What are /r/Battletechgame's favorite Products & Services?

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Update: This post from Russ of PGI on the MWO board.

All he can say is the agreed upon statement from PGI and HG: They have ended their dispute and >PGI will continue to use the "classic" BattleTech designs

My personal speculation is that HG finally realized they were screwed and gave up so long as this settlement protected them from having to pay legal fees for everyone they trolled for decades. I think this settlement and dismissal with prejudice means that the PGI versions of the Unseen are safe and free for use in MWO, MW5, tabletop BT (Inmediares), and HBS BT. So screw the Clans, gimme my Unseen DLC ASAP!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCGamesN

Pretty sure they're the 2nd biggest PC gaming site after pcgamer. Only been around since 2012 but surprised you haven't come across them.

This looks to be from the Mechwarrior Online mech scale compilation PGI made when they rescaled all the game's mechs. https://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/230810-detailed-comparison-and-analysis-of-the-new-re-scale-with-pictures-and-numbers/

The original Citytech has some great stories.

There’s another one about a pilot and their Archer that got ripped to shreds. The techs tried to piece it back together but the only thing they could find was a warehouse full of semi trailers. The Archer ended up with “processed chicken” across the front and “wide load” across the rear.

The pilot was not pleased.

Yes. All it requires is a text editor. If you don't have it already, I would advise you to grab Notepad++ - https://notepad-plus-plus.org/download

I believe that the setting HBS_Kiva mentioned was changing

DestroyedMechRecoveryChance=1

to

DestroyedMechRecoveryChance=0

This can be found in the primary config JSON file. That will destroy any enemy mechs on CT destruction. I'm unsure if that also applies to player mechs, or if that is a separate setting. I'm trying to find the post about it on the official forum.

Edit: To clarify the above, this value determines whether a mech that has suffered Center Torso destruction will drop any parts. By default, a mech will always drop at least one part. The value is a float, which means you can set it to fractional values between 0 and 1. For example, setting it to 0.5 would give you a 50/50 chance of a cored (CT destroyed) mech dropping a part.

Yeah. They translated most mech names 1:1 back in the days. Some kept their english names, especially later ones. It got a bit out of hand when the Clans arrived with their dual names. Like for example the iconic "Madcat" (IS name) aka "Timberwolf" (Clan name). Since Madcat was the mix from Marauder+Catapult, in german that ended up being a "Katamaran" (Katapult+Marodeur) aka "Waldwolf".

So if you grew up with your native language translated names, and then have to switch to the international used english ones, there might be slip ups like above ;)

The new Steam Link app works too!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.valvesoftware.steamlink

Nothing like a little Battletech on your phone, but I do have to admit it's harder to play on a smartphone screen. I haven't tried it with my tablet yet though.

It's called GhostBlade, and it's amazing, even if reading it can be a little on the difficult side from time to time due to the author not being a native English-speaker.

Mechwarrior 4 is a little long in the tooth at this point, though there might be mods and upgrades in circulation. However, Mechwarrior Online is still going strong. It's even prettier, with a somewhat faster pace yet still serious Battletech. In fact, some team modes make it possible to bring four rides to a fight and contest objectives for 30+ minutes with defeated players able to march in reinforcements.

Though I'm sure there is fiction, "books" might also refer to rules and supplements for the tabletop game. Battletech was originally something played with miniatures on a surface. What Paradox has done takes plenty of liberties with the rules, but all in pursuit of maximizing the fun of a computerized version of the original. The game really shines when nobody has to physically toss dice and refer to tables with every attack.

I am halfway down this damned page and this is the third time someone had to bring up old games I really, really, liked. Please stop before I do a GOG.com run that will bankrupt me.

No, it's over! https://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/266758-harmony-gold-lawsuit/ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hIAGuxzEy3ZE4_mjyj-jiw4TMuwoIn3g/view?usp=sharing

The video posted was responding to a motion to settle. That filing became out of date a couple days later, when the lawsuit was subsequently dismissed with prejudice. Doubt we'll ever know if PGI and HG came to an agreement in order to reach this conclusion, but it's safe to say that A) PGI can continue to use their classic designs, B) IMR/Catalyst is in the same boat, and C) Harmony Gold can't file another lawsuit regarding the same conflict.

Now this is what constructive criticism looks like.

I'm playing my own heavily modified version, but one thing that RT does is that I'm still playing the game at all, and not suggesting people don't buy it.

It didn't take me a day to realize "oh this is it" with the base game, didn't even bother finishing the story line as I could see the writing on the wall and it was boring.

Without mods the base game would be Progress Quest that eats your video card.

