The Glade 4.0

Looks to be a commercial implementation of the tabletop miniatures game. Lance on lance battles, 'Mech hanger, all the sorts of things you'd expect in a Battletech game. Closed beta should be upcoming "soon".
http://mwtactics.com/

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Hmm. Apparently, I didn't post about this one earlier. I thought I had, but it looks like I only posted the Hawken and MWO betas. I signed up for Tactics, but didn't post it here. Odd.

I'm cautiously interested. I suspect a lot of my interest hinges on how aggressively they monetize, and what angles the use to do so. It's already looking, from what I gather from some friends and the price points they're attacking with their prepurchasing bundles, like MWO's monetization model may kill my interest.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

From what I can gather, Tactic's model is to allow everything to be obtainable simply through play. Gaining new chassis, pilots, weapons, etc. is done by trading scrap (the in-game awards) for STAC packs. STAC packs can also be purchased with C-bills, although there are no STAC packs that are C-bill only. I'm not sure if ammo and armor (the main expendables of BattleTech) are resources that must be regained via purchasing STAC packs. I would think so, thus guaranteeing that Bronze (the lowest tier of STAC packs) remains a worthwhile purchase option for players even once they may advance to earnings levels that make gold and platinum STAC packs regularly obtainable. Also, it seems that the matching system is by BV, thus ensuring that someone who is only purchasing bronze packs has competitive matches available.

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Yeah, that's right. After posting, I was dinking around their site and was reminded that the thing that had me nervous was the random packs model.

We'll see how it turns out. I've never done any tabletop BattleTech since all my wargaming buddies (who I only met post-college) are 40k nuts instead, but Activision did a good job in the 90's of making me love it.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The Founder's Program was announced on 1/9. Three tiers, purchase gives you access to closed beta.

I may or may not have already been a closed beta tester prior to this announcement. If you decide to sponsor the game, I may or may not be able to speak to you about it further then.

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