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Post by maglag »

Dungeons 2 free on humble bundle for the next hours.
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Post by Stahlseele »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt6FatHHnzI
BATTLETECH Backer Beta: Multiplayer Gameplay

... not sure if want ...
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Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Voss »

Its very much built off the shadowrun combat engine, which was... uninspired.

it isn't the worst battle tech game I've seen, but... eh.


Partly these two talk to fucking much about irrelevant crap, but they've also had to load a lot of new things (impact, unsteady, sensor lock, evasive, etc, etc) just to make battletech function as something more than a two dimensional thirty year old game.

Though as I say that, they just called it 'like chess' which is bizarre and bullshit. They've added at least a dozen subsystems to battletech, which makes it even less chesslike.

Not sure why they modeled ACs as machine guns.
Last edited by Voss on Sat May 13, 2017 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Stahlseele »

As per the fluff, that is basically what, at least the smaller calibre ACs, are supposed to be like . . Rapid fire large bore cannons. But changing the mechanics in such a way as to actually spread the damage the ACs use out over several projectiles that can miss on their own just makes them so much less usefull, especially the AC20 one. That was always in that timeline meant to be basically an area denial weapon, because it was the ONLY weapon that could oneshot everything with a headshot. No other weapon had enough alpha damage on its own to decapacitate an assault Mech.

The impact and unsteady mechanics are technically also already in the board game, as is indirect fire with missles.
Impact and unsteady are modeled by the take more than 20 pts of DMG per round and you need to roll wether or not you fall over and every additional 20 pts raises the TN you have to roll to not faceplant into the dirt.
I do NOT like the morale/inspiration bullshit. You can plainly see how fucking stupid and OP it is on Mechs like a catapult.
The other pilot skills and perks COULD be in the CBT Board game in some of the extended rules, but as nobody i know ever bothers with those i actually have no clue about the ones shown in particular.

I also dislike the LOS and Fog of War, but these also have a precedent in the form of double blind games in the CBT Boardgame . .

The new movement mechanic is at least closer to the CBT Board Game than the move everywhere you want thing they had in the alpha trailer . .

I do not like the current iteration of Melee Combat. It should not be too hard to do a straight port of the CBT Boardgame Melee Combat mechanics i think <.<

The CBT Boardgame is much more like chess than this PC-Game, because as in chess, CBT is basically all about positioning and thinking ahead of what your enemy can do. Technically, it seems to be like that as well in the Computergame, but for some reason, it does not feel nearly as much like it as MegaMek does . .
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Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Voss »

Eh. Impact and unsteady function nothing like the game mechanics. This is pretty much an every round thing, and there is no damn reason not build lances to just keep hammering people with missiles and hope you get two knockdowns per round. (One per pair of mechs)

Lasers look useless, and heat seems excessively punishing (though to be fair I vaguely recall that griffin is a shit design for that exact reason)

Tactically, it's hard to evaluate, simply because the one guy separated his lance and let his mechs get gangbanged one at a time after losing the Jenner. The game still functions around a brute squad and focus fire (which why its nothing like chess)

The inspiration system is also bad for this reason. Rewarding winning with winning more is terrible design.
Last edited by Voss on Sat May 13, 2017 5:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Stahlseele »

Right, i completely forgot about the stupid head damage system.
THAT needs to go away sooner rather than later.
I understand that they try to make the game faster with this, but i disagree with it.
I have such high hopes for user made mods that will bring it closer to the board game ruleset.
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Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Whipstitch »

My hopes for that would be pretty tempered. Megamek is already a thing and the Battletech devs didn't make mod support a priority. The sort of person who'd try and mod this sucker for more fidelity instead of just "settling" for megamek is likely a pretty rare breed of grognard compared to the number of people who just backed the game because they get a giant stiffy at the idea of single player mecha mercenary campaign.

Anyway, the Shadowrun game mechanics aren't great, so that's pretty sobering, but otherwise I'd say I'm still cautiously optimistic about the single player's potential. Things like morale/inspiration are bullshit win moar mechanics in a multi-player context and should probably be removed but in single player it just hits me as another way they can make player lances more effective and allow them to fight more goons without drastically scaling lance size upwards. Likewise fog of war makes sense to me for single player where you should scouting and otherwise fucking around with alternate mission objectives instead of always being locked into equal battle value pvp death matches.
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Post by Stahlseele »

If this is the shadowrun engine again, modding should be easy enough though. I tried and failed to scrounge up some actual technical data on this game though it does kinda sorta look a bit like unity to me in the trailer . .