Now if I don't like something mostly thanks to RT I have an easy way to add or alter things so I'm still playing the game.

As a modders tool, just by existing as an example, massively flattened the learning curve, by making alterations much more accessible. The .json files might be accessible but they are a mess, a ton of work went into figuring out what did what, and what was deprecated or buggy. It's the best living "best practices" document there is, then Discord, then the Wiki.

Plus I love Lady Alekto, reminds me of a young Linus from the LKML. Abrasiveness is a good thing. Yes I'm a grognard.

>Until there's a game that uses the right name I'm gonna use the wrong ones.

There was, 23 years ago.

There is also one right now.

"Telegram" is an app, a messenger. https://telegram.org/. "Stickers" is one of its features, just like big size emoticons. They can be custom-made by users and distributed in themed "packs". I am looking for Battletech-themed sticker pack.

Monitor capture almost always tanks your frames in OBS. Game capture does work, you just have to mess with it a bit. I ran the game in windowed 1080 amd used Windowed Borderless Gaming. Make sure to have it running before launching the game, and follow the instructions for how to hook a game to it (can be a bit confusing).

http://westechsolutions.net/sites/WindowedBorderlessGaming/

Game capture worked perfectly fine for me after adding it to WBG.

Safest way would be to backup your saves, then uninstall the old version properly before installing the new version.

The hard way would be using a registry editor to clear out the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Harebrained Schemes\BATTLETECH entry. Editing the registry manually is risky though, if you delete the wrong thing you could bork your entire computer and be forced to reinstall Windows.

https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/BattleTech

Battletech is an absolutely amazing game. It's weirdly hard in the beginning but once you get through the intro and a few missions, the game really opens up. Mech customization is the strategy. You can choose to go all out LRMs or build a melee focused team. The customization is really great because its not just mechs, its the pilots, and your ship bonuses. There's even enough customization that you can "break" the classes; for example, turn a medium mech into a fast moving scout with sensor lock.

Between the main game and the DLC, there is quite a lot of content before you even decide to do replays. A good 80 hours of content if you're not just speed rushing through the campaign.

On top of the DLC, there are also freely available mods to make the game even better.

If you're not sure about the game's value, the full game is available on Xbox Game Pass (not sure about the DLC though) so you can try out the game with a trial subscription. Otherwise, it regularly goes on sale at GOG.com.

I had a crash right after completing a mission, and the game publisher's Help Desk recommended the following:

>It looks like you have an access violation crash, could you try downloading the CCCP codec and installing it: http://www.cccp-project.net/download.php?type=cccp64

>If that doesn't work can you please ensure the following:

>Add steam.exe and battletech's .exe to the Exceptions list of your antivirus app. (Especially if you have Bitdefender)

>Ensure Steam.exe and battletech's .exe have admin rights in their properties -> compatibility tab (Right click exe to go to properties)

>Go into Windows Defender Security Center -> Virus & Threat Protection -> Virus & Threat Protection settings. Allow the steam and game.exe files through via "Allow an app through controlled folder access"

I haven't had any other crashes since.

Also, a post launch opt-in beta is available. In Steam, go to the game's Properties, click Beta tab, and select the Public Beta. Not sure what the steps are on GOG.

MasterpieceVR is what you'll probably be wanting. AFAIK it has every feature of Medium and exports well. It's a lot of fun to use, even for someone with very low artistic talent like myself. Some of my friends are leagues more capable and the stuff they can churn out really is fascinating.

Scale creep also happened. Covered in these forum posts.

https://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/259434-new-battletech-campaign-gameplay-and-more/

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/fyi-you-can-easily-mod-the-size-of-mechs.1096616/

This makes sense, I hadn't considered height differences. I don't zoom in a lot so the mechs all seem about the same size to me. I found a thread in the MWO forums about canon mech sizes. People generally agreed that heavier mechs are taller on average.

Light => Commando (25 ton) = 9m

Medium => Enforcer (50 ton) = 12m

Heavy => Grashopper (70 ton) = 14m

Assault => Banshee (95 ton) = 15.2m

(https://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/168452-size-of-battlemechsmeters-or-bananas/)

Given that most of the mass is in the arms/torso, its going to be pretty high off the ground for some of the bigger mechs. You'd get a pretty big lever effect by hitting the top of an atlas.

I wonder if it would be possible to model stability for different mech shapes? Like a king crab would have a stab damage reduction because it's lower to the ground... but that's going down the balancing rabbit hole :)

>...although neither it nor its basis are fully Canon yet

If I recall correctly, there was a statement from Weisman that PGI's additions were canon. I can't cite it, and I did just read someone saying:

"...Actually, they are not. CGL/FASA/WizKids/ROC-published materials are canon..."

