BattleTech

[Zeether]

The guys who made the Shadowrun games did a Kickstarter for a BattleTech game (another former FASA property now owned by Catalyst tabletop-wise) and it successfully reached all its stretch goals. Launch date is probably late next year or the year after since they're doing it pretty much from the ground up and not on the Shadowrun engine, but it's sounding pretty good. It's going to be a turn based game like Shadowrun, but obviously won't be cover based since, well, 'Mechs are used to get out there and stomp around and shoot stuff.

I've been interested in the BattleTech universe a while but there's never really been a good game recently based on it...MechWarrior Online is either a giant mess or relatively fun depending on who you ask, and MechWarrior Tactics died because of the publisher, so it's nice to know a decent title is on the way despite not being action based.

[Parker_Hylton]

I worked on Starsiege and Starsiege:Tribes back in the day.  As a former employee, I have to say "yay Starsiege" but quite frankly I always liked Mechwarrior (especially Mercenaries) far more.  There was a Mechwarrior 5 game they started working on and the videos looked fantastic, then whoever was the dev on it went out of business and refused to sell the rights.  Haven't researched that in years.

[Sideswipe]

I preferred Earthsiege to Starsiege.

[Zeether]

Earthsiege is pretty great. They actually re-released the games for free recently.

[Sideswipe]

No shit??  Where?  Earthsiege was on of my very first PC games.  It was like 4 floppy disks, I was fuckin amazed as a young lad. 

[Zeether]

http://www.tribesuniverse.com

There's guides on PCGamingWiki for running them, ES2 requires a new installer for modern Windows.

[Sideswipe]

Nice, thanks for the info.

[Zeether]

I worked on Starsiege and Starsiege:Tribes back in the day.  As a former employee, I have to say "yay Starsiege" but quite frankly I always liked Mechwarrior (especially Mercenaries) far more.  There was a Mechwarrior 5 game they started working on and the videos looked fantastic, then whoever was the dev on it went out of business and refused to sell the rights.  Haven't researched that in years.

Mechwarrior 5 basically became MWO, which is...yeah. Not really great but some people love it. I'm not much of a fan since it's multiplayer only and there's a lot of nerfing that happens for certain weapons.

[Variety of Cells]

I worked on Starsiege and Starsiege:Tribes back in the day.  As a former employee, I have to say "yay Starsiege" but quite frankly I always liked Mechwarrior (especially Mercenaries) far more.  There was a Mechwarrior 5 game they started working on and the videos looked fantastic, then whoever was the dev on it went out of business and refused to sell the rights.  Haven't researched that in years.

Mechwarrior 5 basically became MWO, which is...yeah. Not really great but some people love it. I'm not much of a fan since it's multiplayer only and there's a lot of nerfing that happens for certain weapons.

When was the last time you played?  I've been curious if it has gotten any better.  I left before it was officially "released" (i.e. still a beta, but they decided to tell people it was finished).  But I was in the closed beta, and had a lot of fun with it initially.  Now that they've split from IGP I've heard that it's headed in the right direction.  Haven't been able to find an unbiased current review though.

[CJones]

I actually still have a copy of Battletech: Crescent Hawks Inception. I was surprised to find that hardly anyone knew this game even existed. I was cheesed off that you never actually get to use the Phoenix Hawk LAM that you spend the whole game looking for. Even less well known was that there was a sequel: Crescent Hawks Revenge, which conveniently forgets that the Phoenix Hawk LAM ever existed. The sequel was real time, but had a hilarious bug where you could set the game speed to 1, then just call in air strikes repeatedly while no one can move.

I played the original Mechwarrior as well, but most people only remember from 2 on. In Mechwarrior 1 you could take defense contracts, then just take a Locust, walk right up behind Battlemasters and Warhammers and blow their legs off with the machine guns. They'd never turn a round.

EDIT: I just looked over to my right and realized, I have a boxed copy of MechCommander: Gold sitting in my bookcase right next to me, and I have no idea how long it's been there. Says $9.99. 

[Compound]

Even less well known was that there was a sequel: Crescent Hawks Revenge, which conveniently forgets that the Phoenix Hawk LAM ever existed.

Yeah, the LAMs were an anomaly in Battletech. The Phoenix and Shadow Hawk LAMs (oh, and the Stinger) were pretty much the only three official LAM designs that appeared in the game. I don't even recall Aerotech having any actual LAM designs. Heck, there have been over 100 novels set in the Battletech universe, and there was one LAM used in a single novel.

Plus, I suspect that FASA quietly asked Infocom to not use them in the sequel, especially since at that time FASA and Harmony Gold were sparring over certain mech designs and the LAM designs were right in the center of that dispute.

[CJones]

Even less well known was that there was a sequel: Crescent Hawks Revenge, which conveniently forgets that the Phoenix Hawk LAM ever existed.

Yeah, the LAMs were an anomaly in Battletech. The Phoenix and Shadow Hawk LAMs (oh, and the Stinger) were pretty much the only three official LAM designs that appeared in the game. I don't even recall Aerotech having any actual LAM designs. Heck, there have been over 100 novels set in the Battletech universe, and there was one LAM used in a single novel.

Plus, I suspect that FASA quietly asked Infocom to not use them in the sequel, especially since at that time FASA and Harmony Gold were sparring over certain mech designs and the LAM designs were right in the center of that dispute.

Yeah, I completely missed out on Robotech, but years later in college I saw "Macross: Do you Remember Love?" fansubbed, and I was like "The hell? Those are Phoenix Hawk LAMs. And there's a Warhammer. And there's a Marauder."

Sad thing is, most of the most memorable mechs, for me, were the ones that they won't be able to use in the upcoming game, I assume.

[Zeether]

The Warhammer and Marauder will show up in the new game, but redesigned so as to not get lawsuits thrown at them by Harmony Gold. They're basically using models from Mechwarrior Online.