A major update to Battletech has rolled out on Steam and GOG, adding "Granular Difficulty Settings" and custom campaign mode options, a new time acceleration feature, combat speed optimizations, "quality of life improvements" in the MechLab, ultrawide monitor support, and quite a lot more.   

The new difficulty settings can be adjusted at any time, and as the name suggests provide a far finer degree of control over the experience than was previously available. Here's what you can change: 

• Lethality - when enabled, MechWarriors that are disabled in combat will always be killed.
• 'Mech Destruction - when enabled, 'Mechs disabled from Center Torso destruction are permanently lost. This setting is intended for veterans and those seeking a significant challenge.
• No Rare Salvage - when enabled, + and ++ items are no longer generated as salvage results (but remain purchasable in stores).
• MechWarrior Progression - adjust the amount of experience that MechWarriors gain after each mission.
• Advanced MechWarriors - increase or decrease the frequency of more powerful MechWarriors appearing in Hiring Halls in later parts of the game.
• Enemy Force Strength - increase or decrease the baseline strength of the enemy forces you'll face in procedural contracts.
• Contract Payment - increase or decrease the amount of C-Bills paid by procedural contracts across the game.
• Salvage - increase or decrease the amount of salvage you may obtain from negotiation on procedural contracts.

New campaigns can be made tougher with the new Ironman Mode, which restricts you to a single, auto-updating save slot. Mechs built out of salvaged parts can now be set to start empty instead of with a stock loadout, and players seeking "a significant challenge" can also increase the number of salvaged parts required to build a new mech. New in-game events have been added, and event generation has been improved and debugged.

Turn times have been decreased overall, and individual action times can be "greatly accelerated" by pressing the spacebar. Ultra-wide monitor is apparently still a little hinky, but Harebrained said the issues are "cosmetic only," and not sufficient to delay the feature. The update also brings the Battletech Launcher out of beta, which enables Borderless Windowed Mode, Exclusive Fullscreen Mode, and Video Rendering API to be configured prior to launching the game.   

The full list of additions, updates, balance changes, and bug fixes is really long, so if you want to dive into that you can do so on the Paradox forums. The list of known issues that persist in the 1.10 update is much shorter, so you can check that out below.

• There is currently a small chance of the starter MechWarriors (Glitch, Behemoth, Dekker, Medusa) incorrectly appearing as hireable Ronin MechWarriors in hiring halls later in the game.
• Skirmish lances created prior to updating to 1.1.0 may contain 'Mechs with old weapon & stability values.
• We have had occasional reports of save game lists failing to initialize from Steam. Restarting the game should generally resolve this issue.
• Some tooltips may appear visually truncated at the bottom.
• A few cosmetic-only UI bugs exist when playing on an ultrawide monitor, but given the high-demand for ultrawide support we felt that these minor issues did not need to hold up its release.

Tyler Carpenter, a designer at Harebrained Schemes whose credits include Shadowrun: Hong Kong and Battletech, has resigned from the studio following multiple allegations of sexual harassment. Speaking to Waypoint, Carpenter admitted to the offenses and said that he's left the studio because "my bullshit is not the kind of thing HBS stands for or tolerates." 

"HBS had no idea any of this happened," Carpenter said. "Because of that, for the good of HBS and my victims, I've resigned from HBS effective immediately. There doesn't need to be any inquiry because, frankly, everything is true." 

Complaints against Carpenter ranged from inappropriate comments and persistent statements of romantic and sexual attraction, even after he was asked to stop, to groping a woman he played the Exalted RPG with on Geek Space TV. Guild Wars 2 writer and editor Elan Stimmel told the site that she had "lived in fear of [Carpenter] for years," while Jessica Price of the ArenaNet narrative team described him bluntly as "a gaslighting, assaulting, harassing abuser." 

Carpenter said he began seeking professional help for his behavior in January after he realized that "something was deeply wrong" with the way he related to other people. He also apparently issued an apology on his Twitter account, but that has since been locked. 

Harebrained Schemes, Carpenter's now-former employer, reacted to the allegations with a statement saying that it "needs to address the recent situation involving one of our ex-employees, and allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct." 

"The moment this situation came to our attention, we placed the employee on immediate leave while we conducted a full investigation. We determined the best course of action was that Harebrained Schemes would part ways with the employee, and that action was taken immediately," the studio said. 

"We are committed to providing a safe workspace for all our employees and will always take immediate action to maintain a safe, positive, respectful, and collaborative environment." 

Hyper RPG, which previously hosted Carpenter's Death From Above streaming series, tweeted yesterday that it "does not and will not work with people accused of physical or emotional abuse," although it did not mention Carpenter by name. Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, which is relaunching the series as Death From Above: Legacy, put out a more comprehensive statement saying that "these recent revelations ensure that [Carpenter] will not be involved in any capacity."

Shadowrun and Battletech studio Harebrained Schemes is now a part of Paradox Interactive, which announced today that it was acquired by the developer in total for $7.5 million plus a percentage of earnings over the next five years. Harebrained "will continue to operate with its own internal management and creative teams," Paradox said, "designing and developing the games that have earned them their outstanding reputation." 

Paradox's publishing partnership on Battletech, Harebrained's most recent game, was "a fantastic collaboration," Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester said. "Harebrained Schemes have proven themselves as a world-class studio with a very talented team within a genre where Paradox wants to be present. In addition, we really like the studio, the people who run it, and their games; these are all absolute hard criteria for us in any acquisition." 

Paradox will handle Harebrained's finances, marketing, PR, and distribution going forward, while the studio will "have the freedom to creative direct our games and build our player experiences." Future Harebrained projects will have to be approved by Paradox's publishing processes, however. 

Harebrained CEO Jordan Weisman said the growth of the studio and the "noise" of the marketplace prompted the studio to seek out a permanent publishing partner "that could provide us the financial stability and marketing expertise that would allow us focus on what we love doing—making great games and stories." Experience with the Paradox fan base after the release of Battletech was also a factor in the decision, president Mitch Gitelman added, saying, "The fit just works." 

Paradox said it plans to continue support for Battletech with future updates and additional content, solidifying comments about possible future expansions made by Harebrained in May. The studio has also begun "concept development" for an entirely new project. 

A new BattleTech mod out this week condenses the mech strategy game's lengthy campaign down to a bite-size maximum of eight hours by giving you a 120-day time limit to build up your fleet and reach the campaign finale. If you die in the process, that's it: game over.

It's inspired by FTL, which means the star map that you play on will be randomised each time, and will be a lot smaller than the base game's map. The idea of fighting through seven hours only to fail at the last sounds daunting, so it's not for the faint-hearted, especially as every faction in the game will dislike you from the start.

A revamped XP system will encourage you to specialise your mechs more than you normally would, so expect to make tough choices about what equipment to bolt onto each one. 

To help speed up progress, you'll get more salvage at the end of missions, and you're more likely to find rare weapons. You'll also start with the Argo, a ship you only usually unlock later in the campaign.

Modder Delta Angelfire plans to add a barebones story, randomised final encounters and tweaked skill trees in the future.

If you fancy it, here's the Nexus page, where you'll find full installation instructions.