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[Mephansteras]

Yup. And I appreciate upfront information like this.

[Neonivek]

I expect delays.

I remember back when delays were so common that you basically could NEVER trust a release date and was like "Ok, take whatever the release day is... and add 6 months" or something like that.

[Hanzoku]

And even then, you were still being pretty optimistic. But yeah, I'll join the general chorus of 'better good then on time', and 'I appreciate the upfront honesty about why.'

[Dohon]

Another Q&A happend.

Spoiler: Transcription (click to show/hide)

• People present: Mitch Gitelman, Mike McCain, Tyler Carpenter.
• Beta (AJ Bolden) works on the Mercenary simulation aspect of the game. His Death from above Character Beta will not be in the backer beta. If his character will be in the full game, maybe. To be determined (TBD).
• Beta will have both PVE and PVP. So, skirmish against AI and other players.
• Upgrading Unity (the game engine) has resulted in software rendering has gotten some optimization. The game runs faster.
• Despite the fast few weeks begin difficult because of the development problems (regarding the upgrades), the team handled the situation pretty well according to Mitch and Mike. The level of f-words didn't spike, but remained constant. F-words are a part of development process at HBS. But really, *** happens and the development tried to work longer hours in order to muddle through.
• You'll be able to save your game mid-mission.
• You won't be able to save your game when in multiplayer.
• Romello Jones (character from Death From Above) may or may not be in the full game. TBD.
• If ammo takes a critical hit, the following will happen. The first will disable the ammo feed (meaning you can't draw ammo from that location anymore). The second blows up the ammo that is stored in that location.
• Critical hits function pretty much like in the tabletop game. Critical hits can destroy internal structure, sever arms or legs, etc...
• In the campaign game, Farah Murad is your ships engineer. She is the one responsible for upgrading your Argo DropShip. Yang Virtanen is your Head MechTech and oversees your Mekbays. With regards to upgrading and repairing Mechs, over the course of the campaign,
  you'll have a growing number of MechTechs that will take on the different repair and refit tasks that came through your workqueue.
• Melee does not damage your own Mech, except in the case of the Death From Above attack (INFO: Death From Above is an attack made by a Mech equipped with jumpjets. The Mech launches itself through the air and tries to land on the enemy Mech. Also called a "Highlander Burial" in the BattleTech universe.)
• There isn't a list of Mechs that will be in the beta. The number will be around 20 and the UrbanMech will surely be in the beta.
• HBS is also considering the idea that if a critical hit damages an already destroyed location, it will result in additional damage.
• Infantry will not be in the release version of the game.
• Your commander, the character you create at the start of the campaign, will be a Mechwarrior with a Mech. You are of a Noble background and you will have different selections that tell just how you came to be a Mercenary. There are no character classes and customization will allow you to make your commander look like you (hopefully).
• Artillery and airstrikes on a cooldown. You are able to take a support vehicle on a mission. If you take an artillery vehicle, you will have off-screen artillery support that launches a big shell and provides a big impact on one location. If you took an Aerospace fighter, you can do airstrikes, resulting in a strafing run and bombs falling across a path. There are also vehicles that provide passive abilities, like taking a field hospital would mean that your MechWarriors are more likely to survive.
• MechTechs will be hireable like MechWarriors.
• The Mechs in BattleTech are the same models as found in MechWarrior online. HBS had to do a lot more animation work because the Mechs can move in different ways not available in MechWarrior Online (fall down, get up, punch, kick). The texturing of the Mech is also being handed differently by HBS.
• Mission dialogue should be for the most part be voiced during story missions. A mission will have for instance "interrupts" where for instance an important update is presented by pausing the game and having some characters talk. There will also be conversations when switching turns, having a character say "you know, I grew up on this planet, etc ...". That is all voiced. During non-story missions (the randomly generated ones), there might be some voiced parts.
• There will be about 50 Mech Variants (NOTE: Mike said that the full Mech roster including variants was 50, to which Mitch added something, but it wasn't entirely clear to me.). Those variants are straight from tabletop. You can customize Mechs and switch out weapons, but you'll be bound to the weapon hardpoints. Variants allow you to have Mechs with different hardpoints.
• The Legendary Mechwarriors that were unlocked are accessible in the campaign game, but if they will be in the skirmish mode, remains te be determined.
• The weapon effects and the like are made by HBS themselves. The ones that MechWarrior online uses are designed for use when inside a Mech Cockpit. Creating audio for the BattleTech game is different.
• The Singleplayer campaign is linear. It is comparable to Grand Theft Auto or Shadow of Mordor. You have a broad map where missions pop up, both story missions and random missions. That means you can interact with the story when you want to, but the story missions will stay the same and more will unlock as you progress.
• The Devs at HBS will be having matches between themselves live on Twitch.
• The support vehicles (artillery, aerospace, ...) will be upgradeable or have better versions be bought by the player, allowing you to improve their performance.
• The campaign system is being developed with flexible tags. For instance, it is possible that if a planet is "conquered" for the Aurigan Restoration, it could be that merchants on that planet provide cheaper merchandise.
• There probably won't be a "drop limit" or something that limits how heavy your lance for a mission will be. In the campaign game, your limit will more have to do with resources available to you. You can run a lance with 4 Atlases, but you will need to find / buy 4 of them AND be able to keep them running. You are a mercenary and money is a big thing. In multiplayer, C-Bills (NOTE: The currency in BattleTech) will the balancer as your Mechs, their variants and the quality of Mechwarriors combined will result in a certain C-Bill value.
  
