An Iron Knight Stands Tall Among a Steel Battalion

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > An Iron Knight Stands Tall Among a Steel Battalion

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Shei-kun posted:

I remember when one of my friends picked this up and invited me and some other buddies over.

One of them sat down in front of the controller with eyes wide and full of excitement. An hour later, we asked him if he wanted to plug in the controller and actually play the game.

For that hour, the only words he said were "Buttons!" and "Switches!"

He went on to be the best pilot out of all of us, to the point that he even preferred some of the older VTs due to their armaments, and basically did missions the game expects you to do with later gen VTs with a 1st gen.

Meanwhile, I could never figure everything out.

See, stories like this are what fascinated me about Steel Battalion when I heard about it, and since. Like, it's got an immense barrier to entry, but it definitely seems like a pretty immersive simulator, especially since your friend apparently was doing exactly the kind of thing a character in a real robot anime would do, specializing in older models rather than upgrading to the hot new prototype.

EDIT: By the way, it'd be cool to see the controller again during missions that make heavier use of the middle block, I'm curious how it actually plays when you have to do a lot of communicating, play around with the function buttons, or put out fires/clean the camera.

EclecticTastes fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Jan 17, 2021

# ¿ Jan 17, 2021 01:25

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 06:45

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

SIGSEGV posted:

I wonder how heavy that controller is, whoever was swinging for that project had to call in favors for the business case to pass.

This isn't too far off the mark. The producer, Atsushi Inaba, faced a lot of skepticism from his superiors during development, due to the complex controls. Steel Battalion is actually a very interesting case in the games industry, as the controller was the first piece to be designed, and the whole project was meant to create a new peripheral, and then software to go with it (which explains the barebones story and general lack of focus on anything but the giant robot simulation).

# ¿ Jan 17, 2021 09:57

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

SIGSEGV posted:

That's about what I figured, I wonder how modular it is, otherwise I can't really see a lot of reuse for that mech startup panel.

Well, if you mean just remapping the controls for other kinds of simulations, that's as easy as just programming it in. That said, Steel Battalion kind of has its own custom drivers and poo poo for its controller, which is why you need to do a little hacking to get the controller+chatpad workaround Borealis mentioned working. This is likely because even with a controller and chatpad that could be used for the various buttons and switches, you've also got a third stick, radio tuner, and three pedals, which work in ways that can't be perfectly emulated by buttons, so you'd need your own software to detect them.

If you mean, can the different blocks be removed and reused for other things, well, it looks like the main panel is all one piece, but the pedals can be detached.

Also, I'm actually very curious, if you hooked up the controller and played a non-Steel Battalion game, do some of the buttons/sticks actually serve as the regular Xbox controls? Like, does the console assign them default functions? Or is it just complete dead weight when not used for this specific game? Like, IIRC, stuff like the Donkey Kong bongos and Guitar Hero controllers would work (sort of) like normal controllers when used for other games, just with fairly inconvenient mapping (without modding), so I wonder if that applies here.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2021 11:46

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Loxbourne posted:

It's such a gorgeous controller I wonder if it might be possible to map it to PC somehow. Use keymapping software and have the mother of all sim-game joysticks. Something like this would be tremendous fun for Elite Dangerous, and of course KSP already has people making dedicated hardware switchpanels for it.

Oh there are already tutorials for doing exactly this, though it requires a fair number of steps to set it up. For one thing, you'll need an Xbox-to-USB adapter. As for the actual drivers, there are two methods I've found with a quick Google search:

-This one, which requires you to force your way past Windows 10's nannyware to install a custom-made driver.

-This one, which looks like you'll be doing a lot of the work yourself, manually scripting the controller's functions to work with this arbitrary peripheral emulator (or hunting down a script made by someone else and hoping that the mapping is satisfactory).

# ¿ Jan 17, 2021 13:55

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Given the cottage industry that's sprung up around making custom game consoles, it may be possible to get a reproduction of the Steel Battalion controller made as a custom order for less than it would cost on eBay, and it would mean you could have it be USB-compatible from the start, and even just have the controller be detected as a keyboard/gamepad/whatever with the various doodads just mapped to whatever keys and stuff are used for the game. You could probably even adjust poo poo and optimize it specifically for your own preferences and, uh, hmmm...

