/btg/ Battletech General!

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What's your favorite 20 ton mech?

>>52020024

>Devastators

Well, I can see those turning up in League hands.

The Capellan Confederation era MUL lists the Devastator among their forces, despite them not having any factories for it, which I assume means it was junk they salvaged from Guerrero.

>>52020145

Your mom.

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Reiterating, can folks look over the quirk rules in 2.5? In return, look up my works and despair.

>>52020145
Fireball.
I live my life a quarter mile at a time

>>52020145
Toss up between the Locust IIC and the Fireball. I love them both so much, but for such different reasons.

What is your dream Battletech campaign, my dear anons?

That one you played/GMd or that you really want to play/gm one day?

>>52020145
Unseen Locust, Stinger and Wasp equally for looks.
Dasher and Piranha equally for munchkin fun

>>52020166
It's a reference to the one Barton picked up in the Fort Bourgogne incident.

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>>52020267
I think the Locust IIC is 25 tons.

>>52020372

But they list it as being the DVS-2, which was developed years after Barton's antics.

>>52020405
>which was developed years after Barton's antics.

The whole scenario book is about destroying the prototype DVS-2 program in 3044. You fight three at the end and salvage the commander's ride to take home.

>>52020430

My mistake then.

I thought it was the DVS-1 that was used in those scenarios.

>>52020145
Wasp. She's always there when you need a mech, and there's always a replacement for when it explodes.

>>52020166

Yeah but the FWL who also fought during Guerrero don't get it. Because reasons.

Honestly the whole MUL project seems like a well-meaning clusterfuck to me. Who gets what is pretty arbitrary- Capellans can salvage Devastators, Dracs and FWL can't. For 300 years the idea of replacing the Wolverine's A/C-5 with a Large Laser occurs *only* to the FWL. Removing the MGs and ammo on the Phoenix Hawk for two Heat Sinks is such a revolutionary idea only the Suns is capable of coming up with it, much less implementing it. The FWL refuses to sell the Apollo to anyone else, especially the FedCom, but the FedCom immediately gains access to it.

It just.. arg.

>>52020194

The -9Q already exists. We've hit peak Awesome, unless Clan tech is involved.

>>52020449
That scenario introduced the Devastator as a chassis and as the DVS-2 model. DVS-1 was never even mentioned by name, just "They tried to build a limited run of these things without foundtech and used AC-10's back in the day. It was a miserable failure." Wasn't until 3058 Upgrade where they retconned that into loads of chassis for some dumb reason.

>>52020166
>>52020496
The MUL is pretty shit. Every group I play with takes it with a grain of salt.

>>52020503
That all went the Taurians. Damn munchkin bulls.

>>52020330
>What is your dream Battletech campaign, my dear anons?
A state scale game, with people who aren't idiots (see: Fan Grand Council)

>>52020584
>be Liao arming TDF to fight in St Ives
>makes you literally prepping the bull
Kek

>>52020330
>What is your dream Battletech campaign


A few years ago Cincy ran a campaign going through the entire Amaris Coup. It lasted like three years and was this epic Gundam-esque thing of high drama.

That.

>>52021084
Ditto. I want in on something like that so badly.

>>52021084
Details?

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>>52021230

Too much to type out. They're on the Cincy battletech website under the SLDF campaign forum, look for a sticked thread that's basically a campaign summary. There's a summary image from partway through the campaign pointing out some (not all, maybe 1/4th of the) highlights.

>>52021298
That's awesome. Especially that they played WoB.
>having to fight your way across a 30 hex wide field against a dug in assault company and Alacorns
>still win
Praise Blake!

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>>52011224
>That might be the single worst character pic since the 80s.

I actually like it.

A lot of people forget that Elementals are supposed to be deformed to be bigger, tougher infantry, not unlike how aerospace warriors are deformed to have huge heads and eyes to be more adapted as aerospace pilots.

They managed to keep those traits, and still make it look believable.

>>52021298
>>52021421

Sure it looks awesome, but this is actually evidence of why Cincy's existence is terrible for the game. it sets an unrealistic standard for everybody else.

>>52021482
It looks shooped and weird. His other pics are better.

>>52021519
My second favorite meme

Question in regards to Cruise Missiles. Can Cruise Missiles be mounted on a submarine? Thinking of a variant of the Triton Missile Submarine that replaces the Arrow launchers with a pair of Cruise Missile Launchers. Is that feasible?

>>52021680
As long as it can accommodate the weight, crit space, and (if applicable) heat, yes. The only thing that can't be mounted on a submarine is space naval weapons.

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The bot does weird things sometimes.

I've been in a campaign supporting the Dracs against the Feds. The Dracs are a bunch of nutters but they were the only ones willing to give me salvage terms higher than 20% and pay my transport fee when I was looking for work, so why not? MekHQ rolled a base assault mission so I deployed 1 assault lance and 2 heavy lances. The Dracs deployed two lances of mixed heavies and assaults. Opposing us were 1 mixed light/medium lance, 2 heavy lances and 2 assault lances. The Feds also had 2 lances of light/medium vehicles as reinforcements as well as 10 random militia vehicles like armed agrimechs and APCs.

My command terms for this contract were Independent so this is the first time I actually fought beside my employer. I deployed on the left side of the south edge, the Dracs deployed in the middle inside a small forest. The Feds deployed their mechs inside the town with the militia and reinforcements entering from the north. I managed to trap the enemy light/medium/heavy mechs in a brutal pincer attack on turn 4 by drawing them out of the town just as the Dracs emerged from the forest. That left the enemy assaults, a few heavies inside the town and the various vehicles to be dealt with.

And then pic related happened.

Normally the bot is perfectly happy to execute enemy pilots if they have nothing else to shoot at, or they are within stomping distance. But what happened was that every Drac mech except for one Rifleman surrounded one of the ejected Fed pilots and started this weird tribal dance. The first 6 mechs who arrived formed a circle around him and just stood there spinning in place. When the Battlemaster arrived the Thug moved into the middle of the circle to make room and then they stayed like this while spinning in random directions for the rest of the battle.

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Pitch dark, grues, etc.

>>52021797

Footage of the event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cufG2Dlxvk

>>52021895
Kentares Massacre don't real. It's all Feddie propaganda

>>52021797
>be FS mechwarrior
>fighting drac scum
>get shot out of your mech
>6 assaults approach
>OH SHIT
>they stand around you, not shooting
>dracs don't take prisoners?
>they start spinning around
>wat
>another shows up, now one's standing over you
>he spins around too

fucking dracs

>>52022000
>be cute female FS mechwarrior
>fighting drac scum
>get shot out of your mech
>6 assaults approach
>OH SHIT
>they stand around you, not shooting
>dracs don't take prisoners?
>they get out of their mechs
>wat
>stand over you
>cum on your face
Drackakke

>>52021797
>>52021895
Actual footage of the event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LIg8WSIBpo

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>>52021797
I've seen that happen, too.

I also get this...

>"Protect the 4 civilian units in either APCs, Trucks, or industrialmechs"
>Decent number of opponents in an urban area
>Reroll with tactics to get a night mission
>Manage to clear out most of the opposition, just need to handle the fresh reinforcements
>Suddenly, the swansong of an enemy tank manages to gyro and/or hip one of the agromechs.
>Agromech falls. Manages to survive.
>Stay Down, Agromech
>Naw man I got this
>Stand checks on 11+ means good-to-go
>Prevented from getting a perfect score because the civilian blew up after the fifth consecutive fall.

>>52022134
>11+
So you are telling me.. There's a chance!

Which heavies should I pair with Stalkers for a good assault lance?
3030s era FWIW

>>52022336
Thunderbolts. They're like half a Stalker but with more armor.

>>52022134
I wish Dark Age was still mostly forestry and mining mechs.

>>52022336
The Thunderbolt is the traditional stalker-buddy for a reason, although you should also consider Warhammers, especially the -K, because the weapon arrangement complements the stalker's well.
If you're trying to be fluffy, a Crusader-K or -D is actually pretty good, too
>>52022369
I don't. They're very fun as a complement to actual mechs, but being forced to use them as a substitute for them is just shitty. It may just be my booster pack PTSD talking, though

>>52022369
>RotS had literally three regiments of battlemechs left in PrefX when the wall went up

And people talk about the Capellans having a hard time in 3030.

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>>52020057
>2017
>Still using Demotivational memes

>>52022483

Epic Fail right ~desu?

>>52022134
That also happens to Spider pilots because they can't eject if you have quirks turned on. The only way they can escape is by walking off the map or getting the mech destroyed so the "autoeject" kicks them out of it. They will repeatedly attempt to stand up until they die, no matter the odds. I've met about a dozen spiders in battle since I started playing but I was only able to salvage one in usable condition. And I was only able to salvage THAT spider because I managed to kick both of it's legs and torsos off in the same turn leaving it a head and armourless CT and nothing else. The limbless spider just sat there like the black knight until the battle was over and I captured it.