...but if Weisman said they are, then they are for me.

Just because it's a much, much better game than XCOM and a very similar vein. It's the true spiritual successor to the original xcom and is better than both the original by a little and the triple-a title by a lot.

http://www.xenonauts.com/

Everyone should really give it a shot. Goes on sale quite a bit, available through gog, it's amazing.

This comment I (ffaristocrat) made on Github is a bit easier to follow (with exact commands) since I narrowed down exactly what is causing the problem. Also the ........\mods folder issue has since been fixed and the folder is created exactly where it should be. I haven't had the time lately to test out the latest versions but I assume this still works.

----

Here are the steps to get it working. I've tested it with the current release of BattleTech on OSX (1.0.4-280D) and the current release of BTML (0.2.1).

1. Install homebrew if you don't have it already
2. Copy the injector & the DLLs to BattleTech.app/Contents/Resources/Data/Managed
3. Open up Terminal
4. brew install mono
5. cd "Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/BATTLETECH/BattleTech.app/Contents/Resources/Data/Managed"
6. mv System.Core.dll System.Core.dll.temp
7. mono BattleTechModLoaderInjector.exe
8. mv System.Core.dll.temp System.Core.dll
9. cd ../..
10. mkdir Mods

Then put ModTek and anything else you're using for modding there.

App bundles are pain to navigate to so I highly suggest making the Contents folder a favorite so you can just jump to it.

---

Edit: Every time Battletech is updated, you'll need to repeat steps 5-8 to reinject BTML.

Nvidia cards come with software that you can enable and it will always "record" a set amount of time when you play. if something cool happens in game, you open the nvidia console and you can save the last, say, 5 minutes of gameplay.'

it's called nvidia shadowplay and is really cool. you just enable it and forget it until you come across that amazing event during gaming.

Oh. Mine get 10's all the time, since I play my campaigns for hundreds of ingame days.

Some players like me might play the GOG.com version, and that one has no steam achievements. I don't even think it has any. Never noticed anything special, at least.

If you haven't yet, get parts 2 and 3 of the Grey Death Saga after Thunder Rift. They are available as ebooks on amazon

https://www.amazon.com/BattleTech-Legends-William-Keith-Jr-ebook/dp/B004K1FI9S/ref=pd_sim_351_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=N50V4Q5NK2H7ZGAWEDE4

https://www.amazon.com/BattleTech-Legends-William-Keith-Jr-ebook/dp/B01J6CSX24/ref=pd_sim_351_1/134-4912757-2885849?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=N88PSCJRYR90MCDGAYDD

If you are talking RPG, then go buy MechWarrior (RPG) as others have said, you can still get it on Amazon for a reasonable price, ebay even cheaper:

https://www.amazon.com/Mechwarrior-Third-Battletech-Roleplaying-Game/dp/1555603866

If you mean the tabletop game, BattleTech was never a difficult or complicated system, it's why it was commercially successful v. FASA's other much more complex systems like Renegade Legion and it's laughably simply compared to something like Star Fleet Battles, Advanced Squad Leader, or Fear God and Dread Naught.

You don't need to reinvent the wheel here.

Here is an MSI one. If you type in gaming laptop on amazon, the. Limit your price limit, then you will have tons of options. At the 899 price limit, I suggest staying with ASUS or MSI.

MSI GL62M 7REX-1896US 15.6" Full HD Thin and Light Gaming Laptop Computer Quad Core i7-7700HQ, GeForce GTX 1050Ti 4G Graphics, 8GB DRAM, 128GB SSD + 1TB Hard Drive, Steelseries Red Backlit Keyboard https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074VLX5XV/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_ej2eBbAR9HYPC

I loved the Michael Stackpole books, I’d start here:

BattleTech Legends: The Blood of Kerensky Trilogy (BattleTech Legends Box Set #2) https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09D7BNF4G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_R3NCGZ284JRZMPPAKYJJ

Best thing about the DLCs is that you can play the great mods the community put out there. If you look hard enough, you can get the full pack for below 20 bucks

https://gg.deals/pack/battletech-mercenary-collection/

There was an interesting article from WoT's Chieftain about exactly that! Per the historical data from 1944-1945, it looks like the average engagement range vs. American/British tanks was around 600-700m:

https://worldoftanks.com/en/news/chieftain/The_Chieftains_Hatch_Range_Maths/

For example, from the graph 87% of all engagements were at ranges greater than 200 yards and 65% were at ranges greater than 400 yards. Hence 22% or about one fifth of all engagements were at ranges between 200 and 400 yards. Only 2% of all engagements were at ranges greater than 2,000 yards.

