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Battletech |KS| Turn-based tactical mech combat, Harebrained Schemes, Summer 2017

M

MadLaughter

Member
Question for those familiar with the studio and their previous Kickstarters: Did this get funded faster than their other games? Or, if the money requested makes that answer wierd, how is this game's KS doing compared to past ones?
 
M

More_Badass

Member
MadLaughter said:
Question for those familiar with the studio and their previous Kickstarters: Did this get funded faster than their other games? Or, if the money requested makes that answer wierd, how is this game's KS doing compared to past ones?
Click to expand...
Yup

Day 1 funding for past projects
- Shadowrun Returns - $296k
- Golem Arcana - $99k
- Shadowrun Hong Kong - $267k

Battletech - $300k in 1 hour, 18 minutes
 
M

MichaelFassbender

Member
Holy fuck, that got funded fast. And it's well deserved; these guys are the right people to give justice to the license. Might have to go for an upper-tier level of backing this time around...hmm.....
 
S

Steel

Banned
I know kickstarters usually stall after the first couple days to the last week, but I feel like this could get the PVP tier and go beyond it.
 
E

Effect

Member
For those that have played them is it better to play the Shadowrun games by Harebrained in order? Do you get more of an understanding of the setting, etc that way? Never touched the Shadowrun IP before.
 
K

kiyoaki

Member
Effect said:
For those that have played them is it better to play the Shadowrun games by Harebrained in order? Do you get more of an interacting of the setting, etc that way? Never touched the Shadowrun IP before.
Click to expand...
No, they're self-contained. Just go with whatever setting you like best (Seattle/Berlin/Hong Kong), but preferably Dragonfall or Hong Kong, since they're better than the first game.
More_Badass said:
Yup

Day 1 funding for past projects
- Shadowrun Returns - $296k
- Golem Arcana - $99k
- Shadowrun Hong Kong - $267k

Battletech - $300k in 1 hour, 18 minutes
Click to expand...
It's interesting. At my school, back in the 90s, it always seemed to me that Shadowrun was their strongest IP.
 
G

Granjinha

Member
Effect said:
For those that have played them is it better to play the Shadowrun games by Harebrained in order? Do you get more of an interacting of the setting, etc that way? Never touched the Shadowrun IP before.
Click to expand...

I jumped straight to Dragonfall Director's Cut and didn't feel i was missing anything from a story point of view. Each of the games plot's are self sustained. What i do hear is that coming back to Returns after Dragonfall/Hong Kong is kinda hard.

Still didn't play Hong Kong, though.
 
U

Uthred

Member
Effect said:
For those that have played them is it better to play the Shadowrun games by Harebrained in order? Do you get more of an interacting of the setting, etc that way? Never touched the Shadowrun IP before.
Click to expand...

People generally suggest skipping the first one as the latter two are significantly better, on the other hand its a struggle to go back to the first after playing the latter two
 
C

ColonelSkills

Member
Effect said:
For those that have played them is it better to play the Shadowrun games by Harebrained in order? Do you get more of an interacting of the setting, etc that way? Never touched the Shadowrun IP before.
Click to expand...

They aren't interconnected in so much as they get progressively better. Dead Man's Switch (the name of the campaign for Returns) has some issues that were quite noticeable in the second half. Stuff like grammar QC taking a nose dive. I believe this was mostly because of the stretch goals being hit and all the extra content being dropped in that might have not undergone as much preproduction scrutiny, but I can't speak to it one way or the other. I also played it near launch so that shit might have been fixed.

Dragonfall improves on it in almost every way, in terms of options, dialog, story, you name it. Better game in every way.

Hong Kong I haven't finished but it is shaping up to the best of the set. There's a refinement as they go along that is distinct and noticeable.
 
L

Lime

Member
The backer rewards could be a bit cooler. Their previous kickstarters had game boxes, digital novellas, e-books, figures, artbooks, and a bunch of other things.

This is more a jacket, some broidery patch and that's it.
 
S

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
Lime said:
The backer rewards could be a bit cooler. Their previous kickstarters had game boxes, digital novellas, e-books, figures, artbooks, and a bunch of other things.

This is more a jacket, some broidery patch and that's it.
Click to expand...

They just need more granularity in their tiers.

A big part of any successful kickstarter is convincing people to up their pledge. It's much easier to convince someone to up their pledge by $10 to $20 then it is to convince someone to up their pledge by $500.

They really need to look at that. They can easily fill the gaps with more digital rewards. Have some packs that come with multiple copies of the game and things like that.
 
C

ColonelSkills

Member
Yeah, I was hoping for a box or even a poster of some of this nice promo art.

The jump in tiers will bite them in the ass in the latter half of this campaign, I think. I know they said during Hong Kong that boxes were cost prohibitive and hard to do, and the jacket is rad (but pricey), but the gap AFTER that is a bit large and there's nothing between the 125 and jacket tiers either.

A signed poster would have been excellent.
 
M

More_Badass

Member
Lime said:
The backer rewards could be a bit cooler. Their previous kickstarters had game boxes, digital novellas, e-books, figures, artbooks, and a bunch of other things.

This is more a jacket, some broidery patch and that's it.
Click to expand...
The tiers do have some of those rewards though
- THE ART OF BATTLETECH
- A brand-new ORIGINAL BATTLETECH E-NOVELLA by legendary author Michael A. Stackpole.
- ADDITIONAL E-NOVELLAS by Michael A. Stackpole

etc.

Well, physical versions would be cool
 
G

Gentleman Jack

Member
Memory said:
Not trying to tell people what to do with their money but waiting until the campaign gets higher to the $1 Million+ mark before backing is counter productive if you want that total to get hit.
Click to expand...

