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Oh my god. Y'know, I watched an LP of the two Mech Assaults last year, because I wanted to know what happened in 'em (I don't do consoles). The first was at least recognizably BattleTech. This one? Not so much. Also, everyone is significantly stupider.
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Jan 18, 2018 02:25
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Well, the game has 'Mechs, and it has jargon out of the Battletech universe, but that's about all. Is the game feminist? The only male characters are the villain, the psychopathic mute protagonist, and Lt. Foster, who is the comic relief. The commander is a female, as is her lesbian-lover-pirate-girlfriend. They should make out.
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Jan 21, 2018 05:57
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Coolguye posted:adjectives require intelligence Me not talk so good. Yeah, the sentence kinda got away from me. What I meant was that there are three significant male characters in this game, the protagonist, Lt. Foster, and the bad guy. The protagonist doesn't speak or emote in any way, aside from murder. Lt. Foster is the comic relief, and therefore hilariously incompetent. The bad guy is evil, and therefore ineffectively incompetent. On the other hand, we have two female characters, Major Natalia (Kerensky) and Alera. Natalia isn't entirely incompetent (she gets caught because Alera betrays them or something?), and Alera is a pirate jumpship captain, which is all kinds of awesome. Also, she saves the Universe at some point near the end? Was the game trying to be feminist? Was Microsoft trying to be all "affirmative action" back in the day, while still not giving you a female protagonist?
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Jan 21, 2018 12:48
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Coolguye posted:i wasn't criticizing you, or at least that was not my intention. my thrust there was that to be feminist, or chauvinist, or any kind of -ist, the game would require a lot more deliberate thought and intelligence put into it. maybe i'm being an elitist snob here, but social commentary from shovelware that was clearly designed in a boardroom just seems particularly absurd to me. Oh. Well, you really should have been. I don't mind folks calling me out when I'm being incoherent. After all, I went from trying to make a semi-serious point to trying to make a lame joke about the obvious sexual tension between the only two female characters in the game, forgot what I was writing in the first place, and then decided to click the "Submit Reply" button without reading what I'd written. Which happens very often. Still, I'm glad it got through on my second attempt.  I do like PTN's suggestion that maybe Natalia was going to be the PC in a very early draft of the first game, but it must have been really early. But... Shovelware? Okay, I'm not the biggest fan of either of the MA games, but weren't they promoted a lot? Well, maybe not MA2. It seems to be the same engine, and the missions are very gimmicky, there's little attempt to make a coherent narrative, and it looks like they just threw in a bunch of assets that they may have been developing for another game into MA1's engine, trying to capitalize on its success... Ah. I see what you mean.
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Jan 22, 2018 03:38
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Cythereal posted:Atlases are supposed to be scary? Huh. I always thought they were incredibly useless in the one BattleTech game I played because of how slow they were - they couldn't do much if you stayed at range and picked them apart. I was never really impressed with the Atlas myself. I started out with MW2, and they didn't show up until Ghost Bear's Legacy, and the thing about those games is that the Atlas, being so tall, had a really big hitbox. Also, if you're riding around in a Clan 'Mech, IS 'Mechs don't really impress. In the games I preferred riding around in the Heavies. Good mix of armour, weapons and mobility. Warhammer, Marauder, Timber Wolf... piloted well, those are the real kings. Calax posted:They did have the free worlds league backing them. Kinda-sorta? It was complicated. Thomas Marik, the first competent FWL leader turned out to be a ComStar/WoB plant, except that he wasn't really a bad guy, but the real Thomas Marik was trying to run things from the shadows, calling himself "The Master", and at around this point I lost interest, because I couldn't figure out who was real and who wasn't, and everything wound up in the Dork Ages, which had really badly written novels (for the most part), with nearly no 'Mechs or 'Mech combat. PoptartsNinja posted:Then 9/11 happened and the WoB Jihad got put on a 5 year back-burner in favor of the FedCom Civil War. Did not know that. And the FedCom Civil War was such a significant event, too. MechCommander 2 and all of MechWarrior 4 took place during it. I think that they did a really good job at it, considering that I couldn't really see the seams of it. ... not that this speaks much for the quality of the writing, I tend to be rather obtuse even at the best of times.
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Jan 24, 2018 06:34
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Hate to post directly after posting one, but I just got done watching the video, so: a) I love the "No-one fights like Gestalt" line. There needs to be a Nobel prize for bad puns, so that Robokye can win them every year. b) Can you jump in and out of the Battle Armour? Would that reset your armour? And if you climb into a 'mech (in this mission, where you're not expected to jump back into the Battle Armour), would it despawn?
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Jan 24, 2018 06:55
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VhenRa posted:I thought it was "Lyran Scout Lance." Dreadwroth posted:It's "Steiner Scout Lance" get it right! It's all in the context, really. Anyway, this is neither. The neutral term is "A Shrug of Rands".