• You will not able to have Vehicles as a part of your Unit Roster, but they may be provided to you as support by a client.
• There is a small weapons hardpoint, reserved for smaller weapons like machineguns, flamers and small lasers.
• Multiplayer will be run through a server.
• You repair Mechs at the Argo, though you will have to unlock more Mekbays and more Mech repair capability by upgrading the Dropship and thus, spending money and resources.
• HBS is currently iterating the campaign game and they are looking into how to differentiate MechTechs from one another. It might be that more experienced Techs repair faster or that their skills affect the ability to customize a Mech. Very heavily work in progress.
• You can fail the game by having no more functioning Mechs and running out of money.
• Beta will probably be a few gigabytes big.
• The final release date will be subject to market conditions and thus, BattleTech will not release close to another big blockbuster. HBS has done that once in the past and it had a painful impact.
• It is possible that player receives faulty intel. Mission briefing might state that you will face a medium lance and in-mission, you discover it is a heavy lance.
• In the game, you cannot displace a Mech, space-wise. This was cut some time ago. This means you won't be able to charge a Mech, because a charge would imply you knock the Mech backwards.
• The process for choosing which Mechs will be in the game started by first checking which Mechs were available in the Inner Sphere in 3025. Then, they compared that list to the Mechs that Piranha had created. After that, a few Mechs were filtered out due to capabilities, loadout, ... Also how long it would to get it in the game was a factor, as well as how popular a certain Mech is.
• The game will be released on Steam, Good Old Games and Humble store.
• There will not be QuadMechs.
• You can restart a mission if it goes badly for you, unless you are playing in ironman mode.
• There is no reaction fire in the game. As such, moving and jumping a Mech won't result in a reactive shot from the enemy.
• There is something like "chained contracts". Completing a contract will lead to another. But you will come back to base and be able to resupply before embarking on another contract.
• The beta might have a few more Mechs in it because of the delayed release, but not much more. The problems with the Unity upgrade and such meant that there was far less to do decent Quality Assurance (testing) for the Beta available. So, the delay means that they can do those tests HBS wanted to do. Adding more features while you are testing others is a no-no. You need to test everything before you can release it. Progress is being made on new stuff, but that won't be in the beta.
• Tools for running your own multiplayer league or ladders will probably be something for post-launch.
• Both professional voice actors and team members of HBS will provide voices for pilots.
• No new release date for the Backer Beta until HBS is really sure they will make it.
• Campaign difficulty will not depend greatly on what Mech you salvage when. It will not be like Mechcommander where in Mission 3, salvaging a Timber Wolf (Mad Cat) could make future missions easier. Campaign difficulty will be more controlled.
• There isn't going to be a specific Mechanic like a notice saying: "do this and you can catch the enemy pilots before they mount their Mechs". What is in the game, is that you have secondary objectives and fulfilling those will result in a certain bonus. Secondary objectives are not mission-critical.
• In the campaign game, you can have ultimately 18 Mechs ready at any given time for combat. More Mechs means you have to mothball the extras and put them in storage. It takes to time to put a Mech in storage or take it out of mothballs. There is no limit on how many Mechs you can have in storage.
• You will not able to have a multiplayer match, where one players controls one side and have multiple players control one Mech each on the other side. Focus is quality.
• There have been audio bits recorded from the Death From Above serie (Tyler laughing at players, Lord Commander yelling at players) and who knows, those might make it into the game at one point or another.
• You will have a stockpile of Mech Parts that are not weapons in your DropShip.
• The craziest thing that has happend in BT development is the past few weeks with technical problems that HBS struggled with. The most awesome thing to see was when the first real prototype was up and Mechs were ingame. It was still basic and ugly as sin, but the studio was filled with a lot of great energy, resulting in a lot of great debates about Mechanics and somesuch. Also, MechCon and GenCon were damn awesome.
• Actually stealing Mechs (in-mission) might be in, depending on how believable it is. Taking control of a facility that stores Mechs and receiving one of them as part of mission contract is more believable than outright stealing one.
• There is an event system. As time progress, things can happen. You can get popups like "Mechwarriors have been brawling, what you want to do?". You decide what to do and that has impact on the simulation part of the game. Having a Tech die on you because of something happend in an event for instance is possible.
• You can create emblems for your unit. You start with a primary symbol/mark, with a framing element and several colors that are added. Mechs themselves will receive the primary symbol on them, while the entire emblem will be visible on the Argo when watching the company heraldry.
• There is not going to be a grand strategic AI. Deciding what missions you do and your success at them might produced in the chained contracts mission (winning or losing contract A might result in different opfors for contract B ), but nothing more beyond that.
• Having an overarching enemy AI on the campaign map is out of scope for this game.
• There are no called shots in the game. So, no aiming at a specific location on a Mech.
• Critical hits work like in BattleTech. Once you strip the armor of a certain location on a Mech, hitting that location might result in a critical hit and depending on what is in that location, might result in certain results. The ammo location results have been discussed earlier already.
• Having your Mechs painted a certain way (jungle camouflage in a jungle mission) will not provide bonuses.
• Different biomes have different terrain features. Environmental hazards are limited. Rough terrain means it is harder to move through it, while also increasing the chance that your Mech will fall down. Lava is in the game and standing in it is a Very Bad Idea.
• You might see DFA characters in the game, but actually having DFA lore cross-over into the campaign game is not going to happen.
• Missions will have difficulty ratings. Firstly, it depends on the type of mission. The ratings also change depending on how well you are equipped at the time you want to undertake the mission. Thirdly, there will be a global difficulty modifier added to it, but HBS is discussing on how to implement that exactly.
• Will you be able to acquire LosTech (INFO: Star League era technology superior to the stuff around in 3025)? Yes. How? You'll see.
• Paintschemes have been developed by HBS themselves. How it works, is that you select a paintscheme, then choose where you put your emblem. You want it on the shoulder, you want it huge on the chest, ... Then you customize the colors for the different layers for the paintscheme (primary layer, secondary and tertiary).
• The terrain representation has improved since the pre-alpha video. It is easier to differentiate trees and other terrain features. When planning your move, the UI will show whether or not your movement path will put you in a forest. If a hill is blocking your shot to another Mech, the ui "laser" will show you. There is no such thing as "heavy" or "light" woods, level 1 hill or level 3 hill. Either you can see through the forest (forest reduces LOS and provides cover) or not and either the hill is too high or it isn't.
• Buildings can be blown up (bigger buildings require more damage).
• Mechs standing on a building will fall down and receive damage if the building is destroyed.
• HBS can't confirm or deny that you will be taking missions from ComStar.
• When deploying on a mission, you will be able to choose where your Mechs will deploy exactly.
• HBS hopes that there will be urban center maps in the game. There are already maps with smaller settlements.
• There are different "variants" of weapons in the game. One AC20 for instance fires several shells while another AC20 (from a different manufacturer) fires one large shell.
• There are no inferno SRM's or LBX class autocannons in the game. Alternate ammo isn't in. If they were to be in the game (if time permits, maybe), they would be in the game as a specific variant of a weapon instead of ammo.
• HBS wants to show more gameplay video, but they are working hard on the game itself. So, please be patient, something will come.
• Radar in the game will detect Mechs at a constant range. Actually seeing them depends on the tactics skill and the gear (Mech) the pilot is working with. They tried out different sensor models during prototyping, but the current system with radar blips and line of sight works the best. And it works well, Tyler had a Locust equipped with LRM's that managed to empty its ammo racks because of the increased vision.
• There will not be a live-action intro or cut-scenes.
• Ironman mode means that the game saves after every action you take. If you reload the game, you'll come back to that last action. If you die, you are dead.
• The Shrek PPC carrier is in the game.
• The Raven is in the game and it will have an ECM module. How it will work exactly is still to be determined.
• The further an enemy unit moves during its turn, the harder it will be to hit it. Your own movement will only affect your own aiming at that enemy in a minor way. A Locust that moves very far in its turn will be hard to hit.
• There will be small news snippets that you can read during the campaign. Or at least that is planned. Think of the Shadow Lance stuff in the Shadowrun games.
• Water will affect heat-dissipation.
• There will not be specific tools released that will help in recording footage. Probably you'll be able to use the debug menu that the team uses to record some cool shots and footage.
• The team will probably release a list of weapons that you can put on your Mechs.
• There will not be API features.
• There will not be Twitch interaction features. You can stream on your own though. HBS will try to keep the corners of the UI free so that you put a picture-in-picture window in there. Try, the UI needs to display quite a lot of info.
• No minimum specifications yet. There hasn't been a full test cycle since the development update.
• There will not be repair facilities in-mission. It's something HBS has talked about a lot and they feel that if your mission needs such facilities during a mission, then your mission is too long. They rather cut up the mission in two then.
• The game is not multi-threaded. Unity does not like multi-threading.
• There will not be invasions like in the Dark Souls games.
• An Atlas can not thrown an UrbanMech in order for it to deploy faster.
• The MechLab will not be available at the beginning of the Backer Beta.
• There will updates to the game after its release. Just how much and how big those will be depends on success.
• There will be buildings large enough for Mechs to walk around in, but you won't be able to do that. You can destroy it and then walk through the rubble. Because this is BattleTech.
• There will not be Clans in the game. The game is set in 3025. The Helm Memory Core hasn't been publicly released yet, meaning advanced tech is still out of the question. The Clan invasion happens in 3050, 25 years later.

