2006-02-01 15:57:58

Hi!

First of all, scuse me, I'm from Barcelona (spain) and my english isn't good.

My question is: can you tell me about battletech? Is it accesible? Can I play it or there are many limitations to play?

I wanna know your tips and how you play the game. I start playing yesterday but I can't know if the mechs are friends or enemies, for example.

Thanks for all, and congratulations, this is the vest audiogamer site and you all are the vest comunity!

Alan

2006-02-01 22:29:45

The only way to tell if a unit is friend or foe is to use some form of cursor, in Jaws it's the jaws cursor but other screen readers should have them. Friendly mechs are lower case, capitals means either enemy or unknown. Unless you've got sensors on Beagle or seismic you shouldn't get unknowns.

First step is to find a vtol in the purchase list. You'll have to use your cursor options a lot for this game I'm afraid. type U N I T P L as one word in lower case and it will list available units, you'll want H-7, H-7A, Cyrano spelled C Y R A N O, or Ripper. These are the combat vtols, the nightshade isn't very well armed and the cobra/ferret are pathetic. It might be a while before you can get a vtol.

In the game you respawn, then type LeaveBase as one word. When you're out you should type takeoff, again one word. To check your height type .ss, the third number is height. When you're at about 10 you can type vertical 0 to set vertical speed to nothing. I like to type vertical 30 after takeoff so I can control it more, when you type takeoff it sets it to 60 and it can be tricky to catch altitude 10. Height 10 is best for stealth, you are above all terrain so you can't crash. Height 20 is good for scouting though.

Type .h to see your heading, and enter .h followed by the direction to turn to that heading. The best way to navigate is to type lock followed by the lcation you want to go to, then type .b to get the bearing. You can enter this bearing after the .h command. Then type .s walk or .s run to start moving. To lock onto a target find its two letter code and type lock followed by the code, then use .b to see which directionb it is and .r to see range. You can type fire followed by the weapon number to shoot, but I have the weapons set to hotkeys in my mud client so its easier. Type sight followed by a weapon number to see what your chance to hit is, whenever the game says BTH it means a target for rolling two dice and adding them together, a BTH of 5 would mean it randomly makes two dice rolls and if the total is more than 5 you hit.

Remember that you don't need to exactly line up a target, the target can be 30 degrees either side for a front mounted weapon. Check the game's own documentation for details of the vtol commands.

It is possible to use mechs when the enemy is within about 12 hexes and clear line of sight from the base hex, just get off the base hex after leaving base and either charge straight at them or hang back.

Sensors:
Type weather, if time is day and visibility is less than about 20 type sensors e v to use electromagnetic sensors. If time is night and visibility is at least 13 or so type sensor l l to use 360 degree low light. If time is night and visibility is less than about 13 type sensors e l to use electromagnetic and low light. At night low light has a range double the visibility reported on weather, visual is always equal to visibility, and elecytromagnetic has a range of 16-24.

Sorry this is so complicated, but it's a big game. I'm going to work on a guide to flying a vtol, so I'll report back.

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2006-02-03 19:39:48

what the? alan... I am also from spain...! What a hit! Two spanish users! woh!

2006-02-05 15:06:45

cx2, you are a complete manual for this game... congrats!

2006-02-06 15:04:13

lol, thanks. It's not quite as complete as it might seem though. I'm just adding a few notes on the different vtols here

Ripper
Fast at 193 kph, twin medium lasers. The weapons don't have great range, so you'll have to wait a little longer until firing than with other types of weapon. Chances of hitting are doubled, in theory the combined power of the lasers are better than a large laser but you probably won't get both hitting at once. Can also carry infantry, although they'd probably get a bumpy landing since we don't know what sort of ground we're landing on. Short range for medium lasers is 3 and medium range is 6, being in short range gives you the best chance to hit.

