What would you have liked to see in the game?

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Wayward Son 5

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Apr 26, 2018
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As we all know, official development in the game ended a long time ago. Apart from modders, the vanilla game is done.

I'm curious, though. What were some elements you wanted to see in the game that never made it to the final version? Have any modders addressed the idea?

For myself, I wanted to see multi-lance deployment to allow for larger missions. Once all upgrades are done to can have 25 mechwarriors and 18 active battlemechs available, so it seems strange that you only deploy one lance at a time. Even with the fluff of having only one Leopard-class dropship for deployment, you could have a staggered deployment with scout or skirmisher lance going in first, followed by a fire or assault lance for the heavy lifting. There's dozens of potential scenarios that would benefit from more than 4 mechs, as the game shows in the allied-deployment missions. I understand there's at least one mod out there allowing for a second lance, and I'll check it out one of these days.

I also have a fondness for the Savannah Master hovercraft from the TT game, and I would have loved to see them in the game. Yes, they are small and relatively fragile, but on the right maps and missions, and in the right numbers, they could be a devastating opponent early-game. You've got to love a vehicle that ignores most rough terrain and is faster than a Locust, packing a medium laser. (The original fluff story from the Technical Readout 3025 is a fun read, too.)

On a related note, especially with Urban Warfare, I would have loved to see infantry integration. One of the unique points of the old CityTech TT game expansion was presenting an environment where infantry were a viable force against battlemechs. They had squad-portable SRMs, Infernos, autocannons, and other support weapons of all types, as well as vibrobombs to create anti-mech minefields. The game already has artillery strikes in some missions, and infantry can "paint" targets for more precise strikes, including strikes against mechs. Cities gave them the cover they needed to not get immediately wiped out by a mech's superior firepower, and that made any experienced mechwarrior hesitant to engage in urban operations if they could be avoided.
 
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What would I have liked to see?

The death of Cameron "Talon" Coyne. (What? ... what do you mean, time paradox?)
 
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1.) The ability to control allied vehicles and mechs. Having an allied lance that runs as soon as you clean up the OP4 is frustrating.
2.) Aerospace strafing runs, both allied and enemy. "Warning, Enemy Aircraft approaching."
3.) Downgrade the Precise Shot on the Marauder's Command Console. Going from 18% to 35% make that one unit way to powerful. 25%?
4.) Hovercraft


All in all, I got everything I really wanted out of version 1.9 , and have played the heck out it.

Harmon-Swamp Gator-01.jpeg
 
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Maximillian 'Mad Max' Liao.

With his daughters, Candace and Romano, as a bonus.

 
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I'll second the vehicles and infantry.
What I really wanted to see though was a replay after action video done in "real" time where you could move forward and rewind, along with changing camera postion.
I've said many times that it would have been a great tool to learn what you did wrong, and what you could have done better, or just how cool of a battle you had. That could have been a LOT of fun. Also it would have given a halfway decent idea of how long those battles actually took in theory.
 
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Mechwarrior banter.

We have a Lance mate normally say something at the beginning of deployment, or cut scene dialog when it comes to a Campaign or Flashpoint mission, but I would have loved occasional mid engagement banter in all missions.

An OpFor Mechwarrior mocking a missed shot or trying to insult us. The same from our pilots as well. Just something to add to the immersion mid fight.
 
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Mechwarrior banter.

We have a Lance mate normally say something at the beginning of deployment, or cut scene dialog when it comes to a Campaign or Flashpoint mission, but I would have loved occasional mid engagement banter in all missions.

An OpFor Mechwarrior mocking a missed shot or trying to insult us. The same from our pilots as well. Just something to add to the immersion mid fight.

This sounds like one more reason Dekker gets killed - for mocking the Black Widow on open comms.
 
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+1 on vehicles and banter! :D

Would've enjoyed the player preparing two different lances for sequenced missions. Like, lance Alpha will destroy/capture a radar or communications centre and lance Bravo will assault the base; failure on the first will mean that the second mission will have more defenders on-site or get reinforcements a lot sooner.