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Jan 25, 2018 08:18
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Well, the Highlanders had it coming...? The Word of Blake do re-education camps, much like Comstar used to do, or still does, indoctrination on The Word. Closer to Nod, I guess, except that Kaine was actually interesting and charismatic. Comstar was founded just after the Star League broke apart, and Blake, for lack of a better term, privatized it. Went up to all of the Houses and said, "We'll run communications for all of you, and you don't attack the HPG towers," and the Houses went with it. And then Comstar demonstrated that if a House did something wrong, Comstar could cut off all communications, which is kind of a big deal when trying to run an empire that is many, many star systems apart. Anyway, Blake (much like Kerensky) predicted that the Houses would pound each other into the stone age, which is why it would be necessary to preserve knowledge. One of his followers, Toyoma, decided that the best way to do that is to dress it all up in pseudo-religious babble, and turn the Word of Blake (suitably edited) into holy writ. Then after Tukayyid, Focht took over, and decided to make Comstar more secular. So the more religious nutjobs left Comstar and formed Word of Blake, initially as a Space Verizon to Comstar's Space AT&T... not knowing anything about American Telecoms, I'm assuming that's an okay analogy? The point is, that they're both evil and stupid, but one is more so than the other? And then Word of Blake is able to take over Earth, but Comstar (with Victor Ian Steiner-Davion-Jesus-Stalin-Mitzy-Flopsy-Randolph) don't fight back because Jade Falcons, and... I dunno, space opera. Y'know, I love the books, but sometimes there's just so much poo poo going on. Anyway, Comstar and WoB tend to attribute every significant quote out of history to Blake... rather like the Clans do with Nicholas Kerensky. EDIT: Something that I forgot to mention regarding Stealth in BattleTech games. Yeah, they seem to crop up all of the time. MW2 and GBL were a long time ago, but MW4:Mercenaries definitely has a couple of missions in which you're "sneaking" in or around a base... in a 'Mech. You move with your active sensors off, using ECM and visual recon to get past patrols, and... it's kinda annoying, really. Not as bad as some escort missions, but it's up there. painedforever fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Jan 28, 2018 |
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Jan 28, 2018 10:32
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VhenRa posted:Amusingly, one of the latest books attributes the religious mumbo-jumbo to Blake not Toyama, it was Blake's deathbed orders to Toyama to go that route in order to try to perserve knowledge and Toyama had some severe misgivings. Y'know, I keep meaning to look those up. There was a series on the true fate of the Wolverine Clan (Nicholas Kerensky was more of a dick than was implied), there was another that was on Alexander Kerensky's actual journey... though that last one was in German only.
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Jan 28, 2018 16:33
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... the hell? "Wow, that thing's doing a lot of damage!" "I just need to get some health. Oh, and by the way, the Elementals killed it." That's pretty hilarious. Blood Asp... only other official game I've seen it show up in is MechCommander 2. Sure, MekTek probably has it, but then they had everything. But the only reason it's any good in MechCommander 2 is because it's the only Clan Assault in the entire game. Yeah, it's either this, or the IS Assaults.
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Jan 31, 2018 07:50
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I used to like the Dire Wolf myself, actually (when it came to assaults). About the same armour as an Atlas, smaller profile, more weapons. A lot more people swear by the Warhawk though. Probably all of those ERPPCs in the standard loadout. Both of those would probably be not as interesting visually in Mech Assault, probably why they didn't use them. They look like armoured bricks with legs. The Blood Asp looks distinctive.
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Jan 31, 2018 16:34
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There are weight ranges. Lights are 20-35 tons, Mediums are 40-55 tons, Heavies are 60-75 tons, Assaults are 80-100 tons. There are others, but these are the main ones. The Warhawk is 85 tons, so it's right in there. I think this'd be the MW4: Mercenaries game, because that's the only one I remember having the Annihilator and the Kodiak. Though that did also have the Fafnir, so I might be wrong... I'm not very fond of Assaults. Their role is mostly to stand around and exchange fire. Heavies and mediums are fun, because they can run and dodge. Shame that the games always seem to funnel you towards Assaults. Hey PTN, what's the policy towards spoilers for the previous Mech Assault?
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Jan 31, 2018 17:25
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PoptartsNinja posted:Go for it, so long as you don't spoil the R[Redacted] because we will be seeing it again. Yeah, that shuts me up.  Hastily changing topics, I'm surprised that they kept in the Hellbringer and the Summoner, because those are two 'Mechs that I've always felt have very similar silhouettes. I can see them putting in the Summoner as it was also an iconic 'Mech thanks to that great MW2 intro video, but why that and another 'Mech that's so similar to it? By the way, this surprised the hell out of me, but this little foray into Northwind? It's not contradicted by anything in "canon". Northwind's a big deal in BattleTech, being the home base of the Northwind Highlanders, one of the better known mercenary outfits out there. But y'know, whoever was printing the books at the time (Catalyst?) left a big enough hole for Microsoft to drive the MechWarrior's sullen, sulking body through it. Apparently the WoB assassinated the COs of the Northwind Highlanders, blockaded the system, and blew up the HPG, satellites and aerospace assets, so the folks on-ground had no idea what was going on. The greater galaxy thought that the WoB had nuked Northwind like they had Outreach. The folks on Northwind thought that they were being blockaded. Turns out that the WoB had just deceived everyone into believing that they had control of Northwind, even though there wasn't any sign of WoB forces on the planet by the time the coalition forces got to them... Or y'know, a rag-tag group of Wolf's Dragoons rescued them, I dunno.
