/btg/ Battletech General!

File: 603251d63bac5aa0ed824f741a2ae5603e94fea6.jpg (37KB, 308x313px) Image search: [Google]

37KB, 308x313px

How do you handle your conventional forces, /btg/?

>>54086340
Usually in a foam case.
Care to elaborate on what you mean?

File: file.png (164KB, 435x208px) Image search: [Google]

164KB, 435x208px

>>54086340

>>54086468
When you design a campaign, do you have a lot of tanks and infantry that are assigned to guard pathways PCs might take advancing through the campaign? Like maybe a lance of tanks with a platoon of infantry at a border crossing, or a company of mixed vehicles and some platoons guarding a lesser asset like a petroleum plant or something.
I like to do both of those things, and sometimes give the players the ability to choose what targets they can assault. I plan ahead giving their enemies probably a battalion or more of random vehicles as fluff for them to fight from time to time. Sometimes I add a few bugs in the mix too.

>>54086340
As fire support to my mechs, occasionally as big swarm to harass the enemy.

>>54086340
with lubed up oven mits

File: counters_3025.pdf (2MB, 1x1px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 1x1px

>>54086532
Like RPG campaigns? 'cause I've never played nor run a straight wargame campaign.

...but for my RPGs, I do use conventional forces frequently, especially when the PC force is light. My most recent campaign had the players in all bug-mechs. Unfortunately the group disbanded before I could even get them all around the table on the same night, but the game still worked. I gave them a lot of advantages, but did help the players feel like the 20-ton wimpbots had some oomph to them. I also beefed them up with a bunch of Scorpions and Vedettes.

How is the beta for the new Battletech vidya? Decent? Will it do for BT what DoW did for 40k?

Is there a way to get in it for free?

>>54087870

It's decent, though like anything else here, mention of it will trigger SOMEBODY. There's still some huge balance issues to work out, (like being unable to see a target at AC/20 range with no terrain between you), but id-ing and fixing that stuff is what a beta is for anyway.

And no, there isn't.

File: sbörä pora.jpg (266KB, 1968x1113px) Image search: [Google]

266KB, 1968x1113px

>>54086340
As a conventional force.

A) Infantry on APCs everywhere
B) Air superiority
C) Artillery and out-of-sight LRM carriers spotted for by infantry everywhere.
D) Armored fist to clobber or displace enemy forces once tied to position.
E) Direct support fire with long range weapons demolish woods, hide to attract rushes, kill off big targets once they are engaged at closer range.
F) Scorpion Scorpion Scorpion Scorpion Scorpion Scorpion Scorpion Scorpion Scorpion Scorpion Scorpion Scorpion Scorpion Scorpion-

Hey /btg/, is there any book that might have enough information on the Republic of the Sphere to make an actual army out of, or did one of the best groups get ganked too soon by the stupidity that was Dark Ages?

If there's no decent listing of 'these were usually used in this army' for the Republic Armed Forces, should I just use whatever strikes me as proper?

>>54089527
FM:3145 has the RAF RATs, which can be summed up as "anything they get their hands on."

>>54089552
And given they have at least one or two clans involved (I know the remnants of Nova Cat ended up joining at least) that can be expanded to literally anything, I take it?

>>54089673
Not quite literally everything, but a significant amount of gear. They probably don't have working interface cockpits, for example.

>>54086340
>How do you handle your conventional forces, /btg/?
With AP and Flak ammo.

or do you mean when I control them?

>>54089796
Like how these guys answered.
>>54087099
>>54086539
>>54086532

Hey guys, i'm new to battle tech.
Is it worth getting into the "Fluff"? I was into 40k, but I really like the idea of big stompy mecha.

>>54090260
Depends on who you ask, and which Era you ask about.

>>54090431
Jihad is what's being played at my LGS.

>>54090260
BT has a lot of era partisans, where X and before is the golden age, and everything after is irredeemable trash.
Allowing that its genre fiction, and that writers have committed some hilarious implausibilities over the years, I actually think that the BT fluff is the best of any game I know of. It's certainly the most detailed.

File: theyre_heretics_johnny.jpg (423KB, 500x1860px) Image search: [Google]

423KB, 500x1860px

>>54090260
>Hey guys, i'm new to battle tech.
>Is it worth getting into the "Fluff"? I was into 40k, but I really like the idea of big stompy mecha.

I don't know that it's really worth getting *that* deep into it. For me, anyway, knowing anything more than the 10,000 foot view of the universe was extranous - it didn't make you PPC's shoot any straighter, or increase the number of missiles that connected with the enemy's left torso.

It's not like 40K, where you would pick a favourite army and spend a lot of time assembling and painting it up, but anything else was just HERESY... it's more about the stompy robots themselves, and in many cases, you could argue that just about any force one one side of a game could end up with one mech or another according to your personal wishes.

>>54090260
It depends?

Just read the free BT universe guide (http://www.battletech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/BattleTechUniverseGuide-1.pdf) and decide which era or faction interests you the most, then maybe read some shit on Sarna about it, and then MAYBE if you like it start reading the novels. You don't need to know a shitton of intricacies to play the game.

>>54090826
I feel ya, i'm falling in love with the rediculousness of the mecha. They're so great.
my 40k army is an ork dreadmob

File: HighlanderIIC SJ.png (809KB, 1000x1000px) Image search: [Google]

809KB, 1000x1000px

With regards to the 22nd Freebirth Cluster of the Smoke Jaguars, what are some possible origin stories for Jag freebirths to be allowed to fight?

Given their Clan's history of being hardcore about trueborn status.

>>54090985
Being a gay lover of a trueborn commander.

>>54090985
Desperation as their forces are being wiped out by Operation Bulldog and Taskforce Serpent.

Galaxy Commander Howell.

>>54091012
I don't think the Clans care about sex stuff.

>>54091031
Strangely the freebirth cluster appears before then, and at the time of the Jaguar's death even the Howell conspirators didn't raise freeborn troops that we know of.

>>54089201
Scorpions remind me, they have the "poor sealing" trait. Where should I look for rules on chemical weapons and the like, and how they might effect vehicles like this?

>>54090871
Shame the novels tend to not be great, and most of them are fairly old.

With such a vast aetting youxd think more novels would be on the works. Of course they only seemed to have like 3 writers working on them.

>>54089527
>Republic
>Best groups

Stoners are garbage. They in fact ARE the major stupidity and major cause of everything bad Dark Age plotwise.

>>54091351
Novel length short story compilations come out once a year.

>>54088617
Are they going to inlude non-Mech forces?

>>54090260
Yes. It's got some of the most expansive fluff for a setting. The people that say no either don't like pulpy scifi or are weenies intimidated by thirty years of backlog.

>>54091487
Well, that's a given. They're the major focus of absolutely everything in the entire storyline, the explicit cause of the blackout and the sudden disappearance of central authority, and thus pretty much every major occurrence in the setting.

However, when looking at their hardware base, I find myself enjoying the Republic forces. Both playing with, and against.

>>54085721
I was hoping someone else would post it in the forums. I haven't used my account there in like five years.

>>54091518
Combat vehicles will feature in the campaign as npc forces, yes. Aerospace assets will appear in some supporting form, supposedly, though exactly how has not been made clear.

>>54089994
>>54086532
>When I design a campaign
It depends on the force using them and the Strat/Tac skill of the defending commander. Militia and pirates will both tend to deploy a lot of vees in defensive positions. Pirates are worse on the defense; milita, on offense. Pirates will usually only take along recovery vees and scout VTOLs when raiding, leaving the "work" to 'Mechs most of the time. Gotta love them hands.

With House forces I'll assign vees as appropriate to the individual house's preferences, but they usually wind up in defensive formations. Or, in the case of VTOLs and hovers, when there's a blue-water scenario that 'Mechs will have problems with.

When I'm >playing< a Vee-heavy force, I tend to work with packs of similar vees and use them to channel enemy forces. You can get some serious flexibility out of them too - a couple Partisans is way better in almost any era than wasting a decent 'Mech on AA duty. Note that neither the Rifleman nor the Jagermech are "decent" in this context... Things like Hetzers make great, cheap spoilers or bodyguards for support lances. That sort of thing.

Incidentally, the Partisan is also a fucking excellent anti-vehicle unit, in all its incarnations. Load 'er up with some AP ammo. The -2 on the chart is a lot less punishing when you're hitting 2-3 times a turn, and the buckshot version is just cruel.


>>54090885
You're gonna love these then. The righthand model in the pic is basically a BT Hussar. Also consider running a Periphery force or the Escorpion Imperio/Neuvo Castille...

>>54091341
Chemical weapons are in Interstellar Ops with the other Era Rules, and also in the Re-Unification War books. There's some chem-warfare stuff in TacOps but they hid the majority of the WMDs in IO to throw the moral watchdogs off the trail.

>>54091599
>However, when looking at their hardware base, I find myself enjoying the Republic forces. Both playing with, and against.

Their hardware base is thin, spastic and terrible in 3130, but charming in a Succession Wars way. A mix of downteched old jihad machines, new clan killbots, industrials pressed into service sometimes without the decency to even mount guns to them and a shitload of fancy tanks and downteched battle armor. Not particularly distinct though as most of what they make are chassis they share with other states like the Dracs.

Late DA, they get all the fancy Comstar tech plus all the Devil's Rock projects. They still have a teeny tiny overall force though.

You know what they kind of are army-wise? Like somebody dumped a Periphery State right smack in the middle of the Inner Sphere and gave them Blakist military R&D.

>>54091599
Where is the proof they caused it? I thought the entire point of Gray Monday was that no one knew what caused the Hyper Pulse network to go down.

File: 1493245290152.jpg (2MB, 1944x2592px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 1944x2592px

>>54091712
lost the pic to capcha, my bad

>>54086010
How do I simplify the game so I can run a campaign with multiple mechs, tanks and not require 3 pages of taxes for each vehicle every round?

>>54091728
Not him but we know what caused it to go down, just not who. Apparently, it wasn't the Republic's own main secret SHPG network since they needed that free for Fortress. That's not to say they didn't have another one.

What intrigues me is that McKinnon knew stuff about it that neither Redburn or VSD knew.

>>54091759
Use MekHQ for unit lists in GM mode and just repair all your shit in it when it's convenient? Like, when you're out of dangerous situation just make a few rolls for the most difficult items and such.

>>54091776
So wait, I've been looking into it and can' find anything about what caused it, or are you talking about the crazy ass virus?

>>54091824
It's an SHPG protocol called Clarion Call that somehow disturbs hyperspace and causes HPG cores in the affected area to fall out of tune and basically tear themselves apart when they try to power up.

This all because they're using old Star League protocols to tune the HPG's that don't take into account such a big flux. Every single mobile HPG in the Inner Sphere still works fine because they adjust on the fly.

>>54091880
Huh. Thanks for filling in those blanks, Anon.

>>54088617
>being unable to see a target at AC/20 range with no terrain between you

Wait, what? How is that even possible? LOS is something like 60 hexes.

File: atlas ironfist fd.jpg (497KB, 1200x1200px) Image search: [Google]

497KB, 1200x1200px

>>54091723
The attraction of the Republic of the Sphere hardware, for and against, is that they are a clean slate faction. A fresh turn of page, with some natural exceptions.

The most immediate result on the tabletop is that there's a faction consisting entirely of new food. It is entertaining, but more than just that, it is so in a way that avoids both the clan crisis of badly handled power creep, as well as the jihad's problem of extremely cautious bv costing. These are, generally speaking, normal battlemechs, omnimechs, ASFs, BA, vehicles and the like, in new patterns. Some of them are very old-feeling, in terms of similarity to existing hardware, but they all still represent something tangible, explodable new material.

>>54087870
>Will it do for BT what DoW did for 40k?

Haha, sorry, no. BT is slow, plain, ugly, clunky, has the soundscape of a low budget crocheting club, and most of all completely without a competitive multiplayer element. It's more like a poorly modernized Battle Chess with none of the sense of humour.

And even worse voice acting. Worse than metal boxes. Worse than EMPRAH. Just shrieking that comes across as unmotivated, unmotivating, shrill and most importantly disjointed from the combat.

>>54092174
sosalty.jpg

Granted, I type that having only seen some footage of the beta, having not played it.

