WTF Is... MechWarrior Tactics

The first major gameplay footage most of the world got to see on September 5th 2012.

Narration: TotalBiscuit and James Romanchuck.

Transcript

 * TotalBiscuit: Ladies and gentlemen, my name is TotalBiscuits and I would say I'm at PAX but I'm actually in the "nerding-out room" right now, which is what I'm calling it. This is MechWarrior Tactics - forgive me if I squee, it... may happen. All right, I'm here with James Romanchuck, the producer of MechWarrior Tactics. Welcome to the show.
 * James Romanchuck: Hello, thank you.
 * TB: All right, so tell us a little first about what MechWarrior Tactics actually is.
 * JR: So, the whole MechWarrior franchise is spanned for... thirty? twenty-five? ... years. It's huge. It's got a huge fan base,but really, typically most people recognize it as a first person shooter, right?
 * TB: Yes.
 * JR: A lot of people I've talked to today and at the conventions for the past year have known MechWarrior 2 as their sort of quintessential MechWarrior game.
 * TB: Exactly, yeah.
 * JR: Fact of the matter is, MechWarrior started as a table top game.
 * TB: Yeah, BattleTech.
 * JR: BattleTech. And so, there's never been a really good translation of the BattleTech boardgame - which is a hex based, turn based strategy game - into the computer. It has not been digitized. There's a lot of fan stuff - like MekTek, Megamek - that are great. Us at the sudio love playing it but... it was a 1 for 1 translation and it's exactly the board game. We wanted to... give some more visual fidelity around that.
 * TB: Yeah.
 * JR: Right. We wanted something easier for people to get into but we wanted to retain the same fundamental underlying core fun factor of the original board game - giant mechs blowing each other up.
 * TB: All right. So, we are in the Mech Bay at the moment, which is of course a thing that many people should know even if remotely familiar with this franchise. So, what are we looking at?
 * JR: Well, we're looking right now at a Jenner, hooked up and, y'know, ready to customize.
 * TB: Okay.
 * JR: So, if you just click on your Jenner over there...
 * TB: Yep.
 * JR: We'll start looking at armor. And remember this is all dev UI.
 * TB: Yes, of course. This is very much an alpha at the moment, I believe.
 * JR: Very, very much. This is stuff for us in the internal studio. It looks great - which is kind of unfortunate, people think it's kind of final.
 * TB: It's like, it's not?
 * JR: It's absolutely not.
 * TB: You're gonna see a lot of designations and things that just you're not gonna see in the final product. But you guys know better than that anyway.
 * JR: Yeah, absolutely.
 * TB: All right .SRMs - delicious little things right there. As you can see, SRM-6, SRM-DEF-H
 * JR: So, let me just stop you right now and just... and SRM-6 is not an SRM-6 is not an SRM-6. Most people who are familiar with this franchise load out and kit out their mechs..
 * TB: Yeah, they know the SRM-6.
 * JR:.Yes. We wanted to add some depth. We wanted to broaden the appeal of this. We wanted to add something... something meaty, more than the board game. So, what we've actually done is that we got into the lore of BattleTech and figured out that all these weapons have different manufacturers. And all these manufacturers all produce weapons in a different way. So, say, a Kali Yama SRM-6 is is gonna be different than an Alliance SRM-6 . And because of that it allows us to give you different bonuses and different tweaks.
 * TB: I see it right here. This SRM-6-DEF-H actually has a +15 Crit bonus, this one doesn't heat up as much...
 * JR:.Yep, -2 Heat
 * TB:...that one's easier to hit with, so a hit bonus right, there's a stock SRM, so you actually have four different choices on the SRM-6 alone ....
 * JR:.But these aren't final, again. This is depth. So these are kind of just for testing What we really want to do is, say, like an SRM-6 has the "Gut Puncher" ability. and if we're within 2 hexes, "Gut Puncher" does more damage. Or, say, there's an SRM-6 with the Stagger ability - it knocks an MP off your opponent. And we've done this with pilots, we've done this with chasses, we'ver done this with everything. We want to create synergies. So, pilot now is more than just two stats. A pilot actually has some interesting characteristics, like: they have affinities for mechs, they have affinities for tactical balance - tactics. Maybe a pilot's a sniper, so if he only shoots one weapon he gets an increase - massive increase - in their hit percentage because they're a sniper shooting with one weapon only. So that's how we're adding depth.to the collectible aspect of the game.
 * TB: Sounds like a hell of a lot of depth. You did mention very much a collectible aspect to this?
 * JR: Yeah. Well, it's a free-to-play game, but we're monetizing the similar way that, you know, Magic: The Gathering or any type of collectible game. Pox Nora, various things like that. So what you do is you get these STACs - Surplus Technology / Armament Containers and you open them up, randomized packs of bits and bobs to play with.
 * TB: Booster packs, essentially.
 * JR: Booster packs, essentially. Yeah. And if anybody's familiar with that model, that's what we're going for. It's not a pay-to-win model, what it is is a pay-for-choice model, right. You're gonna find chasses, you're gonna find pilots, and the way we've structured it is is Bronze to Platinum. So out of those four packs - Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum - each pack serves a specific purpose. So Bronze packs are more attuned to like kitting out your mech with heat sinks and ammunition and various things like that - low-level stuff that you need on every mech. Armor. Platinum STACs is sort of like that "edge", that sort of an anchor that you want to build your entire lance around. So you buy those, you buy a few Platinum STACs. Gold and Silver STACs are where you kind of get... where you fill out with all those interesting weapons, with all those bits and bobs, and all he pilots that have abilities. So each range has a specific purpose. We didn't want to sort of... have the Platinum STAC as the THE de-facto pack that everybody should buy. We wanted to give a purpose to each one..
 * TB: Okay, makes sense.And you'll be able to buy these with in-game currency as well as ...
 * JR: Absolutely. So you earn Scrap at the battlefield. We don't have salvage, we don't have the bidding mechanic from the (unintelligible) wars, anything like that. Not yet. So how we simulate that is: after every match you win or lose, you get some Scrap out of that. So you'll going to be able to go buy more STACs - buy more toys to play with.
 * TB: Of course, you buy the boosters.
 * JR: Absolutely.
 * TB (unintelligible) Right, so the current loadout - as you can see right there - has four Medium Lasers and an SRM-4 in the center. Pretty standard Jenner loadout that everyone's pretty familiar with.
 * JR: Yeah. So let's play around with that.
 * TB: Let's muck about with it. Well, I really do love flame throwers, honestly.
 * JR: Do you?
 * TB: Yes, I very much do.
 * JR: Okay, I like flame throwers on my Spider. I think I can just lock down mechs and hop and hop and hop and they're incredibly dangerous. So you want to put some flame throwers on this jenner?
 * TB: Yeah, let's do it.
 * JR: So, click on the center SRM-6 or SRM-4, take it off, Strip off. Just strip it - let's take all the stuff off.
 * TB: There we go. So, no lasers for you any more.
 * JR: And let's go find some Flamers.

WIP