MechWarrior: Introduction

I do not know anything about BattleTech. This is not something, I should say, is directed in a general way towards certain types of tabletop games. Despite my experience with Warhammer 40k being two abandonware games 15 years ago, I vaguely understand most concepts and ideas contained within the franchise. No, BattleTech is something that I've somehow completely avoided over the years.

As far as I'm willing to credit it, I think that most of the games being complex mech sims when I already struggled with something on the more arcade side in Armored Core (So I assume) had something to do with it. Let's just say that I've been content to watch other people do things in mechs rather than do it myself for a while. This of course, bodes extremely well for me being able to get anywhere with the game.

I'm going to try to piece together what I can from the in-game writing and the manual. Looking at the BattleTech wiki reveals that there is a considerable amount of stuff to go around in the universe, over sixty thousand articles, most of which are irrelevant to the game, but still presents me with a somewhat overwhelming introduction. The manual starts off pretending it's some sort of in-universe document, some mercenary The Anarchist's Cookbook, but beyond the intro, there's not much to show this. It's a bit less than fifty pages, bigger than some, but on the smaller side for a simulation.

The backstory the manual gives out is a brief history of a thousand years in which this universe differs from our own. The Western Alliance forced world peace back in 2014, gradually becoming the Terran Alliance by the 22nd century, at which point faster-than-light travel is developed enough to launch interstellar colonization. For the next hundred years humans expanded to over six hundred worlds.

War broke out as the colonies began to rebel against the Alliance. Six years later, the Alliance was broken and a mass exodus of Earth took place, and by 2314, the Terran Alliance had collapsed. This mattered little, as soon the Terran Hegemony replaced it and small-scale wars continued to rage until 2550. This is where BattleMechs come in, the now standard weapon of war in the "ritualized" warfare of the time. This would continue until the Star League took control and instituted a period of peace for a hundred and fifty years.

At which point, until the present, 3024, such brutal warfare occurred that manufacturing for modern equipment was so poor that cannibalism of existing equipment was the rule, rather than the exception. Now there is peace, but knowing the past thousand years, even if there's no open warfare, there's going to be plenty of opportunity for a mercenary. 

I wonder how much of this is actually going to be important to me.

There's this map of the Successor States, presumably the disintegrated Star League's follow-ups. Five alliances control the area, each made up of smaller powers. How much each section controls is not show in the manual, however...

Neither the bandits nor the Outworlds are available to reach.

In-game, we get this, revealing that of the five powers, there is also an Outworlds Alliance that I didn't realize was a separate thing until now. The Bandit Kingdoms, are obviously separate, but probably not important. The most important thing to know however, is that as a mercenary, trust no one. Even your employer is going to try to fleece you out of money. It's been a thousand years and nothing has changed.

This would be a great introduction if there was also information about what I needed to do beyond "find the skull."

The actual game places the player in the role of Gideon Braver Vandenburg, the eighteen year old leader of the newly formed Blazing Aces. Whenever you start a new game, you start on a random planet with a text box that is quite interesting, but tells us nothing of what it actually means. Find someone who has a crest of a death skull with wings behind it within five years. Well game, if a random eighteen year old can be the leader of a group of mercenaries, that's going to be a tall order. Unless in a thousand years people have suddenly decided that having cool skulls as your logo is not cool.

From top left, crew, mechs, missions, travel, bar and options.

There are six options on the menu. The first is that of your crew and news. The game never actually tells you the main character's full name all at once, but trust me. That's going to be important. The crew screen allows me to change mechs and see the skills of my soldiers. If I had any. Mr. Vandenburg is a solo act right now. Why you might ask? Let's check the news.

"Let's just casually have the plot go by and the player will definitely notice!" -The Writer, (Mark Brenneman, probably)

At which point, I really wish the manual decided to explain this. A thousand years of bloody warfare can be summarized in a paragraph before explaining the actual plot of the game! You don't even need to alter the number of pages we have! I'm supposed to be playing as Vandenburg, I should already know this rather than just assume it from context! This is important! It changes the context from "poetic reasoning to find someone within five years" to "bring back your father's killer so you can reclaim your birthright". Being cute is stupid here, I'm not sure I would have figured it out if I didn't look up this game on the BattleTech wiki to find out what Gideon's first name is. At no point so far has his full name been mentioned.

Now, the reason for this, unexplained in the manual, is that with the game, there's an affidavit explaining what happened. As in, there's a single page, an in-universe document, explaining what the heck is going on. See, Clan Vandenburg and Clan McBrin are rivals, and because of the valor of the two clans in the Succession Wars, Ander's Moon is a dukedom on the border of Kurita and Davion space. Whenever the old duke dies, a new duke is elected, anointed in oil from the sacred Chalice of Herne, an artifact from old Terra.

