BATTLETECH GENERAL

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>>45062956
The Albatross pilot says a desperate prayer as he pulls the trigger, and is answered.

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>>45063054
A temporary truce is called to deal with the victor from the north.

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>>45063108
And the Albatross pilot holds up his end of the bargain in remarkably prompt fashion.

Don't run around with open side torsos, kids

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And lo, it was the year of 2520, and the Terran Hegemony looked at the emerging AeroSpace Fighters and thought "These things might be worth using." And thus the words "Fuck it, we have the money" were spoken. And 12 was the sacred number, and so 12 Block I Jupiters were built, that nearly seven thousand ASFs might be shoved up the asses of the Great Houses if they got cocky. And the Terran Hegemony looked upon what they had wrought, and saw that it was good.

And it was day, and it was night, and before anyone knew it it was the year of 2600.

And the Terran Hegemony again looked upon what they had wrought, and thought "It's still OK, I guess, but it could be better." And again the words "Fuck it, we have the money" were spoken. And 12 was the sacred number, and another 132 Block II Jupiters were built, and the original 12 were re-fitted, that there might be 12 times 12 Jupiters and over 18,000 ASFs might be rammed up their neighbours assholes if they got cocky. And the Terran Hegemony looked upon what they had wrought, and saw that it was good.

And it was day, and it was night, and then someone looked at a clock and noticed it was 2650.

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>>45063125
Expecting betrayal after becoming the biggest, meanest thing left on the field, our heroic Albatross pilot opens fire at the Hunchback a split second after an AC20 round roars past.

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>>45063183

And they looked upon what they had wrought, and saw that now it might be better, like with A/C-20s and AMSes and DHS and shit. And a third time, the words "Fuck it, we have the money" were spoken. And lo, all of the Block II Jupiters were recalled and made into Block III Jupiters. And the Terran Hegemony looked upon what they had wrought, and saw that it was good.

And then it was day, and then it was night, and then holy shit it was 2750 already. And the Terran Hegemony looked upon what they had wrought, and saw that it could be better. And there were arguments about NAC/30s, and Naval Gauss Rifles, and implications that recalcitrant admirals were like unto that because their mothers had mated with goats. And then someone said "Why are we arguing about refitting this piece of shit a fourth time? Recall the fleet, scrap them, and build something even bigger and better." And lo, the words "Fuck it, we have the money" were spoken, and the Mercury-Class was created.

And the Terran Hegemony looked at what they had wrought, and saw that it was good.

>>45063187
Pff, you opened fire first, ya filthy dog.

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>>45063187
And then he puts the firestarter down for good measure, leaving a crippled hunchback and some BA. Can he finish them off before BATTLETECH! kills him?

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>>45063233
He maneuvers for a good shot on the BA hounding him, and...whiffs completely.

>>45063212
We totally reject these absurd claims!

>>45063183
You've only got the Block II repeated twice on that one.

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>>45063269
Our heroic pilot backs up and wipes out one squad of impertinent infantry...

>>45063334
>slaughtering infantry
>heroic

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McKenna article.

GF, after this thread dies I'll make a sacrificial account on the OFs and e-mail you the raw text files. I aint gonna BBcode that shit for italics though.

>>45063373

Hey, it's the FWL. That's more success than they've enjoyed since 3057.

Let them have their moment.

>>45063378
it's missing a bit from the top, m8

>>45063373
>He's never had his pilots clawed out of their mechs and shot like dogs.
Sure is civilized warfare over there.

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>>45063334
He skirts around the wounded Hunchback and picks off its AC20 ammo bin.

The enemy BA keeps chewing away with their recoilless rifles, hoping to take down the behemoth. The Albatross is pretty battered, so they just might do it...

meanwhile, the hunchback pilot ejects into a forest fire

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>>45063403

Arsebiscuits. Should be fixed now.

>>45063378
Sounds good, mate. I can deal with formatting on my end. Who should I credit?

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>needs an 8+ to avoid damage

>>45063373
thatsthejoke.png

although the little bastards are putting up a fight

>>45063450

An anonymous contributor.

I'll do a bit up about why I chose the Aegis, Conqueror, and McKenna for articles when I send them too, it'll add a bit more context.

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>>45063468
The last BA squad finally bites teh dust.

*HAPPY PURPLE BURD NOISES*

>>45063476
You know what, just email me the stuff when you're ready. Be a bit easier this way.

>>45063516
GG. At least I managed to take down two of those damn burds.

>>45063539
Can you see who had what kills in the end?

Well fought. Looking forward to doing it again.

>>45063550
I had the Avatar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mG3BvkT6YQ

>>45063550
Should be in the final "Survivors" screen.

>>45063601
Yeah but the server closed before I could cap it.

>>45063613
Should be able to load the game if you were doing local autosaves. Well paranoid autosaves anyway.

>>45063613
Can you open the gamelog.html file in the logs folder? It's working on my end so I can screencap it tomorrow if need be.

>>45063635
Huh, didn't know that was a thing.

Survivors are:
Albatross ALB-3U (Nightgaun7)
Pilot : Ledia Pula [3/5]
Kills : 5

Graveyard contains:
Avatar AV1-OA (Tredegar)
Destroyed by Po Heavy Tank #4 (Karpinsky)

Huron Warrior HUR-WO-RX4 (GreekFire)
Destroyed by pilot error.

Po Heavy Tank (Standard) #4 (Karpinsky)
Kills : 1
Destroyed by Firestarter FS9-OB (Tredegar)

Albatross ALB-3U #3 (Nightgaun7)
Destroyed by Orion ON1-MC (GreekFire)

Orion ON1-MC (GreekFire)
Kills : 1
Destroyed by Albatross ALB-3U #2 (Nightgaun7)

Albatross ALB-3U #2 (Nightgaun7)
Kills : 1
Destroyed by Centurion CN11-OC (GreekFire)

Po Heavy Tank (Standard) #7 (Karpinsky)
Destroyed by Firestarter FS9-OB (Tredegar)

Centurion CN11-OC (GreekFire)
Kills : 1
Destroyed by pilot error.

Po Heavy Tank (Standard) #5 (Karpinsky)
Destroyed by IS Standard Battle Armor [LRR] #2 (Tredegar)

Black Hawk-KU BHKU-OE (Tredegar)
Kills : 2
Destroyed by Albatross ALB-3U (Nightgaun7)

Myrmidon Medium Tank (Standard) (Tredegar)
Kills : 1
Destroyed by Albatross ALB-3U (Nightgaun7)

Firestarter FS9-OB (Tredegar)
Kills : 2
Destroyed by Albatross ALB-3U (Nightgaun7)

IS Standard Battle Armor [LRR] #2 (Tredegar)
Kills : 1
Destroyed by Albatross ALB-3U (Nightgaun7)

Hunchback HBK-5H (GreekFire)
Pilot ejected.

IS Standard Battle Armor [LRR] (Tredegar)
Kills : 1
Destroyed by Albatross ALB-3U (Nightgaun7)

Po Heavy Tank (Standard) #2 (Karpinsky)
Destroyed by pilot error.

Po Heavy Tank (Standard) #3 (Karpinsky)
Destroyed by Black Hawk-KU BHKU-OE (Tredegar)

Po Heavy Tank (Standard) (Karpinsky)
Destroyed by Myrmidon Medium Tank (Standard) (Tredegar)

Po Heavy Tank (Standard) #8 (Karpinsky)
Destroyed by Black Hawk-KU BHKU-OE (Tredegar)

Po Heavy Tank (Standard) #6 (Karpinsky)
Destroyed by IS Standard Battle Armor [LRR] (Tredegar)

>>45063762
>Albatross ALB-3U (Nightgaun7)
>Pilot : Ledia Pula [3/5]
>Kills : 5

And they say it isn't a solid heavy

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>>45063762
>Albatross ALB-3U (Nightgaun7)
>Pilot : Ledia Pula [3/5]
>Kills : 5

SOLID HEAVY

>>45063762
So out of 21 units, those Albatrosses killed 10 of them.

B A S E D
A
S
E
D

>>45064012
>those Albatrosses killed 10 of them.
Might want to recount, the albas killed 6.

>>45064170
They killed the Huron Warrior, the Centurion, and the Hunchback. Unfortunately MM lists them as destroyed for other reasons, but when enemy fire makes your pilot fall over and kill himself, or you eject because you've been entirely crippled, I still count it as a kill for the mechs that shot you.

>>45064198
What's particularly odd is that the Huron Warrior took 4 engine hits before falling over and killing itself, and it still didn't go to the Albatross

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>>45063328

Block I a shit, Block II forever.

We BSG now.

>>45063539

Kek, application to the forum rejected because they didn't like the look of my e-mail address. Do you have a throw-away address you're willing to share here?

So Campaign Companion... when?

so, since the last thread was remarkably mature at talking WarShips and AUs
so, let's git ideas as for an AU where WarShips are common enough to be common in merc hands without dragooning going on, but also without messing with the setting *too* much

>>45065245

Eh, I'm the guy writing the WarShip articles, and as much as I love them the setting really breaks down if any House has more than about 15-20 of them. That's about the cut-off point where they exist in numbers small enough to still have the gee gosh wow factor without being numerous enough to be able to stop enemy advances cold or take a trip through uninhabited systems and hold a nation's capital world hostage.

For WarShips to be common enough that major powers don't object to mercs having them everyone needs to be slinging around late SLN numbers of hulls, but ny that stage the setting is completely broken. Ground combat is pointless since WarShips exist in numbers large enough to completely interdict planets and what matters isn't fighting on the ground but fighting in space. Whoever wins the space battle will win control of the ground as a consequence of that.

The's really only four ways I can see around that.

1: It's not a real WarShip, it's an Aquila or Sylvester, i.e. a glorified cargo hauler.

2: They're not real mercs, they're House Regulars in all but name (Federated Freemen, Lexington Combat Group, Kell Hounds, etc).

3: They're pretend mercs that their employer will cut loose and deny after they do something important like wreck an entire planet. Shocking.

4. It's a ploy, give the mercs a WarShip and charge them out the ass for repairs and maintenance to company store them.

None of this is to say that having lots of WarShips in an AU is badwrong fun or anything. It's just that BT is fundamentally a game about ground conflicts, and more specifically than that about 'Mechs fighting on the ground. WarShips fuck with that paradigm too much if you have them in large numbers, and even if I'm going AU I'd prefer an environment where it's about the 'Mechs, since that's what drew me into BT in the first place.

Is the Jinggau any good? I want to play the JN-G7L variant but want to make sure it's viable.

>>45065860

Two plasma rifles and 6 MLs on a 5/8/5 platform with near-max armour?

Hard to go wrong with that. I'd probably prefer to use the -G8A for headcapping potential, but it's not as though the -G7L is some shitbucket design.

The plasma rifles do make it a bit better against vees, infantry, and BA than it is against 'Mechs.

>>45065910
>The plasma rifles do make it a bit better against vees, infantry, and BA than it is against 'Mechs.

They still throw solid ten points of damage and make them toasty.

>>45064506
Da fuck, I thought I put it in my last post. When did "email" turn into "options"?
[email protected]

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You asked for it. Some copy mistakes but good enough. I present the ALB-1 Albatross Omni

>>45064404
>We BSG now.


I don't believe any of these have the tonnage of the ship?