>>54091935
Not in the vidya (by default)

>>54088617
>>54092174
there he is

>>54092414
W-what? This is the first time I ever comment on the BT vidya.

I can't help it. It bores me. Megamek is a rave compared to it, simply because I don't have to deal with the slogging and bad directing in it.

>>54092082
>they all still represent something tangible, explodable new material.

None of that honestly existed until post-wall though. RotS was a mix of stuff they got from other people or legacy production they decided to keep around, even if some variants were specific to the RotS. Post-wall also means we've seen zero of it in action outside spoiling raids.

So, I stumbled across another retarded moment in Dark Age looking for the fate of one of the actual fun characters from the novels.

Remember how Count Conner Monroe, ex Knight and loyalist supreme, made backup plans for joining the Dracs if Markab was going to fall? You know, since his mom was the head of a merchant Drac family and his people were Azami?

Apparently CGL decided he fought the Dracs instead when they invaded and died a horrible death. Because that makes sense.

File: 1498326592353.jpg (68KB, 508x432px) Image search: [Google]

68KB, 508x432px

Do you like motorcross?
Do you like battletech?
Then I've got the story for you!

http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=57997.0

>>54087099
Worth expanding on:
When I think vehicles, usually, I think of Militia and security forces. The militia needs to have defensive forces all over the planet, or at least all over the continent, so that they can respond to any incursions from opposing dropships. That makes mechs a bit prohibitive due to the cost, as well as needing to get trained warriors, plus not any joe off the street has the right constitution to become a warrior in the first place. Tank crews, on the other hand, can be crewed by pretty well any band of hobos with a few months of training, you can afford to have more of them (Especially if you're buying from Quikscell), by design they tend to excel in only a few environments, and they can still give some mechs a run for their money in the right situations. This makes them the much more logical choice for Militias. Maybe a lance... a company tops of militia mechs that are privately owned by landholders... but overall a mainly conventional force, especially since they know what terrain they'll be fighting on defensively, they can prepare the right kind of vehicles to suit... like a swampy wooded world isn't going to be investing heavily in Striker tanks, for example. Sometimes I even homebrew (for RPGs only) some "tanks" using the support vehicle rules to act as on-planet made combat vehicles, usually with little more than machine guns, BM rifles, rocket launchers, and maybe some surplus components like SRM 2s.

The bigger official regiments, however, I almost always have them using 'mechs. Bouncing from planet to planet, they don't have the privilege of knowing what landscapes are in store for them, so having a heavily mech-based force is a must. I might supplement it with vehicles, but a peek at the regiment's Field Manual blurb would give me an idea of how the regiment equips their forces. One might be high tech with well maintained gear, the other having to use less-than-legal suppliers to stay alive.

File: notnecessarily.gif (6MB, 400x300px) Image search: [Google]

6MB, 400x300px

>>54095291

>>54087870
>Is there a way to get in it for free?
It doesn't seem like anybody uploaded the skirmish beta to torrent sites yet.

>>54092174
Most of those complaints sound like opinion. I've seen it and it looks fine, and the interface seems pretty slick. I've only heard the voice acting through my TV so can't really comment there. But I can already say that it's betten than a lot of the shit in DoW.

Also
>no competitive multiplayer
It's in a fucking beta, dude.

>>54096131
the game keeps crashing and shutting down my computer.

>>54096131
>Better voice acting than DoW

MMM, no.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO3MttgvHUY

DoW voices have the perfect blend of camp, drama, and ham to be truly memorable. While BT might have decent voice acting from a technical perspective, I doubt anyone will remember the pilots or other characters outside of the game.

>>54096221
Check the crash logs in the install directory.

File: 9164bc1f59704def0779e7a247d5d2b478ed69cc448184f6dc4a364bc6f6ed3du9.jpg (1MB, 2560x1440px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 2560x1440px

>>54096131
I'll grant that the voice acting is pretty uninspired, but god knows I wanted there to be no multiplayer at all as it'll take development time away from an in-depth single player campaign.

It's not going to be as popular as DoW, if only because it doesn't have the same kind of budget as DoW. Pretty much every 40K game is going into development with massive budgets to start with. HBS is a small-scale company that makes good games, but they're not accompanied by Hollywood-grade CGI trailers. Hell, they didn't even design their own mechs for the game, they got the rights to use MWO's.

...but from what I can tell from what I've played, the game IS fun. It will be a lot MORE fun when there are more mechs and an actual story mode, but even right now with what amounts to "Instant action", it's still a fun romp. It's not going to get press through anything but a few banner ads and word of mouth though. Even the hype trailer...
>https://youtu.be/MbvJtznqkBE
...looks more like the sort of animation they use to hype Magic the Gathering blocks.
>https://youtu.be/NiaDSWzY9HM

The game itself though is up in the air. For all the hype that people have for multiplayer, you never hear about people being excited about the gameplay or the mechanics... even the graphics are a footnote, because titles that rely on graphics for sales go the way of sports games - direct to bargain bin. We remember the characters and the stories. If HBS does a good job with that, it'll be on /tg/'s recommended lists. If not... well, at least it was better than MWO.

>>54096221
It might be an issue with a corrupted install. Send me the files so I can test it.

>>54096131
>It's in a fucking beta, dude.

Not an excuse. It's shit.

>>54096343
>as it'll take development time away from an in-depth single player campaign.
Multiplayer is literally all about getting your netcode to work properly to handle the skirmish game. It's not that big a development time consumer; in fact, if they do it right, they won't even handle the netcode development with the campaign and programming staff. It's a wholly different challenge from doing a proper campaign.

The single player concept sounds way, way too ambitious though. I feel like it'll be like Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries, where you theoretically have options to fighting all around the galaxy, but functionally you basically have like 2 or 3 choices at a time. Pilot customization is probably just Xcom 2 level, so there isn't likely to be "character" development of your pilots. And I doubt that the plot will offer much player choice for major decisions.

File: mechduelboris.jpg (119KB, 640x900px) Image search: [Google]

119KB, 640x900px

>>54090260
It's one of the most enjoyable parts.
Of course, it has varying degrees of camp, don't expect books with high critical praise, this is lore to a tabletop game about mechs, after all.

...but reading the books - the good ones anyway, gives you a good from-the-ground perspective on the universe and helps you to relate with the characters that would otherwise be nothing more than RPG stats on a page.

So my suggestion is "Yes".

Starting with older novels is often a good route, since they go in with the assumption that nobody knows about the setting, while the newer ones are a bit self-referential and made for established fans. Not impossible to get into, but you might be left with questions.

Starting from the Mechwarrior Dark Age novels is another possibility for a starting point, but because they were written with clix in mind, there is a dramatically different feel about those novels than the Battletech ones.

There is plenty of e-pub available. Good starting points are Decision at Thunder Rift, the Warrior trilogy, and Wolves on the Border. The Blood of Kerensky is another good starting point, but I don't suggest taking that one on until you've read the Warrior trilogy first, since it's more or less the sequel due to a lot of shared characters.

I haven't got suggestions for the Dark Age novels though. I always felt like the early books I read were trying too hard to mash the Succession wars up with the Clan invasion to make some weird lore-chimera.

>>54096549
Ah, worth mentioning though:
Don't be mistaken... the novels don't read like an RPG replay or a megamek after-action report. A good 90% of the book is going to be interpersonal relationships, political manoeuvring, building a setting, and having the main characters get out of tough situations that aren't inside of a mech. Mech battles tend to be reserved for the climax of the book.

>>54096549
I dunno, I get really tired of Battletech lore after the Smoke Jaguars get Annihilated. It's just a fucking mess.

>>54096601

Why? It's not like anything of importance was lost.

>>54096549
>because they were written with clix in mind, there is a dramatically different feel about those novels than the Battletech ones

Point of order, the people and places (other than a couple major lore fuckups in the early books) are still very Battletech, but the combat and the composition of forces is what just feels off and wrong for the most part.

I would say this finally dies away right after The Scorpion Jar/Sword of Sedition Republic Civil War Two-Parter. The whole RotS Civil War Trilogy ending with Fortress Republic is like a transition from clicktech to old school Battletech. In the first one you still have crap like running overheating a virgin machine and tankdropping memes but by the time you see Julian vs. Conner on Ronel you can hear the dice clattering like an old Stackpole book.

This is probably why people talk so much about The Scorpion Jar even though on it's own it's not super great. It's just the place where you really feel the helm bringing the old girl back about.
>>54096601
I hate the FCCW retardation too, but mid-late Jihad and late DA are fun as fuck. You gotta push through the early silly bits unfortunately though. Jihad also relies more than any other period on you actually knowing the old small power blocks and planets, so you get a lot more out of it if you're coming into it as an old hand who gets excited when you hear shit like the Blakists having restored Fortress Dieron to full operation when you remember the Dracs were locked out of 90% of the place and had mostly been using it for storage for centuries.

Cincy made that particular campaign fun as fuck in real life realtime too.

>>54096485
Have you played the HBS Shadowrun titles?
That's more or less what I'm expecting to find in the game. Talking with your crew, finding out about them, learning their quirks and whatnot. Getting on their good side or bad side...
Are we going to get Mass Effect levels of it? Unlikely. Still, going by what HBS has already done gives you an idea of what to expect from their other games.

Up 'till now, only Mechwarrior 4 Vengeance tried to do much in the ways of character development for your lancemates, though MW2 Mercs and MW1 put more energy into drawing you into the setting as a warrior, they were mainly focusing on you. Other titles didn't even bother with char-dev. Maybe some smarmy quips from your lancemates about "BANDEEEEEEETS!", and that's it.

As far as what planets you get to pick and what contracts you take, yeah, you're probably right on that one, though I am pretty sure they're doing a random contract generation system for if you don't want to play in their periphery horseland. That's an inevitable limitation to these kinds of games. You can only program so much in. The big sprawling games that are famous for their open world cost more money than hollywood blockbusters to make, and even those are still bug-riddled messes most of the time.

I don't expect this game to be a Gamemaster substitute, but a compelling romp in the Battletech universe with memorable characters and fun, memorable missions is all I ask for at this time.

>>54096723
I have Shadowrun Returns on Steam, but I've never installed it.

>>54096667
>>54096719
I just feel like the writers started writing characters and events to force things to happen in a certain way, ignoring previous events, established character personalities, and common fucking sense. Like the FCCW and the Wars of Reaving.

>>54096779
Eh? The Reaving was an inevitability based on the Clans histories even as early as 3060. The FCCW too, once Victor learned that Katherine was responsible for their mother's assassination.

>>54096779
Wars of Reaving gets a lot of love from a lot of people but I never really thought it was a good idea. I miss the days when we just had scattered info from DA novels of horrible stuff happening generations back that nobody talked about and the hints we got in the early Jihad material of shit going down in the Homeworlds.

The Hellions showing up out of nowhere with a ragtag Battlestar Galactica style fleet and desperately trying to carve an OZ out of Falcon Territory was nothing less than chilling in the hotspots books.

I would have preferred it all remained a mystery until the Homeworlders showed back up.

>>54096819
But Victor didn't do anything in the FCCW. He went off to become Precentor-Marshal or whatever. It was just Katrina messing around with her cousins who were supposed to be ruling instead and plot-armoring her way to power.

The Reaving was more an issue of it not even really relating to anything ideological, it was all just a power grab that ended up thinning out the lore and removing the threat of the Clans for 80+ years.

>>54096755
Shadowrun Returns was fun... sticks to standard Shadowrun setting of Seattle. Lays down the basics. It feels a bit hollow, but more than anything feels a bit like like it was written by a GM, which is pretty neat. It was definitely a huge step up from Mitch's previous Shadowrun title, the X-box multiplayer FPS...

People say that Dragonfall is the best of the series. I've not finished it. Not because it's bad, but because I decided to install it on my phone and don't think that I can port the save files from my phone's Google Play -bought version to Steam's version. I haven't been able to find any sort of guides to that. My phone is way too weak to keep up with it and loading times, battery drain, and really small display meant for a computer monitor are what keep me from playing more often.

Playing SR: Hong Kong as well on an older laptop. It's also a fun title, and they did some pretty cool stuff to the decking system this time around. You can talk to all the shopkeeps who all have their own backstories and personalities... sometimes giving out sidequests... I'm definitely enjoying it, but taking it a bit at a time.

>>54096862
Does Shadowrun Seattle have a $15 minimum wage?

