Hi all, relatively old veteran here. Ripe old age of 32, practically time to retire to Florida. Started playing BT in high school, I think, around 1990. Actually played the original Mechwarrior sim on a Tandy 1000 RL at a blazing 4.77 MHz. When the battle got up to 8 mechs (4 on each side) I could take on a BattleMaster with the Locust, 'cause it would slow down until everything was in such slow motion you could just run (slowly) behind the big guys and laser the back of their head until it popped. Actually wrote a little assistant app for the pen/paper game that I used up until someone started doing the BTech app (which I still keep a copy of with some of my decade-old designs).
Best "war-time" memory: In college, 5v5 BT game with some friends. Opposing friend fielded the largest mech involved, I think it was an Awesome. I fielded the smallest, only weapon was an ER Large Laser. First round, I was the only person to fire a shot. Just barely in range, after running, firing through heavy cover... required a 12 to hit (for those few unfamiliar, roll 2d6, 12 = perfect). Rolled it. Roll for location = 12, the head. 10 pts damage to 9 pts armor = 1 internal hit. Roll for chance of critical = 9, one critical hit. Roll for location = 3, cockpit. First shot of the game and my friend's massive gargoyle of destruction is standing useless with a vaporized pilot thanks to a random mosquito bite. He was not happy. Great salvage, though.
I even bought Steel Battalion for the XBox. Not a BT property, but arguably the best multiplayer mech combat sim ever released on any home platform, wrapped in the arguably worst RPG system ever released on any home platform. I actually had the opportunity to sit next to a Microsoft gaming rep on a plane once after they acquired certain properties, made the case as best I could for an Xbox Arcade release of a true BattleTech hex-based stat-based "board game". I think he could sense I might have done violence upon him if he hadn't acted interested.
Can't wait for the release. I saw there were no plans for a "persistent universe" system, but that's kinda what I do (systems developer, analyst, programmer, database designer) so if it simply hasn't been investigated, maybe I can help to see if it's something even feasible to reach for.
