/btg/ - Battletech General

What mechs in the introbox would fit with a merc unit with SLDF roots?

Like if I were to make a lance like in NEA's pdf?

>>49990291

If the MoC was a FWL Substate people would like it and stop shitposting.

>>49990257
It's seriously a good sourcebook to read.

>>49990293
Awesome, Clint, Cicada, atlas, hunchback, cyclops, dervish to name a few
Hell, anything aside from the panther, vindicator, dragon, zeus, hermes or enforcer, really.
But be advised thst the SLDF heavily favored lances consisting of four of the same machine

>>49990339
Well yeah, it would turn a bad thing into a good thing...

>>49990291
This would have been a neat idea, like if during the Shattered League period MoC had teamed up with Andurien again, then the two either stay independent when the FWL reforms or MoC just takes Regulus' seat at the somewhat-loyal opposition table in parliament.

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I could be shitposting right now, but I decided to post a beutiful picture for you

stop being so easy to trigger, btg
I love you all :*

It's hard to not be a faggot when I suck cock and fuck ass... but I digress.

>>49990293
Pretty much all of them. As >>49990345 said, the SLDF ran whole companies of the same mech and variant, though for variety I tend to allow companies to diversify their designs in terms of variants, since 12 Archer 2Rs are boring.

>>49990373
>stop being so easy to trigger, btg

No. Please just stop shitposting in the first place.

And thank you for the picture.

I want to talk about the BattleMech Manual a bit with regards to some worries raised in the last thread. I'm the project lead on it.

The Manual is the book I've been periodically popping in here asking your advice on (what is confusing, how does TW not work, etc) for the past year or so. I've put a lot of /btg feedback into it (e.g. why doesn't the Heat chapter have the heat chart from the record sheet? Good question, anon-from-a-year-ago: it does now).

I've taken the text of TW's latest printing and personally rewritten the whole thing. I know one of the common complaints is word count bloat, so I've really worked to trim sentences down as much as humanly possible. The Combat chapter, for example, is 15% smaller than the old one (and that's not including any word count chopped because we moved to mechs only: that's just pure wordage trimming on base rules). And then the whole book is getting another editor to go over it to trim and clarify it some more. At the same time, there's more redundancy in some places, as I've tried to make sure we have page refs everywhere they need to be, and I figured it's always better to repeat a small amount of text than to have you flip around in a book in the middle of the game to read it instead. I've moved a lot of stuff around too, to try and put it in better places.

In a lot of ways the Manual was inspired by the BMR, but at the same time, we tried to take what TW added as well. And then of course, it's mechs-only, which is a new approach, so it's its own book in some ways. We've added a handful of new things, but I probably shouldn't talk about that yet.

Also, CampaignAnon and Muninn worked on this with me throughout, with CA making his first BT writing contribution here (he's cooked up a nice Weapons chapter I think everyone will like). Lastly, there's one more btg'er who helped a lot, but he's anonymous here so I'll leave him that way unless he changes his mind.

If there's any questions, I'll try to answer.

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>>49990389
it is okay to be gay

>>49990340
It really is amazing.
Honestly, Stefan Amaris is the greatest Great Man in battletech history.
I mean, he set the world on fire and brought the greatest empire in human history to it's knees with essentially nothing, in the grand scheme of things

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>>49990410
>No. Please just stop shitposting in the first place.
sorry, I didn't want to imply I was the source of shitposting, it was just an example of how easy is not to shitpost

you're welcome, here's another

>>49990427
noice
some questions:
>TW is going to be superseded by this book?
>which eras the book is going to cover?
>they will improve the ruleset name division?
introtech/tournament legal/advanced/experimental does not make too much sense. This level should illustrate how hard/easy are that equipment rule, but since equips can be experimental in one Era and tournament legal in another it makes the classification kinda pointless

>>49990373
is dat a Blue Flame?

>>49990611
Thunder Fox.

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>>49990427
Serious rely
If there's one thing about BT that always confuses me it's the availability codes (FEEX etc.)

System needs to be clarified/rewritten.

Also moar pretty pictures of Melissa Steiner requested, preferably nudes.

>>49990572
Not a replacement for TW or any other book and definitely not a new edition. Rather, it's a book for guys who have a certain way of playing BT and want to focus on that: all stompy robots, all the time. TW (with TM, TO, and IO) is still the full meal deal. Any rules changes in the Manual will either be backported to TW via errata (there's very very few, and they're small) or clearly understood to be simplified alternate versions (for example, there's a new fire and smoke ruleset in it so you can add fire to a game without it being Dresden Simulator 3000 and rolling dice all day to track spread; it won't replace the TO version, but offers you a new way to handle fire if you want).