Yup someone totally did a tutorial for this.

Something tells me paying someone to do that for you will run you less and get you better results than digging up a Steel Battalion controller.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2021 17:36

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

For my part, this is the kind of game I'd have loved right up until the moment I actually tried playing it. I love quirky, innovative stuff, but I don't have great reflexes and when poo poo gets too busy I end up getting wrecked. It's why I bounced off of both Armored Core and Daemon X Machina despite giant robots being extremely my jam, they both just had too much going on and, not being a Newtype IRL, I had trouble processing all the onscreen information at once and reacting accordingly. What I need is a super robot cockpit simulator, so I only need to fight one or two enemies at a time and there probably wouldn't be quite as many buttons.

Hm. Now I wish Steel Battalion had been a bigger success so that when Capcom was licensing the Harvey Birdman game they could have done one for Megas XLR, too. Now there's a cockpit peripheral I'd have loved to see.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2021 01:34

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Space Kablooey posted:

I think if you hook up a wheel to, say, MechWarrior you'd get a similar experience

"Is also a car" is by far the least idiosyncratic element of Megas' control system. I was thinking more like "buttons for increasingly more excessive amounts of missiles*", "dozens of ridiculous weapons activated seemingly at random by fiddling with various buttons and knobs", and "even the car controls aside from the steering wheel and pedals do crazy poo poo".

*Okay the Catapult could get this one done in Mechwarrior but it can't wrassle or let you blow people up with karaoke.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2021 03:10

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Gideon020 posted:

It would also be something supremely mind-bending to look at since the controls on the MEGAS are arranged by the Power Of Plot Convenience.

I figure you just make a car dashboard and add some buttons, knobs, levers, and switches, and have their functions be highly unclear (like, what the buttons do being determined by the specific configuration of the levers, switches, and knobs), and that would pretty much capture the general feel of piloting Megas. It'd basically be one of those Fisher-Price toys for toddlers but as a game peripheral.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2021 10:45

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

The Vitz is pretty neat, in that it's clearly the Zaku in the Gundam-based robot hierarchy this game has going. It even has the same default armaments (machine gun, bazooka, and grenades), minus the superheated mech-sized hand axe (the inferior optics could also be a reference, as the Zeon mono-eye camera was generally inferior to the Earth Federation's dual sensor, i.e. human-like eyes, design). The Decider is also clearly meant to evoke the RX-78-2 Gundam, a prototype that will end up mass-produced as the main character upgrades to better prototypes (including having a melee option featured prominently). Like, it may look like mechwarrior, but the writing and setup are pure real robot anime, and it's nice to see them paying homage to the original with some of the mech designs.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2021 09:14

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Can we get another labeled guide for the new cockpit? For one thing, I can't tell where the damage lamps are supposed to be in the new setup.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2021 03:36

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

The excessive shaking in Steel Battalion could be interpreted as a subtle sign that, for as much as the military invests in making bigger and cooler robots, they neglect basic features for the pilots' welfare, like shock absorbers. There's also the fact that ejection is manual-only, when the mech could easily have a failsafe installed that automatically ejects the pilot once damage exceeds safe parameters (this is also true of the fire extinguisher; if an office building can automatically react to fires, a giant combat robot should be able to, as well). Of course, I'm sure none of that is intentional on the part of the writers, it just kind of emerges naturally from the game's design.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2021 01:07

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

SIGSEGV posted:

Also for fires in an office building, you can generally safely assume a type of fire, it's harder in a tank where you need to figure out if you aren't spraying water on an electrical fire or something.

You actually have this one backwards. In a giant robot, basically any fire is essentially an electrical fire, the only variable being whether or not an accelerant is involved, which is why VTs appear to have a one-size-fits-all extinguisher system that likely just sprays a foam mix that can smother either type of fire. In office buildings, between all the electronics and (often) kitchen space for staff, there are plenty of possible, if unlikely, types of fire that could break out, so if we really want to analyze it, the water sprinklers being automatic can pose a hazard in certain edge cases, while the VT's extinguisher not being automatic is equally troublesome in edge cases (the pilot may sometimes be too occupied with not getting blown the hell up to hit the button, for one thing).

