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Gwaihir posted:Even when bringing up MechCommander (Which is what I was about to do!), after you grew past your first 4 much and filled out to a full roster of 12 (I think that was the max drop), you end up moving from microing 4 Mechs to microing 4 control groups of 3 Mechs each. At least I did. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, and I do think you gain some fun as a player with more units under your direct command- It lets you specialize more, and being able to unleash 5 LRM Mechs at once while also barreling in with some AC20 bruisers is really satisfying. I think there's a regiment-scale game to be made where the control unit is the lance; you give orders to the lance and then it moves about and the mechs engage enemies based on their makeup and pilots. e: \/\/ that's not a weakness. The game works at the scale it's supposed to work at (well... for a given value of 'works'), and doesn't when you move it out of that scale. That's true of all games. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Dec 27, 2017 |
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Dec 27, 2017 14:46
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Yeah, it's an inherent weakness with Battletech as a system that it scales up to large engagements amazingly poorly. It's the necessary price you pay for getting down to the level of detail Battletech operates at, with micro-level stuff like individual hit locations on every mech with dicrete armor and internal structure values that are tracked separately(the armor values aren't even standardized across each weight class!) and every mech having a different arsenal of individual weapons that can potentially each operate at different ranges/have different limited ammo supplies/produce different heat values that every mech vents slightly differently. This isn't a bad thing at all, the system is simply designed at a high level of detail. In order to scale it up and have it work well, you'd need to start lowering the level of detail in order to promote faster and more streamlined play, with larger engagement sizes necessitating more abstraction. You could do stuff like abstract hit locations(so a mech has a general armor value and a general internal value or something instead of individual hit locations; this would probably the biggest play speed increase), abstract range bands for weapons(MechCommander/MC2 actually did this, with weapons operating at "short" "medium" and "long" range bands), and so on and so forth. This is getting in to designing an entirely different game rather than altering the existing one, though. Personally, I've always preferred smaller engagements in Battletech because they make me care about my individual units more. Throwing a company of mechs around(something that I've done in tabletop a total of twice and christ that was a lot of bookkeeping, and in megamek a couple times) always seemed to devolve into 'mechs getting deleted by massed focus fire that no one was ever designed to withstand one after another until you got down to the small unit combat anyway.
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Dec 27, 2017 14:47
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Alchenar posted:e: \/\/ that's not a weakness. The game works at the scale it's supposed to work at (well... for a given value of 'works'), and doesn't when you move it out of that scale. That's true of all games. Yeah, saying that Battletech - which was designed for small-unit engagements involving a small number of powerful combatants - doesn't scale up well is kind of like saying that Axis & Allies doesn't scale down to portray individual firefights very well. It's true, but at the same time that's not what it was built to do. Every attempt to do something large-scale with Battletech has been a kludge, because that's just not what the system was built for.
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Dec 27, 2017 14:53
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I think the ironic thing is that if you built a game around a scaled up concept as I posted above, you could build in a lot of the conceits of Battletech (mechs constantly moving, lack of focused firing, suboptimal builds, etc etc) to be something the player has to manage and mitigate as an overarching commander rather than micromanage out of existence.
