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Ham Sandwiches posted:So tactical strategy games are pretty few and far between, is it not reasonable to compare them with each other and perhaps say "Yeah this feels like too much of a copy of this other franchise " for me, or is that a level of analysis we as regular scrubs dare not engage in? My mistake. Age of Empires, Supreme Commander, Dawn of War series, Total War, Medieval, Halo Wars, Command and Conquer, the original Warcraft games, they were all few and far between. Everything is Xcom.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:41
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Eldragon posted:How much battletech Table Top (or Megamek) have you played? Mechs never really "operated on their own". Yeah when I said "operated on their own" I was thinking of lights and fast mechs (fast mediums, fast heavies) having a combat purpose that wasn't scouting, and being able to use movement to manage the BTH numbers people get on them.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:41
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maybe the issue here isn't so much that harebrained schemes is ripping of XCOM as they're ripping off this thing called "good game design"
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Jun 5, 2017 21:41
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Skoll posted:My mistake. Age of Empires, Supreme Commander, Dawn of War series, Total War, Medieval, Halo Wars, Command and Conquer, the original Warcraft game, they were all few and far between. Have new versions of those all come out since the 2012 xcom remake that feature a move and shoot system? 
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Jun 5, 2017 21:42
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FYI, no one is making fun of you for comparing XCOM and BattleTech. People are making fun of you for using stupid examples of what BattleTech "copied" from XCOM. I hope this clears up your confusion.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:42
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Psycho Landlord posted:Hey have you pointed out that the Book of Revelation obviously only has FOUR Horsemen in order to cash in on XCOM? It has six with squad size upgrades
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Jun 5, 2017 21:42
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Ham Sandwiches posted:Have new versions of those all come out since the 2012 xcom remake that feature a move and shoot system? Why, yes.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:42
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Cowcaster posted:maybe the issue here isn't so much that harebrained schemes is ripping of XCOM as they're ripping off this thing called "good game design" They did not manage to rip it off successfully for Shadowrun and the combat is a very weak part of that game, which is why it seemed like a risk for Battletech as well.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:43
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Ham Sandwiches posted:Ok, let me explain further.  Were you someone that always tried to brawl in a catapult while your atlas sniped in the back or something? Most (well designed, no stalk shadowhawks need apply) 'Mechs have always had well defined roles and anyone worth their salt would bring a good mix. Obviously if you're just playing 2v2 then that's pointless, but, well, the very basic unit of Battletech combat in 3025 is a Lance of 4 'Mechs. Which, gee, is enough to open up some specialization, and is a great unit size to use for a combat mechanics beta test. I'm going to go out on a WILD LIMB here, and bet that the campaign will involve building up from a collection of 2-3 lights or mediums in to a force of multiple lances in strength, just like all the past Mechwarrior games.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:43
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Internet Explorer posted:FYI, no one is making fun of you for comparing XCOM and BattleTech. People are making fun of you for using stupid examples of what BattleTech "copied" from XCOM. I hope this clears up your confusion. You don't have to agree with me, I'm calling out the elements that I am not a fan of, based on my chance to play the Beta version of this videogame for the first time.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:43
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Ham Sandwiches posted:Battletech HBS 2017 edition has many elements from Xcom 2 that I'm not quite sure will translate well to btech. The 4 person squad size is an example - how much time do you guys want me to explain what I mean? I suspect not much, but then if you want to give me crap for not explaining... So yeah, in btech board rules I think mechs are more autonomous and effective independently. By combining the pilot / skill / initative system, I think you end up in a more Xcom like "defined roles" system where the mechs end up having some similarity to the way that Xcom 2 attempted to differentiate soldiers. Ham Sandwiches posted:The 4 person squad size is an example Ham Sandwiches posted:in btech board rules I think mechs are more autonomous and effective independently Ham Sandwiches posted:By combining the pilot / skill / initative system, I think you end up in a more Xcom like "defined roles" system where the mechs end up having some similarity to the way that Xcom 2 attempted to differentiate soldiers Ham Sandwiches posted:Like check out the beta skirmish gameplay - it's about keeping your guys together and positioning, which is a lot more like Xcom than necessarily Btech. Ham Sandwiches posted:I'm really not sure how my personal opinion on the flavors of the combat franchises that went into it and how they map to my preferences is so contentious, but it really appears to be.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:45
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Ham Sandwiches posted:You don't have to agree with me, I'm calling out the elements that I am not a fan of, based on my chance to play the Beta version of this videogame for the first time. There's nothing you agree or disagree with here. No one is laughing at your opinions. They are laughing at your incorrect facts.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:45
