What is the best Mech game out for PC period, and how can I obtain it? I played one of the Mechwarrior games (2 maybe?) a long time ago, and my fondest memories are of BattleCorps on the SegaCD. I just want to blow stuff up in a giant sophisticated machine of destruction.
What is the best Mech game out for PC period, and how can I obtain it? I played one of the Mechwarrior games (2 maybe?) a long time ago, and my fondest memories are of BattleCorps on the SegaCD. I just want to blow stuff up in a giant sophisticated machine of destruction.
I remember Lt. Kraft, that's for sure. :winky:
As for the best of the PC games - well, I'm pretty sure MW4: Mercs is the best of the PC games, or at least tied with MW2 and 2: Mercs depending on how you looked at cheesing and 'boating. Don't know about this "Heavy Gear" thing but it must not've done too well since nobody except a few folks in here've mentioned it (and a few of them with scorn and condemnation of some aspect of it to boot) and asides from that maybe the strategy sims that've popped up from time like MechCommander and some other one which was basically MechCommander but with more hardcore Battletech rules.
Really, MW is the cream of the crop, albeit a very very tiny crop as of late.
Heavy Gear 2 was also a great game. MW2 Mercs and MW4 Mercs are the two best mech games for the PC.
Seconding the love for Heavy Gear here as well. I'd love to see a CRPG/Mech simulator hybrid that uses the Heavy Gear PnP rules but that's not too likely, unfortunatly.
Heavy Gear 2 was also a great game. MW2 Mercs and MW4 Mercs are the two best mech games for the PC.
Seconding the love for Heavy Gear here as well. I'd love to see a CRPG/Mech simulator hybrid that uses the Heavy Gear PnP rules but that's not too likely, unfortunatly.
Yeah. I'd love to see something like MegaMek for Battletech on the computer, only with graphics and an easier interface.
Heavy Gear 2 was also a great game. MW2 Mercs and MW4 Mercs are the two best mech games for the PC.
Seconding the love for Heavy Gear here as well. I'd love to see a CRPG/Mech simulator hybrid that uses the Heavy Gear PnP rules but that's not too likely, unfortunatly.
Heavy Gear 2 was also a great game. MW2 Mercs and MW4 Mercs are the two best mech games for the PC.
Seconding the love for Heavy Gear here as well. I'd love to see a CRPG/Mech simulator hybrid that uses the Heavy Gear PnP rules but that's not too likely, unfortunatly.
Yeah. I'd love to see something like MegaMek for Battletech on the computer, only with graphics and an easier interface.
So you basically want Solaris Stories? I could dig that.
Sorenson on
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
edited July 2009
Not to drag back a pages-old argument, but I asked about a few things on CGL's "Ask the Writers" board that I was curious about myself. No word yet on the Black Boxes and exactly how many resources were drained by the Star League, but here are some of the writers on the existence of nuclear weapons.
The Gibson Freedom League used Regulan-provided nukes against the WoB on Gibson in 3053-54 (see novel Ideal War), so no, nukes never became lostech.
Cray'll be able to provide better details, but basically, it's not hard to make a nuke. The hard part is getting the fissionable material. And in a multi-thousand star setting, that's not exactly a struggle.
On whether nukes were lostech, only to be found in caches
Oh, heck no. Nukes are not hard to build. Per the BT 2nd Edition Boxed Set (pub. 1986), the minimum average technology during the darkest days of the Third Succession War was about 23rd Century. Nukes are mid-20th Century technology. Every House kept and maintained stockpiles, which (considering the short-lived isotopes common to many nuclear designs) required constant maintenance and knowhow.
Nuclear knowledge was not common in the late Succession Wars, but the Houses did have specialists able to build and maintain fusion engines, which are much more advanced than 20th Century nuclear designs. They were quite capable of building, maintaining, and replacing nukes, and did so. Before the Jihad, the nuclear attack on WoB on Gibson was the first recent use of nukes, followed by the use of several nukes in the FedCom Civil War - all of those came from active House Marik and Davion stockpiles.
