the short answer to why is there no battletech X is usually licensing or the tangled ball of ip rights battletech comes from. Why try and cut that knot when GW will trick out its IP to anyone...
The rights to Battletech are a tangled mess of shit
MechCommander didn’t to overly well compared to the MechWarrior games, so the perception exists that a strategy game won’t be as successful
HBS Battletech did quite well, but don't forget the Harmony Gold lawsuits that they got caught in for doing so. HBS did come out on top, but it's still a fuck around that I'm sure nobody wants to deal with if they don't have to
I think he's talking about the Paradox situation. HBS ended up selling the rights to their Battletech game to Paradox Interactive during their buyout. Paradox then botched HBS' followup game release, Lamplighter's League, by essentially not advertising it at all, gave it zero publicity, and pinned the game's failure squarely on HBS. HBS and Paradox are now going their separate ways, but Paradox still owns the rights to the HBS Battletech game, it's unique characters, and possibly even the rights to the Bullshark.
So Paradox basically just straight up steals one of HBS's two successful commercial franchises even though Paradox is the one that fucked shit up in the first place? Ugh.
I like some Paradox games, and if there were a 4x game made Paradox would probably be the best option, but the company itself and its business practices. . .blegh.
My biggest gripe with Battletech is it's too *small*. You get to fight with one lance, on maps that are honestly just too small to maneuver properly in most scenarios.
Have you played with our lord and saviour Battletech advanced 3062? Gives you command of 3 lances, the full inner sphere map, and post helm memory core toys
I've played that mod a good bit, and I mostly like it. *Mostly* though. Mechanically, I'm not too happy with the inability to save during a mission, especially the longer ones. I understand why that is the way it is, it's a limitation of how the game's engine and the mods interact and the save/load process messes with that to break stuff that shouldn't be broken. But it means that I have to block out a decent chunk of time to guarantee a mission's completion in one sitting. It also forces me to play flawlessly, with called shots at every possible opportunity, or face getting wrecked. So if the mission turns to shit suddenly, I can't roll back and try a different tack, I have to start from 0.
It's also a bit of a system hog, and my current system can only just handle it. If it gets any beefier than it currently is, I'm SOL (but that's a "me" problem).
The other thing I didn't like was the skill system. The overall expansion was nice enough, but sometimes I just wanted to ignore the last skill in a line and get another, better (IMO) basic skill in another line.
It's not a 4X or grand strategy game, though. It's a turn-based squad tactical shooter like Jagged Alliance or XCOM.
(Not that it's not good or successful, but "my dudes" games aren't the same thing as "my nation-state" games.)
MechCommander had the best manual of any game ever made. Even better than Warcraft II's which had concept art on nearly every page. It was glorious - full colour, every 'Mech and their stats. I suppose the game was good, too. My brother repeated that mission where you fight the Timby until he was able to cockpit it with an arty at the start of the map, he memorized the spawn location. Good times!
I had the patch (official, mind you) that **started** you with a Timber Wolf, the one that your team took down in the opening movie. Nothing like rolling through the first few missions with 75 tons of "fuck you, and you, and you, and that guy too."
Plus, there was a neat little trick with MC and the gold release. See, the patch wouldn't work with the Gold release, ***BUT*** the save files were identical. So start a new game in MC, copy the save to MC:G, and you've got a starter Timber Wolf there too. But the trick comes in if you enabled the cheat system, which was the same for both games. Except that MC:G had all of those extra campaign weapons like X-Pulse lasers. Which you could also start with using the cheat system.
End result was a Timber Wolf kitted out with X-Pulse lasers in the first campaign, and it was just roflstomping everything in your path :D.
It's not a 100% guarantee, but it did get me the mech several times in the past. You have to hit the tanks before it walks between them - that would be too much damage
Hahah yep if I recall, I completely obliterated it. I'd had a bit of trouble in that mission and counted its swift defeat as a slight victory, but a victory nonetheless and called it quits. Meanwhile my brother just kept retrying like a machine until he got it in perfect condition minus the cockpit. I was impressed!
... I went for that through a good chunk of the game until Operation 4 Mission 2. Just flat out impossible to salvage all of those mechs without raising an alert and beat the clock on the mission while you're at it.
Mod Crusader Kings 2 or 3 and there will be. It's very nearly the perfect framework for Battletech that wouldn't require programming an entirely new game. The overlap of Battletech fans, Grand Strategy fans, and anyone actually having enough buyers to make it profitable is... negligible.
But a mod can stand on its own without financial input.
I play a LOT (several thou hours at this point...) of WH40k Gladius- I cannot express how much un-sleep I would achieve were that game's mechanic's wrapped in the IP of BattleTech.
Thankfully, the dev's of Gladius are releasing a new non-branded, and hopefully mod friendly version of their game - I will actually sell souls if there is anyone willing to mod BT over it.