>>54096837
>But Victor didn't do anything in the FCCW.
Having been outmaneuvered, he decided rather than plunge the FedCom states into war to walk away. It was the wrong decision, and a war started anyway, and he joined the effort once he realized that. The bad writing was all Coleman adding superfluous Capellan involvement. Newsflash Loren, no one gives a fuck about the worst faction, Chinaboo.

>The Reaving was more an issue of it not even really relating to anything ideological, it was all just a power grab that ended up thinning out the lore and removing the threat of the Clans for 80+ years.
So... business as usual? The Clans have never really used any ideology beyond "Clans are best" for anything more than power plays. Even the people involved admit the initial Reavings are a way to get back at the Invader Clans, while the Scientists were pissed their petri dish was making its own decisions. If that came as a shock to you, you're buying into the Clans own bullshit.

>>54096884
Whether it does or not, it's got a sizable number of people risking their lives breaking into megacorporations while armed to the teeth to steal things for other megacorporations, in order to make ends meet.

Whether it does or doesn't, it's clearly not living wages.

>>54096909
>The bad writing was all Coleman adding superfluous Capellan involvement.
Wasn't the only thing the Capellans did was conquer the St. Ives Compact or something? I don't even remember.

>>54096719
>Cincy made that particular campaign fun as fuck in real life realtime too.

What does this mean?

>>54097377
Tormano Liao is Katherine's advisor for some nebulous reason, and in Endgame (The last novel in the series and for the FCCW), Victor puts some troops that Sun Tzu graciously lent him on Tikonov, who proceed to immediately wipe out the Victor loyalist troops on the planet and claim it for the CapCon.

>>54097397
That was the Fortress Dieron canon event where they played the Blakists and did stuff like shoot down an incoming dropship with a single infantryman by forcing a control roll.

It makes JTP:Dieron hilariously disjointed because you see the Stoners massing for a clobbering only for the Blakists to kick their asses, and it's only the in-between battle stuff where the Blakists are losing and getting pushed back.

>>54092174
How would you know? No one's torrented it for your broke ass.

>>54095291
>Such retarded writing even the forum going normies are calling him out.

Bueno.

>>54096484
>Being in beta is not an excuse for being incomplete.

Keep triggering them almonds torrent anon.
>inb4 only pretending to be retarded

File: Odessa bullshit fight.jpg (363KB, 1024x768px) Image search: [Google]

363KB, 1024x768px

>>54097397

Bascially the Cincinnati battletech team went to Gencon for like 10 years straight when the demo team was running Blake-centric canon games, and proceeded to shit all over the pre-written plotline. Every year, things got even more ridiculously stacked against the Blake team (Cincy) because the Blakists were supposed to lose, and every year the Cincy guys found ways to win, and win hilariously convincingly. So in the fluff, the Blakists suddently lose, even though every single event that should have determined canon had the Blakists winning by ludicrous margins.

IIRC, NEA was talking about the last game they played in the series, and they Blakists had to charge across like 30 hexes of totally open ground against a base guarded by a dug-in assault tank company of Demolishers and Alacorns, a dug-in company of heavy and assault Mechs, and the defenders were recieving heavy and assault mechs as reinforcements. Pic related. The Blakists started the game with a double company of medium Mechs and got only a single lance containing any assault Mechs at all the whole day (plus a Level 2 of Celestials during the last hour of the game or something).

They also did shit like the aforementioned "shoot down a fully loaded dropship with 1 infantryman", collapse a nuclear reactor on a ton of civilians the coalition was supposed to save (so the allies couldn't win the scenario; the Blakists weren't allowed to shoot at the civilians, so they shot the building all the civilians were in instead), and outright bribed the Bounty Hunter and his unit (with a dropship and the Celestials onboard) to leave them alone during a critical point in one fight. The battle Pope mentioned back on the OF that CGL people were putting IRL cash bounties on Cincy team members during the games to get the non-Cincy Blakists to break ranks and take out their own mechs.

It must have been the best days to play in those events.

>>54097772
>The battle Pope mentioned back on the OF that CGL people were putting IRL cash bounties on Cincy team members during the games to get the non-Cincy Blakists to break ranks and take out their own mechs.

There should be some corrections to your post.

First, they weren't cash bounties. They were bounties for booth credit, usually in $10 or $15 amounts. Additionally, the bounties of which I was aware were almost entirely from IWM personnel, not CGL employees.

That is all.

>>54097963

Is any of that supposed to make it fucking better?

>>54097963
>the bounties of which I was aware were almost entirely from IWM personnel
Why would IWM give a fuck? They get money either way, since both sides used their models. That's fucking strange, man. Maybe CGL had them do it so CGL didn't get implicated in trying to sabotage their own events?

>>54098103
>Is any of that supposed to make it fucking better?

No, it is not.

>>54098103
>Why would IWM give a fuck?

Pretty much solely to fuck with people whom they know personally. IWM (as was Ral Partha) is in Cincinnati, remember. It wasn't intended to sabotage the event - I'm pretty sure - but was there simply to cause some chaos on the board and to make our lives more difficult.

CGL did institute a policy, eventually, around 2014 or so, which forbids interference in canon games from any CGL or IWM personnel, specifically including "bounties", though it still occurs sometimes in Battle the Masters-style games or Grinders populated by a lot of Demo Agents; which I'm OK with, since the context for those games is totally different than the canon events.

>>54091880
> Every single mobile HPG in the Inner Sphere still works fine because they adjust on the fly.

If that were the case they would have noticed by now and re-engineered the ground based HPGs to compensate.

>>54099498
Mobiles work on a totally different scale to class B and A stations. It's like the difference between a Battlemech fusion engine and the monster on a Warship. Also, Tucker is the only guy who has realized exactly what is wrong, doesn't realize it until 3041, and even knowing it is unable to actually fix it with his brain damaged self and all of Project Sunlight at his disposal because the math is so complex.

Now, that second part doesn't make total sense to me, but that's the official line at the moment.

>>54091880
Ya know what, I've been looking for this, but can't find anything bout Clarion Call. You have a book to reference?

>>54099580
It's all in the Tucker Harwell parts of A Bonfire of Worlds, honestly the best part of the book minus triple agent Republic slut, Alexi Holt.

File: Battle_of_Luthien_(41).jpg (68KB, 490x412px) Image search: [Google]

68KB, 490x412px

>>54100713
>mfw when aeromanlets near me

>>54096601

This. I hate saying this but a reboot might be actualy beneficial at this point. Everything just falls apart and everyone fights everyone for no good reason. Its not even a fun battle royale, but a pointless clusterfuck because you know no one will be allowed to win, so things will return to the status quo and have another string of reatrded wars. There is no cool shit happening, no cool characters to care about just an eternal, unceasing bitchfight between retards you dont give a shit about.

In fact, the timing for reboot would be PERFECT now. Just sell it as "Game of Thrones with ROBUTTS!" and bathe in the shekels like Scrooge McDuck.

>>54096131
There's no competitive multiplayer possible, not on the game type, nor on the development practices chosen. It's a snorefest.

"It's a beta" doesn't work when we've seen the other HBS projects come up, and retain, the same problems through the entire development arc. They're boring. The combat is trivial due to shortcomings of AI and level design, the battles feel wimpy and unexciting due to unambitious visual and audio directing, and worst of all, there's absolutely no sense of rhythm, urgency or harmony to it. It's just a mellow unpleasant discord, like a bad amateur play.

If any particular point of extreme annoyance should be brought up, it would be the use of voice acting. The actors themselves are okay, as far as any voice acting goes, but the "when" and "what" they're used on? All those limp-dick "oh, I have been shot, owwie" reactions or "I am walking there like this now okay" whatever-confirmations just distract and cut into the readily disjointed and struggling visual narrative of the game. It just distracts and deflates necessary tension. It could work in an RTS a la mechcommander because there was always something more to pay attention to, but here it's just delayed transition after delayed transition obstructing the action. Already boring action.

I've been hearing a rumor from one of the "in-the-know" guys at a shop in Toronto that CGL is going to end either Battletech or Shadowrun as a line via an "Armageddon product". Do any of you think this could be true?

>>54101200
Tbh your opinion sounds like you REALLY don't like turnbased games, at all, and you where expecting Mech Commander 3 out of the Battletech.

>>54102259
I don't see it happening.
Let's be honest. Either happens, Catalyst loses one of it's two cash cows. Goes out of business because they sure as fuck aren't surviving on leviathans, cosmic patrol, or the duke.

>>54102259
This is probably a combination of Ben Rome's salty shit talking on twitter and the rumor that part of why they're taking so goddamned long to crap out ilClan is because its going to totally reshape the landscape of the game from that point onward.

>>54102389
This entire argument is based on the comparison between BT and DoW made earlier on, and the subject is whether the game could be the "DoW of BattleTech".

My opinion is not for turnbased nor rts, but on whether the game is well-directed or not. DoW's cutscenes were horrid drivel apart from the big money cinematics, but they were out of the way. BT is like a cutscene cavalcade, every action being a set of firm stops and starts, like watching a slideshow.

Firmly put, I do not like what the video game is now. It is a mechanically good game delivered poorly. As such, it does not deserve the level of attention and expectation of DoW.

Is Battletech a cash cow? Somehow, I don't think it is.

>>54103142
Porches aren't free, friend.

>>54103173

Shadowrun is infinitely more profitable I would think.

>>54103207
and probably more noticeable when somebody embezzles from it.

>>54103207
I doubt it.

I mean, there are definitely more people who play shadowrun, but how many people actually buy the product? The GM, sure, but the rest mostly get a free ride.

With Battletech, you know that pretty much anyone that plays is someone that pays. It takes a special kind of cheapness that would make a jewish landlord blush to be playing BT long-term without spending a dime.

>>54103240

Not really considering the company kept it's money in one big shared access account at the time.

Overall, I'm one of the one's who isn't expecting a death of a product line but I can see it happening, if only as a way out of producing something new that might appeal to the fanbase. One of the reasons White Wolf ended the original World of Darkness line was to get around certain IP obligations it was tied to. Could the "end" of a line, allow for a reboot/rebranding that would allow Topps via CGL to produce new product in a similar but new universe which opens up access to video game and other media options that is denied them at this time?

>>54103660
They could, and should, do all of that without killing anything.

You could drop ilClan, tie up the loose ends still dangling, leave battletech in a stable place for awhile, and release a new game "From the makers of Battletech!" and if it's a flop, come back to battletech. If it's not, focus on the new line and trickle shit out for BT when you have time.

>>54103207
Shadowrun pretty much only has a source of income from books, with limited sources elsewhere (like some of the new videogames). BattleTech has multiple income sources: many more books, miniatures, several games, and other miscellaneous merch.

The question then become 'is BattleTech's fanbase big enough to make all of that extra income stream more profitable'.

>>54104245

Yeah but I dunno how far from the original you have to fall from for it to be distinct enough for the rights to the whole IP fall to one group.

>>54104400

The video game resources/profits do not get shared to Topps/CGL for either Shadowrun/Battletech. Miniature rights belong to IWM. That they came to an accommodation over the plastic minis for Alpha Strike, doesn't mean they're getting money hand over fist because of it. All the real money potential is in the video game market.

>>54103207
It was until people stopped buying the books.

You think MWO's licensing fees and royalties are worthless?

>>54104245
Didn't they just do that a few years ago with the WizKids Clix shit?

File: 1631 WD cover detail.png (493KB, 931x383px) Image search: [Google]

493KB, 931x383px

>>54101200
I remember liking the land battles in "Sid Meier's Pirates!" well enough as one piece in a larger whole, even if they weren't terrifically compelling on their own. If BattleTech's battles have at least that much complexity, then I hope the same will be true there too.

>shortcomings of level design
Can you expand on this? It is relevant to my interests.

>>54104915

To Topps/CGL, pretty much. To Microsoft, of course not. But they're two different things. MWO worked out some sort of accommodation with Topps/CGL over getting fiction made up but the attempts to get miniatures/use the art of MWO failed because someone (who I don't know) wanted a big enough cut that it wasn't worth it to the other parties.

>>54104974
Damn. Yeah, it might be worth killing the franchise and resurrecting it to consolidate the rights again.

Be a shame to see that happen then.

>>54104948
>>shortcomings of level design
>Can you expand on this? It is relevant to my interests.

