Other people would have a problem with a 2 hour scenario, 30 to 45 minutes is just right.
There is nothing fragmented about it, not even sure where you get that idea from.
Also the original Table Top game had only 1 lance on each side, so it is keeping to the IP in that respect.

It's not the speed of the animations - though the vehicles could accelerate a bit faster. It's mainly the huge pauses between actions - removing those pauses via messing with the data files makes the game flow much better.

Not sure how larger squads would ruin the game - many turn-based strategy games have much larger squads, and I can't say they've been ruined. On the contrary, the Long War 2 mod for XCOM2 turned a ridiculously simplified game into something much better. Having more units = more options.

that is just heap of nonsense. Mechcommander 2 also had units with several parts/hitboxes and metric frackton of weapons and was able to track everything in real time. Battletech works with way less units on the board and does it in turnbased mode where everything is done just one unit/action at the time ... and everything takes ages thanks to slow animations. Why shouldn't the game be able to handle more? Given the difference in hardware power available for the game (on top of it being 'only' turnbased game), it honestly should be able to handle infinitely more units than Mechcommander 2. Instead, it feels like downgrade in everything but graphics.

He doesn't know what he's talking about. Turn-based games have the edge over real-time games in that they don't have to calculate all of the things happening at once, because, you know, turns. Meanwhile, multiplayer fps games are fine with dozens of players in real-time shooting projectiles at each other and no one is making excuses for them. Living Legends manages to do tanks, hovecrafts, battle armor, vtols, mechs, all in real-time, 14vs14 with both projectiles that have travel time and hitscan weapons.

Watch the video I linked above.


Also I disagree, Mechcommander games are over rated as a "battletech" game, never really felt like a Battletech game and it lost so much of the tactical and strategic part of Battletech with it being in real time and having so many units.

This Battletech game is an upgrade in every way over Mechcommander. This game is based on the Tabletop board game in which each player only had 1 Lance/Star. If they had more than 1 lance in this game it would actually ruin it pretty heavily, completely ruin the pacing and the fun.

when you're extremely normal and definitely not mad that black people are in the game or that people use pronouns

By the way, in a recent AMA on Reddit today, the developer stated they are not going to go beyond more than 1 lance for the player to control. However they are considering fielding another lance that will do stuff off screen
https://www.reddit.com/r/Battletechgame/comments/8g7dxm/hbs_developer_update_ama_summarized/

So good decision on their part.

the video is just full of excuses. Devs decided to go the 'lazy' route with tiny, almost claustrophobic maps that don't allow for any sort of tactics other than "start ridiculously close to target location, go to target using the one and only available route, then fight enemy at the predetermined spot, then mission ends". It gets boring really fast and the game could use a little more variable missions. I'm not saying that every battle must have several lances, but there really should be at least a few larger battles that do. You can recruit tons of mechwarriors, you can have 18 mechs ready in 3 mechbays (and way more in storage) and yet you can never ever possibly use more than four? That is really dumb. And how exactly would a few missions with 2 lances ruin fun or pacing?

Battletech tabletop is limited by how much information/actions/units players can manage using pen&paper. Mechcommander games were limited by hardware power available 20 years ago (or 17 for MW2) and by the fact that those were realtime games. Both were compromises ... in tabletop you could theoretically have higher number of mechs (as many as you'd like, really], but that'd mean turns would take way too much time, in Mechcommander the limit was how effectively player can control units (so it omits things like heat management in battle). The new Battletech just fails to take advantage of ... anything, really. The game obviously still can't handle more units that a human can using nothing more than pen & paper and developers are talking about complexity? Really? With all that insanely powerfull hardware available today (and required by the game) we are still stuck with tiny maps and single digit unit numbers? Come on ...

Nothing lazy about it, more like knowing what is going to make the game fun to play and not catering to the few people like you that would ruin the game. Having more mechs on the board would mean a mission would take hours, it would also mean everything would have to be balanced with the idea of 8+ mechs focus firing on one mech and making sure a mech can't be taken off the board in one turn, which means that every mission would then require 8+ mechs every time because having a mission where only 1 lance can be used would mean the mechs fire power/armor/damages would still be balanced on times for 8+ mechs, which would make those types of missions take an even extremely longer time when using only 1 lance.

Having more units in real time would be fine, but this isn't a real time game. Mechcommander would have be a horrible game if it was Turn Based. You want a Mechcommander game, but Mechcommander is not an appropriate Turn based game.

Having more numbers wouldn't make the missions any differerent than what you described above. The maps are the right size for the number of units. Also there is not just one path to get some where.
Also having more mechs would also mean it would take a long time for a mission, and you would be waiting a long time for the enemy mechs to do their own turn.
Also there is all kind of tactics involved with this game, unless you are even saying the table top game was never tactical at all and everybody has always been wrong in calling it such, cause that is what you are saying, and that is utterly ridicolous thought.

Why did you even buy this game in the first place? Knowing full well that it was only 1 lance of 4 mechs? Or did you not research a game before buying it? Either way, you made a poor choice that is fully your fault.

Considering missions now take 15 minutes, doubling the number of units surely wouldn't blow that to "hours?" We're talking 8 units under your command - even with the different weapons etc. it's still not going to go beyond an hour at the most (and likely finish much sooner).

To solve your second point: not all missions would require 2 lances. Also since dropships can only carry six units at once, we'd need two drops - unless of course they just ignore this limit. At any rate, they could either explicitly limit the lances for some missions, or give obvious hints as to enemy strength and possibly allow for calling in the second lance as reinforcements, if required (but they should take a few turns to get there at least).

The latter option makes the most sense, even if done in a set way (e.g. missions above a certain difficulty rank and/or of a certain type have an option for two lances). If the player chooses to only bring one lance instead then sure it will take longer - but you can't blame the game for that. That's like me saying that all battles are currently taking really long because I've chosen to solo them all with my main character for some reason.

Who's asking for real-time? Pretty sure everyone who is playing this wanted a turn-based game.


True there's not just one path to somewhere, but it seems that everything starts really close together, or paced strangely. I've had a number of convoy missions where there are enemies between me and the convoy (before I get there); I take them all out before arrival; As soon as we touch the convoy point, the convoy moves - and the destination is like two turns away; at that point, enemies instantly materialise, but by the time they're near the convoy it's already arrived; turns out I spent way more turns getting to the convoy than actually escorting the convoy - which is probably just as well since the convoy AI doesn't seem to actually follow you, it just drives straight to the destination.

Massively increasing the number of total units would make missions take longer, yes - but they only take about 15 minutes now (or less), and most of that time is waiting for animations and pauses (mostly for lame comments from your team). Similar games have more units and don't take an eternity - just because mechs can have tons of weapons and there's heat management and armor facing doesn't mean it will magically take a crazy amount of time, even with animations of parts flying off (which is cool I must admit).

No one is saying that there are no tactics with this game. No need to get so fanboyishly defensive about it.

It's just that, with modern tech and made by the creators of the franchise in the first place, I would have expected more. Especially since they did OK with the Shadowrun games, which also had the issue of only allowing 4 characters for your team but which also had a proper RPG in addition to the combat.

BT does have way better combat than Shadowrun of course - thankfully. But it could be so much better. Some of those dev comments look to be headed in the right direction - and for the others, hopefully mods will fix it.

oh stop with the "ruining the game" jingle. Of course there would be some balance changes needed, but most of the things you are afraid of (8 mechs focus firing enemy down) are direct result of HBS gutting the game mechanics in order to simplify things for developers (not players, developers). In many things this game is even more simplified than Mechcommander, but where Mechcommander needed it in order to keep things manageable in realtime here it is just laziness.

No partial cover affecting hit difficulty, no ECM or sensor ranges, no effect on accuracy when other unit (friend or foe) is blocking line of sight, not that many options to break line of sight on the map. How is Battletech different from Mechcommander when you can still blob all units together in a chokepoint and merrily blast away through several friendly/enemy targets between you and the intended target with absolutely no drawback? The problem wouldn't be 8 mechs firing, the problem is that it is way too easy to get extremely high hit chances even with very sketchy positioning. With more usefull cover, ECM to hide mechs unless they are in visual range of attacker and with units standing in front of attacker blocking line of sight, it'd be much more difficult to bring down overwhelming firepower on one target even with two lances. With proper line of sight and cover system you could also have things like terrain (or other partial cover) allowing shooting over it using shoulder mounted weapons while arm-mounted weapons are blocked (and while you are harder to hit in return).

But of course that'd be more difficult for developers ... better map design, less dumb AI (the current AI is very simplistic and works only thanks to the extremely small engagement area and the limited number of units on the board who can in most cases come only from one direction), proper line of sight tracking, sensor & ECM systems ... all the stuff that was much easier to just skip and ignore. This game is good, but in terms of game mechanics in many things it feels more like Battletech-lite than proper reimagining of the tabletop game.

And yeah, I know that none of this will change because these design decisions were made so long ago and are built so deep into the game that any change would require pretty much complete overhaul of the game. It just feels like missed opportunity for a proper Battletech game.

Didn't you previously say "Yes larger squads would ruin the game, it would ruin the flow of the game." ?

Well HBS are only considering it for "off-screen". So we won't get to control it directly - I assume we just configure it at the same time as we send the one we do control. Not sure what it will actually do for us either - hopefully it'll provide something tangible (like artillery support), but for all we know it could just end up with us getting some flavour feedback messages during the missions, and then find some random damage/casualties applied to that lance afterward.

Just my guess though. If that's the case then it's a bit of a cop-out.

Hmm.. the animations are way faster than I remember them being in the original board game.