No.

I'm lazy.

I don't want to have to remember later to cancel my pledge if the product becomes something I don't want (skirmish-only).

The momentum always picks back up towards the end of a Kickstarter.

I don't preorder games sight unseen and I don't early bird KickStarters on a promise made $750,000~$1.6M away.
 
P

Poodlestrike

Banned
Gentleman Jack said:
No.

I'm lazy.

I don't want to have to remember later to cancel my pledge if the product becomes something I don't want (skirmish-only).

The momentum always picks back up towards the end of a Kickstarter.

I don't preorder games sight unseen and I don't early bird KickStarters on a promise made $750,000~$1.6M away.
Click to expand...

Closer to 600k-1.45M away at this point, but I get where you're coming from. Honestly, I guess it just comes down to, if you (general "you") wanted it enough, you'd be paying enough attention to the KS to know either way :p
 
S

Sblargh

Banned
Looks promising.

You know, Mechwarrior is something I always heard about, but I don't think I've actually played it (maybe Mechwarrior 2 on the 90s...).

Is the lore interesting? Is there some book that will get me hyped for the game if I pledge?
 
S

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
Sblargh said:
Is the lore interesting? Is there some book that will get me hyped for the game if I pledge?
Click to expand...

The lore is very cool, but it's pretty hard to sum up easily.

As for books... well...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BattleTech_novels

EDIT:

Actually the crappy animated series had a little voiceover at the start that kinda explains the situation.

Adam Steiner said:
"This is the Inner Sphere - thousands of planets colonized by humankind. Once it was united under the Star League, but for the last three hundred years, it has been consumed by savage wars. Until a new enemy appeared - mysterious invaders known as "The Clans". Powerful and ruthless, they struck like lightning, attacking every sector at once! But they made one big mistake - they attacked my home planet! Now, in the spirit of the Star League, ancient enemies have reunited! And we're gonna take back our galaxy!"
Click to expand...

This game takes place shortly before the Clans attack.
 
GavinUK86

GavinUK86

Member
Harebrained did a great job with Shadowrun, I backed every game, but I'll jump in on this once they hit 1mil, if they do, because I don't want a game that's only skirmishes, I want a campaign set in the universe. Looking good though! I doubt they'll have any issues getting over 1mil anyway.
 
M

MisterShine

Member
Looks very nice, but I'm here for an HBS story + good rpg gameplay.

I'll be pledging, but if the campaign doesn't hit 1m (very improbable at this point but...) I'll probably be ducking out.

edit: In for 50. I'm rooting for you guys.
 
B

BrokenFiction

Member
GavinUK86 said:
I hope so!
Click to expand...

wsVE1g4.png
 
M

Mudcrab

Member
Sblargh said:
Looks promising.

You know, Mechwarrior is something I always heard about, but I don't think I've actually played it (maybe Mechwarrior 2 on the 90s...).

Is the lore interesting? Is there some book that will get me hyped for the game if I pledge?
Click to expand...

Battletech lore is dope as fuck. Seriously I could spend hours on Sarna.net wiki.
 
F

Fireye

Member
GavinUK86 said:
I hope so!



Uhh, wow, that's a lot of books.
Click to expand...

One of the major reasons FASA IP has such long staying power is because of the universe they built. A big part of that was the novelizations, in-depth source books, and lots of narrative.

I got in to Battletech because of a tattered copy of Decision at Thunder Rift I found in a used book store. Every time I went to a book store thereafter, I went hunting for any Battletech books they might've stocked. I picked up the original DOS battletech games (Crescent Hawk's Inception / Revenge and Mechwarrior) and spent way, way, way too much time playing them. I picked up the tabletop game, and while I did get a fair bit of playtime in, it was never my passion.

The universe is large, there are lots of stories that have been told, and even more that (hopefully) will be told in the future.

Edit: And, I backed for $125. If there were a physical box option, I'd back for that. If they found some old Battletech novel/sourcebook artwork and put it up as a reward tier, I'd totally do that too!
 
K

Keio

For a Finer World
I'm quite sure physical stuff will come as add-ons.

It's a way to add mid-campaign excitement and upsell to existing backers.

Backed for 25 USD.
 
D

dude

dude
I still have the RPG book somewhere. I love Battlemech and HBS' take on Shadowrun has been very good. I'm in.
 
S

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
Guys help, I've started reading the Sarna.net battletech wiki.

Help guys, I'm drowning. Heeelllppp.....
 
Q

QFNS

Unconfirmed Member
In this for $50. I will echo the sentiment that the reward tiers seem kinda weird above $50. Especially since I also do not give any fucks about physical things.

I like that they are doing the social media stuff similar to how Bloodstained did it. I'm not sure that I will actually participate it in much (I can get my spammy Twitter acct to follow some people or w/e, but that's gonna be it), but I guess everything counts. I would like to get more of those e-novellas!
 
S

Steel

Banned
Sinatar said:
Guys help, I've started reading the Sarna.net battletech wiki.

Help guys, I'm drowning. Heeelllppp.....
Click to expand...

I think I'll just read some of my old battletech books later to avoid this trap.... Maybe I'll start a new campaign in Mechwarrior 4: Mercs while I'm at it.
 
E

Effect

Member
Sinatar said:
Guys help, I've started reading the Sarna.net battletech wiki.

Help guys, I'm drowning. Heeelllppp.....
Click to expand...

Stop. Most wiki for franchises this old and big are a hole that when you climb out of you'll notice several hours have passed. I lost an entire day one weekend due to reading Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki. Not touching Sarna until the weekend.
 
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