[Hanzoku]

Thanks for the transcription, sounds like a lot of good points in there.

[Kanil]

• If ammo takes a critical hit, the following will happen. The first will disable the ammo feed (meaning you can't draw ammo from that location anymore). The second blows up the ammo that is stored in that location.
• Melee does not damage your own Mech, except in the case of the Death From Above attack (INFO: Death From Above is an attack made by a Mech equipped with jumpjets. The Mech launches itself through the air and tries to land on the enemy Mech. Also called a "Highlander Burial" in the BattleTech universe.)
• In the game, you cannot displace a Mech, space-wise. This was cut some time ago. This means you won't be able to charge a Mech, because a charge would imply you knock the Mech backwards.

I'm not sure why they're able to get DFA in the game, but not charge. Don't they both involve jamming two 'mechs into one hex and sorting that out? 'course I've used DFA like twice in my entire time playing, so it's possible I misremember the rules...

Ammo not being a deathtrap is a nice change.

Thank you for the transcription.

[Flying Dice]

I suspect that they might have DFA set up so that the JJ-ing 'mech ends up adjacent rather than mucking about with displacement. Displacement attacks might be out for technical reasons, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was done specifically to avoid cheap exploitation of the system. Stuff like someone having a 'mech in cover from a heavy direct-fire assault 'mech of your own, so you charge it with a medium to knock it into the open. Even worse, since they mentioned fall damage from being on buildings when they collapse, I reckon there might be fall damage for natural cliffs &c. and they didn't want multiplayer cheese with people just ram-training 'mechs off of drops or whatever. Or to avoid stuff like people running assaults and heavies just to juggernaut through lights instead of trying to shoot them.

