How much of a Paradox game is Battletech now?

[Nightskies]

I very much like Battletech. And have a strong dislike of Paradox. As usual, it appears that mods are the difference between good replayability or 'should-have-never-bought-it'.

Is this the right impression? And if so, are the modders getting support with the updates, or are the updates at least not breaking their work?

Tried searching for an existing answer, but there are 142 pages of topics including "Paradox". Emphasis title. Short answers would suffice. More opinions would be better.

[Wantoomany]

Its not a Paradox title, the base game was released before Paradox bought Harebrained.

The DLC is not required, same with mods, I've played the game for hundreds of hours without either.

If you want mods, there are plenty of options available on the Nexus.

[desrtfox071]

The DLC were released prior to Paradox buying HBS as well. It's entirely HBS.

[Doom monkey]

I absolutely love this game, but just be warned that the performance is not what it should be, and apparently, there won't be any updates. The mod community is awesome though and there are literally 3 or 4 big mods that effectively make the game 4 in 1. Vanilla, BEX, BTA and Roguetech.

It's a shame because a decent programmer and some time and they could probably fix a lot of the most glaring performance problems.

[wesnef]

Originally posted by Nightskies:

As usual, it appears that mods are the difference between good replayability or 'should-have-never-bought-it'.

Personally, I've never bought any Paradox games, so I can't comment on them. I've played tabletop BT since 1987, never played any of the other digital games.

I played this game around 1100 hours before bothering to try any mods, multiple playthroughs of both Campaign (story) & Career (sandbox/score-attack) modes. Obviously, this was somewhat aided by the fact I bought the game before any DLC were out, and then pre-ordered the season pass, so every time a DLC (and content/balance patch) came out, I was able to play the game again somewhat differently.

But yeah - the game is perfectly playable without DLC or mods, the DLC are nice because they add more variety (since most of the game is Randomly Generated Missions, more variety is a nice thing), and mods add varying levels of Even More Stuff, depending on your preferences.
(there are three popular "major" mod compilations. All of them add more mechs, weapons, and vehicles. But they add different amount of additional rules & complexity. From Battletech Extended 3025, to Battletech Advanced 3062, to Roguetech.)



---
It's kind of interesting that over the last couple years (since the game was declared 'done'), we've had both threads saying "OMG, evil Paradox game, they'll bury us in DLC!" and "OMG, why is this game abandoned, they should be putting out MOAR DLC!"
:D

[pete]

Originally posted by Doom monkey:

I absolutely love this game, but just be warned that the performance is not what it should be, and apparently, there won't be any updates. The mod community is awesome though and there are literally 3 or 4 big mods that effectively make the game 4 in 1. Vanilla, BEX, BTA and Roguetech.

It's a shame because a decent programmer and some time and they could probably fix a lot of the most glaring performance problems.

And what should the performance be - oh world famous game developer?

[Praxis-W]

I'm no game dev, but theoretically someone could fix the infamous memory leak.

Realistically though, with all the modding and tweaking people have done over the years, I'm guessing whatever was fixable by the community has been tried already.

[Kornstalx]

Originally posted by Praxis-W:

I'm no game dev, but theoretically someone could fix the infamous memory leak.

Realistically though, with all the modding and tweaking people have done over the years, I'm guessing whatever was fixable by the community has been tried already.

It's only a problem with huge mods, that's the issue. It stem from Unity garbage collection and isn't evident in the core game itself; the leaking only raises its head when you try to turn the engine into something it's not.

That said, any beefy gaming rig will power right through it, and the big modpack teams have learned enough to minimize it (RT specifically limits the number of voice/audio changes because that is a huge source of the garbage collection issues beyond vanilla).

[SQW]

Originally posted by Doom monkey:

I absolutely love this game, but just be warned that the performance is not what it should be, and apparently, there won't be any updates. The mod community is awesome though and there are literally 3 or 4 big mods that effectively make the game 4 in 1. Vanilla, BEX, BTA and Roguetech.

It's a shame because a decent programmer and some time and they could probably fix a lot of the most glaring performance problems.

I must add XAI mod to your list for anyone who prefer BT with a light tweak.

If I want to play TT on PC, I'd just play MekHQ. What does 1000+ new mech and tank variants even add to the vanilla experience anyway? MWO didn't get better with more mech packs and unlimited mechbay.