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Ham Sandwiches posted:They did not manage to rip it off successfully for Shadowrun and the combat is a very weak part of that game, which is why it seemed like a risk for Battletech as well. Except the combat in Battletech is not like Shadowrun or XCOM aside from being turn based, which is the core point. Try playing the Beta itself.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:45
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Ham Sandwiches posted:They did not manage to rip it off successfully for Shadowrun and the combat is a very weak part of that game, which is why it seemed like a risk for Battletech as well. ah yes noted xcom like shadowrun returns/dragonfall/hong kong, where a magician can stand on leylines to summon magic creatures while a squadmate hacks into an alternate map and does combat in cyberspace to affect objects in the real world but you know, 4 squad members and also there's multiple grades of cover represented by shield marks so, you know
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Jun 5, 2017 21:47
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Skoll posted:Dawn of War series Excuse me sir, but Dawn of War ripped off StarCraft.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:48
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Cowcaster posted:ah yes noted xcom like shadowrun returns/dragonfall/hong kong, where a magician can stand on leylines to summon magic creatures while a squadmate hacks into an alternate map and does combat in cyberspace to affect objects in the real world Holy poo poo, you can do this in Shadowrun? I really need to get off my rear end and play thoughts. I know the first didn't get the best reviews. Which one should I start with?
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Jun 5, 2017 21:49
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Shadowrun and xcom are identical because they have cover. Never mind that Shadowrun handles cover in a fundamentally different way by making it prevent crits outright and giving a better chance of half damage hits while xcom leans much more heavily on raw chance to hit mods, which fits a game where random danger is more present. Psion posted:Sure, it'll require tuning the system to make sure you have the opportunity to recover, but having never played Battle Brothers I can't really say anything about the specific analogy you're drawing. Battle Brothers strongly disincentivizes carrying many spare bros so if you lose half your party you don't have experienced backups in enough number to make that loss good in short time, so you're stuck with fewer than the maximum twelve bros. If all the missions on offer are balanced around twelve dudes, then you're in deep poo poo and one big step towards a failure cascade. xthetenth fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Jun 5, 2017 |
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Jun 5, 2017 21:50
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Omar_Comin posted:Excuse me sir, but Dawn of War ripped off StarCraft. Yea well StarCraft is a bad remake of Dune!
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Jun 5, 2017 21:50
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Cowcaster posted:there's multiple grades of cover represented by shield marks so, you know that's actually from xcom clone company of heroes
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Jun 5, 2017 21:50
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Those forms of cover were represented by colored dots, which were stolen from XCOM when XCOM invented pixels. Internet Explorer posted:Holy poo poo, you can do this in ShadowRun? I really need to get off my rear end and play thoughts. I know the first didn't get the best reviews. Which one should I start with? Probably Dragonfall Directors Cut.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:50
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Internet Explorer posted:Holy poo poo, you can do this in ShadowRun? I really need to get off my rear end and play thoughts. I know the first didn't get the best reviews. Which one should I start with? dragonfall or hong kong, they're both very good (combat/hacking gets a bit of a rebalance in hong kong). returns is what i consider a experimental bare bones proof of concept: it was a neat short little game with some cool systems and mechanics that all got expanded and fleshed out and iterated on to make a full-length game called dragonfall
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Jun 5, 2017 21:51
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All three Shadowrun games are excellent but Hong Kong is absolutely the pinnacle. Don't take that as not worth playing Returns and Dragonfall because they're great.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:53
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Zaodai posted:Except the combat in Battletech is not like Shadowrun or XCOM aside from being turn based, which is the core point. Try playing the Beta itself. Seriously I can't come up with anything they really have in common besides both being turn-based and having a two-action system - XCOM has a strict two-turn structure, with overwatch letting you act out of turn, Battletech has a initiative-based turn system that is most like Heroes of Might and Magic. XCOM has a discreet grid-based movement system, with focus on cover and altitude and specific flanking angles mattering a lot. The movement in Battletech is fluid and range matters a lot more. Flanking matters but is not the difference between 'mostly safe' and 'dead'. This is just super surface level stuff. We could get into how XCOM's HP system is very different from the locational damage in Battletech in how it affects gameplay (A unit with 1 HP in XCOM is exactly as lethal as a full-health unit), or any number of other things.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:54
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Dragonfall it is! Also, I couldn't sleep last night so I played a few games against the AI where I let them have the "War" limit (25m) and artificially capped myself at 20m. Let me tell you, that was a lot more challenging. I won one match by the skin of my teeth and got fairly stomped in the other one. Really surprising how much a difference that 5m makes. I could also have just been sleep deprived.
