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[Erkki]

Quads make excellent snipers: lower chance to receive damage when in partial cover(more legs) and no penalties to accuracy when prone. No fall chance when getting up if gyro is ok and all legs connected. The Heavy PPC Scorpion for one is awesome.

[Neonivek]

The thing I love about BattleTech that I found quickly is that it many ways it is a game about optimization.

The Battlescore, for example, is only how great your mech is in most situations. It gives a very vague idea of power but isn't everything. It is entirely capable of winning a fight with a mech with a much smaller score.

So I was looking through mechs and I found one with a dismal battlescore and kind of dreadful stats, as it could barely move... had a walk of about 2 and it was a very light mech. I asked my Battletech friend "What is the point of this mech?" and he told me it takes advantage of city cover combat. In fact it makes this Kickstarter weird in a lot of ways because the mechs it includes are mostly for use of the player when there are a lot of great defensive mechs that would be used.

It is really telling when the people who made this kickstarter bad mouth vehicles and basically say "if the stars align vehicles can win", when those with experience know that vehicles can be outright scary (sure they are fragile... but when you get marked and suddenly take a metric ton of homing LRMs up your butt by a vehicle that can travel freely around the map...)

Looking back at the OP, the fact that they're setting it in 3025 (No frakkin' Clans!) is a definite plus for me. But that means there's even less canon justification for modular weapons. Yes, custom loadouts are potentially a thing, but in-universe you'd need to find a skilled Mech engineer to tweak a standard Mech, and then there's a pretty good chance they'd just fuck it up and you'd end up with a Mech with "quirks". Or find one of the rare House variants, which typically changed out a couple of weapons and maybe a slight difference in the armor levels.

Actually still happened and was extremely common because of travel times, the overall prices, and dealing with random chance. House variants occurred when a house itself had a variant and mass produced those but otherwise custom mechs aren't not only not unusual but expected.

As well switching load outs in order to deal with certain conditions happened quite a bit as well.

But THIS is just for individual companies, gladiators, and mercenaries. If you were in the military (and not one strapped for cash) generally speaking you went for the mass production market.

At least that is my impression from actually playing the RPG. It was Risky but honestly, even will a less experienced crew, losing a weapon was a LOT less costly then losing entire body parts or mechs.

[Anvilfolk]

The Battlescore calculated from pilot skill was actually one of the things that made me lose interest in MekWars, the online Battletech campaign. Turns out having a high battlescore is worse than having a low battlescore... if you level up your units too much, they're worth too much and easily taken down by smaller mechs anyway, so it's bad when you level up... which, just, ugh.

And yeah, good ol' UrbanMech. Never really learned how to use it properly Those AC20 though

I wasn't aware that there was a list of mechs they were going to implement. Where can I find it?

[Neonivek]

LIGHT: Locust, Commando, Spider, Firestarter, Jenner, Panther, Raven, Urbanmech

MEDIUM: Cicada, Blackjack, Vindicator, Centurion, Enforcer, Hunchback, Trebuchet, Griffin, Kintaro, Shadowhawk, Wolverine

HEAVY: Dragon, Quickdraw, Catapult, JagerMech, Thunderbolt, Cataphract, Grasshopper, Orion

ASSAULT: Awesome, Victor, Zeus, BattleMaster, Stalker, Highlander, Banshee, King Crab, Atlas

Those are just the ones they are planning to do. You can see it in the FAQ section of the kickstarter.

[Erkki]

The Battlescore calculated from pilot skill was actually one of the things that made me lose interest in MekWars, the online Battletech campaign. Turns out having a high battlescore is worse than having a low battlescore... if you level up your units too much, they're worth too much and easily taken down by smaller mechs anyway, so it's bad when you level up... which, just, ugh.

And yeah, good ol' UrbanMech. Never really learned how to use it properly Those AC20 though

I wasn't aware that there was a list of mechs they were going to implement. Where can I find it?

