Just a few questions before i decide to purchase

[Warhammer]

I have been following this game since it was kick started, luckily it is a success it seems unlike the 2 other battletech kick starters that became vapourware. I use to browse the official forums abit but finding info there is hard. Anyways,

1. Are you hard capped at just a lance of mechs in battle? I was hoping that we could expand to company size but all I saw in the multiplayer beta was just lance vs lance.

2. How difficult will the campaign missions/battles be? If your limited to 4 mechs and there are no MFBs from MW I don't think you will be able to do field repairs but normally the enemy will outnumber you for difficulty. I don't want a pseudo horde/survival mode where its just your lance vs say 15 enemy mechs in waves.

3. Is there a point to running a variety of different mech weighs or it will eventually default to say 3 Assaults and 1 Light for recon.

4. I've read that pilots are semi randomised in terms of skills and you need to grind them to get the desired sets you want. Does this take long as I'm really not into games that force you to grind power else you get left behind.

5. Finally other than the multiplayer beta, has anyone actually tried the campaign and what do you guys/gals think of it?

I played the tabletop classic Btech when I was a kid in the 90s so I'm glad this game was made but well, its 35 pounds and I would like to get my moneys' worth. I don't want to see the usual Paradox thing of 'barely playable' at launch, come back in a few months/years and please buy some DLCs to get the 'complete experience'.

Thanks

 

[HonorKnight]

You can have 18 active 'Mechs in your roster, but in a single battle you can only field 4. They've suggested you may have other support vehicles and/or artillery for a given mission, though.

 

[HonorKnight]

The game lets you choose your missions, and missions come with indicators of how hard they are. So if you want to take it slow and steady and do easier missions, that's your choice. Ultimately the hardest missions will have waves of enemies, but you'll have several advantages over them including "morale" that builds up and it spent on special actions. You can also acquire uncommon and rare upgrades to weapons (and some other components), very rarely even some LosTech, while your opponents will generally be closer to stock variants.

 

[Bubbasan]

I'll try to answer these the best I can in order.

1) Yes, although there may be friendly neutrals in play on some missions. The enemy is not capped at a lance unless you are playing skirmish mode.

2) Non-story missions will be rated at a difficulty level between 1 and 5. There will be no global difficulty setting like X-Com.

3) Yes, yes there is. Mission types will demand different lances. Some will be timed (like extraction) and running a bunch of Assaults will not be ideal. Also, you are going to take a lot of damage and repairs take time so you may not always have 3 Assaults handy.

4) You can hire more experienced pilots but they cost more than pilots you train up. There may be some way to train your pilots outside of combat (simulator time), but I cannot recall if this has been given a final confirmation.

5) Nope, none of us have had access to the campaign.

 

[HonorKnight]

Your active roster of 'Mechs come with maintenance costs, so focusing on assaults will make it harder to pay your bills, forcing you to run harder missions. Missions are nor all simply destroy-them-all, either. Some missions will also be things like run in, grab a VIP, and run out, so you'll want some mobility that Assaults won't have.

 

[HonorKnight]

4) You can hire more experienced pilots but they cost more than pilots you train up. There may be some way to train your pilots outside of combat (simulator time), but I cannot recall if this has been given a final confirmation.

They did confirm training pods in the Argo (your base of operations). This would be some of the more advanced equipment as you build up your Argo from its original shambles.

 

[Bubbasan]

Your active roster of 'Mechs come with maintenance costs, so focusing on assaults will make it harder to pay your bills, forcing you to run harder missions.

Excellent point, I keep forgetting about that. I've got to get that in my head before release.

 

[Gronk311]

I’ll try to answer as best as I can, but others may be more knowledgeable.

As for your questions,

1. The basic game limits you to 4 mechs. However the initial Lepard we begin with is able to hold 6 mechs. (Feb 14 Q&A) In total, you will have a maximum of 18 mechs held in a ready status, but will only be able to deploy 4.

2. Unknown. @HBS_Dagger has gained a reputation through her Twitter posts for going through a lot of Mechwarriors. There will not be field repair or MFBs. While we have not been told explicitly, I would be suprised if HBS sent us on suicide missions. All contracts will have a difficulty rating attached.

3. That will be up to the player, but gathering 3 Assault mechs will be time consuming and expensive. HBS stated a goal of keeping all classes relevant.

4. Unknown. Pilot development has not been discussed much. Raising a pilot will be less expensive than hiring a developed pilot, but carries the risk of the pilot being killed on contract.

5. So far the only ones who have had access to the full game are HBS staff and select magazine reporters. One campaign mission has been posted to YouTube.

I hope you do decide to join us in the battlefields of the future.

Edit: Ninja-ed like Sub-Zero. I type too slow.

 

[HonorKnight]

5. So far the only ones who have had access to the full game are HBS staff and select magazine reporters. One campaign mission has been posted to YouTube.

I recommend reading this review: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/11/15/battletechs-campaign-mode-is-a-robot-dark-ages/ he mentions some stuff he saw that had to have been at least a peek at the campaign, such as a minor random event involving two underlings fighting over the last of the coffee, probably as a result of running with your budget knob turned down super low, which hurts morale and can trigger bad events.

 

[Agathos]

1. 4 'Mechs was an early decision that supports the original goal of being able to play a mission in 30 to 60 minutes. 12 would take a looooong time.

2. & 5. None of us hoi polloi have played the campaign, but there are a lot of campaign balance tidbits on Kiva's twitter. https://twitter.com/HBS_Kiva Personally I've stopped following her because those tidbits were just making me crazy that I can't play it yet.