Argo's a very nice ship, but I would've preferred to have a stationary base to launch missions/micro-campaigns from.

A better character creator instead of having to use one of the pre-formed heads. There's a lot of diversity, true, but I'm used to having all those sliders...
 
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Honestly, prepping different Lances and having their missions interlace is something I've tried to set up on tabletop. But it's never quite hit me in a way which feels like it's not... potentially punishing the player for bad luck. (Though, admittedly, tabletop is so much more fragile concerning a string of bad/good rolling...) Then again, that was some time ago and I've honed a few things down after checking out official scenario books.

Some rough guessing, from how I think? "Banter" was on the list of things which were good ideas but cut out to keep the project "on task", so they could focus on delivering the best they could and not over-extend themselves laterally. Vehicles were likely a conscious decision since... I've heard the initiative turns get kinda unwieldy when you can technically command several units. (I also wonder if it was alternatively a conscious decision so the player just needs to focus on decisions for four units instead of - potentially - up to twelve. Allied lance, and turrets.)

Basically, I think a lot of things were brainstormed at the start, and Mitch can be blamed for coming in and going "all this fun looking stuff can't be done within our timeline, so we put it aside and work on this core gameplay to make it as good as we can". And the longer the project went on, the harder it was to retool things to put things back in - like commanding allies.

If they make a second game, I'd totally love to see them try to expand the scope. But... I got the tabletop game should I want some grand-scale mayhem. (Which I've had time to work on this last week, since I've not had electricity and thus had more time to sit and ponder. Luckily, might get it going again soon. Soonish.)
 
"Don't worry guys, she couldn't hit an Atlas at this dist"
Narrator: "She can. She did. She hit the head. It was at that moment Dekker knew..."
 
Mechwarrior banter.

"An OpFor Mechwarrior mocking a missed shot or trying to insult us. The same from our pilots as well. Just something to add to the immersion mid fight."

Agreed.
I just had a mission in which Darius warned me, "The Mech carrying the scientist is coming under fire, you need to protect them at all costs."

Immediately after that I blew the head off the offending OP4 Marauder. It was one of those moments in the game that make it a lot of fun.
 
Another thing that I really hope to see in the hypothetical BT2: more aerospace assets. Don't have to be player-controllable, but more for the missions when the goal is to capture intel or something on a base and a Leopard shows up at the end. o_O
Like, in 3025 there wasn't much diversity especially in the Periphery, but there were several types of drops and shuttles, not to mention choppers and vtols. It still makes me cringe nowadays seeing a Leopard land on zones that no pilot would ever risk (especially in the urban maps).

The addition of hot drops for the mechs in UW was nice, and I get that implementing more aerial assets would've been too costly, so I just hope HBS will design the potential next with the capability of adding more models. :)

P.S.: And I also hope we'll have missions to capture or disable Union dropships; I understand it might require too many resources to play such a mission, but one can dream... :p
 
P.S.: And I also hope we'll have missions to capture or disable Union dropships; I understand it might require too many resources to play such a mission, but one can dream... :p
We did deal with the Newgrange, didn't we?
... I mean, some other totally suspicious mercenaries committed that particular crime against the Taurians. Certainly not my outfit... (plz no nukes)
 
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We did deal with the Newgrange, didn't we?
... I mean, some other totally suspicious mercenaries committed that particular crime against the Taurians. Certainly not my outfit... (plz no nukes)

Indeed, though the scale of the dropship and its lack of weapons were a bit of a turndown.
Something more akin to some of the missions in MW4 but adapted to this topview strat game we all love is what I meant to say. :)

I mean, if the Urban maps hog a lot of resources, can you imagine what fighting directly against the Iberia would take, especially if that dropship were on a 1:1 scale... :eek:
 
Indeed, though the scale of the dropship and its lack of weapons were a bit of a turndown.
Something more akin to some of the missions in MW4 but adapted to this topview strat game we all love is what I meant to say. :)