The fog of war is annoying to me as such to me as it actually hides the complete map and not just the units on it. Which is stupid too actually. Because GPS and things like google maps are certainly NOT Losstech in the universe. And even the sensor suites are pretty damn good with multispectrum sensors. Infrared, Seismic, Magnet Anomaly Detection, Lowlight, Zoom, Audio, Radar etc. The only thing losstech are the good targeting computers, which explains why it is so hard to hit at ranges that today would be laughed off the battlefield.
If you want to actually have fog of war, you need to start with units actually outfitted with electronic warfare equipment.
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Whipstitch »

It's built on top of Unity, yes.
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Post by Stahlseele »

Then it will be modable as fuck.
People even made mods for the shadowrun games.
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Whipstitch »

My doubts are more about talent pool than technical limitations. Mods for Shadowrun Returns are somewhat numerous in part because they provided a shitty in-house editor that was just barely useful enough that casuals could whip up a crappy campaign if they really wanted to. By contrast you're talking about going full grognard with old tabletop rules, so I'm a tad skeptical. Stranger things have happened though.
Last edited by Whipstitch on Mon May 15, 2017 1:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by OgreBattle »

What's a game that feels enough like Shadowrun Returns/Hong Kong, but better
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Post by Blicero »

OgreBattle wrote:What's a game that feels enough like Shadowrun Returns/Hong Kong, but better
-XCOM: Enemy Unknown
-Silent Storm

The latter is kinda janky tho.
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Post by Stahlseele »

Wasteland 2 mayhaps
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Voss »

There's more battletech afoot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-lMNAJ8ZdA

There is also another video where they talk a fucking lot, but it isn't particularly interesting, unless you want to watch cknorr have a fangasm squee moment.

But anyway, they're being published by paradox.
Duh duh dun.

There is talk about the single-player campaign, which seems a bit more interesting though obviously its a fledging merc company on the Periphery and it should be not-at-all surprisingly and in a wow-that-sounds-familiar moment, the main plot will involve an heiress and a lost throne.

Anyway, the battle itself goes along the same lines as the other. Poking your head out first is dumb, missiles are awesome, and energy weapon based mechs are a terrible idea. Actually, like classic battletech, many, many mech default loadouts and chassis are just traps. Seriously, its 2025 units, why would you take an Awesome? And the adjustments they made for this game's mechanics just make it worse, and magnify the heat problems

And Jordan Weismann is hilariously fucking terrible at both lance selection, tactics AND strategy.
Last edited by Voss on Wed May 17, 2017 12:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by saithorthepyro »

This sounds awesome and like something I would love to look into, especially with Paradox's track record. Admittedly, their one fail for me (Hearts of Iron IV) was there most recent, but since Battletech was my gateway into gaming, I've gotta buy this when it's released.

Little disappointed if the only time-period you play in is 2025. YMMV, but I really liked the Clan Invasion and Civil War mech designs.
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Post by Voss »

saithorthepyro wrote:This sounds awesome and like something I would love to look into, especially with Paradox's track record. Admittedly, their one fail for me (Hearts of Iron IV) was there most recent, but since Battletech was my gateway into gaming, I've gotta buy this when it's released.

Little disappointed if the only time-period you play in is 2025. YMMV, but I really liked the Clan Invasion and Civil War mech designs.
Paradox means DLC. Tho' Harebrained means bungled initial offering and multiple Director's Cuts and retreads, so... pick your poison, I guess.

Clan Invasion is pretty much certain in some fashion unless it absolutely bombs (assuming they don't show up on the Periphery while you're running around building up your mech company like you were sponsored by Wolf's Dragoons or something)

I assume you mean the Davion-Steiner Civil War and not the absolute fucking nonsense that comes later.
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Post by saithorthepyro »

Davion-Steiner yes, not Dark Ages or the setting-wreckers which was Word 'look at how religiously fundamentalist we are about damn communications arrays!' Blake.

I'm just a fan of the new tech that came out, and a lot of the designs, minus some of the baggage involved with those eras story lines. And I really do hope for a Civil War and Clan Invasion DLC. They will hopefully have the good mind to kick Word of Blake out of the setting. Preferably via Nuke before they get off of Terra.
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Post by Blicero »

Voss wrote: Paradox means DLC.
That's how the games paradox develops works. And even then, it's not like Fredrik Wester is sitting on your shoulder forcing you to buy every single piece of CK2 cosmetic DLC.
Tho' Harebrained means bungled initial offering and multiple Director's Cuts and retreads, so... pick your poison, I guess.
Would you rather that companies not go back and fix mistakes they've identified in their released games?

edit: fucking tags, how do they work
Last edited by Blicero on Wed May 17, 2017 3:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Voss »

unfuck your tags.