Those civilian missions are the worst. I always change the post-game results to make the civilians survive if it was blatantly obvious that they would have lived if not for AI stupidity. In the last extraction mission I did the civilian units were all wheeled units, I think one of them was a passenger bus and the other two were cargo trucks. But the fourth? The fourth was a coolant truck, and it had a vehicle flamer.

So while the first three vehicles sensibly cowered behind a hill while I was duking it out with the enemy mechs, the coolant truck went HOLD MY BEER I GOT THIS, drove right up to an enemy warhammer and started burning it's legs at point blank range. This lasted for an amazing 4 turns until the warhammer pilot got sick of his shit, stepped on the coolant truck and set off both the ammo and the fuel tank in a gigantic explosion.

>>52022458
I'm pretty sure this is wrong

>>52022483
We still play Battletech too, Nazi Frog. We love things that stopped being cool a long time ago.

>>52022601
Sounds like a goddamn hero to me.

>>52022641
It's not counting the Remnant who were left outside the Wall.

>>52022449
I just love the idea of a turbo diesel powered medium mech. Especially the engine going runaway if it's destroyed by an engine crit.

>>52022666
>Nazi Frog
Almost had me

>>52022756

We went on to nazi marik pigeon now.

Are there any vehicles that you've found particularly useful in a mercenary campaign context? (whether it be Against-the-Bot, a tabletop campaign with friends, a Mechwarrior RPG campaign, etc.)

Personally I've found both the Saladin and the Striker LRM tank to be pretty useful - they clock in at only 35 tons and add a lot of firepower for their weight. The Saladin in particular adds a ton of firepower to light scout lance in a vehicle that can also keep pace for the most part.

So, are their situations where handheld weapons can be good?

Would a handheld made entirely of machine gun relays work?

>>52022601
>AI stupidity

You can actually mess with the AI settings - find the bot's player # with "/who", then use "/kick #", and from the menu replace the bot with a new one and fine tune the settings. For civilians, turn their aggression way down, turn their self-preservation way up, and turn down their willingness to take PSR checks and extraction missions will play out a little more fairly. If you feel the civilians should be fleeing in a particular direction, you can also tick "Immediate Escape" and set a map edge for the bot to run away to..

>>52022778

Hunter Light Tank is good too.

>>52022778
I've always liked vees but find them a bit fragile. Still, for the cost the LB-X Po is pretty good. Also any kind of LRM carrier that can stay out of the way.

>>52022721
This shit happens all the time in periphery games. One time, my buddies and I played some pirates out Bad News way and one of my machines was a Wasp that had its fusion engine blown decades ago and replaced with a diesel Conlee 80 out of a bog standard APC. It was basically a Wasp 1L that went 4/6 and had just enough heatsinks to fire its missiles. I yanked one sink out and replaced it with a machine gun and half a bin of ammo to up the firepower just a bit and give me something to terrorize the locals without wasting my precious missiles.

Sometimes, playing scum is pretty fun.

>>52022815
Thanks for the tip, I'll try that next time. Ideally the civilians should stop for nothing and just run for their lives off of the map edge I deployed from. Extraction missions are usually not a problem if the civilians are unarmed, it's just the ones with weapons (no matter how terrible) that go from zero to berserker. The agrimechs refitted with weapons are by far the worst offenders at this.

>>52022778
I find Saladins and Pegasus Scout Hovertanks to be very reliable support units. Saladins are quite fragile but the AC20 can put almost any mech on it's ass (or in the grave) with a single shot, especially from behind. The version of the Pegasus I prefer is the one with triple SRM6s and like the Saladin these can reliably shred and knock down mechs, or annihilate enemy vees if you bring some infernos. My Pegasus lance once captured a near-pristine Stalker just by running circles around it and repeatedly shotgunning SRMs into it's face until the pilot blacked out.

If you use them in a combined arms attack with heavy or assault mechs they become particularly deadly because the difference in TH numbers is so wide that the enemy will focus exclusively on your mechs. So you can scoot them right up to the short range bracket with impunity and often get rear armour hits. Just remember to stay out of kicking range.

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>>52022483
Odd, but my files says I got this from /btg/ at November 27th of last year. It was just part of my stash.

Here, have an explodey-mech.

>>52023116
This is a beautiful story. Honestly, if it weren't for the trolls shoving it down everyone's throats and making the thread hate it, PaF was pretty awesome. Bonus points that it's a 1L. I dunno what it is, but that little asshole serves me well every time I field it. Will never forget the time I had one take down a cherry Thud in the first round of firing. One of those "Battletech sucks for the same reasons it's awesome" moments.

>>52022778
Heavy BattleMech Recovery Vehicle is a goddamn godsend. A 70 ton truck able to haul up to 100 tons, with loading gear to drag things on. It's a 'mech tow truck and armored to boot..

But you don't have to just put 'mechs on it. 100 tons of just about anything you want to steal can be loaded on a BRV by any 'mech with hands.

>>52023403
Sadly, our Laio contract liaison seemed to get the idea and ruined the fun, just seeming to goddamn appear sitting on top of it as we rolled into our field base.

Apparently she was afraid we were violating the terms of our 10% salvage just because we had loaded up a headless Phoenix Hawk, an Awesome arm and a Packrat ICE scout car with Laio markings.

And the personal effects of a Laio scout team inside.

Luckily we were able to clear it up that we had just secured these items to make sure they would not suffer damage after the battle.

So it takes about 4 and a half months for a jump-ship to travel the exodus road.

It takes twenty jump-ships to set up a a relay for high speed transport able to move 1 jump-ship worth of droppers per week.

Does it ever say how they were supposed to be sustaining a invasion with that kind of supply chain? Did they spend years setting up forward supply catches or something?

>>52024415
They moved all the initial bid at once, then called for reinforcements and supplies later. Once every Clan not named "Smoke Jaguar" got to the IS, they started modifying local factories to support the OZs, rather than rely on such a long supply line. The Wolves planned on doing more under Ulric, but Vlad was a short sighted idiot who figured that changing what worked wasn't worth it.

Hey, I just read that the little fluff from 2nd ed Battletech is different from 1st ed Battledroids... Anyone know what's different?
Thank you in advance.

>>52024415

WarShips, anon.

Even a Vincent has 90 kT of cargo. Every Galaxy had at least one as a flagship, and the Falcons even had one per Cluster.

Most Clans recovered from Tukayyid very rapidly too. It was really just the Jags who fucked everything up.

Wolves also did establish supply caches ahead of their advance.

"Clans couldn't into logistics" is a total meme. Considering they swept through a fifth of the IS faster than anyone else has before or since at the other end of a one0year supply chain, they had to be doing something right.

>>52024435
All at once would mean putting almost all of their warriors in microgravity for four and a half months and breaking their supply chain so rather then 1/shipload a week per 20 jumpers they would get zero shiploads for a minimum of nearly five months while the chain reestablished itself.

I believe you, I just think that is badly written.

>>52024657
>microgravity
I was under the impression that Battletech spacecraft are able to generate some sort of gravitation, if only via acceleration, just as is handwaved in nearly every other space opera.

>>52024746

The can. They can fly at 1g or more, and they have grav decks.

>>52024746
There's two options.

Dropships and Warships can accelerate constantly for a while, simulating gravity between 0 and 3G or so. That's not an option if you are going on a road trip this long, as Battletech fusion torches are efficient, but not THAT efficient. It's also not an option because when jumping, you have to stay at the jump point with your sails open and can't accelerate.

The other options is a really big doughnut. That you spin and stand on the inside.

This is neat, effective, and used on some Warships and Jumpships.

And.. yeah, this is why I said "most" not "all". Even packed like sardines you can't fit anything like everyone into those. Most of your warriors would be in Dropships, and in microgravity.

If you are traveling via daisy-chain of jumpers and dropships you only need to spend as long as it takes to disconnect in one system and join up with the next jump ship in one system. If everyone's going at once you need to wait to recharge the jump ship in every system.

Trying to get a feel for combined arms selection - In terms of ground attack Aerospace, is there any reason *not* to take a Lightning/Transit instead of another ASF for air-to-ground work? It seems that a flying AC/20 is the absolute best option for 'mech/tank plinking.

>>52024791
If the Dropships are attached to the Jumpship via a ring, couldn't you get gravitation simply by spinning the Jumpship, so the externally attached Dropships experience the centrifugal (centripetal? Help me out, physics majors) force?

>>52024791

>That's not an option if you are going on a road trip this long, as Battletech fusion torches are efficient, but not THAT efficient.

Assuming you run the engines all day every day instead of just doing it for a portion to maintain muscle mass and bone density, a WarShip needs just 5,336 tons of fuel. DropShips would require 1,193 tons.

So take the Potemkin. 25 DropShips for ~28 kT, plus 5.3 kT for itself. It actually has 25 kT for fuel any way so that's not even an issue, and subtracting the DS resupply still leaves over 340 kT for supplies.