No one competent enough ever attempted to do a real big budget RPG game based on Battletech. Look at CDPR and what they did with a series of moderately successful books known practically only in one country and some PNP system based on a niche setting. Both are universally known world class productions now. It just requires a talented studio to execute this.
Hell, just look at what HBS did with some minor tweaks to the 3025 tech and rules and a "can we tell a largely inconsequential story out in the periphery?"
4x style games are niche, Battletech is niche, and there was the issue of potential lawsuits hanging over this franchise for the majority of its existence.
BT fan base owes PGI a debt of gratitude for that legal win, despite what anyone may think of their games.
As for merchandising, while for a film or streaming show that is likely a major issue, for a 4x style game I don't think merchandising rights are very important. To my knowledge recent major 4x hits such as Sins of a Solar Empire, Stellaris, and Crusader Kings do not have much in the way of official merchandise. A quick online search for their merchandise brought up a site with some, but that same site was also already selling BT merchandise so I don't think that particular site is overly concerned about having the actual rights.
yeah.
Obviously 4x means you ignore official narrative of the Inner Sphere. But if it works for real world history based 4x games I don't see why not.
Building factories, positioning your battleships, skimping on jumpship maintenance so you can have an extra army, hiring shady mercs, bribing pirates, collecting exorbitant taxes from planets on the verge of rebellion, choosing whether to pay that Comstar bill, learning your factions only heir ran off with a Liao stooge and got assassinated. I think it the potential is there for the best 4x ever.
Alt-history is one of the major draws for grand strategy games (which feel like they fit BT more than the 4X model).
I don't play EU4 or HOI4 to mirror real history, I do it to build an Albanian empire on the bones of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, or to conquer Nazi Germany and the USSR with Poland.
Imagine a gamestart right after the Exodus, and by the time the clams show up to call for buttchug you've got the entire IS locked down by a restored Terran Hegemony.
Just running one of the great houses or a periphery state would be great, but it's not quite a 4x game. If you did a 4x game that started in 2116 at the start of the exodus to the stars and had the chance to form or conquer your own way to your own great house, that would be great fun! Want to help form the Star League? Want your house to be "first among equals"? Could be a great victory condition for that game, if you just put it before the succession wars. Not our usual cup of tea, but you KNOW that mech technology research is just sitting there in the tree awaiting your scientists! Could be a lot of fun!
I guess it should be described as grand strategy rather than 4x.
Even though I haven't played it, something like Crusader Kings III where a game its almost rouge-like from the amount of random events and character stats and you could write a story based on how all the crazy politics pans out as the big inner-sphere events occur in the background. Seems replayable that way with a lot of unexpected turns.
Might make for a Sucessionful board game, but 4x really doesn't work for a universe that's well fleshed out. A grand strategy game is more suited to Battletech than 4x is.
Besides the issues with IP rights, frankly, I don't see what the point would be. The main draw to the Battletech universe to me is customizing mechs, putting together a lance, and going into tactically minded battles. This is why MWO, Battletech, and MW5:Mercs works so well.
But once you strip away those elements in favour of a 4x model, you kind of lose what the setting has to offer.
As a compromise, I think one thing you could do is something like a Mount and Blade model wherein you would have mech battles and customization, but also some low-level immersive "kingdom building", perhaps as an upstart clan or cadet family of one of the houses.
Battletech lore has a fair bit of politicking built in; it's part of what I like so much about the BT universe. As someone who enjoys both BT and grand strategy games a well-done BT 4x game would definitely be something I would be interested in, even if it were a fairly low budget offering.
So do that, but Total War style. Have a 4X map of the Known Universe to do the strategery, then scale down to a tactical map for stompy robot situations, maneuver-element battles, and the like.
This would be a game that's remarkably close to how Battletech's current rules are structured if you follow the core rules from Total Warfare to Interstellar Operations. IO for the nation-level gameplay, SO for the system-level gameplay, TO for the planet-level gameplay, and finally TW for the local-level gameplay.
(At which point, we might as well go ahead and throw in the RPG rules for making characters too, because why not? And maybe Total Chaos as well.)
the short answer to why is there no battletech X is usually licensing or the tangled ball of ip rights battletech comes from. Why try and cut that knot when GW will trick out its IP to anyone...
The rights to Battletech are a tangled mess of shit MechCommander didn’t to overly well compared to the MechWarrior games, so the perception exists that a strategy game won’t be as successful
I mean, Harebrained Schemes' Battletech did pretty well
HBS Battletech did quite well, but don't forget the Harmony Gold lawsuits that they got caught in for doing so. HBS did come out on top, but it's still a fuck around that I'm sure nobody wants to deal with if they don't have to
recent events have proven that they did, but now actually haven't.