Well, yes, that is how paradox has chosen to market their games. They're designed from the ground up to be sold piecemeal several times, with gaping holes left to be fixed later. And after 3-4 years of development cycles (and effectively a $120 price tag), there is something like a complete game. Stellaris is barely functional 1 year on (and still isn't particularly interesting), and probably won't measure up for another two.
Would you rather that companies not go back and fix mistakes they've identified in their released games?
I didn't notice much fixing. The same shitty UI and mechanics that were a problem for the first one still infest Dragonfall and Hong Kong. And their Director's Cuts and Extended Editions.
Some minor changes and 2 new story modules out of 6 different versions didn't actually fix any of the real problems.
Last edited by Voss on Wed May 17, 2017 2:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Whipstitch »

From the horse's mouth:
Battletech Kickstarter Page wrote: Because we all love BattleTech and the more attention that Paradox can bring to the game, the better its chances for success in an incredibly crowded and competitive marketplace. As I’m often quoted, “In success, all things are possible.” Paradox’s marketing support will hopefully result in increased sales of the game and allow for years of BATTLETECH expansions and sequels for all of us to enjoy.
Battletech Tech Kickstarter FAQ wrote: "You mentioned expansions. What's the plan for post-launch content and DLC?"
In success we hope to release full-fledged expansions to the game and intend to focus on that over small pieces of DLC.
The cynic in me wants to say that this means horse armor LB-X AC/20s will be sold separately, but I won't beat that drum too loudly given that I didn't kickstart this sucker and thus can afford to take a wait-and-see approach.

Anyway, the "2025, Final Destination" bit bummed me out a bit too. I'm not neck deep into franchise lore or anything, I'm just one of the people who was introduced to the franchise by MechWarrior 2 and the series has been around so long now that the Timberwolf and other Clan chicken walkers are actually way easier for me to recognize than most of the medium and scout class Inner Sphere mechs.
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Post by Stahlseele »

i LOVE 3025. Life was easier in Techlevel 1.
Most of the first 12 Mech Designs are actually awesome workhorse soldier units.
The 3025 Awesome Does not overheat nearly as much as people always think. 3x PPC=30 points of Heat. +1 small laser that nobody ever really makes use of. And then you get walking/running heat so another 1 or 2 points. And the Mech can dissipate enough heat to keep firing 3 - 2 - 3 - 2 Salvos of the PPCs. Which, at 3025 tech level is huge in terms of Alpha.
And in 3025 the AC20 was the ONLY weapon capable of oneshotting mechs WITHOUT critical hits!

And Energy-Weapons in CBT are king. Medium-Laser-Boats are fucking OP as hell. Missle weapons are just bad all around.
Exception, of course, CLAN LRM.
ACs are both shit and awesome and in the middle, completely depending on Techlevel.

As for more Battletech:
Somebody (sadly still PGI/IGP Piranha) is now actually making what we wanted years ago. Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries. Also set in the periphery in 3025 Setting as far as i remember. And already there is bullshit in the Trailer. A Raven Battlemech for example that did not exist for nearly 2 decades after when the game is set. And because it is PGI/IGP/Piranha Games, they will find a way to fuck it up again.
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Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Blicero »

Voss wrote: Well, yes, that is how paradox has chosen to market their games. They're designed from the ground up to be sold piecemeal several times, with gaping holes left to be fixed later. And after 3-4 years of development cycles (and effectively a $120 price tag), there is something like a complete game. Stellaris is barely functional 1 year on (and still isn't particularly interesting), and probably won't measure up for another two.
Maybe that's how Stellaris works; plenty of people seem to disagree with you, but maybe they're all wrong. It's not how CK2 or EU4 work. Both were complete games upon release. The high price tag of a game + all of its feature-adding DLC is mitigated by frequent sales. I'm sure there are people who have bought every major DLC for CK2 on day 1. But the existence of people who do that doesn't mean their strategy is by any means optimal.
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Post by Blicero »

Voss wrote: I didn't notice much fixing. The same shitty UI and mechanics that were a problem for the first one still infest Dragonfall and Hong Kong. And their Director's Cuts and Extended Editions.
Some minor changes and 2 new story modules out of 6 different versions didn't actually fix any of the real problems.
Okay, I'm going to take a step back from what I originally said. I had assumed that the Shadowrun extended editions were more like the Witcher, in that they tried to fix issues present in the original game. But, as you say, it seems that that is inaccurate. Instead, the newer versions just have additional content. Disregard me, I suck cocks; etc.

That being said, as far as I can tell, harebrained studios has been fairly generous in the releases of their extended editions. The Dragonfall one was free to people who already owned it, and the same for the Hong Kong one. So it's not like the developers are trying to extract additional cash from their existing consumers with this release style.
Last edited by Blicero on Wed May 17, 2017 4:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Stahlseele »

Yeah, the Shadowrun updates were pretty damn mediocre at best.

And yes, Paradox is basically built on DLCs for everything.
But damn it, if it means i can get me some sweet unseen Mechs into my game then yes, i will give them money!
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Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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