Other WSes will still be packing 75 kT plus much of the time for supplies, and this isn't even factoring in things like Mammoths or Mules for hauling supplies.

This is well and truly a solved problem in BT.

>>52024849

CGL decided to make it so that attempting to spend any thrust with DSes attached to a WS or JS fucks things up and breaks the collar, even though they routinely conduct maneuvers with DSes attached in the fiction.

So now, no way no how. Because Cray hath spoken, forever and ever amen.

>>52024835
They are good anti-mech fighters, the only reason you'd go for something else is if you can afford the luxury of more advanced fighters or if you want something that hits a better multi-role compromise.

>>52024849
Theroeticlly, yes..

>>52024874
But the spin would rip the jumpships off the collars..

And the spin would rip apart the jumpship's sail..

And last, and most funny, dropships are build 'engines down' and connect to jumpships the same way. Everything in the dropper would be upside down when you did this.

>>52024865
Warships can not accelerate with the sail deployed unless you want to walk home.

>>52024657
REVIVAL's planners expected the invasion of the Inner Sphere to really only need the first wave, so there wasn't an expectation of needing to reestablish the supply line. REVIVAL was a shit show from start to finish, planning wise. Of course, that was intentional on the Wardens' part.

>>52024939

So double the 5.3 kT of fuel use to also charge the drive, and oh look, there's still a shit ton of cargo space left to handle the problem. Oh noes. Woe is us.

Seriously it's not even an issue and I don't know why you're trying to make it into one.

>>52024969

>REVIVAL's planners expected the invasion of the Inner Sphere to really only need the first wave, so there wasn't an expectation of needing to reestablish the supply line.

No, they expected to sweep the IS before them and for the Invasion to be easy. For the most part it was.

Something like 10 Waves were planned.

It took like a month for most Clans to recover from Tukayyid. The Jags obviously didn't, but that was due to how badly they shat things up 200 years ago rather than the length of the Exodus Road.

>>52024998
I think I'm probably remembering something from a novel more than an SB, so probably. The death of Lincoln Osis may have helped the IS and the Invading Clans equally all told though.

>>52024981
>Burning the reactor to power the K/F drive
>For half a year

>You are walking home.

That's an emergency option, not something you do for half a year with no possibility at all of getting help if you fuck the drive.

>>52025025

Dude, if you burn the engines and charge at 175+ hours per Jump you don't do shit to either the engines or the drive. It only becomes an issue if you want to charge the drive in 174 hours or less.

>>52025017

>The death of Lincoln Osis may have helped the IS and the Invading Clans equally all told though.

Probably. The IS would have been in an absolute shambles without it but the most likely scenario is the Wolves on Terra by the end of 3052 otherwise and then the Wars of Reaving happening early as all the Crusaders flip their shit over being beaten so comprehensively.

>>52021776
>The only thing that can't be mounted on a submarine is space naval weapons.
Though that can be achieved via submersible mobile structure.

Where can I find info on the Augustine Alliance?

>>52025271

The what?

Closest to that I've heard of is the Aurigen Coalition. If that's what you mean, it's going to be in the new BT computer game.

>>52025359
>vidya shit

Ew. I'm talking about the DA FWL sub-state formed by rebellious Republic Senators.

>>52025535

Then you're shit out of luck becuse about all the DA material we have is just "this is a thing that exists."

>>52025585
But it was a faction in the DA game and, I assume, the DA novels.

It was never detailed beyond what has already been mentioned Anon. Sorry.

>>52025535
Fuck off medron

>>52026414

Stop invoking his name or he may actually show up here.

>>52024435
Jaguars did it too. Just for the plot reasons they did it less, until it was time for salvage post-war and loads of gear was found.

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Do you think Vic ended up happier with Isis than he would have been married to Omi?

What happened to their kids?

>>52026745
From what I gathered Omi was Victors love of the life and when the Katherine hatemurdered her, Victor was devasted quite badly. Tbh I don't know why Victor didn't kill Katherine right there and then when se revealed Omi was dead.

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>100-ton chassis that moves 2/3
>four Light Gauss Rifles and two ER Medium lasers
>improved C3 link, Guardian ECM, Bloodhound Probe and CASE

Thoughts?

>>52027282
WoB/10. But without AMS you're gonna be pillboxed, and generating a TMM is impossible anyway. Also, unless you're using TO rules, the BlAP isn't really worth the tonnage.

>>52026480
I don't think he even knows these threads exist

>>52027282
>>100-ton chassis that moves 2/3
>>four Light Gauss Rifles and two ER Medium lasers
>>improved C3 link, Guardian ECM, Bloodhound Probe and CASE

I actually do have a legit question as someone not hugely familiar with battletech (just played the shit out of the PC games). Why is there a focus on lots of weaker weapons that plink away rather than one big knock out weapon that'll put whatever it's shooting at out of commission?

Is it to pad out turns with dice rolling and extend game time? Because this seems really inefficient.

>>52027282
I think you'd be better off at 3/5. I remember seeing a 3/5 100 ton quad LBX-10 tank here, and the weapon tonnage is around the same

>>52027336

We can hope, but never assume Murphy's Law won't get you.

>>52027282
>>52027320
>C3
>ECM
>CASE
>AMS
>TMM
>TO
>BIAP

Brehs, new to the game. What are these? This is like ASSRAMS on /k/ all over again.

>>52027370
more guns = more chances to hit, and most importantly, critically hit.

less guns = all your eggs in one basket in full effect, not guaranteed to kill or severely cripple target either.

>>52027370
"Knock out" guns are heavy, and are great at getting through armor. Not so much for getting critical chances. The party is when you get past the armor into the internals. Sure that Gauss Rifle can headcap a mech, but hitting an ammo bin or blowing off a limb through critical damage is just as effective, since there's no real "aiming" like in the PC titles.

>>52027407
>C3
>ECM
>CASE
>AMS
>TMM
>TO
>BIAP

In order: Command/Control/Communications Computer, connects your mechs and lets them transmit targeting information to make long range units more effective. ECM, Electronic Countermeasures, so that the C3i system can't be jammed. CASE, Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment, which shunts ammo and weapon explosions away from the fragile bits of mechs. AMS: Anti-Missile System, shoots down pesky missiles. TMM: Target Movement Mod, which is something that makes you harder to hit the faster you move. TO: Tactical Operations, the first big rules expansion book of the modern game line. BlAP: Bloodhound Active Probe, a better Active Probe system that's harder to defeat.

>>52027473
>>52027417

It makes total sense mechanically, I'm just trying hard to justify it from an in-universe perspective. I need to stop thinking about it so hard.

>>52027489
It's less hard to justify in universe, because you see "16 shots of ammo" for a Gauss Rifle and realize that's going to last an entire game with no problems for the most part. However, that 16 shots of ammo is good for less than 3 minutes of combat, since BattleTech turns are 10 seconds in length. Once you figure that disconnect out, all those medium lasers and shit make more sense.

>>52027538
And yes, that means those 8 round games that take 2 hours is literally a minute and 20 seconds of combat.

>>52026009
>>But it was a faction in the DA game

It was not. MWDA never had a single FWL related faction. It was the only IS faction (ignoring periphery factions, none of them appeared in the game) that didn't get any love. Even Hells Horses got a special box with 3 miniatures

>>52022458
Nah, they recalled every unit from the outer prefectures they could.

I have no numbers, but unless any of those was outright destroyed or disobeying orders, Fortress Republic has more than 30 regiments (on paper) within its borders.

>>52026872
Probably his support staff keeping him from doing so. Galen, Kai, etc. being the voices of reason. If he had gone and murdered her, it would've turned both sides into a frenzy and the outcome of the FCCW would've been more like the outcome of a Succession War.

>>52024767
Not on JumpShips. They don't have any appreciable thrust. They, like Space Stations, only carry station-keeping drives. The most they can accelerate to is somewhere in the neighborhood of .1G. That means one could, in theory, putter from a jump point to a planet-side repair station, but that would take a long, long time.

>>52028192
That time could be cut short by jumping to a pirate point in-system though.

>>52028246
Yes, but pirate points are dangerous to jump to, even under the best of circumstances, and not a good idea unless you're making a combat jump.

>>52027538
And then there's the War Dog. Of course, the way BT works means that even something with a lot of ammo is still going to get hampered by the need to replace lost armor, unless you want to risk keep going and getting trounced by fresh units.

Where can I learn more about Operations SCOUR and SCYTHE? I wish Jihad books weren't so hard to read

>>52028349
Speaking of the War Dog, the RAT has thrown me a pair for my new mercenary campaign.
What modifications should I make to unfuck them?

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>>52028872
How comfortable are you with full retard refits? If not very, go with the 2Gr, just note that it doesn't have CASE. If you want to go full retard, use the 3G.