On the whole "Any house caught developing nuclear weapons faced immediate annihilation" thing
That's incorrect. The unwritten moratorium on nuclear weapon USE stemmed from the harsh lessons of the First and Second Succession Wars. However, the moratorium was maintained by mutually assured destruction - everyone kept their stockpiles handy in case the Third Succession War turned upside down. (Davion and Liao actually wrote a 2nd Succession War peace treaty banning tactical use of nuclear weapons in that theater, which was imitated in an unwritten fashion by other Houses.)
As for "immediate war," the Houses WERE at war throughout the Succession Wars. They didn't have the resources to suddenly step up the conflict because someone started deploying nukes. They could breakout their own nuclear stockpiles and threaten the offending House with reply in kind, but until the mid-31st Century (3030-3050) when the Houses started catching their breaths from the Succession Wars there was no way to launch some all-out war targeting a House fielding nukes. No, the only option for maintaining the peace was to keep nuclear stockpiles.
On the difficulty, if any, of re-developing nuclear weapons (and I know the first part is going to be contested immediately).
College nuclear physics professors have most of the knowhow to make nukes. Give them a couple of billion dollars and engineering support and you can give a Third World Country nukes. WoB has Terra, which has all the accumulated, undamaged scientific knowledge of the Star League to building anything from Fat Man to the micronuclear grenades of the Terran Alliance to the late, fission-free nuclear designs of the Terran Hegemony. Terra, if you remember your Comstar Sourcebook, was the place with such good nuclear knowledge that every personal car was fusion-powered in the early 3000s. Oh, yes, WoB has plenty of access to nuclear weapons knowledge. Even if all the nuke factories and stockpiles of Terra were gone, it wouldn't take WoB more than 2-3 years to restart a program with Terra's knowledge.
The Ares Conventions died in c2575AD when the Star League renounced it at the outbreak of the Reunification War. The Houses formally renounced it in 2787 during the beginning of the First Succession War. Its guidance on nuclear weapons is moot.
And finally he was rather curious about what you were sourcing your claims of nukes only in SL-era stockpiles and whatnot.
First of all, I would just like to say that as far as I can remember, no one had ever mentioned having nukes, using nukes, or anything like that in any of the books set before the Clans, during the Clans, or even during the FedCom civil war. Thus, I am somewhat skeptical that this is established cannon and not a retcon. But I guess it could have been mentioned in some sourcebook somewhere and never mentioned again.
Also, I find it unusual that using them was never mentioned as a weapon against the Clans, or that Romano Liao never nuked anyone considering she was pretty much bat shit insane.
As for "immediate war," the Houses WERE at war throughout the Succession Wars.
There's a difference between border skirmishes and an actual war, as can be seen by comparing the actual Succession Wars to the period in between them.
And finally he was rather curious about what you were sourcing your claims of nukes only in SL-era stockpiles and whatnot.
IIRC, the plot of the MechCommander expansion has some crazy Clanner trying to dig up a Star League depot with a bunch of confiscated nuclear and biological weapons. That and the complete absence of any mention to them in any of the books seems to suggest to me that they are not something that everyone has but doesn't use, but rather something that is simply not available.
Also, didn't the bio-weapon used by Kali come from a Star League cache?
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Folks over the course of the next 12 hours you may experience some downtime on mektek.net. We are upgrading our server infrastructure at MekTek in preparation of releasing Mechwarrior4 for FREE. We are building a server cluster at MekTek which basically means multiple simultaneous servers running together serving MekTek's forums, web portal, gallery, downloads, and MekMatch (crucial for online play). Our infrastructure will continue to grow as our community does but not without the support of fans in our community. I'd like to remind both our new and old visitors that MekTek is supported through a donation program which enables us to keep our server infrastructure online. We typically run a donation drive once per year to keep MekTek online. On MekTek's 10th anniversary we are marking this milestone with the release of Mechwarrior4 for FREE, the reboot of the Mechwarrior series by Smith and Tinker, and the return of the Unseens on BattleTech.com. Since there is much more information to follow regarding all of these awesome new developments in both the Mechwarrior and BattleTech world - we are in need of your support more than ever. Our studio is not in the position to foot the bill for the entire community and we rely on the support of our donation drive to keep MekTek alive! This is just a reminder folks that without your support MekTek would not exist. Thanks!