Now, of course, the post itself was slightly facetious, in that I'm well aware the actual reason everything is manual is because the developers started out by making the most detailed and involved control scheme they could come up with in order to more fully immerse the player in the illusion of piloting the robot.

But to resume overanalyzing an Xbox game, like, the manual eject doesn't account for trees, buildings, or anything, to my knowledge, and can even be used in the middle of an enemy base (unless Borealis couldn't eject while in the latter part of that last mission). Hell, as far as I know, you can eject even when the mech is flat on its back. So whatever it does, it must do it pretty well, so while you obviously always want a manual eject just in case detectors break, it doesn't seem like there'd be much risk in including an automatic failsafe in case the mech gets hosed up too quickly for the pilot to react.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2021 08:44

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

The Prominence's optional armor, while reminiscent of the Super Pack from Macross, also evokes the ZZ Gundam's Full Armor parts, which were also equipped with an auxiliary missile launcher. Of note is that the Full Armor ZZ also had an optional shoulder-mounted Hyper Mega Cannon (not to be confused with the High Mega Cannon, installed in the mech's head, or Hyper Mega Launcher, a more common weapon used most notably by the Zeta Gundam), which could be seen as equivalent to the Prominence's new railgun, which also appeared to be shoulder-mounted in the cutscene preceding the mission.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2021 00:51

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

So what happens if you don't respond to the radio message when the Juggernaut appears? Does it keep bugging you, or do you lose points, or even, like, lose instantly due to being court martialed? Or does it just proceed without the added dialog?

# ¿ Mar 25, 2021 10:28

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

So, looking at the costs of fielding various units in a match, I have to wonder what the incentive is for using the original Vitzh, given that it has the same cost as the m-Vitzh (I looked it up and apparently it's just a mild upgrade to the original Vitzh that did little to actually make it more than a grunt mech). I know you're not the most well-versed in Line of Contact, but maybe it came up at some point.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2021 04:58

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

ArclightBorealis posted:

It might simply be because the differences in stats and weapons are so negligible that having the costs be different would be unnecessary. Both vitzhs are always meant to be the cheapest units in this series, in terms of reliability and usefulness compared to other types of its generation. Heck, you're gonna be seeing me use the m-Vitzh in the main LP soon, and I can at least say that outside of one key difference, it's more or less about the same as the regular model.

That is one thing I never really was able to delve into with the video regarding how the units are balanced, but between what I've played and talking with the community, a big difference between units in the original and LoC is that the all rounder units like the Decider or Prominence M1 don't really stand much of a chance due the game encouraging the use of more specialized units. Which means stuff like the Scare Face, which I would consider an almost better 1st gen unit to use in the original as opposed to the Decider, really doubles down on being the long range sniper unit and expects you to excel at the role it intends. Ditto for the Vortex, with its artillery and the "support" role which is doubly emphasized by the rearranged HUD shown in the attract demo at the start. So with that combined with the cost of deployment, I'm assuming whatever incentive there is to use the Vitzh models is if you want your team to not lose as many points when a unit gets destroyed, or just wanting a handicap for the hell of it.

