/v/ - Video Games

What game is in the screenshots?

>>15093827

Microsoft Excel

>>15093827

MekHQ, the open source Campaign Manager for MegaMek, which is in itself the open source version of the Battletech system in its entirety, though still being worked on. It includes all current units, the ability to create almost any unit (they're still working on Jumpships and Protomechs), and allows customisation of just about every element, including whether to use nuclear weapons in violation of the Ares Convention.

>>15093841

Looks alot better and more indepth then nubattletech.

>>15094439

Can confirm this is the case. I've been playing this campaign long enough that Gauss Rifles have been invented, become Lostech and been rediscovered.

I'm another 28 years until the Clans start invading, but that gives me time to start upgrading to prepare for them.

>>15097952

I never figured out how to actually play a match in that game, pretty complicated shit but maybe I'm just a brainlet.

>>15097958

I could draw up a PDF and provide some quick starter guides if anyone is interested.

From what I remember, a while back I wrote a .txt file with about 70 steps guiding you through pretty much everything, but it could probably be trimmed down and streamlined.

MegaMek itself is astoundingly easy to set up, the campaign less so.

>>15098006

Well you can choose where to position, you can use artillery to deny flanking, you can use cheap planes like the Boomerang for spotting and to keep an eye on your enemy, but there is always the chance that an enemy might get a lucky shot with an AC/20 and blow your head clean off.

In those cases, your pilot dies, but nine times out of ten, a Mech goes down from losing its engine or becomes immobile from losing a leg. If a Mech is immobile, the pilot can be recovered with only a few injuries like bruises and cuts, but hopefully nothing more serious.

I did have a pilot who fell over in his Mech and came back with his brain haemorrhaging.

>>15098006

>If the game has RNG:It's bullshit.

Nearly every game has RNG to some degree beyond damage ranges or crits. Which path does a NPC take, which move they use, who they target, their starting positions etc. YOU try making the Chess of the modern age and try to get it to stick. If your point is that most games are shit, I concur, but not because of RNG.

>If the game can kill you off without warning:It's bullshit.

If the game gives you space to prepare for an encounter which might kill you without warning, it's not bullshit imo. Compare Urkis in ToME (suicide unless you pack lighting resistance which you have plenty of time to source gear for) with bullshit like Grinder in DCSS (can roll to paralyze and DYWYPI on sight long before you get any resistance). You cover this later though.

>If you can avoid death through careful planning and good plays:It's not bullshit.

>>15098030

What was the one screen shot I saw where some light mech got a lucky shot on a dashi. It blew it srm rack or something hurting the pilot. Then as it tried to move through a building away the building can down on it, causing another internal to go critical killing the pilot.

I guess its like the animation, its awesome for the same reason it sucks.

>>15098114

Things like that happen. You should never try to move through a sky scraper as a 100 ton Mech anyway, but yeah, unless the Mech has CASE (which most Clan Mechs do), detonating ammo can take the whole side of the torso off. At the point you're losing a Daishi though, you're probably losing one of your best pilots as well.

bumping for stories about how you managed to get your precious troops killed in the most unfortunate and pointless ways.

I positioned an LRM carrier on top of a hill for line of sight. On the first turn, it sucked up 8 PPC shots, 2 AC/10 shots and 3 LRM10 salvos.

All crew were lost, and the jump troopers positioned around it all went up in flames in the same turn due to the ammo explosions.

>>15100271

Find me a game that doesn't rely on RNG

>>15093821

Sengoku rance has permadeath for units that get annihilated, though not always, and the odds are affected by stuff like how it died.

>>15097996

Is it multiplayer or singleplayer? Don't know shit about megamek.

>>15098006

>>15093821

Its not an issue with the dice of the game, but a problem with either how the game or you value a character.

XCOM 2, as an example, took some soul from the fluff creation of table top. You can customize characters for hours, picking the best cosmetics, send them in as a unique squad. The best comparision is W40k Kill Team, where it is focused on a small squad to platoon sized unit. That's where the line gets drawn, and the differences start to manifest.

For a new game of Kill Team, you just have to retable your firgures that you spent time painting and kitbashing. Gameplay on the table doesn't have to affect their fluff, nor does the 10 quid figurine have to go in the trash. XCOM 2, however, will make characters dead, and it will have ramifications on both the fluff and the crunch. The death of anything sargaent or above usually can bring games to a screeching halt, because now, the star character squad is crippled.

XCOM 2 really is the worst in an "in your face" departement when it comes to unit deaths. There is a heavy grind to get characters leveled up, and no way that low level characters can be usable, or level fast enough to make an impact on the game. The game has placed a huge value on keeping elites inexpendable, and making rookies unfieldable except when the game forces the player's hand. It also doesn't help when the players spend some time downloading mods, putting in some personalization, and see all of that work go up in smoke with a kill cam shot. No one can effectively slot a rookie without a huge impact on combat effectiness, garenteeing that someone important will get shot at.

This oversight in the gameplay flies in the face of UFO Defence, where rookies are encouraged to be taken (they get a morale buff with higher ranks arround, and can take the bullet instead), and the death of an elite or two in the span of 3 months doesn't put the game in jeporady (but a large handful of them can). The only personalization that can take place in UFO Defence is just the name - that name belongs just to a face in a sea of faces with some stats who are prepared for death. Their monetary value is $80,000 and 2 days, slightly less then the sale price of a plasma pistol.

Presistent death is fine, as long as the player or the game does not place significant value on the characters. There is a noticable difference to how XCOM2 and X-COM: UFO defence are played because of how important characters are maded.

>>15098006

This is part of the issue with text based games I've found, without visuals it's harder to tell when something is trapped unless you check every single stone you step on, every box, every door, every bag, every everything all the time constantly

with visuals you can see something's up sometimes at a glance, in text based games you have to stop everything and waste time staring hard at whatever it is for a while

>>15102755

Both, MegaMek itself is a client which can connect to others or a server. MegaMek is the skirmish and battlefield, MekHQ is the Campaign Map as it were.

>>15102939

>All this

I agree, having a valuable trooper be irreplaceable and having rookies being totally useless flies in the face of any gameplay logic.

In a hard game, people are going to die.

In a tight spot, people are going to die.

In an unlucky situation, people are going to die.

If the game is going to encourage that you get attached to characters, they have to have some element of customisation and control, hopefully as well as a recorded history of some sort to show their progress.

If a valuable trooper dies, it can mean something, but if they're a lynchpin of the game, it can bring things to a screeching halt and make the game less enjoyable. If one can continue to train and progress further without losing much momentum, the game can be more enjoyable for it, as long as the game continues in a slow difficulty progression rather than spiking from mission to mission in a punishing way.

Bonus points if a character can develop fluff quirks based around personality which doesn't necessarily translate into crunch.

That being said, I was never very good at the Xcom or X-COM games, as I never gave them much time. I did complete Xenonauts though, for whatever that's worth.