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Dec 27, 2017 14:56
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Kanos posted:, with micro-level stuff like individual hit locations on every mech with dicrete armor and internal structure values that are tracked separately(the armor values aren't even standardized across each weight class!) Kanos posted:, abstract range bands for weapons(MechCommander/MC2 actually did this, with weapons operating at "short" "medium" and "long" range bands)
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Dec 27, 2017 15:11
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He means in the sense that a weapon is either Short Ranged, Medium Ranged, or Long Ranged (and with a 'cannot fire' minimum range), and those brackets are the same for all weapons of said range type. Short ranged weapons shoot out to 5. Medium ranged weapons shoot out to 10 Long ranged weapons shoot out to 15, but can't shoot under 4
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Dec 27, 2017 15:53
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Yeah, BattleTech's always been about small-scale skirmishes. One of the biggest mistakes they made in fiction was writing big battalion vs. battalion and regiment vs. cluster battles which read and feel really epic but if actually played out in tabletop would be horrifically anticlimactic thanks to the sheer amount of firepower in play. In a 4v4 the average TTD for the losing side's BattleMechs is about 2.5 minutes (150 seconds, or 15 turns). In a battalion vs. battalion battle you're realistically looking at losing at least one 'Mech every 10 seconds which is really nowhere near as epic as the fiction makes it out to be, which is why the early fiction was almost always: "they found the enemy, realized they were evenly matched after the scouts duked it out for a few minutes, and then one side retreated because even odds means even losses and neither side can actually afford that." Battalion fights are best done as a series of 4v4 and 8v8 battles where the results of the skirmishes the scouts have dictate how favorably the battle lances' starting positions are (letting the winner of the scouting game pick the starting side, or have an extra couple of hex rows of deployment, etc). For tabletop players, here's my basic setup: I haven't done one of these in the LP, but when my friends and I do a fight like this I have them divide their forces into 2 groups of eight and then either: - 1 additional group of 8 (if they want another big battle) and 3 scout lances or - 5 lances of 4 'Mechs If they go for the 3x8 and 3x4 job's done, 1 scout lance per battle, winner of the scouting battle gets to pick their deployment in the follow-up 8v8. If they do the 2x8 and 5x4 things get more fun. You only need 2 scouting lances, so I usually let my players pick between taking extra scouts, adding patrol lances, and taking a single lance of reserves. - Patrol lances have a 50% chance of intercepting enemy scout lances which makes winning those scouting engagements harder, taking two patrol lances bumps your odds of catching the enemy's scouts up to 75% - However there's a chance the patrol lances will never see combat - Extra scout lances give you a chance to stack a double-victory, giving you choice of deployment and doubling your deployment zone from 3 hexes to 6 hexes, or giving you a chance to negate an enemy scouting victory and randomly determine starting locations - If the sides don't have an even number of scouts, the side with more scouts gets a free win if the extra scouts are not intercepted by a patrol lance - A reserve lance can be called in after an 8v8 battle is lost to engage the enemy survivors, so it's up to the player to decide if they think they can take the (damaged) enemy survivors or not (usually they can). Reserve lances have a 33% chance of being intercepted by any patrol lance that did not engage enemy scouts (the patrol lances also function as a rear guard) Basically: No 4 'Mech lance can engage in more than 1 fight (for expediency's sake) but the reserve lance can force one of the 8 'Mech battle forces to fight twice. You can also add special objectives and things for some (or all) battles if you want, but those details are best worked out on the spot between players, and if anyone's not happy with an objective it's usually best to stick to skirmish.
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Dec 27, 2017 15:53
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:What? This is completely wrong - the amount of internal structure a mech is is based on its weight, and the maximum amount of armor it has is based on that. Not every mech has the maximum armor value possible and a lot of those mechs have idiosyncratic armor distributions such as especially thin rear armor compared to other mechs in their class. It's common enough for mechs to be under-armored that it is often commented on in the fluff when a mech has a full armor load! If they were standardized, every single mech in each specific tonnage class would have the same armor values distributed the same way, which is emphatically not the case. That's why I specified "armor values" instead of "internal structure values", which are standardized. Weapons in Battletech are not standardized at all. A PPC and an LRM20 are both broadly "long range weapons" by the standards of 3025, but a PPC's range bands are 1-6(short), 7-12(medium), and 13-18(long) while an LRM20's range bands are 1-7(short), 8-14(medium), and 15-21(long), and each of them have a different minimum range issue with one suffering to-hit penalties and the other simply not being able to fire. You could also argue that a PPC is a "medium range" weapon like a Large Laser or an AC/10, but even those have