>>52028872
Bare minimum replace the twin OS streak 2s for two regular streak 2s, or just an SRM 6 or something, and possibly moved to the LT for critpadding. I have a soft spot for the ridiculous amount of GR ammo, but for rationality's sake I'd at least leave it at three tons, keeping a bit of that character and giving it more than usual to play with while not being stupid about. Add armor to even out the arms, and CASE is basically a must.

YOu might also consider replacing the MPLs with standard MLs, and flipping the SPL forward, and dpedning on how you feel about LPLs you might consuider replacing that with a PPC. Should still end up with some free weight for a couple more in engine DHS too.

>>52028872
LPL to ERPPC, OSSSRMs to JJs, AMS+SPL to 3MLs+armor
There, unfucked

>>52028349
>>52028872
Never used it. What's wrong with the War Dog?

Also interested in thoughts on the Gallowglas, Bandersnatch, Merlin, Cronus and Lineholder.

Going full merc.

>>52029386
5 tons of GR ammo, unbalanced armor on the arms and PAIRED OS STREAK TWOS. That now have the Accurate and Fast Reload quirks. Because I care.

>>52029386
>What's wrong with the War Dog?
Two one-shot streak SRM-2s. Which weighs as much as two regular SSRM-2s with a ton of ammo, that is to say FOUR FUCKING TONS wasted on completely useless weapons
Carries an AMS with two tons of ammo, which is generally useless and extremely explosive, and doesn't have fucking CASE.
It has five fucking tons of GR ammo but every single other one of it's weapons is best at close range
It has unbalanced arm armor for no good reason
It uses an XLFE and therefor costs more than most mercs make in a year
It has many issues

>>52029411
>>52029494
I definitely see the point with the GR ammo, OS SRMs, etc. Didn't Wolf's Dragoons make it? What were they thinking?

>>52029386
The only one I can give a definitive off the top of my head is the Bandersnatch. It's a fairly solid design, depending upon which model you get. The 01A is very ammo-dependent, so once the LBXs and LRMs are depleted there's not much it can do. The 02A is better at that but suffers more from heat due to being fairly under-sinked for the armament it carries.

>>52029546
It was an SLDF design that GM/Blackwell put into production without any edits, apparently.

Which is the most cost-effective mech in the game?

>>52029574
Maybe they should have looked at why the SLDF didn't use it.

>>52029579
Probably some 4/6/4 medium?

What if Devlin Stone is simply a common man in the right place, at the right time, but was manipulated by the real WoB guy David Lear?

>>52029386
>Gallowglas
Excellent all-rounder and virtually indestructible. Get to medium range and just keep blasting
>Bandersnatch
Probably one of the best all-around support mechs ever, and also an exceptional bodyguard. The only real downside is the somewhat thin armor
>Merlin
Not especially good at any one thing, but a very decent utility machine. Also cheap and simple, a good machine to fill out your merc unit with
>Lineholder
Does exactly what it says on the tin, blast with the LRMs at range and then close to batter people with the lasers. Pairs very well with Trebuchete, but is also a plenty solid workhorse on it's own

>>52029579
Most likely the Awesome-9Q or some sort of SFE-endo dualgoose

>>52029386
>>52029689
It always seemed a bit weird to me that the Merlin never got a real 3050-tech upgrade considering how popular it was with mercs

>>52028338
The way I understand it, they're mostly risky because you have to jump at them blind, trusting in map data.

A Jumpship in the same system could take its own observations from the jump point, adjust them for time lag, and jump on accurate data.

>>52029965
DHS, ERPPC, CASE, more armor. Very simple

>>52028016
>I have no numbers, but unless any of those was outright destroyed or disobeying orders, Fortress Republic has more than 30 regiments (on paper) within its borders.

After ten years of rebuilding, they have less than 20 regiments of mechs under the fortress. Don't confuse regimental units for battlemechs. That's 3145. In 3135 when Fortress went up, they had almost nothing. Only one of the Hastati regiments made it back for example.

>>52030462
>After ten years of rebuilding, they have less than 20 regiments of mechs under the fortress.

But that doesn't make any sense. The Word of Blake produced twice that much in top-tier tech, plus all the experimental shit in the 9 years between 3058 and 3067, and technically the first 2-3 years on Terra were all taken up just securing the planet and getting things up and running. More realistically, WOB did all that shit in 5 years.

Why is the ROTS so incompetent that it takes them twice as long to make half as much?

>>52030884
The WoB also had access to factories that were mothballed, not slag, radioactive slag, or free floating vapor. What the Republic had that wasn't destroyed they mothballed or had producing low numbers of units. Not to say the Republic weren't idiots, but they didn't have the manufacturing base to fall back on like the Word did.

>>52030884
>Why is the ROTS so incompetent that it takes them twice as long to make half as much?

Because the only thing they have experience with is melting mechs down, not building them. Fuck their "reclamation" program.

>>52030201
Map data, but also spatial anomalies and more. The jump drive computer has to plot a route to get there without intersecting any spatial bodies or such, from what I understand. It takes longer to simply chart that route, and there's a higher chance of a misjump or an aborted jump.

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Can anybody tell me something about Mechwarrior 4? I never played it before a few days ago. Are the medium and small lasers supposed to be gimped? They're pop guns.

>>52031175
*until a few days ago.

>>52030884
Also, the Word of Blake didn't produce all that directly. They leveraged other states. 2/3 of the Project Phoenix production got bought or stolen by them. They bought a ton of FWL machines as well. And they had access to old storage caches that Comstar kept in their back pocked. And when they took Terra, they inherited all the hard work Focht had been been putting into bringing those factories back online since '52 so they didn't start from ground zero there.

If you read the stories where people are fighting the regular WoBM, it's still mostly 3025 chassis with upgrades and a few actual new machines.

It's the Shadows that had the real nice stuff.

>>52031175
>Are the medium and small lasers supposed to be gimped?

Essentially, yes. Your Raven there would really work with he removal of the NARC and the lasers for mediums and maybe SRMs. Boat standard mediums in the beginning.

>>52030884

Also remember that even into 3100+ they were still actively cleaning radioactive fallout, and had just lost worlds to natural disasters. I agree that they should have had far more than that, but at the same time it's not ALL idiot-ball.

>>52031188
>It's the Shadows that had the real nice stuff.
WoB infiltrators asking "what do you want" when?

>>52031129
All stuff a Jumpship could handily observe from a jump point way above the ecliptic plane, I believe. And those buggers have a lot of time to look.

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>>52031655
"Do you really want to know what I want? Do you really want to know the truth? I want my people to reclaim their rightful place in the galaxy. I want to see Terra to stretch forth her hand again and command the stars. I want a rebirth of glory, a renaissance of power! I want to stop running through my life like a man late for an appointment, afraid to look back or look forward. I want us to be what we used to be! I want... I want it all back the way it was. Does that answer your question?"

>>52031631
Maybe i have an old copy of MW4, but the damage rating for mediums and smalls were something like 0.25 and 0.15 points of damage! Where they trying to make a first person bullet hell shmup or something?
I get the missiles are a good idea.
This just baffles my mind. I loved MW 1, 2, and 3, but this one breaks my brain.

>>52031651
>I agree that they should have had far more than that

Almost all their manufacturing centers in the outer prefectures were taken by Republic subfactions less than a year after Gray Monday. Fucking Dragon's Fury held Irian of all places. Not to mention, the RotS crippled their own battlemech manufacturing on purpose, turning supercomplexes like Kalidasa into tractortech factories.

It's a god damn miracle they rebuilt as much as they did under Fortress, especially when they had to deal with remnants from the Republic Civil War.

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>>52031785
Yes. Yes it does.

>>52030201
Pirate points are temporary. This isn't a huge deal, because orbital mechanics are quite predictable once you've measured objects in the system, their current velocity and vector..

But if you go for a pirate point that only exists for 50 hours every 2 months, you aren't leavening by the same way you came.

And if you try and jump into one where an unmapped asteroid or other massive object has wandered in you aren't jumping there at all.

>>52030201
>>52031658

Even with good sensors it takes a long, long time to map a whole star system. You could spend years cataloging objects. The best you can do for a pirate point if you aren't willing to invest that kind of time is 'looks clear right now'.

>>52031906
>Stone is old Londo with the thing in his neck

More likely than you think.

RotS is top 5 most interesting factions in the game, it was a nice change having a powerful faction that wanted peace instead of power grab

Sadly, BT are huge plebs and 90% think everything that isn't FS or Wolf is bad

The MechWarrior 3 installer is so adorably nineties, I love it.

I remember playing the shit out of the demo as a kid, just hopping into a factory default Mad Cat and try to hold off all the ten waves. I remember the palpable desperation whem I was waddling around, arms blown off, out of LRM ammo, overheated as fuck as spotless new mech walks down the street and I try to hold it away with machine guns.

