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Mr. Fortitude posted:I'm kind of on the fence about backing this myself. I love Shadowrun so I backed their Shadowrun games and I know HBS can deliver a good product, but I don't know an awful lot about Battletech or Mechwarrior. I assume with the expanded single player campaign, you can manage your mercenary base and send others working for you on dispatch missions and whatnot, Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker style? I wouldn't assume that, we just don't know yet. In broad strokes it'll have a main plot where you control a mercenary group with various sidequests with procedurally generated missions and some kind of faction system. Also thanks again PoptartsNinja for some  posts
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Oct 19, 2015 17:54
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Yeah, sending people out on dispatches does sound a bit beyond the game's scope. But we really don't know yet since all that's set in stone right now is that you're a merc unit and you go on missions. Edit:vvv We don't know how closely you'll interact with other mechwarriors or if they're more on the level of stuff you saw in Mechwarrior 4+Mercenaries, where they mostly just had different soundbytes in reaction to stuff. If they're taking a page from Shadowrun's development though, you'll probably see that on some level. evilmiera fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 18:07
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evilmiera posted:Yeah, sending people out on dispatches does sound a bit beyond the game's scope. But we really don't know yet since all that's set in stone right now is that you're a merc unit and you go on missions. I hope there's some kind of off-battlefield interaction with your squad members -- personal missions from each, stuff like that.
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Oct 19, 2015 18:16
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Pattonesque posted:I hope there's some kind of off-battlefield interaction with your squad members -- personal missions from each, stuff like that. Nah, we did that in Mass Effect and it was just 8 separate "Help me solve my daddy issues" quests. Oh and if you dont do it they die in the finale and wont be around for the next games sidequests.
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Oct 19, 2015 18:23
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I don't see what Mass Effect has to do with this since both Shadowrun: Dragonfall Director's Cut and Hong Kong have personal missions for your companions and they're good.
Veib fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 18:29
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Great Beer posted:Nah, we did that in Mass Effect and it was just 8 separate "Help me solve my daddy issues" quests. Oh and if you dont do it they die in the finale and wont be around for the next games sidequests. though that could have been done better it also owned bones obviously the focus here will be on giant robot stomping and screwing over your employers with contract negotiations, but the other stuff would be cool too
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Oct 19, 2015 18:32
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I imagine we will get something not exactly dissimilar to the Shadowrun games. Some closer party members with defined background and personalities who will successfully eject every time their mech gets creamed and then a bunch of non-descript hireable goons.
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Oct 19, 2015 18:32
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ZearothK posted:I imagine we will get something not exactly dissimilar to the Shadowrun games. Some closer party members with defined background and personalities who will successfully eject every time their mech gets creamed and then a bunch of non-descript hireable goons. Hey, they made it so the non-descript goons get one conversation each in the bar in HK; a definite improvement over Dragonfall where only one goon gets one conversation that annoys you. Which HK also improved on with the Racter tie-in. What I'm saying is, HK really did well with NPC characters. And in general NPC character-building is something HBS has really done well with; I can't imagine they'd abandon that for BT. Running a merc company of however-many people where you can only field four (and their respective mechs) seems totally plausible.
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Oct 19, 2015 18:50
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All I wanna do is forcibly eject a pilot and steal his mech mid battle.
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Oct 19, 2015 18:57
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Hakkesshu posted:The best turn-based mech game that no one remembers was Missionforce: Cyberstorm, if this can be even half as cool as that game was then there will be no problems. I played that for weeks when it came out. That game was loving scary for eleven year old me, observe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a-J93GhW_I ditty bout my clitty fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 19:01
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I would totally back this if the PVP goal were lower... or even if it was already met. I want to shoot my missiles and PPCs at real people battlemechs not AI battlemechs!
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Oct 19, 2015 19:03
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Harlock posted:All I wanna do is forcibly eject a pilot and steal his mech mid battle. "E-jecting jecting jecting" Track that pod!
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Oct 19, 2015 19:04
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I just want to eventually play a clanner and kick in the teeth of the Lyrans and/or Free Rasalhague Republic. Also I want Elementals, because 
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Oct 19, 2015 19:22
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Innerguard posted:"E-jecting jecting jecting" That was such a cool loving intro. Sadly I've only ever played the demo.
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Oct 19, 2015 19:25
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Phrosphor posted:These are good, looking forward to the Commstar segment. The lore of Battletech is good, but a big problem with it imo is they just drill lostech and comstar and all this other poo poo into your head, and guess what you never even get to use it in the game! Why bother with all this exposition talking about how bad-rear end these different hidden societies are and then you never even get to use the poo poo.
