BattleTech - Interviews

Eye found two interviews for Battletech, which is currently on Kickstarter.

US Gamer come with 7 things they think you should know about the game.

Mechs and MechWarriors Will be Deep and Complex

BattleTech will be a turn-based title for modern PCs. This means Weisman and company have the chance to render the game's mechs in far greater detail than was previously possible. This isn't just from a graphics standpoint though. Instead, Harebrained wants your mech design choices to directly affect your gameplay. 

"Those mechs are going to be rendered in great detail from a system standpoint," said Weisman. "One of the things I want to do is make sure that Mech Lab/Mech Design components have a stronger causal link between the design and the performance of the mechs. Obviously, you've got weapons and armor, but I want to dive deeper than that." 

"The gyro and actuators you put in should have an impact on your performance," he explained. "I want to get into things like turning radiuses; the sharper your turning radius, the more the mech has a chance of falling over. Having your gyro have an impact on not just your turning radius, but also your chances of falling over when you take hits, which depends on your gyro-to-mass ratio. With a turn-based game, we can really express more axes of performance than we could in MechWarrior as a real-time sim. We can get to that kind of depth without it being cumbersome." 

Gameinformer has talked with Harebrained Schemes’ Jordan Weisman, Mitch Gitelman and Mike McCain.

“It’s a new set of mechanics, but the goal is to model it heavily on the spirit of the tabletop,” Weisman explains. Feel is more important than strict adherence to what already exists. “I designed those mechanics 31 years and not for use by computer. In some respect, we can get closer to the spirit of the tabletop without using those mechanics.”

“It’s gotta feel like Battletech,” Gitelman says. While the team is still prototyping systems, they are pushing towards movement and risk/reward that mirrors what players experience while gathered around the tabletop with friends. Part of that is allowing a more methodical approach to combat.

Unlike MechCommander, which was a real-time game, Harebrained Schemes is taking advantage of the more thoughtful pace of turn-based play. “The biggest thing to me is the discreet understanding of risk and reward,” Weisman says. “In a real-time game, you can’t be shooting all these numbers at a player and expect them to make intelligent decisions. In a turn-based game, we can tell you what your chances of falling over are if you plot a really tight turn for a mech that’s moving fast. We can tell you what your chances of success are for a weapon group when you’re targeting a mech through intervening terrain.”