There was some busted syntax there. The comment was meant to be about the shadowrun games and their battles.

So, the thing about Cincy Btech being at Gencon for ten years straight? I think we did maybe 5 years total and several of us were working it between Levs and BT.

The bounty on a canon event did happen, it was at Origins 07, though I can't remember if it was cash or credit. Nor did it honestly matter, because when the bounty came down the game was so lopsided in favor of the Jade Falcons (the opposing team) they were simply running out the clock. At some point, the Ice Hellion leadership decide to make a press on the Falcons for reasons I cannot remember towards the end of the night, and my Linebacker D was middle of the pack and my Nova H was nearby.

Engagement time. The Jade Falcons didn't bother me since I was not a threat to them. All but 2 Hellion players went after me. The remaining players, not thrilled by this turn of events started going after the other Hellions. The Falcons then decided to remove every last Ice Hellion who started attacking me was their new objective (They were bored) as they felt the Hellions were truly unClan Like. The Linebacker was knocked out via engine hits but recoverable, the Nova H was pretty intact, but after two turns of basically pulling the triggers was hilariously hot.

The Nova was the only Hellion 'mech still alive at the end of the fracas.

We did buy off the Bounty Hunter in GC07, but that was before the Celestials were in universe. I was escorting a column of armor up the blakist left flank when the Coalition had their Ultimate Reinforcements dropped in behind us. we we're in a good position and the BH was dropped in our rear flank. So we started selling off our reinforcements (Damned near all of them if memory serves) to get the BH out of our hair.

As for the civilian shenanigans, someone else will need to tell that story, I wasn't there for it.

File: Origins Mass Murder.png (77KB, 1849x355px) Image search: [Google]

77KB, 1849x355px

>>54106099
>So, the thing about Cincy Btech being at Gencon for ten years straight? I think we did maybe 5 years total

'06-'10 (inclusive) were the halcyon days. 2010 was when the band started breaking up as we all started getting moved into the Demo Team. That was the year of the Kerensky Bloodname tourney and the year I did ~12 hours or so of Boot Camp tables and was only on the canon event table for the very first block and on the climactic day, so it's easy to remember.

Folks might be thinking of our people getting posted to the canon event table to *run* it, though.

The civilian thing was Origins. 2010, I think. The one just before I was doing the impromptu torpedo testing for Levs which got me shifted over to that line. You missed this table (I think you made part of the con, but not the whole thing; there was a work conflict). The table was pretty sparse; our side was me, Andy, the Groenwalds, *maybe* Travis and one other guy, I think. Honestly, most of the Origins through the last 00s and early 2010s were pretty forgettable and they all sort of blur together. I storytimed the event in the past. Pic related.

And yeah, Stu dropped booth bucks on you. You've been clear about that in the past.

>we should have documented all this shit better at the time.

>>54104646
Unless you know the licensing rights, you can't say that for sure. Guarantee you they pay a percentage per sale or a flat fee.

>>54106099
>>54106583
I think they were just tired of your grandstanding shit regardless.

So, I've decided to let my autism off the leash and begin writing an AU , and I'm wondering, since my metaplot interest cuts off around Operation Bulldog, for those of you who like the FCCW, Jihad and especially Dark Age, could you tell me which particular things about those eras that you like?
I want to cannibalize as many good ideas as I can

>>54103207
Based on Herb statements, it's depended on the years: the two lines have gone back and forth. 5-10 years back BT was carrying the weight, but AFAIK today Shadowrun is comfortably in the lead.

>>54107285
I got into battletech with MWDA and still have a soft spot for that era
here's what I like from it
>weirdo filibuster mini-factions (probably my favorite part)
>armed industrialmechs and other improvised stuff (but not as a replacement for actual mechs)
>Combined arms (but again, not as a replacement for mechs)
>forces that could reasonably have literally any unit in them
>wide range of tech levels all used together
>chaos and balkanization wasn't bad, to a degree

>>54104929
They forsook all the mechanics and ruined the fluff to justify their shit game. The IP was still just as entangled.

What they should do, is set the game aside after wrapping up the current plot, and make an entirely new game, with entirely new fluff, and similar mechanics. One with all the rights and no entanglements.

>>54107285
I like jihad because it's literally just 3025 comstar going REEEEEE and nuking everyone while deploying mad science experiments like the machina domini. Also their omnis look dope.

>>54107285
I like the Blakists establishing the Protectorate and putting the Goons in their place as well as making satellite states in the Periphery.

I like the Blakists blasting out proof all over the Inner Sphere that Thomas Marik is a fake and the FWL turning on him.

I like Sideburns Sandoval-Davion plowing that special needs supermodel YSD and telling her to take a seat while he coordinates the AFFS.

I like a lot of the tech, the return of Star League magic like LAM's and drones.

I like the Taurians running roughshod over the backcountry of the Suns while the Davions are caught up in more important wars.

For the Dark Age, I like all the major FLW players, from Jessica to Humphreys to Lester, but they all rely heavily on events in the Jihad to exist the way they do. To a lesser extent I like this too >>54107626 except not until they really get their footing. So many of them were total faggots in the beginning like Erik Sandoval. I would never guess he would become my favorite Swordsworn after his premier novel.

>>54107790
Not him but people forget MWDA was insanely successful. It made more money for Wizkids in the first few years than tabletop Battletech had made for them since the Clan Invasion. There are more minis for DA than Battletech by a complete order of magnitude because of the random pack collectible nature of it on top of the popularity.

Dark Age is about as right as a reboot can go in terms of profitability, and a good model to look at for how a soft reboot would go.

>Brings in lots of new people and money
>Pisses off all the old people who actually carry the game once the hype dies off in a few years

A full fluff hard reboot would be even more damaging even if it was successful in the short term.

>>54106698

Yes I can because that's what they've said in public. Topps gets some money from Microsoft for okaying the merchandising MWO is doing with their kickstarter. Topps and IWM came to an arrangement over Alpha Strike miniatures. And there was an attempt to license the MWO miniatures and it didn't happen because somebody wanted too big a cut for the other party to bother with it.

You ever wonder why the video games tread the same ground all the time? They only have access from the 3025 era to 3062 era material. Anything written after FASA closed belongs to someone else which is currently Topps.

http://www.catalystgamelabs.com/

Hacked!

>>54108066
Considering that Battletech never made wizkids a dime, that's not a difficult bar to clear.

>>54109256
>Battletech never made Wizkids a dime

First of all, depends on what you mean by Battletech. "The Battletech Universe" was MWDA and printed on the front of all their material.

Fanpro didn't get the license for free for Classic Battletech either.

File: 1426638298844.jpg (106KB, 484x662px) Image search: [Google]

106KB, 484x662px

>>54109241

>>54109030
You really have no idea how any of that licensing stuff works, do you?

>>54102259
>I've been hearing a rumor from one of the "in-the-know" guys at a shop in Toronto
Sounds like an idea he pulled out of his ass.

>>54109241
There *is* such a thing as taking Shadowrun LARPing *too* far, guys.

>>54108066
My first Battletech minis was a Dark Age starter set with like 4 mechs and a bunch of tanks and some helicopters, and I bought them because I loved the games. But I really didn't enjoy the setting that they talked about because it was so different from the games, and I ended up never playing it with anyone outside my family.

>>54109967

Meh. CGL insists on using an amateur, and amateurish companies, for all their IT-related ventures. They often run out of bandwidth to host the god damn forums because they're too cheap to spring for coverage on their flagship line.

I don't condone the hackers, but really? Pay peanuts, get monkeys. Get monkeys, get shit flung everywhere.

>>54111347
Given the issues they've had of not paying employees in the past, that means they're going to contract out all of their IT stuff, and get really bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. Updates and patches aren't a real concern to the offshore Indians building it, no doubt. They probably don't have any actual IT staff there except maybe a desktop support person, and that's a low-paying job.

For what a good IT support person goes for, they couldn't afford one. They'd pay well under market rates, no doubt, which means they're going to draw someone either A) Grossly inexperienced for it or B) Someone desperate for a job who's going to jump ship the first chance they get for a job that pays an actual wage.

>>54111482
They used to have a fan running their server until CGL burned the bridge and pissed on the ashes.

>>54109633
The most "in the know" guys in Toronto don't play at shops. They play out of their houses. They also cover(ed?) most of the Ontario convention scene.

>>54107391
Herb did the job pretty well, in spite of all the flak he got. A Time of War wasn't well received, but I think it would have had more potential had he allowed himself to receive C&C from others.

I'm hoping that the recent decline in BT is simply because there hasn't been a line dev while people who should be looking out for the franchise obsess over a hundred and one side-projects.

>>54111853
The recent decline in BT is for the same reason classic Battletech declined under Forever 67. The story isn't moving forward. Remember how exciting it was to talk about new stuff when a good non-historical plot book came out and was just full of all sorts of fun things?

Last time that happened was god damn 2014. They need to get their ass in gear whether they want to drag out the DA a bit more or release ilClan or new novels for the late-3040's or fucking SOMETHING.

>>54111967
Well yeah, but Herb got out in 2013, the last update was in 2014, which was likely continuation of stuff he started. The dry period lines up pretty well with the period there's been no line dev.

...Though I do like the current look at the Succession Wars, they aren't doing enough with it, I think.

>>54112731
Succession Wars stuff is fun and will make a good companion to a new 3025 box with the Shimmyseen, but it's no substitute for the main universe moving. Year of the Star League was similarly a terrible idea. Those things are great sidestories and B-plots but you can't just put the main timeline on ice for years at a time. It was hard enough to convince average people Battletech wasn't dead the first time.

I do miss Herb, though, even if he had some real stupid meme stuff like hating Texas because he was a tubby polar bear.

File: Have Mech, Will Travel Campaign Rules v2.pdf (6MB, 1x1px) Image search: [Google]

6MB, 1x1px

So, if anybody is bored or looking for some in person campaign rules, I could use another few sets of eyes on v2 of my campaign ruleset.

To provide context:
The core conceit is that I'm using MekHQ to create procedurally-generated contracts, missions, and OPFOR that I don't have to spend time playtesting. The unit is divided between the players - each one running a lance and is solely responsible for that lance's upkeep - with a single player also taking on the Unit CO aspect to deal with administrative and supplementary unit concerns. Basically, it's a way to shift a ludicrously huge logistic burden of writing, playtesting, and running an AccounTech campaign off of the GM (read: me) and whichever poor bastard ended up as the quartermaters (read: also usually me). With only a single lance to deal with each, the players can handle their own paperwork, even if it *is* full AccounTech.

In addition to the contract, mission, and OPFOR generation, MekHQ also generates the usual Unit and Personnel Markets, so there's no chance for the players to whine about not having 36 Elite Techs and having enough MechWarriors available to hire to fill out their lances with all 1/1 deathblobs. They get what's screenshotted from MekHQ; no more, no less, and it shuts down complaining when they realize the GM isn't the one making that call. The only really serious GM judgement calls required are all behind the scenes when I'm advancing Against the Bot up to a mission and decide whether or not to actually use that mission or GM Mode through it because it won't be fun on the table; I plan for between 3-7 actual combat missions per contract instead of the 71 missions I just got in a 9-month contract in my solo campaign.

Warning: it's an unholy mix (of the parts that *work*) from MechWarrior 3 RPG, BMR(r), TechManual, StratOps, FM:Mercs (r), and Against the Bot.

>>54113245
>dat filename

There are a lot of Paladin fans in this fandom aren't there? I mean, I expect the B5, BSG, SW, SG crowd but stuff like this never fails to impress me.

>>54113363

Hey, Richard Boone was badass. What can I say?

File: PaladinBlakeBusinessCard.png (3KB, 286x178px) Image search: [Google]

3KB, 286x178px

>>54113396

Captcha ate my image.

File: 1398962204252.png (54KB, 263x290px) Image search: [Google]

54KB, 263x290px

>>54113396
>>54113396

Just caught me off guard because I have a full Accountech player whose character is literally Richard Boone. He even made an edit of the trademark card.

And he's also from Cincy but he doesn't live there anymore.

>>54113245
After looking through it, the only thing I really see lacking is mentioning that they should prioritize the most essential repairs first since at some points they will be fielding machines with partial repairs and partial reloads. Because that's just how it goes in campaigns.

