Does anyone know if there will be a way to adjust the game difficulty such as RECRUIT, NORMAL, VETERAN & HARDCORE?
Game Difficulty
- Thread starter tcharmon74
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No such difficulty settings will be in the game.
If you want higher difficulty, you’ll have to pick more of the higher rated contracts. Rather than settle on 1 and 2-“Skull” Contracts, take some 3-“Skull,” even 4 or 5-“Skull” Contracts. For the 4 and 5-“Skull” Contracts, you’ll likely need a minimum of reputation with the applicable Employer.
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The devs have stated there is not going to be traditional difficulty settings like that. They will make available a range of easy to hard contracts (rated from half skull to five skulls) that we can take at any time, given we have the reputation to access the higher level contracts.
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But it's also assumed that the single player campaign missions will increase in difficulty, so if you want to complete the campaign you'll have to keep taking more difficult missions just to prepare for them. You're not going to defeat the final "boss" mission with 4 Locusts.
So overall we can expect an average level of difficulty in a strategy game to complete the game?
Hm, been a very long time since I seen/played a game released without difficulty settings. Be interesting to see how that is recieved overall.
They did talk about an iron*player* mode, but that has been pulled out of the upcoming release. Not sure if this included a change in difficulty.
The kickstarter update said “a feature that wasn’t a Kickstarter commitment but that we talked about online a bunch is Ironman Mode. Unfortunately, that won’t make it in for launch but we’d love to add it later.”
There is no iron man mode, but they are encouraging us to play it that way. The idea is that it is fun to overcome and adapt to losing important weapons, pilots, and having your favorite mechs down for repairs. Unlike xcom, where things going wrong often are game ending.
I am going to try real hard to play it this way and fail the first campaign if necessary. There is also a built in save or do-over mechanic built into the story missions that I am a little fuzzy about.
The developers explained that they didnt do multiple difficulties because they didn’t have the capacity to test and balance the whole campaign multiple times on multiple difficulties, but the community will help fill this vacuum. I bet Amechwarrior will have difficulty-changing mods as soon as day 1. In the beta he built and regularly maintained mod packs that made the AI much smarter, among other things.
While the developers don’t “officially” support modding, they went out of their way to put just about everything into easy-to-understand json files so they’re easy to tweak with no need for technical skills
While the developers don’t “officially” support modding, they went out of their way to put just about everything into easy-to-understand json files so they’re easy to tweak with no need for technical skills
To expand on this:
I want to do an "Ironfan Mode" mod pack that would remove any AI handicaps like the lowered crit chance and of course a harder AI. Downside is, I also want to do a stock playthrough first to get a feel for how the game plays. Sure, I could on day one remove things like the AIcritchance malus and it would work just fine. However, I wouldn't have any idea how that kind of change would affect the SP down the line. It might make the early game overly brutal, or make rare weapons you happen to acquire in the late game way too fragile and easily lost. Thus, making something like a Medium Laser ++ not worth bringing to the field, but instead as items to sell and buy 2 replacement baseline mediums due to the increased loss of weapons.
I'm mulling over making such a pack anyway, but prefacing it in that it's basically untested and won't be until I get a handle on stock play.
I am in the same boat... but as I hear HBS describe it, when I am feeling up for a challenge, my MechWarriors are healthy and Mechs are Fully Mission Capable (FMC) I can get ambitious and take a string of higher rated Contracts. Then if later that night I am pressed for time and want to get in a quick lower rated contract, I can do so.
So rather than get locked into one difficulty level, BATTLETECH sets before us a buffet line of Contracts and associated Missions, where we can pick and choose contracts thus difficulty as our situations dictate.
Over time (some sooner, others later) gamers will come to experience a wider range of gameplay possibilities, than if constrained by an escalating set of hard-edged Difficulty Settings.
What HBS has crafted is rather elegant and lest the gamer define for him or herself, their gaming experience... and I quite like that. : )
It's open world merc sim so it's your choice to storm a prep school or a military base. The world doesn't get easier or harder around you - you pick the easy/hard fights. ;-)
Maybe a silly question but: do that mean you can keep on playing "as long as you want to"? I am personally thinking of game like MechForce (in Amiga time) what I play around 3 year. So you can keep on running and playing (contant new flood of random generated mercenary quest) as long as you want to for decades if you just have computer and system which support the game? Naturally you might get bored, have in the end all mech warriors maxed out (skills) and all possible items bought but still.
Not counting Multiplayer, the most recent one for me was Darkest Dungeon.
I would say it was not particularly well received on that front and they eventually brought in an easier mode called "Radiant." There were also a lot of user-made mods that upped the difficulty despite not having overt mod support, so the parallels are probably pretty strong here (and especially considering that individual missions had a similar 'risk-to-reward' assessment rating to what we know of Battletech too).
A shame about no difficulty settings. This means that its almost certain that the campaign will be made in such a way that any casual player or game journalist would be able to "beat the game" without giving much thought to which mechs to pick for a mission or how to command them, where to invest his resources etc. so it would be too easy for players who will actually use their brain a littile bit while playing. Meh. MechCommander 2 again?
About the "pick the harder contracts" thing: its almost the same as saying "well you can drop with two mechs instead of four if the game is too easy". The player should be thinking about risk\reward when considering which contract to pick, not about wheter the mission would be too boring or not.
About the "pick the harder contracts" thing: its almost the same as saying "well you can drop with two mechs instead of four if the game is too easy". The player should be thinking about risk\reward when considering which contract to pick, not about wheter the mission would be too boring or not.
Yes. The only way to lose the game is to go bankrupt, so the only way to "win" the game is to say "okay, that's enough BATTLETECH for me" before going bankrupt.
I think anyone that gives little to no thought about what 'Mechs to pick for a mission or how they are controlled on the battlefield will fail spectacularly. It might be just me, but the AI in beta seemed quite able to take out someone who just moves his 'Mechs around willy-nilly.
Also, funny you should mention Mechcommander 2, since Mitch (Gitelman, studio head at and co-founder of HBS) was the producer on that game. I'm pretty sure he's keenly aware of any and all criticism towards it.
Not quite. The ratings are about risk/reward, but they are also about difficulty. A higher-rated contract is more difficult, hence riskier, and with more reward than a lower-rated contract. I fully expect to have to go to lower-rated contracts from time to time when my best 'Mechs are undergoing repairs.
Let's take a completely made-up example: A one-rated contract might see you facing off against a lance of light 'Mechs; easy if you're dropping with mediums. A two-rated contract might have you fight a lance of mediums and a couple of vehicles; that's more interesting for your medium lance. A three-rated contract might have you drop against two lances of heavies and mediums, with vehicle support - now that's a challenge for a lance of four mediums. Four-rated? Toss in an assault or two. Five-rated? Assaults, heavies, vehicles, turrets, the works. And with one or two waves of reinforcements just to spice things up.
One should probably also keep in mind that there will be a selection of mission types; plain-old battles, base defence, base assault, escort missions, rescue missions, and so on.
The good thing about having a selection of risk/reward/difficulty missions is that I can choose what I want to play at any given time. Do I feel like taking on a harder mission for larger rewards today or do I want to take it easy and earn a little less? Do I want to play a base assault or do a rescue mission?
Now mix in that my 'Mechs might be in a range of states of repair and that my MechWarriors may be recuperating, and it becomes an interesting decision: What can my current company strength handle? Just because I could take a three-rated contract with my best 'Mechs/MechWarriors doesn't mean I can do it with my second-stringers.
I for one do not think I will be bored at all with this game
