BATTLETECH in the Time of COVID19

[Prussian Havoc]

It strikes me that as time goes on and COVID-19 strikes ever closer to home for more and more of us, that value of BATTLETECH increases.

Escaping into a match of BATTLETECH, even it only for 20-minutes and just half a match can be all the escapism some of us can find at the moment.

For some of us BATTLETECH has always been about more then just the game.

For some of us it has ALWAYS been about our BATTLETECH Community and coming here to the forums to trade a few posts on our favorite Big and Stompy subject, or to check into @Hatchy, @Bishop Steiner or @SpOoKy777 ’s threads and look at the latest Work of Hatchy’s Helpers or Mech Art. Or to check in on our favorite works of BattleTech FanFICTION from @Linak Dekhyper, @Kereminde or any of our many others over these past few years. Or maybe it was to catch the latest patch notes or see when the next HBS Livestream or Q&A was scheduled.

So I started this thread to give us a place to come and support one another, encourage one another and to distract one another... if only just for a few fun minutes in and among all the crush, hustle and bustle of the Real World.


By way of BattleTech distraction I offer up some “inside baseball” on my current commission of Mech Art from SpOoKy777.

First below, we see the latest Work in Progress (WiP #3) from SpOoKy and immediately just below it we see the “Point of View / Camera’s Eye View” of the scene being so expertly set by SpOoKy.

Some of you will recall that back in Kickstarter when HBS was sharing stories and accounts of “Refrigerator Mechs” and “Every-Mech-a-King-Crab” stories of BATTLETECH Development, there was a number of brief mentions of Mechs not just “Falling Down” but of Mechs “Taking a Knee.”

: )

Being a retired Soldier who has spent enough time at Fort Benning to be intimately familiar with Building Four (OCS) and it’s drop-zones (Airborne Training) , “taking a knee” has special and dear meaning for me.

As such, having the “Player Character’s” Center Torso Destroyed Highlander “take a knee” has always seemed so very right to me...

Even if for just a moment, I hope these images were able to distract and immerse you away from any problems, troubles or concerns you may be managing at the moment.

May all the strength, courage and serenity you and yours need, be yours.
May our burdens be all the lighter for sharing them with family, friends and one another.
May our Futures be all the brighter and our Tomorrows ever better.

Share your BATTLETECH stories, moments and breaks with us below. Maybe a screen capture. Maybe a quick sketch. Make a quick story. Maybe just a moment of light and levity...

How are you doing?

 

[Kereminde]

I'm stuck with a couple things.

For one, some of the ... memes, though calling them that is stretching the definition ... which have been going around the other BattleTech hangout spots during this time have had me shifting uncomfortably in my chair over the subject matter at hand. It's had me take a couple extra steps back, and legitimately question whether I still want to be associated with the same people who... well, terms of service require me to self-censor regarding this. (Even if my sense of common decency prevents me from pointing to it or clipping excerpts to illustrate it.) Suffice it to say, I've found myself drifting a bit away - though I can honestly say it no longer surprises me how quickly the Inner Sphere tore itself apart after the HPG Blackout.

Second, what with the nieces home for "who knows how long", it means tabletop BattleTech is out. It means pulling the gaming PC out and hooking it to the living room television to enjoy sweet sweet gameplay... is out. So I've had to find other options, and now lament that I can't get my HBS BattleTech fix on the Switch which I managed to get just before everyone else grabbed them before "social distincing" with their games of choice.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

@Kereminde, child-proofing a home is a challenge... and not without it’s share of, “Oh DARNs!” Good luck.

And thank you for turning me on to the Nintendo Switch. That had managed to come out without me even being the wiser... a sure sign I’ve spent too much time watching my yard for whippersnappers when I should have been browsing Amazon Prime and checking out the new stuff. Thanks for the heads-up. : )

May you and yours have all the Strength, Courage and Serenity to safely reach the High Ground on the far side of this current challenge. :bow:

 

[Teggs]

What? No, no, Kereminde... it just means you need to get your nieces into Battletech!

 

[ThatGuyMontag]

I'm at the start of a Career Mode replay with scoring turned off right now and frankly *loving* it.

It's kind of amazing that two years on I still haven't uninstalled the game (my current install has had an unbroken existence since launch). This is still my "dip in to play a couple of contracts and lose an evening" game of choice and now that I've finished all the mini painting I need to, it's the best way to just chill and listen to some podcasts while waiting for everything to reopen.

One of these days I'll get to give Mechwarrior 5 a try but for now I've got all the stompy 'mech goodness I need.

