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[Dohon]

And here's the transcript for the Campaign Game livestream. Meanwhile, there is a Youtube video of the stream.

Spoiler: Transcript (click to show/hide)

People Present: Anders Carlsson (Paradox Interactive Marketing Producer), Mitch Gitelman (Harebrained Schemes President & Co-founder), Kiva Maginn (Harebrained Schemes Lead Designer)

This stream is all about the Campaign Game. Story spoilers will be kept to a minimum, but there might be some minor spoilers though.

Headsup though: this is a slightly older build. Might crash, might be glitches. More fixes are in a more recent build.

Note: Anders played a campaign game till about week 18. He didn't upgrade your "mothership" the Argo a lot, nor did he upgrade his pilots. He has a lot of money (3.5 million c-bills) at his disposal too, he effectively cheated through missions to do this. (He did this using a debug menu, allowing him to kill all opposition with a single command). At the same time, he had a few damaged Mechs and an injured pilot. This has all be done for demonstration purposes. The real game will be far less generous with your resources.

First things first. Your company consists of a name, a crest (icon) and a paint scheme. This can all be altered at will during the game. Paint scheme consists of a primary, secondary and accent color. You have a small Atlas model that allows you to preview your color scheme.

You have your "mothership", the Argo. That is a kind of a Dropship, an experimental long-term exploration ship (artificial gravity included). Initially used to explore planets and new systems, the ship went missing a few hundred years ago. How you acquire it, is something you'll have to find out yourself. The Argo is your base of operations. You also have a Leopard Dropship, a smaller Dropship, used to shuttle your lance of Mechs to the mission and back. It is also your first Base of operations when you start your campaign, until you find the Argo and use it for yourself.

Upgrading your Argo is done through the Engineering Section. You have your Engineer, Farah here. You can talk to her, get to know her, you even ask tutorial questions.

Upgrades to the ship are expensive and the ship starts out as a flying wreck. You'll start with reparing / upgrading the power system, otherwise the other functions of the Argo cannot be upgraded. Upgrades require upfront cash investment, but will also increase your monthly upkeep.

You have an event timeline, showing the upcoming events (Mech finished repairing, argo upgrade finished, next financial report). The XCOM games had a similar feature.

Each month, you'll be presented with a financial report. You'll have to pay your upkeep, your wages and so on. You'll always see when the next report is due, both on the event timeline and on the left of your main Argo screen.

Each Mech active and ready to use is put in a Mechbay. They each cost upkeep, about 7200 C-bills. This number is the same for every Mech, heavier Mechs don't cost more. This was decided because it would punish the player. If you get a new Mech, a heavier and more impressive one, you shouldn't be penalized. The hand-wave-in-universe reason is that you pay for the Mech Bay to be turned on and kept running.

Wages also are a recurring cost. These depend on the skill of the MechWarrior, but they will also increase depending on your "generosity". You can decide to spend more money on wages, basically giving your pilots a bonus. This will increase their morale. The higher the morale, the more positive events you'll get. During combat missions, morale will be used to trigger special morale abilities. The higher your morale, the faster you can trigger those.

Mechs are repaired and customized in the Mech Bay Menu. You have your main Engineer, Yang. Like Farah, you can ask him questions, leading to more tutorial bits. He has a lot of those, because there is a lot to learn.

The Mech Bay Menu has three sub-divisions. The Bays themselves, where your active Mechs are located. Storage, where your other inactive Mechs and Mechparts are stored. And finally, there is Components, the pool where all your weapons and equipment is stored.

You have three rows of Mechbays. The first one is unlocked when finding the Argo. You can have up to 6 active Mechs per row. More rows are unlocked as you upgrade the Argo.

Fun aside: one of Anders Mechs was completely destroyed, except for a completely intact cockpit. Turns out that in certain missions you have to call-down your Leopard DropShip and when it is coming down, there are certain spaces around it that are considered dangerous. Leave a unit there and ... well, it gets squished by the DropShip.

Removing destroyed components from a Mech takes no time and costs nothing. Installing something new takes a little bit of time and cash. Repairing a destroyed part of a Mech (a lost arm for instance) takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. As an example, the Spider that Anders had (the one with the intact cockpit), was pretty much completely gone. Repairing it back to full strength and equipping it with new weapons and such takes 33 days!

Mechtech Rating means how much engineers and repair crew you have. The higher this rating, the faster repairs will go. This will increase as time progresses, but upgrading the Argo will give you more Tech points. Events will also influence the amount of points you have available.

You can refit your Mechs, switching out weapons and components. The quest to build a perfect Mech! However, you rarely will be able to have your Mechs just right because you will be forced to re-build them with stuff you have in your storage.

Weapons have improved variants. These improved variants are all about bonuses (some might add extra crit, some others extra raw damage, ...), they won't have drawbacks. A better weapon is a better weapon.

