Weapons Are Online, Battletech Available Now On PC
Today, you can command your mercenary group of MechWarriors as you take on a contract from a deposed ruler.
If you've been hankering for some heavy metal, BattleTech is officially here to quench your thirst. The stage was set with some story background in the most recent BattleTech trailer, but the game is out now and Harebrained Schemes has released a new trailer to celebrate and send up a flare for potential players.
“There’s a lot of love for the BattleTech / MechWarrior universe, and the entire Harebrained team feels incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to work on a tactical combat game worthy of its legacy,” said Jordan Weisman, CEO of Harebrained Schemes and creator of the MechWarrior universe and original BattleTech board game, in a press release. “We hope that fans of the universe and strategy gamers in general find as much fun and excitement playing BATTLETECH as we found creating it.”
Battletech is out now and can be purchased for $39.99 on Steam, GOG, and Paradox.
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replyCharles Singletary posted a new article, Weapons Are Online, Battletech Available Now On PC
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If you're a fan of Battletech, all you need to know that it's a very fun and good recreation of the tabletop game: the Battlemechs all look amazing (models are straight from MechWarrior Online, which is a very good thing), tactics all work like I remember them (overheating, destroying components, etc), and the campaign is a nice mix of story missions and random contracts.
If you're not familiar with Battletech:
Setting
Imagine Game of Thrones in Space, or Dune in the near-future: different houses hold different regions of known space and they constantly try to backstab each other. But instead of knights and soldiers, they use giant Battlemechs. These battlemechs are towering behemoths of armored steel and lots and lots of weaponsm piloted by Mechwarriors. Houses operate their own armies: the smallest typically have one or two lances (fighting groups of 4 mechs each), whereas the biggest factions can throw hundreds at their enemies. There's also a lot of mercenary groups, who sell their services to these warring houses. Most of them are (like you in this game) small-fry who scraped together a few medium and light mechs and try to make ends meet. There's also The Clans, exiled techno-barbarians, but that all takes place centuries after this game.
Gameplay
Can be divided into two parts: management and combat.
Management takes place between missions, when you're on board your spaceship. You can recruit Mechwarriors (they tend to die or get injured a lot), take on contracts, level your crew and, this is the best but daunting part, customize your Mechs. Customizing mechs is more complicated than you might expect: you need to worry about weight, where to place (volatile) ammo, what kind of guns to fit, manage heat-buildup, and more. This is definitely hard and obtuse at first, and I only knew what to do because I played a lot of Mechwarrior games, but you'll figure it out soon enough.
Combat is what most people want: Big stompy robots shooting and punching each other. It's turn-based, and the order of activation is determined by initiative: light mechs go before everyone else, then the slower mechs. You can destroy parts of enemy mechs, which have immediate effects on their combat ability: shoot a leg to slow a mech (or even topple him over), destroying an arm also removes the weapons on it, hitting the torso might detonate ammo (and more often than not the entire mech), and a few shots to the head (where the cockpit is) will kill the pilot. Some weapons work better against armor, others better against unarmored (damaged) sections.
Speaking of weapons: Lasers, long and short range missiles, autocannons, particle cannons, you can even use your jumpjets to jump on other mechs. But using too many weapons too often will overheat your mech quickly, and if you overheat you will damage your mech's structure. To prevent that you can attack with less weapons (switching inaccurate or heat-hungry ones off), don't shoot for a turn, or stand in water. Or you can just punch enemies, because that doesn't cost heat. It's a lot of fun to group up on the last remaining enemy mech, knock it over with the first melee attack and then just surround it and keep kicking it till it explodes.
Oh, there's also enemy vehicles (tanks and artillery), and while they can damage your mech at inopportune moments, they're easy to deal with (my favourite is to just walk up to one and destroy them with a single kick).
Mechs
The bigger they are, the more guns and armor they have.
Light
Scouts, almost no armor and often carrying poor armament. Use this to scout ahead, flank enemies, and/or take out vehicles.
Medium
Very specialised mechs: brawlers, snipers, rocketplatforms, flankers. Especially the beginning your main mechs: learn their strengths and weaknesses and use them.
Heavy
More armor, more guns. Often brawlers that can take a lot of hits, but some models are super specialised.
Assault
Big, nasty, slow. One salvo can destroy almost any mech it sees. The Atlas mech is the most famous of this category (it's also the skull-shaped mech you can see on promotional art).
But the best thing is, you can customize any mech however you like, as long as it has room for your designs. Wanna turn that medium brawler that's using medium range cannons and lasers into artillery support? Remove those weapons and replace everything with long range missiles!
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What's so good about it
The graphics look good, the combat is very detailed and impactful because positioning and targeting components is vital, tactics can make or break a fight (Light mechs can take on Assault mechs if played properly),
What's not so good
I'm a bit worried about replayability because, although most of the campaign is completely open, there's some story missions that you need to plow through. I'm hoping that the developer (or a modder) will release an entirely open campaign. Rest are some minor UI things: sometimes it's hard to see what your mech can target, and you can't look at your mechs during the enemy turn (to see damaged components, for example). But these are very minor.
It's a great turned-based strategy in a great sci-fi setting.
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Looks like it is, though not without some issues.
http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=37455501
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New to Battletech? A Primer... https://bg.battletech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/BattleTechPrimer_Final.pdf?x64300
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