>>52032225
RotS makes no fucking sense and didn't get interesting until five years after they were created and we started seeing them start acting like a proper hardass successor state, with dark secret agendas and doing things like have Senators commit 'suicide' Russian style. Even their own people thought that. It's why so many of them just picked up and did their own thing when the Blackout hit.

>>52031871
>It's a god damn miracle they rebuilt as much as they did under Fortress,

I'm pretty sure you mean "fiat", not "a god damn miracle".

>>52030884
WoB didn't build twice that. I love the Word as a faction to play but their size gets overblown constantly. Virtually every unit we saw of theirs past the original ten divisions was understrength. We saw probably eight full divisions-worth of Level IIIs appear in the first two years of the Jihad, and those were attached to around fifteen division formations. They used those to capture factory worlds in the Lyran state and other places, and I'd argue that's where the rest of their Militia growth came from.

>>52032016
>Pirate points are temporary
How temporary? In one of the Coleman books he wrote that the Capellans knew all the pirate jump points to Tikonov in 3067 because they'd held it so long in the past.

>>52027370
For LGRs specifically, it's because they're better the more you have. This applies to anything, but especially to them.

>>52027376
Takes an extra 8 tons for the LGRs alone.

>>52027336
He does, although I think he doesn't visit here more than like once a year.

>>52027685
Wasn't the Augustine Alliance part of the Republic in the DA game though? Or at least in the novels?

>>52028617
That's pretty much it, afaik.

>>52031871
>Dragon's Fury held Irian

lolwut

>>52029689
Thanks for the analysis. Any familiarity with the Cronus?

>>52032522
>How temporary?
Depends completely on the mechanics of the systems, how many planets, moons, how fast they move and all that.

Properly mapped systems do exist though. I was reading about that one world with a 60 day travel time from normal Zenith/Nadir points that pretty much only uses pirate points for trade and travel because it's so damn far.

>>52032592
Muninn can you post your Word of Blake pics?

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>>52032646
I assume you mean my old sigs?

>>52032592
>Wasn't the Augustine Alliance part of the Republic in the DA game though? Or at least in the novels?

They were the remnants of the Republic Senator's rebellion. They were still independent in the novels and got their resolution in FM:3145 like a lot of the other republic subfactions.

>>Dragon's Fury held Irian
>lolwut

The best part is they seem to realize like three years later that "Hey, what the fuck were we thinking?" and abandon their own troops stationed there so Katana can go start her Prefecture III campaign in earnest. And the boys left behind go "Well fuck you too Dykelord Dieron. We'll start our own defense force, with Irtech and hookers!"

The story is in Wolf Hunters I believe.

>>52032611
The thing with the cronus is that I don't know if you mean the basic -3M, which is a lot like the Lineholder but with SRMs and jumpjets, and thus wants to brawl even more, or the -5M which is an expensive, fast, hot-running harassment machine
Also, if you're playing mercs, Griffins, Phoenix Hawks, Archers, Warhammers, Thunderbolts and Shadow Hawks are also going to be very common machines, more so than those you've already listed

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>>52032707
I should really redo these older ones now that I have the proper BT font

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>>52032646

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>>52032646
Also a few are missing from the collection, wonder where those went...

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>>52032797

>>52032707
Sigs for sure, any others you got too.

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>>52032869
I have a sad lack of WoB pics on this machine.

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>>52032869
This one's my personal favorite

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>>52032869
Found two of the others

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>>52032869
Aside from the pun, this one is beaten by >>52032913 handily

>>52032858
>>52032897
>>52032913
These are great.

>>52031175
Small lasers are pop guns, yes. In the video games, given the choice between being underweight or mounting a small, underweight is the better option. If you've got more than a half ton free, mount bigger guns.

>>52031175
Many video game adaptations have had to wrestle with how to translate tabletop game statistics into a game that is fun and playable. Notably, one problem that persisted through MW2 and MW3's lifespan was that grouped medium lasers tore through a 'mech like hot butter.

MW4 nerfed them severely, and also generally doubled armour across the board for all 'mechs so that 'mechs took longer to kill; but this has a consequence of increasing the value of high pinpoint alpha weapons like the PPC, Gauss Rifle, or large-caliber ACs.

>>52028338

They're only dangerous if there are other factors in play, like comets/asteroid showers and so on. Most of the time the worst issue you'll face with a Pirate Point is that you don't have enough astrographical data and the Jump will simply fail to compute or initiate.

So you know how I was asking for help deciding which version of a Wulfen-hunting Clan Protectorate mech? Congratulations, I made it an Omni that fits (almost) all of them.

Now we just need a name for this bastard.

>>52033728

Phelan.

Means wolf and will trigger the Crusaders hard since he was Vlad's mortal enemy.

>>52032225

>faction that wanted peace instead of power grab

No they didn't.

If they did, they wouldn't have taken the route they did with the Capellans.

>>52033836
Why the fuck would a group of ex-Nova Cats and pseudo-Foxes name it after a random Wolf dickhead?

>>52033976

Because it's made to fight the Crusader Wolves who live next door? Like the fluff says?

>>52033976
Not like the Space Jews would care and Nova Cucks have a reputation for making good decisions.

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>>52033728
noice

>>52033836
yeah, but Phelan is mostly related to Lyrans, another faction the FWL hates.

triggering them with the mech's name is very nice, though. naming it Kerensky or Katyusha would trigger them as much, and would sound better for leaguers.

Maybe the clan Wolf will name this mech another thing, maybe a pejorative name? It would be interesting to see a IS mech with a Clan denomination, mirroring what Inner Sphere did during invasion or how the same Wolves did with Ice Ferret.

>>52034042
>Katyusha
That'd be funny as hell, I'm for it

>>52032627
>60 days travel time.

Man, that's a bit on the far side.

At the customary, human conformable 9.8 meters per second squared that means thirty days thrust, flip, thirty days the other way.

In that time you'd travel about 1,000 AU, or about 131 light hours. At such a distance the star you'd come to visit is unlikely to be the brightest star in the sky and any transmission you made would take five and a half days to reach the planet you'd come to say hi to. In the sol system you'd be 33 times farther from the sun then Neptune.

That said, it's likely just a writer assuming travel times are linear, rather then logarithmic.

>>52034042
>Katyusha
Only if it gets a missile-boat config.

>>52033728
Some Sea Fox names:
Deathstrike (their first Galaxy)
Devourer (Warship)
Bloodletter (Warship)


>>52034064
Why is Katyusha triggering the Wolves?

>>52034249

Archers mostly.

>>52034247

Katyusha was Aleksandr's wife.

>>52034249
Archers, crusaders, thunderbolts, Riflemen, osts, Warhammers, marauders, quickdraws, orions, the occasional Thunder, maybe a Dragon here and there.
Lots of stuff

>>52034284
Yeahhh...not really seeing the FoxCats going for that.

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If Cataphracts were 25% of all Capellan Heavy mechs for a while, then what was the other 75% exactly besides Catapults?

And what design eventually wound up replacing the Cataphract for the Confederation given the design waned in the years following Xin Sheng?

>>52033906
>If they did, they wouldn't have taken the route they did with the Capellans.

if they did, like other factions in the setting, they would take "the route they did with Capellans" with every other neighboring faction too. Even when they became like everyone else it was to assure their survival more than anything

>>52032304
desu I became into them after FM3085. can't opine about their early depiction

>>52034247
you know what is a excellent name for SEA Fox and horrible for Wolf?

Global Warming

>>52034321
See >>52034308

>>52034321

Common SLDF heavies, most likely. T-bolts, Archers, and Marauders are almost certainly the bulk of them, given the proximity of factories producing those near the CapCon. Probably not a lot of Davion salvage, though, given that the Cappies would have to control the battlefield to get it.

As for a replacement, almost certainly the answer according to the resident CGL Capellan experts (like Coleman and MadCap) would be the Stealth Pillager. In equal numbers to the Cataphract.

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>>52034360

>>52034360

Why would a name inspired by mythology be frightening to the Wolves and not Sea Foxes?

>>52034335

I don't know.

It seems like they wanted conflict with the Capellans and took a lot of steps to ensure it happened.

In fact, if what I heard in regards to Liao is true, then Stone was deliberately toying with people's lives.


> with every other neighboring faction

I don't think they'd be so ignorant to assume they can pick a fight with their allies in the Suns, Lyrans, Dracs and Bears and dangerous enemies such as the Falcons and Wolves.

Especially when they lean on the first three for production with so much of their own industry in smoking ruins after the Jihad.

>>52032016
Best bet would be a Lagrange point between planet and moon then. Just opens the question of how well a Jumpship can accelerate to stay in it, or if it needs to accelerate at all - would the tidal forces of planet and moon just drag it along?

On another note, when we talk about mapping a solar system, we only have today's tech for comparision. As far as I know, all our observations - telescopes, probes, math - were made from a point within the ecliptic plane. (Correct me if I'm wrong, though.) That's like looking around a parking lot while standing on it, while a Jumpship would enjoy a bird's eye view.