Jarris McBrin engineered a bandit attack on the player's father, and ensured it's success by sabotaging the castle's sensors. He just so happened to be on maneuvers with a news crew in tow. The skull in front of bat wings? Symbol of the bandits. Now that Jarris is the hero, he denounces the former duke as someone consorting with the bandits, and has evidence, which is presumably faked in some way. He then tries to get elected as duke, only to fail because the Council wants to hold off until Gideon reaches legal adulthood on his 23rd birthday. Jarris then beats Gideon up and tells him to leave the moon, but telling him that the bandits have the Chalice. In very shonen-esque dialog, I might add.

Gideon meets with a friendly councilman named Jordan Rowe. Rowe believes that Jarris is a pawn for someone else, and brings up deposits of radioactive materials, which the Kurita, a foreign power, would find very useful. He'll try to find proof of this, while Gideon will turn himself into a skilled mercenary to find the Chalice. To this end, Rowe gives him the mech and the C-bills he has at the start.

This explains everything and I'm glad it exists, but man, this kind of annoys me. This is fifty percent on the developers and fifty percent on people ripping this game for the internet. For the later, while I realize I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth, come on, you can't scan a single page that explains the game's story? The easiest thing in the world to scan? The developers on the other hand, come on, this could have been at the start of the manual. It's not like you actually commit to the bit of the manual being an in-universe document. 

I can't help but think that having missiles above the cockpit like this is bad mech design...which might be true in-universe as well.

Back to the menus. The second option is to review your mechs or get new ones. For some mysterious reason, my mech has some light damage and needs a bit of reloading. I guess it was mothballed. Fortunately, I have a million space bucks, or whatever the BattleTech currency is. I'm starting to get the feeling that this game wasn't intended for people who didn't play the tabletop games. There's also the fun factor of sometimes parts not being in stock, but I'm not too worried about that.

Buttons or bullet holes? You decide!

The third option is for missions, the fourth is the map and travel options, the fifth is the bar and the sixth is the options. At the bar, I can get a drink or hire some people to be part of my crew. The drink functions as a rumor mill, in this case, Gideon asks the barkeep about a skull with bat wings. He says to ask some other guy, who would know. The game's just going to be this way, telling you things you have to just look around to find out about. I prefer to have some active income before I start hiring people, so let's do some mercenary work!

In theory, if your mech was damaged and you needed money to fix it, you could take advantage of the payable immediately bit, but that seems like a very specific scenario.

Mission briefings are basically just simple objective lists along with probable enemy forces. I'm not sure if there's any real practical difference between planets and objectives. Planets are planets, I would think, and objectives are all going to boil down to shooting the enemy mechs until they are either destroyed or gone. Assuming fleeing is programmed in.

Surprising amount of variety in mountains, not that it's going to matter too much.

There's a map, which going in I don't understand at all. I'm on the left, the enemies are on the right, and what I presume to be the property is in the corner. Note the two red dots, the briefing was wrong. I am mildly upset, I can understand making a mistake between 2 and 3, but 1 and 2?

Beautiful.

The game world is that style of blocky 3D we've come to expect from the early days, vague lumps shaped like mechs, then a featureless plain for everything else except important terrain. In this case, mountains. Although the enemy here is foolish enough to not realize I'm coming closer until I open fire.

Controlling the mech is deceptively easy. Numpad moves, up increases acceleration, down decreases it, left and right turns. There is a targeting sensor you can up and down to hit weak points, N and M, which despite how it seems is of vital importance, since you aren't automatically aiming at anything. Enter targets, and space shoots, going through all your weapons in order based on what is currently activated in your Automatic Weapons System. It's on and includes every weapon by default and I see no reason to mess with this at the start.

Wow, nighttime!

This ends badly...not because of any obvious reason, but because of two things. I didn't understand the AWS at the start and turned off the missiles, because why would I want those? The second is that his shots are constantly causing me to overheat. So I can't move or shoot, which as you can imagine, causes a death spiral and I die so badly the game crashes DOSbox.

Fortunately, I have saved at the very start of the game. Interestingly, the game has thirteen save slots, but you manually make all saves, which means you can have more than thirteen saves, but you can't use more than thirteen at a time. Also, the number of enemies on a mission is random, so there's only one the second time around.

This time, I do everything I can right. I don't screw with my AWS, I target him ahead of time, and when I think it's reasonable to do so, I open fire with a missile. They're dumbfire on this thing, which I discover when I miss once. That's okay, my initial missile hits and my follow-up blasts strike true. I'm blasting this guy apart like he did me. I'm going to win...and the game crashes when he dies. Must be a bad rip.

I spend a bit of time and determine that despite allegedly being playable in the version of DOSbox I'm using, it isn't. Fortunately, I don't yet need to switch to one of the Japanese versions lying around, and can instead play it in DOSbox Staging...which I probably should have used to begin with, considering that it's got MT-32 music. Barely, and at the cost of apparently putting the combat in CGA for some reason. It's not really justified.

