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I don't think the Atlas has ever been under dispute, it's never been one of the Unseen, has it?
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Jul 25, 2017 12:18
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It's why they're targeting HBS and PGI and not Microsoft, who actually holds the license, nor have they presumably yet added Paradox to the docket, because those are big companies with lots of lawyers and money with which to fight them.
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Jul 25, 2017 15:35
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Voyager I posted:Is there any way for PGI / HBS to tag in the big boys for this suit? I'm not a lawyer but I can presume that there's a strong possibility that now that Paradox is financially supporting the game and will (presumably) financially benefit that Harmony Gold sort of has to. Because I'd imagine you sort of have to sue everyone or nothing, and you can't just say "I'm suing you individually". Wouldn't HBS/PGI be able to argue "hey, Paradox is benefiting from this, why aren't you suing them too?"
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Jul 25, 2017 22:25
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An unfortunate thing for this game is I'm afraid HG might try to say "we're contesting this product, it cannot be released until the lawsuit is resolved" and the game will be delayed until the lawsuit is resolved, and then the possibility of the appeals process taking a while. Though I imagine HBS could take out the 'Mechs that are under protest.
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Jul 31, 2017 03:29
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The Atlas is safe, Catalyst, HBS, and PGI can just point out that it's been in tons of games and miniatures and such and HG never challenged it before. If they had any copyright they did not defend it, thus it was lost.
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Aug 1, 2017 17:00
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They'll do the Q&A they'll just either ignore all questions about the lawsuit or say "we can't talk about the lawsuit" and proceed to ignore all questions.
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Aug 2, 2017 11:55
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Early 2018 is the current scuttlebutt, I believe.
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Sep 19, 2017 01:18
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Party Plane Jones posted:So have they said when this is actually coming out or what? Cause I refuse to pony up more money for the beta. Early next year.
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Sep 28, 2017 20:31
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Amechwarrior posted:https://community.battletechgame.com/forums/threads/9901 Just for reference for those that don't follow the usernames this is isildur, I'm almost completely certain.
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Oct 5, 2017 23:35
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I know you were nervous isildur but for my part I think you were one of the best guests the monthly Q&A has had. In fairness to your co-workers, what you work on is far more interesting to me than sound design or art, but you gave wonderfully detailed answers that were concise and easy to understand. And you stuck around for the full hour! Also thanks to Mitch for relaying my SQUAWK!!!! to you and you for returning it.
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Oct 11, 2017 21:15
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I'm fairly certain Isildur is going to enter this thread, and she's going to murder you all for even daring joke that this game is going the way of MechWarrior Tactics.
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Oct 27, 2017 02:33
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Given that this is the company that wrote Shadowrun Dragonfall, I'm not overly concerned about the writing. This seems like one of the very, VERY first missions, introducing a few key concepts: corporations are dicks, be scared of a backstab, some characterization for your staff, and a few other things.
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Nov 16, 2017 01:29
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Wicked Them Beats posted:To be clear, I'm fine with schlock in my sci-fi. They're giant battle robots punching each other; I'm not expecting Shakespeare. To be fair I'm not going to expect a bunch of idiot miners to be smart about their betrayal.
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Nov 16, 2017 03:18
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Yes, beta is currently available. Worth noting beta is fun but limited in scope.
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Nov 16, 2017 15:12
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By limited I mean it's 5 maps with a limited selection of Mechs, preset pilots, and strictly 4 Mechs vs 4 Mechs skirmish. People won't play single player skirmish much after full release. Like XCOM, the draw for this game will be the campaign, and to a lesser extent multiplayer.
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Nov 16, 2017 15:40
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Pretty sure those campaigns are just the random grab bag and you can rename them whatever you seek.
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Nov 21, 2017 05:21
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As a not-as-Goon-but-still-Goon suggestion if you guys have something like XCOM's heros, slip in a particularity notable one from PTN's thread or his MW2 Mercs play through.
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Nov 22, 2017 21:07
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I think the golden goose for me is getting up to Batallion size in later games (my hope is that we'll be able to play the same company throughout the ages, either implicitly playing as them or HBS not explicitly making us not the same company, so to speak). But I can't quite figure out a good way in my head to make it so that battles aren't a massive tedious mess with more than 4 Mechs on the field at once. I suppose I could see them pulling a trick in the hopeful Clan sequel that has your mercenary outfit deciding to 'bump up' to Stars instead of Lances. One idea I've been bouncing around in my head is that you're signing long-term contracts in later games, so you have to choose which Company to send on a mission. Once there it's a bit of a 'campaign' style system with your Lances engaging enemy forces individually at times as you push the battle line forward, culminating in a bigger battle where you command your entire Company. So you sign a contract with the Lyrans to take Butte Hold. Butte Hold is a cold world and ammunition will be in short supply, so perfect for a Company of your Battalion that's mostly outfitted with energy weapons. In contrast, a different contract to take a desert world would have, say, the Fed Suns saying 'don't worry about ammunition, we'll supply', so you just send a Company outfitted with mostly ballistic weapons. Having different forces for different operations. Alternatively, the only 'good way' I can see to not make combat super tedious is to have you appointing commanders of Lances, which intrigues me because suddenly your not just trying to figure out who's the best MechWarrior for that mech, you're trying to figure out who's best for the Lance. A good MechWarrior might not make a good commander. But maybe your super-skilled MechWarrior will get pissed they get passed over for promotion and leave the Company, so maybe even though they're not a great officer candidate you can't afford to lose them.