Pure speculation, but if I'm anywhere near right it's in the general category of avoiding metagaming silliness while compromising depth as little as possible.

That, or there's just going to be a relatively light emphasis on melee combat to begin with, so they dropped aspects of it to spend more time on other stuff.

[Kanil]

Pushing people off cliffs is the most goddamn hilarious thing, and I hope at no point did anyone involved in this game say "we could let you do that, but we don't think it'd be fun."

I guess my thought is that whatever system they're using to handle DFAs could probably also be used to handle charges. Not that I think charges desperately need to be in the game, but it just seems odd to say "We can't do it because..." when they've already solved that problem for a similar attack.

[NullForceOmega]

DFA and charge are not similar, when executing DFA the attacking 'mech is randomly scattered to an adjacent hex.  Charge works completely differently, by 'attempting' to displace the target in a straight line, not even remotely mechanically alike.

[Dohon]

New Kickstarter Update is out.

In short, no new date for the beta yet (they want to be sure that they'll make it). They did share some new screenshots of the game and they released part 02 of the Backer novella's.

[Dohon]

Another Q&A session happend. Also, if you want to hear some music, be sure to watch these two videos by the composer working for BattleTech here and here.

Spoiler: Content Summary (click to show/hide)

QUESTIONS FOR CHRIS ECK

• People present: Mitch Gitelman, Mike McCain, Tyler Carpenter, Christopher Eck
• Christopher Eck is a tools developer. He makes tools that aid in developping the game. Those tools help with automating repetitive tasks modify 3rd party assets to make them useful to HBS, the map editor, ... He basically has HBS employees as his customers.
• The hardest tool to make was when Eck had to get map data to live in a "weird state". There was a non-Unity server, but the map tools were in Unity. Getting both to play nice was and is hard.
• The tool Eck is the most proud of is creating one with dynamic logic, allowing designers (some who don't have a big coding background) to listen to certain events and then add events using their own custom logic. For example, you have your Mechs marching to a certain point and then a message pops up "we reached the dropzone, we got incoming". As a designer, you can then write what happens, how many enemies and how they should act.
• Eck first started off helping the art team, creating with pipeline automation and the maptool and terrain editing. Lately, he's more involved with the game designers, working hard on the mapdesign tools and the encounter logic going.
• When designing a game, you'll be asking yourself which tools you need in order to make the game. As the game progresses, you start to have "wouldn't it be cool to have X in the game" moments. Those are both the best and the worst moments of game development, depending on where in development you are. Right now, HBS is in the stage where you either go "cool, but we shouldn't do it" or "cool, what do we need to trade out in order to get it in".
• Eck started out designing tools for gameslot machines (first job ever). Also a lot of hobby experience with regards to games and developing them. Otherwise, it's mostly business related. His last big job was creating licensing software for the state of California. Eck loves programming. There are a lot of similarities between game development and business development. The first allows you to show off what you created and have people impressed by it. The latter is more dry ("hey, we can merge those two customers together more efficiently").
• Working at a game development studio is more HR-focused according to Eck. The leadership is far more honest, they report more on what is happening.
• When they were looking for a tool developer, Mitch (as head HR-guy) was looking to see whether a candidate would "fit" in the studio or not. There is a human algebra to creating games. Collobaration and communication is important. When going through the interview "loop" (meeting with all kinds of people and have them ask questions), Mitch found out that Eck is honest. He can ask the hard questions, something that Mitch adores as studio manager. For instance, during Eck's first week, Mitch had to fire someone
  and Eck asked why he was fired.
• Turning his BattleTech hobby into a job was quite scary for Eck. He had to uproot his family and his fear of change approaches the fear shown by Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. He lived in Tennessee for 40 years. He did this hoping the job he was going to do would be worth it. Turns out, he loves it. The team is passionate, lots of great people. He doesn't recommend that everyone does it though. A lot of jobs in game development are "churn" jobs. Those have high turn-over rates and there is a lot more supply than
  demand. There is always someone out there, willing to work longer for less compensation. If the studio is right, go for it. But if you think "I'll be happy working on any game", that is not true. Working for HBS is like a child dream come true.
• Eck also stars in the Death From Above show as a Raven pilot called Lazarus. According to Mitch, Eck is really good with that Mech.
• The Unity update wasn't a big hurdle for Eck himself. The problem wasn't with game performance, it was with editor performance. Maps loaded slower, it took minutes to test something. Disclaimer: Unity doesn't suck. It was getting the HBS homegrown stuff to work with Unity that hit a few snags. HBS has done several Unity upgrades (many, many, many times), but this time, it was more profound to the team as whole. HBS was changing source control servers and source control servers when the Unity upgrade happend and it created the perfect storm of headaches.
• The reasons why there can't be a mission editor for players ... First, the requirement of the development version of that editor was that it had to work in the Unity development environment. If players had access to it, you have access to the source code, to all the 3rd party tools included and all the assets themselves. Beyond reason one, there is also the idea of support to consider. If something breaks, Eck has to be involved personally because he wrote it. And the level of polish is just ugly.
• Creating a standalone editor is hard and takes a lot of time. It took the time of engineer (and support) during the entire development of Shadowrun Returns to get that standalone tool out. One entire year! That investment could have gone to creating a better game. The 2D presentation of Shadowrun made the tool possible too. BattleTech is 3D.
• Eck's job is different day to day. He is a problem solver. The only consistent thing in Eck's workday is that he makes coffee. Pam, the office manager likes this a lot.
• It takes Eck 6 days to grow a beard. Not a lot of chest hair too.
• Eck loves the Warhawk Mech [NOTE: That is the Masakari to you Inner Sphere Surats]. He had awesome luck in one fight where he killed 4 guys, another one came in to finish him off. He offered him Hegira [NOTE: An offer made by a Clan MechWarrior, allowing another warrior to retreat from the field without losing honor], which flipped him off and made him alpha strike Eck. Eck lived and then killed the guy the next round.
• Eck ended up being a Smoke Jaguar Clan "fan" because nobody wanted to play them in the Tukayyid scenario book. He thinks they are a bunch of space Nazi nuts. He is impressed by some legendary warriors they had, one being an Elemental warrior that wanted to be the first one on Tukayyid and he had bid away jumpjets. So he hits the ground, breaks his back and legs and then gets hopped up on Clan magical combat drugs. Eck got stuck with Smoke Jaguar. Personally, he's more of a Clan Wolf fan.
• If the studio had unlimited money, Eck would go for the ultimate game. It would be the tabletop version, but on the scale of having the entire Inner Sphere represented. You would have to worry about loading your DropShip, planning a jump, getting your troops on the ground. You'd have space battles and combined arms ground battles. Quadmechs too. But realistically, he'd shoot for a Solaris VII stable management game, third person, where you manage a team of Warriors.
• Eck wants the Hatchetman in the game and he is working on some "deals", but it probably isn't going to happen. But in success ...
• Eck likes the clans and their militaristic mindset, but he would rather play as a Merc because you have to worry about money and parts, which you wouldn't worry about as a Clan Warrior.
• Tyler is not worse at the in-house beta than Mitch. Mike is number three on the in-house leaderboard. Mitch is actually second to worst.
• Eck feels that gameplay is far superior to game atmosphere. That said, BattleTech is beautiful.
• Mitch is really excited about the game cinematics. Also shout-outs to the music, audio and special effects.
• It took Eck between 2 and 3 hours to create the paper cutout of the Leopard DropShip used in Death From Above.