different ranges than the PPC(with the PPC falling between the LL and AC/10 and the LRM). Maybe you're missing what I'm talking about with my example of abstracting weapons. I'm not talking about weapons having short/medium/long range bands(which they do), I'm talking about weapons being broadly grouped into range categories that only operate at that range, which is how the MechCommander games did it. An LRM and a PPC would be "long" weapons; both would fire at a specific range band, and only that range band, and when the enemy closed you'd switch over to "medium" weapons such as AC/10s and LLs, then "short" weapons like MLs and AC/20s. This isn't the only way to do it, it's just a way that was done successfully in a Battletech-based game before(albeit a very different game). e: I suppose calling large unit engagements a "weakness" of Battletech is a bit misleading. The system functions very well for small scale engagements, which is what it's good at and is the type of play I enjoy the most. It's just that almost every bit of fiction beyond the "farm boy inherits a mech from grandpa and joins a lovely merc unit" is focused around company on company or larger engagements, which leads a lot of people to gravitate to that scale of play and it's amusing because the game system is so bad at portraying those. Kanos fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Dec 27, 2017 |
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Dec 27, 2017 15:53
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Gwaihir posted:Even when bringing up MechCommander (Which is what I was about to do!), after you grew past your first 4 much and filled out to a full roster of 12 (I think that was the max drop), you end up moving from microing 4 Mechs to microing 4 control groups of 3 Mechs each. At least I did. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, and I do think you gain some fun as a player with more units under your direct command- It lets you specialize more, and being able to unleash 5 LRM Mechs at once while also barreling in with some AC20 bruisers is really satisfying. Missionforce cyberstorm did fine with larger rosters. Don't see why this can't do the same.
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Dec 27, 2017 16:04
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Kanos posted:Not every mech has the maximum armor value possible and a lot of those mechs have idiosyncratic armor distributions such as especially thin rear armor compared to other mechs in their class. It's common enough for mechs to be under-armored that it is often commented on in the fluff when a mech has a full armor load! If they were standardized, every single mech in each specific tonnage class would have the same armor values distributed the same way, which is emphatically not the case. That's why I specified "armor values" instead of "internal structure values", which are standardized. 
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Dec 27, 2017 16:04
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The fact that most Battletech games (including the HBS one) would do a lovely job of actually portraying a a large fight doesn't mean that it'd be bad to have that game. It just means we need to move those mechanics into our hypothetical Crusader Kings style faction control game.  Realistically though, I could totally see it working in a Frozen Synapse style "put in orders, teams move simultaneously" system if you're willing to take some direct control away from the players. Weaopns fire in their range bands, and still have to hit percentages, but maybe you don't get to control all the specific weapon toggling and poo poo to speed it up. You just do movement and place the little facing cone that shows the range bands inside it, and then because obviously the movement is simultaneous you can't specify targeting orders necessarily so you have to rely on the AI pilots you're commanding to make targeting decisions. I think that would be super fun, and it'd be quick to play, but I'm sure most people who were used to tabletop/megamek would find the loss of "control every aspect of everything" to be less enjoyable. I think the tradeoff would be that you'd get more control over the wider campaign area, and obviously with having taken some of that direct elemental control away you could more easily broaden the unit types you could control (tanks, aircraft, infantry, etc). So you could be moving your bigger units of mechs on the big map of the IS (or Clan Space) as part of the strategic layer, and maybe your broad unit makeup modifies your engagement profile that sets the fight type, so if you've got a bunch of big but slow mechs and the enemy has faster mechs, you are at a higher risk of starting with a little damage from them skirmishing you as you get into position, or they get to deploy first, or they get to pick one of three maps because they used their speed advantage to dictate where the fight takes place. I think there are a bunch of fun ways you could do big fights and be true to the Battletech overall experience if not necessarily to the tabletop experience. Being chained specifically to the tabletop will be the death of any attempt to move to actual wars, though. 
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Dec 27, 2017 16:30
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Limiting you to fewer mechs encourages savescumming to a larger degree, I'm guessing that missions have to be balanced around a full roster so losing about a quarter of your fighting strength depending on the mech to an unlucky crit means struggling uphill for the rest of the mission. Cyberstorm gave you about twenty mec, sorry, hercs to juggle in the later missions, which meant taking a few losses wasn't that big of a deal.
