Playing on a Laptop :)

[smurfopax]

Hi guys,

i am on a two week business trip at the moment. I installed Battletech on my Lenovo T480 as expected the performance isn't great but it will do. Any tuning tips to let it run better, except toning down everything what i already did .

Thx

 

[Timaeus]

If you've turned down everything and it's still not running that great then there's probably not much more than you can do. Though I am surprised it's running on Intel graphics.

 

[smurfopax]

Yeah actually it's running quite well, it's more a CPU problem then a Graphics Problem. The CPU only knows 100% after starting it up.
I'm just curious if anyone tinkered around with the configs to get more performance out of the game, i can remember that i needed to do this a lot in the old times. You always could get more performance out of quake even if you already toned all down in the menue. But looks like that i'm to dumb to find the config file, if there is one.

 

[Amechwarrior]

Get ModTek and the mod "BT Performance Fix" and loading screens will fly by. It might also help in this case.

 

[smurfopax]

Thx, will try.

 

[Kurnn]

Why would you play games on a laptop? When desktops gives you so much more power for less cash, and lasts longer?
*Scratch head*

 

[smurfopax]

Because it's hard to carry around my Gaming Monster Machine on a 3 weeks business trip . But the BT performance patch helped a lot, not so abyssal loading times anymore. The Game now really looks ugly, but it will do for the next 2 weeks.
Thx @Amechwarrior

 

[Kurnn]

Because it's hard to carry around my Gaming Monster Machine on a 3 weeks business trip . But the BT performance patch helped a lot, not so abyssal loading times anymore. The Game now really looks ugly, but it will do for the next 2 weeks.
Thx @Amechwarrior

Why would you carry a game monster machine around? And risk damage it?
*scratch head*

(I work for HP and travels 3 days a week minimum. My work laptop is for movies and Dungeon Master! And Robotech (1986). My gaming PC from 2011 stays steady at home)
Gaming laptops sells more then gaming PCs these days so most people rather pay more for a laptop then less and more power for a desktop. Thats fact. I just dont get it

 

[Timaeus]

Why would you carry a game monster machine around? And risk damage it?
*scratch head*

(I work for HP and travels 3 days a week minimum. My work laptop is for movies and Dungeon Master! And Robotech (1986). My gaming PC from 2011 stays steady at home)
Gaming laptops sells more then gaming PCs these days so most people rather pay more for a laptop then less and more power for a desktop. Thats fact. I just dont get it

Because people like to play games on the go. Don't crap on them for wanting to do so.

 

[smurfopax]

It will be difficult to get a laptop that cost more then my gaming rig . And i'm IT guy, so when i travel i travel with a extra SSD that i put into my Work Notebook. More convenient then to deinstall Steam before i need to go back to the office.
Normally i play stuff like Hearts of Iron or older stuff like Oblivion or Skyrim on it but i thought i could give it a try with Battletech. Looks like the Intel stuff got enough bang in the last years that something like Battletech can run on it.

I'm happy

 

[Donvale]

Why would you carry a game monster machine around? And risk damage it?
*scratch head*

(I work for HP and travels 3 days a week minimum. My work laptop is for movies and Dungeon Master! And Robotech (1986). My gaming PC from 2011 stays steady at home)
Gaming laptops sells more then gaming PCs these days so most people rather pay more for a laptop then less and more power for a desktop. Thats fact. I just dont get it

For a lot of people a laptop simply makes more sense, I would never buy a fixed desktop in my current situation of living and moving around Japan for probably the next two years, it's simply not feasible to keep unassembling and shipping it about when I can just pick up the laptop and go, plus I need a macOS device so a macBook Pro 13 it is! Which similar to the OP machine is Intel Graphics based and works surprisingly well (Battletech actually runs miles better under macOS than Windows for some reason).
One thing I do use which helps a lot is I have a small stand with a USB powered fan that I sit the laptop on when playing, the one I have actually has a movable fan so I position it exactly under the hottest part of the laptop and it makes a significant difference to how long the internal fan ramps up for, this would of course vary a lot from laptop to laptop, but any laptop with a metal shell will tend to disapate a lot of heat into the shell so in the case of the macBook Pro it makes a decent difference.