30 MINUTE QUESTIONS

• HBS has hired an IT guy named Sean and he starts this friday. Also a new tester joined named Jenbo.
• Does Mitch kidnap his potential new employees in order to get them to work at HBS? No. Mike McCain however was a contractor for HBS in the beginning and when Mitch talked to him, he said "I fire 7 art directors. Please don't be number 8, Mike."
• Last stream, HBS said that they took the edge of the fastest and the slowest Mechs movement profile. The exact mathematical formule can't be recalled, but you can be sure that a Locust will still feel like the fastest Mechs (while also exploding when you breathe on it).
• The Patch given by Mike to Eck is NOT something that you'll see show up as potential merchandise.
• Beta is not coming this month. HBS has a plan and is executing it. They'll announce a date once they are confident.
• Currently, the MechLab allows to fully customize a Mech (within the hardpoint limits) and get it in a skirmish game. That's the state where it is at right now in development. They took a good look at Smurfy's Online tool and used it as a reference. It's not 1-on-1 copy of it.
• There is no day-night cycle during a mission. It's either day or it isn't.
• HBS will be there at MechCon 2017. Being at GenCon is still entirely sure. Mitch will be there though.
• The coding language used for the game is C# (C Sharp). Json too.
• You want to fight Mitch 1-on-1 in the Beta? Get in line.
• HBS is talking and working on how to make each of the weapon families (Autocannon, Missiles, Lasers) viable.
• Work on the AI continues. It has proven to be quite good at using Jumpjets. It can jump away when being pressed, but it can also jump at you.
• Any plans after BattleTech? Yes. Sleep and a few stiff drinks are included.
• There was talk of Mechs having a ton of free ammo, but that isn't the case. If you want to launch a Mech into battle without ammo, the game will notify you and ask if you are sure you want to launch without ammo.
• Going to your next mission, you first start out browsing the contract offers available in the system. These will be short, providing general info. Once you select one, you get more info on who is offering it, what the negotiation options are, and so on. If you accept that mission, you are taken to the lance assignment screen and you get your true mission briefing. It's mostly in a picture and text format, but there might be some general soundbits as well.
• You can have an assymetrical PVP match. For instance, one assault against four light Mechs. It is a toggle that you enable when creating a match.
• The same for stock Mechs. If you don't toggle the option on, customized Mechs are allowed in that PVP match.
• The Archer Mech probably won't make it into the game.
• Mechs don't have an unique AI assigned to them. The game works with modular AI, allowing for Mech Roles that a Mech then can fall under. For instance, a Catapult and a Trebuchet are Missile Mechs and will generally fight you from the back. They will engage you up-close, but will keep their distance until the ammo is dry. So, the AI will work with the characteristics of a Mech, but it isn't hardcoded to act a specific way with a specific chassis.
• Your Player Character in the Campaign will not be voiced. You will have dialogue with your crew and have dialogue options, but you will not hear your character speak.
• HBS is currently focusing on combat, getting the balance right and the multiplayer ready for beta. At the same time, work is being done on the campaign, the event system for instance. A lot of writing and content creation is being done. Same for Cinematics, music, audio, ... Vehicles are in the pipeline. Mechs are pretty far along in the pipeline.
• HBS has a high-level draft of the story. But they are still iterating. There is already a first and second draft script for cinematics. In-mission dialogue is also being written. It is all based on that high-level draft.
• HBS can't say how long you'll need to "finish" the game. There is the campaign, there are random missions, there is skirmish, there is multiplayer. There will be quite a lot of stuff to do.
• No OmniMechs and thus, no OmniPods.
• There are no multiplayer unlocks. All the Mechs, their variants and the equipment is available from the start. They only thing you'll grind in multiplayer is someone else's face.
• The Commando Mech is pretty good. Tyler had one blow up his Hunchback because it got in his rear-arc and its alpha strike hit the rear center torso.
• There is no vertical-slice development for BattleTech. They are working on three major parts of the game and progress has been made in each part, but one a section is done, they will see what's next for each individual part of the game.
• There is no hard-set number of Mechs and Mech Variants that will be in the game (around 50 in total). That said, the hardpoint system in itself allows a certain amount of "variance". For instance, swapping the AC20 on a Hunchback 4G for an AC10 is possible and doesn't require you to buy a new variant just to get that done. The same for swapping out the AC10 on an UrbanMech for an AC20. Chassis Variants will provide you with different kinds of hardpoints for the same Mech. For instance, compare the Griffin N to a Griffin S.
• HBS won't provide PDF versions of their "record sheets", but you can simply pull the data from the .json files once you have access to it. HBS has nothing to hide in that aspect and they are sure that there will be a fan database of the Mechs shortly after release of the game (or even during beta).
• Tyler Carpenter's first Mech and BattleTech game was the BattleTech Second Edition Box Set. Mike McCain's first Mech game was Missionforce Cyberstorm, the second was MechWarrior 2 game. Mitch's first was BattleDroids. His first videogame was MechWarrior 2.
• You will not meet Hanse Davion or Maximilian Liao. You do get to meet some famous BT characters.