>>52032522
The Caps held the systems so long that they had very accurate data, to the point that they could predict orbital mechanics decades in advance.

>>52032225

>RotS is top 5 most interesting factions in the game, it was a nice change having a powerful faction that wanted peace instead of power grab

MUH PEES is LITERALLY one of the most stupid and overplayed clichés in writing. When a shitty writer cant think up of an interesting and believable conflict he will just have the designated good guys "fight for peace" because they are good guys like that. Its fucking stupid and lazy and it keeps cropping up in movies and vidya too.

>>52034489
DAE trying to end genocidal conflicts and petty stupid bullshit killing civilians, destroying infastructure and supplies, and disrupting the balance of power among nations isn't believable

>>52034530

They must not have done a very good job.

The Sphere spent well over seven centuries doing all of that and I don't think what amounts to a little over half a century would be enough time to do away with such thoughts and urges.

Especially when the Sphere is a civilization built on bloodshed, spite and, in the case of some, fanaticism.

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>>52034391

Please. By 3145 the Steath Pillager was completely outclassed by the primitive Rook, so the Confederation responded with an updated version.

You'll note that it still isn't as good as a JM6-S, we were careful about the balance here.

>>52034585
Boy am I glad for LTAC field gun infantry

>>52034584

It's literally kindergarten tier writing, something you'd see in My Eridani Light Cavalry.

>stop fightings guys!!!! just be nice to eachother :)))))))

It's such a jarring break from the theme and tone of the setting, (space feudalism and giant robots) that it kills any chance to suspend by disbelief. They stick out like a sore thumb with that sort of inane writing.

I even LIKED the concept of a new successor state, it had so much potential, but this shit is just too much.

>>52034585
>Using inner sphere small lasers instead of clan micro pulses
Wow, the Capellans can't catch a break, can they

>>52034087
Technically, it's a world that's somehow got knocked out of its normal orbit and is dying a slow death, yet people still haven't abandoned it for some reason. It's also in orbit around a big hot A0V star. And it's 52 days transit. Don't know how much that figures into anything.

Phecda is the name.

>Stone shipped a bunch of people there as part of his mandatory "break people's traditions and national loyalties" resettlement program
That's stone cold.

>>52034794

I wanted to use them but Alexander Knight complained it would make it too hard for something with Re-Engineered Lasers to beat it.

I exhaustively fact-checked everything involved, though. By roughly 3051 the Confederation had all the technical know-how to build machines like that, but thanks to blatant anti-Liao authorial fiat they were never allowed to, until now.

>>52034855

>Stone shipped a bunch of people there as part of his mandatory "break people's traditions and national loyalties" resettlement program

So he's as responsible for the Massacre on Liao as Sun-Tzu's General are then?

>>52034391
They make Thunderbolts in the old days. That and Archers are likely the most common.

>>52034881
t. Ezekiel Crow

>>52034881

Are you seriously trying to imply that the Capellan Confederation is at fault for something?

OK, I'll stop now.

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>>52034087
There wouldn't be many inhabited planets around class B stars, but it is a thing in the setting.

>>52034881
I find it ironic that when Kurita did that to the Galedon District to bolster the poor worlds of the Pesh District, it was villified but when Stone did it he gets a high five.

No wonder the Senators who were descended from the old nobility hated him so much.

>>52035071

>he gets a high five

From who exactly?

>>52035107
Stone's sycophants in universe like the paladins and also the narrator.

>>52035136

So folks like Victor then?

>>52034949
SO means Strategic Operations right?

>>52034949
>Visiting a blue supergiant

They don't last long enough for planets to form, much less life. I can't imagine why, given the choice, you'd go there other then to satisfy curiosity.

>>52035199
Victor, Lear and all the other dudes like that.

>>52035136
Some niggers are just Terran-centric.

Nothing wrong with wanting to make Terra great again and break the power of the Ignoble Houses.

>>52035243

Yes.

>>52034489
>one of the few factions that does not start a war with everyone else just because
>hurr durr muh cliché

the republic weren't peaceful, they just didn't start any wars. In Battletech land that enough is a reward

but since you are in the 90% mentioned, do you think would be 100 times better if the Republic was a feudal faction ruled by nobles and trying to be the next Terran Hegemony, right?

actually, it would be perfect if they didn't try to innovate at all and just keep the original 5 Houses and their super creative motivations and write the 5th, 6th and 7th Succession Wars

>>52035269
>Make Terra great again
>Steel Wolves land there uncontested because the defenses were garbage
>Quality of life is Glengarry-tier vs. what it was under the robes

Stone never gave a shit about Terra.

>>52033728
Tigers are the only animal that routinely beats wolves, to the extent that they can make them locally extinct. So call it the Spirit Tiger or Ghost Tiger or something.

t. conservationist

>>52035302
>they just didn't start any wars

They did with the FWL states when they demanded they hand over some of their best industrial worlds just so Stone could have a nice round state on the map. You could almost say the same about the Capellans but they were both at each other's throats all the time anyway since SCOUR so start doesn't really fit. More just "At War"

>>52035302
5th Succession War would be FedCom wins, gg no re.

So there wouldn't be any more after that.

>>52035302
Eh, the Great Houses rising and falling with the skill and personalities of the people running them at the time is a solid, easy to grasp way to set things up with a war game. It also means that when your faction is on the back foot there's always a solid excuse like "Well, if the current leader wasn't a mopey bitch trying to get in good with X other house because they want some of that sweet Kurtia booty"

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>yfw you found a periphery merc unit and one of your random founding members is a 13 year old girl

>tfw you put her in a mech anyway because her stats are decent and your low on man power

>tfw she gets injured and loses her leg and you have to use the ATB rules for prosthetics

Warlord/10

>>52035356
Call it the Tigershark. Combines two of the most badass predators, one of which apparently fucks up wolves, and it's got a cat and a shark so it represents both clans.

>>52034881
>dude who did ethnic cleansing through forced relocation is just as bad as dude who torched a fucking planet
I dunno man, is he?

>>52035338
Yeah what was up with the invasion of Terra in the derp age?

>>52035356
Tigers are the only one I've heard of that hunt bears too.

>>52035587
Yes. Ethnic cleansing is ethnic cleansing.

>>52035814
Tigers don't dominate bears the way they do wolves, though. They can't compete with male bears and they tend to attack sick or hibernating females or cubs and even then win something like half to two thirds of the time, depending on a variety of factors. And tigers are typically larger than black bears and the brown bear populations that share range with them.

But hey, if you want to pit the Spirit Tiger against the Ghost Bear, go for it.

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>>52031175
The first MW4 did some really wonky bullshit because they decided that they wanted to screw with the firing rate of the weapons systems from 10-second reload times.

In order to compensate, the first of the Mechwarrior games made it so that the DPS of the medium and small lasers meshed with the tabletop numbers pretty well, If you consider it at dmg/10s. The issue is that the game mechanics hugely favour alpha striking, especially in multiplayer where poptarting/hillhumping is the name of the game.

This is why the ACs were dialed back, too. Higher fire rate.

The numbers were tweaked a bit in MW4 Mercs to make the ML/SL less unbearable, but there's a reason you never saw anyone use them.

>>52035632
One of the Republic's defensive measures is a bunch of "TERRA THIS WAY" signs pointing to some backwater nowhere with "TERRA" in big letters on its surface. Fools 'em every time.

>>52035946
>yfw the Word of Blake reprogrammed everyone's nav computers and built fake landmarks on a backwater planet and thus fooled everyone into never actually booting them off Terra
>WoB puts the Wall up and causes the Blackout to keep any word from getting out, then takes over the Republic from the inside.

Now this is a twist I can get behind.

>>52035903
It'll never happen, but I would like it if the Spirit Cats (or nuFWL) were somehow the cause for the death of the Ghost Bears.

>Reminded that because of salt WOB and anything like it will probably never be a thing again

End me

>>52036177
>Spirit Cats
>I want my clan back you son of a bitch.
t. wossname the missing nova cat

>>52036222
Have faith, brother. The Word will rise again.

>>52036017
>WoB puts the Wall up and causes the blackout to keep any word from getting out, then takes over the Republic from the inside.

You know, that would neatly explain both of those, particularly the Blackout...

>>52036265
Kisho

Xotl, if you see this hop in IRC for a minute por favor. Remember to ping me when you do.

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>>52035587
>>52035903
>Arguing the morality of actions based on the means, not the X amount of people killed

>Making a morality stack based on innocents getting killed

>>52036316
Well I was just talking about real world species and their interactions, so...I guess?

>>52036316
I think stacking rules say you can only have a maximum of four morals in a hex anyway.

>>52036334
Sorry, misquote, meant for >>52035824

>>52022901
In AtB, I generally stick to using the slower, heavier vehicles I capture, and very rarely the fast hovers that I have.
My reasoning for this? Besides the obscene amounts of opposition, there's also the frequency of night maps and bad weather conditions.

