THE FIRST MISSION || #01 SWANSONG BattleTech Campaign || Ultra Hard Career Mode w. all DLCs

[@bryancraggs94]

Good so far. I haven't played BT in a long time. I might have to revisit it. More Xcom crossover please. :)

[@SykenPlays]

Haha, yeah the character directly were imported into the universe. BT has a surprising amount of depth, specifically with the different overhauls that came out. I didn‘t want to start with a modded campaign though without even showing the base game.

[@lyrrakell]

Looking forward to seeing you tackle this game. It's a lot of fun--though I never did finish the campaign.

[@SykenPlays]

BattleTech is such a nice game, I tried my best in this run to make a good impression and hope that the audience will like it. I would love to produce a bit more content for the game.

[@jonathanpickles2946]

I love this game. I don't know that many of the settings at the start make the game more difficult mostly they make it slower, except ironman, the death ones and the enemy force stuff. I say this as someone who tweaked the Campaign to start with 4 locusts before the DLC came out. I love the very slow xp progression too or the pilots all look the same. You can tune the difficulty in game by taking on easy or harder quests so it's all a bit nebulous anyway. Looking forward to more!

[@SykenPlays]

Hi Jonathan, that totally makes sense. You can overcome some of the difficulty by grinding through it. My intention in this campaign is to not grind a lot, but instead try to limit-test and showcase good firefights and sensible tactics to win at different stages in the game. As a potential follow-up for the future (assuming that the run will have positive feedback), I am very open to add more difficult mods on it (had some suggestions for those already) :)

[@jonathanpickles2946]

@@SykenPlays I have not really touched mods. They seem to add tonnes of stuff that I am not really interested in - the tabletop game got very bloated over the last 40od years. It would be interesting to see expert play high difficulty ones though. I don't think this is as difficult or has a high skill ceiling as X com (or put another way I think I am a lot better at this than Xcom!)

[@QSS6]

Been waiting for this! Let’s see how you tackle it. 🙂

[@SykenPlays]

It is going to be quite a fun ride. I really hope that the game will resonate with the audience, because there are so many interning mods, which also can be covered. The game itself has a very robust strategic layer and although it does not compare to the depth of xcom2, you can still pull of quite some things - and I am hoping to showcase these varying options in the runs here.

[@fubblitious]

I didn't see you select "WOTC RnG" option in the setup, but I guess multiple 70% misses and poor old Hogbite getting a bump to the head says otherwise. Good hunting!

[@SykenPlays]

It is enabled and trust me, it will be quite a bane during the run x.x

[@TerminalCommie]

Seeing a different game is awesome love xcom but seeing something new is exiting

[@SykenPlays]

Thanks mate, I will try to do a bit of variety, the viewers suggested a few more game and bit-by-bit I wanted to get some different content online.

[@TerminalCommie]

@@SykenPlays I think it’s a great idea, xcom is the best turn based I’ve played but warhammer also puts out not bad ones mechanicus is a pretty good one with some challenge. Any content you put out I will watch though you have an awesome eye when it comes to strategy games.

[@weirdbob9070]

Oh I can’t wait for you play the modded versions of this game!

[@SykenPlays]

Yes, I am looking forward to that as well. Wanted to test the waters a bit and there are so many great mods out there for the game.

[@alexanderschoneberg8610]

@@SykenPlays so here will be a roguetech campaign possibly? :)

[@Jonnysh]

right now the actual consequences of battle actions area little hard for me to follow, but I'm sure I'll catch on as I get more familiar with the series - looking forward to it!

[@SykenPlays]

It should hopefully come across during the gameplay of the first session. I am trying to explain a lot, so that it is easier to get to know the game mechanics. And yes, soon-ish it should be easier to follow - thanks for sticking around.

[@MikeThePublicBravo]

6.2.22? Looks like Christmas is coming early this year! Cannot wait :D

[@SykenPlays]

Thanks for the kind comment Mike :)

[@AlanW]

I feel like Bradford's callsign should be "Central" - tough luck on that headshot.

[@SykenPlays]

That is actually a great point - unfortunately too late to edit it now, but for future runs, I will keep it in mind. Why didn‘t I think of that.

[@xthebumpx]

"Why is it possible to give a female character facial hair?" Watch out, you're going to get yourself cancel mobbed. 😂

[@SykenPlays]

I think it is a valid question. But I can see your point.

[@ricwalker6600]

i always play my BJs as dedicated snipers. with the right pilot and right equipment and right playstyle it snipes the part i want destroyed from a save distance with ease. enabled to do so thanks to the higly mobile meelee minigun shadow hawk scouting and softening up the target with the 2 LRM boats. that goes for me all the way up to the late game, only replacing the BJ with something bigger to protect the unique guns. Its the beauty of Battletechs mid and lategame. its the only other game that gives me the same "gear fear" like Escape from tarkov. Do i really want to risk that mech with its ++gun on this random mission or save him vor the next story mission? Even XCOM does not reach that level of risk assessment for me. yeah, loosing your best guy in early to mid game can really hurt, but in the late game, where you have lots of colonels you can affort to lose some captains. But battletech? Everything is loosable to sometimes the craziest things: i litterally screamed when my best pilot in his 100t mech died because a little scout mech that a blew off both arms runs up to it and oneshots the mechs head with a kick. I screamed in agony and laughed about the insanity of that moment for minutes.