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Dec 27, 2017 16:37
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Battletech on the Wargames/SD44 gameplay engine.
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Dec 27, 2017 17:52
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Alchenar posted:I think there's a regiment-scale game to be made where the control unit is the lance; you give orders to the lance and then it moves about and the mechs engage enemies based on their makeup and pilots. I would totally play Battletech Kohan.
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Dec 27, 2017 18:31
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ditty bout my clitty posted:Limiting you to fewer mechs encourages savescumming to a larger degree, I'm guessing that missions have to be balanced around a full roster so losing about a quarter of your fighting strength depending on the mech to an unlucky crit means struggling uphill for the rest of the mission. Maybe, but who cares about save scumming? Balance the game so that if you take a few losses it's not a huge deal to the larger campaign, and if players want to save scum let them. It's one of those things that I"ve never understood getting hung up on to the point that you change core game mechanics to discourage it.
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Dec 27, 2017 18:43
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Zaodai posted:The fact that most Battletech games (including the HBS one) would do a lovely job of actually portraying a a large fight doesn't mean that it'd be bad to have that game. It just means we need to move those mechanics into our hypothetical Crusader Kings style faction control game. Yea, I'd be really happy with Mech Commander but a hair more tactical control like you described. I love tweaking mech builds far more than I do picking the most mathematically odds advantage movement shot combo personally anyhow.
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Dec 27, 2017 18:45
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Cyrano4747 posted:Maybe, but who cares about save scumming? Balance the game so that if you take a few losses it's not a huge deal to the larger campaign, and if players want to save scum let them. It's one of those things that I"ve never understood getting hung up on to the point that you change core game mechanics to discourage it.
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Dec 27, 2017 18:53
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Cyrano4747 posted:Maybe, but who cares about save scumming? Balance the game so that if you take a few losses it's not a huge deal to the larger campaign, and if players want to save scum let them. It's one of those things that I"ve never understood getting hung up on to the point that you change core game mechanics to discourage it. Mechcommander disabled saving during missions, and I think it's better off for it, even though good pilots were hard to come by. E: for anyone jonesing for tactical robit action, I highly recommend cyberstorm. It's free and there are unofficial patches around that make it W7/8/10 compatible https://archive.org/details/missionforce-cyberstorm ditty bout my clitty fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Dec 27, 2017 |
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Dec 27, 2017 18:58
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ditty bout my clitty posted:Mechcommander disabled saving during missions, and I think it's better off for it, even though good pilots were hard to come by. That does nothing to stop save scumming, it just forces save scummers to restart the mission. edit: if someone really wants to quick save / quick load every time they fire a gun so that they get nothing but headshots on their triumphant march across the map, good for them I guess. That sounds like a horrible way to play and I can't imagine it's any fun but them doing that isn't ruining the game for me playing SP on my computer and not interacting with them in any way.
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Dec 27, 2017 19:01
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Cyrano4747 posted:That does nothing to stop save scumming, it just forces save scummers to restart the mission. That's the point, it raises the threshold for using the load button. My habit of "rerolling" bad turns in Xcom makes me a worse player and makes the game altogether less fun for me, but there's no "bronzeman" toggle.
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Dec 27, 2017 19:04
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ditty bout my clitty posted:That's the point, it raises the threshold for using the load button. Ok, but so what? It's a single player game. If someone wants to quick save every time they move 5 feet forward that's on them. You can go ahead and never save in mission. Design the game around the people who are just going to play without savescumming, and let the scummers play the game in the way that makes them happy.
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Dec 27, 2017 19:06
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I have A) no familiarity with Battletech beyond playing Mechwarrior 2 as a kid on the PC and B) am mostly here because thanks to Shadowrun I have faith in Harebrained Schemes to tell good stories. How hard will this be to get into and understand?
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Dec 27, 2017 19:07
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Not hard at all as long as you focus on the movement/sight/armor/firing mechanics and not think about how X/Y/Z weapon does .1 damage more than it should, "optimal builds", or how any of the technology in the game would work in real life.