VTOL can handle it, but when your Pegasuses are sputtering around at a speed of two or three hexes, and require point blank to hit things, it doesn't work out all that well. Also, dodging fire from a unit or two is one thing. Dodging fire from 20 vehicles during a "Chase" mission is bullshit.

Instead, I tend to stock up on the tougher tracked Vees with better long range capability, using them only in defensive lances. That way, they most often have concrete to drive on and can have the opposition come to them.

On a tangent: Has newer versions of AtB finally gotten the kinks out of Battle Armor infantry screwing up save files? Have the programmed the infantry platoon special abilities like search-and-rescue parties into the game, or is it still manual? Lastly, the "Rules" Excel spreadsheet included rules for how to play as a house unit instead of a merc unit. Have those been programmed into the game yet?

If I could set lances to be "Reinforcements only", that's when I'd like to have faster vees.

Vengeance Incorporated/Quickcell merger when?

>>52036222
Old ComStar and WoB were unironically some of the best things about BT lore.

I'm told we can expect them again, but not in my lifetime. Such is liberation.

I think MW series died with MW3 and onward.

MW needs to die, be baught out and a Fresh restart from MW2 Mercs story.

>>52036536
>Buy a Vedette.
>Instead of a box of shitty parts, you get a box of shitty AND stolen parts.

Might improve the overall quality actually, because the stolen stuff at least won't be made by Quickcell.

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>>52036743
>Campaign where you play as a Vengeance Inc./Quickcell "recovery" team where you steal and sell on the cheap while your employers steal from and cheat each other

Procure my c-bills in a consensual transaction please

>>52036267
Nothing explains the blackout. A huge amount of the HPG equipment wasn't even Comstar built.

>>52036740
MW3 was the last great MW game. But MW4, particularly Mercenaries, did have its good moments.

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>>52036740
It was downhill from MW2, overall, but there were a few good things about each.

-MW3 had destructible terrain and weapons that felt more accurate to the tabletop universe. It also felt like the missions were more cohesive and built towards something, not unlike the MechCommander series.

-Mechwarrior 4 vengeance had some live action acting and started putting characters into the game with personalities that were at least nominally interesting. The roleplayers in Hyper RPG make better actors than the ones Microsoft scraped up, but lancemates in prior games were little more than cardboard cutouts with a statline. MW4Mercs started inching back towards that trend, though. (I must be the only person on earth that thought the Solaris stuff wasn't as interesting as normal missions, but I could never get into sports either, so that might be part of it)

-MWO went back to using the canon criticals tables during customization, making recruiting new players easier than during the decade where MW4 was the only offering.

Still, MW2 through MW2 Mercs had some of the most creative and interesting missions. There were a few points were they stumbled on the lore (Like an energy shield in one of the final levels). Hit registry was bullshit and Mercs was plagued with between-mission bugs that fucked with loadouts, but the combination of atmosphere, story, and interesting missions was top-notch.

From what I can see from the upcoming Mechwarrior 5 Mercs, there was graphical improvement over MWO, but there's almost no atmosphere to the level they presented, and the fact they plopped the Raven in there shows that attention to the lore took the back seat.

>>52037159
I guess the one benefit of MW5 is that its on Unreal 4, meaning it will be easier to mod

>>52037114
>Nothing explains the blackout.

It's already been explained as a large network SHPG protocol that overloads the HPG cores of standard A/B class stations by throwing them out of alignment (due to futzing with hyperspace somehow). This causes a cascade failure in the cores. Stations still work in the areas where this effect isn't enough to throw the cores outside normal operational limitations.

The functional HPG's in the Dark Age are all basically holes in the SHPG network coverage due to some thing or another. It's why a number had to be taken down physically by attack teams. This is also why mobile HPG's of various types all still work, because they have to adjust their alignment on the go.

Now here's the really interesting part. Fortress uses a derivation of that same protocol to do the same thing to jumpship cores. But Clarion Call is still 100% operational. That means you have TWO massive SHPG networks in the central part of the inner sphere when the Blakists had less than 6 stations back in the 3070's and none were captured intact that we know of.

So who built the Republic SHPG's and how? Where are they? Comstar would know if they were on occupied worlds. Then who built the other SHPG's and where are they?

Only two kinds of people it could be, robes or clanners. Place your bets folks.

>>52037114
Well, it explains the motive at any rate.

>>52036380
You can get more if you put them two-to-a-floor in a building.

>>52037159
>but there's almost no atmosphere to the level they presented
To be fair, that was a gameplay demo, it wasn't supposed to be a proper level
And since everything they've said so far makes it out to basically be AtB, but with fights played out in MWO rather than megamek, you're simply never going to get the atmosphere of actual scripted campaign missions from random generation.
Although I bet modders are going to get some very interesting stuff done with it, being unreal 4 and all

Anyone here into BattleCorps? There's some short stories I'm interested in reading but I don't have a subscription. I was wondering if they could be uploaded into the links in the OP.

Interested in Shadows of Faith, The Last Full Measure, and Righteous Fury.

>>52037321
Also
>You now realize that the Blackout could have been solved by throwing tweaked Mobile HPG firmware into the broken stations once they got new cores.
>Tucker worked four years without figuring this out

I know the guy had brain damage and was more concerned with fucking his triple agent wife, but that's just sad. Project Sunlight was a total bust.

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>>52037396
I've read The Last Full Measure. It's in the second compilation book. Pretty good story.

Haven't read the other two though. I don't think they've been put into regular books yet. Well, part one of Shadows of Faith had, but only the first part.

>>52037159

MWO is just such a shitpile. I'd pay so much for an actually good, not pay to win, online mechwarrior game. I just want to form a company with friends and play company vs company or vs binary when the inevitable trashborn expansion pack happens. Just let me customize and paint my mech and have a built in sound chat so I could spam my yodeling playlists while playing Steiner, is that too much to ask?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rW74KU5Q4w

>>52037321
Aliens or wizards, I assume. Pretty much all the "WOB are MASTERS OF HYPERSPACE" feels like it was pulled out of an author's ass.

>>52037654
>feels like it was pulled out of an author's ass

It kinda was. Bonfire was written the same year as JHS:3072. After six years of people asking what the hell could cause the Blackout or Fortress, those are the things they came up with.

>>52037321

After 3052 anyone could have built those HPGs. Remember that post Operation Socrpion most HPGs were seized from Comstar and became the property of the Great Houses. In the intervening time anyone could have figured out how to build more, or just built enough Black Box transmitters to provide a communications mesh network with higher throughput then the HPG network anyway, given Comstar protocols were so badly designed that you could break the whole thing with a DDOS attack.

>>52037750
The compounds were seized by Hanse. They were still run by Comstar acolytes. And by 3056 they were back in Comstar hands, just without comguards for security. It's barely different than the "death" of Comstar in the Republic. They just became the communications arm of the Republic. Same employees, same ranks, same old robes.

>In the intervening time anyone could have figured out how to build more
But they don't. Successor states have never known how to build new HPG's. Even Comstar only had a single HPG core production facility on Terra that they inherited from the Star League.

Also, Black Boxes are slow as fuck compared to HPG's. And you could tune Clarion Call/Fortress to them just as easily by adjusting the hyperspace band to their operational level. Lastly, Comstar protocols are largely just Star League protocols. They're extremely secure against anybody that doesn't know them. Problem is, the Blakists knew everything Comstar did since they were Comstar. That's why the Whiteout worked.

>>52037907

>The compounds were seized by Hanse. They were still run by Comstar acolytes. And by 3056 they were back in Comstar hands, just without comguards for security

I always wondered why that particular storyline got aborted. It seemed the FedCom is about to strike a deathblow to the comstar, or at the very least seize all their assets and bankrupt them but suddely everything went back to the status quo.

>>52037968
>why that particular storyline got aborted

Because Waterly got killed and there was the schism, plus people being thankful for Tukayyid. Hanse was dead at that point too so who was left to squeeze their balls, Melissa? Unlikely.

>>52029579
Savannah master

>>52038019

>Waterly got killed and there was the schism, plus people being thankful for Tukayyid

>their leader got killed
>their army is crippled and stranded on a single planet
>their entire leadership and organization is in disarray and on the brink of a civil war.
>the clan threat is neutralized for the moment, they cant launch any significant attacks

What moment can be possibly better to strike and finish off your an eternal enemy when they are on the ropes?

>Melissa?

No shit, who else? Even she knew about how duplicitious the ComStar was. Plus its not like the entire AFFC and MIIO wasnt there to advise her, its not a one-woman show. Even if they just seized and manned the unguarded stations, that would be half of the ComStars income gone.

Does anyone Know when catalyst will release another intro box?

>>52035461
Tigershark sounds like an ASF though.

>>52038117
My point was Melissa did nothing in the years she ruled the Fedcom before Kat had her killed. She wasn't aggressive that way. And Comstar lost almost half their income when the Blakists ran the HPG's in FWL and Capellan space. Didn't slow them down much.