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Jun 5, 2017 21:54
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Numerous people have address this - in the original Battletech and in each iteration since, a squad of 4, known as a "Lance" is the standard unit size. Lances are usually comprised of a variety of different sized mechs that can perform different roles in combat. It is normal military procedure to have a variety of soldiers in a unit in the military in real life - this is not something isolated specifically to XCOM. This is why people are giving you grief - you are repeating over and over again that HBS using a squad of 4 is taken directly from XCOM when, to the rest of us, it is clearly not. Battletech videogames seem to settle on 4v4 as the standard combat method. I don't know how or why they do this. Sure it's been the norm, and yet there's a lot of really interesting matchups in Battletech that result when you allow idk 1 v 8 with some flexibility. A mercenary company type game is the best place to explore this. In such a design - a design about a merc company where you can in fact allow flexible team sizes and balance by weight, why would you not do this? You do this because you make the squad size 4, without thinking about it. But what's the other reason the squad size would be 4? Because you need roles and specializations, it's what Xcom has. Your pilots level up, which means they need to be different, and now you can combo specialized pilots and specialized mechs. Except now your lights can't actually fight very well because they'd be overpowered as scouts and too good for the weight. So you have mech / pilot combos that are more situational and based around their skills and their chassis. That's cool but that's much more on the Xcom side of the needle than the Battletech side of the needle. What do I mean by Battletech side of the needle? Maybe I take 8 30 ton lights into a 240 ton mission or maybe I take two assaults and a slow medium. That works in the board game because of scaling, moving, and positioning. Adding the initiative system on top of that means it turns into a much more deterministic "Did I put the light where it needs to go to provide sensor coverage, are my damage dealers in a position to shoot" and that's more xcom than Battletech. quote:You confuse me again - what do you mean by "combined pilot / skill / initiative system"? Many, MANY games use piloting skills and initiative systems. What specifically about what is happening in Battletech makes it feel so XCOM-y? In the board game, a mech moving quickly has a very high BTH against it. A mech heating up gets more and more BTH penalties to hit things, in a gradual way. And by managing the positioning and long term odds, I can create unfavorable matchups that let me win against mechs that are superior. So, in Battletech, the board game, two 30 ton mechs are a serious challenge for a 60 tonner. In Battletech, the HBS 2017 videogame, two 30 ton mechs are two lights that probably wouldn't be in the same lance if you could afford otherwise / were later in the campaign. So we're right back to the whole "mobility doesn't matter" which means you care about firepower and armor, favoring heavies. In addition the ranges are shorter, further favoring heavies and reducing positioning. There's less to do per turn since you don't "have" to move if you want to keep your BTH up. Lots and lots of stuff like that. So my feeling is that the mechs form a "team" like in Xcom with the soldiers having different roles, and that's captured by Mech Weight instead of Soldier Type. It ends up functionally replicating that by making Lights cover scout like functionality and specialist gimmicks, then meds - assaults fill in the more traditional grenadier / sniper / ranger depending on loadout. And that feels quite different to me from "a lance is a group of 4 mechs but they function individually as a combat unit if separated"
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Jun 5, 2017 21:58
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i can see you playing through the entirety of shadowrun returns as an assault rifle toting goober utilizing absolutely nothing about the combat mechanics besides guns and coming away with the impression that it was "a lovely xcom ripoff" but you'd have to be the kind of hopeless moron who considers vanquish a "lovely gears of war ripoff" because you played it as a 3rd person cover shooter without sliding or slow motion
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Jun 5, 2017 21:59
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This is an exceptionally good troll I have to hand it to you.