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Jan 31, 2018 19:17
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Y'know, I used to think of the MW2 games as more simulator-esque as compared to the later games, especially how far you could customized your 'Mechs.... until someone pointed out to me that the only way to build a 'Mech is to place all of the weapons into the torso slots, and leave the arms empty. The game doesn't care if the part has a weapon mount, and everything is treated as an OmniMech. I think that also carries over to MW3. MW4 improved that by only allowing you to place weapons where it lets you. And then Mech Assault goes to the extreme of treating every 'Mech variant as a different 'Mech altogether.
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Feb 1, 2018 16:54
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Name shoutout! PTN poptart ninja-ing all over the mission. Gosh, that was terrible. The artillery doesn't do much splash damage, does it? You'd think they'd add that at least.
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Feb 2, 2018 04:59
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Oh god, machine guns! Machine guns are not very good in BattleTech. They're light, they're rapid fire, they don't add to your heat, but they're short range, and they don't do a lot of damage. They're anti-infantry, and even then, you have better options. Something that I just noticed is that the armour is a single stat in Mech Assault. In every other BattleTech game, being shot at from the back is bad, because the armour is lighter there. In this... get shot from the front, from the back, it's all the same. Oh. And Kuritans are not "good". They're interesting, and under Teddy-the-K not quite as repressive... but still a long way from "good".
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Feb 6, 2018 18:36
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Apparently, since 2787 and upto 3145, there have been seventeen major battles over Hesperus II. Eight of those (and some of the biggest ones) were by House Kurita, or the Draconis Combine. Those battles have also been significant for House Steiner politically. One of the battles came about because House Steiner withdrew defending troops to raid another planet, and House Marik took advantage. That set the stage for Katrina Steiner to overthrow Alessandro. Another battle convinced the Eridani Light Horse (a premier, but very boring merc company) to leave Lyran service. And finally, a Wolf Dragoon raid under Marik contract convinced Katrina to start negotiating with Jaimie Wolf to work for the Lyrans.
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Feb 7, 2018 04:07
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Ah Robokye! The puns are wonderful. As someone who uses them a lot, I cannot help but agree that the groans, the real heartfelt groans are so much better than any canned laughter. My wife usually just glares at me, which works nearly as well.
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Feb 12, 2018 07:40
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Has anything with the label "Dark Ages" been any good? Apropos of nothing, the IS seemed to prefer humanoid 'Mech designs for Assault Mechs, while the Clanners preferred chicken-walkers. Did that ever have an impact on the tabletop, or was it just aesthetics?
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Feb 13, 2018 06:45
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Y'know, Earth's defences are legitimately horrifying. I read the old FASA Star League book about how Kerensky and the SLDF broke through. There were independent defence droids, and platforms, and guns, guns and more guns. During the Jihad, it was worse, because I don't think that the forces facing off against the Word of Blake had anywhere near the number of warships that the SLDF had. Gee, if only they had a magick data core to cloak their warships. Good grief. Y'know, when you were dodging around the Timber Wolves, I was wondering why you didn't just climb the buildings, jump from rooftop to rooftop, and then drop on them. And then when you did, I saw the problem(s). The controls aren't that good, and those Timber Wolves don't stay in one place, do they? They retreat, firing their machine guns. And here is the Ragnarok! And I thought I hated it, with its magic shields in the first MechAssault. How nice of them to make an even more bullshit 'Mech that breaks all of the rules.
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Feb 16, 2018 06:45
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| # ¿ Apr 23, 2024 16:46 |
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I don't know about that. I've been reading the news. How much do you trust the real AT&T or Verizon when they tell you that the repeal of net neutrality won't change a damned thing? The trouble with Word of Blake is that not only are they split from the original Space AT&T (who were caught by "those in the know" of attempting to manipulate events), but they're also religious nutjobs. Thing about religious nutjobs is that rational thinking isn't their strong suit. About the time that they start frothing at the mouth, everyone takes a big step back, and thinks about how they're going to get out of there with their lives. Because there's no reasoning with them. Remember, Daesh's big plan was to have a big ol' apocalyptic battle in Syria to bring about Judgement Day. A bigger giant-er robot in a Universe of big giant robots is almost sane.
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Feb 19, 2018 10:54
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