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Dec 27, 2017 13:06
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Well they're shutting down the beta soon-ish (if not already shut down, and maybe not even meaning the single player, just the multiplayer). If I were willing to bet I'd say March to give Paradox time to drum up their marketing machine. Add BattleTech to the weekly rotation of live shows they stream. Game does not feel far away.
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Jan 2, 2018 14:52
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There has been an update to the Beta on Steam that deletes the .exe. Thus, alas, the beta is over, and gone. You could take measures to back it up, but if you did not do so, no more games until the full release.
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Jan 9, 2018 01:12
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I doubt the Arano Restoration is completely the good guys, having played Dragonfall I have too much confidence in HBS for it to be black and white. But HBS has said if you don't want the Restoration to succeed you just don't do the story missions. I don't think you have a long term contract, you're just their first number on the speed dialer.
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Jan 11, 2018 04:40
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I can completely understand them only having one path. And criticizing it now is a bit weird when we don't even know the story details. Maybe the Directorate has a valid reason to not hire mercs. Remember, this is basically a proxy war with the Taurian-supported Directorate versus the Canopian-supported Restoration. Maybe the Taurians have given the Directorate a bunch of mercs (that are really paid by Taurus) and in order to keep them from getting 'out of line' said 'these troops will be enough, you'd better not hire any more!' Hell, maybe the Taurians don't even want the Directorate to win, maybe they just want the Aurigans a bit trampled so that they can dominate them economically. Remember, in order for you to work for the Directorate they'd have to actually make you an offer. Without playing the game we can't say they don't have valid reasons to do so.
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Jan 11, 2018 18:29
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Here's a bit of a problem, though. From a game design perspective, you don't want players making that choice. Yeah, in universe, it makes perfect sense. But from a game design perspective, as best I can tell, beating the story campaign is the only thing resembling a win condition. Bankruptycy is the only thing that will say "hey game over you lose", but there is no equivalent free-roam win condition for the campaign. Without the story campaign, it's literally JUST the random missions, and though I think they'll be good, I don't think infinite random missions will be quite enough to carry this game. I don't think they're enough to carry ANY game, which is one of my concerns with MW5. Yeah, for certain players, they'll want to just play Mercenary Sim 3025, but for most there needs to be... a goal, of sorts. The story campaign is the only real goal, other than you saying stuff like "I want to have 12 Atlases." So to steer players to the story campaign you can't incentivize that decision to skip it. It needs to be basically strictly a roleplaying decision, and you can't pay players a lot of money to make it- maybe 1 contract worth. It's a sensible addition but I think it goes against the gameplay.
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Jan 12, 2018 00:39
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The problem with that choice is that it's not an equal choice. It's basically asking the player "do you want to deny yourself access to content for a short-term gain, or keep access to the story campaign?" In my mind, that choice is a trap. They don't want you to make that choice. As a player you shouldn't make that choice. It's unbalanced to you, not the character, but YOU, the person at the keyboard. It denies you access to content with nothing to replace it. Sure, it's a perfectly viable choice in the game from a role-playing perspective. But most players aren't going into the game as informed as we are. We know that it's a trap, but a casual, first time gamer who bought the game because it looks cool will think, unless you specifically spell out "this is a bad choice and will screw you out of a lot of content", that both sides are viable. And if you do spell it out, they'll wonder why is it a choice at all? It's like in Skyrim, there's a choice to destroy the Dark Brotherhood. Most players probably don't even know it's there. Because it's a bad choice. You replace a long questline with some interesting content with a single "go kill all these people" mission with a poo poo reward. As a roleplaying choice, it's perfectly fine. It's less unforgivable in Skyrim because there's a lot other content. And Skyrim is a roleplaying game. This game is not. It's a tactical game with roleplaying elements. I think a decent compromise would be giving the player that option... ONLY after they've already beaten the story once, on any future restarts.
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Jan 12, 2018 01:30
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rt4 posted:HBS Battletech: Backer Beta was terrible; countdown to further disappointment But it wasn't! It wasn't anything worth snatching your wallet for, but the beta was a lot of fun testing and seeing how the game went!
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Jan 12, 2018 03:40
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Last I heard the plan was still for your commander to be able to select from a few different backgrounds, wasn't it? Sort of like Mass Effect and Shepard where you don't play his background but it does change some dialogue and (I recall HBS saying) give you a special mission?