Each Mech has a certain "intended" role. At the Mech Outfit screen (the MechLab), you can always see what the intended role / standard equipment of that certain Mech Variant normally is. In case you want to rebuild a Mech to "factory specifications". But you can deviate from this of course. You have the power.

There will also be special alerts. If you refit a Mech with an Autocannon, but forget the ammo, there will be a counter saying "hey, you need ammo!".

Your MechTechs can only work on one project at a time. So, if you need to repair three Mechs, they'll do one after the other. You can switch the priority of these tasks, allowing to change the order in which things are done. At the same time, upgrading your Argo is handled by a different team, meaning you can upgrade the ship and repair / outfit mechs at the same time.

In the Storage menu, you can see all your inactive Mechs and Mech Parts. Inactive mechs are basically stowed away, stripped of all armor and components. You can bring these back to active status (which costs time and money) and you'll have to re-install all your weapons and components. However, while they are in storage, Mechs don't cost any maintenance.

You also have Mechparts in storage. Each Mech consists of three "parts". When you destroy a Mech, it will leave behind parts. Collect enough of these parts and you can rebuild that Mech, adding it to your roster.

Blowing out the center torso of a Mech means that Mech is destroyed, leaving behind just one part. Taking out the legs will leave you with two parts. Killing the pilot (either by killing the cockpit or by falling damage) will leave you with three parts (and thus, a Mech you can assemble pretty much immediately).

The component list is your inventory of weapons and components. Here you get an overview of your stuff and can easily see what weapons you have (and if you have improved variants of those weapons).

Weapons tie into the hardpoint system of BattleTech. Each Mech has a certain amount of hardpoints, spots where certain type of weapons can be installed. Two ballistic hardpoints mean that you mount up to two ballistic weapons on that Mech. You have four types, going from ballistic, energy, missile and support (machine guns, flamers, small lasers, ...).

Support came into being because HBS wanted to take away certain weapons out of certain categories. If Machine Guns were also considered ballistic weapons, you could strip them out and basically have room in your hardpoints for more autocannons.

The hardpoint system is also an inheritance of the MechWarrior Online system. PGI has already done the mapping of weapons to certain locations and HBS can use that work. But the more important reason why hardpoints are being used, is because HBS wants Mechs to feel unique and have different flavor. Compared to the MWO hardpoints, they added extra hardpoints in order to give you a bit more customization options.

Pilots have four "stats". There is gunnery, piloting, guts and tactics. You can level up your pilots along these four paths. And yes, you can have a pilot that's a solid level 10 in each stat. However, each point in a certain tree will require more and more experience. The current formula is: (skill level)^2 *100 xp. So, piloting level 8 requires 6400 xp.

Every 5th level along a skill tree, will give you a special ability, a "specialization". Every 8th level will give you another ability, a "mastery" ability. Each MechWarrior can have 2 specializations and 1 mastery. So, you'll have 2 abilities in one tree and another in a second tree. Once you have those unlocked, the other abilities will "disappear" from the pilot development screen. You can still upgrade the regular statistics, but getting a 3rd ability will be impossible.

The special skills are:

Gunnery Level 5 = Multi-Target (Fire Weapons at up to three separate targets within this `Mechs current firing arc).
Piloting Level 5 = Evasive Movement (This unit generates an extra EVASIVE charge from movement actions, up to its maximum.)
Guts Level 5: Bulwark = Gain Guarded (50% damage reduction against ranged attacks to the front and side) when remaining stationary.)
Tactics Level 5 = Sensor Lock (Select a target within sensor range to reveal it until the end of the current round and remove two of its EVASIVE charges).

Gunnery Level 8 = Breaching Shot (Attacks with a single weapon ignore COVER and GUARDED on the target.)
Piloting Level 8 = Ace Pilot (This unit can move after shooting if it has not moved yet.)
Guts Level 8 = Juggernaut (Succesful Melee attacks knock your target back one Initiative Phase.)
Tactics Level 8 = `Mechs piloted by this MechWarrior gain +1 Initiative, and remove one bar of stability damage when Reserving.)

As pilots start to specialize themselves, they will gain a new title. For instance, a MechWarrior with the level 5 guts skill will now be considered a "Defender". There is one unique rank title for every combination of specializations and masteries.

Pilots have service records too. This includes how many kills they made, how long they have been in your service, etc ... There is also the background of the pilot. You'll see their biography in text form and you'll see their attributes (Criminal, Military, Inner Sphere, Lyran, ...). These attributes have a tie-in into the event system. Having a MechWarrior with the Criminal attribute might give you a few events related to that ...

Pilots are hired in Hiring Halls. Each planet has a different Hiring Hall. Your reputation with the faction that controls pilot influences how expensive your new recruits will be. And of course, the more experienced the Pilot, the more expensive he or she will be. Some pilots require that you have a certain reputation with the Mercenary Reviewing Bond before they will deign to work with you.

