We'll solve that oversight immediately

Jordan Weisman wants your money to make a PC game around a universe he invented way back then. Sounds familiar, but this time it's with big stompy robots (and vehicles, thanks to a stretch goal). Skirmish mode vs AI opponents and an actual campaign are already funded thanks to raking in one million in the first 24 hours, the "expanded mercenary campaign" and Multiplayer are still to go.

Oh, and they want to use actual 3D this time, no more pre-rendered backgrounds

i am not sure wether or not to kickstart them again.
they did not manage to get my phyiscal rewards from SRR to me in 2 attempts because they could not make it german customs compatible.

Maybe if you choose House Steiner it will come through okay, but if you go with House Kurita or Liao--- yeah, it's getting burned at the border.

i would go with Steiner of course.
well, maybe Marik <.<

How does one make a package incompatible with customs? I know a friend of mine had to pick up his rewards at customs (and ended up paying duties because he told them what he had paid for the KS, not that that the packet was just two shirts and a thumbdrive ), but straight incompatible? Did they use cocaine for padding or what?

I threw $50 at them. If they manage to have customs problems with electronic-only rewards, I will at least get a good laugh out of it.

I am planning to support but undecided what level. I will go for at least a copy of the game when it launches, but am not sure whether or not to spring for the Stackpole novella.

I had the same thoughts myself. The art book for Shadowrun Hong Kong was awesome. That might be worth considering. They said it is supposed to be a $40 game when it comes out, so there are 2 options for a discounted game and one that costs a bit more for beta access and either a novel or a bunch of novellas (novella? novellae?). I want it to hit the stage 3 development, so I figured an extra $10 will make a difference (if everyone is doing it).

There are also options for physical rewards, but I've got more than enough stuff in my apartment.

High fives to ALL of you for this.

Battletech was actually my first tactical game/RPG - a month or two before Shadowrun. All my friends bought AD&D books when we went to the Big City (20,000 people!) and I was like, fuck that! Giant robots!

It's gonna be a long march to the finished game, but I'm confident we can do it justice. Plus, it helps that MegaMek was my only Battletech outlet for years.

i sure hope they get up to the 1,85m target.
seriously, who the hell decided how the order of these is going to be needs to be kicked in the head a bit <.<

I have little doubt they'll meet that target...the multiplayer (ok, dualplayer ) on the other hand seems far off, which makes me a sad dropbear

Not me, i want a good singleplayer game.
Which is what they are planning on making.
And that makes it so hard for me to understand why they would put stupid vanity stuff before more/better gameplay <.<

Probably 2 reasons:

Many people like their fluff and shinies in a game. Even just a simple cosmetic change in game can have people going ga ga.
Never fully understood it myself, but I have seen it enough to realize it's a thing.

The second reason is it's to fill in the gaps between the various tiers of money that Harebrained decided upon to finance the work on the extra bells & whistles.

If they had just jumped from 1 Mil (single player campaign) right to 1.85 mil for the extended Merc Campaign, people may have been less likely to go that distance. (though in this case it seems a pretty good bet regardless)
But by throwing in fluff/shinies people feel better about the steps.

Did they really need the 1.85 to do all that they wanted for the expanded Merc campaign? No idea, but better to have the budget and not need it than not have the budget and fail to deliver.

Good news! I just checked and it is at that level. It shows 1.82, but kickstarter doesn't show the paypal amount.

Procedural contracts with dynamic alliances, reputation, side missions and everything sounds like the kind of project where developers spend days tracing an obscure game breaker which only occurs during full moons, with a lance consisting only of mechs with odd tonnage, and only if the player took a certain side quest 50 missions before.

So I consider it a good sign HBS are coupling the more complex features to a solid increase in funding. Shows that some thought goes into actually delivering the promised features, instead of just promising cool features by the dozen

at least they made the extended mercenary campaign . .

I saw an email today, and I got excited: The Warhammer and Marauder were going to make it into Battletech!

Then I saw that they were the Reseen abominations.

I would literally rather play without them in the game than suffer through the Reseen abominations.