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Oct 19, 2015 19:42
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Washout posted:The lore of Battletech is good, but a big problem with it imo is they just drill lostech and comstar and all this other poo poo into your head, and guess what you never even get to use it in the game! Why bother with all this exposition talking about how bad-rear end these different hidden societies are and then you never even get to use the poo poo. Like I said earlier, this poo poo is lord of the rings for military sci fi dorks. Comstar are the fuckin elves man. E: that's another reason the Clan Invasion was cool. It made Comstar get up off their asses for once.
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Oct 19, 2015 19:50
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Actually let me try and do a quick Comstar post. Apologies if I miss a detail, I'm doing this on my phone from memory. So travel between planets is common, but still not exactly fast or easy. You have Jump ships which can instantly go anywhere within 30 light years of your starting point, but they're huge and cumbersome and need to recharge anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks depending on the star before they can jump again. Jump ships always stay in space. To get from jump ship to planet, you have dropships. Usually a few to a dozen per jump ship. Dropships come in all shapes and sizes, from basically space shuttles, to egg shapes the size of office buildings. Travel to and from planet to jumpship can take days or weeks depending on star and distance, this is 90% of your travel time between planets. I mention this because it's too slow and inefficient to actually run any kind of government via courier (and also another reason why poo poo's all neo-feudal) So what you also have is instant ftl communication via hyper pulse generator (hpg). Based on everything above you can see how hpgs are super important to a keep from getting destroyed b keep from getting taken by enemy forces. Enter Comstar. Ok, so when the Star League shat itself, Kerensky and like 70% of the entire standing military booked it. And the rest went home and started stompy roboting all over. The ones who didn't stompy robot decided to follow this guy Jerome Blake, who wanted to create a neutral party to keep the hpg network going and protect it from being commandeered by any of the great houses. This was all well and good, but Blake also had some weird semi mystical ideas about information being free or whatever. So Comstar over the years became a quasi religious organization with a telecomm monopoly and lots of shiny star league era tech that they only ever used to secure their hpg stations, they were otherwise completely neutral and hands off to matters in the Inner Sphere. Think of them like the spacing guild from dune crossed with AT&T.
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Oct 19, 2015 20:12
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Anastasius Focht is one of my favorite characters to come out of the Battletech Universe, and his arc was a fun piece of genre fiction. Remembering all this stuff certainly increases my desire to see this game come to fruition.
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Oct 19, 2015 20:16
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Once upon a time there was a man named William Blake. Blake was the Star League's minister of communications, and was responsible for keeping interstellar communications working. Like most people in the Star League, he was more than willing to keep working under When Kerensky invaded Terra to kill Amaris, Blake was the first to realize that no matter who won the Inner Sphere was going to go to complete poo poo, so he kept ComStar, the Star League's communications division, completely neutral. He did so by whining at both Amaris and Kerensky until they made Terra's HPG off-limits and promised both that he'd keep sending their messages no questions asked. When Amaris died and Kerensky abandoned Terra, the Terran Hegemony had been completely devastated and pretty much the only Star League office with any sort of power or organization left to pick up the pieces was Blake, who Eventually he died, and his words and writings all get recorded and studied intensely. Gradually ComStar starts to find it easier to get recruits by adopting a quasi-mystical bent and presenting Blake as a prophet. Blake's words became canonized and somewhere around the time the Inner Sphere stops nuking itself to death ComStar crawls so far up inside its own rear end in a top hat that even the people at the top start looking on Blake as some holy messenger rather than a frightened smart guy who just didn't want humanity to die out. Around this time ComStar's attitudes change and rather than simply preserving every bit of knowledge and technology they can get their hands on they begin hoarding it instead. As technology gets lost, rediscovered, lost, rediscovered, lost, and rediscovered ComStar stops helping with the rediscovery and starts making sure that most technology starts getting "lost for everyone who isn't ComStar." Rather than protecting humanity ComStar starts secretly seeking to control it and all is going swimmingly and ComStar gets more and more smug about it until suddenly the Clans show up. Finding someone with technology better than their own ComStar pretty much shits a brick and goes into panic mode since it's something Blake's writings never accounted for. Since their leadership has been growing steadily more bugfuck crazy over the centuries the So ComStar tricks the Clans into an unwinnable battle of attrition by making the Clans (and their relatively small militaries) fight a literal ocean of men and equipment and eventually force a 15 year truce. Around this same time Myndo Waterley dies. The next leader of ComStar throws off many of the mystical trappings ComStar has relied upon and, as most of them have been drinking the proverbial kool-aid, a new movement called the Word of Blake splinters off. They do nothing for a while and then suddenly take over Terra because ComStar left it basically unguarded. Also spies. Also one of the guards was a Dervish which, as BattleMechs go, is a colossal piece of poo poo. So the Word of Blake does nothing for a good while little longer except revel in their smug superiority. A new Star League forms, and just when Word of Blake gets recognized and invited to sit on the Star League council alongside ComStar and the five Great Houses, the New Star League dissolves. I'd say the Word of Blake goes crazy but they were already, so instead they do what any crazy religious fundamentalist does when they're apoplectic with rage, Pinky: they launch a Jihad and try to take over the PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 20:30