[@SykenPlays]

Hi Ric, thanks for the input, that is really good and it is great to see a different approach to the game. The LRM boat softening is an often employed technique, which I will also showcase a bit later in this run ;)

[@sethwarren1445]

Reminds me of an old mech warrior tactics game.

[@SykenPlays]

It is similar indeed, with a slightly stronger focus on replicating the table-top game. One of my favorite aspects of the game was the breadth of weapons and arsenals, which made the whole customization fun overall.

[@kyle7362]

Her name was Elena (Outrider) Dragunova >.>

[@SykenPlays]

*Cough* Well, I got bad news for you ... I might have butchered the name throughout the run then -.-

[@Napoleonic_S]

play with the roguetech mod, it's lightyears harder.

[@SykenPlays]

Great suggestion. I played quite a bit of RogueTech matter of fact. This is a starter campaign to introduce the game and showcase a vanilla run. That being said - if the run is successful, there will be a poll for Mods and rest assured RogueTech is going to be one of them.

[@martingrundy7577]

Hmm. Never heard of this game

[@SykenPlays]

It is actually quite good, one of my favorite tactical games. Very different from the cover-mechanic based approach of Xcom, but still similar due to its movement phase, facing, customization and depth of weapons.

[@1kvolt1978]

Why did you lie to me? It's not the hardest difficulty, not even close. The main option was to change number of parts - and you kept it at three! At three! It's an easy difficulty, not hard. And I know you'll say "It's just grind, bla-bla-bla, bla-bla-bla..." But it's not. More than three parts (ideally eight obviously) per mech makes game difficult not because of grind, but because it keeps you from snowballing. You can't get strong mechs by doing just one mission and make the rest of the game a walk in the park. You also have to hunt for the parts you need to complete mechs which means you have to play tactically to kill the pilot but save the mech instead of just annihilating everything on sight. And you have to use mechs you get first even if those are mediocre at best. This is what makes number of parts per mech the only actual difficulty option. Everything else makes almost no difference.

[@SykenPlays]

Good morning and welcome to the channel first and foremost. I thought that I had addressed your concern in the introduction. My reason for picking the setting is quite simple: It is an introduction into the game and I wanted to share viewers on my channel different builds and strategies. As you might or might not be aware: After 20ish videos in a let‘s play series, the engagement with the series drops to less than 20% of the initial viewers, after 50 videos it is often only 5% of the original viewers. People are not interested in seeing grinds and thus I decided to keep the length of the campaign to a reasonable size at the expense of this game setting.

[@1kvolt1978]

@@SykenPlays Yes, I understand your reasons. It still doesn't answer why you have broke my (and probably some other people like me) hopes by calling your difficulty settings "the hardest" when it's not. Oh well, what's done is done. Have a good day, sir.

[@SykenPlays]

​@@1kvolt1978 You are actually the first person to bring this up as a problem. The overwhelming majority of viewers welcomed the decision. Look, to be very clear: It is not a problem to play with 8 mech parts. It just makes the campaign longer and incentivizes a playstyle that is not representing the normal evolution of (light, medium, heavy, assault tiers). I have played exactly that challenge off-camera and the solution to it is gathering credits, grinding missions and then buying Mechs as a whole (because their purchase price is not increasing with this setting). You simply get 8mn credits and buy an assault mech, then rinse and repeat, until you get a full 400T lance. The viewer learns not much from that and 80% of the content is skipped plus most of the viewers tune out after the 5th mission. If you are looking for that kind of content, you are unfortunately in the minority and might need to look for another channel.

[@1kvolt1978]

@@SykenPlays I'm absolutely sure that number of parts affects shop prices for a full mech. And because you pay IIRC ten times more for buying it's not viable startegy. Of course if we are talking about playing for the end goal i.e. gaining maximum victory points. Ususally it's worth buying 1-2 good early medium mechs to get started and then get more on the battle field. I know that I'm in the minority who looks for the good content. It's hard to be like this, good content is pretty rare. There is only one dude, good ol' Edmon, who did this type of campaign - and I've watched it all. But his campaign is quite old preDLC. Still very, very professional content. Everyone else make the same. Boring easy fast mode, like if they actually don't like the game, but more going for hype train. Sadly you're happened to be one of them, but you was the only one who clickbaited with the name of the playlist. And this is why we have this dialogue.

[@SykenPlays]

@@1kvolt1978 You unfortunately are wrong with your assumption. The prices are independent on the amount of parts that you need, which is an oversight I assume. It is also not true that it is worth buying 1-2 good early medium mechs, because their full price is typically around 4mn (so 50% of an assault Mech). The literal best strategy is to farm missions for supplies, keeping the own costs down as much as possible, not traveling and instead simply buying assault Mechs. The point that I am making is that the grind campaign approach would have gained 5% of the viewership, because the vast majority of people wouldn‘t like it. The other point that I tried to explain to you - and you are free to disagree - is that the campaign with 8 parts is not more difficult. Grinding the same mission and then buying your way into assault Mechs, because everything else is not feasible, is not really difficult, you just run similar missions over and over. We can close the discussion here, you are entitled to your opinion, but please don‘t make generalizing statements like this would have been a click-bait titled campaign. Thanks and have a good day.