>>45065245
>>45065516
The simple answer is if you want warships without the knock-on effects buggering the setting over a barrel, anti-warship planetery defenses must be common and effective, but only against warships; dropships have to be able to waltz on by just fine

>>45065516
>It's just that BT is fundamentally a game about ground conflicts, and more specifically than that about 'Mechs fighting on the ground. WarShips fuck with that paradigm too much if you have them in large numbers
>I have zero imagination or ability to analyze change

ok

>>45067331
Hard talk from someone who's begging others to be imaginative for him.

>>45067426
I'm not the guy who was asking for more warships, I'm just a guy who thinks "warships wreck the setting!" is only spouted by dummies.

>>45067675
Haha sure, hardtalker.

Speaking of warships...

NEA do you have any interest in Age of Sail or are you only into the predreadnoughts and such?

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>>45067727

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>>45067731
Pre-dreadnoughts are pretty sexy and difficult to resist.

>>45063516
>>45063762

A very enjoyable read. Thank you.

>>45067764
I like 'em, but they ain't no Tonnant at the Nile or nothin'

>>45067823
It got a bit less creative towards the end, I'm afraid, but glad you liked it.

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>>45067858
I was always more a fan of frigates and smaller vessels than SotL. Though Tonnant is a historical gem.

>>45067945
>>45067858
>After having lost both legs and an arm, he continued to command from a bucket filled with wheat, until he died.
>His last order was allegedly to nail the flag of the Tonnant to her mizzen-mast and never to surrender the ship.

Holy shit

>>45068016
That's how you fought a battle back then.

>>45068057

Only if one was a proper gentleman, my good anon.

>>45068400
>It was a few threads back, but I'm the one who pointed out that the late Star League never had to fight on the ground if they didn't want to.

And as pointed out in response, this is only an issue if the SL actually has all the ships. If they have enough to beat any two Houses, they're still the big boss of the setting but no longer untouchable, for example. Or just give them a big fleet with good tech but not enough to be the interstellar policeman without cooperation from the other states. Hell, have their main advantage be short interior lines.

Frankly, you bringing this up again is proof of what >>45067331 said. You're incapable of imagining anything different from the BT universe and history as it currently exists, when the whole premise of the discussion is a universe in which there are a lot more warships.

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>>45068421
Too right m8.

>>45068457
that drawing has it rigged incorrectly

stop triggering me shitlord

>>45066760

Oops. Jupiters are 1.25 mt. Mercurys are 2.5 mt.

>>45067331
>>45067675

In low numbers they don't wreck the setting. In large numbers they do.

It was a few threads back, but I'm the one who pointed out that the late Star League never had to fight on the ground if they didn't want to. 280 McKennas, 40 Texases, 70 Aegis, 400 Sovetskii Soyuz... and those are the classes we have hard numbers for There are unspecified hundreds of Congress, Black Lion, and Lola IIIs. The Houses in 2765? A total of 228. The Periphery? Another 338 all told. None of the House or Periphery WarShips could easily beat anything the SLN had over about 700kt.

Shit, on the McKennas alone the SLN can annihilate all the other navies. They are *that* good. You know what happens then? The SLN has literally at least another thousand ships. Any planet they want can be interdicted.

Enemy troops can't leave their hidden base, they'll be wiped out by orbital artillery in the open. They can't try to get off-planet, the WarShips will kill their DropShips.

Even Northwind Highlander tricks will not work against a worl with 2-3 WarShips around it, and the SLN can do that to at least 300 planets easily. The enemy can't reinforce their ground forces because anything they try to send will be gunned down by the WarShips. And then the WSes starve or bombard the world into submission, SL forces never even need to get their boots muddy.

There's no way around it, that's just what happens. >>45066926 is a potential fix, but involves creating entirely new rules because the planetary defence systems we've seen short of the Reagan and Clan SDSes are flat-out unable to handle WSes in real numbers.

BT is all about steamy 'Mech-on-'Mech action. If there are enough WSes, and don't radically alter some other part of the setting, you can't have that.

>>45068482
see >>45068450

>>45068450

>And as pointed out in response, this is only an issue if the SL actually has all the ships.

Which they did. In earlier periods they had enough of a relative advantage over everyone else that the end result was the same even if their total fleet size was smaller.

>You're incapable of imagining anything different from the BT universe and history as it currently exists, when the whole premise of the discussion is a universe in which there are a lot more warships.

No, the analysis was about what you get with large numbers of ships, not just about the SLN.

With large fleets all combat boils down to the space game. Whoever sends more WarShips to a given planet will win it. Ground combat is irrelevant if one side has orbital superiority.

Their ground forces, if they can be bothered to send any, get orbital support fire and the enemy are wiped out the moment they're spotted (from orbit, using you satellite grid that you can set up at your own leisure and which the enemy can do literally nothing about). In the BT fluff, *DropShips* have good enough sensors to detect fusion reactors in a low-power state, never mind what a WarShip and sat grid can accomplish.

If you ignore the problem or radically alter the setting like with >>45066926, yes it does go away. That illustrates the issue. As do the 1st and 2nd Succession Wars, when everyone was going all-out to kill off each other's WarShips to prevent the outcome I've been describing all along.

Just saying "there are a lot of WarShips! A LOT!" isn't a real answer.

>>45068606
>Which they did.

Nigga you have got to be fucking kidding me. He says you're stuck on this one era of history, and your response is effectively "Yeah, I sure am!"

Not even in this argument but damn, son. Take your head out of your ass.

>>45068665
Good luck.

>>45063449
McKennas are vulnerable to bum rushes.
For a quick and dirty test try a Mjolnir in a 1 vs1 match. If the Mjolnir can be held at range, no problem. If the Mjolnir points its nose forward and charges you have a problem. The McKenna has to generate multiple CIC or sensor crits by 25 hexes or it is going to get mauled. Dead McKennas happen 2 out of 3 times.
Okay, Mjolnirs are very specific and this doesn't mention support units, but the basic principle remains the same. OTOH a pair of Tharkads or Atreus should bring the support, and have the firepower to do the job.

>>45068665

The SL and SWs are eras where everyone had a lot of WarShips. If that isn't relevant to the discussion I don't know what is.

As long as WarShips exist in significant numbers, whether you're looking at those specific eras or just saying "everyone has, like, a hundred of them or some shit" what I've described is the end result unless something else major is also changed.

>>45068735

>ships from the 2600s are vulnerable to ships from the 3060s that uses most of its mass for weapons, armour, and guns, unlike the other ships of a McKenna's era

... yeees?

For the rest, no, not really. A McKenna can bracket the shit out of a Tharkad or Atreus. The Tharkad will take Threshold crits from Extreme-C range on all arcs even when the McKenna is going all-out with Bracketing. The Atreus is getting Thresholds on Bracketing to -2.

Neither have the speed to force a NAC battle either, they're both 3/5 like the McKenna. They also bring less fighters and can't make up the deficiency with Carrier DSes.

Bracketing is really, really significant now. The McKenna is basically built for it and the House navies of the era can't do it at all. A Fleet action between a McKenna and an Aegis or Black Lion against any two House ships of the era is a hilarious mismatch.

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>tfw you're the only Andurien fan around here
>tfw the Duchy rose again like you knew it would
Yay for secession.

>>45068976
Assuming the Free Worlds League didn't dissolve, would it ever be worth it to restore a provincial BattleMech brigade to Andurien?
I can't help but think of how the Lyrans let Skye keep their brigade of Rangers, and subsequently said Rangers attempted to back secession at literally every opportunity.

What's the best (or most playable) edition of Battletech RPG?

I never heard it mentioned anywhere, and was wondering if it's worth checking out.

>>45069103

Easiest to understand and use and probably best related to the fluff of the time is MechWarrior Second Edition. It's in the OP mediafire archives.

3rd Edition/Classic BattleTech RPG take an overly granular approach to things that I'm not a fan of, have complicated character generation that slows you down from getting into the game, and use D10 for action resolution which means there are additional conversion rules if you want to use BT mechanics, which to my mind is a thing that should never have happened.

A Time Of War is the current rule set and people who've gotten past the horrible layout and chargen say it's actually pretty good. I've never made it past the horrible layout and needlessly complex chargen though, so my opinion of it is a bit different :P

>>45068897
I believe I said "a pair of Tharkads or Atreus".

The McKenna's extra armor alone rules out any historic cruiser from being able to kill a McKenna by itself. OTOH quite a few have the firepower closer in, they just won't last that long against the armor. Two cruisers are a different story.

It is up to how the McKenna chooses to maintain the range. If it goes 90 degrees on, you get 4 turns. Start a stern chase it is anyone's guess. Who is willing to use overthrust? Who has guns with the reach? The McKenna may be bracketing but as the lead ship it is giving away a -2 to-hit. Is the McKenna in a tactical position where running is possible?

Bracketing IS significant. But it is not the be all and end all. The reduction in firepower makes it very dependent upon the enemy holding the range. The McKenna/Mjolnir is a convenient example within the limitations of their masses and vintages. Another example is the Davion II/Lola III.
Unfortunately the available canon ships don't allow for a more balanced example. Perhaps two identical ships? But that doesn't allow for the weight savings in say 2 NAC30s vs 3 NAC20s.

>>45069103
1e is like a crappier version of 2e. There's no real reason to play it over any other edition I can think of.

2e is fairly rules light; if you like a more barebones, old school RPG experience it's fine. Really good for making quick and dirty backgrounds for wargame campaign pilots, but still serviceable as a standalone RPG itself. A lot of the character options available in the Field Manual books are really unbalanced; in fact in general the math behind the mechanics makes for some very obvious min-max issues.

3E is alternately loved and scorned for its lifepath character creation system with random events that can either fuck your character, give them something awesome, or leave them generally boringly average. It uses a 2d10 based system instead of 2d6 like most everything else in BT, which adds a minor layer of conversion when wanting to use pilot characters in the wargame. Otherwise it's quite rich in content and options, and I think it works great as a standalone scifi RPG.

4E (A Time of War) is unjustly maligned for its admittedly obtuse character creation system; it is stupid, but it's not as impossible as the autists who are capable of memorizing the wargame's mountains of tables make it out be. Something of a middle-ground between 3E's rich character-option roleplaying experience and 2E's simple wargame crossover.

>>45069181
>>45069252
How much of AToWs chargen is ridiculous?
I generally assume when that's mentioned people mean the life path stuff, but the rules also mention you can just skip it and do straight points buy even for PCs. Or are other parts of it a mess too?

>>45069378
In my experience, it's really frustrating the first couple of times you try chargen, just keeping track of all the XP and trying to make it fit into what you ultimately want your character to be, but try practicing with a couple of test characters and you should be able to grasp it pretty quickly. Alternatively, you do have the option to points-build, which simplifies the process a bit. I think it's biggest flaw is that it's so time consuming, which bothers me since I'm used to setting up a character within 15 to 20 minutes.

>>45069252
>>45069181

Thanks guys.

I think I'm going to give 2E a quick skim, sounds like my type of game.

How unbalanced is the core book alone?

>>45069378
AToW's chargen's biggest problem is that it uses huge numbers of points for lots of little things, and then those points all get converted at different rates to find your final values for skills/attributes/whatever. And like >>45069181
said the poor layout makes reading and copying them all down an even bigger chore.

So in AToW you're dealing with thousands of points spread out in meaningful values of multiples of tens or hundreds, and maybe in total you get close to a hundred different individual pluses and minuses that you have to hack out.