Also the first part talking about Edge I think should read "Can be reduced by -1" vs. "Can be reduced to -1" but I'm not super familiar with Mechwarrior 3. I've always used Mechwarrior 2 to rough stuff out combined with the modern traits.

And you didn't mention the common unofficial tech overtime rule. +50% pay for an extra shift in a crunch. It's kinda silly to only have 8 hours no matter what, especially when you're in a bind or really need the extra time for double or quad time TN bonuses for lower level techs.

>>54113704
>And you didn't mention the common unofficial tech overtime rule. +50% pay for an extra shift in a crunch. It's kinda silly to only have 8 hours no matter what, especially when you're in a bind or really need the extra time for double or quad time TN bonuses for lower level techs.

That's a terrible rule, because paying +50% salary to a Tech making 800 Cbills a month is essentially the same thing as a rounding error to a mech unit dealing with hundreds of thousands of Cbills in a month. A regular enlisted tech makes 800 Cbills each month, which is basically 40 Cbills/day. So really, to get an extra half-days work out of him costs an extra 20 Cbills for 4 more hours work? That may as well be free.

Merc units deal in such huge money values, because the rules are written that way, between contract base pay and salvage that paying tech OT is pointless. There's no penalty for it that matters at all. If there's no penalty to it then it shouldn't even be a thing.

>>54113768
What makes less sense, your dudes sitting on their ass while the enemy rolls up on you when you can even press your mechwarriors into astech service or having some sort of mechanism to squeeze more time out of them? Also, it would be an extra 30 Cbills for four hours at 1.5x pay.

File: 1447220632208.png (316KB, 1012x1057px) Image search: [Google]

316KB, 1012x1057px

>>54113704
>they should prioritize the most essential repairs first

I get you, but that's a player choice to do it or not to do it, and I don't feel it's generally appropriate to put that into a rulebook.

>talking about Edge
That's a typo. Good catch; none of my players noticed that either. It's, "reduced BY 1".

>unofficial tech overtime rule
That's because I hate it. I'd go into detail, but >>54113768 already broke down most of the reasons why I dislike the rule. I totally understand that limiting Techs to 480 minutes/day in all circumstances is pretty silly, but if the Overtime work is so cheap compared to the benefit that it may as well be free, then it's not really a meaningful choice, right?

This opinion came about as a result of being "that guy" playing in the 90's and running across this Overtime rule. I just paid my Techs an extra 50% salary and expected them to work 12 hour days, 7 days a week. After the Overtime Pay, they were making pretty much the same money as the MechWarriors since Techs work cheap to begin with, and if I salvaged and sold a single Light Mech, it paid for their Overtime for something like a year.

>>54113819
Neither. Neither makes sense. I like to make players make difficult choices, and the choice to spend a non-important amount of money to get a tremendous benefit isn't difficult in the slightest. If you ran Techs through Overtime and they might quit because of it? Yeah, sure, that's a tough choice. But the Overtime rules are, in my opinion, a way to get something for (essentially) nothing, and that goes against literally - not figuratively - my entire GMing philosophy.

IMO, we probably just want different things out of the system.


>apologies, fell partway asleep looking for an image

>>54113924
>IMO, we probably just want different things out of the system.

Not really. You probably just have a better staffed unit on average. When you have one full team for every three or four machines instead of every machine, it's pretty much just enough to stay alive. Especially when you don't have any of them as highly skilled techs.

My GM makes finding new techs like pulling teeth. Probably because it's a 2990's campaign in bumfuck near Periphery though.

File: 1446007915218.png (743KB, 750x567px) Image search: [Google]

743KB, 750x567px

>>54113957
>Not really. You probably just have a better staffed unit on average. When you have one full team for every three or four machines instead of every machine, it's pretty much just enough to stay alive. Especially when you don't have any of them as highly skilled techs.


Ooooh, yeah. That'd do it. We went through the FM:Mercs(r) unit creation process after generating characters, and it's impossible to get through that with a low number of Techs.

Each Lance had 2 Tech groups to start with, and while only 1-2 Techs show up on the Personnel Market each month, those are starting to add up after a while. Plus my players are pretty good about falling back when they've taken moderate damage, so the really time-consuming technical stuff didn't come up during their first contract (usually; one dumbass was driving my Javelin and decided to go pointblack with a +1 TMM against a Hunchback, a Swayback, and a Gladiator; NEVER lose somebody else's Mech). A 3044 campaign starting off Galatea is going to have a bit more common Tech support than a 2990s Periphery game.

>>54111499
True, but in CGL's defense, Deathshadow was a colossal ass and I would have tossed him too.

>>54114421
> CGL's defense

Shill!

>>54114494
Damn, found out.

>>54107285
I'm profoundly drunk, but while we're at the AU crap, I;d make a suggestion to correct a certain thing as goes with the smaller states, just for the sake of actually making things more interesting beyond
>nobody cares about the periphery, so they're automatically worse in every respect and can only be interesting story-wise when they're being an add-on to another faction
just as a /hwg/fag, I'd rather 8-11 interesting factions rather than 5 IS big boys and three flavors of 1800s america plus a half dozen irrelevant motherfuckers
That is, I figure there should really two kinds of Periphery/Minor powers; the larger folks (TC, MoC and OA, in that order) who are in the Successor State range per capita but smaller, coming very close to the worst of the Big Five, but overall not there, and mostly do Periphery Stuff, but can stand up with the big boys when they have to, and then the Minor States, who can either match the major states in terms of size OR tech level, never both, so you have Caesar's Legion In Space with a pile of low-tech regiments and then their Republican Guard, or else the Rim Collection with their small army of elite guys in modern mechs, and the like

>>54111967

Or how about they write some new plot that isnt fucking shit?

>>54114645
at this point, do you really think CGL has anyone at all that could write something that wouldn't mangle the asses of at least 2/3 of the intended audience, and even if they did, could they do it without mangling the other 1/3 (and also their embezzling overlords)?
well the answer is Fuck No, they're caught in a shitshow of their own making with no way out, and thus they're stalling for time

>>54114698

Literally just write GoT in space, whats so hard about that? Just simmer down with the permament war 40k wannabe bullshit and constantly trying to raise the stakes and have a comfy little succession war with lots of small scale conflicts, intrigue, and backstabbing. Do away with the superstates too and go full HRE with gorillions of duchies, principalities and fiefdoms duking it out for titles, land and C-bills, maybe sometimes even a righteous crusade to the kerensky cluster for the glory of Blake.

>>54114758
>Just simmer down with the permament war 40k wannabe bullshit
but that would result in substantially less pointless atrocities, and without that, how would any of the current crop of writers ever get an erection again?

>>54114799

Maintaining erections just by looking at giant robots should be their most basic hiring standard.

>>54114758
That is the entire Early Dark Age, and it was trash. They're really not in a bad spot right now, they just need to kill the ever living fuck out of the RotS now that the wall is down and have the Mariks either get off their asses and kill the Wolves or get in a proper war with the Capellans and the MoC to bring Andurien back in.

The giant mess that is the coreward part of the sphere will probably solve itself once Clan Best Snake and the homeworlders show up.

>Do away with the superstates too and go full HRE with gorillions of duchies, principalities and fiefdoms duking it out for titles, land and C-bills, maybe sometimes even a righteous crusade to the kerensky cluster for the glory of Blake.

This will never not be a bad idea. The history of Battletech has always conclusively proved that the superstates with infighting provinces are way better than actually breaking the states up. See FRR, St Ives, the Chaos March, the RotS subfactions, and so on. All garbage once independent.

>>54114908

>This will never not be a bad idea. The history of Battletech has always conclusively proved that the superstates with infighting provinces are way better than actually breaking the states up.

Are you a retard or you dont know what the HRE was?

>>54116058
To be fair how many people actually know what the HRE was?

>>54116058
I thought you were making some stupid GoT reference, but I guess you meant the Holy Roman Empire. Don't use outside abbreviations. They mean different things in different places. Like CBT means Classic Battletech here but it means something totally different on most other board. Or IS on the anime board.

>>54116106

SMD DESU SENPAI

>>54116058
I've never run across an HRE in CBT, so either spell it out, or don't be a retard using external abbreviations in Cock and Ball Torture discussions.

>>54116113
kys asap

>>54116087
My understanding is it's where Sigfried from Soul Calibur is from. Outside of that has something to do with the conquests of Rome making it's way into the rest of western Europe.

...but I am not into the Fantasy genre, so I'm in the layman's territory when it comes to knowledge of history.

HME immediately made me think of MREs

>>54113245
Hmm, fancy that. This hit the ground perfectly. I've been dredging for players from a closed circle of affiliates for a new mercenary campaign for a week or so, still meditating on how to run the whole thing, and this drops on the plate. Neato.

Alright /btg/, I want to run some campaigns based on each IS faction winning and establishing a new Star Leage

Give me your tasteful wank ideas.

File: dragon durf.png (43KB, 847x953px) Image search: [Google]

43KB, 847x953px

>>54117739
ASSPULL WARNING

Draconis Combine: During FCCW, ISF plants covertly usurp all operating echelons of ComStar during Theodore Kurita's tenure as First Lord. The organization is subtly led to favour hereditary lordship backing Kurita in light of current cacophony between the other great houses. Ghost Bear-Combine war tilts into a complete rout of the prior thanks to the newly mutated power balance and, following a final set of trials, the clan joins Nova Cats in promoting the newly solidified status quo. And after that he largely extorts everyone else to tacit vassaldom. Putting down uprisings, purging undesirables and "unproductives", and "cultural re-education" cause a drop of 27% in the total population of the entire mankind.

>>54117739

FedCom

>they call on Theodores bluff, he dies in the counterattack as FedCom keeps pushing into the Combine
>Takashi goes full MUH HONOR and they act like its 1945, fanatical charges, kamikaze attacks, death to mercs, zero flexibility
>full blown collapsemode as RCTs close in on Luthien, Hanse does a Tikonov with the Rasalhagues
>Comstar tries to make a deal with the FWL like they tried with Theo
>too bad they have to deal with another surge of internal unrest and their desperation attack, trying to ease the pressure on their allies fails
>they realize the fanatical kuritas are more concerned with setting up heroic last stands at this points and they are not reliable allies at all.
>their uncoordinated effort does nothing, the combine falls, RCTs are starting to get redeployed to Tikonov
>Comstar is divided on the issue too, they cant decide betwen going full jihad or stay cloak and dagger, plus they gave away a lot of shit to the dracs and the FWL
>Mariks see the writing on the wall and decide to do a bold political move
>they surrender and get a good deal in return
>House Marik is now first of the March Lords, ranking above houses Sandoval and Hasek
>Comstar REEEEs and finally decides to go jihad
>but its too late, thhe FedCom is just too strong, they have shit tons of exceptional veterans and the resources of the entire IS
>Anastasius Focht calls the ComGuards to stand down not much later, why the fuck bother when Hanse is Star Lord already in everything but name, plus the religious shit just scares him
>WoB still happens but they fuck off to the hidden worlds to be your average terrorists
>I guess the Liaos also do something before the Syrtis Fusilliers land on Sian(again)
>Hanse throws a victory parade on Terra. gets declared Star Lord of the Second Star League by his new vassals and subjects
>clans arrive as he is entretaining himself mopping up the peripheries and get greeted by the SLDF
>"well freebirth, someone else already did it"

>>54118350
It's doable. I really want to try to push for the 3039 war to go beyond the Drac counterattack in the game I'm in just to get rid of a Great House that always seems to be handed the Idiotball going forward.

>>54117739
>literally just PRI

File: battletech body doubles.png (114KB, 1349x634px) Image search: [Google]

114KB, 1349x634px

>>54118350
>>54118469
The whole 3039 "Hanse shrugged" farce is just idiotic to the level that as a Drac player, I concur. The FedCom under Hanse, in all of its overbearing power, should have flattened Takashi and ended the whole damn bloodline. Frankly, the whole game history might as well ended at Hanse.

>>54111499
No professional is going to maintain a server well enough for free. A fan doing it is going to either three-quarter ass it or feign ignorance.

>>54118469
>>54118687

>dracs finally manage to unfuck themselves
>push black dragon shit on them again

I just have no idea why. It's such a weak attempt at forcing conflict.