That's some choice armor.

But this does work, finally, I get to finish a mission for the swell reward of...150,000 C-Bills. My repair costs are about half. The mission also sets me from April 3025 to July, or depending on what counts, three or four months. Which given the five year time span, means that a campaign consists of either 15 or 20 missions. Pretty la-di-da approach to mercenary work considering you have a time limit.

So...we got him drunk with cheap Baijiu.

When I go to repair my mech, I get this. This must be the guy I was looking for. Considering we're talking about someone who went after a duke, they have to be pretty gutsy, so if there was a regular unit with it, we'd know. Though pirates ballsy enough to do that also seem like they'd be obvious. What I'm saying is, there are only so many groups in the universe, so either there are a lot of big tough groups around, or this is a small-time group of dudes.

I check out how much a new mech would cost, and the only option is another Jenner, the one I currently have, in pretty used condition. It costs nearly four million C-bills, which means that at the rate I'm currently getting paid, I will never get another one. Even if I do perfectly, that's twenty missions. I'm getting a sinking feeling here.

Since I figure that my target is probably somewhere nearer to Kurita, so I travel near to the border. Costs me 45k C-Bills, but it's a reasonable expense for the moment. On my next mission, I shop around for various options. Since I don't like my chances with anything tougher than a light mech, my options are limited, and it seems like 150k is going to be what I'm getting on the regular unless I find something that gives me more money or stuff, somehow.

My second mission is a capture of ammo and weapons, fairly straight-forward. One enemy target on the briefing, none on the map. This, as it turns out, is inaccurate, it's behind a mountain. Apparently line of sight applies to my briefings too. I'm sure that won't be a problem later. This guy I gun down quickly with a bit of luck on my side.

Let's go back to the news. See, every time you complete a mission, you get four or so months worth of information regarding bandit/pirate attacks. This is as considerable as you'd expect, though less so than if we were getting information about bandit attacks in a known universe with over two thousand inhabited worlds. Older messages are automatically removed, but there does remain consistent messages between missions. 

Wanted, dead or alive, same price, is a pretty interesting way to do business.

Of interest to me now, there's Grig Griez, whose wicked acts are endless, but still only carries a 200k reward. That's enough to pay for ammo and repairs at least. There's also Helmar Valesek, the self-proclaimed bandit king of Santander V, who I know has a group of mechs with him and allegedly superior tactics. I think that despite the risk, I'll head for Santander V.

The way you find out where a planet is, is to activate the planets sub-menu on the travel screen. And I can't find Santander V, but I can find Galedon V, where I can find the last known whereabouts of Grig Griez from the local authorities. Also, nice Star Wars reference, I wonder if you can sue someone for using a random planet from your work in theirs?

Taking a screenshot automatically removed the text, considering it's the home key, that's a bit over-sensitive.

Griez, the arch villain, I love the writing in this, is on an uncharted planet beyond Land's End. Since I spent 45k to get here, I decide to pick up a mission first. Something tells me not following the proper chain of events is going to result in something not triggering. And actually...this kind of is Land's End. Well, no matter, I should probably get the Kurita's on friendly terms. This is a garrison mission, which means they come to me. 

This is the easiest mission yet. Don't go after them means I can focus on aiming, because as much as I hate to admit it, aiming a target indicator up and down and adjusting my speed at the same time is tricky. A few lucky missions beforehand and I barely get hit. That said, it is disappointing that my missile launcher takes so much heat to use, come on, ammo weapons aren't supposed to do that! (as a general matter of course, not necessarily something about BattleTech, something, something, game balance)

Boy, Jarris isn't wasting any time waiting on grinding the peasantry under his sole.

With that, the year is over and Gideon is a year older. Rowe is desperately trying to keep Gideon's supporters together as the economy on Ander's Moon begins to tank thanks to the Vandenburg's assets being seized. No joke, McBrin is opening a financial service...thing, which I'm sure is going to end up with some It's a Wonderful Life level screwery as the place is in such bad shape that food shortages are expected.

If I'm not mistaken, the left arm is completely destroyed, very modest repair cost.

There are new mechs here in Kurita space. Three Locusts are for sale, which are reasonable priced, under two million, I could reasonably get these within the decade. Of course, they also look like fodder to be shot down. There's also a Phoenix Hawk, which is only slightly more expensive than my current Jenner and much more reasonable for my playstyle of waiting for the enemies to come to me. I feel like before I get a new mech, I need a bit of buffer capital, since I know I'll get screwed on the trade-in.

Before I end this, I'd like to bring up reputation, which I briefly mentioned. There's a general reputation, of which I'm still risky, and faction relations. Curiously, despite everything I've done being allegedly bandit fighting missions, I had Kurita as slightly negative and 

Considering how this game is going and how simple and playable it is, I may just try my hand at a second campaign since it's almost inevitable that I'll lose.

This Session: 1 hour