MekTek's total server costs/month are now $513.98 USD/month or $6167.76 USD/year. Our donation drive is the only way we can continue paying for this kind of bandwidth bill! Total donations will cover this increased cost for approximately 2 months. Remember we did not hold a donation drive since last year.
Looks like they are preparing to release Mechwarrior 4 soon.
The Count Of Midget Fisto on
In Low Orbit Over Budapest
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
edited July 2009
IIRC all or most of the biological weapons used in the Jihad were from SL caches. Chemical weapons, not so much.
Edit: Also, I think the only games that are considered properly canon are the Crescent Hawks games.
IIRC all or most of the biological weapons used in the Jihad were from SL caches. Chemical weapons, not so much.
Edit: Also, I think the only games that are considered properly canon are the Crescent Hawks games.
Okay. Why did no one use nukes against the Clans? Especially after the Jags glassed a freaking city.
The idea that no one has nuclear weapons anymore is believable to me, or at least doesn't offend my suspension of disbelief too much.
The idea that they do, but just don't use them because of MAD does not seem believable to me, because they are also waging wars against each other and that is not how MAD works. Sure, we had proxy wars against the Soviets, but we didn't like, invade Kamchatka and it was cool because we only used conventional troops and not nukes.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
edited July 2009
Man, believe whatever you want.
I'm tired of this argument.
Edited because I re-read the original post and wow it came off dickish.
As an aside, I find it funny that they have "23rd century technology" which is apparently 80s technology with holograms. Score a point for outdated sci-fi.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
As clunky as mechwarrior mechs are I would think melee attacks would be awkward. At least hand held weapons would be. Some kind of pneumatic spike built into the arm or something would be more fitting.
JJ on
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
edited July 2009
Mechwarrior mechs are only clunky because for some odd reason, people get the strange idea no mechs under 60 tons exist.
Okay. Why did no one use nukes against the Clans? Especially after the Jags glassed a freaking city.
I'm not a big Mech nerd, but I'd have to guess that it might be a similar reason why generals were trying to fight battle like Napolean throughout most of the 19th century, even when technology made those tactics suicidal as early as the American Civil War... People tend to try and fight the last war, rather than the one they are currently fighting.
The idea that no one has nuclear weapons anymore is believable to me, or at least doesn't offend my suspension of disbelief too much.
The idea that they do, but just don't use them because of MAD does not seem believable to me, because they are also waging wars against each other and that is not how MAD works. Sure, we had proxy wars against the Soviets, but we didn't like, invade Kamchatka and it was cool because we only used conventional troops and not nukes.
I have a feeling, if you told someone in charge that they should use thier nukes, they would either be completly appaled at the suggestion, or respond with a confused "Why?"
...In a similar way that the French responded to the English arming and training peasants during the Hundred Years War, that 18th century proffesional armies responded to opposition that deliberatly targeted officers, and probably how people responded to General Sherman marching deep into the South with no goal beyond burning down and blowing up anything the Confederacy could use for the American Civil War...
In other words, they had become so ingrained into fighting the wars with Mechs and such that using the House's nukes for anything other than a last-ditch "FUCK YOU!!" has become, at best, considered barbaric and monsterous, if not incomprehensible.
PS. Don't mean to sound dickish as well, just saying how I can see that "They've always had nukes, but never used them" could be true.
IIRC all or most of the biological weapons used in the Jihad were from SL caches. Chemical weapons, not so much.