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HBS should take a page from your book and make their games an alternate timeline, with multiple endings that all lead in "non-canon" directions. I'd also like it if they make your mercenary squadmates actual characters, especially if you can choose/make your own. They probably haven't nailed down exactly how to handle it but they seem to be big on customization for your mercenary outfit so extending that to some story stuff would be nice too. The player themselves appears to be a character with an origin/backstory that might lead to dialogue options or sidequests which would be cool. In a few years this might be a popular one to Let's Play. We'll need a Trial of Possession for who gets to do it.
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Oct 19, 2015 21:01
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I had never seen BT called 'LoTR for Mil-Scifi dorks' until this thread but it's so, so, right. PTN's posts are not only funny but also pretty much on the nose once you strip out all the in-universe slant and propaganda that nearly all the fluff is written with, but there is SO MUCH more if you want to go down the rabbit hole. The Minnesota Tribe, the whole Red Corsair thing, the Liaos having a genetic disposition of being batfuck insane and paranoid (complete with trying to replace a rival House lord with a mind-wiped duplicate) until one comes along that is actually sane (maybe?) but plays up the insanity card so everyone doesn't just squash him. Some of the sourcebooks had even more ridiculous nuggets hidden away. There's an almost-literal Skynet analogue tucked away on some remote world research lab and one of the RPG adventures introduced Shadowrun-style datajacks used to pilot mechs with (which drove you insane, naturally). It's too bad that after 3070 or so the timeline contracts downs syndrome and we get Dark Ages. The new Catalyst stuff set in 3145 is supposedly pretty decent, but I'm having trouble letting go of old characters in favor of the new cast. 
WarLocke fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 21:29
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The most important part of Battletech lore is that somewhere out there, there's a planet of sentient bird aliens.
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Oct 19, 2015 21:33
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PoptartsNinja posted:*Words* Can't HBS just hire you and be done with it?
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Oct 19, 2015 21:57
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:The most important part of Battletech lore is that somewhere out there, there's a planet of sentient bird aliens. ... that worship Locust mechs as avatars of their Bird-God.
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Oct 19, 2015 22:07
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I thought we made that part up?
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Oct 19, 2015 22:08
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I thought we made that part up? oh god, just go read far country.
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Oct 19, 2015 22:13
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A.o.D. posted:oh god, just go read far country. Or don't, because it's really bad. Like, so bad we chose it as a gimmick to rile MWO grognards with. e: But no, it was really A Thing: 
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Oct 19, 2015 22:15
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 Why the gently caress did I never get into Battletech
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Oct 19, 2015 22:15
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A.o.D. posted:oh god, just go read far country. No. I know. I meant the locust worship.
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Oct 19, 2015 22:16
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Galaga Galaxian posted:No. I know. I meant the locust worship. Nope. The reason the bird aliens ally with the 'good guys' is that they are the lovely mercs that got stuck with the two Locusts; the Kurita Samurai dude had a Panther and the rear end in a top hat merc that sides with him has a Phoenix Hawk LAM. So not only does it have aliens, the book has a LAM - the only instance of a LAM existing in the novels AFAIK  e: I accidentally posted this in the main BT thread (  ):The only thing I'm worried about is 'legendary MechWarriors'. I'm cool if it's just re-using dudes from other games (Rooster, Spectre, etc) as a fun thing for fans even if they're not era-appropriate, but I'm worried it'll end up being more like escort missions where you have to keep Justin Allard alive or some poo poo. Although the fluff grognard in me would be pretty stocked if one of the missions was a re-written 'Morgan Hasek-Davion hires you as additional muscle to drop on Capella and extract Allard' so I'm kind of conflicted. An escort mission might be worth it to get to gently caress poo poo up with Yen-Lo-Wang... WarLocke fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 22:20
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The Tetatae (bird aliens) own. And yeah btech grogs go cross eyed in rage if you bring them up, not just in MWO. Squawk!