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Jun 5, 2017 22:03
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Cowcaster posted:ah yes noted xcom like shadowrun returns/dragonfall/hong kong, where a magician can stand on leylines to summon magic creatures while a squadmate hacks into an alternate map and does combat in cyberspace to affect objects in the real world You feel that the combat system in Shadowrun Returns is markedly different from Xcom's system because they named things differently and introduced enough elements that it wasn't a 1:1 clone? I need more than that I guess.
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Jun 5, 2017 22:03
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no, isildur, where are you going come back
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Jun 5, 2017 22:03
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I await the eventual "I was only pretending to be retarded!" victory post.
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Jun 5, 2017 22:03
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Ham Sandwiches posted:You feel that the combat system in Shadowrun Returns is markedly different from Xcom's system because they named things differently and introduced enough elements that it wasn't a 1:1 clone? I need more than that I guess. ah you think that a car is not a sled simply because they took the wheels off and attached horses and it goes through snow tell me more of your quaint Believfs
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Jun 5, 2017 22:06
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Personally, I wouldn't expect you people here at Something Awful Dot Com to admit HBS is stealing wholesale from XCOM, considering that you're using English text. You know what else used English text? XCOM. Check and mate, shitters.
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Jun 5, 2017 22:08
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Internet Explorer posted:Dragonfall it is! I'll be the dissenting voice and say to start off with Returns. Returns is a good, tight, relatively short story. I beat it once and according to Steam I've got 15 hours on it. The story is good and the mechanics are fine to carry you through for that long. Once you get the hang of everything you've only got another few hours of game so even if the gameplay gets a touch stale you're still into it to see the story through. Playing it AFTER everything else, though? The missing features would be really apparent in a bad way. Plus, when you get to Dragonfall you'll already be clued in to most of what you need to be thinking about. Not that that game has a steep learning curve, but Returns -> Dragonfall is a nice, natural progression.
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Jun 5, 2017 22:09
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Cowcaster posted:ah you believe that a car is not a sled simply because they took the wheels off and attached horses and it goes through snow tell me more of your quaint Believfs I don't know man, if we can't agree "Shadowrun's combat system is very very similar to Xcom 2012" then I don't think we're going to find a lot of common ground, because to me it is similar and I didn't care for it while I played through the Shadowrun campaigns. I really don't mean to be glib, just putting in some magic and whatever is enough for it not to be similar enough? The cyberspace was an afterthought in the first two games and acted as a sort of timer with you holding off dudes while your hacker did stuff. Was that enough to push it into "Not xcom" territory? Was it the fact that the classes were slightly different? To me the decision making and flow was similar enough that it felt like an Xcom mod / reskin.
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Jun 5, 2017 22:10
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You can play the Returns campaign in the Dragonfall updated engine, which would be substantially less crap, I'd wager.
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Jun 5, 2017 22:10
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Zaodai posted:You can play the Returns campaign in the Dragonfall updated engine, which would be substantially less crap, I'd wager. That's the way I played it and it rocks. Hell just the ability to save during maps in the campaign is wonderful 
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Jun 5, 2017 22:11
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I can't believe the final crux of "this is like XCOM" was that "light mechs aren't tanky enough while moving". I actually agree with the latter point but it really doesn't make it more or less like XCOM, it's just a balance issue.
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Jun 5, 2017 22:12
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Both games involve a variety of units good at filling different roles, maneuvering to get the best shots, have lasers, guns, and missiles, and feature random chances for things to fail horribly. Checks out, battletech really IS xcom. You guys need to give Ham Sandwiches a break. He's opened my eyes to the truth.
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Jun 5, 2017 22:13
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Ein Sexmonster posted:I can't believe the final crux of "this is like XCOM" was that "light mechs aren't tanky enough while moving". Fast mechs, not just lights, there are some mediums that have huge rear end engines and that makes em interesting, and heavies that are real slow. And my point was that just like in Xcom this pushes into unit differentiation by "role on team" which I don't think is where Battletech shines.
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Jun 5, 2017 22:13
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Blessed be the wise words of the prophet Jerome Ham Sandwiches Blake.
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Jun 5, 2017 22:14
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