BattleTech(2018), Thoughts and Review.

for the past weeks I have been playing BattleTech.
(Ingame Cutscene.)

Basic Information.

BattleTech is a turn-based videogame based on the BattleTech Universe. In this game you get to play as a mercenary company commander, you get to own and customize mechs, customize your own team of mechwarriors(pilots), your very own dropship to travel the through the stars, all while keeping your finances on the green.

The Management.

Let's talk about what you can do in Campaign and Career mode as this is main content.

You can set the game difficulty. The score multiplier is merely for the 1200 days challenge of career mode. choose what best suit you.

You also get to choose your main character, the commander's backstory and look.

you can pick the genders between He, She, They.

A more in-dept customization.
(You can also customize your mechawarriors info and look, except the backstory at any time.)

You get to customize the name, insignia and colors of your mercenary company.
(That is an Atlas, a very cute engine of destruction.)

This is your main screen and that in the middle is the Argo, your spacefaring headquarters of a mothership.

In both campaign and story mode, you found this Argo in a derelict state and then subsequently revived it, but due to its poor condition, you need upgrade it to restore its former glory and then some. upgrading the Argo allows you to decrease travel time between destinations, increase the recovery time of mechwarriors, decrease the time needed to repair and refit mechs, and how many mechs you can keep on standby.

Space is absolutely massive, and in this game there's a lot of destination to choose from, in this screen you can check the difficulty of missions on the planet, check its attributes and travel to it.

You can hire new Mechwarriors(pilots) and buy mechs, weapons and equipment that is based on the destinations attributes, there's also a black market for those even rarer stuff.

This is the contract screen, it shows available contracts you can partake in the region you are in.
See those orange mech heads? that represents the difficulty of a contract, the more of them in a contract, the more difficult it is. You can negotiate if you want to be paid more in cash, loots or do it for relationship boost with the employer.

This is the barracks screen, it is here where you can manage your mechwarriors, upgrade their skills, change their portrait and voice, check if they are injured, or look at the memorial wall where the names of those who died in combat are engraved.

This is the mech bay, this is the place where you can manage your mechs. you can have up to three bays of mechs, these are mechs that are ready for fighting. you can have an unlimited amount of mechs in the storage.

This is what it looks like when you refit your mech, this mech, 'slaps the mech.' is an AWESOME-8Q, it's an 80-ton Assault Mech, what makes this so special is the sheer durability and the amount of weapons it carries, the only downside is it's slow and doesn't have jumpjets.
you can fiddle the mech's armor, weapons and equipment to your liking, this one is armed with max armor, three PPCs and enough heatsinks that it will allow it to shoot the three of them 100% uptime.

A PPC or Particle Projection Cannon in terms of min-maxing DPS is bad, but what it lacks in DPS, it makes up for its utility, it deals stability damage that will allow you to knockdown hostile mechs and a stacking debuff to target hit with a -1 to accuracy. in a game where survivability is the goal, it's the best thing you could ask for.

Those three PPCs are enough to blow something up in one salvo.

The Fighting.

Combat in Battletech is turn-based, which meant units take turns to take action.

The goals of a given battle depends on the contract, destroy a convoy, destroy a base, or a basic slugfest of last man standing.

A unit's 'initiative' value determines when it will take action in a given turn, The higher it is, the earlier you can take action. by default a light mech has a value of 4, a medium mech has 3, a heavy mech has 2, and finally an assault mech has a value of 1. a mechwarrior pilot can take a skill that increases this value by 1.
Tactically you'd want to 'Reserve'--make a unit not take action by letting other units in a given initiative take action first. you do this because you probably have 5 evasion pips, and you want to take advantage of it first, because after ending your turn, your evasion pips resets and the new counter depends on how much ground you travel on the current turn.

those red targets are enemy units that are too far to see visually, but are marked by your unit's sensors.

you can 'Sensor Lock'--an unlockable Mechwarrior ability, to 'light up' targets so that your other units can target and shoot it. Sensor lock also applies a -2 accuracy debuff to the target and a reduces 2 evasion pips from the target.

by default there are three types of movement. the first one moving your unit to a spot and take an action, the second one is sprinting, it moves your unit farther but you can't take an action, the third one is using jumpjets to fly into a location, very useful for jumping over obstacles

moving and sprinting allows you a limited option on where to set your facing angle depending on how far you moved, using jumpets allows unlimited option where to set your unit's facing angle, the only downside is using jumpjets doesn't dissipate heat.
(Mechwarriors can unlock the ability to move after shooting.)

shooting an enemy is not straightforward, you are not just shooting a unit but body parts of a unit. if the unit is facing away from you, you will end up shooting its back parts.

Accuracy is calculated by the target mech's weight class, evasion pips, the attacking mechwarrior's gunnery ability, weapon type used, additional weapon modifiers, equipments, stacked sensor debuff, terrain height, effective range and of course RNGJESUS.

there are three types of weapon. Ballistics weapons deals damage to a location, deals stability damage, requires ammo, generate less heat and has recoil. Beam Weapons deals deals damage to a location, only PPCs deal stability damage, doesn't require ammo and generate the most heat but doesn't have recoil. Missile weapons deal damage to a location, deals the most stability damage, requires ammo, generates heat, doesn't have recoil and has to roll a new body part and accuracy for every missile it hits(exception is the Archer Heavy Mech).

there's also auxiliary weapons that are short range and are used when attacking with melee, yes that's right there's melee and there's 'Death from Above'--jumping and landing on top of your enemies, MELEE and DFA attacks ignore evasion pips and doesn't produce heat.

You might be wondering but what is heat?, heat produces when weapons are used, it can only applied by weapon via the flamethrower, basically when your mech is overheating your mech takes internal damage and might even shutdown. yeah Heat Management is a thing and it's cool because it balances mechs with lots of weapons. therefore if you think your weapons will make you over the heat capacity, it's better to disable some of the weapons.

There's also a mechanic termed 'Called Shot' it happens when you target a downed target or using the 'Precision Strike' Morale action. basically it allows you to pinpoint a specific target's body part.

The Morale bar is the bluish white vertical bar on the left side of your units' portraits, if it's above 50% your units get to enjoy a +1 accuracy. you can use Morale points to use Precision Strike' or 'Vigilance'

There are three ways to disable a mech. a.) destroy the center torso, b.) destroy both legs, and c.) make the mechwarrior/pilot incapacitated(can also be done by destroying the head) this also determines how much scrap/parts you can recover.

I highly recommend ejecting your mechwarrior from their mechs before their mech's get destroyed, Mechs can be repaired but Mechwarriors only live once.

There are also terrain features such as trees to hide for a damage reduction, a lake to dissipate more heat, or a radioactive fields that mess up with your mech's systems.

Biomes are also something to think about, snow biome are good for heat intensive mechs while deserts and the moon biome is very bad for heat intensive mechs.

And that pretty much sums up the combat.

The Scoring.

AND THAT'S IT.

MISC.