I backed this... sometime ago, and promptly forgot about it. Now, it landed today, and I had a shiny new Steam key for it.

If you grew up on the tabletop game, this is an incredibly faithful adaptation. I'm four or fine missions in, and I'm having a great time.

I saw IGN's review (massive for a game that was under the radar) and am thinking about buying it... I love this type of strategy, and mechs are my weakness. I was disappointed to read that the RNG is pretty bad in this one... the review made it sound worse than XCOM's RNG gunplay. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

I'll probably buy this one down the road. Working on finishing Pillars of Eternity before PoE 2 comes out.

So far I'm really enjoying it. There is a substantial amount of difficulty right off the bat. I got two pilots killed in the very first mission.

My favorite part of the game so far is having to run the mercenary unit in addition to just fighting. I find myself thinking about what I'm going to have to spend to fix a mech, as well as the time it will take to work on it, as I'm fighting.

I'll buy this once it goes on sale, loved the table-top game and the old PC turn based games.

Plus I need a new turn based game I've played Civ 6 and x-com 2 to death.

Azariah said:

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So far I'm really enjoying it. There is a substantial amount of difficulty right off the bat. I got two pilots killed in the very first mission.

My favorite part of the game so far is having to run the mercenary unit in addition to just fighting. I find myself thinking about what I'm going to have to spend to fix a mech, as well as the time it will take to work on it, as I'm fighting.

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Yes, also enjoying this aspect quite a bit.

Really makes you question if you want to go for the Death from Above move. Same thing goes for ammo consumption, do I want to sit back and pay for LRM ammo or get in there and take hull damage duking it out?

The AI is also pretty good at re-positioning their mechs to shield themselves from critically damaged areas.

So far very impressed....but for those interested, delay going to the special client meeting for as long as you dare. That mission was brutal on me. I should have bulked up or used different tactics or maybe it was just bad RNG during the fights.

HalifaxAg said:

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Azariah said:

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So far I'm really enjoying it. There is a substantial amount of difficulty right off the bat. I got two pilots killed in the very first mission.

My favorite part of the game so far is having to run the mercenary unit in addition to just fighting. I find myself thinking about what I'm going to have to spend to fix a mech, as well as the time it will take to work on it, as I'm fighting.

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Yes, also enjoying this aspect quite a bit.

Really makes you question if you want to go for the Death from Above move. Same thing goes for ammo consumption, do I want to sit back and pay for LRM ammo or get in there and take hull damage duking it out?

The AI is also pretty good at re-positioning their mechs to shield themselves from critically damaged areas.

So far very impressed....but for those interested, delay going to the special client meeting for as long as you dare. That mission was brutal on me. I should have bulked up or used different tactics or maybe it was just bad RNG during the fights.

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I actually found that mission a needed lifeline. I was having trouble making ends meet until I finished that one off, quite easily, actually. That million+ credits really kickstarted my merc career.The rough one for me was when you had a very limited time to finish off a ton of dudes as well as knocking down a building. I ended up having to dash a dude through the enemy lines to take it down in time.

I just had one of my most elite pilots headshot to death. That was pretty soul crushing. Rest of the mech (my heaviest one) is fine, but dude took a targeted PPC blast to the face after taking a couple of smaller shots there that knocked him down.

I find the standoff weapons to be the best ones. LRMs especially do so much damage for me. That same mission where my ace died saw me take down eight mechs by hucking LRMs in their direction until my racks ran dry. After that it was just go stomp on a bunch of Locusts time.

Oh, tip for those of you getting started. Always shop the store for upgraded weapons (the ones with some number of plus signs after their name). Rocking a mech that gets free bonuses (they weigh the same as regular weapons) definitely tilts the game in your favor. Just don't store them in your extremities, because once they get blowed up they're gone. Arms go away a lot.

I have found one bug that is infuriating. Right now my lance is built around three indirect fire mechs and one scout. My intention is to setup my LRM carriers in launch positions, then walk my scout up to the point where I can see an enemy on sensors. Then, I want to use my action with the scout to paint the target with a sensor lock and rain fire down on them for one turn.

It doesn't actually work, though. The game basically has two modes in combat. Before you make contact, all your dudes move without respect for the enemy's turn. As soon as you make contact, however, the game drops to the second mode of everyone getting a turn. It does so by instantly ending the turn you're on, so none of the "raining fire" part actually gets to happen.

**These edits brought to you by learning-to-use-spoiler-tags

Good tip about the rare weapons disappearing when the component they are mounted on gets destroyed. I didn't even think that those weapons were disappearing... time to shore up my supply of weapons.