Gotta ask: Is your Steam sub-folder in one of either "Program Files" folders?

Because Windows' User Account Control can be, rather restrictive, albeit understandably so... given the typical user(s) browsing/downloading habits.

Recommendation: Relocate the location of your \Steam\SteamApps\Common folder to somewhere other than either Program Files folder(s), IF that is the case.

Relevant link for reading: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-move-a-pc-game-to-another-hard-drive-without-re-1714706774

You could try some of the predecessor mech strategy games if you like the style.

Mech Commander series is pretty good, and MissionForce: CyberStorm was ok too.

If you don't mind "in cockpit" games, then MechWarrior series, Heavy Gear etc are good too.

Some of these are still around for purchase (eg, GoG.com), but many you'll have to find alternative means to get a copy, and may have to do some work to get them running.

I had this problem too, then i found this: https://www.wemod.com/infinity it allows you to use debug console and kill all enemies on a mission, even ones that have not correctly spawned. fixed the whole problem in 2 minutes including install of infinity so thought i should let you know.

9/10 would cheat against bugs again again

We do, easiest way to use them without having to dig around in files is to just download/use the infinity trainer, it'll enable/disable it on a key-press for people without you havning to dig into files.

If you really wanna tweak things, poke around in your sim-data files and you can get a lot more specific with speeds/times/$$ from missions/## spent per months etc.

I would understand not wanting to install and run program just for this one feature, but i use dual monitor tools to lock my mouse to one screen. You can set a shortcut then i have my shortcut mapped to extra keyboard macro keys. It's got a few nice features worth looking into for dual monitor users

Edit: also pretty sure you can middle click to pan

> I understand you may not have that impression, but it is one of the things talked about during the tutorial text.

It's an excuse for bad design, and a poor excuse at that.

Bad intelligence would be cute if there was any intel at all, but there isn't, it's just fluff to cover up throwing a RNG at everything instead of properly balancing the game.

If it's going to be swingy there needs to be tools to deal with it (and I've seen no evidence that Darius' dialog is in any way related to what actually ends up on the map), if there aren't going to be tools there needs to be game balance.

You can't have no game balance and no tools to deal with it, and say "we meant to do that". I mean you can, but it's going to piss people off and limit sales.

You can't even preview the map you are dropping onto, that's not design, that's lack of design. Might as well not even have descriptions, or any choices at all, just a "randomly generate next mission" button.

Also upkeep and deployment costs should be separate.

Call it "danger pay" for the pilots.

Extra costs for fielding heavy mechs could be your armor insurance company that's paying for those armor repairs, and like all insurance it's use it or lose it. Insurance makes a profit on every point of armor they don't have to replace. The insurance company maintains distribution facilities, even cashes of armor stockpiled on backwater worlds since it's fungible and only profitable to trade on massive quantities. They are really selling an "armor anywhere" service like AAA for mechs.

Also I'd like to see planets with Mech repair facilities you can rent to accelerate Mech repairs and refits faster than what you can do on your drop ship, but at a cost. Give you a reason to hang around in orbit instead of jumping to the next planet if you still have some nice contracts available where you are at.

I'd also like to see aggressive bidding. Basically bribing a faction on a planet with no missions to cook something up for you for the cost off ammo (automatic minimum credits and salvage) but you get a random mission for full reputation and a re-roll of the existing missions when you finish it (sparking up a conflict).

In Battletech the only thing more powerful than a Mech is a shit ton of C-Bills, it would be nice to have things to do with those credits.

Maybe even a bank(s), so you can pay down your loan principal and lower those interest payments, refinance with lower interest rates, and/or take out more loans for quick cash. The open source game Endless Sky has a really good but simple bank/loan system.

https://endless-sky.github.io/

Most people just focus on paying off the loan but I found once you have good credit it's more profitable to take the loan and have an extra ship(s) making money. It's a little extra to juggle so if you aren't into micro managing you can just skip it and not get punished, but if you do manage it you can make faster progress.

CompactGUI is an interface for Windows 10's native compression program, compact.exe.

Results vary widely from game to game, but I was surprised to learn that I could compress BT's game files by half, saving me 15GB on my SSD when using the "XPRESS16K" setting!

Visit CompactGUI at the earlier link for more information on how it works.

> Monitoring TCP/IP connections I noticed Battletech.exe was making some TCP/IP connections during play. Some of these are to AWS, but a couple of IPs didn't respond to ping. So completely disabled all network connections/adapters be they wired, Virtual Box adapter and Wi-Fi

This is not uncommon for many servers. Just FYI, probably wasn't the issue but who knows :)

> With all network adapters disabled, I completely shut off Anti-Virus software (Webroot). Sadly, Webroot doesn't have an exclusions whitelist (say whaaaaa) so I hope this isn't what fixed things!