Beyond hiring pilots, you can also purchase equipment, Mech Parts and even full Mechs. Once again, reputation affects prices. But the quality of the world (and its specifics) will determine the quality and what exactly you'll be able to buy.

Maybe an obvious observation, but, the timeline doesn't advance when you are tinkering in these menus. Only when you press "advance time", will the time start to move forward.

There are so-called "travel" contracts. An employer will pay you to go to another system and do a mission there. Meanwhile, your travel costs are handled by your employer. Otherwise, you'll have to pay for the journey yourself.

The Star Map shows you ... you guessed it ... a map of Stars. Each dot represents a system with planets. Clicking on it, you'll see who owns it, which factions are active in the system and what attributes a system had (Research, Agriculture, ...). Rich worlds are interesting, as are Black Market and Star League Remains.

Each system also has a challenge score. This gives you an insight in how hard the contracts are in that system. A neutral world in the middle of nowhere will be easier than a border world on the frontier between the Taurian Concordat and the Federated Suns. The difficulty is also influenced by a global modifier, depending on how powerful you are and how far along you are.

Running out of money (going bankrupt) will end the game for you. You are a mercenary and it's all about the money. If you start running out of money, you can start selling stuff and you can decide to cut back on wages (lowering morale in the process).

There are also MedTech points, representing your Medical Technology and staff. This can also increase over time and gain more points via upgrades. And, like MechTech Rating, events will influence this as well. The more points you have, the faster pilots will heal. Without a lot of MedTech points, a heavily wounded pilot might spend 2 months in the sickbay.

When signing a contract, you get to negotiate certain aspects. You have Cash, Salvage and Reputation. If you want more Cash, move that slider to the right. More salvage? The same. Of course, both are exclusive. More Salvage will result in less Cash. If you move them both back, you'll get a reputation bonus because you are working for someone on the "cheap".

Salvage means how much stuff you get once the mission is done. There are two numbers: Priority salvage and Normal Salvage. If you have a 1/4 salvage rating, that means you'll get 4 pieces of salvage. One of those you can pick yourself, the other 3 are random. What remains is given to the employer. If you don't go for at least 1 point of priority salvage, you might not be able to get that sweet unique piece of loot that dropped.

Once negotiations end, you'll go to the mission prep screen. You get an overview of your Mechs, your pilots. You then decide which ones to take with you. Based on that, you'll get a lance score, which you can compare to the mission difficulty score. This way, you'll know if your lance is roughly up to snuff. Of course, mission intelligence isn't flawless and you might be in for a harder fight than you bargained for.

[Hanzoku]

Gotta say, I find the Gunnery perk and mastery underwhelming. At least on the tabletop, it is almost never worth splitting your fire across multiple targets instead of guaranteeing a kill on the primary target. The mastery only working for a single weapon is also a shame. The perks as they are now, I’d take Piloting and Tactics in every pilot, with a little more to think about depending on mech and roll between Gunnery, Piloting and Guts for the mastery.

I think they’d be better off with having two options to pick from for every path - increased accuracy for one round would be a tempting gunnery perk.

[Flying Dice]

It was nice in beta for situations where you only have indirect contact with a more desirable target, so you can dump lurms onto them but still use other weapons on that 'mech to soften another target. Also for situations where you have targets in different range brackets. Not much point shooting at something with 20% hit chance, but if there's another enemy closer/farther you can split fire to maximize hit chances. Helps make mixed loads more viable on single 'mechs by increasing how much ordinance you can effectively use in a given turn, where the traditional weakness of being able to fight at any range is doing so with less impact than a specialized loadout.

[Mini]

I can see a use for it in firing a single weapon at an evasive mech (to strip one of the charges) while shooting everything else at something where you will actually hit. Also if you have something with multiple large guns (an Awesome, for example) and you are fighting multiple things that would die in a single shot (light vehicles). Niche use, but that niche (at least the evasion part) comes up regularly. Similarly, the mastery is good on mechs that only have a single big weapon anyway (Hunchback's AC/20, Vindicator's PPC), but again is pretty niche.

To me the biggest benefit to upgrading gunnery is going to be the increased chance to hit anyway, so even if the abilities aren't amazing there's still the decision of whether you want your guys to be able to hit things more reliably now or leave that until later (which has the potential to make you lose battles) or upgrade gunnery and get somewhat worse abilities.

[Mephansteras]

Valid point. Upgraded gunnery is very strong in its own right, skills aside.

[Flying Dice]

Also worth noting that if you go full into Gunnery you also get the skill that ignores defensive bonuses when firing a single weapon at a target.

Get a 'mech with something like a PPC, an AC/10, and a LRM10, use Multitarget, fire one per target and ignore the defensive bonuses of each. That's extra shiny.

