GWJ Strategy Club Game 1: Battletech (Completed)

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Welcome commanders. The votes have been tallied and our first game will be Battletech.

Since we voted in early July, I suggest we take till September 30 to finish the campaign. Please share your thoughts, epic wins, and strategies to this thread. I’m going t come up with a ranking system for for everyone who starts and finishes the game.

Here’s the link to the Steam page (cost is $9.99 during sale) https://store.steampowered.com/app/6...

If you’re interested in learning more about the club, please check out the main thread.

Fired her up this afternoon and was Impressed by the tweaks since launch. My main problem with the initial release was how slow it felt, but it looks like the new speed-up options fix that entirely.

Very keen to play more.

I played through the campaign on release, as this time I’ll play career mode instead. That’ll unlock the DLCs quicker (flash points especially) as I don’t believe they crop up during the campaign (which is pretty good and I recommend) and you have to wait until it’s finished.

Thanks for getting me back into this. I’ve been meaning to return to it for ages!

The main campaign is great. I have sunk over 800 hours into the game. And the real longevity of the game comes with Mods. I specifically recommend checking out Battletech Advanced 3062 mod. If you are familiar with lore this mods adds the clans!

https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech...

My recommendation would be the 3025 Extended: Commander Edition mod.

-Adds a ton of new 'mechs with faction-appropriate distribution
-Adds unique 'mech variant and pilot quirks
-Opens up basically the whole Inner Sphere for sandbox play with borders and factions changing over time from 3025 to 3057, with Clan invasion
-Adds difficulty levels with a more hardcore "simulation" mode
-Re-balances weapons/skills/'mech variants

Short of actually adding a new story campaign (which is probably beyond the scope of what's possible with mod tools), it adds so much depth to the original game it basically feels like a sequel.

https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech...

I nominated it, so I’m definitely in. It’s funny, I have no background with the battletech series, and only some history with giant robots (watched a few gundam shows on Cartoon Network back in the day), so I’m coming to the game pretty fresh in that regard. I remember from the reviews of the game when it came out that the game is far more a battle of placement and attrition than quick kills and deaths, a la XCOM, so I’ll try to keep that in mind as I go through it.

I’ll be starting up in the next few days.

I have a new computer coming this week so will jump in this weekend. Two quick questions:

1. I’m assuming everyone in this thread wants to join in. If so, I’ll add your names to the OP.
2. Are the DLC packs recommended for a new player? I’ve heard they add cool stuff but also make it a little tougher.

I'm definitely in. Also good doing it with or without a mod. The Commanders Edition above looks really interesting, especially as a Kurita fanboy who's partial to Battlemasters.

I'm in-ish. I'm not sure I'll be able to make it through the whole campaign, but I'll join the fun for sure.

I may be in, not sure. I finished Battletech's campaign a while back. Can you just play the career mode without purchasing DLC?

amazedbygrace86 wrote:

I may be in, not sure. I finished Battletech's campaign a while back. Can you just play the career mode without purchasing DLC?

I believe so

I'm in, except I can't decide...

Continue the career campaign I was working on back in May?

Start a new career campaign with 3025 Extended?

Do the story again (it's been a long time)?

jdzappa wrote:

I have a new computer coming this week so will jump in this weekend. Two quick questions:

1. I’m assuming everyone in this thread wants to join in. If so, I’ll add your names to the OP.
2. Are the DLC packs recommended for a new player? I’ve heard they add cool stuff but also make it a little tougher.

The DLC packs are as follows:

Flashpoint - this added a career mode (I think -one of them did anyway!) and short sort of side missions to the game. they are 2 or 3 linked missions that you have to play through concurrently, but offer really nice rewards like unique Mechs or Mech components. The issue is these don't appear until after the main campaign is complete, unless you play career mode (without the campaign) If you've not played before I'd definitely recommend the campaign

Urban Warfare added urban environments to fight in. Nice and interesting from a tactical point of view but that's pretty much it. I think it just throws these in randomly during the campaign though.