Cyrano
Same speed as Ripper, has large laser and beagle probe. Large laser takes a while to recharge but lets you fire sooner, and means you can hit better if you have to fight from higher altitudes since your altitude is factored into range calculation. The beagle can apparently give a bonus to firing rolls within range 5 or so, but since it only has a range of 6 as a sensor it's probably ignored. Large laser ranges are 4 for short and 8 for long.

H-7
Type 2 autocannon and 4-tube short range missile launcher. The AC/2 autocannon has good long reach and reloads fast so you'll probably be likely to get 3 or 4 shots in before passing over your target. SRM4 hasn't great range, and only 2 or 3 of the missiles are likely to hit when you do hit at all, but it's good for delivering inferno SRMs. Infernos are a special type of missile designed to cause mechs trouble with heat, and are nasty against vehicles and other vtols too bevcause they burn them for damage instead. A mech hit by infernos will act as if it has 6 less heat sinks than it actually has, which could easily be a third or half of its heat sinks. Since mechs get heat for every weapon they fire just about this really affects their ability to fight, and is really helpful for your side in a battle. To load infernos shutdown before leaving base and type loadcrit F 4 i. To enable infernos power up by typing startup and then type inferno 1, you can't fire SRMs until you have enabled infernos because the game tries to look for normal SRM ammo and the H-7 only has one set of ammo.

Ammo for AC/2 is 45 shots which should last a battle or two, and 25 shots for the SRM4 which is plenty. You should die before you need to reload, death is common for vtols but we can get back in the fight much faster than a mech thanks to our speed. H-7 is slower than Cyrano or Ripper at 160 odd KPH, it can be quite noticable at times.

Be aware that loading infernos costs 15 C-Bills, one of the game's two currency types. C-Bills are used for special ammo, requestables, rentals and lottery tickets so if you hang around a few battles whilst your faction's claiming a base, generator or relay you should pick some up. The other currency type is experience, used to buy skill upgrades and permanant units. Rentals last until you get killed in it, units bought with XP are currently permanant although an alternative system is being proposed.

H-7A
Type 5 autocannon and machine gun. AC/5 has fewer shots and less range, but does 5 damage instead of 2. Machine gun is unpredictable, on gattling mode it does between 1 and 6 damage at random. Type gattling 1, spelled with two T's, to enable gattling fire on the machine gun. This is a perfectly good vtol, but I prefer the standard H-7 so I can carry infernos tongue

Be aware that the range on the machine gun is utterly abysmal, you have to be almost literally right on top of them and if you're moving slowly enough to achieve this in terms of timing you're probably about to get killed. I'll have to check, but I think a machine gun's range is about 3 or so with 1 as short and 2 as medium.

Ferret
Armed with a machine gun. Type gattling 0, again with two T's, to enable gattling fire. Can technically carry infantry or battle suits, but again we don't know where we're landing. At best we would land on plains and have no effect, but there's every chance we'd land on other ground and not be able to take off again or land in water and sink.

For those who don't know the battletech mux games are based on the classic battletech tabletop game, there's a lot of info on the net about the units and weapons. Not all of the assessments apply in the mux, but if you want to find the range of x weapon or certain stats it's certainly useful. I'm also about to try and put together (with sighted help) a tactile version of the quick start map sheet for the table top game for my own use, I'll report back on that as well if it works as planned and lets me semi-independently play the table top version.

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2006-02-08 18:11:57

Okay, a potentially big discovery here. There's a command called HudInfo intended to let people make semi graphical interfaces for the battletech mux games. The output from the command in its different forms is designed to be interpreted by a mud client plug in, but I'm wondering if it would be possible to write scripts to present the info in a accessible text form. Maybe someone with experience of Monkey Term could do it, it would rtake quite some scripting but would allow access to either of the two current muxes and any new ones that might appear in the future.

In theory a custom client could be created turning it into something approaching a true audio game, but that would be some way off I think.

I also got the Cyrano's large laser ranges wrong, sorry. Short is 5, medium is 10 and max is 15.

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.