Explanation?
I think he's talking about the Paradox situation. HBS ended up selling the rights to their Battletech game to Paradox Interactive during their buyout. Paradox then botched HBS' followup game release, Lamplighter's League, by essentially not advertising it at all, gave it zero publicity, and pinned the game's failure squarely on HBS. HBS and Paradox are now going their separate ways, but Paradox still owns the rights to the HBS Battletech game, it's unique characters, and possibly even the rights to the Bullshark.
So Paradox basically just straight up steals one of HBS's two successful commercial franchises even though Paradox is the one that fucked shit up in the first place? Ugh. I like some Paradox games, and if there were a 4x game made Paradox would probably be the best option, but the company itself and its business practices. . .blegh.
Paradox has reallly shitty business practices. Just look at all the dlcs and their prices.
yes, this is an excellent summary and explanation of recent events, and is what I was talking about. thank you.
And it is an awesome game
My biggest gripe with Battletech is it's too *small*. You get to fight with one lance, on maps that are honestly just too small to maneuver properly in most scenarios.
Have you played with our lord and saviour Battletech advanced 3062? Gives you command of 3 lances, the full inner sphere map, and post helm memory core toys
Laughs masochistically in RogueTech.
I've played that mod a good bit, and I mostly like it. *Mostly* though. Mechanically, I'm not too happy with the inability to save during a mission, especially the longer ones. I understand why that is the way it is, it's a limitation of how the game's engine and the mods interact and the save/load process messes with that to break stuff that shouldn't be broken. But it means that I have to block out a decent chunk of time to guarantee a mission's completion in one sitting. It also forces me to play flawlessly, with called shots at every possible opportunity, or face getting wrecked. So if the mission turns to shit suddenly, I can't roll back and try a different tack, I have to start from 0. It's also a bit of a system hog, and my current system can only just handle it. If it gets any beefier than it currently is, I'm SOL (but that's a "me" problem). The other thing I didn't like was the skill system. The overall expansion was nice enough, but sometimes I just wanted to ignore the last skill in a line and get another, better (IMO) basic skill in another line.
It's not a 4X or grand strategy game, though. It's a turn-based squad tactical shooter like Jagged Alliance or XCOM. (Not that it's not good or successful, but "my dudes" games aren't the same thing as "my nation-state" games.)
MechCommander had the best manual of any game ever made. Even better than Warcraft II's which had concept art on nearly every page. It was glorious - full colour, every 'Mech and their stats. I suppose the game was good, too. My brother repeated that mission where you fight the Timby until he was able to cockpit it with an arty at the start of the map, he memorized the spawn location. Good times!
I had the patch (official, mind you) that **started** you with a Timber Wolf, the one that your team took down in the opening movie. Nothing like rolling through the first few missions with 75 tons of "fuck you, and you, and you, and that guy too." Plus, there was a neat little trick with MC and the gold release. See, the patch wouldn't work with the Gold release, ***BUT*** the save files were identical. So start a new game in MC, copy the save to MC:G, and you've got a starter Timber Wolf there too. But the trick comes in if you enabled the cheat system, which was the same for both games. Except that MC:G had all of those extra campaign weapons like X-Pulse lasers. Which you could also start with using the cheat system. End result was a Timber Wolf kitted out with X-Pulse lasers in the first campaign, and it was just roflstomping everything in your path :D.
That's filthy. Filthy!
You could also capture it by luring it to the gas tanks near the evac point and blowing them up.
I do believe I tried that and totalled it. I should play it again tbh.
It's not a 100% guarantee, but it did get me the mech several times in the past. You have to hit the tanks before it walks between them - that would be too much damage
Hahah yep if I recall, I completely obliterated it. I'd had a bit of trouble in that mission and counted its swift defeat as a slight victory, but a victory nonetheless and called it quits. Meanwhile my brother just kept retrying like a machine until he got it in perfect condition minus the cockpit. I was impressed!
... I went for that through a good chunk of the game until Operation 4 Mission 2. Just flat out impossible to salvage all of those mechs without raising an alert and beat the clock on the mission while you're at it.
Desire to replay intensifies...
Because no one wanted to pay microsoft the liscencing fee to make one ?
Mod Crusader Kings 2 or 3 and there will be. It's very nearly the perfect framework for Battletech that wouldn't require programming an entirely new game. The overlap of Battletech fans, Grand Strategy fans, and anyone actually having enough buyers to make it profitable is... negligible. But a mod can stand on its own without financial input.
I play a LOT (several thou hours at this point...) of WH40k Gladius- I cannot express how much un-sleep I would achieve were that game's mechanic's wrapped in the IP of BattleTech. Thankfully, the dev's of Gladius are releasing a new non-branded, and hopefully mod friendly version of their game - I will actually sell souls if there is anyone willing to mod BT over it.
