It's sad that Mech2 and Ghostbears legacy are still probably the best mechwarrior games 20 years later.

Too bad we haven't had a real mechwarrior game in a long time. I wish developers would stop trying to chase graphics and go back to gameplay oriented games. The graphics just need to be sufficient.

Hrm, not overly impressed upon my initial few hours. First mission in, one of my mechs just randomly gets stuck in the map, stays stuck for probably 12 turns? Later it seemingly randomly is able to move again, but by that time one of the other mechs has gotten unluckily crit'd and lost an arm, pilot injuries, and eventually he dies, mission over.

I'll redo from the beginning at some point, so far I'm still thinking wait for a lower price. Where's Phoenix Point?

It's not quite half off (40%) but good enough, I picked it up after hearing lots of good things about it. Thanks Blue!

Definitely a "Just One More Turn" game. Finished it (and loved it) but have not gotten the expansion yet; as the reviews have been iffy.

Some progress stopping bugs haven't been patched in more than a month. Support forum seems to show other people running into a lot of smaller bugs.

Missions get a little repetitive.

Otherwise its a real nice strategy game.

Best Mechwarrior game since Mechwarrior2: Mercenaries! My personal GOTY 2018. I actually bought it at launch and played and finished it bugs and all.

The multiplayer is fun too, I did a bit of that and it's quite a bit of fun. Though I imagine it's more fun if you have some friends to play against instead of random strangers.

Numinar wrote on Feb 22, 2019, 01:55:
To be honest that's the proper oldschool PC dev way, no new amazing deep PC game ran great on the average PC back in the day, part of the fun of upgrading was brute forcing your way through shitty optimisation. Old Origin games were super famous for it, and anything ambitious seemed to be made for the devstations they were created for not the 486/2x66 or Pentium 60 you actually owned.

Not sure I agree about Origin games and "shitty optimization". I think the games were simply always slightly ahead of the time but they ran great if/once you had the proper hardware (yeah, a current $5,000 PC was the real recommended spec on release day).

There are old games that are truly fucked up beyond any hope of repair in terms of performance that won't run well even on modern PCs that are probably a factor of several 100% faster than what we had back then.
Examples for such games would be Ultima IX or Gothic 3. Both are broken at a basic level where no mod and no hardware can ever fix those hackjobs.

BTT of BattleTech, and if we look at the dev post I linked to, it sounds to me like its performance issues are mostly Unity related.
Unity is known to have long loading times and to be a resource hog. There are quite a few Unity games that have very high CPU/GPU utilization for no apparent reason.

It would be nice if they could really fix it one day. Talking about "fixing", it looks from the Steam forums that the latest patch broke a whole lot of stuff and even corrupted quite a few players save games/campaign saves.
Ouch. Hopefully Paradox won't pull a Tyranny here by abandoning the game.

CJ_Parker wrote on Feb 21, 2019, 21:48:

Numinar wrote on Feb 21, 2019, 21:32:
It has the thing a lot of Firaxis games have...

Firaxis? Dude? BattleTech was developed by Harebrained Schemes and the engine is Unity so the long loading times are most likely related to their choice of engine. There are quite a few other Unity games with above average loading times even on SSDs.

I mentioned them as a developer that makes games that are great but also never run as well as they should based on how they look (Xcom 2/Civ have similar bugs and frame skipping to BT). I did not mean to infer they developed BT.

To be honest that's the proper oldschool PC dev way, no new amazing deep PC game ran great on the average PC back in the day, part of the fun of upgrading was brute forcing your way through shitty optimisation. Old Origin games were super famous for it, and anything ambitious seemed to be made for the devstations they were created for not the 486/2x66 or Pentium 60 you actually owned.

Nobody I knew could run the largest Total Annihilation maps until years after it released. (64MB ram was for rich people!) I honestly don't miss it but what I was saying was that BATTLETECH, like the Firaxis titles, is worth the pain and missed frames.

A very good game, but if you want to turn it into a truly great (albeit buggy) game, check out the RogueTech mod. Adds many more mechs and weapons, and greatly increases the customisation options for your mechs (different engine cores, armour types, sensor suites, melee weapons etc.)

I concur, all around excellent game for any fan of turn based tactics, BT universe is just like icing on a cake. Waiting for discount on flashpoint dlc to roll my second moded campaign. Go try it at least while is on free trail.
Btw, loads in seconds on my system- nvme ssd.

Eirikrautha wrote on Feb 21, 2019, 20:52:

Veinman wrote on Feb 21, 2019, 19:47:
This game is awesome, go play it. I waited far too long to try it.

Part of that wait was probably spent on loading screens, right?

The game itself is excellent. The five minutes I wait for the game to start is criminal. Ditto that for the five minutes for each mission to load. And that's vanilla, before any mods (which are also an excellent feature). If they could optimize this game, It'd be the best game released in the last few years. But I have to have a hobby to do while I wait for the damn thing to load...

missions take a bit to start, but to load the game? takes me no time at all. literally esc past the splash screens and intro movie and instantly to the main menu. but i do install all my games on an nvme drive =D

the wait was worth it, and necessary i think. at launch it was buggy and didn't support ultrawide resolutions. now it runs like a dream. the first game i've been sucked into in a long time and it was worth it. just debating whether i should get the dlcs now or later.

Numinar wrote on Feb 21, 2019, 21:32:
It has the thing a lot of Firaxis games have...

Firaxis? Dude? BattleTech was developed by Harebrained Schemes and the engine is Unity so the long loading times are most likely related to their choice of engine. There are quite a few other Unity games with above average loading times even on SSDs.

Personally (SSD), I thought it was OK though.
Also, don't call me crazy because there at least WAS a correlation at some point way back near release... if you suffer from very long loading screens then try playing with the vsync setting on/off.

Not sure if they ever patched or fixed that or if it is a general Unity thing or a Unity thing of that specific engine version they are using but, whatever, just try it and see if it helps.

You can safely play a game like BT with vsync enabled obviously since any potentially added input lag is completely irrelevant in this type of game.

P.S.: Just googled the issue out of curiosity and whaddayaknow there is a relatively recent official post on this matter at the Paradox (*puke*) forums.

Eirikrautha wrote on Feb 21, 2019, 20:52:

Veinman wrote on Feb 21, 2019, 19:47:
This game is awesome, go play it. I waited far too long to try it.

Part of that wait was probably spent on loading screens, right?

The game itself is excellent. The five minutes I wait for the game to start is criminal. Ditto that for the five minutes for each mission to load. And that's vanilla, before any mods (which are also an excellent feature). If they could optimize this game, It'd be the best game released in the last few years. But I have to have a hobby to do while I wait for the damn thing to load...

That is too bad man, are you on SSD? Mine dosn't seem that bad for loads.

I never get tired of the Dune-esque spaceship and soundscape sequence that tried to hide the loading screen though so maybe I'm not feeling to the same way but I'm with you on the optimizations.

It has the thing a lot of Firaxis games have, where it's an awesome game on an engine that is flexible rather than fast.

Still might be the best game I played last year. Though there are about 5 games I feel that way about, BATTLETECH is definitely the single player up at 3am wish it was my real job winner.

Veinman wrote on Feb 21, 2019, 19:47:
This game is awesome, go play it. I waited far too long to try it.

Part of that wait was probably spent on loading screens, right?

The game itself is excellent. The five minutes I wait for the game to start is criminal. Ditto that for the five minutes for each mission to load. And that's vanilla, before any mods (which are also an excellent feature). If they could optimize this game, It'd be the best game released in the last few years. But I have to have a hobby to do while I wait for the damn thing to load...

This game is awesome, go play it. I waited far too long to try it.