3E was not as bad; 50 build points for attributes and advantages at a 1:1 ratio, and skills in a range of maybe 1 to 20 points or so, with a less-than-intuitive conversion ratio to actual skill levels.

2E was like 20-30 points at 1:1 for attributes, maybe at most 4 points worth of traits/advantages, and "You get X number of skills at rank 1, Y skills at rank 2, and Z skills at rank 3"

AToW is probably not as bad as GURPS or Shadowrun point buys in terms of detail and sheer number of options, but it makes up for it in tediousness.

>>45069477
>How unbalanced is the core book alone?
High attributes are generally going to be way more valuable than skills, since your target numbers are based on a combination of both. Just keep in mind the interplay of the two and how they apply to resolution mechanics.

It's also probably more of a problem when just making generic pilots for the wargame; you can minmax your piloting and gunnery skills really easy and ignore everything else and not suffer many consequences. It could be less of an issue for more broad-focused and generalist non-pilot characters.

>>45069227

I try not to compare ships from different design eras too much outside of pure who has what and how can they win with it style analysis, which is necessarily not complete because you can always get an unexpected result due to dice rolls or differences in player experience.

The SLN and Clan ships from TR 3057 are put together ass-backwards, with the design system having followed most of them being given stats. The new York, Fredesa, and Nightlord have to fit that asthetic.

They have utterly absurd amounts of cargo to soak up the mass that logically should be going to armour and, if nothing else, AMS batteries and more heat sinks so they can use every arc all the time.

The IS ships (and Conqueror and Leviathan II) from TRs 3057 and 3067 are built with the construction rules in mind rather than needing to backfill stats.

Then you get the non-Hegemony fleets of the 2400-2750 where some designs are competitive or at least interesting purely from a stats perspective but are neutered in actuality because fluff mandates that whatever the THN/SLN had at the time was better, whether that's represented directly by the stat lines or by less tangible factors like Bracketing.

With luck two Atreuses might take a McKenna, especially if they're bringing carrier DSes. Tharkads you probably need 3 with Carriers, 4 or more without.

OTOH, the FWLN has 20 Atreuses and the LCN has 11 Tharkads. Killing 14 or so McKennas is a start, but then there's 266 more and the rest of the SLN to worry about. McKennas alone exist in numbers enough to gank everything else in the end. Especially with the shitty corvettes and old designs bulking out everyone else's fleets.

>>45069573
>>45069477

MW 2nd Edition does kind of assume you'll be playing a combat-oriented game. It's not that hard to build characters who start the game with abilities roughly on par with legendary characters from the fluff at the height of their (long) careers. There also aren't that many non-combat skills or ways for non-combat PCs to contribute, except maybe technicians.

MW3rd Ed/CBT RPG/ATOW go full retard in the other direction.

Either way has its plus points, but I don't think it's too unreasonable to assume that groups interested in playing the BattleTech RPG are going to really want to do some oWoD Vampire political RP shit, they probably wanna climb into their 'Mechs and blow shit up.

>>45069588
Go fap to the Star League somewhere else, Al

>>45065245
shrink warships until they don't break the setting, and make the big bruisers too slow to intercept blockade runners.

>>45067331
but artillery is the devil, anon
even more the devil than javascript

>>45068606
>>45068897
Aerospace superiority is a precursor to victory even without warships. Warships do not majorly change that.
Major change from Star League: one faction's fleet doesn't hugely outnumber everybody else.
Major change from Fall of Star League: it's no longer normal to bomb and burn valuable targets instead of trying to capture them.

Also, it's a bit weird that you think a world which earns the attention of a warship won't have anti-satellite missiles hidden amongst its own satellites and orbital debris.

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If Star Adder were to become the Il Clan, how would they go about doing it? Would it be a straight push through the Bear butthole, or something more subtle?

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>>45069588

This is why NEAerotech needs to be a thing, with quickness. Because that's a version of the game that makes sense and is fun, rather than the red headed stepchild of Battletech that CGL gives us.

>>45069728

>Aerospace superiority is a precursor to victory even without warships. Warships do not majorly change that.

They make it a lot easier to attain and a lot harder to challenge though. So, so much easier to attain and so, so much harder to challenge.

I don't think the extent to which is readily apparent to anyone who plays extensively with WarShips, really. I'm not trying to say the other side are retards, just that the fluff really hasn't explored what WSes are capable of because the focus has always been on ground combat. Once you see what WarShips can do to other combat vessels and what that means for the much weaker transport assets of BT you start to really notice how much handwaving is going on to get forces on the ground and stop WSes from being a decisive factor.

You can do the same hand-waving in a setting where WSes are more numerous, but to me that seems to be missing the point of having more WSes in the first place. ISTM you'd have more WSes if you wanted a stronger focus on space battles?

>Also, it's a bit weird that you think a world which earns the attention of a warship won't have anti-satellite missiles hidden amongst its own satellites and orbital debris.

Combat sats and stations are notably thin on the ground in canon. They could be there, but again any force with orbital superiority by definition has the time and assets to conduct sweeps.

A smart fleet commander is going to kill any existing satellites as a matter of course when setting up in orbit just to fuck with enemy detection and communication capabilities any way. Not like you can't replace them later with your own com sats and can't route planetary comms via your fleet, after all.

>>45069832

>If Star Adder were to become the Il Clan, how would they go about doing it?

When they were last seen they were doing a reasonable job of it. The Wars of Reaving were a setback, but not insurmountably so.

They've got a yes-man Clan in the Cloud Cobras and are strong enough to boss the remaining Clans around. Assuming nothing went wrong for them (ie, assuming they stopped being Star Adders) and that there were no major Society flare-ups in the Homeworlds they'll have had 90 years to build up and lord it over the other Homeworlders.

What they have is anyone's guess. Maybe squadrons based on Leviathan Primes with newly-built Conqueror escorts. Maybe not. If they do have the WSes they'll have to use them on the Bears.

First they would gather intel. Then they would try and wait for the Falcons and Bears to be distracted. The Horses aren't as strong. If they time it so that they attack in 3155ish when the Falcons are going CAW CAW over how badly they've reamed the Lyrans and the Bears are probably fucking the Dracs, they could blitz the rear of the Clan OZs and secure a lot of manufacturing sites. If the Adders are content to wait, they can erode the other Clans over time in successive waves.

If they want to do it all at once, I guess we see who has more fiat on their side in a Clan Sensible Snake vs Ghost Bear + RotS deathmatch.

My money in any case is the Bears just no-selling any Adder invasion right from the start.

>>45069832
>Adders beating Bears
I wish I lived in your world.

>>45069979

>ie, assuming they stopped being Star Adders

ie, assuming they never stopped being Star Adders, I mean.

>>45069840
Did anyone make a pdf of NEA's recommendations for each WarShip class?

Yeah. Been working on an AU with a 3069 conflict between FWL and Cappies (No Jihad) and well.


Without an idiot ball, the FWL can basically abuse the fact they have more Warships then the Lyrans, FedSuns and Cappies combined and basically walk right over the other side.

>>45070076
Shit, the FWLM spent two centuries walking right over the CCAF. WarShips just expedite the process.

Tried one with FWLM vs LAAF?

>>45070112

No. As it was... the Capellan War as I have it was pretty much over before it started. Word of Blake manipulated everyone like hand puppets. Their might not be a Jihad... but the Word of Blake are still the heavy. Its probably too much to go into here DESU. (First major divergences occur in the 3050s).

>>45069979
There are four homeworld clans left. By the end of the Reaving, the Adders came out the strongest and the Cobras second strongest. The Coyotes and Lions were both severely diminished touman-wise. It is not unreasonable to think that they have grown strong again in the intervening decades, but that is not what matters most. What matters most is how the Adders have maintained dominance. Have they kept the other three clans under their thumb? Have they built a working alliance, as they are wont to do? This will be the deciding factor in how the homeworlders will interact with the Inner Sphere.

>>45070076

Not just more WarShips, but Carrier combat groups.

200 ASF without looking at additional Assault DropShip or WarShip support is good for about four enemy cruisers. Factor in their Aegis (not sure if they've re-activated one of the 30 the Houses got way back when or if it's the SL upgrade version) and Black Lion and they're 100% bullshit since even if their Zechs, Eagles, and Agamemnons are bad objectively nobody has the numbers or design quality for that to really matter.

In one sense it's a shame the Jihad happened. But if the FWLN is used as it logically should have been the authors made the FWL almost as powerful compared to everyone else as the FedCom was in the 3050s, and that's gonna have knock-on effects in a lot of different ways. Good if you're a PURPLE BURD fan, but probably not the best for the balance of power between the Great Houses.

>>45070189
What's WoB have to do with it without the Jihad?

>>45070220

Eh, kinda. In the end the Adders don't really regard anyone else as more than tools, and using them as cannon fodder suits them just fine. Throw the other three at the Clan OZs knowing they'll take a proportionally worse pounding than the Adders while accomplishing their goals, eliminate even potential rivals, and be the shit kings of fuck mountain at the end of it.

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>>45070021

Yeah, I did. here.

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>>45070381
Thanks a million, friend.

>>45069848
>They make it a lot easier to attain and a lot harder to challenge though.
That's contingent on what balance of WarShips each side can bring to the fight (during the initial assault, later while escorting the transports, and later still as reinforcements). Take WarShips away and it's still contingent on what balance of forces each side can bring.

>ISTM you'd have more WSes if you wanted a stronger focus on space battles?
Canonically (for every era except 3050-3052), most planetary invasions begin with a battle for aerospace superiority, hours or days before the troop transports reach orbit. Troop transports shouldn't be commonly facing WarShips, except perhaps in retreat.

>Combat sats and stations are notably thin on the ground in canon.
Yeah, but if we're talking about WarShips as a common orbital asset, then we're talking about a setting where orbital assets are more common than in canon. Achieving orbital superiority is an advantage, of course, but stopping to sweep satellites from orbit works to the defender's advantage - it buys time for ground forces to dig and for reincorcements to arrive from out-system, it diverts invading ships away from ground-support missions, and gives orbital weapons a chance to attrite the invaders, and can potentially create other openings for the defender.

>>45070253

Word of Blake are still effectively running the FWL as the Free Worlds of Blake, afterall.

>>45070224
Origins of the FWL's pair of Aegis are actually known. One was FWLS Olympic, one of their 6 of the Reunification War 30 transfered and the other was SLS Impetuous, taken out during the Amaris Conflict.

>>45070983
>Word of Blake are still effectively running the FWL as the Free Worlds of Blake, afterall.
lol But seriously what's their connection in the AU?

>>45071049

Fiat, obviously.

>>45071950
I accept your point. I mean WoB did control the Fiat factory on Terra after all.

>>45072186
>I mean WoB did control the Fiat factory on Terra after all.
My God, you've finally cracked the case! Now we know where all the WoB's secret bullshit came from! And the RoTS! It all finally makes sense!

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>>45072358
I couldn't have done it without you, anon.
And of course, the world-famous engineering of Italians.

>>45070868

The issue is more that if your opponent has sent a WS (or a Squadron) somewhere you essentially have two choices; send your own ships there in larger numbers, or cede control of the world to the enemy.

ASF swarms are a possibility but in the canon environment their numbers are low. Word of Herb is that the ASF assets assigned to ground forces and listed in the FMs is actually most of what a given faction have. Everyone does have an unstated (but relatively small) number of fleet regiments, but most canon WSes will chew up at least 30 before dying, potentially a lot more if they're well-designed or carry a large number of fighters themselves.

