Bugs - Kill it with fire ! And Plastic

I'm mourning my Battletech campaign.

(picture credit - a Lt Saatch on the Battletech tabletop game forums)


It has hit its end due to a gamebreaking bug. It has a monthly cycle where you pay for upkeep including the wages for the pilots and the maintenance on the ship and mechs.

Trouble is, there is apparently a (hopefully not too) common circumstance where the counter can break. The monthly counter then goes into negative numbers, blocking the queue for repairs to mechs and upgrades to the ship. Yep. It's a game breaking bug.

I think what caused it with me was having a pilot die in one of the story missions, when the monthly counter was rolling over. Oh well.

The thing to remember is - it's just a game. Even if you're quite well addicted to it and are not quite sure what else to dive into ... it's just a game. (Video game addiction can be very tricky, I'm avoiding Stellaris for similar annoyance reasons but I know that if I try Stellaris again, it could well be a 4am or later finish).

But an untimely end to a game campaign doesn't mean you can't try and have some fun with it as a last hurrah until they patch out the bug.

Enter the Locust Horde.

One of the achievements for the game is "Plague of Locusts", where you aim to win a 4v4 skirmish with the lightest mechs. I refitted mine with flamethrowers. Heat is a mechanic in this game, fire jump jets or weapons and heat will build up. Too much heat and ammunition can explode and the mech will shut down. The internal chassis will melt.

Good times.

And toasty fire.

 Satisfying fire.

Kaboom fire.

I ran 3 skirmishes involving these mechs. They managed to take out one enemy in a random battle and although they damaged the rest of them, they couldn't bring any of them down.

I tried a fight with long range Locusts vs these little devils ... they melted. So I switched the sides around and got the win and the achievement.

Hopefully they patch this particular bug soon. If not, it means an unsatisfying time save scumming (reloading to erase failure or mistakes) to avoid pilots dying and even there, the bug can trigger. I'd been trying to avoid that this time around, accepting the occasional death of pilots as part of the story. Dekker died in the first battle, Medusa soon followed and later poor old Samnite who went out in a blaze of glory, rushing the enemy captain in her mech and melting it like the Locusts were doing above.

The tactic worked ... but it cost the company a Samnite.

The story of your characters and mechs is part of the charm of games like these. The faithful mechs that keep on dishing out the pounding. The ones like Breath of Tiamat which did a lot of damage but also needed more time in the shop than any other. Light of BB-8 (a mech with big lasers) was doing well, as was Howling Thunder, Hissing Typhoon (first Heavy mech) and the Light Light Show.

I know, my selection of names is really, really bad.

Like the availability of plastic recycling ! (How's that for a seismic shift in subject !)

I took my empty plastic bottles to the local supermarket on Thursday, hoping to get rid of them all. Imagine my surprise when ... the hole to put the bottles in is smaller than the bottles.

That's just plain weird. And it's indicative of stupid policy when it comes to environmental matters. It's why we throw things in the bin instead of disposing of them as the crusaders would like us to.

(I have a likely solution and it'll probably involve the cinema on Friday pm, so all good).

I'm watching gaming and reading tonight instead of diving in for more but I suspect the bug in Battletech will mean my Skyrim and Kotor 2 characters will see more time put into them and their story.

It is frustrating when bugs like this happen. But it's just a game.