Heavy Metal adds a load of ultra heavy mechs beyond the original roster. It also added a couple of new flashpoints and a new weapons system. I believe they are all available in the campaign

You won't miss them if you don't have them but they do add to the game. I'll get a career set up on this in the next couple of days and start to play through. I have no vested interest in the Battletech universe so I'm not that concerned about the clan mods.

Fired up the game tonight for the first time in a long time. Jumped into an Ironman Career mode. First battle went well, but I feel pretty rusty. Nice that you can speed up some of the animations.

Oh I didn't realise there was an ironman mode.

I'm only 2 missions deep, I'm very tempted to start it up with that enabled. Hopefully it's not too punishing for a beginner.

OK so we are up and running. I'm playing Career mode rather than going through the campaign again, mostly so I get to see the Flashpoints.

Difficulty settings as follows

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/zObNzuT.png)

The High Society Vandals have been created, lead by Emilia "Boov" Wellington (she is loosely - very loosely - based on mini-sorb. If we're going to do this we might as well base our company leader on an extremely opinionated and demanding 8 year old)

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/7ACn5Fg.png)

She hails from the Magistracy of Canopus, had her family go bankrupt at 16 years old and ran off to become a pirate - as you do. We don't know who she swindled/threated to become a mercenary captain, but mercenary captain she is. She's here to kick butt and steal teddy bears, and she's all out of teddy bears.

She likes purple

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/Bsek92H.png)

Good mix of mechs for my starting roster (I randomised them in the difficulty) but the load outs are distinctly sub-optimal. Next step will be to get them sort out.

If I remember correctly PPCs aren't worth the cost of mounting them any more? Is that still correct with the 1.9 patch?

Ironman mode, nice!

I've been meaning to give this a try. I guess the next two months is a good a time as ever.

I know nothing about the game. What is career mode?

Career mode is the non-campaign mode basically. You get a random company, mech and mech warrior roster and a few other perks I won’t tell you because it’ll spoil the campaign.

I recommend the campaign if you’ve not played it. You don’t have to be versed in Battletech lore at all to play the game, but I suspect it would help a little. The game has these great pop-outs though by which it explains the different factions, history and lore of different characters, locations and weaponry in the game.

There are definite weaponry load outs more suited to different mechs though. I would recommend looking those up the deeper you get into the game. Tactics are critical, learning how evasion works, the turn ordering and which mech warrior abilities synergise is very important.

The game does a pretty damn good job of making the lore accessible in little bite-sized pieces, and they set the whole campaign in what is actually a sort of backwater region created brand new especially for the game so they wouldn't have to worry about bumping up against a lot of established lore or needing the player to know the lore if they don't care.

That said, for those who do care, I am sure there are some YouTube primer videos on the setting, and I remember writing up some explainers on the various major Inner Sphere factions for the main BattleTech thread, so I'd be happy to do a "History of the BT universe in 5 minutes" post if anybody is interested. I've been a fan of this IP for about 20 years now, and when it comes to the lore I plunge in my proboscis and fill my sacs.

I might be in on this, too. I played a mission or two a long time ago, but I'll probably start again just for the refresher. I kept meaning to give this another shot; maybe I was just waiting for the right time.

Campaign biggest tip: you don't have to rush these ones. They are quite tough and you will benefit from doing other Mercenary missions and earning loot and C-bills (and generally levelling up your pilots).

Now as to mods. BTA was the first omnibus mod I installed. It's got a lot of tweaks. It's probably a good idea to install this one as your first foray into the expanded universe/lore. Then there's RogueTech. This one is hard, it introduces new systems and different (somewhat improved) AI. But you can tweak the difficulty settings until you are comfortable. Having played RogueTech for a while now, I cannot contemplate going back to the original or BTA. However firstly it is unstable in comparison (it can crash although stability has improved) and the AI is slow.

I just started a new Campaign with the updated 3025 Extended mod; I hadn't played in a few months and my old campaign wasn't compatible. I wasn't too far so no biggie.

I'm playing on fairly forgiving difficulty, though the mod does some ironmanish things like blocking save/load in combat. So far I haven't done much mech customization, though I do tend to swap out really short-range weapons for bigger LRM packs. That may change as I get bigger mechs that can take more hits, but right now I like dueling at range.