Been enjoying the game, but the % chance to hit seems to show it being higher than what actually occurs, to the tune of 10-20% higher. There is already a ton of RNG with where you hit the mech, that having a misleading chance to hit on top of that makes the game frustrating at times.

I am enjoying completely reworking my mechs in order to specialize them. Getting rid of the ML on the vindicator to upgrade the LRM5 to an LRM10, for example. Would be nice to have multiple variants of mechs available, as each mechs seems to only have a single variant at this point.

Tried a skirmish game against a buddy of mine. Each of us picked 1 assault, 1 heavy, 1 medium, and 1 light mechs for our lance. We found out that a 30 second turn timer is way to short, especially if you want to multi-target. I missed my whole first turn sprint for positioning because I didn't know there was a timer haha. I lost my scout Jenner early on, but ended up winning because I knocked over his Atlas twice early on, incapacitating the pilot.

Fun game!

Multiple variants of some mechs are coming. My stashed inventory of partial mechs is littered with various versions of several of them.

I don't want to give too much away, but one tip I've found useful in knocking mechs down early is to use called shots. Fire a few scattered shots to see what you hit the most, and then have everyone else target that area.

There's a weird thing with called shots though, in that sometimes they're available and sometimes not. I'm not sure what the criteria is.

I love the whole battletech universe books, tabletop game and the old video games. How could I be so clueless about this game coming out. Will have to fix that when I get home tonight.

ja86 said:

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I love the whole battletech universe books, tabletop game and the old video games. How could I be so clueless about this game coming out. Will have to fix that when I get home tonight.

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You must be doing something wrong. The ad for it was constantly showing up on my facebook feed for weeks!

Azariah said:

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There's a weird thing with called shots though, in that sometimes they're available and sometimes not. I'm not sure what the criteria is.

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Based on morale...called shots cost you 25 morale and it has to build up over time (and kills)


Lost a good pilot to a darn LRM ground vehicle last night...the tank has 3 LRM20 and the other tank had 8 SRM6 and both were armored out the wazoo. Ridiculous!

HalifaxAg said:

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Azariah said:

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There's a weird thing with called shots though, in that sometimes they're available and sometimes not. I'm not sure what the criteria is.

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Based on morale...called shots cost you 25 morale and it has to build up over time (and kills)


Lost a good pilot to a darn LRM ground vehicle last night...the tank has 3 LRM20 and the other tank had 8 SRM6 and both were armored out the wazoo. Ridiculous!

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I finally figured it out. Now I've upgraded some of my pilots to snipers with upgrades to boost their morale. I'm landing a lot of called shots.

That sucks about losing the pilot. I make it a priority to run over and step on every vehicle I can. The SRM Carriers get top priority.

Having a lot of success with 2 short and 2 long range mechs. My short range guys are bursty SRM & ML damage on centurions. My long range guys are loaded up on LRMs. I try to focus fire a mech with LRMs to make them fallover then run up and use short range guys and the free called shot to one or two shot the mech while it is fallen down.

Works pretty good for now.

Finally have the time to start playing. Any suggestions for beginning of the campaign mech builds? I am currently just running with the basic mechs they give you to start.

build wise try to load up on SRM6...just learn the mechanics, turn your damaged areas away from line of sight, never show your back, learn how to read how much armor and structure is left on your targets so you know when to go for the precision strike, destroying a torso will destroy the whole arm and contained weapons with it, manage your heat, etc

running all heavies now, my two close range thunderbolts can oneshot 50-55 tonners with center torso precision shots. my other tbolt is a LRM boat that I use to try and knockover mechs. still try to find a catapult or madcat...

If you can decapitate a mech it will give you the whole mech (three partials) as salvage. If you blow off both legs it will give you two partials.

Have one of your close range mech pilots have the Sensor lock ability. You can sweep a lot of guns off the table by patiently raining LRMs on tanks.

I'm currently running two lances. My main assault lance is a Highlander, King Crab, Jagermech (missile boat), and Battlemaster. All of the pilots have at least two 10 level skills.

My second lance is a pair of identical missile boat Orions, a Grashopper, and a Firestarter. The Firestarter is able to do crowd control by turning off the bad guys biggest mech over other round.

thanks for the tips and ideas.

Has anyone hired these Ronin NPCs? Wondering if they enhance the gameplay in any way?

HalifaxAg said:

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Has anyone hired these Ronin NPCs? Wondering if they enhance the gameplay in any way?

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I have an NPC pilot named "Ronin", but that doesn't sound like what you're talking about. Are you referring to just hiring new mechwarriors?

If you mouse over the ronin icon you'll get a popup stating:

This mechwarrior is a unique character. You may only hire this character once; if you fire them, or they are killed, they will not reappear in any hiring halls.