You can just up the number of ASFs, but that creates another issue since if you have too many ASFs you can blanket your worlds with them and force attackers to show up with ever-increasing amounts of their own if they want to be able to conquer it.

Assault DSes and PWSes are also possible, but are going to need to be around in serious numbers and in designs like the Interdictor (SC), Conquistador Blockade Runner, Taihou, or Castrum to be really viable. If you have them in numbers you can run into the same problem as with ASFs, where you render worlds virtually impregnable. They can't go anywhere on their own, but they don't need to.

BT and lots of WSes are two great flavours on their own, but it's not really a setting that was made with the necessary robustness to deal with both together. Part of that is intentional, BT is really about 'Mechs, Part of that is unintentional, FASA really didn't think things through; the size and power of the SLN alone is proof of that without going into anything else. Part of it is that the StratOps rules make WSes flat-out insane.

The idea isn't *intrinsically* bad, it's just that handling it requires either FASA-tier handwaving so that WSes aren't decisive assets and has knock-on effects that have knock-on effects of their own. You basically need to redesign the whole setting.

>>45071049

I think he's talking about canon and his AU at the same time.

In canon, the WoB was skimming a shit ton of cash and production from the FWL, along with suborning a lot of the FWLN and FWLM. Thomas started going off-script from 3057 on but they had considerable sway over the FWL even without needing him to be 100% puppet 100% of the time.

For his AU I'm guessing WoB were working to make their prophecies about the Houses destroying themselves in an orgy of violence so they could step in as humanity's saviours at the end a reality, starting with having them fight the Capellans. And then proceeding to Step 2 of their undoubtedly nefarious plot.

>>45070983

>one Block 1 Aegis

Ew.

>one Block II Aegis

OH GOD YES

>>45072643
You live in a strange little world where everything is so cut and dry

>>45072748
>In canon, the WoB was skimming a shit ton of cash and production from the FWL, along with suborning a lot of the FWLN and FWLM. Thomas started going off-script from 3057 on but they had considerable sway over the FWL even without needing him to be 100% puppet 100% of the time.
It was more 3064, and by then it was too late. Had he started purely his own game in 3057 we may have seen a different outcome.
As for what they suborned, that always was a tall order on the Italian car company.

>>45072782

Serious question.

How much do you play the naval game, and how well do you understand it?

The rules and potential uses of WarShips intersect spectacularly poorly with fluff describing how they were actually used.

We literally had an era where the SLN could have taken on all the other fleets combined, come out the other side with minimal losses, and then been able to sit full WS squadrons over enemy worlds until they acquiesced.

They never did, because reasons. Well, reason singular; the game is about 'Mechs, which is why Kerensky is famous as a pilot and for commanding ground forces, and the SLN fleet merely serves as a plot vehicle to get him there.

The reason I keep brining up the SLN era is simple; any high-WS environment starts looking like that. It's the WSes that really should be the decisive assets, and the only way around the problem is to ignore it or try and find a sweet spot with ASF and DS design and numbers that negates WSes without also screwing the ground game because air cover is so heavy and decisive.

Everyone having a fleet of 15-20 is about the sweet spot for a "high numbers" universe. You then have a task force of say three vessels over your capital with the rest on your borders, ready to support or repel invasions. They're in numbers large enough to contribute noticeably to a campaign but are rare enough that Houses will withdraw them rather than face destruction if the enemy is strong enough.

Even the FWLN of the 3060s is too much for its era. And if everyone has a fleet that size or larger, conflicts should either be stalemated because no-one wants to deal with the loss of forces that would happen with the loss of naval supremacy or should be 1st/2nd SW-style battle royales where everyone is trying to kill the enemy fleets, to varying degrees of success.

If you stop to think it through, a high-number WS universe has a lot of associated issues that aren't immediately obvious from the "moar WS" part of the thought process.

>>45072782
You can't compete with the walls of text, anon.

>>45070220
The Stone Lions may be filthy traitors, but they still have Horse blood in them. They would not bow to Adder domination for long.

>>45073035

Or maybe I do like WarShips, and wish there were more of them, but have thought through the consequences of that?

If you want more WarShips, it's because you want to use them, right? Instead of just having them sitting there gathering dust or being hand-waved into irrelevance?

The solution proposed earlier, that planetary defense arrays are large enough and powerful enough that WSes don't dare approach, but because unspecified reasons (read: so the ground game has any relevance) they can't target DSes or smaller ships so people still have to fight directly over a planet. There are still issues with that model but it's the best idea I've seen.

>>45073022
I feel like you can have more than 15-20 WarShips per faction, most of them just have to suck; a Vincent or Vigilant or Bonaventure is a strategic asset on par with a couple assault DS or a single proper PWS; I would 100% agree that you can't have many cruisers and frigates and ESPECIALLY battleships, but I feel like you could get away with ~40-50 ships per faction, so long as 66-75% of them are old-model corvettes

>>45073209
Chill your engines, walloftextanon. I was teasing both of you, not disagreeing.

>>45073022
I don't play the naval game at all.

I also don't give a shit. I can think up plenty of scenarios for ground battles in a universe with lots of warships even if we change nothing else, and if we start getting into changes in the universe like planetary defenses and so forth, then it just gets even easier.

You keep going on about the SLN when the entire fucking point of this is a universe in which everyone has more warships and things are changed. Thus your ranting about how much better it is than everyone else combine is irrelevant.

In the real world we have plenty of navies with lots of ships with very destructive weapons (and airforces too), and yet ground fighting still takes place. Try thinking about why that is and then get back to us. If you can stop masturbating to the SLN long enough.

Why not just have mechs board the warships?

>>45073239

Mmm. I guess so. What makes it workable in that scenario is less Vincents or Bonaventures being shit in a fight (which they are, no doubt) but the fact that neither of them have DropShip collars. If they did the effect on force projection would be a lot greater. You can certainly get away with treating them as a single squadron of low-capability PWSes with a dedicated JS in terms of what they can do in a fight.

I will certainly own up to having thought a "high WS environment" means those ships being proper WSes, Destroyers and above.

So we may have been talking past each other, sorry about that.

>>45073502
I wasn't disagreeing with you at any point in the thread. Also, I feel as though single-collar corvettes like the Pinto or Tracker wouldn't be THAT big of a problem. You'd still not want them to be more than say 1/3 of the corvettes or so, but they wouldn't be TOO powerful.

>>45073366

>Try thinking about why that is and then get back to us.

1. We are on a single planet with limited resources. If someone else has a natural resource not present in our own nation you have to trade for it or take it by force. This is not a problem in a setting spanning literally thousands of planets, aside from things that are laughably nonsensical like HarJel which they might as well have said was Mithril and could only be mined by the magical dwarfs of Moria.

2. Most conflicts happening in the world are ones that the major hegemonic powers (Russia and the USA primarily) are using as proxies since they can't go much further without risking MAD. Again not an issue in a massively interplanetary setting. Those that aren't proxy conflicts are ones that the major hegemonic powers either find beneficial and don't want to stop, or that they can't be bothered to stop. Africa is a war-ridden shithole because it suits companies with significant influence on the governments of the major hegemonic powers to keep it that way. The US could, if it wanted, go in to any number of conflicts tomorrow and end them decisively. The only reason that doesn't happen is because the cost in lives would be too high for a government to survive and/or the tactics necessary would see them up in the Hague. Again, not a problem in an interstellar setting.

3. Forces are different. The strategies and tactics used in BT differ as wildly from today as today does to what was done in the Roman Empire.

TL; DR: Different situation is different.

>>45073464

Rules-wise, it's really difficult. There are some ships (Hamilcar) that are supposed to be able to deliver those forces and some 'Mechs (some Configuration-U Omnis) designed for it, but 'Mechs are massively gimped in space.

Proper space assets, even light ASFs, will fuck up a 'Mech good and proper.

If you want to conduct a boarding op of any kind, marines are the way to go. Even those get pretty brutal for the attacking force, the stuff from Twilight of the Clans was well-written and interesting, but rules-wise the DEST and Fox teams would have died on their first attempts and never seen Huntress.

But rule of cool and all, and a 'Mech jump-jetting onto the hull of an enemy ship and cutting into it with a vibroblade is pretty cool.

>>45073704
>or the tactics necessary would see them up in the Hague

Top fucking kek. This alone proves you're delusional.

>>45073704
I don't see what 1 has to do with anything. If applied that logic would mean nobody in BT fights in the first place.

I don't see the relevance of 2 either. BT has both open wars and proxy conflicts.

As for 3, what do you think makes it so different? A cruiser launching a tomahawk at a BMP is about the same as a warship shooting at a mech. If anything the cruiser has it easier, since a stray tomahawk might take out a house as opposed to the suburb orbital fire is going to level.

>>45073836
>But rule of cool and all, and a 'Mech jump-jetting onto the hull of an enemy ship and cutting into it with a vibroblade is pretty cool.


Like 'em or not, this is absolutely something that LAMs should be able to meaningfully do.

>>45073704
How did the Japanese fight on Okinawa? The US had total naval and aerial supremacy!

>>45074000

Futilely. It was 100% unwinnable for them.

>>45074080
They still fought quite determinedly and killed a lot of US soldiers.

The Afghans fought the US and Soviets effectively despite being totally outclassed in most materiel terms.

I could go on for ages. Point is, there's more to it than "muh warships win forever"

>>45074000
But that analogy doesn't work; it only would If the US had used nuclear weapons on okinawa; warships are exponentially more destructive than pre-nuclear air and sea assets

>>45073913

>If applied that logic would mean nobody in BT fights in the first place.

Ding.

The resources in the Terran asteroid belt alone would have seen the Star League through at least another 500 years, and the Hegemony had how many more dozens of worlds?

This is a problem cause primarily by FASAnomics really. They didn't know about it or ignored it to make the setting what they wanted, but even allowing for that the resources of a House or the TH are absurd. There's no reason to fight except for dick-waving, and although that is a reason I don't think it's a particularly good one. Hasn't stopped humanity to date though.

>I don't see the relevance of 2 either.

The Houses don't need the resources or prestige gained from such things. Periphery nations or other small factions might, but realistically it's back down to dick-waving as an explanation as to why conflicts happen.

The problem is that the dick-waving has a non-trivial cost, especially when WarShips are involved. The smarter play is to just go home, mine your own planet/asteroids, prevent the loss of force you would have had by fighting, and pump up your own military instead.

>3

Orbital fire yes, but a lot of planets in BT, especially outside of the TH, are not self-sufficient. A WarShip squadron can basically do to a planet what a besieging army did to enemy fortifications back in the day, except tricks like digging tunnels aren't going to work and winter's not a problem. Factions have to either cede the world or let it starve as a result. But we're back to FASAnomics here, and none of that makes sense.

Orbital support fire is a thing, but really the threat alone of it is enough to get the effect you want. Enemy ground forces have to stay in hidden bases or urban environments to avoid being pasted from space, so having an enemy WS present in orbit is a strong disincentive to try and force a ground battle for whoever's on the wrong side of that equation.

>>45074251
How does it not work? It's one force with total dimensional superiority over the other. Sure, it means the defenders are pretty much doomed, but you could get some damn fun games out of them digging in and fighting to the last mech.

>>45074128

>Point is, there's more to it than "muh warships win forever"

Except there's not. You literaly can't set up a scenario in BT where that works in the face of orbital superiority.