Edit: Also, I think the only games that are considered properly canon are the Crescent Hawks games.
Okay. Why did no one use nukes against the Clans? Especially after the Jags glassed a freaking city.
The idea that no one has nuclear weapons anymore is believable to me, or at least doesn't offend my suspension of disbelief too much.
The idea that they do, but just don't use them because of MAD does not seem believable to me, because they are also waging wars against each other and that is not how MAD works. Sure, we had proxy wars against the Soviets, but we didn't like, invade Kamchatka and it was cool because we only used conventional troops and not nukes.
It's a fictional universe.
It's not perfectly consistent. And the guy said that there are nukes, then there are nukes, and people don't like to use them.
As clunky as mechwarrior mechs are I would think melee attacks would be awkward. At least hand held weapons would be. Some kind of pneumatic spike built into the arm or something would be more fitting.
Most mechs that don't have hands would seem to be very odd in a melee scenario, but remember that melee doesn't require a weapon, and you don't have to hit with your hands. The thrills and spills that come along with kick attempts in a battletech game are great.
Also, as heavy as the Atlas is, it is the BEST melee mech. You don't get the -2 to your melee attack rolls like a light mech, but your punch damage is rediculous, and a well placed punch/kick, as I said before, can RUIN your opponent's day.
I would think clanners would love the idea of melee combat, seeing as they're so traditional in their combat protocol and beliefs.
"Sir, you have insulted my honor and I challenge you to a match of fisticuffs!" *monocle*
I read the books and was greatly disapointed when i could not kick other mechs. The nuke argument has 2 sides, first theres still no reliable way to clean radiation so capturing/defending a planet means you dont want to shit in your back yard. You also wouldent balk at deploying them either- mechs fucking overheat and explode IN A DESERT. Detonating a tactical nuke delivered via a missile on a landing dropship is the perfect way to destroy a large portion of the attacking force with only minimal contamination.
Space battles make no fucking sense at all- their ships are so fragile nukes would rape their huge expensive warships.
Melee combat needs to be in this game. There's just nothing like charging at each other guns blazing until you're in point blank range and then just start kicking the shit out of each other and see who's leg breaks first.
It reminds me of the recent MMA PA comic. But in a more awesome way.
My ideas for how to implement it would be:
1) Context sensitive type thing, where if you move next to someone who has been knocked down, you can press a button to just stomp on their cockpit/torso/leg/etc.
2) Charges and DFA via collision detection, basically. If you are running and crash into another mech, you both take damage and make piloting checks and so forth.
3) Normal kicks and punches via buttons and rather broad hit boxes in front or to the side of you?
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
The idea that they do, but just don't use them because of MAD does not seem believable to me, because they are also waging wars against each other and that is not how MAD works. Sure, we had proxy wars against the Soviets, but we didn't like, invade Kamchatka and it was cool because we only used conventional troops and not nukes.
What? The point of MAD is to prevent both sides from using nukes so they don't completely annihilate one another. We built nukes to counter Soviet numbers, the Soviets built nukes to counter our nukes, and in the end we had to resort to advancing our technology in order to face their numbers without nukes. The proxy war stuff was because the Cold War was supposed to be about communism vs. capitalism and neither side wanted an outright ground war. Thus, they fought with proxies. The two sides didn't keep from fighting each other because of nukes, they kept from fighting each because it would've been a huge drain on their resources. The tactic both sides used of supporting just their allies in a given area was much easier for each superpower to maintain than just gearing up and gunning for the other guy.
Considering the wars of the Inner Sphere are about resources rather than destroying an enemy, deploying resource-annihilating weapons wouldn't serve anybody. As long as each side is willing to protect their people over destroying their enemy, then nukes kept for the purposed of MAD is completely logical. Now, once you start getting zealots who only want to destroy their enemies, then things get nasty.