[Rince Wind]

Or get THE mech with 3 PPCs.

[Hanzoku]

Actially, from what I gather from the Paradox forums, energy only mechs have been badly nerfed by how heat is handled in the game. Designs like the Awesome and Black Knight won’t work nearly as well out of the box as they do on tabletop.

[Kanil]

Yeah. I don't really know how this game works, but the AC/5 apparently does 9 damage. Unless they've also been buffed, lasers will suck really hard compared to that.

[Rince Wind]

Damage and armor values have been changed to allow for more granularity. So the 9 doesn't say much, certainly not that it does 80% more damage than in tabletop.

And for the most part energy weapons are king in CBT. Missiles have their use, but ACs, especially the AC/2 and AC/5 are pretty bad. The AC/10 is ok, and the AC/20 is the weapon with the most damage for most of the ingame time. But they are heavy and have a rather low ammo count per ton. With special ammunition you are looking at two shots for a ton of AC/20 ammo. Ammo which can blow you to kingdom come quickly on a (un)lucky crit. Even with CASE you loose a location and get a hit to your MechWarrior. Autocannons are too heavy for what they bring to the table and for the risks associated with them. If you just use energy weapons all you need are more heatsinks.

The Hunchback 4P throws around a lot more damage than the classic 4G with its AC/20, because the medium laser is just that good.  I still love the HBK-4G more because the damage is concentrated and because it gets all the style points.

When you can mix and match regular ACs just don't make the cut if you are only looking at numbers.

So...I am entirely in favour of a rebalance to make my preferred weapon system (ok, they may be tied with SRMs) better.

What I do know is that missiles and autocannons affect stability while PPCs play havoc with the sensors of those hit by them.

We'll have to see if you can do a 3-3-2 firing pattern on an Awesome. I was never much of a Black Knight fan anyway, though I do love the Flashman (not for its looks). Things like Stormcrow Primes that can fire all their lasers on the run all day long are the most boring mechs.

[Kanil]

Damage and armor values have been changed to allow for more granularity. So the 9 doesn't say much, certainly not that it does 80% more damage than in tabletop.

Armor values were multiplied by 5. Screenshots show the AC/5 doing 45 damage, which would be 9 TT damage. It very much seems to suggest it does 80% more damage than it's tabletop counterpart.

Yes, AC/5s in TT are bad. But if the PPC is doing 50 (ie: 10) in this game, then the AC/5 is going to make the PPC look worse than the TT PPC makes the TT AC/5 look.

[Rince Wind]

Ah, ok, I didn't know the exact values anymore and thought it did 9 damage ingame, my bad.

The AC/5 is (probably) still 1t heavier, without ammo. Though you can't buy enough heatsinks for the difference in damage anymore. I'd say the PPC would not be as bad as the AC/5 in tabletop in this comparison, because there you need 2 AC/5s with a combined 16t weight to do the same damage at similar ranges. And your ammo still explodes in your face.
But I think I was less than impressed by PPCs in some of the dev streams.
Well, we'll know in less than three weeks. (Fingers crossed that it runs on my toaster.)

[Kanil]

I'd say the PPC would not be as bad as the AC/5 in tabletop in this comparison, because there you need 2 AC/5s with a combined 16t weight to do the same damage at similar ranges. And your ammo still explodes in your face.

This ignores the primary strength of the AC/5 and/or primary weakness of the PPC: heat.

Two AC/5s is 16 tons + 2 heatsinks + 1 ton of ammo, totalling 19 tons for 10 damage (as two weapons, with all the advantages and disadvantages that implies.)
One PPC is 7 tons + 10 heatsinks, totalling 17 tons for 10 damage.

The AC/5 loses out here, but it's not a vast difference. It definitely needs a buff, but... 9 damage results in it doing 18 damage for 19 tons vs 10 damage for 17, and that makes the PPC look really bad.

There's a bit more to it, of course. You have 10 free heatsinks, so the first few lasers are more efficient. And the ammo still explodes, although this game is more forgiving on that front than TT, with the two crits to explode rule.

And of course, I haven't looked too closely at the game yet, so I don't know if PPCs are also good... but if you feel they don't seem that great, there's a good chance they just aren't.

[Mephansteras]

Hopefully all those beta testing games helped them out a good bit on the balancing aspect of everything.

[Hanzoku]

Again from reading what other people have said, you want a (singular) PPC in your lance somewhere, because being hit by a PPC applies a -1 gunnery penalty to the mech. But overall, heavy energy weapons look to be really... bad. We'll have to see how it all feels when playing the game of course.

I do think that AC/2s and AC/5s needed some buffing. For one thing, it helps turn the JagerMech into a credible threat instead of a secondary target as it is on the TT. (I'd prioritize many Medium mechs even over a JagerMech... except for how easily it blows up, at least.)