Performance wise, I think as long as you have an SSD and restart the game every 2hrs, it's a non-issue in 2022. I have a mid range rig and play on max setting at 60fps and missions takes 10sec to load.

[Jamie Wolf]

Originally posted by SQW:

I must add XAI mod to your list for anyone who prefer BT with a light tweak.

If I want to play TT on PC, I'd just play MekHQ. What does 1000+ new mech and tank variants even add to the vanilla experience anyway? MWO didn't get better with more mech packs and unlimited mechbay.

You are aware that the big 3 add alot more than just new mechs right?

As for what do new mechs add to the experience, plenty, they add new build possibilities that aren't present in vanilla via different hardpoint configurations. They classic units that many people like and want but are not present in the base game. They can and do make factions feel more distinct when setup right. In vanilla every faction can use every mech, which makes them all the feel the same. With more variety of units and modded the right way, each faction feels more unique when you fight them because they have distinct units and variants

[maerchen]

And if you are not aware about the game changes the mods offer:

With a fully upgraded Argo you can field up to 8 Mechs, 4 vehicles/VTOLs and 4 power armours at once in each mission and command airstrikes, chose your own drop zone and fight on Solaris VII.

And that's not everything. Enemy factions now do drop lances or stars, depending on their ideology.

[Kornstalx]

Originally posted by SQW:

I must add XAI mod to your list for anyone who prefer BT with a light tweak.

My problem with XAI is it uses the Pilot Perks/Traits mod.

That mod is broken and abandoned. You will spend dozens of hours investing in a specific mechwarrior, only to find out some key Trait they have is broken (Bookish is particularly egregious.) People either need to fork and fix that mod, or drop it completely.

BEX uses Pilot Perks/Traits mod as well, and it's broken there in the same ways.

[pete]

Originally posted by Kornstalx:

Originally posted by SQW:

I must add XAI mod to your list for anyone who prefer BT with a light tweak.

My problem with XAI is it uses the Pilot Perks/Traits mod.

That mod is broken and abandoned. You will spend dozens of hours investing in a specific mechwarrior, only to find out some key Trait they have is broken (Bookish is particularly egregious.) People either need to fork and fix that mod, or drop it completely.

BEX uses Pilot Perks/Traits mod as well, and it's broken there in the same ways.

What's wrong with the Perks/Traits thingy in BEX?

[Jamie Wolf]

Originally posted by Kornstalx:

BEX uses Pilot Perks/Traits mod as well, and it's broken there in the same ways.

BEX's latest version switched away from pilot quirks for its quirk system and to mech affinity, which is still maintained and I'm not aware of any bugs with its quirk system (and I say that as affinity's author)

[Doom monkey]

Originally posted by pete:

Originally posted by Doom monkey:

I absolutely love this game, but just be warned that the performance is not what it should be, and apparently, there won't be any updates. The mod community is awesome though and there are literally 3 or 4 big mods that effectively make the game 4 in 1. Vanilla, BEX, BTA and Roguetech.

It's a shame because a decent programmer and some time and they could probably fix a lot of the most glaring performance problems.

And what should the performance be - oh world famous game developer?

I'm a programmer and was a game developer back in the day. The performance is absolutely atrocious. Taking seconds to load a list of 20 pilots? Taking seconds to load an inventory tab? They clearly made huge mistakes with their unity implementation and never went back and fixed them.

The game takes 2 minutes to load a savegame ffs, on a fast modern computer. And when its done, it isn't like it has everything it needs loaded up, it still has to load new missions, load the mechbay, etc. If you aren't critical of the performance in this game, then you just don't know anything about it.

[pete]

Originally posted by Doom monkey:

Originally posted by pete:

And what should the performance be - oh world famous game developer?

I'm a programmer and was a game developer back in the day. The performance is absolutely atrocious. Taking seconds to load a list of 20 pilots? Taking seconds to load an inventory tab? They clearly made huge mistakes with their unity implementation and never went back and fixed them.

The game takes 2 minutes to load a savegame ffs, on a fast modern computer. And when its done, it isn't like it has everything it needs loaded up, it still has to load new missions, load the mechbay, etc. If you aren't critical of the performance in this game, then you just don't know anything about it.

Sorry I asked. Life must be so difficult for you to have to wait 2 mins. How do you cope while waiting at traffic lights or for the hot water to come through for a shower. Better not get to liking those 3 min tonoodles.