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Oct 19, 2015 22:24
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As a child, I had a Battletech box set my friends and I would goof around with in the afternoons, but the story was totally impenetrable to me at that age, so these loreposts are endlessly fascinating. It seems like BT has this really excellent sort of fluffy New Age Sci-Fi setting, wrapped in the very crunchiest of tabletop mechanical combat simulators. What the gently caress.
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Oct 19, 2015 22:52
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LordSaturn posted:As a child, I had a Battletech box set my friends and I would goof around with in the afternoons, but the story was totally impenetrable to me at that age, so these loreposts are endlessly fascinating. It seems like BT has this really excellent sort of fluffy New Age Sci-Fi setting, wrapped in the very crunchiest of tabletop mechanical combat simulators. What the gently caress. Welcome to FASA
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Oct 19, 2015 23:10
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Colonial Air Force posted:Welcome to FASA Once you get past the pink mohawk 80s!!!!! Radicalness of it all, Shadowrun's lore is equally deep and fascinating.
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Oct 19, 2015 23:36
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Hakkesshu posted:The best turn-based mech game that no one remembers was Missionforce: Cyberstorm, if this can be even half as cool as that game was then there will be no problems. This is an indisputably good and correct opinion. Error 404 posted:Once you get past the pink mohawk 80s!!!!! Radicalness of it all, Shadowrun's lore is equally deep and fascinating. Shadowrun is an extremely cool setting that suffers from being mired in an awful RPG system and anything related to the Fourth World and/or Earthdawn with pointy ears. Wales Grey fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 23:37
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So, let's talk about the Great Houses. There're five Great Houses in the Inner Sphere, and most use a pseudo-feudal government. We'll start with the only exception: The Capellan Confederation, while feudal in theory, doesn't really give their nobility much in the way of special privileges above and beyond the average citizenry, and even has ways for normal citizens to become nobility. They have the most upward mobility as long as you're a useful and contributing member of Capellan society, and as long as you jump (or roll over (or die)) whenever a member of House Liao asks you to. That said, most of the Confederation's populace will never perform enough meritorious deeds to become a citizen unless they join the CCAF, so most people languish in some form of poverty. This is the favorite nation of Loren Coleman, who currently runs Catalyst Games and maintains the BattleTech tabletop game. The Capellan Confederation is famous for having at least three 'heroic terrorist' characters, much in the same way that Dominic Deegan was famous for its heroic orc rapist. The Capellan Confederation in 3025 is 1985 Post-Communist Russia. They were a power once but their glory has faded pretty heavily. They do a lot of posturing but no one really takes them seriously anymore. They are also simultaneously Yellow Peril the nation. They're led by the "inscrutable" The Capellan Confederation hires a lot of mercenaries because their army is tiny, backwards, lacks initiative, and generally poorly trained. They're also one of the most likely Houses to abandon, betray, or gently caress over the mercenaries they hire. They just put out enough mercenary contracts that the chance of bumping into a screwjob is relatively unlikely. The Free Worlds League is next. They neighbor the Capellan Confederation and ate about half of it during the first three succession wars. They're the Byzantine Empire, and are known for not doing much. The Free Worlds League actually has the second best industrial capacity in the Inner Sphere but they don't use it for much. They're the only nation lead partially by a parliament, and they're usually bogged down by bullshit. They elect their House Lord and are prone to massive civil wars. They've also been the most overall peaceful nation since the second succession war, and often have long stretches of only attacking the Capellans. The other Great Houses tend to ignore the League, which will simultaneously come back to bite them in the rear end (when the Word of Blake uses the League's industrial capacity to fuel their Jihad) and prove completely justified (when the League collapses and Balkanizes in the 3070s). Incidentally the League's current ruler, Janos Marik is known only for having an eagle tattooed on his forehead (and while whatever mysterious thought process lead him to believe that was a good idea it does speak worlds about his character*). He's eventually replaced by "Thomas Marik" who is a Word of Blake sleeper agent. The League's industrial capacity is only really hindered because they don't produce many PPCs yet most of the BattleMechs they produce have at least one (and often two or more) PPCs. The Free Worlds League is the most likely nation to have missions against itself since many of the internal factions hate each other. The Lyran Commonwealth is pretty much every warring German state from the 1600-1800s. It has the strongest economy in the Inner Sphere and produces the most BattleMechs. House Steiner also loses the most BattleMechs since most of its military leadership is the very model of a modern