CLASSIC BATTLETECH CATALYST game labs

Classic Battletech is 24 years old (quite a long time for a game, heck, I'm one year younger! ), being released in 1984. Of course, such a long standing and successful franchise was bound to expand to other medias. A role-playing game was launched, a 13 episode cartoon was made, over 100 or so novels were written and many more are being written as we speak but one of the most important medias it branched out to was that of eletronic entertainment, aka: videogames.

From the first game in 1989, the Crescent Hawk's Inception, to the latest one in 2006, MechAssault: Phantom War, the Mechwarrior franchise has an incredible number of 18 titles in various gaming plataforms.

Many people were and continue to be introduced to Battletech via those games, myself included and in my case, that game was the excellent Mechwarrior 3. The last Mechwarrior game for the PC was Mechwarrior 4:Mercenaries, released in 2002, and it contained everything from the previous two MW4 games (Vengeance and Black Knight).

The reason of this and the following articles is the same as that of Mech of the Week articles, to expose the mechs to the players. The difference here is that I'll be looking over the mechs of MW4:Mercs (with both Mech Packs included) and comparing them to their CBT versions. Of course I know not everyone played the games and those that did could use a quick review, so before starting I've made this introduction to explain how the game handles the mechs and the things related to them.

WEAPONS:

When it comes to the weapons, MW4:Mercs handles them not so differently from the board game. Some weapons have minor differences (ex: the Clan LRM20 and the IS UAC/20 weight more) but the weights, ammo and ranges are right. Of all of them, only the SMRMs are not canon, they are Clan made versions of the MRM that trade damage for Streak capabilities.

In total, there are 72 weapons (44 IS and 28 Clan) and below is a list of each and every weapon, first is the weight in tons followed by size of the weapon (how many slots it occupies in a bay), then the range in meters and last, how much ammo it has, let's check them out:


You can increase the amount of ammo you carry by adding one ton of ammo, each ton added doubles the base amount of ammo the weapon has, for example: a GR starts with 24 shots, adding another ton increases that to 48 shots. There are a few especific things about certain weapons, these being that: all missile weapons have a base ammo of 240 so what is on the table is how many salvoes you have with each missile launcher so the bigger the LRM, the less the amount of shots you have; Ultra ACs fire at a double rate so run through ammo quickly; of all ACs, only RACS can jam, that happens by firing constantly but you only need to wait until they return to normal.

MW4:Vengeance introduced the concept of weapon bays and that is continued in MW4:Mercenaries. Basically, each mech has hardpoints on its torso, arms and head where the weapons are mounted. Each hardpoint is color-coded to indicate the type of weapon it accepts: energy weapons are red, missile weapons are green, ballistic weapons are yellow and omni hardpoints are grey (meaning they can accept any weapons).



ARMOR:

The game handles armor distribution differently, you add 10 points of one ton of armor until you reach how much you want or how much is allowed at the given location of the mech's body instead of adding 0.5 or 1 ton to the total armor and then distributing the points, as show below:



There are three types of armor:
Ferro Fibrous - The standard armor type that provides good general protection.
Reactive - A type of armor more efffective in defending against ballistic and missile weapons but suffers a bit more damage from energy weapons.
Reflective - The counterpart of Reactive armor, this type of armor is more effective in defending against energy weapons but suffers a bit more damage from ballistic and missile weapons.

COMPONENTS/EQUIPMENTS:

Aside from the weapons and armor, there are several eletronics and components that you can equip your mechs with but not all chassis can mount them:

ECM Suite - 1 ton, it decreases enemy sensor range and gives an increase to the lock-on time of missiles.
Active Probe - 1 ton, it increases sensor range and decreases missile lock time.
Jump Jets - weight depends on the chassis, allows you to jump.
LAMS - 1.5 tons, automatically shoots down a percentage of incoming enemy missiles.
Enhanced Optics - 1 ton, gives a wider field of vision when using the zoom window by increasing the zoom window size.
IFF Jammmer - 1 ton, it makes your mech appear as a neutral unit in an enemy's HUD.
Advanced Gyro - weight depends on the chassis, it greatly increases your stability and reducing the chances of your mech being knocked down.