>>54118765
I think the reason is Theodore and his family where written as actually competent people who got along with most of their neighbours and someone in the writing board found that boring and BOOM Black Dragons fucking everything up again.

Seriously if they needed a villain faction why not use Capellans.... Oh yeah Coleman is a fanboy of them so nope on that.

>>54119812
But they used Capellans as villains too. Just... Sun-Tzu'd into competence from a past of idiocy, funny as it was.

They just didn't knock them down right after propping them up. Not yet, at least. If DA is continued, I expect it will turn into a mighty Davion fellationfest where all yellow fiends are properly tamed to harem duty.

>>54119812

Why even have a villain faction instead of well-written characters driving conflict? I hate how everyone must be either a despicable, black hearted villain or moping noble soul. The entire FedCom civil war could have been so much better if they made Katherine into a more ambivalent Hanse-like character, someone with vision and plenty of ambition to burn.

It's all going to shit. CGL will be closed by the end of the year.

>>54120284
>The entire FedCom civil war could have been so much better if they made Katherine into a more ambivalent Hanse-like character, someone with vision and plenty of ambition to burn.
Or even at the bare minimum, SOME kind of motivation beyond cartoon supervillainy and frustrated incestuous desires

>>54120430
Her initial feeling of being passed over for power due to the fact that she was the second child was interesting, especially when it looked like she wasn't nearly as adept at holding the Lyran Alliance together with all of her focus on it when Victor was spending less than half of the effort. An interesting dynamic, if wasted.

>>54120379
Big freakin' deal. How many times has BT gone down already?

It's a super simple situation, BT is an established concept known worldwide. Not household, but recognized by the general consumer groups of both tabletop wargames and video games. So? Make more content, put out more licenses, get more money. Not make less content, get more porches.

If the IP changes hands, then at the very least I hope it will go to younger hands. Enough with the 80's washout tomato cans.

>>54120480

It wasn't just being the second born that caused her anal annihilation, it was her being shit at/utterly disinterested in combat and the charter for the FedCom requiring the Archon-Prince(ss) to have had a military career. Even most Archons served on the front lines but the First Prince *has* to have had a military career.

Katherine was just all "waaah, I don't wanna have to do anything anyone else says I should do, I wanna always tell everyone else what to do" and went 100% bitchmode over it.

But then everyone collectively decided that having blonde hair was totally the most important qualifying attribute for being Archon Princess and ignored the laws to put her in charge any way. So what the fuck ever.

File: Catapult Kid Record Sheet.png (329KB, 1408x984px) Image search: [Google]

329KB, 1408x984px

On the off chance that somebody here has kids, here's the record sheet template I'm using to teach my 6 year old. Open up a normal record sheet in paint and lasso the weapons chart and armor diagrams to overlap the ones on this for each new Mech you want to use.

>>54121524

>It wasn't just being the second born that caused her anal annihilation, it was her being shit at/utterly disinterested in combat and the charter for the FedCom requiring the Archon-Prince(ss) to have had a military career. Even most Archons served on the front lines but the First Prince *has* to have had a military career.

Oh yeah, gotta love that militarism. Unofficial Davion anthem coming right up here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3H18bkKyG8


She could have just went and become a JumpShip officer or something cushy like that. IIRC nobility always starts as officers, so basically she just had to complete a navigators course or something. Then she could have presented a cool, collected lady of war image in cute naval uniforms, and win the support of the long neglected navy, being the first princess who served with them in ages, maybe even give the FedCom civil war a navy vs army tinge.


But nah, she was born a bitch. I dont even get where the mother killing part came from. She was raised in a loving and supportive family. Was she just randomly possessed by a demon or something?

>>54121609
That's pretty neat.

My step-daughter will probably never be into BT, but having the modifiers right on the record sheet is super handy.

>>54121524
Hell, she could have just done her time in the JAG office.
Hell, in an alternate world where everyone weren't retards, that would actually fit her pretty well IMO

>>54121876

The FedCom forming at all is basically "gg, no re" for everyone else if even the tiniest amount of logic is applied given the overwhelming military and economic advantages the merged state has.

It had to fall apart for plot reasons and Victor was already Hanse 2.0 so someone else had to do it.

It just all comes out of left field since the focus was on the Clans and then the Cappies in turn. Katherine somehow manages to bamboozle Davion Central into naming her First Princess despite not meeting the qualifications and everyone knowing the killed Melissa because muh opinion polls.

Most of the problems with the FCCW plot could have been fixed if Katherine had taken over the Suns rather than the Lyrans. But that would have required the Suns to ultimately lose a conflict in an era where that shit simply does not happen, so nope. Idiots all the way down.

>>54122086

I'm like 90% sure one Archon (maybe even Melissa?) did their time in the medical or disaster relief corps. For the Suns I think they have to be a line officer or they become the Regent instead but with the Lyrans while command of the 10th is the usual standard it's not required.

Katherine just has a mad hate-on for the military because Victor was good at it. She also makes it clear to everyone that the military can get fucked because muh politics yet this plays well to the LAAF and AFFS because reasons.

>>54122135
>>54122232


>The FedCom forming at all is basically "gg, no re" for everyone else if even the tiniest amount of logic is applied given the overwhelming military and economic advantages the merged state has.

Plus they could force any opponent into a two-front war.

>It had to fall apart for plot reasons and Victor was already Hanse 2.0 so someone else had to do it.

Ironically, Victor wanted nothing just to be a soldier. Katherine could have done politics with Victor as her warlord and bring the IS to their knees without effort.

I also love how everyone and everything just bent over in the military and the state apparatus in her realms just to accomodate her stupid bullshit and apparently shes the first one to use basic propaganda ever in the BT universe.


I really expected her to mature a bit, wisen up and actuallly BE Hanse 2.0, responsibility and everything and with the same ambition and hunger for power he had. A kinslayer actually becoming a pretty good ruler but growing a conscience she has to quell with a "I did what I had to" mentality and a whole "price of power" theme. Would be even better if she actually managed to deliver on her promises and make it a golden age for the fedcom.

>>54121876
>>54122353
While we're at it, the WoB being the ones who whacked Melissa would make about five or six hundred times more sense than Katherine's Arbitrary Evil Reasons

>>54122353

I put most of Victor's focus on soldiering down to his expected career path being officer training -> 10-year military service-> training to lead a giant stellar realm. If all had gone according to plan he would have finished his military service in 3060.

Ultimately Katherine was just good at two things Making people think she was awesome at first and stealing power from others. She was too stupid and too far up her own asshole to use it wisely. It's pretty god-damn telling that the moment she has to do her own politicking without Tormano Liao around and do any kind of military shit without his help that it all comes crashing down around her ears.

>>54120480
You know as much as people give Martin crap about, he actually put a really good reason why Tywin thinks Cercei is bad ruler, she is not as smart as she think she is and that same thing applies to Katherine as starts to fuck up as soon as she has to actually lead instead of just trying to stab everyone in the back.

I suspect Hanse saw the same thing, that Katherine wouldn't make good ruler, and probably knew that she was off the hinges a bit and was reigning her in. Too bad Hanse died and Melissa had to deal with miss Crazy Pants afterwards and we know how that ended.

>>54122549

> She was too stupid and too far up her own asshole to use it wisely. It's pretty god-damn telling that the moment she has to do her own politicking without Tormano Liao around and do any kind of military shit without his help that it all comes crashing down around her ears.

I'd just assign that to shitty writing

>look how incompetent and evulz she is! thats because she evilbad!

>>54122469

This too. The entire concept of some nameless assassin killing family members of the two most powerful states(three if you want to count Omi) and Katherine knowing how to contact such a guy is ludicrous. Even the nekekami arent this good.

File: 1380608970786.jpg (392KB, 970x1013px) Image search: [Google]

392KB, 970x1013px

Hey, do you know where i can found the Record Sheets: Vehicle Annex, IndustrialMechs & Exoskeletons? Its not in either of the three PDF folders.

File: love_handel.jpg (180KB, 1280x720px) Image search: [Google]

180KB, 1280x720px

>>54121876
>Unofficial Davion anthem coming right up here.

Huh. I guess I've never seen that episode of Phineas and Ferb. Jaret Reddick of Bowling for Soup sang this vaguely-Battletech-themed song as "Danny" of Love Handel (his semi-regular character in the show) for one of the TV movies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy4PbtPJuJU

>>54122549
Yeah the whole Clan Invasion sent that plan to crap basket, I mean the Invasion itself was just few years but the consequenses to the Inner Sphere lasted way longer than that.

VSD going all "fuck the Clans" in expense of his own nation, Comstar having a internal shitfit just because Myndo Waterly had to try his shitshow of taking over all of IS and all of the other stuff that happened in that Era.

>>54122897

See? Thats good writing. The beauty of history and things branching out in unexpected directions, events completelty chained by seemingly insignificant things by characters blooming out into monumental changes etc.

Too bad they can only throw out villain balls and idiot balls now just to keep the background noise of stupid wars and weightless events going. Who the fuck even cares at this point who gets to be the ilClan?

File: Used Sheet.png (95KB, 2044x1636px) Image search: [Google]

95KB, 2044x1636px

>>54121941
>having the modifiers right on the record sheet is super handy.

That option exists for sheets printed from Solaris Skunkwerks, but frankly a full sheet with internals and heat and a half-dozen charts on it is too visually complex for a kid. Hell, it gives adults problems, which is why the IntroBox record sheets are basically only the top half of a record sheet to begin with.

Also, teaching your kid is easier than at least 10-20% of the adults I had to run a Boot Camp for at GenCon. At least with a kid they'll listen if they're interested. Adults talk back, and it's often frowned upon to walk up to them after the game and confiscate their dessert if they persist in throwing dice across the table.

You do have to change the way you think if you play with a kid, though. For example, it might sound like a good challenge to give the kid a heavy Mech and you take a bug (Stinger or Wasp), but the bug's mobility will mean the kid misses most of his shots and that's frustrating. Slow lights, trooper mediums, and general-purpose low-end heavies and assaults (Quickdraw, Dragon, Zeus, Battlemaster) will be more rewarding for the other person.

>>54086010
Whats with that weird grey spot in FWL's colon

>>54123491
independent planets

>>54086010
lol, what if the DC invaded the FWL

File: Wars of the Republic.jpg (1MB, 1500x1967px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 1500x1967px

>>54123098
I care, tbqh

File: warhammer_by_discogangsta-dakq02o.jpg (862KB, 910x1157px) Image search: [Google]

862KB, 910x1157px

is there any optional rules that allow players damage internal structure before destroying all armor in a section? I'm not talking about rolling for criticals, though

>>54124635
There's equipment that can do that, like Tandem-Charge SRMs. But there's no official optional rule that does that IIRC.

>>54124635
Armor-Piercing weapons?

Why is MekHQ such a pile of buggy garbage?

>>54124989
>>54125111
Both those just cause cit rollls.

>>54125294
Do you really need to overcomplicate things? You might as well make extra sheets for each mech's area to include a certain number of armor points to each number of structure points, then determine which crit module gets hit if the armor on the area is destroyed and so on and so on. Or, I dunno, make it so that destroying a % of armor gives a % chance to hit structure when hitting an area. Good luck doing it cleanly with 2d6.

>>54125357
>>54125294 and >>54124635 are not the same posters

>>54125412
Alright. Still, round 1 HD hits are already dangerous, and now that guy suddenly wants CT to explode from 2 AC/2 shots. I'm fairly sure that's the mark of a player who plays without TacOps shenanigans.

>>54125442
>optional rules that allow players damage internal structure before destroying all armor in a section
>not talking about rolling for criticals

became

> that guy suddenly wants CT to explode from 2 AC/2 shots

you are somehow angry for something that didn't happen

>>54109441
Do you? If it sounds retarded, that's because FASA fractured the fucking IP, and Wizkids (followed by Topps) took what should be one license and split it between two companies.

Now you have PGI not interested in playing ball with the tabletop side, and the whole thing looks royally stupid-because it fucking is.

>>54125555
I'm not angry, I just think that doing structure damage before the armor is stripped is exactly like rolling for criticals (how else is structure damage going to be handled?). It just starts earlier. Imagine several cluster hit weapons hitting a light at the same time.

>>54125611
Yes, I do. There's these things called "contracts" that determine how things are determined in the business world. In these "contracts", they'll outline the details of payments of royalties and fees. The contract is between the owner of the IP (Topps) and the one licensing it (Microsoft, IWM, etc.).