[Hanzoku]

Thanks for providing the content summaries of the Q&A sessions - I really appreciate being able to skim the highlights like this.

[Mephansteras]

Thanks for providing the content summaries of the Q&A sessions - I really appreciate being able to skim the highlights like this.

Same for me!

[Dohon]

A new Q&A session is up. Still no release date for the beta, though they getting close. And they are in crunch mode, you can see that the people present are tired.

On the bright side, expect some new gameplay footage, a multiplayer match between two developers. That video is supposed to come out this week.

Spoiler: Transcript (click to show/hide)

• People present: Mitch Gitelman (Studio Head), Jon Everiste (Composer) and Rob Pearsall (Sound Designer).
• Jon and Rob worked on Nekropolis, Jon on Shadowrun Hongkong and Shadowrun Hongkong.
• Beta is getting along and progress is good after the horrible slowdown caused by the previously mentioned problems. However, a new date cannot be given at this time, although they are narrowing in on one.
• That said, HBS will record and release gameplay footage of a multiplayer match. This match will be played between Mitch Gitelman and Mike McCain (Game Director).
• Rob is a huge fan of Nine Inch Nails. Jon's favourite is Radiohead.
• Jon's inspiration when creating music for BattleTech starts with the art. He likes to get his hand on as much art as possible and when the game gets further along in development, the story that supports the art forms the final piece of the puzzle. The art gives the feel of the music and the script / storyline makes sure that Jon stays on track. However, a major switch-up of the story (like happend with Shadowrun Dragonfall a month before release) isn't a huge impact. The story is cohesive, the foundation remains the same. The feel of the music remains the same, while the details might keep evolving. Jon had small bits and "themes" for certain characters, allowing him to join those together and form the score. Jon has seperate recordings of performances by soloists. That way, he can combine them, in ways that one wouldn't always consider.
• Rob has no prior experience with BattleTech. The universe has a lot of sound effects from previous games as its legacy. At the same time, the game is set in 3025, where everything is very rundown. So, Rob dove in and started to catch up by sitting down with some veteran BattleTech fans and just taking notes. Rob has a background in music and recording, but he grew up in an engineer family. He loved physics as a kid. This resulted in him always asking "how does it work". How does a Mech bend,  what forces takes place ... He then applies all that (and the clips Mitch sent him) together. When confronted with the question (one he himself asked the veteran BattleTech fans): "do I follow the legacy or do I make it cool?", he decided (and heard from others) to make it cool. So, Rob and others "modernized" BattleTech. He has the advantage of going "blind" into this, he doesn't try to copy anything. A PPC will sound like a PPC, but his interpretation will sound "fresh".
• Rob got involved with HBS by way of a producer at HBS(Rob played the drummer in his band). They interviewed him for Nekropolis, but turned him down initially. After 6 months, they hired him.
• Jon was doing a stint at Digipen Institute in Redmond and was working alongside Jenn Ravenna, concept artist at HBS. She brought his name up during a meeting (this was at the time Shadowrun was finished and the trailer was released). THe rest was history.
• Mitch explains that audio design and creation is actually regularly done at the end of a game's development cycle. It isn't necessarily the best way to do it and the way HBS does it now (bringing them in earlier) seems to work better. When you play a game, multiple senses are engaged. These "feelings" is what Jon and Rob love. But audio design is regularly forced to be reactive to game development and changes. With BattleTech, Ron and Jon got involved right from the beginning.
• Jon started his BattleTech gaming "career" by playing MechWarrior 2 and getting in the simulator pods. Rob started with MechWarrior Online.
• Jon loved the audio in Uncharted 4. It was ... off the charts! The design, the score, very incredible. The Banner Saga was also interesting, as was The Witcher 3.
• Rob worked on Destiny (doing voice-over work mainly) and he found the weapon sounds to be amazing. The layering, the feeling of the guns, the kick ...
• Something that Rob found interesting while working for BattleTech, is that he always wondered: "wait, how far away from the sound is the listener right now?". When you are looking down from a birds-eye perspective, you are not going to hear all the sounds from the battlefield that you want to hear. So, they are "cheating" the sound by being able to hear sound from far away, while letting it appear to be coming from maximum a hundred yards away. Of course, a weapon will sound louder the closer you get. But if you are listening from the "edge", sounds will be a bit more muffled and ambience will be stronger. Water splashes are only heard when in close, but not from above.
• The human voice will have its place in the score of BattleTech. Jon has recordings from a 24-strong Latvian choir. Right now, they are also doing recordings with a local soloist. That will be peppered throughout the score.
• Rob is a sound designer. A sound designer doesn't go to a sound library, picks a sound and then throws it into a game. A designer has to come up with something unique. Even when taking something from a library, you will change it by layering it with something or changing it. Rob also uses "middleware", software that allows him to randomize and mix things and layer things. Middleware provides a user interface for things, allowing non-programmers to do their magic. Now, a sound designer is involved with everything audio-wise that isn't music. Voice Overs is also split, but in BattleTech's case, Rob is also doing that.
• Jon's favorite piece of music concerns Lady Arano. He can't spoil too much, but there is a lot of solo's involved. Her background being Maori / Hawaiian, Jon started down a certain path when composing pieces related to Arano. The concept art of Arano also had several notes attached to, referring to other pieces of art and pictures.
• Mitch and Andrew (Lead Writer) regularly go back and forth on character backgrounds. You have to weigh: how deep do you go? How much is wasted because it will never show up / be mentioned in the game? When doing this "homework", it becomes a tool for others to use for their own work. The overarching theme of each character is something that Jon picks up on and then works his magic on.
• The hardest piece of audio Rob has worked on so far is the Rotary Autocannon firing sound. [NOTE: Rob called them Rotary Cannons, but those are something else entirely in BattleTech and they don't exist in 3025. Here they mean "autocannons that fire multiple shells"] Now, the gun mounted on the A-10 aircraft is a really scary piece of hardware, with a unique sound. They melded that with a futuristic machine gun sound, creating a scary sound effect. Problem was, they had to make it so that you could hear individual impacts when firing a burst. An individual "shot" sound had to be recorded. An AC20 fires 20 rounds, but the A-10 gun fires thousands of bullets in a matter of seconds. So, to hear the whine for the AC20 to be "short" is jarring. Rob is trying to tweak it and it might get pulled, but that will be a disappointment.