Just played the first scenario - had to attempt it twice since the first time Mastiff was destroyed. Will plan to watch a few guide videos but at the moment I'm unsure how to tell if a movement spot will offer cover beyond the forest effect. Also unsure how to decide on choice of targets beyond finding those which don't have evasion modifiers.

When I wake up tomorrow I'll decide on whether to buy any of the DLC before the steam sale is over!

I'll be joining in for Battletech and playing the campaign, will get a start at the weekend

Okay so some starter tips.

Cover: indicated by a green dot. Note however there is also line-of-sight that is important because breaking visual LOS means direct fire weapons (lasers, PPCs, ACs, SRMs, flamers and machine guns) cannot target a mech. Note also terrain can have different effects. For example, rough terrain is from memory an orange tile on rocky ground which makes you harder to hit but reduces movement distance and increases stability damage taken. Or water tiles which assist with cooling your mech heat.

Rotate your torso: look at how much damage a mech has taken to a particular part (CT, L/R torso arm and leg). Rotate the damaged side away from the enemy. A mech's positioning is determined by the 90 degree arc e.g. front arc is 11 to 1 o'clock, rear arc is 5 to 7 o'clock.

Move for evasion pips: generally the farther your pilot moves the higher the evasion pips (and harder you are to hit). Equally, try to focus fire a flat footed opponent who is stripped of evasion pips. In fact, focus fire everything down if you can since damage mitigation is often from taking targets off the board.

Take them from the rear: rear torso tends to be less armoured meaning you can blow up the enemy more easily. If you can't take the rear then pick a side (left or right) and flank attack to try and pile on damage on a mech part. This is important if a mech has deadlier weapons mounted on a specific side - if you can blow up the arm or side torso that mounts that weapon you can reduce its threat to your lance.

Take assassination missions: often the target is a heavier tonnage mech that you can hopefully disable and salvage.

Try not to travel too much: travel costs C-bills. Try to take up all the decent missions before travelling.

Going to pick this one up here in the last few hours of the sale. I fear that this will end up in the big pile of Paradox games but the price is as good as its going to get and I'm hoping this thread motivates me to keep at it.

Though old, this video is pretty good and mostly still relevant to the game:

Worth a watch.

Hmmmmm.

So an interesting start. I had several local missions that went well and I managed to salvage enough parts - quickly - for an extra mech. Then I seemed to get a random loot drop in game which gave me a new mech from the Heavy Metal expansion for free, I just had to find room in my mech bay (which meant I had to wait until another mech had been repaired before I could mothball it) and then outfit it with the new weapon variant (basically weapons that do more damage the more evasion you generate) . I've not used it yet because:

I took on a mission a full "skull" difficultly more than I could generate in tonnage. I did this to get the transit fee to the new system paid for me, as well as check out my new tactics. "Go take out these old veterans in their old decrepit mechs!" said the mission, I thought I'd be up against some heavy mechs but maybe with limited armour

Their mechs may have been old but certainly were not decrepit - they were all pretty much fully armoured. One Grasshopper, One Dragon, A Vulcan (easy enough) and an enforcer (at least I had one of those) basically did a number on my enforcer and I lost a good Pilot. I managed to get the Vulcan and Enforce down easy enough but the Grasshopper and Dragon were another story.

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/ju1JL56.png)

However, my firestarter burned the Grasshopper pilot in his cockpit in revenge, before we had a protracted game of cat and mouse with the Dragon to try and minimise damage and injured pilots. In the end all my mechs needed repairing (and the enforcer refitting) but as I didn't destroy the Grasshopper (i just killed the pilot) I do now have a bonafida Grasshopper (70 ton heavy mech) in my bay that I need to get fitted out. This after only just after the first month.

I took a lot of damage and I'm very nearly skint after all the repair costs & new pilot hire costs thanks to all the injuries (and loss of Tranquility), but that Grasshopper should give me a real advantage early on - especially in Flash Points assuming I'm not over the tonnage limits.

All in all not a bad start

I love the grasshopper! max out the jump jets and load it up on light lasers. Jump behind mechs and light them up.

Two more missions done - I'm glad we picked this game, I'm really enjoying the tactical depth and the mech management piece.

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