Your BattleTech News Roundup For July, 2021

It’s raining here where I am right now. A summer thunderstorm, the sort that comes on quickly, blocks out the sun, and then dumps a bucket of water over your head before leaning back into a more sustainable downpour that comes with the occasional far-off thundercrack and enough wind to rattle the branches of trees and bushes. It’s the sort of weather where you wish you could just stop whatever it is you’re doing and just read a book by candlelight.

Mostly because I’m worried one of those lightning bolts will strike my house and fry my laptop.

But that’s just how dedicated I am to ensuring you, dear Sarna reader, get all the BattleTech news that’s fit for human consumption. And trust me, there’s always a heap of BattleTech news to consume, so let’s hop to it. 

What If MechAssault Was A SNES Rail Shooter?

Just as July arrived, so too did these delightful images from MrTalida. They imagine MechAssault, a game we’ve discussed a few times around these parts, but as a SNES rail shooter instead of a 3D action game. Think After Burner, but with ‘Mechs instead of jet fighters.

As a huge fan of these classic arcade games, this set of pics hit me right in the nostalgic feels. But better, since it’s Mechs. It almost makes me wish that we had these MechAssault games instead of the brutally hard BattleTech game we got on the Sega Genesis (called MechWarrior 3050 on the SNES). 

MechAssault 2 Lives On In Garry’s Mod

Speaking of MechAssault, it’s been brought to my attention that a group of modders is trying to recreate MechAssault 2: Lone Wolf as a mod for Garry’s Mod. The current MechAssault 2: Mech Pack public beta provides potential players with access to all 15 chassis (or 33  total ‘Mechs, if you count the palette swaps and the Spider boss), as well as both Elemental and standard Inner Sphere battle armor

This is still a mod for Garry’s Mod, so you’ll need to own Garry’s Mod in order to install the MechAssault 2 pack. It’s also still in beta, although the mod creators are currently looking for others to help them complete the project and maybe recreate all of MechAssault 2 inside Gary’s Mod.

It looks like these guys have already made quite a bit of progress with almost 30,000 downloads. If you’ve got Gary’s Mod and loved MechAssault 2, check out the mod here

MechWarrior: Living Legends 2 Will No Longer Need MechWarrior 5 To Play

Podcast 226 - Living Legends 2 Dev Talk
Watch this video on YouTube.

So remember MechWarrior: Living Legends? The same folks are making a sequel, which was announced last March. At the time they planned on making it using MechWarrior 5, which would have meant you’d need to own MechWarrior 5 to play Living Legends 2, but now the dev team has announced that’s no longer the case.

JPL Studios has announced that MechWarrior: Living Legends 2 will no longer need MechWarrior 5 and will instead be released as a standalone game. Apparently, lack of access to MechWarrior 5‘s source code meant that the changes JPL Studios needed to make for Living Legends to exist as an MW5 mod were just too complex to do without knowing the ins and outs of MW5‘s code. 

This, unfortunately, means that JPL Studios is going to have to make an entirely new game from scratch. Well, almost scratch. It’ll be made in Unreal Engine (same as MechWarrior 5), but JPL will need to make all their assets, animations, and everything else on their own. And because the only way to get this done under Microsoft’s Game Content Usage Rules is to do all this without actually selling the game, MechWarrior: Living Legends 2 will remain totally free. 

It’ll also drop the “MechWarrior ” moniker because it’s copyrighted and just go by Living Legends 2. But we can call it MechWarrior: Living Legends 2 here because that’s basically what it is.

Don’t expect any updates on this project for a while. Scuttlebutt around the Living Legends 2 Discord is that we might see an alpha build later this year, but don’t hold your breath. 

As for the original Living Legends, expect to find new VTOLs in the future along with some “thoroughly reworked” flight models. 