• When firing a weapon, you don't hear 1 sound being played. You have 3: 1 sound for the weapon when firing, 1 sound for the travelling of the weapon and a last one for the hit of that weapon. And then you have the echo of the weapon bouncing of hills and stuff ...
• You have autocannons (like the AC20) that fire one shell and you have autocannons that fire bursts. These exist so that you'll have some choice as to what weapons to mount during the mercenary campaign. Each weapon will have different perks and drawbacks. And right now, the single-shot autocanons sound suitably impressive ("ba-BOOM").
• The AC20 in the Beta will have the A-10 like sound-effect, but it might change for the full game.
• The soundtrack for the game will be available in loss-less formats. (NOTE: You can buy the Shadowrun Soundtracks on Jon's Bandcamp ( https://joneverist.bandcamp.com/ )
• The Skirmish mode has different "moods" (music-wise). Those are sort-of based on planet type, but more on the map and their general tone and mood (such as biomes). For the single-player campaign, the music will be more "curated", more selected, at least for the big missions.
• Mechs that are on the move, will sound about the same. As Mechs take damage, you will hear that the engine starts emitting sounds (gyros spinning out of sync for instance). As you blow armor off, those hits will generate a certain sound. Striking a Mech in the internals will be accompanied by another sound. Critical hits and dismemberment are pretty big on sound (as well as seeing and hearing sparks), as you can imagine. And yes, the ammo explosions too. Now, a damaged Mech might start to move in an awkward way, depending on the damage. But it won't exactly start to make different "bending" sounds.
• Special care was taken to make sure that damage is well simulated. There is a real logic behind the SFX you see when you damage a Mech.
• The game's music will change in pace and intensity as the intensity and pace of the mission changes. Especially in story-driven missions, where there are several changes of "beats" (change of fortune, a new character is introduced, ...). Generated missions, skirmish and multiplayer tend to start off with a flow: first ambience and as you spot a player or battle commences, the music changes to a more tense state. Jon is looking into allowing more different "tense" states during the battles, but it isn't in the game yet. Game music tends to be reactive, since you can't predict what a player will do or not in such or so circumstances. The trick is make players believe that the music isn't reactive.
• HBS is narrowing in on the beta and as such, no new stuff is getting added to the beta. Just bugfixes and some polishing. And at the same time,  features to be implemented after will require some testing by HBS in order to see what the effects are of those "new things".
• There are hundreds and hundreds of pilot lines (courtesy of Mitch). When doing voice work, HBS makes voice actors do the death screams last. They also make sure the actors are about 3 big steps away from the microphone. "Imagine that the windshield turns into molten flame and comes at you. Now scream."
• There will be ambient sounds like rivers and trees, but they aren't in yet.
• Beta will be the raw gameplay: activity, balance, ... The beta will not represent the final game (beyond how combat works and feels, that is pretty much tied down). In time, more layers of polish will be added, polish that just isn't relevant at this stage of development. Birds flying out of tree isn't relevant for beta.
• Some fun asides: Rob told how he replaced engine sounds with sounds from mockingbirds because they weren't truly ready yet. This led to a week-long of Mechs stomping about like tweeting birds. Mitch and Jordan back in the day (even at Microsoft) would put a blue dot on art. As they asked people to critique the art, they would always look for something to say. The blue dot was spotted, people felt good about themselves and the art was then approved (minus the blue dot). And sometimes, when people say there is something wrong with a certain sound effect, it can sometimes help to just turn up the volume of that effect a bit. Suddenly, great effect!
• Creating the musical score for BattleTech tends to follow the process as during the creation of the Shadowrun score. You start off with the art and the story and so forth. The biggest difference is that Shadowrun had only digital musical instruments. For BattleTech, you need more mock-ups, sketches for the score. You are having to start be a producer more. Also, more flying to Eastern Europe (Budapest) to get 65 Europeans to play the music you wrote. In total, 150 people are working on getting the written music by Jon into a recording. And then editing ensues. He didn't conduct the music though, he stayed in the recording booth to listen to the music. Fun fact: most of the live recording was finished by the end of last year. Which was nice, since it gave breathing room, something he has never had before.
• Rob created the PPC sound effect, but is already planning an improvement when he read the forum questions for this Q&A. In the past, PPC's were either electrical or "whompy" effects. Rob basically combined both and made an "electrical whomp". It sounds satisfying. Rob figured out how the impact sound would be like. Weapons in BattleTech travel in 3D space. Weapons also tend to sound like our contemporary weapons. PPC's tend to be instantaneous hitting weapons and because of that, Rob couldn't hear the impact sounds, since it played at the same time as the weapon firing sound (which turned out to be a bug). It took 0.50 miliseconds of delay to make it sound right. Now, Rob wants to add the crack of a thunderclap to the PPC effect, giving it a nice final layer. This might get into the beta.
• Jon will post another "behind the scene" video of his composing, but he is currently swamped with working on the beta. Expect the video in the next few weeks.
• Some joking was done about adding an Easter Egg that replaces all weapon sounds with sounds made by Tyler Carpenter like the infamous PPC "ZORTCHJ" sound.
• If you are a deaf or hearing-impaired player, you will not be at a disadvantage when playing skirmish / multiplayer. There are no "solely auditory cues". The user interface will provide all the information you need. The voice overs and sound effects just reinforce things that are on screen. A pilot might for instance say "Ugh, I'm hit in the meat!", but you'll get a pop-up on screen saying "Pilot injured".
• Regarding subtitles, those will be in. If there is a story voice-over, you'll get subtitles. Same for story messages in game, there will be text. Pilot chatter like "I'm hit!" will not be subtitled because there is just way too much of those and it would clutter the screen. However, pilot voices will be translated in your localized version of the game.

