Battle HUD: phase strip, Battlemaster weapons, red sight lines

About this game

Developer: Harebrained Schemes · Publisher: Paradox Interactive · Platform: PC (Steam) · Art style: Realistic 3D · Screen type: Battle / Tactics

More BATTLETECH screens in the Gallery

What to study

BATTLETECH's battle screen is built around one idea the whole layout serves: initiative is a place, not a number. The five phase hexes sit across the top with the active phase lit and swollen, every 'Mech on the field carries its phase as a hex badge, and the red sight lines from Showboat's Battlemaster to three targets make the firing solution readable before a single weapon is chosen, the weapon table at lower right (a PPC, six medium lasers, an SRM 6, machine guns, melee at 115) is then just the price list for lines already drawn. Damage lives on the paper doll in the unit card, an orange stripe over the Battlemaster's torso, while the lance portraits along the bottom keep the four pilots, two of them tagged INSPIRE, in the same glance as the guns. Nothing is modal; the argument, the actors and the costs share one frame. Frame at 1:02.6 in BATTLETECH Basics - Episode 1: Combat.

Patterns

How the screen is arranged.

hud-overlay portrait-row paper-doll data-table

Components

Parts on screen.

Card Banner Data table Portrait Vitals bar Pips Action bar Badge Quest tracker

Screen inventory

• the initiative phase strip across the top centre: hexes numbered 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 with phase 1 lit white and expanded, under a 'YOUR TURN' banner and 'Round: 15' at upper left and the objective 'DESTROY ENEMY LANCE 25%' below it
• three thin red sight lines running from the player's Battlemaster at centre out to three enemy 'Mechs at upper left, each enemy tagged with its own numbered phase hex, segmented health bars and white chevron pips
• the target callout floating right of centre: 'SHOWBOAT' over 'BATTLEMASTER BLR-1G', a phase-1 hex badge, orange-and-white segmented armour/structure bars and a shield icon
• the bottom-left unit card: SHOWBOAT's BATTLEMASTER with front and rear paper-doll silhouettes, an orange damage stripe painted over the torso of the front doll, and S:/A: segmented bars above
• the bottom-centre lance row: portraits for BLOCKADE, KRAKEN, SHOWBOAT (framed as selected, with an 'INSPIRE' tag) and WILDFIRE (also 'INSPIRE'), over an ATTACK action bar of numbered ability icons
• the bottom-right weapon table with WEAPON / AMMO / DMG / HIT% columns: PPC at 50, six identical MD Laser rows at 25, SRM 6 with 176 ammo at 10 (x6), two MG rows and MELEE at 115

Top 3 colors

#170d09 25%#38140d 23%#5f321d 18%

Top three palette colors by share. The remaining colors make up the rest.

Source and credit

© Harebrained Schemes / Paradox Interactive, BATTLETECH screenshot: BATTLETECH Basics - Episode 1: Combat + BATTLETECH Basics - Episode 2: Mercenary Life (Steam), Harebrained Schemes, shown for design study and commentary. PlayCraft is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Paradox Interactive.

Source tier 2 (publisher-released) · screenshot: Steam store page · Steam page

Source details

Fetched 2026-10-23. verified 2026-10-23: frame is a scene-change survivor (candidates/v2_0025.png @ 62.63s) from the verified-clean curl-shim download of BATTLETECH Basics - Episode 1: Combat (Steam), inspected visually at full resolution; phase hexes 5-1 with 1 lit, 'YOUR TURN / Round: 15', the three red sight lines, the BATTLEMASTER BLR-1G callout, the paper-doll unit card and the PPC / MD Laser / SRM 6 weapon table all legible; a fresh extraction at 62.63s from the canonical mp4 hash-matches this candidate at distance 0. Disclosed: a small pre-alpha build watermark ('V-0.5.0-170927-PREALPHA… // BATTLETECH BACKER BETA') sits in the top-right corner of the frame, part of the source footage itself.

no published policy found (checked 2026-10-23); fair-use study use, takedown honored within 48h

Rights holders: see Copyright & takedown.