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Jan 15, 2018 13:10
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Kickstarter update time! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/webeharebrained/battletech/posts/2089189 Disappointed they won't be able to squeeze in a few features but happy they'll be post launch content. So long as they're not DLC. Moving Kickstarter commitments to paid DLC would give me a problem.
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Jan 16, 2018 19:52
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 Ok we good.
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Jan 16, 2018 19:57
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Linux will cause salt because yeah that means if you are Linux only you can't play the game, which is completely fair to get salty about.
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Jan 16, 2018 20:04
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An interesting thing I wonder about is if the famous cameos won't be in the story... where will they be at all? It's probably going to be a pretty cool feature to include them.
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Jan 16, 2018 21:07
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Oh I agree it's probably something they're not exactly unfamiliar with but when one of the Kickstarter promises was "will work on Linux!" and then you get told "maybe not for a little bit after..." I think they're completely entitled to a little bit of salt. This is the first project I backed on Kickstarter that I've actively followed through the entire process (most times I just give Obsidian my money and say "give me game when ready"), so I've been keeping a curious eye on what features will or will not make it. As for DLC ideas, I did just have the idea that a small one they could totally do would be a Solaris Stable Manager DLC. You're in charge of a Solaris stable and have to get your MechWarriors up the rankings to become Champion and some such. Not even a big story DLC, just a few arenas and random missions. Also get the commentator from the MechWarrior games.
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Jan 17, 2018 13:12
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Currently yes we do not expect any Mechs not in MWO to be in game, but the fan base is frothing at the mouths about the hatchetman, and HBS is aware, so I wouldn't be surprised if that one gets added later.
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Jan 23, 2018 15:51
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I am interested to see how they do the Clans. Obviously I presume we'll do a little reenacting MW2 Mercs as an Inner Sphere merc force helping resist the Invasion, but I hope they do DLC, perhaps set during the Refusal War, where we can play as a clanner.
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Jan 26, 2018 18:33
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For the record Weismann has stated that retcons are out of the question because just because he helped write it doesn't mean he had the right to rewrite it.
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Jan 26, 2018 21:40
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It's worth noting in a game you CAN code in the Clan's rules of warfare. Say we get the Clan campaign. Make it so you have an Honor value. In order to increase the Honor value, you need to follow the Clan's traditional rules of warfare: 1. Once you engage a target you can engage no other until the target is destroyed, UNLESS you are fired upon by a second enemy. 2. Firing upon an enemy (or being fired upon) constitutes a challenge, and that enemy is now your target. 3. You cannot engage a target that is already engaged with another. You must wait. 4. If you are fired upon by a second enemy, or if you fire upon an already engaged target, all rules are off and the battle degrades into a free-for-all. If you are the one initiating the unhonorable attack, you lose honor. Make it so you must batchall. Make it so you must bid. Every pilot and Mech gets a value. The competition bids down their values, you've got to come in under. Make it so the Inner Sphere doesn't understand the process... at first. Then they do. And most shamedly, they lie. They set traps. And you're still expected to honor your original bid.
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Jan 27, 2018 19:18
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Wolves on the Border is the defacto "read this book first it's actually pretty good". The 'spine' novels are basically anything written by Stackpole + the Eridani Light Horse novels of the Twilight of the Clans. Be warned: reading beyond the Warrior trilogy may give you a near-or-fully lethal dose of Victor Steiner-Davion + Kai Allard-Liao.
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Jan 29, 2018 13:26
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On the topic of dumb lore, how well known amongst Goons is it that the guy who wrote the Eridani Light Horse lore (setting aside the legal arguments being made about that lore being integrated into the canon) tried to use that stuff as a vessel to insert his own Mary Sue literal furry anthro unicorn character into the setting? To be fair he claims to have been trolling people, which is a well-agreed pasttime.
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Jan 29, 2018 23:51
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My prediction is expansion based on the 4th Succession War, and maybe a smaller DLC where you manage a Solaris stable rather than a Merc outfit. Both will contain new Mechs that integrate with the old campaign. Clans will be saved for the sequel but done mostly because PGI already did all the work. I hope we'll be able to role play the same outfit throughout the timeline. E: with the exception of Natural Selection I've found Stackpole's novels decent. You don't go into BattleTech novels seeking high literature. They're mostly trashy airport bargain bin novels, but if you like the setting they're certainly enjoyable. Like a typical Rock film. You don't go into them expecting an Oscar winning performance. You go in to shut your brain off and just have dumb fun. Alternatively you can pick up whatever source books you feel like. Sky Shadowing fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Feb 1, 2018 |
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Feb 1, 2018 04:09
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Dragonfall was an expansion to Returns, remember. It was just so good they turned it into it's own game.
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Feb 1, 2018 14:51
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Virtually most of the money HBS makes, assuming they budgeted properly, should be pure profit. Given that the Kickstarter contributed most, if not all, of the budget. That's obviously a bit of a two edged sword, though, because 50,000 or so of the hardcore fans have already bought the game. That's why DLC makes sense. Most of us here already contributed our money. DLC is a way to recoup more from us.
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Feb 1, 2018 15:07
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