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I've played a lot of them lads and I have to say... nothing quite captures the essence of Battletech quite like megamek. I know it's a 1 to 1 recreation of the board game, but perhaps that's the draw? There is also the vastly complex and in-depth campaign system, which is great for solo play and running campaigns with friends as a standalone tracking tool.

I own plenty of the games, I've played hours of some of the old console and PC titles when I was a kid, though sadly I haven't the patience to get that old stuff to run on modern PCs anymore. And I don't know, megamek is the best. Sure it's a little clunky, a little ugly, but it works. MW5 is okay, HBS Battletech is okay, even MWO has its moments, even with all the mods and updates and DLC along the way, these games are good and kinda scratch different itches but when I want to sink my teeth into a few solid days of gritty unrelenting Mech combat and mercenary company management - it's megamek.

Am I alone here? Are there other titles that you can think of that are like this for you? What's your go-to BT vidya gaem?

Mechcommander (and to a lesser extent MC2).

Love it, there was a MW% apparently had a MOD that was turning it into this. I love the commanding of a lance or ideally company of mechs.

Free to download now, I can't send the links because on a machine with limited net access, but you will easily find it with a search.

MegaMek is as close as you're going to get for a 1:1 remake of tabletop without programming it yourself at this time.

That said, it's not a 1:1 remake. There are some things that are missing and some things they have added so it will work with Java or their own house rules the creators enjoy.

The old MechCommander and the newer HBS are fun, but they make a lot more adjustments such that you can't take what you did there and use it on the Tabletop.

The Mechwarrior series is even worse at this, no matter the version.

Note that doesn't make them bad in their own spaces, just bad at replicating Tabletop Battletech.

Oooh I did kind of forget about MechCommander!

Unfortunately that's one of those titles that's just too much work to get running on a modern PC.

The Harebrained Schemes version of BattleTech is a streamlined version of BattleTech, but pretty fun.