BattleTech is extremely slow, here’s how to speed things up

Harebrained Schemes’ BattleTech hit PC today, and fans are already starting to dig into the single-player campaign. But once you reach the second or third mission, you may begin to notice one of the game’s biggest drawbacks: It’s incredibly slow to play. I’ve had single missions take as long as an hour.

Luckily, there’s an easy way to speed things up.

BattleTech draws a lot of its inspiration from the XCOM reboot, especially when it comes to its automated camera angles. Every once in a while you’ll get a great glimpse of your fire support or sniper BattleMech lining up and letting loose the perfect headshot. Other times the camera just gets trapped inside a mountain.

While XCOM developer Firaxis has had years to work out the bugs, Harebrained is just getting started, so if the shenanigans with the camera is annoying you or simply taking too long you can just turn it off.

Open the settings menu and uncheck the box for the “dynamic attack camera.” You can also turn off the over-the-shoulder camera angle you get when targeting enemy units. There are also sliders for how often the camera zooms in to follow units when they sprint, jump or perform close-range melee attacks.

Your mileage may vary, but you may also want to turn off the buttons for “auto-center on selection” and “auto-select units when not in combat.” Otherwise, there can be plenty of times that you lose control of the camera, and you will find it skipping around the map wildly.

I’ve spent a few dozen hours with the game, and I’m far from done. Check out a more thorough write-up of my impressions, published earlier today, and keep an eye out for a beginner’s guide.