Eras: Up to 3145. But will support earlier play back to the Age of War.

Ruleset division: I'm not fond of it either, but we're stuck with that for the foreseeable future. It remains as is. The book supports Tourney Legal stuff only. So no handhelds, remote sensors, and other page-long stuff.

>>49990345
>>49990400
Are there any in particular more likely to be found in a unit with Terran Hegemony roots? I'm going for a ELH feel too.

>>49990689
They confuse me too. This is a gameplay manual, for guys who just want something they can reference at the tabletop. No c-bills, no availability codes, no legalities, no tech faciton spread: none of that stuff. Just what you need to play, nothing to get in the way.

Talk to Ray for Melissa nudes. He's doing some cool stuff with layout for the book; perhaps that's part of his master plan.

>>49990694
>The book supports Tourney Legal stuff only. So no handhelds, remote sensors, and other page-long stuff.

Fucking stupid imo. Not you guys' fault but still

>>49990755
No, no problem: I understand some people will want every last item. But I should note that this is taking the tech level changes into account as seen in TRO Prototypes, RS 3145, and IO. There's an awful lot of stuff that's TL in 3145.

>>49990427
Any chance of the Battletech pc game / DFA webseries initiative rules being ironed out as an official optional rule?

>>49990717
Thunderbolts, orions (especially), griffins, Archers, Crusaders, stingers,and maybe even a Mackie, all TH classics.
I guess the problem is that the TH iconics are also some of the most common mechs, and/or also iconic to other factions

>>49990694
>Not a replacement for TW or any other book and definitely not a new edition.
good

>Eras: Up to 3145. But will support earlier play back to the Age of War.
also good

>The book supports Tourney Legal stuff only
not very good, but understandable. However, as I have already mentioned, how we will know certain equipment is Tourney Legal in certain era without saying it is advanced in a earlier/later era?

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>>49990732
Well I'm the OCD guy who wrote the spreadsheet for designing warships, in the sense that I wrote it ten years ago and occasionally go back and fix it every few years.

Most BT rules are easy, but putting availability in is requiring a cmplete rewrite and has me pulling out my hair. I expect to have the damn thing totally rewritten by 2029. Oh well.

Makes me kind of miss Battlespace, though.

>>49990787
Sorry, friend, I still meant within the introductory box set.

>>49990717
If you want a decent option to start, I'd recommend looking at Liberation of Terra II's RATs. You'll have a decent variety of units to choose from, and you can dial in from there. Note that the ELH was a standard line regiment, even if it was detached.

>>49990755
Most of that stuff takes up an obscene amount of page space though. Or have been revised so many times that the rules are just a cluster.

>>49990777
That's up to someone with a different pay grade. But not in this book.

>>49990777
That's the "give lights a reason to exist" stuff, right? No, there's nothing like that here. New rules are kept to an absolute minimum; since this isn't a new edition, we don't want too much deviance between books. As Randall mentioned in the podcast, you'll instead see a small number of TO options backported into the Manual text (still labelled as options, mind you).

>>49990798
>how we will know certain equipment is Tourney Legal in certain era without saying it is advanced in a earlier/later era?

I wrote a handy Tech Advancement table along the lines of what's in RS 3145 NTNU to show you how everything in the book moves from Exp to Adv to TL. There's also some nice stuff that will be done with the weapon tables to help that I think you'll like. Players will be able to follow along era by era without problems.

>>49990800
Yeah, they strike me as a reason to give factcheckers grey hair, and not much else. I don't always agree with a lot of the "detailing everything eliminates creativity" arguments, but I do in these sorts of cases.

>>49990831
Ah, I see. No problems. My only other comment is please index the hell out of that thing.

>>49990869
I am very happy to hear this, Xotl. And even more happy you and CA/Munnin are involved in this project.

one last question. Is there an expected release date?

>>49990830
>Most of that stuff takes up an obscene amount of page space though. Or have been revised so many times that the rules are just a cluster.

Which is why it would be nice to have it in a book without a hundred pages of errata awkwardly copied in there

>>49990916
The index is something that's come up a lot, and therefore something I'm definitely aware of. However, I have no idea how they're made, so I don't know how much of an opportunity we'll have to improve it beyond standard. I'm hoping a lot, but obviously dealing with that kind of a mass of data is not easy. Still, your concerns have definitely been heard on this one.