Most planets aren't self-sufficient and blockading them will force them to give in eventually. Ground forces are useless here because the only way to break the blockade is with WarShips or a comparably powerful naval force of your own.

There's also little to no incentive to engage in ground combat for the force with orbital superiority. They have the advantage. If the enemy leaves urban areas or their hidden bases or Castles Brian they die to orbital artillery. If they don't leave, they eventually starve.

Enemy forces have taken a city hostage? Well, what are your options at that point any way? Let them carry through on their threat and kill civilians and wreck the place, or try to dig them out and wind up doing as much damage or more in the process? That's literally the only arguable case where ground forces matter, and unless it's a really major city like Geneva on Terra or the major population hub on a House capital it's better to wait and see how it plays out. You can always level it or send in ground forces if it becomes clear the enemy won't do the reasonable thing and surrender.

>>45074451
I bet a few lances of mechs can hold out for a damn long time.

>>45074451
If you just run around bombarding stuff, you end up with the 1st and 2nd SWs. People obviously grew out of it enough for mechs to matter.

>>45074505

Maybe they can hold out, but what does that achieve?

Yay, they're alive until they starve to death.

They can't make the enemy fight them unless they have hostages, and even then the percentage play is low because the side with orbital superiority can just sit it out and wait. Wherever the lances are is where they're stuck, they're useless as combat assets.

Maybe they've taken a House Lord or First Lord hostage, that might be enough leverage to allow them to fight free or leave unmolested. But how often is that going to happen?

>>45074451
It's obvious that you simply have too much of a warship fetish to see reason. Good day.

>>45074568

That was because they were trying to wreck each other's manufacturing bases. If your objective is to take an enemy planet, you're going to go about it differently.

And the reason that it stopped was specifically because they couldn't do it any more. All the WarShips were dead. They didn't decide to stop, they just couldn't keep doing it.

>>45074617

>admits he doesn't understand the naval aspect of the game
>gets rekt by several anons for making up shitty arguments
>says everyone else is wrong and won't listen and that he's out

Well, I'm glad that's over.

>>45074617
btfo

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As promised yesterday, here it is the Interstellar Operations

http://www.mediafire.com/?4hi24un9tthh9pr/

enjoy

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I guess we're getting a new epub soon

>>45076496
Wow.
It's fucking nothing

>>45076496

What's it even going to be? A bit more detail than this http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Lone_Star, maybe with a short campaign set in the Amaris Civil War?

I really wish they'd get on with ilClan and fleshing out what's happening in 3150, all these dribs and drabs of stuff from other periods while we sit in this seemingly un-ending holding pattern is getting more and more frustrating.

>>45077339
from their site:

>It’s a whistle-stop tour of the universe! Every system and planet where mankind treads in the BattleTech universe has a story, for those with the drive to explore it. Take a tour of the stars humanity now calls home, experience awesome new worlds, immerse yourself in the local civilization, and prepare to do battle in exotic locales. From the peripheral Butte Hold to the game world Noisiel, to lost worlds like Jardine—join us on the tour!

>I really wish they'd get on with ilClan and fleshing out what's happening in 3150
I lost my faith on them releasing the ilClan anytime soon. They'll release the stupid 1st/2nd Succession Wars book first and they aren't even near to start teasing them.

My guess is 2017 at best.

On the bright side, they'll finally reveal (if we can believe in Ben Rome they will reveal for real) who's behind the Black Friday with another epub series

>>45066497

Sent them as .rtfs and a .zip file.

>>45074607
>Maybe they can hold out, but what does that achieve?

They maintain control of the ground until relief arrives? They tie down ships on blockade duty and force the commitment of ground forces to dig them out? They may eventually be forced to surrender, sure, but that doesn't mean holding the fort is useless.

>Yay, they're alive until they starve to death.

You're seriously overestimating how easy it would be to starve some mech jocks.

>They can't make the enemy fight them unless they have hostages, and even then the percentage play is low because the side with orbital superiority can just sit it out and wait. Wherever the lances are is where they're stuck, they're useless as combat assets.

Ok, you have orbital superiority but I'm dug in around the factory you want. Come get me.

>>45075530
I'm on my phone right now, but thank you. I'm gonna download that as soon as I get home and fantasize about playing with people that would let me use thermobarics.

>>45081232
>getting cucked this publicly

wew lad

>>45062956
Anyone got a mega of all the PDF"s? Mediafire is a bitch for multiple downloads.

>>45081293
At least Phelan taught her the meaning of love later.

>>45081293
Well, he did kek the entire concept of the clan eugenics program, and nothing she could do would measure up to that

>>45081507
It was a failure of a program anyway.

>spend two centuries producing the "best" warriors possible
>lose to regular freebirths
>get cucked by the SLDF on your own capital world at your own game
how embarrassing

>>45081578

That's what happens when you're the antagonist of a BT plotline, anon.

No matter how smart you're supposed to be or how good your troops are supposed to be, you act like retards and your troops wouldn't be able to fight their way out of a wet paper bag.

>>45081685
Clanners should have genetically engineered themselves to be the protagonists.

But seriously, that laughable aerospace gene type. So awful the Ghost Bears don't even use it because it somehow makes Clan aerospace pilots even worse than Spheroids.

>>45081750
>>45081685
>>45081578
Personally, I view the entire program as a Scientist Caste manipulation.

One that backfired horribly, but still.

>>45081750

Yeah, but that's an out of nowhere thing too. MW2nd Edition and 1st ed BT Compendium make the point that the Pilot phenotype is almost as superior to their IS counterparts as the MechWarrior phenotype.

But either nobody paid attention to that or didn't care enough about it between lolclans and especially lolhellions.

I also don't really like the Bears not using the phenotype since there are extremely strong hints that Karl Boujon (ASF lineage) was small and weak compared to Bjorn Jorgenssen (MechWarrior lineage) which is why he tried to fight his Trial Augmented rather than in physical combat. Plus the whole Bear superiority thing.

But what can you do?

>>45081879
Play Ghest Burr.

I forgot about the earlier writings saying it's a good phenotype, and to be honest I don't even remember what newer source says it's worse.
I do remember Tyra Miraborg and her Wrasselhog pilots ghosting some Bear aerospace pilots though. In one of Stackpole's rare bits of good humour, Tyra flames the Ghost Bear pilot that shot her a thumbs up and tried to bug out of the fight.

>>45081926

It's pretty constant through all the books up to Prince of Havok when Marthe Pryde makes fun of Asa Taney.

Which is kinda weird because it's a Stackpole book too and in earlier places like Natural Selection (also by Stackpole) you have IS characters being amazed at what pilots the Clans regard as pretty ordinary can do.

They really rush through things in the end of the ToTC books. Prince of Havok is blatantly all about setting things up for the FedCom Civil War and ending the Clans as a serious threat to the Houses so that can proceed.

Then you get Falcon Rising which is basically a book-long ad to former Jag players that there's still this other balls-to-the-wall Crusader Clan they can play as (and should have all along).

Not even a Falcon fan or baiting, that's very much the vibe of the book.

>>45082123
Too bad Falcon Rising is one of the worst books in the entire line of BT novels.

>>45082123
>Not even a Falcon fan or baiting, that's very much the vibe of the book.
That's just Thurston's style of writing. His vibe isn't Jaguar fans should play Falcon, it's that all Clan fans should play Falcon because green burd is the best Clan there ever was forever.

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Stat me

>>45082149

>ANGRY GREEN BURD NOISES

Personally I agree with you. I'm not really a Falcon fan any way, but what really gets me is that there's two books in a plotline about the death of the Jaguars that instead focus on the Falcons.

They should have used at least one of those books to cover the Jaguars. I'd rather have seen Freebirth replaced with a novel that starts out on pre-Serpent Huntress and is about a Warrior or Watch agent who's been detailed to figure out what the Scientists are up to but who gets recalled to active duty when Serpent shows up.

The other book I'd have probably spent on Bulldog. Bulldog really needed more coverage, preferably devoted to the Dracs and FWLM units that took part in it.

>>45082212
>not wanting to be trapped in an endless cycle of rebirth, going from Asshole to BEST CLAN EVAR. Like the Phoenix.
Wolf scum plz.

>>45082262
>Bulldog really needed more coverage
Two chapters at the end of Grave Covenant weren't enough?

>>45082262
Oh yeah, Freebirth was shit too. Fusionaires, LAMs and Horse being a POV character. Who greenlit this?

>>45082306

For how important it was? I don't think so, no.

Also those two chapters make it look very much like it was mostly a AFFC op with the other states helping out. If you read the SB to go along with it, sure you see that the Dracs are the ones doing the heavy lifting... but the novel depiction seems to stay with people longer and not everybody has read the SB either.

They say stuff like the Dracs can't spare assets beyond the DEST unit Michael Ryan had and the Haruna, but the impression you get from the novel line is that the Dracs twiddled their thumbs and waited for someone else to finish their fight for them. Hence the specification that the novel not be about the FedCom forces, they're already getting enough of the limelight in what was written and the Serpent stuff.

But YMMV and what's done is done.

>>45082409
I was being sarcastic lol

>>45082331
>Fusionaires

Huh?

>>45082531
Fusionnaires are a clan alcoholic drink. Even in "Freebirth" Thurston can't resist wanking off to the green bird by having a character proclaim Jaguar versions are practically watered down compared to what "muh green burd" drinks.

>>45082531
Clanner PPC drinks.

>>45082331
>Hating on Tyle
EXTRA FREEBIRTH.

>>45082409
An entire novella series about Bulldog would be a great novel, rather than Clan Swayze and other, less exciting characters.

>>45082591
>a clan alcoholic drink.
Think clanner beer comes in five-packs?

>>45082612
Not hating on him, but he never should have been a POV character. He was better as a support character.

>>45082629
Fair enough, though that is the only novel we have where someone pilots a Mackie, so that's nice. I do agree with up thread that Freebirth should have been a Jaguar novel. Though arguably, I'd want a pseudo-Pearl Harbor style novel, with Jaguars going about their lives, then ending right as the Invasion of Huntress starts.

>>45082622

That or cases of 25.

>>45082667
It would have made six clusters fighting to the death in a single day more impacting if we'd seen them beforehand, yes.

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What's your favorite snek clan and why?

>>45082685
Or if you aren't a Surat and buy the full Cluster of 45 beers and 30 soft drinks

I've taken a long break from battletech but after discovering x-wing and armada, I'm gonna dive back into this too. Might not have local games but there is always megamek right? Is the Irc still frequented or is it dead?

>>45082793
Trick question. All snek clans are worst clans; fire mandrill only

>>45082842
Clanners are disgusting. All clans are worst clans.

>>45082711
Well I was going more for Clanner-Affleck and Clanner-Gooding Jr. standing back to back fighting off the ELH to Aerosmith. But yours works too.

>>45082814
Yep, bunch of people on IRC. Last night we had a 4-way brawl over megamek.

>>45082814
We just had a 4-person game yesterday. Get in here.

>>45082925
Generic IS Omnis and BA vs newtech FWL stuff vs 3 Albatrosses vs 8 Pos.

It was amazing.

>>45082814
Read last thread and this one for Muninn's play-by-play of the game

>>45082906
It's the same idea really. Gooding Jr's character was sympathetic because we'd seen him for the last hour (with other characters) in non-war scenes.
If instead of Freebirth we got a novel about a Jaguar solahma warrior and his trials and tribulations finding his place in the Huntress garrison, and then we saw him bite the dust when the ELH hit Lootera in "Sword and Fire" it would be more emotionally engaging.