 

[smurfopax]

Yeah, Gaming Laptops make sense depending on what you do for a living. Some colleagues travel more then me, they all got Alienware or similar monster Laptops. Much better then carrying around a console, that's what my best friend does all the time and i dont understand it ^^.

 

[Vonbek]

I work for HP and travels 3 days a week minimum. My work laptop is for movies and Dungeon Master!

My Gaming is a TUF705 for games, my Work is a MBP2012 rejigged to SSD etc. for lighting software/autocad/DAW. Two completely different system needs, and also completely different definition of "travel" as I can literally be in 5 different countries inside a week if travelling for work.

Add to that my Travel can be months on end.

Horses for courses.

 

[Kereminde]

If you've turned down everything and it's still not running that great then there's probably not much more than you can do. Though I am surprised it's running on Intel graphics.

I'm not! Remember I was running it on a crap toaster of a computer

 

[Timaeus]

I'm not! Remember I was running it on a crap toaster of a computer

I'm surprised you were able to run it too, unless you had a non-intel gfx chip in there.

 

[Donvale]

I'm surprised you were able to run it too, unless you had a non-intel gfx chip in there.

I've played almost 400 hours on three laptops (2 macOS, 1 Windows) all running on Intel Graphics, basically if it's an 6th gen i5 or better with 8GB of RAM the onboard Intel graphics will be probably sufficient for low resolution play as long as your patient (even though not officially supported). There was one update that caused headlights to not function correctly, which went away on it's own after the next upgrade, other than that no issues.
I almost always played 1440 x 900 on low settings with anti aliasing enabled (single biggest improvement for a small performance hit) and I have always used a stand with a fan as the biggest limitation of Intel based machines running Battletech is usually the thermal throttling in the type of laptops that use Intel graphics not the graphics hardware itself.

 

[Timaeus]

I've played almost 400 hours on three laptops (2 macOS, 1 Windows) all running on Intel Graphics, basically if it's an 6th gen i5 or better with 8GB of RAM the onboard Intel graphics will be probably sufficient for low resolution play as long as your patient (even though not officially supported). There was one update that caused headlights to not function correctly, which went away on it's own after the next upgrade, other than that no issues.
I almost always played 1440 x 900 on low settings with anti aliasing enabled (single biggest improvement for a small performance hit) and I have always used a stand with a fan as the biggest limitation of Intel based machines running Battletech is usually the thermal throttling in the type of laptops that use Intel graphics not the graphics hardware itself.

Lucky for you. Most seem to be unable to run it, or crash a lot.

 

[Donvale]

Lucky for you. Most seem to be unable to run it, or crash a lot.

the macOS version is much more stable from my experience (to the point HBS should really just consider supporting Intel Graphics in macOS to capture all those macBook Pro 13 users), the two macOS machines literally NEVER crashed, the Windows device was slightly more tempremental, but crashes were rare even then and not bad enough to ruin the experience.
It might help I am in IT so well versed as to what to do and what not to do and I never tried to get carried away getting maximum quality, just settled for running as stable as possible, the only time I really had issues was when I tried to make Roguetech work, that killed it dead! Although I frequently run several other mods to improve quality of life in game.

 

[Kereminde]

I'm surprised you were able to run it too, unless you had a non-intel gfx chip in there.

Seriously, check my signature HP 110-194 out of the box and with everything cranked way down. It worked, but I always did a fresh reboot and rarely played for more than 3-4 hours at a time. (And still logged three digits total.)

 

[MeiSooHaityu]

My last two gaming rigs have been laptops (Alienware to be exact). Desktops are definitely cheaper, however they are a lot harder to take on a plane when going out of town .

If a desktop fills all your needs, that is definitely the better route to go in a lot of ways. For me though, I like the portability and since I tend to keep my laptops for quite a while, I can get a bit more of my money's worth (especially when I try to buy when there are deals going when I am ready to get another one).

As a side note, don't forget to try and keep the laptop's vents, fans, and heatsinks clean. A clean, free flowing laptop (especially the more demanding gaming ones) is a happy laptop.