BattleTech (my review here) was a pretty decent if flawed entry into my beloved BattleTech Universe by HareBrained Schemes which finally sated the MechCommander cravings that many gamers of a certain vintage had. Despite the campaign being quite interesting and with an okay storyline, there were many flaws in the game and there was very little incentive to go and play the sandbox.
RogueTech (My First Impressions here) is a community made mod that aims to make the entire BattleTech sandbox experience a more challenging affair, with the real financial scrimping and scavenging that comes from running an interstellar mercenary BattleMech lance... trying to navigate and survive the political hazards and machinations of the Great Houses, Clans and Periphery powers, whilst trying to turn enough of a profit to keep your outfit fed and out of the gutter.
The game really captures that edge of ruin feeling that comes with running a lance of BattleMechs without a royal employer, that feeling that we all enjoyed so much from the TableTop version of the game. You are constantly on the edge of disaster, with each tiny gem of a victory being hard won and hopefully not being outweighed by the time and financial costs of repairing your BattleMechs!
This is a game for the hardcore... it is seriously going to challenge your character! But some of us really enjoy that sort of thing!
Installation
The first time that I installed the RogueTech mod, the installation was a little bit arcane and hacked together at best... a sort of unwelcome revisit of the old school PC gaming past. Since then, there has been a proper installer developed... however, there are still quite a few pitfalls for the unwary.
First up you will need the Installer and the Community Assets Bundle, which can be found at NexusMods. Note that the Installer is pretty small... but the Assets Bundle is pretty large at 2-3GB, and your download speed is pretty slow on NexusMods unless you have a paid subscription. So, leave yourself a bit of time to get that Bundle!
Next up, you will need to ROLLBACK your BattleTech version to the appropriate version that is defined by the installation wiki here... You will need to right click on the BattleTech game listing in your game library and go to "Properties" then opt into "Betas" and select your version number. At the time that I installed my version I needed BattleTech v1.7.1, however it appears that the latest RogueTech Launcher/Installer is now compatible with v1.9.
Run the Launcher/Installer... and READ CAREFULLY! This is a complete overhaul for the vanilla game that packages a huge amount of sub-mods. So, there are a huge amount of different installation configurations and packages that will be need checked. Just as a little hint, DEFINITELY INSTALL any mods that improve performance... BattleTech runs like a pig on most systems (including high powered ones) and you will need every little bit of help that you can get!
NOTE: The process has been streamlined with a single Laucher/Updater/Installer now. I guess the developer got sick of answering support questions about the Installation!
The Mod
As I had mentioned earlier in the review, RogueTech is a complete overhaul of the vanilla BattleTech game as a "Rogue-like" hardcore sandbox. It imports all the tabletop rules, from Clans to experimental weapons along with a seriously huge catalogue of Mechs and Vehicles. It is a BattleTech nerd's wet dream! The emphasis is on the struggle and the hard-fought wins (and learning to cope with the losses), the way that games sued to be before all of this super-charged testosterone fantasy sort of thing (I blame the console kiddies...)!
When you fire up your new game... you are presented with a huge array of universe and difficulty options. Don't get a big head here... the game on default is VISCOUS! This is war and there is no hand-holding... you will get slaughtered... most likely in the first few months (or even the first mission!) until you get the hang of things.
This is not like the vanilla BattleTech, where you are playing through a guided story. Here, there is no mercy for a beginning mercenary company. You are a gnat that is playing on a battlefield populated by elephants... you will get stomped on if you aren't smart!
RogueTech starts you off with the Argo dropship. From here it is pretty familiar territory for the game, with the same set of menus on the left that affect the Metagame of running the company. However, as you start to open those menus, you find that everything is not the same... there is much more detail and great deal more complexity!
The Argos has a greater degree of customisation that is possible. You will definitely want to be expanding your Mech bay, to be better able to handle the rotation of repairs and active duty Mechs. A notable inclusion is the extra Leopard-class dropship (which is really expensive!), allowing you to field another lance (4 Mechs) in Battle. The low unit count of the vanilla game was one of the biggest gripes of the game... especially when the OpFor was fielding sizes at least twice to three times your numbers!
The Mechwarriors that comprise your company are your lifeblood and they have a greater degree of traits that affect combat modifiers and non-combat dialogues in a pretty meaningful way. They are also much more central to the way that the combat plays out. Initiative is now calculated as a combination between the skills of the Mechwarrior and the weight class (much more granulated weight classes as well!) of the BattleMech itself. So, it is not longer purely a case of lighter faster, heavier slower... and you really really want to get that first mover advantage on the battlefield!
The specials that you acquire after hitting a certain proficiency in a particular skill are also tweaked from the vanilla version, mostly to make the less "interesting" skill trees much more viable. In the Vanilla version, you would pretty much bump up Piloting and Gunnery... here, you will need to specialise a bit more if you want an effective lance.... you won't always just be fielding the heaviest possible lance as the light Mechs have some serious use with the extra equipment on offer... they are no longer just cannon fodder!