major general. By which I mean they are promoted by nepotism and family connections rather than actual capability. They're on relatively peaceful terms with the Free Worlds League (they still raid each other, mind, but the borders remain largely unchanged) and as they're the richest they hire a fair number of mercenaries to shore up their defenses and raid the other houses. They're currently lead by Katrina Steiner, who is probably the single most capable politician in the Inner Sphere in 3025. The Commonwealth considers it a status symbol for a noble to have a mercenary lance or company on retainer (so they can pretend they're a general even if they're not in the military), but at the same time they're also prone to making stupid and risky decisions and tend to lose a lot of fights with House Kurita. The Draconis Combine was founded by a literal weaboo named Angus Kurita, and it's considered a mark of pride that many members of House Kurita have blue eyes. They are Space WWII Imperial Japan, which means in 3025 they're typically used as the setting's 'big bad.' In spite of this they're often portrayed heroically as the nation is very Honorabru and plays up the Samurai asthetic. House Kurita is actually politically fairly weak, as the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine is largely a passive 'father figure' who makes suggestions rather than giving orders and otherwise has to hope his Warlords do something no stupid. Needless to say this rarely works out for the best. Their neighbors loving hate them because when they're at their best they often conquer large huge numbers of their neighbors' planets before overextending themselves and slowly losing them all. House Kurita is lead by Takashi Kurita, a man who bucks the passive 'father figure' role and takes a very active and aggressive (but not complete) control of the military. House Kurita wins more fights than they lose, but they're theoretically hampered by their adherence to a vague Space Bushido and more practically by their "win or literally die" attitude that doesn't tolerate and heavily punishes even the slightest failure. Their industrial capacity is the middle of the road. House Kurita doesn't much like mercenaries as they feel people who fight for money are unreliable, and they tend to penny-pinch and fight hard for every negotiable point on their often barely-negotiable contracts. In a few years Takashi Kurita will also publish a 'death to Mercenaries' order ordering every Mercenary operating inside the Draconis Combine put to death. So, y'know. Take their contracts at your own risk. Finally the Federated Suns are the Space Hansa / Dutch / French and, eventually, in 3039 they become Space America when Michael Stackpole starts writing novels about them. They become the 'designated good guys' for a long stretch (before the Capellans superseded them). Their impression as the 'underdog' is aided largely by the fact that they're bordered on one side by the Draconis Combine (who is never not invading) and on the other by the Capellan Confederation (who are lead by lunatics). Their industrial capacity is the second worst in the Inner Sphere since nearly half of the Suns is still recovering from a massive Draconis Combine assault a few centuries before. The Draconis Combine actually came a hair's breadth from capturing the capitol of the Federated Suns at one point (and put innumerable civilians to the sword in the process), and so large swaths of the Federated Suns so vehemently despise House Kurita that anti-Asian racism is practically an institutionalized feature of their planetary governments. The Suns are lead by Hanse Davion, who is the most accomplished Successor Lord in terms of military acclaim (in terms of actual prowess Theodore Kurita, Takashi's son, probably has him beat). Hanse hates Maximillian Liao more than he hates Takashi Kurita since The Federated Suns hires a lot of mercenaries and treats them better than most other nations, but they absolutely need the help to shore up their defenses so most Federated Suns contracts are combat heavy and the Federated Suns rarely has enough manpower to stage a rescue if things go wrong. * Janos Marik is also Sean Connery. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Oct 20, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 00:46
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The FWL is actually led by Janos "Forehead Eagle" Marik at this time.
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Oct 20, 2015 00:50
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notZaar posted:They should leave the giant robots to the experts (the Japanese) in my humble opinion. It's practically cultural colonialism.  who you talkin to?
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Oct 20, 2015 00:56
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Washout posted:The lore of Battletech is good, but a big problem with it imo is they just drill lostech and comstar and all this other poo poo into your head, and guess what you never even get to use it in the game! Why bother with all this exposition talking about how bad-rear end these different hidden societies are and then you never even get to use the poo poo. I always mixed in some old cache of 2750 weapons into the 3025 universe. Its like magic weapons in dnd.
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Oct 20, 2015 00:59
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Xotl posted:The FWL is actually led by A Slice of Lightly Buttered Toast at this time.
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Oct 20, 2015 01:00
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