First of all, I would just like to say that as far as I can remember, no one had ever mentioned having nukes, using nukes, or anything like that in any of the books set before the Clans, during the Clans, or even during the FedCom civil war. Thus, I am somewhat skeptical that this is established cannon and not a retcon. But I guess it could have been mentioned in some sourcebook somewhere and never mentioned again.
They were in the Battlespace supplements. I'm virtually certain they mention a type named "The Alamo" in the 3057 book.
EDIT - If I remember correctly, it did 100 points in Battlespace rules (so 1000 under regular rules). Anything that had enough armor to survive that was still instantly destroyed. I think orbital bombardment damage dropped by 2 (20) per hex, so if you were within like 30 hexes of a nuke you were instantly fucked, no matter what you were in.
Well, technically they can sort of bounce off one other without causing much damage.
Both mechs may even be upright afterward.
But yeah, it's important to remember their roots. They look big and stompy, but they're supposed to be able to do the same sort of things you'd expect that thingy up there to do. Only worse.
Basil on
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
edited July 2009
Keep in mind, a mech kick is less of some kung-fu round-house, more using its weight to stomp down on another mech's leg (or torso if they're higher up) in an attempt to disable it.
Posts
What is the best Mech game out for PC period, and how can I obtain it? I played one of the Mechwarrior games (2 maybe?) a long time ago, and my fondest memories are of BattleCorps on the SegaCD. I just want to blow stuff up in a giant sophisticated machine of destruction.
As for the best of the PC games - well, I'm pretty sure MW4: Mercs is the best of the PC games, or at least tied with MW2 and 2: Mercs depending on how you looked at cheesing and 'boating. Don't know about this "Heavy Gear" thing but it must not've done too well since nobody except a few folks in here've mentioned it (and a few of them with scorn and condemnation of some aspect of it to boot) and asides from that maybe the strategy sims that've popped up from time like MechCommander and some other one which was basically MechCommander but with more hardcore Battletech rules.
Really, MW is the cream of the crop, albeit a very very tiny crop as of late.
But man, tech readouts. I love those things.
EDIT: Heavy Gear 1 was actually pretty darn good, as I recall.
Yeah. I'd love to see something like MegaMek for Battletech on the computer, only with graphics and an easier interface.
On whether nukes were lostech, only to be found in caches
On the whole "Any house caught developing nuclear weapons faced immediate annihilation" thing
On the difficulty, if any, of re-developing nuclear weapons (and I know the first part is going to be contested immediately).
An interesting note on the ares conventions
And finally he was rather curious about what you were sourcing your claims of nukes only in SL-era stockpiles and whatnot.
Also, I find it unusual that using them was never mentioned as a weapon against the Clans, or that Romano Liao never nuked anyone considering she was pretty much bat shit insane.
There's a difference between border skirmishes and an actual war, as can be seen by comparing the actual Succession Wars to the period in between them.
IIRC, the plot of the MechCommander expansion has some crazy Clanner trying to dig up a Star League depot with a bunch of confiscated nuclear and biological weapons. That and the complete absence of any mention to them in any of the books seems to suggest to me that they are not something that everyone has but doesn't use, but rather something that is simply not available.
Also, didn't the bio-weapon used by Kali come from a Star League cache?
Looks like they are preparing to release Mechwarrior 4 soon.
Edit: Also, I think the only games that are considered properly canon are the Crescent Hawks games.
Okay. Why did no one use nukes against the Clans? Especially after the Jags glassed a freaking city.
The idea that no one has nuclear weapons anymore is believable to me, or at least doesn't offend my suspension of disbelief too much.
The idea that they do, but just don't use them because of MAD does not seem believable to me, because they are also waging wars against each other and that is not how MAD works. Sure, we had proxy wars against the Soviets, but we didn't like, invade Kamchatka and it was cool because we only used conventional troops and not nukes.
I'm tired of this argument.
Edited because I re-read the original post and wow it came off dickish.
