This game has totally been overshadowed so far by MechWarrior Online, but I think it's definitely worth a look. It's going to be F2P (like everything is now), and it looks like it's a more faithful recreation of the original BattleTech game. Hex grid, turn based maybe? I certainly wouldn't be mentioning it because I was reminded of the games' existence with a beta invite. Saying something like that would probably be against the beta NDA. Regardless, I haven't had a chance to look at it very closely yet, but what I've seen makes me thing I might like this more than MWO.
I'm curious about it, but Mechwarrior Online broke my rose-tinted glasses, and this has me wondering if the old tabletop gameplay actually holds up, or is horribly broken. So uh, count me as 'cautiously optimistic', and I'd still give it a try if I was handed a beta invite. So uh, brb, let me check my email =)
The old tabletop battletech is indeed horribly broken and easily abused if you make your own mechs, which was largely the point of the game. Hopefully they'll not be afraid to do some balancing!
My recollection is hazy from the articles from so long ago, but I think the mechs in this one are pre-built.
Ah. That might help, though it seems weird to not be able to outfit your mechs. They'd still have to deal with most of the stock mechs being terrible however, e.g. anything with a Machine Gun.
ME3 style CCG + Battletech = win. At least, on paper - as I am NOT in the Beta. Damn you Beta gods! Anyway - there is Definitely mech customization. "Common" mechs are stock. "uncommon" are semi-customizable. "rares" are fully customizable. Right down to equipping a gyro, and choosing how many crits your actuators take up. The new (November and newer) previews on the mwtactics site give a LOT of detail. PS - oh - and you can say you're in the beta in this one. But thats it, according to the forum mods.
If you played the game as a combined ops RPG machine guns had their use. Not against other mechs, but against infantry, light vehicles, and air. And in 3025, we just didn't have the resources to endlessly customize our mechs. We took that half broken jamming every five shots AC 5 and *liked* it,by gum! Yes, some of us were actually out there *roleplaying* their battletech......
Jealous to hear you are in the beta. I've been signed up for an eternity and still check for one daily. :( I hope it's rocking. There will be mechlab customization. You will buy packs of random "cards" with either in-game earned currency or real money currency, and those packs will contain mechs, parts, etc. Think like what Mass Effect 3 MP does, I guess. They are going a bit further with customization in that similar parts made by different companies will have different bonuses - i.e. one AC20 may do more damage, one may generate less heat, one may have a slight bonus to hit, etc. It's set in 3025 so this makes for a way of having a lot more weapon variety without actually having a lot of weapon variety in the setting. Videos abound if you search and they are taking the battletech formula but splitting the turn breaks so that they are after the movement phase instead of after the shooting phase. This lets them start turns with players taking their shots and then taking their moves. Shooting accuracy figures in the movement during the last turn, and allows for effectively simultaneous turns. I'm not a huge fan of their unique takes on some of the mech art, but at least they're going for a style that is uniquely their own. MWO has a wierd mix of mechs that look very accurate to the source material and others that look much different (centurian comes to mind). Also the models are smaller so it's easier for me to imagine the traditional models.
To expand on this, and keeping int mind It's been a Looong time... I had a copy of the Battetech Urbanmech rule book... and you actually had penalites vs Infantry units if you tried using anything other then MGs and Flamers on them. They had Rocket units which a lone one by iteself may not have been much threat, but once you started getting 5-6 of them, you could end up in trouble if you had no anti-infantry support. It actually made sense too if you think about it... would be like trying to attack a swarm of been with a hand gun.
It occurs to me to ask - I don't know much about this game yet, does it really belong in the MMO forum rather than the other one?
I think it's as much an MMO as WoT? Which is pretty nominally an MMO and more a progression based lobby style matchmaking. Unless it's only 1v1? I don't know, I just want a key.
MMO is kind of morphing into a meaningless term. World of Tanks calls itself an MMO when it's just 15 v 15 with a player metagame. I think it's becoming a catch-all term for online-only game, regardless of whether it's 'massively' multiplayer. Also getting the impression this is more of an alpha than a beta.
Yeah, MMO is nebulous, in some ways LoL could go over in this discussion as well, but it's not, and WoT is here, but oh well. If enough MMO threads get drowned out by our riveting MWT thread, I guess we can petition to have it moved.
I'm more just asking because there is probably a non-overlapping audience of turn based strategy fans over in the other forum who might be interested and that don't check this forum at all.
My recollection is that MGs and flamers did a lot of bonus damage to infantry, ACs did their damage score, and lasers and gauss could only hit 1 infantry per attack regardless of size (a big downside against normal infantry, but not that big of a deal against elementals). I forget how missiles worked.
Well non-powered armor, anyway. At this point there a dozen or two variants of power armor in the game.
Sure, but that's an entirely separate issue. And the game was always focused on its giant robots, so, you know.
Well: Founders options are live for this. https://mwtactics.com/founders Tempted, but tempered by my disappointment with MWO.
likewise. also tempered by seeing the current state of things. I don't know where they get their dollar values for the packages. A $642 value? The hell are in these 7th Kommando mechs?
I'm in the closed beta. I don't think its breaking NDA to state that it is in closed beta because it is not open beta ready. Some people try games when they are incomplete, and get soured on the experience (MWO). If you are one of those people, I suggest getting a founders pack, then waiting for the open beta* *After MWO, I'm thinking Open Beta+6-12 months might be the better idea for a more polished gaming experience.
I completely agree with dtolman. Also, battletech-lite with no melee, no knockdowns period, and no pilot consciousness rolls seems to leave me wanting more depth.... maybe weapon/chassis bonus effects and pilot tactic effects will help that when further developed.
Right now it barely works reliably on anything. It runs on Unity web player so in theory anything that Unity runs on will be able to play it, but my personal experience is that on my laptop, It's an absolute no-go in IE & FF and I can sometimes play a turn or two on Chrome before memory leak locks it up. On my desktop IE and chrome won't touch it, but FF runs it stable enough to get 10-20 turns in before memory leak locks it up.
I will happily play a game of MegaMek with anyone that's waiting to jump into this game. It was a big hit back in the day of hanging out in #lummies and #qt3. Looks like they're still improving it.
MMOBomb is giving away MWT beta keys. Apparently these keys also come with metric fucktons of scrap for testing. DISCLAIMER: This game is very much not ready for prime time. Do this instead of giving them money for a founder's pack, if you're curious. e: They're out, but see below.
PS MMOBomb will let you register with a Mailinator address. I recommend you do. And when I say this isn't ready for prime time, I really do mean it. The nicest thing I can say is that it's somewhat functional.
This game is terrible in every way. Wow. Just the mechanics of scrolling around the map, trying to have any situational awareness of your units at all is deeply horribly broken. Oh... oh god.... oh, it's so bad. I need one of those fainting couches so I can put my hand to my head and swoon onto it.
I'm kind of confused as to why this is so, because what I thought this would be was just MegaMek with slick graphics, a decent matchmaking service, and a monetization backend. I would be fine with that!
I'm curious if this thing has an NDA, seems like it shouldn't considering people are basically paying to play the beta. Is the beta tag just a way to get reviewers not to review it?
It does have an NDA, and it's labeled beta because it's very much not ready for release. Opening it up to Founders-style preorders this early is a bit shady.
MMOBomb is giving away keys again. MWT is sort of functional now? It's not anywhere near done, but at least now you can sort of play it.