LIGHTNING ROUND

• Jon does use analogue synth in the score. He has several. He uses the Profit 12 a lot. He also has a Noisemaker Module Synth, a Euro Rack.
• The new gameplay video will be announced on the forums, on the kickstarter page and a new kickstarter update will be released containing it. As to Mitch his chances of winning the match: McCain is close to the top of the in-house leaderboard while Mitch is last.
• HBS doesn't have a number stating how much percent audio and music takes up from the budget. Rob estimated (based on the kickstarter funds) maybe 0.2 percent.
• HBS is not doing a lot of effort to hide stuff from the players (that is, the players who go digging in the game files). PVP matches will require authenticating of course.
• The pilots you have in the game will have a portrait, name and a voice assigned to them. You can switch these to your heart's desires. So far, you have a Korean voice, as well as a Russian and British. More are coming. You can already make an international lance in the beta.
• There is some guitar bits in the score, but don't expect it to sound heavy metal like.
• Jon plays a little bit of piano and guitar himself. He grew playing the drums too. He's not, like, good at it. But he can manage it. Jon loves the cello.
• Neither Rob or Jon have met someone famous that played their stuff. Peter Dinklage is a huge Destiny fan though. Steven Spielberg and the late Robin Williams were big BattleTech fans.
• Game audio will support audio 5:1. Primary will be stereo.
• Roughly half the mechpilots will be women.
• Will there be fully 3D editable pilot portraits? Depends. Until the beta is out, HBS does not know much work is left on the game.
• Jon had 3 recording days (each 8 to 9 hours long), which resulted in 45 to 60 minutes of recordings.
• Rob can do the entire voice-over for one pilot in 2 hours. As for sound effects, Rob can take up to an hour to create and layer the effect for one weapon.
• How players will give feedback during beta will be explained in a kickstarter update, but for now, know that there will be in-game questionnaires. This allows for feedback and in a format that makes it easier for HBS to collect and analyze it.
• There are different sounds for weapon impact in environmental areas and objects. There is a list of 25, 30 surface types. Rob will mix and match those and apply them to the feet of a Mech, to every weapon. Dirt will sound different from water. Everything that interfaces with the world of the game will change according to the texture.

[Mephansteras]

Sounds like it is shaping up nicely.

As always, thanks for the write-up! It is quite helpful.