But the biggest issue is how does anyone plan to hunt them down? Comstar is everywhere. Without every state attacking them at once, you'd never be rid of them.

>>52038205
Gencon this year most likely.

>>52037907

>But they don't. Successor states have never known how to build new HPG's

Except for the Suns, who have built one at the NAIS in HB: HD.

>>52038234
Thanks

>>52038224

>But the biggest issue is how does anyone plan to hunt them down? Comstar is everywhere

Seize the HPGs, tell them to scram. Land a couple of RCTs on Terra, the only mech unit on the entire planet was Myndos bodyguard anyway. Issue a IS wide HPG message for all ComGuards to stand down. Focht even tells Ulric, that the ENTIRE ComGuard is on Tukayyid, every single tank, mech and asset. Conquering Terra would be a deathblow to ComStar morale and quicken their collapse. Even if they somehow got off planet, without reinforcements, R&R and supplies they couldnt do shit to the AFFC. After Operation Scorpion they'd also recieve no support from anyone and the FedCom look justified in finishing off that the ComStar started.


Also, now I think about it, Melissa was present during the time leading up to the war of 3039, when the MIIO waged a shadow war on the commies. She also knew about Hanse's response to Scorpion, blowing up a ComStar compound and capturing all the survivors on New Avalon. Why wouldnt she continue carry out her husbands policy? Did Frederick revealing himself to her affected her that much?

>>52038416

ComStar had WarShips at Terra, False Thomas was basically on board with ComStar, and the Dracs are solid allies as well.

I don't see this going terribly well.

>>52038416
Now Comstar is still in the FWL, CC, FRR and DC, and they're basically in the same position as they were in 3058 with the locations shuffled around.

>>52037373
>Although I bet modders are going to get some very interesting stuff done with it, being unreal 4 and all.

I would love it if you were right, but my bet is that we see nothing but a few extra mechs. If they included an intuitive level-building package, it'd help. Being able to download and add camapaigns into the game would be absolutely fantastic.

How much friggin' armor should I be keeping on hand in a campaign? I've been ordering 50 tons at a time and it feels like that's gone within a half dozen missions.

>>52038568

Try getting shot less?

>>52038486
>>52038496


>ComStar had WarShips at Terra

Werent they hidden in some system? My memory is really sketchy about the many appearing and disappearing WarShips between retcons. Even the, having a showdown at Terra and Focht &Sharilar and Hanse&Melissa coming to an understanding after a battle or something would have been much more climactic and a proper end to a shadow war. Maybe something about Myndo actually getting dragged out of her bunker and brutally murdered by some fedrat, setting the stage of a resentful WoB

>they're basically in the same position as they were in 3058 with the locations shuffled around.

Right? But I think it would be a much better leadup to the whole WoB storyline and explain why they are so fanatically trying to strike back.


I'm just saying, it would have been a very "Hanse Davion" thing to order such an invasion, and even if it went wrong and greatly weakened the FedCom, it would provide a much more logical and fun chain of events than what the books gave, Focht just phoning home, Hanse dying at the awesomeness of Sun Tzu and his harebrained marriage plan that made ZERO geopolitical sense and the comstar just sulking around like an emo teen.

>>52038661
>Werent they hidden in some system?

They were hidden at Freedom Station, within single jump range of Terra.

>>52038661
>>52038725

The Dantes were active and hidden in the Terran system, though the rest of the fleet is in mothballs. There's also the Castles Brian with SDS weapons all over Earth that WoB very carefully made sure went off-line before their attack.

Admittedly the Dantes being revealed to have been cruising around the Terran system makes WoB's success there look even wonkier, but hey. I didn't write that fluff.

The odds of any invasion force even making planetfall are slim. Taking over, or getting word out of what happened even less likely still.

>>52038246
It's a partial one.

>>52038725

Thanks for clearing that up.

>>52038830

Hanse dying before Focht jumps into the system to slap Myndos shit would be downright hillarious and a much more fitting death to his character. Dying to his ambition and overreaching, unwittingly creating a dangerous enemy.

>>52038845

There's other stuff indicating they know how HPGs work and could finish it, but haven't because reasons. Mostly they don't need to because they have Fax Machines fo secure comms and don't want to piss ComStar off and risk interdiction or having to run the network themselves.

>>52038416
The AFFC of the Clan Invasion era wasn't that coordinated.

>>52038117
>ComStar had the jumpships and dropships to move 72 divisions

Impressive.

>>52038907

Space magic teleport! The same thing also enabled the clans to bring several galaxies per clan to tukayyid on a moments notice despite the ridiculous jump chain from clan space.

>>52038416
>Myndo Waterly's bodyguard unit was all that was there
>Precentor ROM and ROM HQ was on Terra

>Focht's coup still went off perfectly

I guess the writing has really never been without its problems.

>>52038213
It is the name of a real plane. (RIP F-20 too good for this world)

Question. If a WarShip were knocked out and fell into a planetary atmosphere, would any portion of it survive re-entry to crash on the planet surface? If so, how much of it (and of it's cargo) would be left? Would it be worth contesting?

I'm running a short campaign for some people and I was thinking to have them fight for the remains of a crashed warship.

>>52038949
The Master never really cared about his underlings. Look at how he hung St. Jamais out to dry.

>>52038987
No. It would take a controlled, specific fall for it to not completely burn up. The Robert Davion split into three parts on re-entry into Kathil, and virtually none of it was salvageable. They will hit at ballistic velocities, and whatever doesn't incinerate from passing through the space-atmosphere barrier will be obliterated when it hits the surface.

There will be plenty of scrap remains to go over. But it would be scrap materiel, not something readily salvageable.

>>52038987
Depends on how you mean "fell". In the Battle of New Syrtis in the FCCW when one of the warships got taken out in high atmosphere, it was nothing but a distant falling star that exploded into a lot of raining burning debris in the uninhabited tundra.

Best way to have a survivable wreck would probably be to have a ship that's reduced to a 1/2 from engine damage get caught in the gravity well and attempt a controlled landing. Warships are essentially flying skyscrapers so both landing and salvage would be really crazy and complicated.

>>52038987

You can just explain it away with "it was an emergency landing on a landing trajector". Sure it will be busted up and its engines will never be able to lift it off again but there is still far enough to loot. Weapon systems, supplies, tech etc. There is no not to overthink it though, just go for it.

>>52038949

That's why I wanted the schism to be something more... momentous. The entire Operation Scorpion, ComStar finally playing out its hand, the schism, Focht channeling Kerensky was all just a fart and got completely forgotten.

>>52038987

Depends on too many factors to say for certain. WarShips in the battleship tonnage range (Nightlord) can demonstrably enter an atmosphere at speed and have enough mass remaining to cause major damage, so the WarShip making it to the surface is at least plausible. Additionally, given the properties of BattleTech armor, it's likely that SOMETHING would survive the crash, though being in usable condition is a crapshoot.

Basically, if the WarShip is at a low relative velocity to the plant (say, a geosynchronous orbit that fails) and comes it on a relatively flat glide slope instead of just plummeting face-first, and its flight path doesn't take it into a mountainside, and it gets lucky enough to impact on ground which is relatively flat and won't cause the WarShip to porpoise too badly (and start going end over end), then yeah, I don't think its unreasonable to have a small amount of cargo survive the crash.

As much as it pains me to recommend 40K-anything, there's actually a rather good description of a mid-range ship (about the size of a BT WarShip, actually, given some description of inter-vessel distances) in the Ciaphas Cain book, "The Last Ditch." I'd recommend poking at it.

As for whether its worth contesting, that's rather dependent on the cargo. I'm pretty sure a crashed SovSoy carrying a shipment of 200,004 tons of cERPPCs in 3050 that crashes into the swaps of Wolcott would be worth fighting over, even if only 1% of them survived the impact.

>>52039067

If you really want to REALISM it, even just the several hundred thousand tons of metal is hugely worth salvaging, especially titanium, copper wiring, and rare earths. Some smaller components might be functional and salvaageable as whole.

>>52039067
>I cannot into completing sentences today

As much as it pains me to recommend 40K-anything, there's actually a rather good description of a mid-range ship ***performing a barely-controlled crash into a planet*** (about the size of a BT WarShip, actually, given some description of inter-vessel distances) in the Ciaphas Cain book, "The Last Ditch." I'd recommend poking at it.

>>52039046
>The Robert Davion split into three parts on re-entry into Kathil,

That's because Avalons are like 3 seperate parts glued together. Two nacelles and a central hull. it's practically MADE to come apart.

A 1-piece combat brick of a ship like a Lev II or a Nightlord or a Farragut would deal with impacting an atmosphere a whole fucking lot better than the aerodynamic abortion that is the avalon.

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New thread!
>>52039161

>>52038995
Maybe that works as a retcon but not really as an explanation for her bodyguard unit and ROM doing nothing.