Finally getting a chance to play the Battletech campaign a bit, it’s kind of scary how close in theme and concept the general out of battle mechanics are to what I had in mind for the campaign.
There’s a lot of management with the mechs that is persistent. It adds a lot of meaning to everything that happens during a battle as every round you expend, any damage your mechs take, injuries your pilots sustain, or any battlemechs you lose have long lasting consequences. You have to think about what you can and should do before you do it because you might not have the resources to do it. The mechs are as customizable as you would expect, but there’s little things like refitting a mech takes actual in game time that puts that mech out of action. You have to salvage mechs, hire pilots, buy equipment, and the loot and financials of the game are really well done specifically because of how detailed managing all aspects of your mercenary outfit is.
Obviously some of that stuff doesn’t necessarily apply to my game or jets, and it goes into far more depth than I was ever imagining I would go, but it’s really cool seeing another game do something very similar and do it so well. There’s a lot to keep track of, which could arguably be a point against it, but I think it adds a lot of depth to the mechanics and meaning to what you do.
Battletech is great by the way. I said it before but I’m so happy this game exists and is as good as it is. Even better, my biggest annoyance with the game, the seemingly arbitrary pauses that slow down combat more than it should, can be fixed by changing some values in an easily accessible file.