The same problem happens on tabletop, considering the model for the Union-class DropShip and the scale of each hex. Often I find myself saying, if the tabletop had the problem then I can't fault HBS for having it as well :)
 
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So I was three story missions and maybe a dozen side missions into this title when I just got sick of playing. My main character ran a Jag kitted out with four long range lasers and maxed gunnery. He'd miss fifty percent of the time -on a good run. I don't think I ever saw the enemies miss more than once, collectively, in a single round. I was tired of trying to slog through missions where I was outnumbered four to one (with three waves of reinforcements incoming! Talk about fun!) and had to wait for five minutes while every single enemy took their turn at once in order to respond. . .With my four dudes.

I really liked the ShadowRun games, but this was just tedious and annoying. The tutorial was worse than useless, the story was uninspired, the mechanics feel cumbersome and imprecise. Everything about this game was lacking, but if it had been properly balanced I still might have bothered to finish it anyway. No matter how much progress I made I never felt like I was getting close to anything like parity. And I was only at three and a half skulls. How punishing is five?

I was always the underdog. I have twelve mechs and eight pilots but I couldn't send down waves of reinforcements, use my drop ship to skirmish or to harry, drop artillery from orbit, jam sensors, disrupt communications, nothing. All tactical advantage always went to the enemy under all circumstances at all times. Its was just a bullshit imbalanced unsatisfying experience for a casual gamer like myself.
 
So I was three story missions and maybe a dozen side missions into this title when I just got sick of playing. My main character ran a Jag kitted out with four long range lasers and maxed gunnery. He'd miss fifty percent of the time -on a good run. I don't think I ever saw the enemies miss more than once, collectively, in a single round. I was tired of trying to slog through missions where I was outnumbered four to one (with three waves of reinforcements incoming! Talk about fun!) and had to wait for five minutes while every single enemy took their turn at once in order to respond. . .With my four dudes.

I really liked the ShadowRun games, but this was just tedious and annoying. The tutorial was worse than useless, the story was uninspired, the mechanics feel cumbersome and imprecise. Everything about this game was lacking, but if it had been properly balanced I still might have bothered to finish it anyway. No matter how much progress I made I never felt like I was getting close to anything like parity. And I was only at three and a half skulls. How punishing is five?

I was always the underdog. I have twelve mechs and eight pilots but I couldn't send down waves of reinforcements, use my drop ship to skirmish or to harry, drop artillery from orbit, jam sensors, disrupt communications, nothing. All tactical advantage always went to the enemy under all circumstances at all times. Its was just a bullshit imbalanced unsatisfying experience for a casual gamer like myself.
ok, I understand better. I have been playing computer based games since "Computer Space", which was an arcade game that came out before "Pong". All of them have this learning curve and all of the good ones had a early point that seems impossible to beat, until you learn how. At some stage, the game becomes greatly unbalanced on the side of the player.

1.) Gunnery skill is only part of the story. With high Tactics your Mechwarriors start to be able to target specific parts of an OP4 for destruction.
2.) Use the lighter units in your lance to strip the Diversions from the faster Op4s before you fire. A slow moving Mech is significantly easier to hit.
3.) Use the terrain to your advantage. When Darius says, "This looks like a good place for an ambush", it is an ambush. Do not charge down the middle. Pick a flank and hug the edge. I try to find one that has a ridgeline between me and the rest of the map. When you find the Ambushers, Concentrate your fire and bring them down one by one. Once there are no spotters for the other mechs they have to close and you can usually destroy them as they approach.
4.) Use your speed to hit the flanks, give Bulwarked Mechwarriors some armor.
5.) Five skull missions are tough. With a Maxed out lance piloting a Marauder, Atlas, Annihilator and a Star League Highlander for a mobile scout you will be running through them like a hot knife through butter.

I haven't seen a perfect game yet. There is a rather infamous wargame called Tactics that was so balanced that winning was almost impossible.

Just my 2 Cents. I have enjoyed Battletech since 1993, so this particular game was easy for me to like.
 
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