BattleTech - MegaMek (MekWars Campaign)

[Bolien]

My favorite games of all time are that from the BattleTech (MechWarrior) franchise.

While I await the new BattleTech game I've been indulging in MegaMek.
What is MegaMek you ask? Its a Java based digital form of the BattleTech board game.

Screenshot:

Spoiler:

Currently I'm a part of a small community participating in a persistent campaign server based on the Inner Sphere war during the Star League Era.
This campaign, MekWars, is super fun with fleshed out systems for economy, pilot leveling, planetary conquest, salvage, and repairs/reloading.
The best part of this server is its pick up and play. If you want to fight, message anyone and ask and you can begin a battle, simple as that.

The server wipes every six months or so and it just started a new cycle, so a great time to hop in!
If interested head over to http://npettinato88.wixsite.com/mekwars-dominion and download the client.
Read the rules, pick a formation, and log in. Once in, the mods will get you situated, its super easy.

Oh and this is Classic BattleTech with all the fixings, so expect combined arms (Mechs, Infantry, Aero, VTOLs, etc.)

See you on the battlefield, MechWarrior.

[Timbrewolf]

Battletech without the combined arms kinda falls apart. Mechs are great and all but they're supposed to be somewhat balanced by their vulnerability to masses of smaller units. I really liked how the old clicks game handled it, by having your infantry units be able to kick the shit out of mechs if positioned right with the correct abilities. Hey nice mech, would be a shame if some of my jumpjet dudes just captured it out of the blue.

Games like MWO and the Mechwarrior series are fun for stomping around and blasting shit but they don't quite grasp the full scale of what Battletech is supposed to be.

How does a game of this go? Do you have two players each controlling their entire force or is it broken up by units? If it's the former I'll probably pass, but the latter would be pretty rad. Having a bunch of players each controlling a battallion of tanks, a single mech, a helo group, an infantry batallion, etc. would be cool as fuck.

[Bolien]

Yeah I completely agree, that's why Mechwarrior Living Legends was my favorite in the series (though it was a total conversion mod and not an official game).
Also the new BattleTech strategy game is going to have combined arms, praise based Weisman. Part of the reason I through money at the kickstarter.

MWO is pay to win trash tbh, they ruined what could have been a great game. Only saving grace is that it's pretty cus CryEngine.

You command a force. You build an army that has to have a minimum of 4 non-support units, those being mechs and tanks.
The army builder calculates battle value and you have to have a minimum of 4k BV.

You're allowed 1 support unit per 4 non-support units. Support units being arty, infantry, motorized infantry, battlearmor, field guns, VTOLs, and Aerospace/Conventional fighters.

So what you do is find someone willing to fight. You both roll (client has a dice bot) to determine attacker.
Attacker declares BV and planet they are attacking. You can look at the galactic map to see what terrain you may face.
Defender builds an army to match the BV and the match begins. BV can be negotiated, some people like big games some small so its a courtesy to comprise.

Send me a link to your Discord and I can go even more in depth, sick of writing paragraphs.

[tedward1337]

Can you link the Kickstarter? I've always had a soft spot for this series

[Bolien]

KickStarter is long finished, over a year ago.
Lucky for you they did open up backing on their own site: https://battletech.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

PC Gamer just did an interview with them at PAX which was pretty good: http://www.pcgamer.com/battletech-is-th ... iting-for/

PS you should play MegaMek.

[tedward1337]

I'll def be down for this, I've given the rules a quick read. Seems pretty straight forward, I'll still need someone to give me a hand with a few things however.

[Bolien]

Yeah rules aren't super complicated, especially if you're familiar with classic BattleTech.

I can help with whatever you need and I have a good friend who's a mod.
You're my friend on steam so just ping me with whatever you need.

[tedward1337]

I've actually never played any battletech games. The first "MechWarrior" game I played was the one released on the original Xbox, after that I played MechWarrior 2 and fell in love with it. Being able to use tanks/VTOL/jumpsuits AND mechs was the bomb
Shame i didn't have Xbox live when I played them.

[Bolien]

Ah yes MechAssault, great game.

We can play a few training matches to get you used to the tabletop nature of Battletech.
The good thing is other than determining attacker, the program rolls all dice automatically.

Its not too hard to play, like most war games its all about positioning and understanding your mechs advantages and theirs.

[dezzmont]

If we do a B-tech campaign we could easily do combined arms and custom mechs. You could also do the Mech Warrior RPG, and Mechwarrior handles stuff like each player controlling a small company and slowly growing and wheeling and dealing and backstabbign each other really well.

MegaMek does do combined arms by the by.

[Bolien]

The MekWars server is all MegaMek, just a war games galactic conquest thing.
Not an RPG.

If someone wanted to DM anything battletech though, I'd be very down and can bring a guy or two.

[dezzmont]

Sorry. Emphasis on the 'if we.' The idea of a living B-tech campaign sounds delightful. Can you link to the site that lists out the tournaments rules?

[Timbrewolf]

What made Battletech unique is its concept of shit heating up and cooling down as a result of your movements and actions, needing to balance not overheating and exploding vs exploding the other guy before he explodes you.