But they still can not use the Unseen versions as there are still problems with using those images.

That is a considerable sized stable of mechs to not use if they don't involve the Reseen alternates.

I agree it's not ideal, but better than nothing.

It is really a tangled web that one.

I just hope they allow modding, so the Reseen abominations can be quickly replaced with the righteous originals.

Original Marauder: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/0/06/3025_marauder.jpg
Reseen: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/c/ce/Mad-4s_marauder_ii.jpg
MWO: https://mwomercs.com/static/marauder/img/co...rauder-hero.png


Original Warhammer: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/4/49/WHM-7M.png
Reseen: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/e/e3/Whm-8d_warhammer.jpg
MWO: https://mwomercs.com/static/warhammer/img/c...hammer-hero.png

Yeah, I don't like the non-centered AC on the Marauder either, but it's worlds better than the Reseen.

In other words: No, they are not the reseen monsters. HBS talked to PGI and AFAIK, they were allowed to use the new models, as their FAQ seems to indicate.

i actually know the artist that did the MWO Models a bit.
he was one of the originals at the MWLL Mod Project.
i still don't see how the MWO Models are going to work in the game they are planning to make.

Ah. See, the links they gave in the email pointed to images of the Reseen monstrosities.

The MWO mechs are... Meh, they're not bad. They're not GREAT, but they're not bad, not fucktrocious. They're a lot closer to the originals, which makes me wonder, why don't they just fucking use the originals? I thought that Harmony Gold's bullshit claims had been stomped flat by now.

[e]Okay, I'm being a little hard on the MWO Reseen. They're not just "not bad," they're good. I won't go so far as to say great, but good. They look like Tech 2 revamps, though.
Which, given the timeline of MWO, is exactly what they are. They don't really fit with the 3025 aesthetic of the Inner Sphere.
Which suits me, as TBH I fucking hate T1 3025 FEUDALISM IN SPESS, I liked it when the Clans showed up and started kicking everybody's dumbshit heads in and making them advance or die.

Obviously, they aren't.
And they're not so much bullshit, either. It's a fact that the models are taken from Macross/Robotech/Dougram/Crusher Joe, and the situation is pretty clear-cut, even though they are fan-favorites (including me).

TBH, I think that PGI's artists have done some great stuff with their versions. They won't fit everyone's tastes, obviously, but I think that most of their designs look more usable overall than even the originals, even if I don't like all of them.
I can spend hours spinning my Shadowhawk, though. Still waiting for a Rifleman.

Back on topic: less than 100k to finish up the single player requirements! Too bad, Solaris seems far off.
And it's already the highest amount HBS has crowdfunded so far.

That was never in dispute (because it was too darn obvious), the dispute was whether FASA/CGL have the necessary licenses to the IP. And honestly it does not matter whether they have, what matters is whether somebody is willing to challenge the question in court. If a trial delays a release by half a year, a small company such as CGL or HBS has lost not matter what the judgment says. So obviously they will shy away from anything which might incur the risk of such a trial...



I'm still hoping for some big push towards the end

My bad. I chose to simplify the explanation. AFAIK, it was settled out of court with the promise to never use those models (as well as the externally commissioned VMI models, although that was unconnected to the original dispute). The last promise to try again was shattered in 2009, and it doesn't seem as anyone is willing to go to court over it.

TBH, I don't even think it's necessary anymore. It's not like the mechs were ever retconned, just the old, and IMO pretty dated looking images were never used again (unfortunately also not in the artwork history book). With the changes from PGI, I think that these models aren't an IP problem anymore and I think they do the job better than the originals in some places, or at least a decent one.


Me, too. And it's still a week to go. And then some 18 months of waiting. Damnit.

Meh, sod it. I just hope they open up the game to cosmetic modding.

Then it's "Screw you, I'll have my Marauder the way I want it."

I fondly remember the Marauder from the MekTek pack before it became official.