3. With the initiative system designed as it is, a smaller 'Mech could theoretically hit and run an assault 'Mech to death without ever taking a shot in return. Better to take a mix. Plus, maintenance costs are in the campaign. Wouldn't you rather complete this contract with lights and mediums and keep the money?

4. Hard to say for sure until we've played the campaign, but pilots will die at a rate somewhat higher than a power gamer is accustomed to. You may never "grind out" a lance with the perfect set of skills because they can die on you before you finish.

Also, the universe is supposed to remain in motion without you, so if you take a bunch of side contracts to grind, you may find the campaign missions are no longer available.

 

[HonorKnight]

Also, the universe is supposed to remain in motion without you, so if you take a bunch of side contracts to grind, you may find the campaign missions are no longer available.

Yeah that's an interesting tidbit: You're supposed to be helping with this big civil war campaign but you have the freedom to blow it off and do whatever else you want instead. If you skip enough of their missions, eventually they'll be wiped out without your help and the would-be nemesis faction becomes a new potential source of missions for the open-ended mercenary campaign!

 

[Valaska]

I have been following this game since it was kick started, luckily it is a success it seems unlike the 2 other battletech kick started that became vapourware. I use to browse the official forums abit but finding info there is hard. Anyways,

1. Are you hard capped at just a lance of mechs? I was hoping that we could expand to company size but all I saw in the multiplayer beta was just lance vs lance.

2. How difficult will the campaign be? If your limited to 4 mechs and there are no MFBs from MW I don't think you will be able to do field repairs but normally the enemy will outnumber you for difficulty. I don't want a pseudo horde/survival mode where its just your lance vs say 15 enemy mechs in waves.

3. Is there a point to running a variety of different mech weighs or it will eventually default to say 3 Assaults and 1 Light for recon.

4. I've read that pilots are semi randomised in terms of skills and you need to grind them to get the desired sets you want. Does this take long as I'm really not into games that force you to grind power else you get left behind.

5. Finally other than the multiplayer beta, has anyone actually tried the campaign and what do you guys/gals think of it?

I played the tabletop classic Btech when I was a kid in the 90s so I'm glad this game was made but well, its 35 pounds and I would like to get my moneys' worth. I don't want to see the usual Paradox thing of 'barely playable' at launch, come back in a few months/years and please buy some DLCs to get the 'complete experience'.

Thanks

1. In a drop, yes you are commanding a lance for each drop. A company is as we all know 12 BattleMech's with some auxiliaries and support units. As we will have 18 you will be commanding a task force's amount of BattleMech's, but are bereft of the support units such as infantry and armor.

2. So far against the AI in the last patch... Consider there to be a pretty decent challenge actually. I won the vast, vast... Vast majority of engagements I was in, but the AI did make me work for a good deal of them and beat me on the level a couple times even running equal lances. The state machine that HBS has made is pretty cognizant of what it should and shouldn't do, so its fairly challenging.

As the game itself, we were told that one or two losses will NOT put you out of the whole campaign and you can afford to lose missions. We'd heard the term "XCOM, XCOM2" thrown around for your ability to bounce back.

3. Yes, Lights have multiple movement points which can allow them to back stab VERY effectively. Mediums are a little bit slower with movement points but obviously great all round fighters. Heavies are the amazing jack of all trades, master of all trades they've always been, but with the new movement reservation system and such lights can do some incredible things the inbetweens cannot. And assault are... Assaults. They are immovable monsters that the lighter Mechs, as always, will need to take advantage of their extreme mobility advantages to avoid fire while delivering fire to the weakest points they can.

You can spin Assaults pretty good relying on some MechWarriors abilities, or just the inherent bonuses to dodge that a light grants. This allows for back shots etc... But again you take a solid unfortunate hit and you will be on your butt and a sitting duck. Generally though, all 4 classes are viable in a way I haven't seen since MW2/MW4, which is fantastic. HBS really pulled it off here, its not like Mech Commander (amazing game) where you are simply working to tonnage... There are very clear amazing advantages to lights. Well... I mean lights and mediums were still really good in Mech Commander since there was a physical damage system too, actually. Okay its a lot like how Mech Commander 2 had an amazing bonus for Lights haha, so yeah they are viable.

4. We dunno yet to be honest. HareBrainedSchemes has delivered two products we can look back on though. ShadowRun, which skill development was paced to the game... And Necropolis, which was insanely grindy. I think they'll very much be finding a sweet spot this time but that's my personal confidence in team. I doubted them on this new movement system, and the AI was at first very exploitable until later beta's... But when it started to work it is just fantastic.

5. We've not been able to play the campaign. Some of the writing we heard was... Painful, but we were told that it was all nothing but stand-in. More it was the voice acting which was just gosh awful, but from what I heard it was just random people in the office they shoved in. They got A TON of feedback on the voice acting and writing that was like "Ehhh" and I am betting that it will be something they are eager to handle appropriately.

 

[Timaeus]

2. Unknown. @HBS_Dagger has gained a reputation through her Twitter posts for going through a lot of Mechwarriors. There will not be field repair or MFBs. While we have not been told explicitly, I would be suprised if HBS sent us on suicide missions. All contracts will have a difficulty rating attached.

Do you mean Kiva?

 

[TaurianMerc]

Do you mean Kiva?

Maybe it's Dagger's mechwarriors getting killed by Kiva shouting "Moar Death!!!"