>>45082945
And the three Albatrosses won.

PURPLE BURD STRONKEST HEAVIES

>>45082945
>newtech FWL stuff
It was more just random stuff the army generator gave me. Marian Hunchback, Drac Orion, FedSun Centurion and god-knows-what experimental Huron Warrior.

>>45082925
>>45082934
I work overnights but I'll do what I can. I'll at least start hopping on Irc again to chat

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>>45082962
SOLID HEAVY

>>45075530
Cool, did they unfuck viral jammers and transforming mechs that shall not be named?

>>45083425
Viral Jammers got a reasonable nerf, except for losing the +2 mod against friendly target effects. The loss of the ability to actually outrun the effect was lost though. Plus you immediately lose the negative effects if you move out of the radius, which doesn't make sense according to the fluff, but whatever.

>>45083550
You're just salty now that you can't send two 1100 BV hovercraft on suicide runs to fuck over your opponent.

Also, the two other representations of the tech (MDWA and Alpha Strike) have the effect end as soon as the jammer is removed. You CAN just reboot stuff, after all.

>>45084087
>You're just salty now that you can't send two 1100 BV hovercraft on suicide runs to fuck over your opponent.
It amuses more than I can say to do it, yes. It did need to be nerfed despite how much fun it was to ruin an EWAR game. Baseline jammers were absurdly overpowered. A +1 malus against Friendlies would have been nice.

>Also, the two other representations of the tech (MDWA and Alpha Strike) have the effect end as soon as the jammer is removed. You CAN just reboot stuff, after all.
True, the fluff just implies it takes a bit. I figured that the effect would be best as a compromise to have it dissipate the turn after the target leaves the effect.

>>45076496
So they're actually doing that touring the stars series?

ilClan't... I mean I can't believe it.

what would the setting look like if we never had the FCCW, but instead the FedCom broke up during the jihad but remained reasonably friendly?

>>45072643
Hey, >>45070868 here. When I said "take WarShips away" I meant from *both* sides. You've been saying that warships mess with how aerospace superiority affects the ground campaign, but without ever acknowledging what baseline effect pre-warship aerospace superiority has.

Serious question: you understand that anything a warship could do to 'Mechs squatting in a factory could already be done by aerospace fighters or conventional artillery, right? The WarShip doesn't represent a novel threat there.

>>45074661
>the reason that it stopped was specifically because they couldn't do it any more. All the WarShips were dead. They didn't decide to stop, they just couldn't keep doing it.
They didn't realize they *couldn't replace* the shit they were blowing up until after it was all blown up. The whole "don't blow up shit you can't replace" culture has now replaced the "burn all habitable planets" culture, and that's not insignificant.

>>45073704
If #2 (hegemonic powers find warring over low hanging fruit more profitable than developing hard-to-reach fruit) is true in BattleTech, then it trumps #1 (fruit is everywhere). And for #3 to be at all meaningful, it would include the possibility of unexpected knock-on effects causing WarShips to not affect ground combat the way *you* are expecting them to.

>>45073022
>should be 1st/2nd SW-style battle royales where everyone is trying to kill the enemy fleets, to varying degrees of success.
So what prevents a DropShip-rich setting from devolving to the same "kill enemy fleets / ignore 'Mechs" paradigm?

>>45074697
Is "rekt" your fetish, or your safe word?

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>>45082842
>picking le complete joke clan

fire mandrill a shit, GREEN BURD STRONK!

>>45085147

The argument is over. You've tried twice now to shit stir, let it go.

>>45085057

Probably not much different really. At least assuming the same IRL stuff that led to Weisman's Dark Age still happens.

CGL might have had to bulk the Word of Blake up a bit more to explain how the AFFS and LAAF got so badly messed up during the Jihad, but it wouldn't be a major turning point or anything.

Plus in the DA the Suns and Lyrans still get on pretty well, to the point that Julian Davion slaps a force together and goes to try and help them.

>>45082793
Well, the Adders are smart, the Cobras are stable, and the Vipers were utterly retarded. I have to say I love all three.

>>45085307
Black Burd Best Burd brother

>>45084895
>ilClan't
Don't get my hopes up, dammit.

>>45085337
The argument being "over" is only a thing for people - shit stirrers, say - who view argument as sport. (Though admittedly, the other participants may indeed have been in it for the "sport.")

Also: twice?

>>45082258

To whom it may concern,

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Please be advised that HARMONY GOLD will undertake all appropriate steps to protect its Marks and its associated goodwill. You can avoid legal action by immediately ceasing and desisting from any and all infringing activity including use of all imagery, designs, and concepts associated with ROBOTECH. Posters to this and other websites must immediately cease and desist all use, sharing, promotion and/or marketing of ROBOTECH on these domain names. You are hereby put on notice that HARMONY GOLD will be monitoring the use of this domain name for this purpose.

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>>45086681
sent :)

>>45085337
>oh shit they have logical arguments SHUT IT DOWN

Stay mad cuckboi

>>45082258
I wonder if that bastard would explode like every last bloody one of my Cruds seem to do.

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>>45088037

I dunno, not EVERY Crud explodes. Some of them run out of LRM ammo first.

>I have never had an opponent hit the CT ammo - it's always the LRM bins

>>45089429
>I dunno, not EVERY Crud explodes. Some of them run out of LRM ammo first.
Yeah, and in my games that's the cue for the crits to start transferring inwards to hit the SRM and machine gun ammo.

>I have never had an opponent hit the CT ammo - it's always the LRM bins
NEA confirmed for having made a pact with the devil.

>>45089554
>NEA confirmed for having made a pact with the devil.

No shit. He worked with CGL.

>>45089429
My Cruds always seem to explode. In one memorable game I actually believed I could get a Crusader through the fight without it brewing up, but then I failed a PSR and it faceplanted, critting the remaining ammo. In an AtB campaign, I headshotted a pristine enemy Crusader - and I mean pristine, not even a dent elsewhere - and gave it to a dispossessed driver. In the next battle (his first under my banner), the bastard brewed up due to one of those "needs 12, rolls 12" PPC hits from near max range.

>>45088037
Hell, I have an all-energy and rockets crud and I STILL expect it to fall victim to an ammo explosion somehow

Hey warship-article anon, I posted your first write-up on the Aegis. I formatted it and edited a few small things for clarity, but otherwise left it as-is.

http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=50938

>>45090077
>greekfire posts here
actually I don't know you well enough to judge you, you're probably a nice guy

A pair of quick questions:

1) Now this is fucking dumb, since I have 20+ years of Battletech under my belt, but do Clan Mechwarriors use the cooling vest and shorts combo or the cooling suit?

2) How's this for a fluffyish FWL heavy lance circa Ops GUERRERO and BULLDOG:

>Hercules for the lance leader
>Warhammer -7M
>Apollo
>Trebuchet -7M

>>45091477
>1) Now this is fucking dumb, since I have 20+ years of Battletech under my belt, but do Clan Mechwarriors use the cooling vest and shorts combo or the cooling suit?
Clanners use an improvement on the old Star League full cooling suit.

I think it has some armor built in too.

>>45091477

1: As said already the fluff indicates the Clans use an improved version of the SL cooling suit. However there is a shit ton of art where they are wearing a cooling vest and underwear.

2. Not bad, but having both an Apollo and a Treb seems a bit redundant. Maybe swap the Treb for a Grffin that can hang back with the 'Hammer and Apollo while the Herc goes in, or trade it for a Wolverine, Cronus, or Wraith to accompany the Herc.

>>45091477
Looks pretty good, though the warhammer is pretty rare. Maybe swap it for a Thunderbolt-7M?

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>>45091506
>>45091627

Yeah, I figured the cooling suit would be the Clan driver's uniform. It's the art, and the fact that everything I could dredge up from the novels, went with the vest and shorts. Cooling suits it is, however Star Commander Nicki can keep her IS kit.

And it's the -7M Wolverine for the lance, then. The Bucket's going to the shop.

>>45091879
How is the Warhammer rare? It was introduced in '47

>>45091984
3050 says they were only building five a year

Has anyone here ever used the short-ranged Cestus with the autocannon 20? How was it?

>>45091879
>>45092081

I was going off FM: FWL, which has the Warhammer as a fairly common (7 roll) on the B heavy list, and the T-Bolt is restricted the A grade only.

>>45092081
That's the Ronin Inc factory, though, which wasn't even listed as a manufacturer in TRO:3039. I think it's safe to say that the -7M would have been reproduced at the Emris IV plant, drastically upping production numbers.

>>45092200
Huh
I guess they were doing a lot of warhammer field refits, then. The thud being A-rated units only strikes me as rather odd, too

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>>45086828

Holy shit. You actually manage to get more retarded each time you post.

>those arguments
>logical

Let's see.

>>45085147

>could already be done by aerospace fighters or conventional artillery

To make an attack the ASF have to expose themselves to AA fire and risk land darting. Factories may have artillery defences and counter-battery fire is a thing. Is a WarShip at any risk? No. Literal invincibility isn't a novel factor, because reasons.

>and that's not insignificant.

Any environment where WarShips are common necessitates a massive amount of heavy industry (see: Star League era, IS 3052-3067). Otherwise where do the ships come from and how are the maintained? Also, what happened to those factories as soon as a serious war broke out? Oh, right. Targeted while the enemy tried to protect their own assets.

>So what prevents a DropShip-rich setting from devolving to the same "kill enemy fleets / ignore 'Mechs" paradigm?

A necessity for such a setting to require PWSes (recent idea IC and OOC) and to have a much larger amount of JumpShips to transport them, just for a start.

Go on. Tell us we're all fapping to our WarShip fetish and flounce out again.

Or just let the argument stay dead, because you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

>>45092480
>and to have a much larger amount of JumpShips to transport them, just for a start.
I'm not that guy, in fact I agree with you on this stuff, but the setting as written requires (and is stated in more recent stuff to have) a fuckton of jumpships, at least 10-100x the old canon values, so this isn't really an argument that you should be making

>>45092284

It's the RATs, anon.

I know that FASA's whole deal was that they were a fairly accurate (plus/minus a bit of luck) for what units were actually using IC, Fanpro and early CGL also made that explicit.

But then people pointed out that RATs are fucking retarded since they have a limited number of slots and power creep in publications is a thing. FM: U is spectacularly bad in this regard.

Now RATs are purely for flavour purposes if players want to use them. There are still problems even with Xotl doing them, though from what he said that was largely due to him being involved with the RATs before certain newer designs that should have been present on them (eg, the Tomhakw II which is notably absent from the Wolf list) were published and the lists never being revised after that.

I generally see the RATs as being useful for broad-strokes stuff if I don't have time to look at TR or FM information about which units are fielding what. More gives you an indication of the tactics a given faction is likely to gravitate towards (LGR sniping for the FWLM in some eras, Gausswalling for the AFFC, Stealth for well-suppilied CCAF units, etc) than what any given regiment is actually deploying.

>>45092570

The setting required a lot more JumpShips to handle the fact that so few planets are self-sufficient, certainly. However the majority of the ships that were added when they canonically upped the count by a factor of ten are in private hands for cargo companies keeping planets alive by transporting food or water, or are in the House fleets but are occupied doing the same job.

The military fleets didn't really grow much. A lot more JumpShips are available if a House wants to dragoon them than were before the retcon, but the problem of what those ships were for remains. Divert too many and you wind up with your economy in ruins as trade grinds to a halt and worlds start losing population numbers to famine, tainted water, and whatever else.

