Tutorial hangs about turn 5 every time... can't continue

[tritone]

Help! I just bought the game and am trying to learn it, but I cannot get the tutorial to move past about turn 5. It's the turn where you destroy the building that's on hex 10/11 (I think that's the hex) and then you're supposed to move past it to about hex 11/11 I think. Trying to move after destroying the building is where the game hangs and will not continue.

To destroy the building I click the attack button (2nd icon, 1st row) and choose each weapon, in turn, until all my weapons are fired. Then I hit 'x' to recycle, then attack again with all my weapons until the building eventually is destroyed. The tutorial then says to hit the "call move" button, which I do.

Here's where the trouble begins. First of all, I can't move. The tutorial says to move, or run, or use the automove, to get to about hex 11/11 I think it is. As soon as I hit the Move Forward button, the fire menu returns! So I hit the Call Move button again, click the Move Forward button, and again, the fire menu returns! (I'm calling it the fire menu... it's the icons on the bottom that looks like a target cursor on the 1st row instead of the Move, Run, etc. buttons).

So I tried the automove trick (ALT+RIGHTCLICK on the hex) and sure enough, it asks me if I want to use Automove Yes/No, so I click Yes. A few seconds later, a box pops up and says something like "Skill Check 83%"... and that's all she wrote. NOTHING works after that. I can move the cursor, but the box with "Skill Check..." on it cannot be moved, or dismissed... it never goes away, and the game is completely dead in the water. I have to ALT-ESC to the desktop and CTL-ALT-DEL the game. I've saved the game at this turn (before destroying the building), and tried loading the savegame and playing beyond it to continue, but I simply cannot proceed past this spot. I've also restarted the game and played it again to this point, and it always dies on the "Skill Check 83%" message.

What is "Skill Check 83%" and why is the game hanging here? Is there something I'm supposed to do to dismiss it? I don't think so, because the game appears to be completely hung (although the game cursor tracks my mouse movement). Usually I can drag those dialog boxes around, but not this one. The little red/blue arrows in the corners of the dialog are frozen (they usually can be clicked even if there's nothing to 'page' to). I think the game is really hung.

Can someone help me get past this point? I suspect I've hit a condition that the game didn't expect (because I'm doing something wrong) so perhaps somebody can tell me EXACTLY what buttons to click after destroying the building to move forward? (Remember that the Attack menu is visible, so I need help getting 1) OUT of attack, and 2) Moving forward without hanging) Why does Call Move, then Move Forward, not work? As I said, I'm just learning the game. I don't know what to do here.

Any help appreciated! Looks like a REALLY cool game.

Brad

[tritone]

I might as well answer my own question because I finally figured it out.

I guess you right-click in the "Skill Check" window whenever it pops up. I don't remember the Tutorial explaining what to do if this window pops up so early in the game... but somehow I got past this point (still don't know how I did that) and then a few turns LATER there is an explanation of how to handle a Skill Check window. Come to think of it, I believe I got around the problem by stumbling into the "wait for 20 seconds" mode after my problems above and then the Skill Check window just didn't show up then. Or something like that.

Anyway, I finished the tutorial and this game is totally awesome! I've never played a TBS or RTS that seems to give you so much control and feedback about what's going on. I really got a kick out of blowing off the arms and legs of some of the enemy titans.

My only comments so far, are: is there a way to speed up the game beyond setting the Message Delays to "fast"? It seemed to take *forever* for my Titan to traverse the empty terrain to the Exit area even on Automove. And also... I'm really confused about the whole concept of "waiting". It seems that when the game started, just clicking the Move button would... well, move my Titan! Later in the game, I got stuck in some mode where clicking on an action did NOTHING until I "waited on..." it or whatever. I found that if I clicked on a Move command I had to "wait on/Move" or W+M for every little thing. I just don't understand this at all, but maybe I will. I especially don't understand what "wait on call" means, but that seemed to make the Automove "automatic" at least.

I probably only have myself to blame. When I get a new game I always PLAY THE TUTORIAL before reading the manual. I used to RTFM first, but the manual(s) almost ALWAYS make more sense if you've played around in the interface first, and especially played the tutorial first. This is one of the few games where experimentation inside the tutorial was extremely frustrating. Had I not been stuck out of town, with a laptop full of NO GAMES except this one, I probably would have chucked the game back in the box and left it on the shelf for months before getting back to it (if ever). Now there's no chance of THAT happening. Are there other mech-like Matrix (or otherwise) games like this? Particularly... TBS, not RTS or action/FPS.

[LarkinVB]

Great you like the game ! Please read the sticky turn system guide thread. It will help you to understand the turn system and wait commands better. Sad enough we missed to put it into the manual. Seems a lot of players have problems to grasp the turn system as it is not the standard IGOUGO nor is it real time.

[LarkinVB]

My only comments so far, are: is there a way to speed up the game beyond setting the Message Delays to "fast"? It seemed to take *forever* for my Titan to traverse the empty terrain to the Exit area even on Automove.

Set titan animation off, use automove and set you attack mode to wait on call and you will be real fast. In combat situations its better to set attack to 'wait on new foe' though

[Kabal]

I only got this game today, and haven't had a chance to play it yet, but from what I hear, it's almost identical to the Battletech game put out by FASA. There are several computerized versions of the game that I know of.

One is called MechWar, and it is a relatively primitive graphical representation of the original game. It can be downloaded for free from the following site:
http://www.sarna.net/btech/bt-mw.shtml

Then there are the two Crescent Hawk games put out by Fasa in the late 80s/early 90s.
Here is the writeup about and download for the first one at Underdogs.org:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=110

and a writeup about the 2nd:
http://members.fortunecity.com/lethe97/chr.htm

[Thorgrim]

That message you replied to is a little "old" [;)]
There was a hacker attack on the forum, and 2.5 months worth of messages got lost.

This game is similar to the Amiga's MechForce. It has some similarities with BT.

There are other more recent adaptations of the board game, namely MegaMek (with ladders and campaigns). And a german 3D one, but who understands german? [;)] (yeah, Henrik Kai and Christian [:D] )