Quite a few people will break out the Flamers pitchforks over this, for most mechs I liked the models from MS and MekTek far better than the weird spaghetti arms on the originals. Screw "we've always done it that way", the original Timberwolf with its spaghetti arms just doesn't look like a war machine...

In the other news, it seems we will get MP

In the homestretch



$2,467,358 taken out of the 2.5 mil needed for the PVP multiplayer with just 28 hours to go....

Does the $2.46... million include the paypal numbers?

Edit: put in the effort to look for myself. It does not, so we may be there already. Also, they got all of the backer missions they needed to get a new Stackpole novel, so the level just under $125 gets a bit more benefit.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/webeha...ech/description
it's fully funded.

So now all we have to do is keep chewing away at mission points to get that final BarberTech match

Six beards enter, Three beards leave.

they actually managed $2,785,537

Plus Paypal, for those of us whose banks can't get a string of numbers on a plastic card to work...

So all in all a bit over a million more than SRR, nice haul

Mech Fans are usually more ready to part with their money than RPG people.
Simply because Mech-Games usually have more toys that need to be bought.

Agreed, tabletop players seem to spend a lot more on their hobby, even when it's not sold by GW

But it's not just the tabletop fans, I think there are a lot of people who loved the Mechwarrior/Mechcommander games while having never touched a mini in their entire life -- or at least not a great lot of minis, like me.
SRR on the other hand had the oooold SNES game and a shooter which sold rather poorly, nothing to create a huge fanbase outside the PnP demographic.

have you looked up the prices on the metal minis of the old unseen mechs?
they go for about 20 bucks each . . and yes, then the MW2, Mercs, MW3, Addon, MW4, MechPacks, Addon, Mercenaries, Mechcommander, Mechcommander2 . .

Well, time to beat Mechcommander. The all the newly free earthsiege series games. And maybe the 2 mechwarrior mercs games.

I can be patient on this one.

And seeing how it's unity engine, we probably can expect some mods like the original unseen mechs to appear.

So a lance will set you back 80 Eurobucks, less than two arms for a 40k walker. And that's the smallest they offer, the largest one costs four figures for the body alone.

There was a time past when Microsoft first acquired the FASA licenses, that I was hoping Harmony Gold would try and pull some crap again and we would see MS's lawyer army stomp HG into the dirt.

Ah, well.

From what I understand, FASA basically went to the wrong people to acquire the US licensing rights. Neither they nor the people that "sold" them those rights realized the mistake til Harmony Gold, who supposedly owns the 'legitimate' licensing rights, got involved.

Only even HG's claims to the license are suspect.


-k

true, however while the other parties involved were able to confirm their holding of the rights back home in the land of the rising sun, they have not pressed the issue stateside and as such HG is still able to browbeat parties there.

Except for the fact it shackled FASA and other parties, it actually is really fascinating seeing all the twists and turns in this IP minefield.

I threw $275 at them because I want the swank-ass jacket.

yeah had i backed, i'd have backed that level as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjEeDz51pHE
BATTLETECH "Super-Pre-Alpha" First Look!



Doesn't look too bad

They had all these disclaimers about it being pre alpha but the combat engine alone makes me happy. I guess people these days are hard to please. I can hardly wait for release.

it already looks better than the wannabe megamek with shinier graphics.
and it appears to play better as well. even if it may have somehow inherited the PPC to head shot bug from megamek <.<

I was slightly disappointed by the Hunchback. Two contact shots with the AC/20 and the target is still standing?

Yeah, the damage distribution needs some looking at.
AC20 should be a BIG HIT not several small ones . . .

Depends on fluff vs. crunch: The crunch says ACs cause one big hit. But fluff-wise the numbers on autocannons are just a "performance rating", the actual design may differ. Which works to explain the wildly different artwork, but raises the question why RACs are a separate category...

But whatever an AC/20 technically is, I think the effect was lacking a certain epic feel

Yeah, i know about the difference in fluff and crunch in terms of AC, but the main selling point OF AC was always the big holes punched, not the scatter damage. Scatter Damage was always LRM. If they changed that, then using ACs instead of LRM is simpy stupid, because of the reach advantage.