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Dec 27, 2017 19:10
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Captain Oblivious posted:I have A) no familiarity with Battletech beyond playing Mechwarrior 2 as a kid on the PC and B) am mostly here because thanks to Shadowrun I have faith in Harebrained Schemes to tell good stories. I wouldn't worry about it. Some kind of tutorial mission is more or less par for the course these days, and I can't imagine it will be different here.
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Dec 27, 2017 19:11
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My own personal favorite is keeping you in direct control of the Command Lance but assigning general orders to Lance Commanders to execute your orders for the turn. It has it's problems with turn order, total time, lethal concentrated fire, etc, like all the other solutions of course. But, giving up that direct command and entrusting your soldiers lives to someone else is something real military commanders have to deal with. They just need to find a way to make it fun. I'd setup missions so you would need to send at least one Lance off to the wings of some objective. Depending on how you distribute your forces, the Command Lance could either be a Quick Reaction Force able to move to the flank and rush to reinforce a weak spot, or you could be the heavy anchor personally commanding the direct assault and taking the brunt of the fire while a supporting fire and strike lance move in to positions to do their thing.Captain Oblivious posted:I have A) no familiarity with Battletech beyond playing Mechwarrior 2 as a kid on the PC and B) am mostly here because thanks to Shadowrun I have faith in Harebrained Schemes to tell good stories. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft1mzn0FyJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OncJWeODv2M I think this is the best introductory on youtube. This two part video has the lead developer explaining the how and why of the game to two people, one who knows a good amount about the universe and the other who doesn't. Just watch the first part and if it interests you watch part 2. The game takes a bit to get used to, there is a lot of information to handle like MW2. You just get better at parsing it all as you play.
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Dec 27, 2017 19:19
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Cyrano4747 posted:That does nothing to stop save scumming, it just forces save scummers to restart the mission. I played Mission 3 in Mechcommander far more than any other mission in that game. That Mad Cat WILL BE MINE
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Dec 27, 2017 19:20
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Taerkar posted:I played Mission 3 in Mechcommander far more than any other mission in that game.
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Dec 27, 2017 19:23
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Taerkar posted:I played Mission 3 in Mechcommander far more than any other mission in that game. Yuuuuuup.
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Dec 27, 2017 19:23
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Taerkar posted:I played Mission 3 in Mechcommander far more than any other mission in that game. I cheesed it with artillery on my fifth attempt or so.
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Dec 27, 2017 19:31
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Captain Oblivious posted:I have A) no familiarity with Battletech beyond playing Mechwarrior 2 as a kid on the PC and B) am mostly here because thanks to Shadowrun I have faith in Harebrained Schemes to tell good stories. The initiative system will probably be the only thing to trip you up much, and even then maybe not. It seems like it's intuitive to some people and backwards crazy moonspeak to others (like me). Largely though, if you stay away from multiplayer (when the full game is out so you have the campaign to play), you should be fine with your MW2/Shadowrun knowledge. Move robot mans, shoot other robot mans, collect monies.
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Dec 27, 2017 19:34
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I remember playing a 9 hour combined arms company game over megamek once, and we eventually just abandoned the game tt rules as written suck rear end for large engagements, I do feel like a game would be well served to abstract a lot of it away or require you to hire individual Merc commanders and trust that they don't suck and that you paid them enough battletech manager 3025 is what I'm saying
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Dec 27, 2017 19:48
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isn't there a stripped down system that poptarts used for his lp? Alpha Strike?
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Dec 27, 2017 19:50
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Taerkar posted:I played Mission 3 in Mechcommander far more than any other mission in that game. I was lucky and got it the very first time I beat that mission, weapons and all. I always figured it was a scripted salvage until I played that level again about a decade later.
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Dec 27, 2017 19:57
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Mordja posted:I was lucky and got it the very first time I beat that mission, weapons and all. I always figured it was a scripted salvage until I played that level again about a decade later. They game plays a LOT differently for the first 10 or so missions if you don't have that mech.