Yes, they seem to be special NPCs but I wonder if they enhance the story or do anything special other than the cosmetics of their icon and flag.

I see what you mean now. Yeah, I wonder about them too. I have a couple on my payroll. One of them has an 11 Tactics skill.

Is anyone playing skirmish?

Azariah said:

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I see what you mean now. Yeah, I wonder about them too. I have a couple on my payroll. One of them has an 11 Tactics skill.

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11 !

Didn't think you could past 10...going to have to hire these guys now. What bonus did you get at 11 that was not given at skill 10?

It's not supposed to go past 10. I just stumbled across a chick in the hiring hall who said 11 there. I snapped her up immediately.

I have no idea what her bonuses are. That box is completely blank. She's pretty incredible in my missile boat Stalker, though.

TIL about the wild and sordid history of rights in this game. Crazy stuff.

wow, just got out of a mission with an atlas, zeus, stalker, highlander, battlemaster, quickdraw and 2 thunderbolts against my highlander, thunderbolt and 2 orions.

got some good salvage outta that one! first stalker I've run into, that thing is insane.

Stalkers are nuts as missile boats. They are also terrifying to fight.

I bought this and started it over the weekend and I'm loving it. Very faithful to the PnP version. I'm still working with loadouts as some of my loadouts I like in the Mechwarrior action pvp game don't work as well in this version.

Anyone having luck with AC10/20 loadouts?

They just patched it today btw with no career mode and some new DLC for those who are finished. I'm only 14 hours in so a few story missions and inching up to 200 tons for my dropship lance.

AC20's are too heavy at your point in the game. I would save any special ones you get for later in your progress. After finishing the game, I now run 2 king crabs with double AC20's each and special SRMs. I can usually core almost any mech in one round with each crab. My other two mechs are 2 Stalker LRM/ML boats or I run a third crab with a AC5/LRM loadout.

At your point, I had good luck running Gladiators with SRM6/ML loads and then Thunderbolts with more SRM/ML loads. I stuck with the Thunderbolts until I started acquiring my Assaults & Crabs. Just protect those Double heatsinks when you get them, they are golden and not to be squandered.

The game is a lot of fun but can be hard to manage money early on. Later on, you'll be swimming in CBills.

Wow, can't believe I missed this thread before. Picked it up when it first came out and sunk over 150 hours into the main campaign. Really need to check out some of the patch notes before picking it up now that the Flashpoint DLC is out since it appears there have been some significant balance changes.

Are LRMs still broken to the point that I should still have at least one dedicated missile boat in addition to cramming as many LRMs as I can onto the remainder of my lance?

HalifaxAg said:

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AC20's are too heavy at your point in the game. I would save any special ones you get for later in your progress. After finishing the game, I now run 2 king crabs with double AC20's each and special SRMs. I can usually core almost any mech in one round with each crab. My other two mechs are 2 Stalker LRM/ML boats or I run a third crab with a AC5/LRM loadout.

At your point, I had good luck running Gladiators with SRM6/ML loads and then Thunderbolts with more SRM/ML loads. I stuck with the Thunderbolts until I started acquiring my Assaults & Crabs. Just protect those Double heatsinks when you get them, they are golden and not to be squandered.

The game is a lot of fun but can be hard to manage money early on. Later on, you'll be swimming in CBills.

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Thanks for the tips! I got rocked on my last contract just after the patch including my main pilot getting knocked out for 120 days and all mechs heavily damaged- but I still won!

Anyway now that I understand mechanics a bit better I'm going to restart the campaign and go for 1 or 2 spotters/brawlers with the SRM/ML loadouts and a few missleboats. I have LRM's in Mechwarrior and in the PnP but they seem very effective in this one both for thinning armor for the killing punch and knocking down enemies. I may go with one srm/ML guy and another with PPC's or AC's for called shots/coring.

Damage will be higher with SRM6 vs PPC. Plus it's 6 shots versus 1. You miss with the PPC, you cause zero damage. If one missile misses, big deal, the other 5 will hit....much less heat as I remember too. Use line of sight to close the gap and then SRM nuke them.

I've got an ok crew going now early in the game still (<200 tons) with a centurion laser boat brawler, SRM brawler, one LRM "boat (55 ton)", and a PPC/LRM mid range guy. I'm actually pretty happy with how the centurion laser build is working especially with melee attacks to drop heat a bit. Ding up the armor with the LRM's then call shot with the lasers.

Oh I also found out going broke is bad, I didn't realize it means automatic loss and start over/reload from prior save.

I'm enjoying the game way too much though, great adaption of the PnP game.