SPEED:

You can upgrade the speed of any mech by adding free weight to your engine, for example, to upgrade the Cougar's base speed of 96.95 kph to 103.93 kph costs 1 ton, to upgrade it further to 110.92 kph will cost another 1.25 tons, likewise, by decreasing your speed you can free additional weight. Continuing with the above example, by decreasing the base 96.95 kph to 89.96 kph, you will free 0.75 tons.How much it'll cost to increase and how much you'll gain by decreasing it depends on the mech since each has a different speed but its interesting to note that most of the mechs in the game are a bit faster when compared to their CBT counterparts.

HEAT SINKS:

There's no surprise here, these work as they always did. The more you add, the faster you'll dissipate heat and they cost only 1 ton.

So that's it for this introduction, feel free to comment or ask about anything said here. The articles on the mechs themselves will follow later so I ask that you all hold your comments on them for now, please, with 44 mechs there will be a lot to talk about so there's no need to rush.


edit: math error, thanks Rage.

Reactive and Reflective armor is much more heavier than FF armor.

There is also the AMS you forgot to add under the equipments section that is available on IS mechs.

I really, really liked this setup. It seemed like it had nuances that couldn't fit into CBT(weapon 'pod' types, graduated engine sizes, sensor ranges).

You mean making every mech in MW4 a omni?

Yeah, but just about every MW game had the ability to customize some tricked-out broken munch-mech.

I actually found the opposite. Earlier MW games that used board game construction rules could be anything(MW 2: Mercs at least made you pay for drastic redesigns), but in MW4, the 'only a ballistic weapon can go here' design ethic kept that from happening and made you fish around to get that one chassis you wanted. Again, your mileage may vary.

Its a fine system for what it does, and I do apprecate that it gives a lot more cherictor to each mech.  My key disagreement is that the system made some canon configurations, even some very classic ones, impossible, and that it treated omnis little difrently than other mechs.  Since omnis were fairly rare in the game, and most were smaller ones and not Dire Wolves, it would have made an intresting incentive to aquire a lot of omnis and use smaller but more versitile mechs.  As it was, it was better to use a Mauler than a higher tech Summoner; making the Summoner a real omni would change that.

One thing I tended to see was that weapons tended to be heavier and do less damage, while armor values were higher than in the board game.  As a resualt, fights lasted a bit longer than they might have in either the board game or an earlier game.  I also found that it tended to make for a shorter ranged game in general, and one that emphasized weapons with low recycle times like light ACs more than the board game would. 

Yeah, thats a very good idea but to balance that I say that you shouldnt be allowed to change their armor, pretty much like in the board game.

I thought the engines were probably too flexible.  And yes, I would like to see omnis have all omni slots.

It seems too easy to change though.  One click and you're golden.  It should at least take the mech down for a mission or three, as something like that should take time to refit.

I tried the Dire Wolf one out after reading over that, and while I can't fit seven on(only six), it is a pretty bad-ass config.

Yeah, but that's been every MW game. Just a few clicks, and you can make Catapult into an Exterminator. A more in-depth campaign system would be cool, but it's not like MW 4 really revolutionized being able to re-enginner and repurpose your machine while your mechwarrior gets a sammich.

I am speaking of MechWarrior 4 and its expansions.  I agree with you Death that in MW3 the stock mechs were just as good.  In MW4, which is the version I played the most, you were able to build these retarded designs that almost everyone on a server played with.  If you saw a Kodiak, you could bet it was armed with nothing but streaks and Ultra AC's.  If you saw an Executioner it was loaded with ER PPC's.  If you saw a Dire Wolf, it was loaded with ER Large Lasers.

It has been a long time since I have played MW4 so perhaps it is 6 ER large that the Dire Wolf can mount but as you pointed out, it is a sick config.

All designs were frail in that game.  It was very easy to hit the same location with 2 or 3 salvos and destroy even the largest assault mech.  Legs were notoriously weak IMHO and very easy to pluck off.

Same thing with the Mauler and the Vulture.  They always seemed to take heaps of damage before collapsing.  I can recall scenarios where I was blowing Thor's apart yeah the significantly lighter Vulture withstood damage much better even though most of its weapon slots were for ballistics.  Even the Black Knight seemed to take a ton of damage.

However, there was nothing more gratifying that pasting a light mech in one salvo and watching the mech's reactor go critical instantly as it fell to the ground.

Hm. I had to pound the snot out of MW4 machines to make them die. In MW 3, shooting the legs was viable(since pulse laser hits sent enemies to the ground) as was use of the rather unsporting LRMs. MW 2 was simply leg-tastic. 

The Black Knight was very easy to kill because of its head separate from the CT. Same with mechs like Atlas