Based on what I've read about LoC's campaign mode, it seems like all-rounder units had more of a place there compared to the free mission mode. So, to save everyone the google search, Line of Contact's campaign mode took place on an island being contested by the PRF and Hai Shi Dao, with their roles reversed. They basically rip off the setup of Zeta Gundam, with the PRF becoming brutal occupiers and Hai Shi Dao fighting for their freedom. A third faction, Right Brothers, gets involved, being a splinter faction of Hai Shi Dao (it's hard to tell which one is meant to be analogous to the AEUG and which is Neo Zeon with the small amount of context I was able to find, but I assume that's how they broke down). Anyway, each "Round" of the server took place over eight real-world weeks, each week being one Turn. During that time, players would battle it out in various missions across the map to claim territory for their team (note that abandoned mechs that weren't totaled could be salvaged by anyone else visiting that map, though the mechanics of it are unclear, keep in mind this mode didn't exist very long). At first, it was just PRF and HSD forces, but at the third Turn of each Round, Right Brothers showed up and players could switch to them. On Turn 5, Jaralaccs Mercenary Company (the guys who field the various Jaralaccs mechs) shows up, and players can switch over that way instead. Each faction offers their own signature mechs, which players had to buy with Supply Points from missions, just like the first game (I'm not sure if players could keep their old mechs when changing factions, but given that Jaralaccs only has access to four different models of the Jaralaccs, one would hope so). However, high-end mechs existed in limited quantities on the server, and each player owned a specific one with its own serial number, and there was no way for those mechs to return to the pool aside from being sold, so there was a constant scarcity of powerful mechs like the Juggernaut or Quasar. It was a neat idea, implemented poorly, clearly meant to make everything feel more authentic, with only certain pilots getting access to the top-end, experimental mechs. Anyway, because the conflict was (by my interpretation of the description) a lot less rigidly structured, all-rounder mechs allowed one to take a versatile approach to what must have been fairly unpredictable battles.

Also it's worth pointing out that one mech in Line of Contact had a "weapon" that literally tapped the opposing team's voice chat channel. In the age of services like Discord, it's unlikely anyone today would ever actually use the in-game voice chat, but back when the game was new, that's a pretty nifty feature.

# ¿ May 2, 2021 05:49

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Good music choice, gave me flashbacks to Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden. Small correction, though, Bryan Cranston (as Lee Stone) actually played Isamu Dyson, Guld was played by Richard Epcar (who had previously been part of the Robotech cast, and is most recently known as the English VA of Part 3/4 Joseph Joestar). Larger correction, Macross 7 is the best Macross. :colbert:

# ¿ May 13, 2021 01:02

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Kaboom Dragoon posted:

As for M7... mmmmaybe don't watch the VODs for our Killer7 streams, I think we were somewhat dismissive of big chunks of it (yes, even in a surreal game about assassins, we manage to bring it back around to mecha anime).

It's okay, I learned from Macross 7 that we don't need to fight about things like this, I'll just sing rock and roll at you until you see the light. :guitar:

# ¿ May 13, 2021 13:54

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

ArclightBorealis posted:

Macross 7's music specifically is the best, but that doesn't translate to being the best show in the series due to how it's paced and how low budget it feels for a lot of it (going for like 49 episodes doesn't really do it much favors). Even so, I'd still watch it over something like Macross Zero or Plus again, the latter being a take I'm sure would probably tip off some other people but then again Plus just doesn't do much for me past the animation quality and having my absolute favorite VF design.

Eh gently caress it, general ranking of the series for me:
Delta > Frontier Film Duology > Do You Remember Love > Frontier >= SDF Macross > 7 Dynamite > FB7 > Macross 7 > Plus >>>> Zero

Honestly I didn't even realize how much I dig the YF designs until you said it and I was like, "Yeah, those designs really are sweet." Then again, I'd probably just hold up the VF-19 Excalibur Custom like "and then they improved on it" and honestly while the YF-21's head is more distinctive, I kinda prefer the head unit from the Sturmvogel.

Also, while I prefer taking the films/OVAs as part of their parent series, and I haven't seen Delta (yet?), my personal tastes are Macross 7>Frontier>Plus=Original>>>>Zero, but I have a pretty high opinion of the entire franchise. Except Zero. So the difference in how much I like them isn't, like, huge. Man, now I'm wishing more good mecha anime would get localized. Like, so far this year we've gotten Dynazenon and that's it to my knowledge, and Dynazenon is really more of a sentai/kaiju show that's borrowing some super robot flavor and also if it and Gridman don't end up in an upcoming SRW title within the next few years, I'll be shocked because just listen to those opening themes, they were made to be SRW BGMs.

# ¿ May 13, 2021 20:10

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 06:45

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

So, if you don't lose any supply points from a mission failure, do you essentially get unlimited tries at missions as long as you can avoid getting shot down, or is there some other point where you get reassigned to the boonies and lose your save file if you fail too many times?

# ¿ Jun 2, 2021 23:44

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