Yeah pilot skill rating higher than 5 is not really worth the increased BV, especially not in 3025 play. Its much more worth it in later eras, for TSM mechs, when jumping to heavy woods(to avoid falling, unfortunately optional rule) and staying upright in Small cockpit mechs.

MWLegends also gave the pilot a chance to re-roll ammo crits, through-armor criticals, hd hits and fall-overs per pilot skill level lower than 5. Sometimes that gauss slug still hit head twice. 

[Anvilfolk]

LIGHT: Locust, Commando, Spider, Firestarter, Jenner, Panther, Raven, Urbanmech

MEDIUM: Cicada, Blackjack, Vindicator, Centurion, Enforcer, Hunchback, Trebuchet, Griffin, Kintaro, Shadowhawk, Wolverine

HEAVY: Dragon, Quickdraw, Catapult, JagerMech, Thunderbolt, Cataphract, Grasshopper, Orion

ASSAULT: Awesome, Victor, Zeus, BattleMaster, Stalker, Highlander, Banshee, King Crab, Atlas

Those are just the ones they are planning to do. You can see it in the FAQ section of the kickstarter.

Hgngng... getting the urge to play again. Also, the UrbanMech is in there! I honestly never knew enough about robots to know whether those are a lot or not anyway. They look like enough to me

[Neonivek]

Given that there are a metric megaton of mechs in existence... There is no amount that would ever be "a lot" so to speak.

[BrigadeGeneral]

Gratulations on geting those overfunds O.o

I like the concept of the game. I still remember playing Mehwarrior on my rig with Radeon 3D Rage chipset, and those female sounds "Warning! Vehicle lights, ENGAGED!"

[nenjin]

Mechwarrior 2, still the best mech game ever made IMO. "Thermal Enhancement, ENGAGED."

[BrigadeGeneral]

Funny thing I had with Mehwarior, for first few hours of playing, I was unable to do anything except engaging those lights or activating weapo system. Once I learned, that was a blast

[Sensei]

So, I watched through the livestreams, and there were a few details that aren't on the kickstarter page, if you're curious:

-Heat
-Jamming
-Infantry and Quads being considered
-Non-mech vehicles, but likely NPC-only
-Modifying mechs "quite extensively" "messing around with actuators and gyros and stuff"
-Most mechs will be based on art from Mechwarrior Online, but because it's set in the succession wars period of technological decline, will look like they're been repaired with salvage and custom parts
-Emblem designer
-Color schemes for mechs
-Unseen mechs possibly re-designed
-Player will probably control a lance of 4 mechs
-Localization (German, French, Russian)
-Releasing on Steam, GOG, Humble DRM-Free
-Equipment in mercenary campaign will have different stats depending on who manufactured it
-Inferno Rounds
-Campaign likely to track mech damage mission to mission, possible to lose money on a contract due to damage
-You can fail or withdraw from a mission and continue the campaign, in mercenary campaign at least

One concept that came up a lot was "information overload", the fact that they want to communicate a lot of detail in each turn per-unit, and that's one of the main reasons they don't want to commit to controlling more than four mechs at a time.

[Kanil]

-Non-mech vehicles, but likely NPC-only

That would be such a cockslap to the face.

[Neonivek]

-Non-mech vehicles, but likely NPC-only

That would be such a cockslap to the face.

In all fairness as much as I love vehicles, and as viable as they are. They are incredibly risky death traps.

[Flying Dice]

-Non-mech vehicles, but likely NPC-only

That would be such a cockslap to the face.

Honestly, if they were going to put in the work, I'd rather see more mechs included rather than the ability to use and customize other vehicles. Especially if the scope really is going to stay oriented around commanding a single lance.

[Neonivek]

Which frankly flyingdice... is probably a good way to do it.

If there is one thing Vehicles sometimes seem to do better then Mechs is that lighter vehicles do a lot better against heavier mechs then lighter mechs do. (This is ignoring that IMO 75-100 Ton mechs are equals IMO, after 75 more weight is a trade off)