Wow... the Universe Sandbox that you have to play in is just HUGE! It seems to be the entire Inner Sphere, Periphery and some Clan space as well! The contracts on offer (now around 10 per planet updated constantly instead of the measly 2-3 of the original) are also a vast variety of difficulties... go hard to get that sweet loot and C-Bills... but be prepared to cop a hefty repair bill.... if you even make it back alive!
This is a sample of the missions on offer, a huge selection... and half-skull missions are already more than a match for a starting Mech outfit. I would suggest that you turn on the option where the contract difficulties are linked to planet types rather than scaling with your company.
Well... if this screen of the Mech Editor doesn't fill you with extreme feelings of joy and excitement, then half of the RogueTech experience is going to be completely lost on you. RogueTech is all about surviving and scrounging parts and C-Bills to keep your mercenary lance running and in the black. This means that you will be constantly juggling, tweaking and jury-rigging your Mechs with whatever bits and pieces that you have salvaged off the battlefield. A componenet that goes BOOM is not likely to have a replacement in a quick hurry (unless you happen to have a stock, and trust me... at the start, you have NO stock!).
So, you are going to have to just make do with what you have. It also means that going up against the higher tech Clan and Comstar units is quite lucrative if you survive as it means that there might be some advanced tech in the smoldering ruins of their Mechs!
On the tactical field, there is not too much that is different. Your Mechs can now Sprint and Shoot (with the hefty accuracy penalty) and the AI is now much more vicious (except for the friendly AI which is a touch on the useless side... often showing you with missiles and friendly fire and oddly avoiding direct combat and preferring indirect fire).
However, due to the greater amount of equipment in play, there is a greater variety of tactics at play as well. Light Mechs have a greater input into the game as their speed now actually makes them really hard to hit and the Electronic Warfare section of the game really can make your life quite difficult if you are on the wrong end of it! Now, it isn't just good enough to bring your heaviest Mechs and guns to the battle... if you are blind and can't hit anyone it doesn't matter!
More emphasis is now placed on not getting hit and damaged, as the metagame really emphasises the lack of C-Bills and salvage to repair with. This places you in a much harder spot, you really need to kill the enemy to get that salvage and bonus contract completions... but can you really afford to take the extra punishment?
Visuals, Sound and Performance
Visuals are okay... I like to think of the game as a digital rendition of the tabletop experience, so the actual visuals are not that important. If you are able to pump the graphics settings up, then it looks decent enough... but it really isn't that pretty a game!
However, that really brings us to the really critical point... the performance of the game. This is a huge total overhaul of a mod running on a base engine that really was terribly optimised to begin with.... so, the actual performance of the game is pretty poor for a modern game. I run the game on relatively decent hardware... and I get pretty long load times (on the order of half a minute...) and hangs in the AI turns. People with much better hardware still run into problems!
A few iterations back on the RogueTech versions, the performance was absolutely terrible! I was talking about multi-minute AI turns and load times. It really was only for the hardcore nerd that really wanted to play a open sandbox hardcore version of BattleTech.
Even worse, during the tactical missions you can not save... so, if the AI hangs or just crashes the game... there goes an hour of your playing life! Even worse if you managed to take out a highly advanced Clan Mech with a stupidly lucky head shot that killed the MechWarrior and left the entire gold mine intact!
However, the version that I just installed has really improved things to a point where I'm enjoying playing and not considering to uninstall the game completely. I have no idea whether it was the updated vanilla version or the updated RogueTech version that did the trick... but now, it is a joy to play! I'm even considering upping the graphics details back up...
Conclusion
RogueTech is the definitive MechCommander successor.... it is hardcore... it will eat you up tactically and ruin you in the strategic metagame! However, it THE game that BattleTech should have been.
I love the games where you are struggling and eking out every little drop of victory in a hard fought grind... where every decision could mean disaster, and disaster just is another road bump that needs to be overcome with sheer will and determination.
If you love big stompy Mechs and BattleTech was your childhood love... then this is currently the ONLY version of BattleTech that you will want to have on your SSD (HDDs will cry at this game...). Sure, the vanilla BattleTech is okay... but the only reason for its existence is to act as a base layer for this awesomely ambitious mod!
Review Hardware
Played at 1080p (144Hz) on:
Intel BX80662I76700 Core i7-6700 Prozessor (3,4GHz)
6GB EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC GAMING
GIGABYTE Z170N-WIFI
Ballistix Sport LT 16GB DDR4
Samsung 960 EVO M.2 512GB
S4 Mini Case (NFC Systems)
Splinterlands (aka the best blockchain game out there!)
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