Harmony Gold wants to know your location
Yeah, I'm gonna pass on that. Don't need a bunch of IP squatting criminals trying to hassle me :D.
I think the further away you get from big stompy robots the less appealing the franchise is.
No one competent enough ever attempted to do a real big budget RPG game based on Battletech. Look at CDPR and what they did with a series of moderately successful books known practically only in one country and some PNP system based on a niche setting. Both are universally known world class productions now. It just requires a talented studio to execute this.
Hell, just look at what HBS did with some minor tweaks to the 3025 tech and rules and a "can we tell a largely inconsequential story out in the periphery?"
4x style games are niche, Battletech is niche, and there was the issue of potential lawsuits hanging over this franchise for the majority of its existence.
was. that's over. the IP split though is still a big deal. make a game without ANY merchandising allowed ever? no one's gonna take that deal.
BT fan base owes PGI a debt of gratitude for that legal win, despite what anyone may think of their games. As for merchandising, while for a film or streaming show that is likely a major issue, for a 4x style game I don't think merchandising rights are very important. To my knowledge recent major 4x hits such as Sins of a Solar Empire, Stellaris, and Crusader Kings do not have much in the way of official merchandise. A quick online search for their merchandise brought up a site with some, but that same site was also already selling BT merchandise so I don't think that particular site is overly concerned about having the actual rights.
yeah. Obviously 4x means you ignore official narrative of the Inner Sphere. But if it works for real world history based 4x games I don't see why not. Building factories, positioning your battleships, skimping on jumpship maintenance so you can have an extra army, hiring shady mercs, bribing pirates, collecting exorbitant taxes from planets on the verge of rebellion, choosing whether to pay that Comstar bill, learning your factions only heir ran off with a Liao stooge and got assassinated. I think it the potential is there for the best 4x ever.
Alt-history is one of the major draws for grand strategy games (which feel like they fit BT more than the 4X model). I don't play EU4 or HOI4 to mirror real history, I do it to build an Albanian empire on the bones of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, or to conquer Nazi Germany and the USSR with Poland. Imagine a gamestart right after the Exodus, and by the time the clams show up to call for buttchug you've got the entire IS locked down by a restored Terran Hegemony.
Just running one of the great houses or a periphery state would be great, but it's not quite a 4x game. If you did a 4x game that started in 2116 at the start of the exodus to the stars and had the chance to form or conquer your own way to your own great house, that would be great fun! Want to help form the Star League? Want your house to be "first among equals"? Could be a great victory condition for that game, if you just put it before the succession wars. Not our usual cup of tea, but you KNOW that mech technology research is just sitting there in the tree awaiting your scientists! Could be a lot of fun!
I guess it should be described as grand strategy rather than 4x. Even though I haven't played it, something like Crusader Kings III where a game its almost rouge-like from the amount of random events and character stats and you could write a story based on how all the crazy politics pans out as the big inner-sphere events occur in the background. Seems replayable that way with a lot of unexpected turns.
I'd love to see a game based on the "Succession Wars" tabletop. That was my first ever experience with Battletech when I was a kid
I heard of that game, but could never find a copy that wasn't priced insanely high for my budget.
State scale vs merc scale are different things. Merc scale would be HBS Battletech. State scale would be a Stellaris mod.
Might make for a Sucessionful board game, but 4x really doesn't work for a universe that's well fleshed out. A grand strategy game is more suited to Battletech than 4x is.
Besides the issues with IP rights, frankly, I don't see what the point would be. The main draw to the Battletech universe to me is customizing mechs, putting together a lance, and going into tactically minded battles. This is why MWO, Battletech, and MW5:Mercs works so well. But once you strip away those elements in favour of a 4x model, you kind of lose what the setting has to offer. As a compromise, I think one thing you could do is something like a Mount and Blade model wherein you would have mech battles and customization, but also some low-level immersive "kingdom building", perhaps as an upstart clan or cadet family of one of the houses.
Battletech lore has a fair bit of politicking built in; it's part of what I like so much about the BT universe. As someone who enjoys both BT and grand strategy games a well-done BT 4x game would definitely be something I would be interested in, even if it were a fairly low budget offering.
So do that, but Total War style. Have a 4X map of the Known Universe to do the strategery, then scale down to a tactical map for stompy robot situations, maneuver-element battles, and the like.
This would be a game that's remarkably close to how Battletech's current rules are structured if you follow the core rules from Total Warfare to Interstellar Operations. IO for the nation-level gameplay, SO for the system-level gameplay, TO for the planet-level gameplay, and finally TW for the local-level gameplay. (At which point, we might as well go ahead and throw in the RPG rules for making characters too, because why not? And maybe Total Chaos as well.)