BattleTech: Graduation Was Ruined

Jason looks appropriately outraged.

I promise you that my updates have not permanently regressed to a weekly thing. Unfortunately, my triumphant return to blogging was not accompanied by an equally triumphant cleansing of my task list, and the last couple weeks have been a bit overwhelming.

One of the many combat missions at the beginning of the game.

BattleTech has grown on me a bit, even though there's a host of things about it that I don't understand--and even though I seem to suck at it. It took me forever to get out of the training academy. I managed to screw up each mission at least twice, and a couple of them took me six or seven re-tries. But it wasn't so bad because I had time to mess around, make money, develop my skills, and figure out the game mechanics. A few notes:

• I found that I could talk to my fellow students if I saw them walking to a building ahead of me. Then they'd be there when I looked around. Otherwise, it said, "nobody here seems interested in talking to you." They didn't really have much to say anyway.

• I enjoyed the stock market investments a lot. I wish this was a feature of more games. I made so much money that it felt like cheating a bit; eventually, I was able to purchase all the training the game would let me buy, and whatever weapons I wanted.

I may never live up to my father's reputation as a MechWarrior, but I'll at least be richer than him.

 

• I never did figure out the rules of when I got paid. As I wandered around, I'd see my money go up in $15 increments, but it seemed to be completely random. Sometimes, an hour would go by with no money. Other times, I'd go out to the kitchen to whip up some pasta, come back to my computer, and find myself with over $150.

• The game has tiresome copy protection that has you naming mech parts before every training mission.

• I'll save a combat tactics posting for when I understand it more, but it seems very tactical. The way you maneuver and use the terrain recalls Pool of Radiance even if the weapons and graphics are more reminiscent of Wasteland. You have the option to have little graphics show up for key combat events. I like the way Jason gets enraged and bangs on the console every time the mech overheats.

• When you engage in combat, you have the option to fight yourself or have the computer fight for you. Either way, you have the option to see graphics or not, and different levels of text from "verbose" to "none." If you set control to the computer, say no to graphics, and no to text, you still have to wait as the computer does all the calculations behind the scenes and ultimately tells you the results.

Manual combat against another mech. I like to walk right up and kick them. That might explain my gunnery score problem.

• From my repeated missions, my piloting skill reached "excellent" very quickly, but nothing I could do would get my gunnery skill off anything but "unskilled" until the final mission, when I finally made it to "amateur."

• I continue to enjoy the scripted dialogue in the game from shopkeepers and mechanics.

I won't think of not buying it after that.

As I said, most of the training missions left my mech destroyed and had my little icon limping sheepishly back to the training center. Once I finally beat the fifth scenario, a fellow cadet named Rick Atlas asked to see me in the lounge. While we were talking, a drunk tech spilled a drink on me and Atlas stopped me from giving him a good thrashing (which was probably a good thing, the way the game has been going; I likely would have just embarrassed myself). The little scene ended with Atlas asking if I'd ever been to Starport and giving me some kind of electronic device when I said no. I think this came in handy later.

But I have been to the Tosche Station to pick up power converters.

The training missions started pitting me against multiple mechs, and on the seventh mission, I got an ominous message that the training opponents were "like nothing you've ever faced before." It soon became clear that they weren't training; the academy had been invaded by the enemy. As I tried to battle the mechs, I got an increasingly alarming series of messages that the citadel and its army were destroyed and my father probably killed.

I'm basically a complete coward.

The enemy mechs destroyed mine, leaving me to flee on foot. Sure enough, the training academy was in ruins.

My money was in there!

I was soon slain by a group of 5 humans who laughed off my pathetic attacks with a sword.

This is the "death" message.

Reloading, I decided to use my funds to stock up on a variety of weapons and armor. Little did I realize that I was completely wasting money and every time I made a purchase, it just replaced my old weapon or armor with the new one. Without meaning to, I ended up wearing a flak suit and wielding a short-range missile launcher as my weapon. When I reloaded and went through the invasion again, my short-range missile launcher proved quite effective against the enemies on foot (I haven't tried to battle mechs on foot yet), which makes me wonder why anyone would bother with a sword or pistol or lesser weapons.

Oddly, it doesn't seem to run out of ammunition.

The game suggested that I flee to Starport. I had no idea where it was, so I staked out in a random direction, but soon I noticed that the overland map had an arrow on it pointing me the way; I assume this is a consequence of Atlas's electronic device.

I encountered legions of enemies along the way, and by the time I reached Starport, I had virtually no health left. As I close the game for the night, I've just discovered that Starport is no safe haven, and enemies roam the streets, still looking for blood.

Notice my "body" or health meter at its minimum.

I really do like the combat in this game, even if I suspect I'll be letting the computer fight a lot of it. What I don't understand is how I got to "excellent" so fast in so many skills. It doesn't seem there would be a lot more categories to go ("stupendous"?), and the game's just beginning.

While you were all waiting for this posting, you had the dorkiest discussion ever on the thread to the last posting, but it got a little out of hand. I confess that I fall on the side of mecha skeptics: I don't see how they'd ever be efficient or effective combat vehicles. But I'm not personally invested in the opinion. And since they're clearly important to this game, I hope there's some way I can acquire one in Starport.