I have a feeling, if you told someone in charge that they should use thier nukes, they would either be completly appaled at the suggestion, or respond with a confused "Why?"
...In a similar way that the French responded to the English arming and training peasants during the Hundred Years War, that 18th century proffesional armies responded to opposition that deliberatly targeted officers, and probably how people responded to General Sherman marching deep into the South with no goal beyond burning down and blowing up anything the Confederacy could use for the American Civil War...
In other words, they had become so ingrained into fighting the wars with Mechs and such that using the House's nukes for anything other than a last-ditch "FUCK YOU!!" has become, at best, considered barbaric and monsterous, if not incomprehensible.
PS. Don't mean to sound dickish as well, just saying how I can see that "They've always had nukes, but never used them" could be true.
It's a fictional universe.
It's not perfectly consistent. And the guy said that there are nukes, then there are nukes, and people don't like to use them.
It's the only way to be sure.
Most mechs that don't have hands would seem to be very odd in a melee scenario, but remember that melee doesn't require a weapon, and you don't have to hit with your hands. The thrills and spills that come along with kick attempts in a battletech game are great.
Also, as heavy as the Atlas is, it is the BEST melee mech. You don't get the -2 to your melee attack rolls like a light mech, but your punch damage is rediculous, and a well placed punch/kick, as I said before, can RUIN your opponent's day.
I would think clanners would love the idea of melee combat, seeing as they're so traditional in their combat protocol and beliefs.
"Sir, you have insulted my honor and I challenge you to a match of fisticuffs!" *monocle*
Space battles make no fucking sense at all- their ships are so fragile nukes would rape their huge expensive warships.
It reminds me of the recent MMA PA comic. But in a more awesome way.
My ideas for how to implement it would be:
1) Context sensitive type thing, where if you move next to someone who has been knocked down, you can press a button to just stomp on their cockpit/torso/leg/etc.
2) Charges and DFA via collision detection, basically. If you are running and crash into another mech, you both take damage and make piloting checks and so forth.
3) Normal kicks and punches via buttons and rather broad hit boxes in front or to the side of you?
What? The point of MAD is to prevent both sides from using nukes so they don't completely annihilate one another. We built nukes to counter Soviet numbers, the Soviets built nukes to counter our nukes, and in the end we had to resort to advancing our technology in order to face their numbers without nukes. The proxy war stuff was because the Cold War was supposed to be about communism vs. capitalism and neither side wanted an outright ground war. Thus, they fought with proxies. The two sides didn't keep from fighting each other because of nukes, they kept from fighting each because it would've been a huge drain on their resources. The tactic both sides used of supporting just their allies in a given area was much easier for each superpower to maintain than just gearing up and gunning for the other guy.
Considering the wars of the Inner Sphere are about resources rather than destroying an enemy, deploying resource-annihilating weapons wouldn't serve anybody. As long as each side is willing to protect their people over destroying their enemy, then nukes kept for the purposed of MAD is completely logical. Now, once you start getting zealots who only want to destroy their enemies, then things get nasty.
They were in the Battlespace supplements. I'm virtually certain they mention a type named "The Alamo" in the 3057 book.
EDIT - If I remember correctly, it did 100 points in Battlespace rules (so 1000 under regular rules). Anything that had enough armor to survive that was still instantly destroyed. I think orbital bombardment damage dropped by 2 (20) per hex, so if you were within like 30 hexes of a nuke you were instantly fucked, no matter what you were in.
The same way they can climb up escarpments, pick kittens out of trees and land on each other without breaking their legs off.
Wait, they can? Every time that my mech has landed on another mech, one gets the hell beat out of it
Both mechs may even be upright afterward.
But yeah, it's important to remember their roots. They look big and stompy, but they're supposed to be able to do the same sort of things you'd expect that thingy up there to do. Only worse.
(From the book, "Ideal War")
Though IIRC they were used by a group of rebels who acquired them from the Word of Blake.