So while other tabletops were like "this dude can move this far" Battletech was like "this dude can move this far, or gain some heat and go this far"

[dezzmont]

Heat became a complete joke of a mechanic as time went on though. I think that is why early sphere wars are so popular, you don't have every mech loaded with an XXXL Supersized bigmac engine with octupple heatsinks that literally can't overheat ever, which makes having mechs with a bunch of different weapon types as viable as a mech that just has 6 ER PPCs that it can fire all at once to severely harm another mech and potentially destroy itself. Battletech works when the battlemechs feel like these fortresses on your side that are way tankier than your infantry or vehicles but will risk just exploding if you ask too much of them. It adds to their majesty and terror because the mech can suddenly go ham and fire all of its weapons at once but you can't do that all the time or it will melt.

[Timbrewolf]

Battletech suffered from obvious power creep bullshit.

I mean just look at the Clans and how they're strictly better at everything across the board genetically engineered super soldier edgelords holy shit. Like fuck me how terrible can you write.

I wish the clans never happened.

[Bolien]

Word of Blake/ComStar Guards was basically the IS counter to the clans but they had to be written in specifically for that reason.
Kind of dumb, they came out of left field because the clans were stupid OP.

Star League era is best era tbh.
3025 is suffering, I hate that shit. It basically just comes down to a mech kick fest since no one is that well armed.

Dark Age isn't terrible, IS tech had finally caught up to clanners so it was interesting.

[Bolien]

Tedward, in his first BattleTech game via MegaMek, has learned the harsh reality of 31st century combat.

RNG is a mother fucker.

[tedward1337]

I loved every second of it
Strongly recommend/10 for everyone to get into this

[Bolien]

I think you losing your commander on the 3rd movement phase via falling into a basement was the funniest thing I've seen in awhile.
Glad you enjoyed it, looking forward to playing more with you once my grillfriend leaves.

[tedward1337]

There's so much depth to this game that I didn't expect.
The basement was one of them.

I played a skirmish with some rando, and even though I won, I took some loses in the process.
The only notable one being when the enemy mech I was kicking went nuclear and destroyed the mech/pilot inside
Also both my tanks got rekt even though I did some considerable damage to the medium mech

[dezzmont]

Sounds like you went up against a rookie who didn't really get that the tanks were doing more damage to the enemy than they were ever worth, and didn't realize they needed to move their mech out of their turret arc

Vehicles basically are support units providing extra firepower at a dirt cheap cost but are easily damaged, immobilized, and avoided. The fact those two tanks didn't need mech support to get work in probably did a lot to help you win, because they spent too much time fighting a gun in a box on wheels and taking hits from it rather than moving around.

[Cik]

best way to deal with tanks is artillery, air strikes, long range missile / cluster attacks (LB-X works) or fire. lots of fire.

mission killing them is often enough; get them early and they'll never be able to move into range and thus are worthless.

unless it's a gauss alacorn, then you should resort to punching your opponent in the face.

[Malkevin]

Yeah I completely agree, that's why Mechwarrior Living Legends was my favorite in the series (though it was a total conversion mod and not an official game).
Also the new BattleTech strategy game is going to have combined arms, praise based Weisman. Part of the reason I through money at the kickstarter.

I too liked MWLL because it let me rape weebs in their gundam wannabee suits with my hull downed manly tank of destruction.

Too bad it got abandoned because the devs went off to work on the much inferior MW:O

[tedward1337]

I bought some medium infantry and in the mix were some jump jet troops
Swarm mech time get
But in reality how can I sneak these boys up to jump all over the enemy mechs

[Bolien]

Yeah I completely agree, that's why Mechwarrior Living Legends was my favorite in the series (though it was a total conversion mod and not an official game).
Also the new BattleTech strategy game is going to have combined arms, praise based Weisman. Part of the reason I through money at the kickstarter.

I too liked MWLL because it let me rape weebs in their gundam wannabee suits with my hull downed manly tank of destruction.

Too bad it got abandoned because the devs went off to work on the much inferior MW:O

Well Cik and I are actually still apart of Clan Smoke Jaguar.
We ran the server Huntress, basically the only fully populated MWLL server as well as organizing most of the competitive play for the community.

Our clan had members who were part of the dev team and knew the original creators (I actually met them at a Star Citizen event, they now work on it).

You're a little mistaken into why MWLL died. Piranha Games CEO had a strong business relationship with Crytek.
Since both games used the same IP and same engine, Russ (Piranha Games CEO) met with the leaders of the MWLL project and pressured them to shut it down with veiled threats.
Later Russ claimed they all came to a "gentlemen's agreement." Which is bullshit.

After development died, us in Clan Smoke Jaguar were left with a husk of a game and we decided to move onto other titles like Planetside 2 and Star Citizen.
We closed Huntress and the community died. Rest in peace sweet prince.

[Bolien]

I bought some medium infantry and in the mix were some jump jet troops
Swarm mech time get
But in reality how can I sneak these boys up to jump all over the enemy mechs

You can use APCs or a VTOL troops transport to get them places quickly.
I think the VTOL transport is called the Ripper.

They aren't the sneakiest unless you're in an urban environment but a good way to get them into the fight is distract opponents with your mech/tank lance so the infantry can move into position.

[tedward1337]

Ive got an APC, but how do I load them in?

[Bolien]

I believe you can put the infantry over the APC and theres a load button?

Don't quote me on that, I never use infantry.

[Cik]

that's how omnimechs work at least

but you know, i wouldn't know because i'm not dezgra filth like you two

it's probably the same, though.

you can load them in before you start, FYI by going to configure on the infantry and then load in or whatever. or at least, you should be able to.