Harebrained Schemes has shared its post-launch plans for Battletech, the giant fighting robot strategy game that launched to much acclaim last week. The studio said the positive response to the game means that "many things are now possible," including localization into other languages, more customization options, and possibly even some full-on expansions.
Before all that, however, come the bugs. "Our launch last week wasn't perfect. A subset of players are experiencing hardware/system compatibility and performance issues that our team is working hard to investigate," Harebrained wrote in a Battletech Kickstarter update. "Solutions for critical issues are always our top priority, and will be released as soon as they're available and tested. Typically, we will release patches to our public_beta branch on Steam for a few days for testing before we push them to the default branch."
A "general bugfix" patch is expected to arrive in late May, followed by a larger update focusing on increased customization and player-requested features. Specifics are still being determined but items up for consideration include:
- Accelerated Combat Options - We're working on options for players who would like to accelerate the pace of combat missions.
- MechWarrior Customization - We know that many players would like to change the appearance, callsign, name, and voice of all their MechWarriors, not just their Commander. This didn't make it in for launch but we'll be adding it in Update 1.
- Granular difficulty settings - A set of discrete options for players to customize the challenge level of the game in different areas.
- MechLab / Store / Salvage Quality-of-Life Improvements - Interface additions to reduce friction when buying and salvaging new items.
- Tutorial-skip Option - Allowing players who have already played the prologue missions to skip those missions when starting a new campaign, and get right to the Leopard.
- Addressing Difficulty Spikes - We'll be working on smoothing out some issues with unexpectedly hard (or easy) content. Not to remove all difficulty variance, but to address clear outliers.
- Live-streaming Quality-of-Life Improvements - Audio persisting when alt-tabbed, for example.
"The above is just the beginning! We'll be continuing with more free Updates after Update 1, and we'd also love to release a larger paid content Expansion or two," Harebrained said. "But right now we're staying focused on bugfixes and immediate reactions to launch feedback."
The first Battletech fixer-upper patch went live yesterday. The full patch notes are available on the Paradox forums.