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Dec 27, 2017 20:00
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One of the first mods I ever installed in a game was one that let you start with the Mad Cat from the opening video sequence in your hangar.
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Dec 27, 2017 20:08
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ditty bout my clitty posted:Limiting you to fewer mechs encourages savescumming to a larger degree, I'm guessing that missions have to be balanced around a full roster so losing about a quarter of your fighting strength depending on the mech to an unlucky crit means struggling uphill for the rest of the mission. Any amount of mechs will encourage savescumming so long as "Whoops, looks like team rocket's head shot again!" is a factor of the series  That said, fun policing save/loads is always a losing proposition anyways unless you are just looking for cheep buzzword cred anyways. The majority of such concerns being hard line tends to revolve around Leaderboards ™ anyways. Though some games to it unobtrusively without impacting the funhaving, other games will go "We did a re-release but removed NG+ letting you go on an early equipment revenge spree. Because leaderboards, I guess" like the ninja gaiden games.
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Dec 27, 2017 20:22
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sebmojo posted:isn't there a stripped down system that poptarts used for his lp? Alpha Strike? He used alpha strike for one recent mission, yes. It went pretty well but the crunchiness of classic BT has since won out.
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Dec 27, 2017 20:22
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sebmojo posted:isn't there a stripped down system that poptarts used for his lp? Alpha Strike? Yeah, but that strips it down so far that you don't even have individual weapons anymore. If we're going to have a computer game, we might as well take advantage of the fact that the computer can do all the housekeeping which allows some level of complexity without actually causing any additional burden to the player.
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Dec 27, 2017 20:28
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Section Z posted:Any amount of mechs will encourage savescumming so long as "Whoops, looks like team rocket's head shot again!" is a factor of the series It's more an issue of me taking advantage of a feature if it's there. More videa gaems should do a bronzeman feature, where saves are limited and having to make due with what you got doesn't make the game weirdly unbalanced. E:To drag Xcom into this again, it's surprisingly easy to get to a "no-win" state if you let the RNG do it's thing and play the game somewhat suboptimally, especially on higher difficulties. ditty bout my clitty fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Dec 27, 2017 |
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Dec 27, 2017 20:49
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Sky Shadowing posted:I think the golden goose for me is getting up to Batallion size in later games (my hope is that we'll be able to play the same company throughout the ages, either implicitly playing as them or HBS not explicitly making us not the same company, so to speak). I think the way you'd accomplish this is actually by breaking the matches up into sections. Assigning different lances to portions of the battle - you know how some modern-ish RTS games will give you a task and a base and economy, and after you hit a goal the announcer goes 'battlefield expanded!' and opens up more map space, gives you different units, and another goal to work towards? basiclaly instead of comitting multiple lances/stars to one battle, you committ them to different nearby objectives, and depending on how those go you have a chance to react between battle/map phases. For example, a base assault mission may involve a few prongs: Engage patrols outside the perimiter, attack generators, and crash the gates. You committ a star/lance to each. they're not on the same exact map, so much as nearby - a neighboring map sheet in battletech tabletop terms? If you're successful at the generator attack, it makes the gatecrashing assault easier. If it fails, there's extra defenses powered up. If you win the patrol-skirmish, there's no reinforcements for the attack; if you lose they'll walk on in as a reinforcement wave during the attack. Your nearby mechs can slip into another battle as a replacement for a downed mech - keeping the rule of 4-5 on screen at once - but lets you take the less dinged up pilots in your roster and push them into a next mission. 'oh, we lost a commando but have a centurion that made it out nearly pristine? send em in'. You'd basically arrange missions in simultaneous-ish phases, figure out if you won/lost/drew or had a sub-effect going forward. Play, resolve, step forward, repeat. It would also give you the sense of having to make meaningful choices as far as strategy, pilots and mechs to send where, and the best tool for the job. Something between supreme commander and dawn of war 2, I think?
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Dec 27, 2017 21:37
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