Bringing Turn-Based Tactical Mech Warfare Back To The BattleTech Universe

Despite BattleTech’s origins as a turn-based table top game, its video game adaptations have rarely followed in that mold. You might have heard of the likes of MechWarrior, MechCommander and MechAssault, all of which lived in this overarching universe despite borrowing the name of the spin-off RPG, but as Harebrained Studios look to revisit the BattleTech universe, they’re heading back to its roots with a turn-based tactical game.

In many ways, it’s the perfect time to do so, as following the success of XCOM: Enemy Unknown in 2012 and last year’s sequel, there’s proof of a renewed appetite for this genre – not to mention the hugely successful Kickstarter that started the project in 2015. Harebrained themselves have more than a little pedigree, having been founded by Jordan Weisman, one of BattleTech’s creators, and Mitch Gitelman, who worked alongside him on MechCommander in the late 90s, while Mike McCain was Creative Director of Harebrained’s Shadowrun series.

Heading into battle, you have four humanoid Mechs under your command. These aren’t nimble and lithe creations, but slow and ponderous, stacked with huge arsenals of devastating futuristic weaponry, and with serious design flaws. As bipedals, they can navigate a wide variety of terrain, but they’re also vulnerable to being destabilised and toppled to the ground. More fundamental is that using weapon systems and taking certain types of damage can lead to overheating, if you’re not careful, with the Mech shutting down to cool off if it needs to.

Every move you make across the battlefield has to be viewed through that lens, and there’s a juggling act between unleashing your entire arsenal on an enemy and knowing when to only fire certain weapons – they can be more or less effective at certain ranges – or simply back off and cool down. Mechs can take a serious amount of damage, and it’s only through attrition, concentrated fire and a little luck that you can take down an enemy Mech.

As a battle starts, you initially have free reign to move your Mechs across the grid in near real time. It only shifts to true turn-based play once an enemy is spotted off in the distance, first as a genericised wireframe that shows you know where it is, but not what it is. From that point on, your moves are dictated by a rather fascinating system of phases that run through each turn.

The Mechs at your disposal come in different shapes and sizes, from the smaller and faster ones through to the towering Mechs that pack a huge amount of weaponry. Depending on their speed, they are available for use in different phases of a turn, numbered form one to five. The faster Mechs can go first and can move the furthest, with each side taking turns to pick from their available Mechs in a given phase. However, you can defer, saving a particular Mech’s move and action until later in the turn, and this leads to the fascinating possibility of saving a smaller Mech until last, so that it can move in, launch an attack and then, as the next turn starts, take its next move early and retreat to safety.

Damage on a Mech is locational, with the possibility of damaging and knocking out parts on one side or another, or simply pulling flanking moves to strike at the weaker rear of a Mech. Positioning yourself is vital, whether it’s simply turning to face the enemy, woodland to help provide light cover, or obscuring part of your mech with a rocky outcrop. Standing in water gives you the opportunity to unleash more weaponry for longer, as it cools your Mech.

Different Mechs and their pilots have different abilities to use, such as one that lets you split your fire between multiple targets, one that makes a mech more evasive and more likely to dodge, and so on. It’s another layer that helps to diversify the gameplay as these attributes might make a particular MechWarrior better suited to certain roles.

Access to the backer beta has just been granted, with tens of thousands of keys being sent out to those that supported Harebrained’s Kickstarter or became a backer since then – something you can still do. It currently features just a single player skirmish mode, but PvP play is on the way, and the final game will feature a fascinatingly open ended campaign. While the game is only coming to PC, Mac and Linux initially, there’s always the unspoken possibility and hope that it could jump across to console as well.

Set within the established BattleTech universe, you’ll take command of a mercenary outfit that is drawn deeper into a dynastic conflict on the edges of the Inner Sphere. Your crew and Mechs will evolve and grow over time, and you have to manage the modifications and loadouts of the Mechs, the salaries of the MechWarrior pilots and the supporting staff, while deciding on which missions to take from aboard their Argo-class dropship that serves as their home.

It’s here that one key new addition to the game comes into play: being able to charge an enemy Mech and punch it. It’s something that Harebrained are adorably proud of, finally being able to have Mechs punch each other – in the case of the smallest Mechs, it can look like a toddler running into their parent’s knees. Doing so can add a large amount of instability in one go, knocking a Mech to the ground. it’s something that still needs fine-tuning, both in terms of animations and the gameplay, but once an enemy is prone, you can then target a specific arm and weapon, attempting to remove it so that you can salvage it for later and get upgrade parts for free.

Another area to improve on is how dynamic the game looks in play. It looks good, with a customised version of Unity powering it, and as you launch or suffer a fresh barrage of assorted firepower the camera does well to frame the action. However, I feel it could take a few leafs out of XCOM’s playbook in this area, deliberately going for a more cinematic approach at times.

Most importantly, though, it’s a lot of fun. There’s just something about the BattleTech universe that strikes a chord, not least the fact you get to fight with giant Mechs, but beyond that, there’s a number of compelling twists and ideas within what Harebrained are creating. If you like big robots and you like turn-based tactical games, this is definitely one to keep an eye on.