So, crits to LAMs mounting rockets in a bomb bay means they explode, I guess.
That seems strange.

>>45092676
>But then people pointed out that RATs are fucking retarded since they have a limited number of slots and power creep in publications is a thing
indeed. since I'm working on an AU including a rather large number of homebrew variants and mechs, I've decided to go with 2D10 RATs so as to try and avoid that issue

>>45092865

I'm not even sure if external bombs can be critted.

For internal ones it doesn't bother me. LAM interiors are cramped and filled with a lot of vital, fragile component. Same is true for most things that can carry internal bomb bays, really. Even if RLs aren't usually a problem when critted, especially since it's a bomb mount rather than a properly installed RL.

uh, hi, got a question - I have my hands on an old Polish BT ruleset, original from '94 according to copyright, translation from '96. For all intents and purposes, I'm still going to play it with a friend, but I'm just curious - how outdated are the rules in it compared to modern BT?

...and yes, it's Polish because I'm Polish and I CBF to import and use rulebook in english if I can use a Polish one.

>>45093036

The rules are mostly the same. Total Warfare (the new rule book) even lists the changes between it and the BattleTech Master Rules, and the BMR was little different to the rule set you're discussing.

There are more, but these are the big changes I remember:

-'Mech weapons other than Flamers and Machine Guns no longer slaughter infantry. You can't kill an entire platoon with a Guass slug any more.
-External heat (Infernos, Plasma weapons, etc) is capped at 15 points per turn.
-AMSes only use one shot when they fire and reduce the missile rack's roll on its chart to see how many hit by 2.

>>45093036
>>45093162
There's a bunch of changes to how vees work IIRC, specifically Infernos no longer being quite as murderous.

But feel free to use those rules.

I wonder if you could get a translated version of Megamek.

>>45093502
>>45093162
hey, thanks for explaining! Looks like I'm not missing out on much. If I get around to using megamek I'll read up on actual English rules, the translated book is just for ease of use at the table IRL. Hard to properly explain how awkward it is to use foreign words and phrases out loud together with Polish, so translation is usually preferable if only for glossary

>>45092480
>To make an attack the ASF have to expose themselves to AA fire and risk land darting
The boardgame rules are not the whole of reality, anon. Saturation bombing and dropping nukes from altitude are things which aeros can do.

>Factories may have artillery defences
Which are more or less fixed in place and finite in number, while the attacker's are not, and may not have the same range as the attacker's, and that's assuming the defender has any at all.

>Is a WarShip at any risk?
If you assume that the factory has weaponry equivalent to that which is expected to attack it, you can't suddenly change your mind when we switch to a WarShip-rich setting.

>Any environment where WarShips are common necessitates a massive amount of heavy industry
Yet does not necessitate that the industry be replaceable at a rate which makes scorched-earth feasible.

>what happened to those factories as soon as a serious war broke out? Oh, right. Targeted while the enemy tried to protect their own assets.
You can't answer a question by repeating the thing being questioned. Well, you CAN, but it doesn't make you look good.

>A necessity for such a setting to require PWSes (recent idea IC and OOC) and to have a much larger amount of JumpShips to transport them, just for a start.
In a setting where DropShips outnumber BattleMechs by a ratio somewhere in the range of 4:1 to 25:1, and which has a corresponding number of JumpShips, what makes Pocket WarShips necessary? You could beat 'Mech armies by literally crashing small craft into them. And for that matter: why exempt PWSs from this hypothetical DropShip-rich setting?

>Go on. Tell us we're all fapping to our WarShip fetish
Wasn't me, but it does help to know that you care less about the data than you do about "winning" against a solitary imaginary persecutor.

>and flounce out again.
I reply when I can. If you can't deal with that, then stop saying things I'm going to reply to.

>>45093036
>>45093706
hey buddy, could you maybe take a few pictures of the box/cover and stuff?
I've always found battletech stuff in other languages really neat

>>45092756
If the notion is that a WarShip can "conquer" a planet by embargoing it, then why not assume that the military DropShip count is high enough that planets can still be embargoed?

r8 my 6k BV list
6 Po
24 rifle infantry platoon

>>45093971
foot, jump, motorized or mech inf?

>>45094012
Foot
and I have enough spare bv to fit in a hover APC for recon

>>45094054
Well I wouldnt want to close in on that force. What would you do against units that shoot further than 15 hexes and are faster than you. Also what if artillery?

>>45094126
>what if artillery
If we're playing with artillery, I bring my own

And hide from anything with longer range than me.

>>45094158
I have found trying to hide from units that can dictate where the fight happens and outrange you tend to go poorly. YMMV. Let me know if that works out.

That said large amounts of infantry make me randy. I want to see that inf turned to jumpers and loaded up in vtols. Then start dropping near 3/5 assaults and make their day suck.

>>45093971
I counter with Plasma Packing Panthers:

6x PNT-13K

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>>45093723

See pic.

>>45093887

DropShips can't move between systems on their own. The bottleneck there is more transport assets than fleet size. A force of ~12 PWSes does what most Destroyers can in terms of controlling orbit, but that force requires two Monoliths, two Star Lords, four Invaders or six Merchants to move around. To take on a force like that you need at least 18 PWSes, so again two Monoliths, 3 Star Lords, 6 Invaders or 9 Merchants. The JSes rapidly add up.

With a high PWS/low JS environment you get a situation where high-value worlds are exceedingly difficult to successfully attack because the defender has time to establish PWS assets around that world and you've got to scrape transport assets together to go after it.

Conversely you can take the standard BT universe and increase JS numbers and DS cargo hauler numbers as much as you like with only FASAnomics to deal with. Militarily everyone can shift more troops faster, but everyone can do that so it mostly balances out. Interior raids become a bit more of a thing.

As long as nobody is doing shit like accelerating a fully-loaded Behemoth to .1C and slamming it into a planet, any way.

>>45094307
>mfw I can bring 100 ferrets and 100 jump rifle squads to an 8K BV match with BV to spare
[VDV INTENSIFIES]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rAHrHd2lcw

>>45091477
Is the Hercules supposed to be considered shitty in the fluff? Because I always see Pardoe and other authors putting it in militia formations.

>>45094452
Use extra bv for vtol gunships. Go full air assault.

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>>45094455
Playing off, TRO 3055U, it certainly doesn't seem shitty: on the contrary, the fluff bigs the Hercules up, saying how well it did against the Clans during BULLDOG and how Solaris fighters are kicking arse all round with it.

>>45094455

Not as far as I know. It's a 5/8 mover with heavy armour and an armament based around an ER PPC and an LB-10X. It's not as good as it could have been with the secondary armament, but that's a very solid platform to be working from.

If it's turning up in Militia formations it's either because the author has a boner for it or because it's a FWL design from an era where the FWL was exporting a ton of its output, so while it's maybe not very likely to be present in many militia units it's not a massive shock for it to be there the way it would be for planetary militia to be stacked with Daishis.*

*Except for the FedSuns, where that's totally legit. Thanks, Microsoft.

>>45094506
I could bring 2 companies (72 ferret+squad) and 10 Karnov Gunships.

ALL THE MGs

>>45094455
It was a pretty damn nice design in the pre-jihad era. Kind of a shame it never got any upgrades or even variants, though

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>>45094694

>Po (LB-10X) is 59 BV more than the standard Po
>Pos have two MGs
>MFW

>>45094694
Now thats how the militia do it. If you where to bring that to a real game use platoons to speed things up and maybe put them in cobra vtols since a platoon wont fit in a ferret. Its also fairly cheap to upgrade the gunnery of inf. 3/5 laser jump are 101 bv. I imagine rifle inf are even cheaper.

>>45094638
>his planetary militia doesn't have a Vulture, Shadow Cat and Cougar, minimum
laughing_dresaris.holo

>>45094811
But Ferrets are space Hips/Hueys.

>>45094441
>See pic.
Many of my questions have been aimed at determining why the things you're responding to don't particularly resemble the things I've been asking, yes.

In the future, instead of getting pissy, try making fewer assumptions up front and instead lead off by clarifying where the other guy thinks the goalposts are.

>Militarily everyone can shift more troops faster, but everyone can do that so it mostly balances out. Interior raids become a bit more of a thing.
I'm asking how extra assault ships would affect the ability to embargo planets. You seem to be taking for granted the idea that there's a qualitative difference in the ability of PWSs and non-PWS assault ships to embargo planets, but it's not clear how you could substantiate that. The non-PWS might take longer to cripple a civilian dropship, but it's still got enough thrust to catch a civilian DropShip hours out from the planet.

>>45094712

But it did, anon.

They're both pretty shitty so I understand forgetting them. Having looked them up I want to as well.

One pulls the AMS for another S-SRM-2.

One has Endo-Composite structure and an Ultra A/C-10 instead of the LB. It loses 3 tons of the secondary weapons to have CASE II and an Angel ECM suite.

Then there's another variant based on the one above that has Blue Shield instead of the Angel.

Of course the last two are detailed in the ONN section of TR 3150 and it's probably gonna be another few months at least before we get the RS compilation for that.

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>>45094939
Oh I get it. From a fluff point that force is cool as hell. It's just unwieldy in megamek.

>>45095056
Bingo. You'd use little chunks of it with more BV-expensive assets. Like a company of the airborne infantry with a mech lance or something.

RL-10 x2 and MG w .5 ton ammo Ferret when?

>>45094957

>You seem to be taking for granted the idea that there's a qualitative difference in the ability of PWSs and non-PWS assault ships to embargo planets

Gee, shit. I wonder why I'm making that "assumption."

Maybe it's because what differentiates a PWS from an Assault DropShip is that PWSes have Sub-Capital weapons and/or Capital Missile Launchers.

Mybe Extreme conventional range, which very few weapons get, is 21-25 hexes. Maybe to use those weapons you have to enter or be extremely close to Medium (Capital) range, which stops at 24 hexes. Maybe most Sub-Capital weapons have at least Medium (Capital) range. Maybe some even have Long (Capital) range. Maybe Capital Missile Launchers have Extreme (Capital) range and can fire nukes.

Maybe some PWS designs are capable orbital bombardment.

>hurr but you're just making all these ASSUMPTIONS, while I'm being rational and logical and know more about this than you XD

Jesus Christ.

>>45095018
>Of course the last two are detailed in the ONN section of TR 3150
Ah, I don't have any of the DA TROs so that explains why I missed those

So I've got a question I hope doesn't stir up a shitstorm but it's one I've been curious about a while.

I'm a Taurian fan, and the first sourcebook I read with them was FM: Periphery. I'd heard a bit about the Periphery First Edition and how it was controversial and caused commotion, do I decided to finally read it.
After reading the background history and Taurian specific section, I don't get the hubbub. I mean aside from the errors about a couple mechs and a couple tanks being made in the Concordat, and that bit in a planetary description mentioning "warships", is there anything else that causes such controversy?
I've often heard people earnestly point out that the whole thing is practically wrong but nothing besides those bits I mentioned really stuck out.

I'm aware of Medron Pryde but is there something else in the 1st Edition he cites that grinds people's gears?

>>45095657
Not really, no.
There's some stuff about how the magistracy is an abject mess that later stuff ignores, but that's not really a retcon per se

>>45095657

What you've covered is most of the actual issue with P1E, yes.