Now This Is A Poster That Could Get Me To Leave My House

I made a poster for my upcoming demo event in Brooklyn this weekend. from battletech

Bauermeister hosted a BattleTech intro event in Brooklyn a few weeks ago, and to get everyone in the mood, they made a poster for the occasion. To say it’s pretty sweet is a bit of an understatement.

Not sure why that Clan Wolf MechWarrior is behind the wheel of what appears to be a very standard Inner Sphere Warhammer, but whatever. Rule of cool and all that.

Wolves Wave 3 Is Taking The Puma (Adder) In A Very Different Direction

I’ve never been a huge fan of the Puma aesthetically speaking. It’s a great little ‘Mech, don’t get me wrong, it just looks sort of like if a Kit Fox found a home that it started carrying around everywhere it went. The Cougar looks a lot cooler, which is likely why you see a lot more of it in various video games including MechAssault.

Wolves, the MechAssault fan game that we’ve been following for a while now, is getting ready for its Wave 3 release of ‘Mechs. And one of those ‘Mechs just so happens to be the Puma.

I’m not going to say that the Wolves version of the Adder improved substantially on the ‘Mech’s hermit crab aesthetic, but I will say it looks exceptionally unique. I’m here for it.  

Now THIS Is A Grasshopper

Reddit user Philbobagginzzz is a hobby enthusiast from Alberta, Canada who loves painting miniatures. Warhammer and BattleTech are both parts of Phil’s repertoire, but we’re going to focus on the BattleTech side in this post.

It’s a Grasshopper. But not just any Grasshopper--it’s a PURPLE Grasshopper. And the base is also the size of your fist, so it’s less of a tabletop mini and more of a figurine. It’s something that I’d be proud to mount on my mantle, and I love Grasshoppers, so it gets a pass in this month’s news dump. 

Alpha Strike Cards Out Now For WarShips, JumpShips, DropShips, And Small Craft

Alpha Strike might not get all that much attention around these parts, but it does something that I think is very important in BattleTech: it makes things simpler. BattleTech is fine for an afternoon of fighting between lances, but blow that up to a company-level engagement and you’ll be playing for a week. Alpha Strike cuts down on the dice rolls and makes it a lot easier to include large-scale engagements in your tabletop nights.

It also makes space combat a lot easier, and now that you can get Alpha Strike cards for WarShips, JumpShips, DropShips, and Small Craft, you can have a massive space fight that won’t take the rest of the year to finish. 

Both Alpha Strike card packages are now available on Catalyst’s store and Drive-Thru RPG for pay-what-you-want. That’s 140 WarShips and JumpShips along with almost 200 DropShips and smaller spacecraft. 

Also, a recent update on the Clan Invasion Wave 2 shipping: Australia and the UK within the next two weeks, mid to late August for the USA and EU, no word on Asia and “the rest of the world.” Here’s hoping Canada is considered part of the USA for the purposes of shipping. 

Crusader. That’s It. That’s The Title.

Samir Dawoud (who goes by SU-SMD on Reddit) is still posting great art online, so I’m gonna keep tellin’ you about it. This one is a CDR-3R Crusader, a classic Unseen design that only just got a visual makeover in Recognition Guide: ilClan Volume 17, which hasn’t been uploaded to Sarna yet. Until it does, this is the best-looking Crusader I’ve ever seen (I’m only up to Volume 14 in my personal reading). 

This particular image will soon be featured on a custom BattleTech card courtesy of Renegade HPG over on Gallery 3025. Speaking of which…

A Reminder That Gallery 3025 Exists And Is Doing Good Things

We’ve talked about Gallery 3025 before, and we’re going to talk about it again right now. Do you want new BattleTech art? Animations? Even more elaborate fan projects that bring the BattleTech universe to life in new ways? Then you should sign up to Gallery 3025. For a very low monthly donation, you can get quick and easy access to brand new BattleTech art and also bask in the satisfaction of knowing you’re one of the noble few keeping BattleTech alive. 