Unless you've actually read the contract that states what the royalty schedule is, you need to kindly shut the fuck up.

>>54125611
the only reason people buy your clunky, complex video game is because people got into your clunky, complex board game.

>>54086010
Basically they are a high end visual arts team, the ones that set the trend. Thats how they get people to pay 2-5 hundred dollars on demo. And they are stuck in a hardware gulch, because we can't convince retailers to sell enough 4k graphics capable machine's to make it into the retailer market.

I know Alex is well liked and I like him too, but does anyone else really kind of hate the art direction Battletech has taken? I don't blame Alex, his designs when he posted here were better than what ended up getting used. Why are geometric shapes and curves so out of fashion?

I just want a modern game with the aesthetic of mechcommander 1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ETZpSv-l-A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEDp49GOXLA

>>54125890
So in order to get people to invest, they need to do a lot of research, and the people who do the math and the people who do the art are essentially different people who are interested in cross training their skills. Hardly anyone can do both the math required for new development and the art required to utilize the new effects.

>>54125907
I think the point is that the western aesthetic doesn't really lend itself well to Japanese anime. It looks and feels different.

There is need to get people to take what they are doing seriously, because their research is important. It may not seem like it today, but everything we learned in the 90's can be seen in applications today.

We generally can't trust this thing to most corporate or government entities, outside of Japan, Hong-Kong, and a few other financial syndicates who have a stake vested in the research. What you do will change the future of technology.

>>54125985
Yet is doesn't pay a DIME

>>54126002
They are taken advantage of your intellect and creativity. They convince you that what you do has no value so they don't have to pay you.

Its a pyramid scheme. Have someone else write your playbook for you cause they know you don't have the guts to call the shots yourself.

>>54126024
They can do this because they no there is no cut-off point for talent, because they do not recognize talent when they see it; they don't know what to look for. They can't tell a fan collaboration from a professional design.

There are people who know how the game works and people who don't. Battletech is not an easy game, I can only really figure out how to build meks and beat the single player video games.

But there are honestly some people who can't even do that, and they should not be on your roster.

Battletech is a game for people who want to challenge themselves, who want to take on a challenge and see if they can win. Its a game for people who are sick of being coddled by easy single player campaigns and getting BTFO in multiplayer by cheating bastards.

>>54126161
I swear to bob, if you want to learn hacking, you don't attend some CIA seminar or Defense department lecture, you find out what the latest game is, find out whose cheating, and figure how to use the script they used and who wrote it for them.

The hackers who build this software, they sit on it and do absolutely NOTHING with their hardware. Most of them don't even think to put a backdoor or tracking software in their scripts, because even a novice programmer understands how to read a script and tell if something is fishy.

Its big, clunky applications that people are scared of, not simple tools that do pretty much exactly what they say they do. The trick is learning how to use them, because the person who made them isn't going to hold your hand and try to explain it to you.

(Its hard enough getting documentation out of them, but hey, what do you want for free?)

>>54125687
Anon is saying that Topps *doesn't* own all of BattleTech's IP rights. FASA sold them off piecemeal back at the end of the last millennium.

>>54126249
That's never been disputed here.

>>54126241
90 percent of all encryption can be busted in a few hours, weeks or months, depending on how vocal it is and how much media attention it receives.

Hell, the most sophisticated decryption software I could find was built on exploiting of a hardware feature of modern graphics cards, the guy didn't even know how to use multi-threading he just knew how to program in a really old school programming language so it was superfast, lightweight and effecient.

I've known programmers that will do ANTHING to get out of writing a program in visual basic. We can't even get them to start using Visual Studio, with its beautiful front end API, modeled after the Eclipse IDE. People are still using garbage like Netbeans, which we have to carry due to compatibility, which advertises universal compatibility for 9 of the most common programming langauges, but only has support for 3, anything else and you've got install a beta plug-in manually, and who knows whether it will work?

>>54126261
see >>54125687 and >>54106698

>>54125907
Personally, I think the art direction of Battletech has stagnated heavily, the same with a lot of companies who switched to all digital art and never looked back. The character in those early pieces from Laubenstein and Geier just isn't there, and every piece of interior art is just too clean and on model. Also, the death of FMV means the possible cheese factor is lost. I dare anyone to say that the opening of MechCommander would have worked half as well if it was CG.

>>54126249
So what does Topps own?
The strategy video game currently in kickstarter?
The Multiplayer FPS shooter Mechwarrior Online?
Megamek and all its utilities?
The old school XP era Mech Commander franchise?
The board game? The Rulebooks? The Supplements?

>>54126380
Topps owns Classic Battletech's tabletop material, MechWarrior Dark Age, and the contents of the novels. Microsoft owns ALL digital rights, Iron Wind Metals owns the rights to produce miniatures based on the setting, and AFAIK, Roc owns the rights to release novels under the Battletech name. Welcome to FASA and "we need to pay our writers FAST."

>>54126380
>So what does Topps own?

Very Little!

>The strategy video game currently in kickstarter?

No. That's Harebrained Studios and Jordan Weisman's company

>The Multiplayer FPS shooter Mechwarrior Online?

No, that's PGI, who licenses it from Microsoft.

>Megamek and all its utilities?

No, that's a not-for-profit fan project.

>The old school XP era Mech Commander franchise?

No, that's Microsoft.

>The board game? The Rulebooks? The Supplements?

Yes.

>>54126380
Microsoft owns the electronic rights. IWM owns the miniature rights. Topps should own anything else, barring additional third parties I don't know about.

File: kleinBottle_anim.gif (997KB, 240x320px) Image search: [Google]

997KB, 240x320px

>>54126377
You need to show that your not just capable of processing simple geometries, but complex ones as well. You need to start studying those D30's and D36's and what not.

You can still give it that angular feel, but you are also going to have to demonstrate knowledge of texturing and texturing effects, lighting and shading effects, Zoological or Human Anatomy, plus whatever wierd ass shit like pic related they decide to teach you.

>>54126457
As far as I can tell, Disney owns the home video rights to the cartoon, since they bought Saban, which produced the show. I don't have much evidence to say one way or another, since CGL doesn't really talk about the show.

>>54126456
What does HBS own?

>>54126491
They bought that a long time ago. Somebody should check with them and see if they sold the property or put it on a shelf.

>>54126498
The material directly related to the new Kickstarted game, released under license from Topps, PGI and Microsoft.

>>54086010
>
So does Ironwind own or lease a Metal or Plastic Press? Do they have a 3-D printer for printing new designs? Do they hire sculptors and do casts? (Cause you might not need sculptors outside of cleaning models that come out of the printer)

>>54126512
Probably shelved it to gather dust - no profit in selling or using the BT cartoon.
>feelsbadman.jpg

Which brings us to the issue of the forums.

The question really is, should battletech go full digital? Should megamek be brought into the fold?

http://www.sarna.net/forums/

>>54126563
They're a metal casting company, not a prototyping company. They hire sculptors to make masters whether traditional or 3D printed. They also subcontract to produce lines for other mini companies. You'd be surprised how much non-battletech metal comes from them.

>Cause you might not need sculptors outside of cleaning models that come out of the printer
And who makes the 3D models? Sculptors, that's who.

>>54126646
Well, it could always be envisioned as a cartoon for adults.

File: pls_no.gif (914KB, 390x215px) Image search: [Google]

914KB, 390x215px

>>54126676

>Should megamek be brought into the fold?

What, and have CGL fuck that up too? They can't even run a website for fuckall, much less develop a java app.

>>54126687
Sorry, i have a tendancy to think of sculptors in an archaic sense. I would think the more prestigious title would be Graphic Designer or Programmer.

>>54126713
Graphic designer implies concept art and 2d painting. Programmer implies code. Digital sculptor does what it says on the tin.

>>54126676
MegaMek cannot be brought into the fold because Microsoft would then own it lock, stock and barrel. Heavy Metal Pro was released under license from Microsoft, and that was just design software.

>>54126729
3D Modeller is more common though.

>>54126740
Then it should just be a public licensing agreement.

So do you have any way of getting the models your programmers use to convert for use in the 3-d printer? Or does it do that already?

>>54126749
Used to be.
But since Zbrush and Mudbox highpoly stuff is usually referred to as sculpts.

The workflow is quite different, so it makes sense I guess.

>>54126785
A model is literally a list of coordinates. Any can be converted to print. There are certain tricks you need to account for with miniature production though, like scale, thickness of lines, mold compression and other things that someone who just makes something pretty in a picture does not.

Like in a very small mini at battletech scale, you want to make the panel lines several times larger than in the art and v-shaped along with putting sharp edges on raised panels to catch the brush for washing and highlighting. It's made with different concerns basically.

>>54126694
You know, one of those trendy art school projects. Trains up and coming animators.

>>54126883
NO MANGA

>>54126377

This is exactly how I feel and it really depresses me. Mechcommander had a really cool feeling to it, the new Battletech game looks exactly like Sins of a Solar Empire aesthetically. It's that generic digital art look. I don't know why they can't do something more creative and different? They had literal pilot camera feeds in MC, now there's just shitty generic fast-turnout card art.

>>54126912
Last thin I need is to get in another Philipeeno Knifefight with some boat woman over her son's intellectual properties.

>>54126785
Even though I've been following the thread I have no idea what you are asking.
>So do you have any way of getting the models your programmers use
Models used where? And programmers don't do art.
>to convert for use in the 3-d printer?
In theory you can print any 3d model provided it follows a certain set of rules. Closed geometry and keeping the material thickness in mind.
Realtime applications have different technical requirements than models used for printing though. So unless you got the highpoly source models to work with you can only print the lowpoly models, which in most cases lack the detail you may expect.
That said there is the possibility to convert any 3d model to a printable format provided you can extract the models from the software. If it is compressed or in closed archives that may be difficult though. Depends on how the game works.
There is a guide to extracting MWO models online somewhere though.
>Or does it do that already?
Does who does what?

>>54126920
Animation does feel a bit stiff, actually. But the artwork is fine.

>>54126945
Well, if and when we make the upgrade to 4k, you are going to be able to do some very interesting things with computer models, and the software quality of the images may surpass the printers print scale.

You may have to rely on the low poly models, especially if you start printing to scale.

>>54127004
I mean, hell, Games Workshop has a scale model, why shouldn't we? I don't think any mech is more iconic than the Atlas to the franchise as a whole.

>>54126945
Well, if you have access to the source files, it should be easy, but getting them to share those with you can be difficult.

Just ask them what format the models are in, and how to convert them.

>>54127057
>but getting them to share those with you can be difficult.
Actually impossible. The work files are company assets. I don't think any studio would willingy share them.

Pretty much unheard of.

>>54127004
>You may have to rely on the low poly models, especially if you start printing to scale.
You meant printing in actual scale, as in 1:1?

Sorry I'm not sure if you are serious or not.

You can always do something more detailed digitally than what you can print. That's by virtue of being a virtual model inside a computer that doesn't have to account for mechanical stress or material strength or any of those real world restrictions. Not even accounting for technical limitations of printers or printable materials.

If you mean print scale as in level of detail that is.
If you meant how large the pieces are you can print in one go then it's easy to cut a model down to manageable pieces digitally and assembly it IRL.

Maybe it's a joke that went over my head, I'm kind of confused by what you were saying.

>>54126954

It's really generic artwork, the whole "obvious brush strokes to make photoshop artwork look less digital" that paradox interactive and a ton of other companies use.

I guess I just like immersion in my Battletech. The new Mechwarrior game actually looks to be doing a really good job with all this, I just hope they change some of the models a bit so theyre a bit more distinct. PGI mechs are too greebly, the IS ones anyway.

>>54126350
You'll have to quote where I said that's disputed, because I think you're reading far too between the lines.

>>54126457
>IWM owns the miniature rights.
They license them from Topps, same as CGL. IWM doesn't own any part of BattleTech.

File: Battletechmap.png (399KB, 1742x1105px) Image search: [Google]

399KB, 1742x1105px

Hey /btg/ I'm a new GM looking to run a campaign for a bunch of people new to Battletech, and being fairly new to the setting myself (I've got some experience with the videogames, and have been playing AtB for about a month on my own), I figured I'd post here so you can tell my why my setting is shit and what I need to change.