Honestly - i would just use Windows Defender. It has improved quite a bit. That is the only AV i need personally.

https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/windows-10/december-2017/microsoft-windows-defender-4.12-174847/

So here is a solution. Turn off cloud save

C:\Users\predator\AppData\Local\GOG.com\Galaxy\Applications\50593543263669699\Storage\Shared\Files\C0\SGS1

delete your saved games

Upvoted Hyndis because I did not think of that but I know some games where the longer the list of savegames, the worse the loading time gets.... maybe I go to "%AppData%\Local\GOG.com\Galaxy\Applications\50593543263669699\Storage\Shared\Files\C0" and keep moving the "excess" savegames to a different backup folder, or delete the really old ones.... yeah the game saves frequently, on money check, on mission end, on travel, its a bit of a mess :P

GOG.com seems to only have the updated installer, no downloadable patch, but you can still get it directly from the website.

That said, the game installed using the Galaxy client is the exact same game you'd install yourself with the downloadable installer, no DRM added.

Since BattleTech is a Unity game, it is written in C# and compiled down to IL (Intermediate Language) and then run on a virtual machine that implements the CLR (Common Language Runtime). The IL bytecode is stored in .dll files that can be reinterpreted/decompiled back into C#. Most of the game code is contained within BATTLETECH/BattleTech_data/Managed/Assembly_CSharp.dll.

I use a tool called dnSpy to open the .dll and decompile from IL to C#. There are other tools that do this as well, dnSpy happens to be free and pleasant to use. Using this tool, I was able to develop BTML and then it's successor ModTek (which is the foundation of the official mod support), as well as many other mods for BattleTech.

As to why I'm not currently maintaining these mods -- it's a hobby that I dabble in, but I've been fairly busy with a new job as well as a little disinterested since I've put thousands of hours in.

To make SLDF mechs able to spawn:

1. Go to \BATTLETECH\BattleTech_Data\StreamingAssets\data\mech and you'll see a bunch of files there ending in .json. You can open these files with notepad but it sucks. I recommend downloading Notepad++ instead. The files should all start with mechdef then the names of various mechs. Find the SLDF mechs you want, and open the files.

2. Once you've opened the file, you're looking for a line that says 'BLACKLISTED'. You can use the search function to find it. Sometimes it's at the top, other times it's at the bottom. Delete it. That should be enough.

3. 8 of the 10 SLDF mechs have mechdef files, the other 2 (phoenix hawk and crab) don't. I think HBS need to provide those files (they have in the past for other mechs without mechdef jsons).

4. (might not be required) This used to be something you had to do, as the database files overwrote the jsons still. It may no longer be necessary but I did it cause I didn't know any better. Go to \BATTLETECH\BattleTech_Data\StreamingAssets\MDD and open 'MetadataDatabase.db' with a database editor. Google one.

5. (might not be required) Find the 'TagSetTag' table, and then filter for the ID of your mech (eg, BLR-1GB). Find the 'BLACKLISTED' tag there, and set it to NULL.

I haven't had a look for phoenixhawk or crab files. If anyone has any links please feel free to add them!

Alright, so you'll need to open up your SimGameConstants.json (I recommend Notepad++, if you don't already have it).

Then find the line: "DefaultRoninHiringChance" and change the number after the colon to a 1.

So it'll look like this: "DefaultRoninHiringChance" : 1,

You may already know that this exists, but just a PSA to anyone reading this that if you would like to edit JSON without wishing to break your monitor, you should download Notepad++.

If you want to get super fancy you could also get Atom or Visual Studio Code.

The Windows Store is terrible, at least when it comes to XGP games. I had the same problem with Gears Tactics.

Installing and connecting with ProtonVPN solved it for me. The free version should work.

The loading speed is largely a function of the game's ability to read data from your hard drive quickly. Upgrading your 7200 RPM spinny-disk to an SSD will be well-worth the money.

You will get a better ROI than the $400+ you likely spent on the R9 390. A Samsung Evo 860 (500 GB) is on sale for about $80 on Amazon right now (might find better prices elsewhere - this is for reference). https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Inch-Internal-MZ-76E1T0B-AM/dp/B0781Z7Y3S The older 850 Evo model is probably cheaper. Even if you keep most of your older games and media on the 7200 RPM drive as a storage diskm you'll enjoy your computing experience much better if Windows (or your other favourite flavor of OS) and modern games are installed on an SSD.

This is what i run to both play and stream it https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078M59CJ3/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 IT lags but should give you a base model if doing laptop