BATTLETECH considered complete with one last patch coming, Harebrained moving on

I'm pretty excited for their next games too. :)

I was disappointed in this game. It looks nice, but everything is so complicated. After few battles I felt boring already. It missing some better explanation and feeling of progression. But in current state of game, when I start I do not even know, where should I grow and why. What mechs should I buy and what parts should I change. Everything is so unclear, that it's become boring. But that's just my opinion.

I find it refreshing to hear that a game is going to be "done." I mean, it's a pity to hear about the memory leak Aquabat's talking about not being corrected, but nowadays it feels like I'm always hearing about games being constantly adjusted, patched, and "balanced."

Perhaps it's time to start playing this game that I bought so long ago. :D Hopefully I love it. I loved Shadownrun: Dragonfall and likewise look forward to what they're making next.

Quoting: The_AquabatDisappointing this game leaks memory. Picture this as the same as the Batman AK leaking scandal. It's still a nice game but you need more than 8gb of RAM for 1080p. I think that on windows for what I heard it doesn't happen (but it happens on MacOS). I reported that on the forums last year and they did nothing... and they knew this for a long time. saying that the game needs 8gb of RAM minimum it's a lie . they should come straight and make a statement and acknowledge that the game needs at least 12gb of RAM on Linux. There is not much PR now to be lost... making a statement won't influence in their sales at this point.

I do think their minimum should be bumped up too (which is true for A LOT of games), but I don't agree that it leaks memory. Needing more on Linux doesn't mean it's leaking, it's quite common with Unity games from all that I've tested especially when they're using some older builds too.

I played through an entire skirmish earlier, keeping in mind I have the two recent expansions and I didn't touch 7GB RAM use for the game but I have seen it hit 9GB before when playing 3-4 hours in one go but never higher than that.

Quoting: DMGI was disappointed in this game. It looks nice, but everything is so complicated. After few battles I felt boring already. It missing some better explanation and feeling of progression. But in current state of game, when I start I do not even know, where should I grow and why. What mechs should I buy and what parts should I change. Everything is so unclear, that it's become boring. But that's just my opinion.

What mechs to buy . . . well, as a rule, big is better. It's not perhaps quite always true, but it's a pretty damn good rule of thumb.
Pay attention to how much armour the dang things have. I occasionally couldn't resist beefing up weapons a bit extra at the expense of armour and came to the conclusion that the best defence is a good defence. And on at least one occasion I bought a big mech with glorious weaponry, didn't tweak it much, didn't look too closely at the pocket descriptions about that model, and wondered why it kept dying so fast . . . then took a look and whoops! It was totally under-armoured.

What weapons . . . Dunno. Different strokes for different folks. One thing I do notice is that one big weapon does more than two little weapons totaling the same damage, because you can punch through and do real damage in one shot instead of spreading it across the armour of different locations. This is a major reason I'm not sold on missiles--with missiles you have to basically knock out every single piece of armour on your target before you can start to hurt it because you have a ton of little impacts.
But I tend to skew towards short range effectiveness--use terrain cover to get as close as possible, rush, crush opponents with stuff like AC-20s or stacks of basic medium lasers and stuff. Called shot to the head, baby! But I believe emphasis on longer range engagement can be effective for people who can do it well (ie not me), and I have to admit the indirect fire abilities of long range missiles can be nice to soften up opponents who can't shoot back. So yeah, there are various workable approaches, which I think is a good thing.
If you're gonna have a laser hog that overheats a lot, make it a mech with a good hand-to-hand attack because you can whack the opponent while cooling down.
And if you spot weapons with a few nice bonuses, all bets are off--with a couple damage boosts, suddenly a short range missile rack can become a monstrous killer, and you should forget all your normal ideas of what weapon type is effective and hammer that "buy" button.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 14 February 2020 at 9:13 pm UTC

First load time is fine, but if you sit there and continuously load the same save-game, watch as it slowly bogs down each load event to the point where its not enjoyable waiting for it anymore. Also causes odd stutter performance issues as time progresses (in a mission).

Pretty sure the memory leaks occur each time you enter a mission, as you go from mission to mission there is something stuck in memory that builds up over time. Believe it or not, this problem exists under windows also but its more obvious under Linux since its stuck on OpenGL for Linux (not very well optimized in certain maps like citys etc)


Last edited by TheRiddick on 14 February 2020 at 11:43 pm UTC

Quoting: The_Aquabat

Quoting: TheRiddickFirst load time is fine,

did you try with 8gb of RAM?? with more is fine but with that amount it is not.

I know this is gonna sound strange, but my first thought when you said that was "who is still running with only 8gigs of ram?" I've been on sixteen for like seven years, back in the DDR3 era. I'm on 16 now because I was impatient to get my new Ryzen budget build up and running. I'll upgrading to 64GB by end of Summer. A 3900X or even 3950X by end of year to replace the placeholder-2600 currently installed. Probably a 1TB Samsung PCIE4 NVME, also. New GPU+43in 4K monitor sometime next year.

Memory leaks should be fixed, granted, but get with the times.

Quoting: jarhead_h

Quoting: The_Aquabat

Quoting: TheRiddickFirst load time is fine,

did you try with 8gb of RAM?? with more is fine but with that amount it is not.

I know this is gonna sound strange, but my first thought when you said that was "who is still running with only 8gigs of ram?" I've been on sixteen for like seven years, back in the DDR3 era. I'm on 16 now because I was impatient to get my new Ryzen budget build up and running. I'll upgrading to 64GB by end of Summer. A 3900X or even 3950X by end of year to replace the placeholder-2600 currently installed. Probably a 1TB Samsung PCIE4 NVME, also. New GPU+43in 4K monitor sometime next year.

Memory leaks should be fixed, granted, but get with the times.

Yeah, we live in the times of "who cares about optimizations", when games have memory leaks with 64GB then you'll get in 128GB?

You pretty much use this just to brag about how you have money for a 64GB PC, exactly the kind of PC gamer which is a minority but very vocal in forums telling people bad optimization is on their end and devs should not be blamed.

Quoting: The_Aquabatyou are lucky I guess just check the user profiles here there is still A LOT people using hardware more than 4 or 5 years old. You miss the point Linux is about extending the lifespan of old hardware. this has been discussed before but contrary to popular belief we Linux users are not bleeding edge lords... again check the profiles and you will see there are lots of ppl and on really old hardware.

Yeah, one has to be lucky for having a job that gives you the pleasure of changing your PC every two years, the same reason console users use against PC gaming because people like him are a minority, but really vocal, they actually make people think that you have to be buying new GPU and memory modules every 2-3 years.

But Steam surveys show how 16GB isn't even the half, 8GB GPU is not even the 18% and four cores are the most used CPUs by Steam users.

You can say most people don't change their PCs because they are struggling with money issues, even when they have a stable job, but even that, for me it is really hard to think how I'm gonna treat my old PC knowing to recycle this kind of waste is quite costly and I don't want to just trash something is still working.

For me is sad when devs have to resort to raw power instead of optimization.