 

[Jolly Joker]

Hasn't changed anything for me. Home Office anyway, same with my wife. Been starting a new career, though, after my last one, and the difficulty settings do just what they were supposed to: making things fairly difficult:

Unequipped Mechs with Stingly Salvage and Stingy Payment in combination with VERY slow warrior progression and 6 parts for Mech Assembly are pretty challenging.
I'm not really getting somewhere fast.

These (and 2 more Locusts) are my Mechs after 250 career days. I could have had a few more JVN-10As and Panthers, but the rule is, only 1 copy of each Mech. Also, the Mechs are pretty mundanely equipped. I got Black Market access a couple of days ago, but as you can see funds are not overwhelming. Given pretty stockish equipment and the hard opponents, agreeing on 2-skull missions might give you a 3.5 instead, which may end badly, considering the slow progress the Warriors make.

Anyway - it's fun.

 

[LongRange]

I've been playing this game since a few months after it launched and have loved every minute of the 2000+ hours I have invested. Apart from the mechy enjoyment I've had since first discovering this world in MechWarrior 2, just playing the scenarios has been a way to forget about whatever is going on in my life for a little while and reset the stress meter. The fact that it is fully capable as a single-player game is a delight to me when so many franchises are MMO only. Sit down, boot up and disappear into the world of Battletech for a while. TBH, I'm a little sad that HBS has halted development, but I'm glad they gave us something with enough variety to keep it interesting.

 

[starscream]

Well as since I am stuck at home Battletech has been the one thing that has been keeping me from losing my damn mind I am in the UK and we are looking at lockdown until june to be honest I don't think even they know
Just means more time for stompie goodness

 

[LongRange]

Fortunately, I'm getting to work from home. Unfortunately, it means I look up from my work laptop and see my home PC's big monitor just sitting there saying "Hey big boy, don't you want to play a while"?!

 

[starscream]

Not Bt related but something to lighten the mood a bit

stay safe out there folks

 

[ronhatch]

I need to spend some time re-working my mods for better compatibility with 1.9 and figuring out an odd bug with one of them. With that added to recently falling back on my limited-data phone as my primary Internet connection, I haven't even downloaded 1.9 yet. There's no question I'll get it sooner or later, but for now I've been binging on Diablo III and trying to reach the storage expansion reward for Season 20.

Might upgrade my connection soon if I can get a landline installed, since limited bandwidth is that much more frustrating when you're stuck at home.

 

[Kereminde]

What? No, no, Kereminde... it just means you need to get your nieces into Battletech!

They're way too young for even a half-hour cartoon to hold their interest solidly I'm not trying to teach them BattleTech

 

[Prussian Havoc]

Becca was 8y/o IIRC when she took an interest in ClickyTech... that meant Lauren was three and three-year-old hands loved to play with ClickyTech too. Which was fine, as long as three-year-old mouths didn’t try to chew on the Mechs! But then this was ClickyTech and we had so very many doubles on top of that. : )

 

[LongRange]

I just want to say that this board and the members thereof have been a key element in understanding and progressing in this game. Without the help and discussions, it would have been just another single-player grinder that I would move on from after completing the main goals. I have read of lot of the books and had some familiarity with the larger issues, but the member discussions (some more heated than others) have given the sim a richness that is lacking in most other game universes.

I truly hope that HBG/Paradox don't abandon this for long or at least another developer (not you MSoft) chooses to keep the story going.

I haven't played MW5 yet. I'm told my graphics card isn't strong enough and I need more RAM, so I plan on hanging around here for a while and I hope there is enough interest that others do as well.

 

[Aotrs Commander]

For me, BATTLETECH is doing the important job of sitting unplayed on my harddrive. That is not me being facetious. I haven't played since pre-flashpoint (though I've been following all the while), because I am these days in the habit of going "frack it, I'll wait until everything comes out and then I'll have a big block of stuff to play." It WAS going to be on the list of things to play soon, but with the wargames club shut down, I knew when I started playing, I'd want to play TT as well. So it's sitting as a promise for the future (maybe even around the time the Catalyst kickstarter mechs arrive at the end of the year (or, in fairness to the problems currently plaguing, early next).

(Fortunately for me, my games library these days is full of stuff with very long playtime-per-game things, like PDX games and whatnot, so unlike a few years ago, I'm not short of anything to play as I still have games unplayed completely (Imperator, for example) or I've only played once (X-Com 2).)

And, if I run out of stuff to play before then, BT is there, waiting, fresh, for my attention.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

Sitting down to a few matches of BATTLETECH with my latest crew, “Chimera’s Cavaliers” is a great way to cap off some very tough and stressful days... even more so on the really difficult days. : )

May you and yours continue to find all the Strength, Courage and Fortitude needed to navigate not just yourselves, but your friends, families and Communities through the times ahead. :bow: