Author Topic: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)  (Read 164870 times)

Bedwyr

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #780 on: 09 December 2019, 14:00:39 »
Yeah, tons of parts but weapons are rare!  I cannot find a flamer to buy after dozens of stops.  I am more likely to find parts like Heat Exchangers or Rangefinders.  Its really weird when I went to places specifically described as having markets.

My new play through . . . seen plenty of Flea & PXH,, several Vulcans, no Wyvern- no Raven, Crab or Hatchetman either!- no Rifleman, one Archer, a allied Marauder, and a Annihilator (career).  I have seen the weapons and ammo.

Worth filing a report? (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?forums/battletech-bug-reports.998/)
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Fat Guy

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #781 on: 09 December 2019, 14:59:58 »
I have a secret for you.

All of them. It's a lance-wide pilot ability, not a weapon, that's caused by the sheer act of the BH being alive. The trait is called 'perfect aim'.

I'm glad I dropped him quickly then.   xp
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Colt Ward

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #782 on: 09 December 2019, 15:30:30 »
Worth filing a report? (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?forums/battletech-bug-reports.998/)

Well, I saw them on the career game I started after the expansion was released but have not in the campaign- but its been a common complaint since the expansion, weapons are not in the stores like they were . . .

Which might be fine if mech bits were not thrown about like flower petals.
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Firesprocket

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #783 on: 09 December 2019, 17:30:58 »
So that others don't follow in my foot steps, allied to Steiner and loathed by the Fed Suns means you can't access the faction store because the Steiner store is on a Fed Suns planet ::)

DarkSpade

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #784 on: 09 December 2019, 17:42:13 »
That sounds like a bug
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Jayof9s

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #785 on: 09 December 2019, 20:10:13 »
For those who have completed the battle royal against the Black Widow and the Bounty Hunter: What exactly are the weapons on the Bounty Hunter's Marauder that bypass armor?

I need to get me a few of those and try them out.   :thumbsup:

Not sure about that fight but I noticed that Gauss Rifles now do 5 Structure Damage when I was editing weapons for my personal weapon rebalance.

Hard to notice on the GR since they tend to just remove all the armor anyhow, but I added structure damage to pulse lasers (since they were originally fluffed as penetrating armor better due to the pulses) and it's a lot of fun. Makes them a lot more unique, even if they only do 1/2/4 internal damage for small/med/large - the small chance for crits is great.

Apocal

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #786 on: 10 December 2019, 02:06:06 »
They continue to depart further and further from table top.

Of course they do.

A number of tabletop elements were -- and still are -- compromises to keep the game playable on a literal tabletop. Others are more a question of preference on the table, but bad for a computer game. For one example, the firing phase resolution: there isn't really a good way to stay true to the table and display the results graphically. You have a Hunchback blowing away an enemy Wolverine to start with, great. But then that Wolverine (or, rather, its smoking remains) then core out a Jenner, followed by the hulk of the Jenner laying more fire into the Wolverine's corpse, which would be a particularly confusing visual, to say the least.

My biggest gripe so far is that absolutely every planet I have visited has had dozens of mech parts, and ammo for Gauss and LBx weapons, but virtually no weapons for sale at all apart from light autocannon

You need to go to planets that specialize in the specific weapon type, moreso than before. I suspect the people with weapons falling out of their earholes are the ones with an established rotation that takes them around the lucrative worlds.

Caedis Animus

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #787 on: 10 December 2019, 04:53:09 »
Of course they do.
The amount of people who get mad about the game being deviant from the tabletop when it literally never set out to be tabletop accurate is baffling. Like, they were saying it wouldn't be an accurate representation from the start, what did you think would happen?

That's like being told your car will get towed if you park it in a certain spot, then parking it in said spot and complaining as it got towed away.

Daryk

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #788 on: 10 December 2019, 05:06:37 »
Again, it wasn't from the start.  They went there during the Kickstarter.

Apocal

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #789 on: 10 December 2019, 08:43:06 »
Anyone managed to find Annihilators yet? I'm coming up short; I've only seen one in the wild and couldn't down it before having to get to the evac point.

Luciora

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #790 on: 10 December 2019, 09:42:10 »
I got one last night.   Quad LB10Xs and 2 Snubs.  Lights and mediums uusually die outright from the first volley.  Heavies tend to weather the first with internals before succumbing to wounds or lancemates.  One lucky Banshee took 3 full volleys, but there wasn't much salvage from it after.

Anyone managed to find Annihilators yet? I'm coming up short; I've only seen one in the wild and couldn't down it before having to get to the evac point.

Fat Guy

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #791 on: 10 December 2019, 10:51:01 »
Anyone managed to find Annihilators yet? I'm coming up short; I've only seen one in the wild and couldn't down it before having to get to the evac point.

Aside from the one in the Widow's lance, I only saw one in a two and a half skull mission. Unfortunately none of my pilots were good enough at called shots at that time to headcap it (and I didn't have my Marauder yet).

My headcapping Marauder: lose the AC 5 for more heatsinks, armor, and a +1 accuracy (energy) TTS. Upgrade the PPCs and Mediums to +10 damage versions. Add gyro and cockpit mods as they become available.

The thing is a headhunting beast!

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Apocal

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #792 on: 10 December 2019, 10:55:06 »
Aside from the one in the Widow's lance, I only saw one in a two and a half skull mission. Unfortunately none of my pilots were good enough at called shots at that time to headcap it (and I didn't have my Marauder yet).

My headcapping Marauder: lose the AC 5 for more heatsinks, armor, and a +1 accuracy (energy) TTS. Upgrade the PPCs and Mediums to +10 damage versions. Add gyro and cockpit mods as they become available.

The thing is a headhunting beast!

Well, I'm trying to find an Annihilator to become my prime headcapper, with damage-boosted UAC/10s and UAC/5s.

MoneyLovinOgre4Hire

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #793 on: 10 December 2019, 11:48:31 »
Again, it wasn't from the start.  They went there during the Kickstarter.

Very early on.  Long before the game  was actually released.  So them having stuff that isn't tabletop accurate now shouldn't be any sort of surprise.
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Bedwyr

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #794 on: 10 December 2019, 12:39:17 »
Very early on.  Long before the game  was actually released.  So them having stuff that isn't tabletop accurate now shouldn't be any sort of surprise.

Well, I'd say that it's fine to have an imaginative vision for something and not get what you expected in the end. That disappointment is perfectly valid and I'm not going to denigrate it. So I'll throw out the following for posterity and to work out my own experience watching the project make it to release, what my expectations and experience were and so forth. Intended to be reflective and not aimed outward. Two discussion points:

Point, the first: I pretty much saw this coming from a mile away. Much of that comes from following game dev and reading books, class lessons, columns, and conversations within the game design world. It's something that's become formal/academic for a good while now and attitudes about what good design is and how to get a game to ship *and* be successful is recognizable at this point. A flashier MegaMek, that is something very faithful to the board game but packaged up with good art direction, was never going to happen.

There are expectations buried deep within game designers now about what will 'read' to a wide audience (not dumbing down, but what will naturally engage people and keep them drawn into your game). This involves things like how many mouse-clicks it takes to accomplish any action, how information is distilled, what the core game loop is and should be and how long each iteration of the loop should take, what kind of metaphor or story the game mechanics are trying to sell, etc.

Knowing that kind of motivation and background in designers tells me that they're coming from a completely different place than a decades-long Battletech fan. A Battletech fan has the board game and its rules firmly in mind and all natural decisions and expectations follow from that. A video game designer incorporates the board game into his/her decision-making process, but the envisioned experience is never going to stem from the board game unless you're making a strict adaptation like mobile versions of Agricola or Carcassonne. HBS's game was never trying to be that and, while I'm sure they cracked open MegaMek at one point, never trying to be MegaMek either.

I think that's where the conflict in expectations primarily happened. Basically the board-game fan is from Mars and the game designer (Mike McCain, Kiva Maginn, and on down) is from Venus.



Point, the second: I interpreted assurances that we were going to have a board game experience was not an assurance that this *was* going to be the board game. It was that it would be very much a Battletech board game experience as compared to, say, MechCommander RTS or even a Mechwarrior sim. The context was the video game series that are out there. It might be a fine distinction, but it made a lot of difference for me. Especially as I had in mind what Harebrained had done previously. Shadowrun was probably closer to its ruleset than Battletech is, but that's probably an artifact of the natural flexibility of GM-run P&P RPGs.

One of the biggest distinctions of the Shadowrun trilogy was the incorporation of elements from the very successful XCOM, which showed both designers and the audience what a modern turn-based strategy game could do to generate urgency, excitement, and polish. The main thing was how they communicated cover mechanics (directional shields), but there were other subtle bits and bobs that showed off the game's artistic heritage. That was an amalgamation of the tabletop rules and game-design trends in the industry. I fully read that as the context for what Battletech would be in the end and more easily rolled with the changes.
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Jim1701

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #795 on: 10 December 2019, 13:26:11 »
Again, it wasn't from the start.  They went there during the Kickstarter.

All I can say is that I followed the Kickstarter from the start and I never saw the devs say they were there to recreate the tabletop experience.  The original concept as stated by the devs was: 
Quote
Our goal is to craft a combat system for BATTLETECH that’s the perfect blend of tactical depth, speed of play, and meaningful unit customization. As we did with our Shadowrun games, we intend to capture the *spirit* of the original tabletop rules, while designing the best PC game we can.

This comes from their Kickstarter Campaign page which as far as I know they can add to (usually for stretch goals or additional information) but not change content once the Kickstarter goes live.

They even mention using the same process as for the Shadowrun game which certainly doesn't conform to any PnP Shadowrun rules I know of.  To the best of my knowledge any inference that the game would be a faithful replication of tabletop play was based solely on assumptions made by some backers rather than anything the devs said.  They promised to make a game that captured the spirit of the tabletop game as much as they could, nothing more.

If there are statements by devs that say  otherwise I will of course stand corrected.
« Last Edit: 10 December 2019, 13:30:06 by Jim1701 »

Luciora

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #796 on: 10 December 2019, 13:45:08 »
There was already a thread or two that were screeds about this, needless to say it's already been discussed to death and people that were unhappy were not going to change their minds. 

Now I want to get 2 King Crabs and see what havoc a twin LB20 and a twin Ultra20 would to.

Jim1701

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #797 on: 10 December 2019, 13:50:16 »
I haven't gotten far enough to use one of the advanced AC's but if they both use the missile formula to determine cluster hits then WOW that's going to be terrifying.   :yikes:

MoneyLovinOgre4Hire

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #798 on: 10 December 2019, 13:58:25 »
The game has advanced ACs beyond LB10-Xs and Ultra 5s?
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Luciora

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #799 on: 10 December 2019, 14:06:13 »
They have.  Swapping the AC/5s for the Ultra/2 let's you add armor and sinks and helps the Rifleman immensely.

The game has advanced ACs beyond LB10-Xs and Ultra 5s?

Caedis Animus

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #800 on: 10 December 2019, 14:07:00 »
The game has advanced ACs beyond LB10-Xs and Ultra 5s?
Yup. It's vaguely hinted that the more advanced models are part of a certain Clan's old spoils, but for the most part, it's like a soft retcon (I mean, as far as you can have in a non-canon game).

Bedwyr

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #801 on: 10 December 2019, 14:11:49 »
There was already a thread or two that were screeds about this, needless to say it's already been discussed to death and people that were unhappy were not going to change their minds. 

Fair. I said my piece and will refrain further.
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Colt Ward

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #802 on: 10 December 2019, 14:37:31 »
Yeah, I have a LB-5X on a Shadow Hawk . . . which is a awesome tool when I have opened up a location (or three) on a mech.  I now picture the table top gun going off that way- which is a tight shotgun blast!
Colt Ward
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Bedwyr

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #803 on: 10 December 2019, 15:52:12 »
Regarding the weapons disappearing from shops, I added a couple posts to two pre-existing threads over on the Paradox bug reports forum. So they should know about the issue if it is an issue.
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MoneyLovinOgre4Hire

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #804 on: 10 December 2019, 16:02:08 »
There was a patch for the game this morning.  Don't know if it was for that issue, though.
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Jayof9s

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #805 on: 10 December 2019, 17:10:37 »
Anyone managed to find Annihilators yet? I'm coming up short; I've only seen one in the wild and couldn't down it before having to get to the evac point.

I've seen two in my new campaign - one was exceptionally early on. I got a mission to hunt down two 'very heavy' 'mechs piloted by war criminals and then found out another lance was already hunting them, so it became a three-way fight between an Annihilator, Banshee, vs. a medium ComStar lance, vs my medium/heavy lance. I lucked into a take down that let me salvage the beast.

Saw the 2nd a few missions later but didn't get more than a single piece.

I was basically just following along the campaign missions and visiting one or two side planets along the way and doing all the contracts available.

Edit: I want to say the first Anni I saw was on Mechdur, it was an urban map for sure either way.
« Last Edit: 10 December 2019, 17:35:05 by Jayof9s »

Colt Ward

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #806 on: 10 December 2019, 17:30:34 »
I would like to see the Campaign games randomize the non-boss mechs . . . Grim Sybil still pilots her Quickdraw, the Warden has a Jager, Victoria her Kurita Cat, etc but . . . give me a Archer defending the drop port on Panzyr instead of the Dragon . . . or a Javelin instead of the Jenner?
Colt Ward
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Insaniac99

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #807 on: 10 December 2019, 17:49:41 »
For one example, the firing phase resolution: there isn't really a good way to stay true to the table and display the results graphically. You have a Hunchback blowing away an enemy Wolverine to start with, great. But then that Wolverine (or, rather, its smoking remains) then core out a Jenner, followed by the hulk of the Jenner laying more fire into the Wolverine's corpse, which would be a particularly confusing visual, to say the least.

Sorry, but that simply isn't true and is a lie they told during the kickstarter.

  There is an entire genre of games that do just this and they have manage to handle the effects and results quite well.  RoboSport, Laser Squad Nemesis, and Frozen Synapse are just three examples of simultaneous turn-based tactics games that are much more complex and many in that genre handle more than the 4 mechs that Battletech does.  They often use a cinematic camera and breaks down the simultaneous action between the distinct groups involved so you see the fire coming slow-mo style before it impacts the enemy but it's zoomed on just those two.

It is more than possible to make a good simultaneous resolution on PC that shows information in a clear way.  The real reason HBS didn't is because that genre is a niche one, even more so than the IGOUGO of modern XCOM and HBSTech.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's dishonest to pretend it's not possible to have very clear visuals of what is happening.

Bedwyr is also correct in that point, the "pro" game developers reduce games down to a science of clicks, attention span, and so forth then they end up creating bland games that sell well, it's one reason I play a lot more "indie" games nowadays, they don't know the "right way" and take risks that result in, at least to me, much more enjoyable games. 

I would like to see the Campaign games randomize the non-boss mechs . . . Grim Sybil still pilots her Quickdraw, the Warden has a Jager, Victoria her Kurita Cat, etc but . . . give me a Archer defending the drop port on Panzyr instead of the Dragon . . . or a Javelin instead of the Jenner?

That would make it much more replayable,  and a better way to do difficulty with different weights (or more optimal mechs in the weight class) for different difficulties.

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #808 on: 10 December 2019, 18:25:46 »
To be clear, I only expanded on my initial post in response to a query from another poster.  Having started one of those threads Luciora mentioned, I'll shut up now, with the single addition (for Jim1701's benefit) of there having been discussion about what the Kickstarter would be before the Kickstarter opened.

Jim1701

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Re: HBS Expansion Thread- its time for II (spoilers)
« Reply #809 on: 10 December 2019, 18:39:39 »
Sorry, but that simply isn't true and is a lie they told during the kickstarter.

  There is an entire genre of games that do just this and they have manage to handle the effects and results quite well.  RoboSport, Laser Squad Nemesis, and Frozen Synapse are just three examples of simultaneous turn-based tactics games that are much more complex and many in that genre handle more than the 4 mechs that Battletech does.  They often use a cinematic camera and breaks down the simultaneous action between the distinct groups involved so you see the fire coming slow-mo style before it impacts the enemy but it's zoomed on just those two.

It is more than possible to make a good simultaneous resolution on PC that shows information in a clear way.  The real reason HBS didn't is because that genre is a niche one, even more so than the IGOUGO of modern XCOM and HBSTech.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's dishonest to pretend it's not possible to have very clear visuals of what is happening.

Bedwyr is also correct in that point, the "pro" game developers reduce games down to a science of clicks, attention span, and so forth then they end up creating bland games that sell well, it's one reason I play a lot more "indie" games nowadays, they don't know the "right way" and take risks that result in, at least to me, much more enjoyable games. 

That would make it much more replayable,  and a better way to do difficulty with different weights (or more optimal mechs in the weight class) for different difficulties.

I find it pretty insulting you want to just accuse HBS of actually lying about something you have absolutely no inside knowledge about.  You don't know what their resources are.  You don't know if they could or how long it would take to reverse engineer a mechanic used in some random game I certainly haven't heard of.  It's not like they can just call up a competing company and ask to borrow a 250,000 lines of code, please and thank you. 

RoboSport appears to be nearly 30 freakin years old.  Frozen Synapse is a single player game where multiplayer is limited to hotseat mode according to their website and it's nearly a decade old.  You can't just lift concepts out of one application and dump them into another and hit frappe.  It don't work that way. 

Build a game that someone would actually buy then come back and accuse someone of lying about what they can and cannot do.   :rant:

 

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