The related and probably greater issue is that Medron deliberately misreads and misconstrues a lot of other things to argue the Concordat is better at X, Y, and Z than others are giving it credit for, and that it also means the Concordat is/should be capable of A, B, and C as well because of it.

Case in point: early sources indicate that the Concordat, and other Periphery nations, rely on local corporations to handle a lot of their interstellar communications. ComStar personnel are listed in planetary entries along with their HPG classes.

Logical conclusion: ComStar is stated to have a monopoly on HPGs and kills the living shit out of anyone who tries to research or capture HPGs. Ergo, the local companies are using Pony Express networks to transmit interplanetary messages.

Medron's conclusion: The ComStar listings are only for ComStar facilities and they won't connect to the Taurian network out of spite. The Concordat actually maintains its own HPG network that does its intra-Concordat communications. The Concordat therefore completely understands HPG tech and can build new HPGs if it needs to.

Now, granted the text doesn't *explicitly* say which of the two is the case. But I think we can take a guess at which of the two is the more likely actual state of affairs.

This is not even a hypothetical, BTW. Medron has made that exact argument in the past, and a lot of similar ones. And then what he says gets taken as gospel by a lot of other people, Taurian or not, and so on and so forth.

>>45095657
>I've often heard people earnestly point out that the whole thing is practically wrong
When they say "wrong" what they really mean is "I don't want this to be true but it technically is"

How's the tempest?
It looks pretty good, has anyone used it

>>45096366

CGL literally made a dev-level ruling that things in P1E are only correct if they are corroborated by other later, canonically correct sources (so not Objective Raids, which is a good fan effort but really should never have been published).

It's really whacky in places and doesn't fit the vibe of the game, either now or back when it was first made.

Fair to say it's a goldmine for RPG ideas or AUs though.

>>45096347
>point: early sources indicate that the Concordat, and other Periphery nations, rely on local corporations to handle a lot of their interstellar communications
As a point of fact, the only source for that is the very first edition of Mechwarrior, which has a lot of early-installment weirdness, which only makes medron's citations even dumber

>>45096454
>CGL literally made a dev-level ruling that things in P1E are only correct if they are corroborated by other later, canonically correct sources
Other way around; it's still canon, it just automatically looses every contradictory statement

>>45096388
Its ok. Doesnt really stand out. Just a 4/6 heavy with a gauss rifle.

>>45096388
It's actually a lot like the Cestus. Both are pretty good designs

>>45096454
Just a nitpick but I thought they said things are canon as long as they're not contradicted by a later source.

>>45095944
Kind of a shame since given how the Magistracy is written as having slavery and sex discrimination and low education rates it would make sense for them to be a mess.

>>45096347
Medron seems in denial about a great many things.

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>>45096388

Mixed reviews.

As a cityfighter, it's actually quite good. 4 jump, and a very credible short-range battery that gets outright scary at 3 hexes.

Most anywhere else, though, it falls prey to the problem with almost every low-end IS-tech heavy. Low speed and an XL engine. It's too easy to hit, and killing it at range both knocks a headcapper off the table, and prevents it from closing in to use that nice short-range arsenal. Don't get me wrong, it's got good armor for its weight. IIRC it's at 95% of possible, and it can take an AC/20 to each side torso. It's just that it's going to attract an inordinate amount of fire, and NO low-end heavy can soak that. Plus you get the side issue of a low-armor, arm-mounted Gauss Rifle that has a tendency to blow up and deal damage to the pilot.

The Storm Tempest is generally useless, IMO. Light Guasses as a centerpiece of the weapons load have to be very specifically used,and the ST doesn't do it. Gaining ER Mediums and upping the SRMs to streaks doesn't help that fact. There is one bright side: because it doesn't mount a GR anymore, it actually attracts less firepower, so it can actually live longer and may get to a useful weapon range.

I haven't used the 3150 variant, but a 4/6/6 mover with a Gauss and a SNPPC is actually pretty nice. I cannot emphasize how useful 6 jump is compared to 4; it means that you can move from cover to cover on practically every mapsheet. The TRO is unclear on whether it loses the mediums, or the LPL to get the SNPPC; if the former, it's really good (you get a battery of a GR, SNPPC, and an LPL on a Mech that jumps 6). There's no record sheet for it yet, AFAIK.

>>45096388

The -3M is great as a bodyguard element in a Lance with a lot of stand-off firepower. It has the GR to complement them and the LPL, SRM-6, and 3 MLs in close. Being 4/6/4 is the sticking point, it's kind of at the point where they should have gone all-out for ranged firepower or taken the GR off to make it faster. Individually it's OK, GRs are always good. It shines better in a Lance though, and a lot of FWL machines are like that.

The -3M2 I'm less a fan of because it smacks of the "lolrandumbLGR" phase of FASA/Fanpro with FWLM designs. If it had an ER PPC I'd like it more. I wouldn't like it that much, but I'd like it more.

The -3MA is meant for specialty A/C ammo. It loses the Gauss Rifle for that capability. Not that great.

The -4M is supposed to have iJJs and a Snub-Nose PPC. A lot will depend on what else it has. 4/6/6 is an OK movement rate. I'd hope in this case that they take the GR out and make it a pure brawler, but it's apparently an unwritten rule that all Tempest variants have to suck so it's probably going to be based on the LGR design and still have that. Yay. It's still only a ONN entry so maybe there's still some hope left.

The Tempest C from TR 3150 is supposed to be a rebuild using full Clan tech. If they don't go full retard and make it a rebuilt -3MA except with ProtoMech A/Cs it could be pretty good, with a Clan GR and Clan LPL and Clan ER Mediums and Streak SRMs in close. Like a better version of the Summoner.

>>45096773
>The TRO is unclear on whether it loses the mediums, or the LPL to get the SNPPC

Actually, never mind. I just threw this up on SSW. To get a 4/6/6 profile and add a SNPPC, you have to remove the SRM-6 and ammo, all three MLs, AND the LPL. So you just get a GR and a SNPPC for your guns.

Which is nice. But not great, considering the time period.

>>45096773

Yeah, with the -4M it's gonna depend on where they find the mass for the Snub-Nose PPC and iJJs.

That's 18 tons, but the JJs, MLs, and LPL of the -3M only account for 17.

Maybe it has a Clan-Spec Gauss Rifle, I dunno. I'd probably rathered have given up the SRM than the MLs too.

What's the best 70-ton trooper?

>>45096949
Lose 5 tons. Acquire Thunderbolt. Remove clans.

>>45096949
AINT NOTHIN BUT A HOUND DOG
seriously, the hound is amazing; CASE and DHS are basically the only major improvements it could have

>>45096857
>>45096931

Tempestmind.

>>45096949

Two IS contenders come to mind from the SW era.

Grasshopper, especially the PPC variant.

And the Flashman. Mmmm.

Both are very under-rated, particularly the Flashman.

I guess the Capaphract might qualify here but I'm not a real fan.

Later, the Hercules (discussed a bit up-thread) is good. CA seems to love the Hound as well.

>>45097069
Since when has anyone seen flashbulbs and underrated them?

>>45097069
>Flashman
75 tons

>>45095332
What scale of time and distance are you imagining the blockades to operate at? Not boardgame scales, surely?

>>45096949
Albatross, though technically it's a 75 tonner

>>45097069
>Flashman
>trooper
It's 100% a heavy cav.

>>45096949
Cataphract or Warhammer-7M

>>45096949
Guillotine is also pretty bad ass.

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>>45097069
>CA seems to love the Hound as well.
The Hound needs DHS badly, but only because it's 3145, get your shit together. Otherwise, I have a soft spot for the Grasshopper, especially one I use in various configurations... to the point I have 24 variants of it. I also really like the Guillotine, Gallowglas (lots of G- mechs here, must investigate further) and the Daikyu. Though the 70 ton range is my favorite, so I've got a variant for each of them. In fact, have a Davion Daikyu that I used as salvage in a campaign.

As for the Tempest: Needs an ER PPC, because IS LPLs are shit.

I can't post my favorite Hercules.

>>45097208
I don't remember troopers having to be slow.

>>45097164

My derp.

>>45097131

People really seem to dismiss stuff with LLs in 3025 games for some reason. They'll be all over PPC and ML boats, but not LL boats. The Flashman doesn't have enough MLs to be an ML boat, and it has LLs. So it gets ignored, right up until it's running the rape train on the enemy.

>>45096949
Gallowglas

>>45097337
They are supposed to be tough, and an XL tends to take away from that.

Is there an I.S. mech with similar performance to a falconer?

>>45096949
>>45097208
>trooper
>heavy cav
I don't think I have a book that describes all the mech roles.

Could someone break down the roles and give examples?

So are we having another MegaMek brawl soon? That shit looked fun and I want to get in on the next one.

>>45097948
Ability is limited by anons with knowledge to port forward. Also I am unsure how much interest there is.

>>45097916
Here's a rough guide, other anons feel free to jump in and add more

Trooper: typically moves 4/6 (or 5/8 for mediums) with a SFE or occasionally LFE. Generally carries a fairly all-round weapons load out and large amounts of armor; LBX-10s, LLs and PPCs are common
The ur-examples are the Thunderbolt and vindicator while a few other examples would be the Hound, Gallowglas, Centurion and Merlin
Heavy Cavalry designs almost always use XLs and move 5/8. Typically carries a medium-ranged weapons loadout and mediocre armor. Examples include the Flashman, Ost-series and Maelstrom

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crashing this thread with no survivors

>>45089996
B A S E D
A
S
E
D

>>45090148
GreekFire's ok at killing Albatrosses

>>45091477
FWL as all hell. I would be inclined to swap one of them out for an Archer though just because of how common they are.

>>45092095
It performs about like you'd expect.

>>45093971
Are you bringing this to the next MM game? I didn't realize 8 Pos was ll you had last game until after the game, I thought they were backing up a couple of mechs.

>>45094452
UUURRRAAAAAA

>>45096388
>>45096773 and >>45096844 said what I was going to

>>45096857
It's actually better at a lighter tonnage, iirc. Another gimped FWL mech, yay.

>>45097052
Those are pretty significant, especially the CASE. Now if there were a hound with CASE II...

>>45096844
>except with ProtoMech A/Cs
u wot m8

>>45098314
My take on cavalry is that it needs to be fast and have the sort of weapons load where the enemy will know you made contact Whether it be a gauss rifle and two snubbies that can exploit 7 hex short range on all three, or an LBX20 and some pulses. You're relying on shock and lethality, because they aren't tough enough to hang around if they get stuck.

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>>45098469

>>45098482
Nah, too many doods.

Now, 8 Pos and a couple infantry might work.

new thread >>45098511

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>>45098482

>u wot m8

All Tempest variants to date have sucked, and we're talking about a design made in the Dark Age.

It might not derp it up too bad, but again, Tempest, FWL design base, Dark Age. It might look like this.

Pray it doesn't, though. I am already.

>>45097882
The jinggau, kinda.

>>45065516
>Ground combat is pointless since WarShips exist in numbers large enough to completely interdict planets

You seem to suffer a fundamental misunderstanding of what Warships are for.

Warships are for doing two things: escorting ground troops so they can land on a planet, or killing enemy ground troops before they can land. Engaging warships engaged in the former job is just a prerequisite to accomplish the latter. Without ground troops at all, all Warships can do is 1. blockade or 2. glass. Glassing a planet renders it utterly useless for anything. The point of going out into the dark void is to capture planets and enforce your will upon the people and governments upon them.

tl;dr I disagree