Setting is an as of yet unchosen/made up planet in between Steiner and Davion at the dawn of the Fedcom Civil War. Old Duke/Ruler wanted to remain neutral during the conflict, but has just died and left his teen son as heir to the throne. Said heir has a pair of uncles with sizable land titles, one has ties with davion, one with steiner, and a lot of reasons to want the planet for themselves. there are also some minor nobles with smaller land grants who have their own seperate interests.

Planet was uninhabeted until sometime between the 3rd and 4th sucession war. Back when the Amaris Civil War kicked off, the world had been in the process of being terraformed, but the work was never completed. Over the centuries, however, the introduced plant and animal life evolved and adapted, creating a world with a thin but breathable atmosphere, and created enough greenhouse gasses to melt a large chunck of the ice caps and create an ocean. It became of interest to the great houses when a small Star-league era staging area was discovered, with equipment designed for terraforming, but guarded by battle mechs.

I wasn't sure about the terraforming at first, but I know it was done for Mars, so even if rare, I know the technology existed at some point.

Here's the initial map before I place settlements, go ahead and rip it appart /btg/

>>54128178
What sort of environmental conditions are we looking at, in terms of rules?

>>54128178
Oh and I should add, PCs are being mustered for jr, who was still in diapers while his uncles were seeking fame and glory during the clan invasion.

They brought some toys back with them, and maybe a bondsman or two.

>>54128238
Might require an oxygen mask at any notable elevation, and VTOLs/conventional aircraft may struggle a bit. But other than that, very earthlike.

New players, so trying to keep it simple for now. Might throw in some moonar shenanigans once I decide how many moons, what environment on said moons, and once my players are used to playing in "normal" conditions, but that's a bit down the road for now.

Been watching "The White Queen" (War of the Roses drama) for inspiration.

>>54128295
Well, if you find that you and your players are up to it, you could use the 'trace atmosphere' or 'thin atmosphere' conditions from page 54 of TacOps.

Also, this sounds like a rather cold planet, so you may want to consider that. Those rules are also in TacOps.

But with new players I wouldn't use environmental conditions until everyone is comfortable with just regular combat

>>54127438
Easy enough.

>The contract is between the owner of the IP (Topps) and the one licensing it (Microsoft, IWM, etc.).
Explicitly saying Topps licenses rights to Microsoft.

>Unless you know the licensing rights, you can't say that for sure.
Contesting how the other anon said the rights are distributed.

>Guarantee you they pay a percentage per sale or a flat fee.
Contesting the claim that Microsoft's video game profits don't get shared with Topps.

If these things *aren't* what you intended to communicate, then that's fine, turns out we're all on the same page. At least clarifying it helped >>54126380 out.

Do you have a credible Source?

>>54128691
Let me clarify, do any of you have a credible source?

Are these records held in private or public trust?

So are people just riling up the thread to cause a drinking game? Because I feel like that's what's going on.

File: drinking.gif (2MB, 290x150px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 290x150px

>>54128777

Jokes on you, Battletech is a drinking game anyways.

>>54128691

It's been known how the IP was divided up during the FASA era since back then. Asking for sources is like denying Porchbux.

The rule of thumb is this: Would it make sense for the rights to be held by the owners of BT, and are the rights in question anything but rule or source books? Then someone else owns it.

>>54128777
No, it's autism, same as every night. Don't know what you expected when someone mentioned IP, really.

>>54128178
Don't make it Steiner vs. Davion. Even the real Fedcom Civil War wasn't that way. You make it loyal to Katherine or loyal to Victor.

Second, the terraforming timeline doesn't work because even though there were a shit ton of terraformed worlds in the Star League era, they were all settled as they were being terraformed and only when the terraforming equipment died after the end of the Star League and started undoing itself was when those planets were largely abandoned or reduced to different modes of life. This was even the source of things like the water raids in the 3rd Succession War.

Nobody went and settled them after the fact. Nobody but the Taurians colonized shit in the late Succession Wars, they were abandoning places instead.

The way I would make it fit is as one of the worlds that we know exists as a failed terraformed world in the core world area where most of that went on, and just have it as one of the worlds that is settled but the population is so small that it doesn't make it on the Comstar charts.

So one of the many dying worlds of the Inner Sphere, but with some die hards hanging on and suddenly thrust into importance on the interstellar stage as an old Star League complex is found.

>>54128777
we should stream a live game of them drinking and playing Mexican battletech, and encourage people to drink along with them.

You can rotate people out if they get too drunk to play. It'd be a good handicap for the comstar team.

>>54128817
I'm not asking for primary sources, only secondary sources from a credible source. I only ask cause I'm new and I haven't been following.

>>54128777
Better that than the weird "young hackers today are too lazy" tirade upthread.

>>54128178
FWL vs. Draconic Combine!

Cause nothings more pointless than fighting an enemy with whom you do not share a border!

I know the solar system is technically a plane, but doesn't 3 dimensional positional matter occasionally?

>>54127206
lol, no, I meant to human scale!
ha, thats kinna funny1

>>54128857
Shouldn't be too hard to find remarks directly from one of FASA's founders/owners. Barring that, there might be something in old press releases, and if the official forums ever come back up, there's almost twenty years of informal comments from BattleTech's licensees (who have tried to purchase full control of the IP at various times).

>>54128903
or maybe to larger than human scale...
hmmmm

Maybe it doesn't have to be as big as a 1:1, but it could still be HuGe

>>54128727
Not him but it's publicly stated by FASA and Jordan that arcade game rights were sold to the Simulator people back in the early 90's (why they can still operate even though Microsoft owns all the computer rights since Mechwarrior 4 in 2000)

Miniature production rights were sold to IWM in 2000 when FASA closed up shop and the old Ral Partha employees wanted to stay in business so bought that and rebranded.

Wizkids (Jordan's new company he founded in 2000) kept the general BT rights and those passed to Topps when Wizkids was purchased back in 2008 or whenever that was.

Roc has distribution rights for paper novels I believe, but I can't remember if that's actual rights or an exclusive distribution contract. Doesn't matter much either way because they don't want to carry new novels so you're fucked. Catalyst still being able to write and distribute electronic novels as well as print paper short story compilations would seem to carry the second though.

File: Desiretoknowmore.gif (940KB, 627x502px) Image search: [Google]

940KB, 627x502px

>>54128838
Thanks anon, this is exactly the sort of feedback I was looking for.

(BTW where would I look for more info on water raids? with hydrogen being one of the most common elements in the universe, that seems odd to me)

>>54128888
Nice quads. As for your question, only if you're planning an intra-system jump or you're targeting a pirate jump point. Otherwise, a jumpship will go for the zenith or nadir coordinates.

>>54128966
Wait, so you can just jump into nullspace? Whoa. I hadn't thought about that. What if you built a colony there?

>>54128944
Water raids were basically the mission you were sent on in Fallout 1.

Find those other fuckers with fancy purification tech that still works, and steal their chips and shit. You would think fusion power would solve most water problems for people but by the late third war, it's no longer operational on a terraforming scale and tons of planets have supremely nasty natural water full of everything from alien viruses to heavy metals in the parts per hundred to just not having it at all.

Water is around even if it's just ice in the outer system. There's just no good way to move it or clean it on a scale for millions upon millions of people. This is a problem that continues even into the Dark Age. The Star League were the only guys who could really do that stuff on the crazy scales of full terraforming and hollowing secret warship bases out of moons and so on. Even the crazy Blakists could only kind of repair stuff that was failing, not construct anything new.

>>54129009

Built it on what?

>>54129009
>What if you built a colony there?

That's kinda what Recharge Stations are. And more than one shipyard is built at a Nadir or Zenith jump point. Less a colony and more a city, like Babylon 5 or something.

As a sidenote, can we make battletech royalty more like a mexican soap opera?

>>54129009
Well according to the in setting rumors book, if that can be believed, yes you can just jump "into" hyperspace, but it's apparently like the Warp having all of its collective PMS days at once, and only crazy or heavily augmented people can stomach the place for long. It would have to be all space stations.

>>54129038
No, thats still inside the solar system. I mean like lightyears away from the nearest star.

>>54129046
Sure, if you don't mind being in a place no one can find you when your jumpship inevitably breaks down, and you having only STL communications.

>>54129046
Nobody does that. One blown helium seal or failed hotcharge of your drive and you are totally fucked, especially when jumping isn't super exact in the first place.

What people do if they want to be totally alone is set up temporary staging areas on planets around uncolonized stars. This is a classic set up to a surprise invasion.

>>54129055
Well you lay down a foundation, starting with beacon, then slowly building a resupply station, regular shipments of materials coming and going..

>>54129071
I think you misunderstand me. I don't mean traveling along the galactic axis, i mean going straight up or down, or simply parking between the stars.

>>54129088
I do understand you. And the answer is still the same.

You greatly underestimate the utility of jumpsails in keeping needed supplies down.

Gaiz, I'm super depressed. I think China is going to get to Mars before we do.

>>54129074
For what purpose? BattleTech doesn't have artificial gravity, so it'd all be spinning colonies, and then we've just got the problem Gundam has with the Sides.

if i may be a retard for a moment: what if the reason there are no aliums in battletech is because the aliens brainwashed them into thinking that they were the only species that exists?

The aliens are just like, "Oh, let them have their fun! Its not like they are hurting anybody, anyway!"

>>54129145
Nah man. You know how in every space alien show, there's some mysterious race that got to space before everyone else and did all sorts of cool shit?

That's us in Battletech. Except we're more like villains out of an episode of Captain Planet when it comes to other world's ecosystems in the setting.

Does the battletech universe still engage in terraforming projects? Do they mine on planets with inhospitable environments? Do planets ever become uninhabital? Do superstucture projects ever fail?

>>54129187
that would make sense, if all life was the same, chemically.

>>54128944
Well it depends on the planet and if the water in there is actually usable by human consumption. People went and colonised alot of places that where halfway livable before and during Star League and needed support to stay afloat. When Star League collapsed and Succession Wars kicked off, these places got screwed and alot of them where abandoned, those that survived had some valuable thing they produced, usually mining ores but where lacking in the food and water.

Not getting any support from their overlords who where busy nuking each other to stone age, these planetary rulers probably went around their neighbourhood and tried to get support from nearby planets, hiring mercs when that was refused and so forth.

>>54129187
and I have never seen anyone propose that DNA was not the only chemical basis for life. Still, even with DNA, there are probably a lot of chemical compositions that have not been tried, a lot of life that has not been discovered or brought into being.

Different environments could lead to radically different biologies. So long as it obeys the carbon cycle, life still has a chance to break out of the mold.

>>54129202
>still engage in terraforming projects
Blakists repaired a number of failing Star League terraforming machines on various worlds. It's one reason they were so effective in expanding the Protectorate before the war.

>Do they mine on planets with inhospitable environments?
Most planets are some kind of inhospitable. True garden worlds without some kind of natural disaster level local creatures are maybe a third of settled space.

>Do planets ever become uninhabital?
Yes, see the one that got thrown out of orbit and all the poor dissident fucks Stone sent there.

>Do superstucture projects ever fail?
Yes. See how Venus went from almost a second earth back to a sulphurous hellhole after the global mirror system got wrecked

40k is a universe that makes someone who has a big ego feel small. Battletech is place that makes kids with small ego's feel big.

>>54129267
See, you guys are just as smart as the guys who made Eclipse Phase! You just don't have their trendy liberal arts background!

>>54129202
See
>>54128838
Terraforming tech was lost with the star league.

Pretty sure mining in inhospitable places was a plot point in several of the videogames.

It makes sense in-universe, especially if it's on another planet in the same system as an inhabited one. Why dedicate a jumpship to hauling resources when a couple of dropships can just fly out to a nearby uninhabitable rock that has (thing) in abundance?

>>54129242
They make a point that tons of planetary ecosystems have stuff that doesn't conform to earth taxa in any way. People just tend to make comparisons to what it looks like.

But standard colonization in Battletech is basically dumping a bunch of genetically tailored Terran stuff on a world and wiping out anything local that gets in the way.

File: 1498844745320.jpg (227KB, 680x794px) Image search: [Google]

227KB, 680x794px

>>54129281

>>54129281

Maybe if you do it wrong. Sure, your players are lumbering about in massive machines of war, but they're still mortal. They will bleed, like anyone else.