 1 tank. The first tank also had both a PPC and an LRM 10, which was very annoying. Before that I normally ignore the tanks for the large part to take care of the mechs.



Most of my reloads have had the same mechs, the only difference was which lance would show up first in which region. I have generally wiped all the boards out without having to do too many reloads though. I have really only reloaded if I failed a mission or someone died which has only been 2 specific missions so far.



Interesting, I will have to keep that in mind. That could seem to make sense except you would think that would be factored in. Obviously the crew seem to be aware of the disparity between wealthy clients and poor clients and would include that in their report on the difficulty.



Yeah, I did have a long wait time after the first main story mission. I sort of messed up though since I had to travel anyway, and I waited for my mechs to repair before I traveled instead of including the travel time in my estimates. Made me almost short the next month, but I got it figured out. Currently I am maintaining 5 mechs with 1 in storage and I have 6 crew. That seems to be enough to pretty much keep cranking through missions for these early tasks. I have not figured out how to upgrade the ship yet though to get more bays, is that an option that is opened up later?




I have only done the first story mission. There are 13 story missions I believe in the campaign. If you pretty much just stick to the campaign and don't take a lot of side missions then you are looking at around 30-40 minutes as mentioned. Apparently you don't have to do the storyline and you can continue playing after the campaign just running from contract to contract until you run out of money.

3rd story mission in something happens and that unlocks the upgrade options.. So I reccomend at least getting to that point.
 
I have been playing a bit more and definitely feel the LRMs are probably the most effective weapons. I also have been spending more time using my morale to aim for legs to take out the bigger mechs. That seems to work really well with LRMs since each missile has its own chance to hit.
 
I haven't salvaged a good LRM boat yet- or haven't spent the downtime converting one of my mechs into a boat. Closest I have is a Treb with dual LRM15s. That said I have been able to knock down a few mechs with a combo of missles and AC fire. If you have cut the enemy field down and you're going after full salvage of the last one (and the target mech isn't rocking 25% armor) a good tactic has been knockdown #1 with LRMs = 1 pilot injury, followed by blasting side torso's for 2 more pilot injuries and letting it up and legging it for a 4th pilot injury. Sometimes, I think to keep the difficulty near the skull rating, the enemy heavies show up with the low armor. I've tried the previous tactic to salvage them but they're just so badly damaged already that you end up coring them before you can fully injure the pilot. For the 25% armored enemies I think it's best to settle for 2/3 salvage and just blow off both legs. I guess the pre-damaged mechs are more of an early game issue.
 
So far I use a Treb with Dual LRM15s, and then most of my other mechs I use have at least an LRM10. I go primarily with AC and LRM setups. AC does a lot of damage when it hits.
 
Also used a Treb, took out all the other weapons and loaded up on LRM ammo and had combo of LRMs totaling 35.
I was fighting assaults before I was able to salvage an LRM catapult. Don't think I even saw one until around 50 hours.
Then I got a stalker and had 2 LRM 20++ and a large laser+++. Was able to knock almost anything down from a good ways off.
 
So I have about 40 hours in and have done maybe 5 storyline missions heh. I keep getting sidetracked doing all the other missions I can in every area. Currently I am running around with 2 Trebs, 1 Quickdraw and 1 Thunderbolt. I am finding the Trebs to be some of my favorite, especially with jump jets so I can get up high or back down out of sight. Still working on trying to get a Catapult or Orion. I find the most success basically circling around the edge of the map and making the enemy chase me. I tried doing a run up and smash build, but that didn't seem to work as well.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like they have my favorite mech of all time the Marauder. Probably doesn't fit with their timeline.
 
They may add some new mechs to it later on. It sounds like the game was quite a large commercial success for them so it wouldn't surprise me if they do a DLC or the like to add on to it. They seem to like to give their games some more features after release, if they can afford to (and they have been able to with their Shadowrun games). The good news is they aren't working with a big publisher so there's no rush to get on to the next project. They gots to makes the monies of course, but so long as they are making enough they can afford to work on what they've already released.
 
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