The latest from Gallery 3025 updates us on Jayden’s piece of an Archer as it gets reloaded with LRMs. The Archer is mostly done, and all we’re missing is the actual missiles, plus a VTOL and a bit of AAA. You can bet that when it’s done it’ll likely be the cover image for one of Sarna’s news blasts.

MechWarrior Online’s July Patch Brings More Balance To Weapons And Jump Jets

MechWarrior Online just got its July patch, and this month we get a weapons balance pass and a change to the new Canyon Network map that almost makes MWO feel like a live service game. 

Canyon Network has flooded as of this match! No idea what this means for gameplay (yet), but maybe it’ll mean ‘Mechs that stay low in the floodwaters will get bonus cooling while peeking above the hills will give better sightlines on your opponents. Also, it’s neat for any part of MechWarrior Online to change this rapidly, so kudos to Francois on this map update!

As always, there are too many weapon changes to just list ’em all here, but I’ll give you my quick hits. Pulse Lasers were overperforming for both Clan and Inner Sphere, so the Cauldron has decided to buff regular Large and ER Large Lasers to better compete, along with Light PPCs, Snubbies, and Heavy Large Lasers. Steam SRMs have been tweaked to better improve their striking power, and LB 5-X ACs for the Inner Sphere now take just 4 crits instead of 5. 

Another big change in this patch is to jump jets. Jumping has always felt better in certain ‘Mechs, with usually the lighter end of each class enjoying the best jump performance. The 40-45 tonners in particular made the best jumpers since their jump jets cost only half a ton but provided as much lift as you’d get on a lighter machine. 

The Cauldron’s latest changes help to smooth out jump jet performance disparity so that mounting jets on heavy and assault ‘Mechs isn’t quite so useless. Smaller ‘Mechs will enjoy increased initial thrust, while heavier ‘Mechs will have improved burn time so they can still make those high jumps, they’ll just do it more slowly.

MechWarrior Online is still in the midst of the Beach Party limited-time event where you can snatch a free Atlas if you play enough. There’s also a new Warden ‘Mech Pack coming that reimagines the Timber Wolf and Dire Wolf as old-school 3D renders sort of like how they did with Enhanced Imaging mode enabled in MechWarrior 2. They also come with some fun Elemental bolt-ons so you can bring a point of Elementals into battle (they won’t actually shoot or anything, but they look nice). 

That’s it for July! The rain has stopped here and we’re back to hot, humid, hazy weather--the kind that makes you want to just take out a book and read under a tree. This time without the fire risk.

And as always, MechWarriors: Stay Syrupy.

stay syrupy

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5 thoughts on “Your BattleTech News Roundup For July, 2021

  1. Sapphirus

    I really enjoyed the Mech Assault 2 mod for Garry’s Mod! When I first saw it on the GMod Steam Workshop weeks ago, I was so hyped to try it out. It’s fun (and funny) to put MA2 mechs into other franchises through Garry’s Mod :P

    Reply
  2. Samuel

    With that Gmod Mechassault 2 addon, NPCs of the mechs are planned but probably won’t be done for quite awhile. That’s what I would really look forward to though because we can then do massive NPC battles between battlemechs, or make them fight other NPCs from other franchises.

    Reply
  3. Wick

    Warhammer predates the Clans (as do the downed Atlas and smashed cockpit of the Catapult in foreground). Covered up in the poster, the original image (https://www.deviantart.com/akirawrong/art/Mech-war-153467653) has a Russian error on the Catapult’s cockpit screen. Most likely these were defenders of the apparently Russophile, if not Russian-speaking, Levic Ascendancy in 2821 rather than Capellans of the 3050s or later. A Clan Wolf Mechwarrior would not at all have been out of place using a Warhammer then. (Additionally, a closeup of the right torso seems to show only two barrels rather than the typical three, indicative of a formally Royal WHM-7A, which would give further evidence to it being a Klondike-era battle.)

    The bigger question is where can one find boots and hat that big to fit a Flashman.

    Reply

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