What The Tom's Team Played This Weekend: 'Battletech'

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spdragoo

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Love Battletech, longtime tabletop player. While I miss some of the gameplay from the old MW2 trilogy, I'm definitely loving this game. And I have to agree, the depth of the in-game universe is probably going to lend itself to some replayability.
 

Jsimenhoff

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I'm really looking forward to MechWarrior 5, which has a release scheduled for December 2018. Very excited for anything that can put me back in the pilot's seat.

 
I, too, am an old school tabletop player with the FASA boxed sets and house lore books to show for it. While I've not yet made the leap into this game, it does have my interest seeing as I've been following along since the initial announcement it was in development way back when. I play MWO and that's fun and all, but there's a direct control element missing and the "tactics" regularly used by the PUGs you drop with are a mixed bag or wholly absent altogether. That makes for some highly aggravating times and a game like this can only pin the blame for mistakes on you (and RNGesus, of course).

I'm also interested in MW5... but how that all turns out remains to be seen. It does look promising thus far, but PGI hasn't always put their best forward if MWO is any measuring stick.
 

Eximo

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I need to do some troubleshooting this weekend, or perhaps wait on an update. I tried the first 'real' mission three times. Keeps crashing, unable to click things, and once an actual crash message. Made it through the tutorial and opening story mission just fine though.

MWO is a fine combat simulator. I pretty much only do PUG drops and I usually try to gauge my personal performance against the team results. Lacks the charm of mission play though, just not enough variety, and I really hate grinding for C-Bills. I also don't like the win/loss tiered ranking system. Seems arbitrary for PUGs since win/loss depends on team performance.

I kickstarted it, but they never really delivered on a decent meta-game. It pleases me to no end they got 'Duncan Fischer' back for their new Solaris game modes, though.

I use a Summoner/Thor as my avatar on Tom's.
 


I don't disagree with your points on MWO. It's fine enough as you have said and while the variety of PUGs can make for a challenge, I really wish they'd tighten up the drop mix a bit. It sucks getting steamrolled and it also sucks having to carry, but I guess that's all part of how it goes. I've not bothered with Solaris as it doesn't have my interest at this point. Oddly enough, I have the S7 boxed set for TT. :p

I noticed the 'mech avatar. My main in MWO is the stable of my longtime fave, House Liao: Cataphract.

 
loving battletech, it's like 60-80 hours to play through the campaign, I'm on my second playthrough. It's wild to see good sound "tactics" matter in a game (something which was lost a bit in xcom). Furthermore, for pilot skills from the skill tree to make a huge impact in your playthrough. definitely the most addictive game play experience for me since~ FIFA16 I think.
 

mikewinddale

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I'm having so much fun with this game. I just got some great salvage and upgraded my lance from two Orions, a Zeus, and a Battlemaster to an Awesome, two Highlanders, and a King Crab.

They're all fully loaded with maximum armor, medium lasers, and SRM-6s. And my pilots all have maximum tactics, gunnery, and morale. So I can take several targeted shots in a row, all with 86% chance to hit.

So I just sprint in, shrug off one volley of enemy PPC and LRM, and then I've got 4 assault mechs in their faces with maximum short-range damage.

Then I take out several mechs with one hit KOs via targeted shots to the center torso.

If I run out of morale to take targeted shots, then all my assault mechs have maximum jump jets, so I just jump behind the enemy and perform alpha strikes to their rear torsos. Oh yeah, all my mechs have enough heat sinks to jump *and* fire an alpha strike, no problem.

My lance is a wrecking ball. Hell, my Awesome can take out a 70 ton Grasshopper in one strike.
 

mikewinddale

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The one thing I don't like as much about Battle Tech is that compared to Mech Commander, the missions are much simpler and more straightforward. It's mostly just go in, kill this one enemy lance, and you're done. Maybe there's a second lance. But it's pretty short.

By contrast, Mech Commander had much more complex missions with multiple waypoints. It felt much more strategic rather than tactical, in a way. Your missions weren't simply, "Go in and kill this one lance and you're done." Mech Commander was more like, "Here's a big battlefield, and we need you to accomplish these half a dozen different things."
 
May 14, 2018
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Been playing since the 24th. Due to knowing not only the Battletech universe, but the very first Mechwarrior. I have been in no rush to finish the campaign until I got an all Assault lance. That happened last night with a fully completed Argo as well.
Now it is time to confront the end story on the campaign.
This game is great and not for those that want things to happen instantaneously. This game is a thinking game as well as distruction in a rain of long ranged range missiles.
 
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