>>49990918
The usual problems with release dates apply. Until someone says something officially, I can't comment. Sorry. Thanks for the vote of confidence though. :)

>>49990777
>>49990831
>That's the "give lights a reason to exist" stuff, right?
what initiative rules are those? I'm interested in anything that makes light mechs more viable

>>49990950
>Which is why it would be nice to have it in a book without a hundred pages of errata awkwardly copied in there
Don't get me wrong I agree, I just write what I'm told to. In this case, it was TL gear only.

>>49990975
Watch the Death From Above series, or the pre-Alpha video for the HBS BT game.

BT video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJkixB91Uug

DFA battle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_Rx12M6nY0&index=64&list=PLHKocVDXoWBvk0-skvvtUaMiFoo1MYPd9

>>49990975
It's the system they are using in the forthcoming PC game and on the Death From Above series on Twitch/Youtube. Basically the turns are divided up by weight class, so all the lights go first, including shooting, then mediums, heavies, etc. Tanks move one phase later than mechs of the same weight class. Any unit can delay it's action till a later phase. A light mech can dart out before anyone else can move to backstab or sit behind a hill with a held action making an assault really think about his move. It helps mediums too.

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>>49990968
Yeah I'll second on the index.
Sometimes it seems like finding things in the BT books takes up more time than playing.

But I suppose it's a trade-off. You can either have detailed rules or you can have easy rules. It's hard to find the balance.

I Think we need a visionary like Stefan Amaris to come in and take over Battletech.

Long Live Emporer Amaris!

>>49991117
It seems pretty neat, though I'm sure someone's bound to find a way to abuse it. Infantry are also counted as lights, right?

>>49991189
I hope the improved layout, extra page refs, and all the other formatting changes I made will really help in this regard (that, and the fact that there's so much less text to wade through because all the non-mech stuff is gone).

Still, if anyone wants to dive into the TW index and start bringing up *specific* ways in which it fails (X is outright missing, Y isn't needed at all, Z is poorly worded so that no one will ever look there for it, etc), I'll likely be able to make sure those mistakes won't be repeated in the Manual. I have a few listed from previous threads, but the more the merrier. Just post it here.

>>49991226
Yeah, I think so, but I'm not sure because the PC's infantry unit keep deploying from ambush/airdrop at dramatically appropriate moments on the show and so they are pretty loose with the infantry rules.

Also a warning about the web series, they have no idea how to play in the first 3-4 episodes, but by the end of the season they get pretty good. It's actually pretty cool to watch players go from taking 3 hrs for a game to consistently an hour and a halfish.

>>49991226
Also yeah, no rule ever survives contact with the power gamer.

>>49991260
I think I remember running into the fact that aerospace strafing rules don't specifically mention the fact that energy weapons strike every hex. Maybe a little clarification on the difference between strafing and direct strikes.

Not sure if they'll be in if its just BMs though.

>>49991303
Yeah, Hamid & crew were typically more plot devices than tabletop units. And definitely, it's been great watching a group go for "wait how do i mech" to actually playing decently and making reasonably smart decisions.

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>>49991189
Long live House Amaris!

>>49991341
I also have to give them props on guest stars, I've been playing battle tech since 1994 ish and nothing has made me as uncomfortable as "Daddy" or laugh as hard as Red Mariah.

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>>49991260
Looked up the section on strafing:

It says "The attacking player makes separate to-hit rolls for each
weapon against each target. Apply weapon hits using the
standard rules for the appropriate unit type." (page 243)

I remember getting into an argument at the table about whether or not each target received full damage, that could be clarified.

>>49991391
Yeah, Kerensky can suck eggs!

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>>49991391

>>49991407
That won't be in the Manual, since it's a mech-only book, but I'll make sure it gets clarified for TW. Thanks.

>>49990352
>>49990358

What I've never understood is WHY the MoC needs to be separate from the FWL. Like, I could see it being a differentiated periphery realm to any other successor state, but when the whole deal of the FWL is "do your own thing with your microstate", I don't really see the point.

>>49991391
>>49991407
I still can't believe no one in the Star League said, "Hey they have a shark on their flag, do you think they might be the bad guys"

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>>49991445
Fluff-wise I thing the BT universe should have more shark-related sayings.

"Never trust a shark bearing gifts"
"If it's all teeth and stomach don't invite it into your house"
"We need a bigger McKenna"
"I bitchslapped him like a Cameron on Christmas"

Heh heh

Hey /btg/ my friends and I recently got into Battletech, and I have a couple questions for you guys.

We've decided to play 3025-3039 (Introtech?), because we know if we go further, its going to devolve into rampant power gaming and we'd like to leave that back with WarmaHordes.

My question is how big of a board should we be using? Currently we've been doing a 1x2, so as to give snipers a chance to snipe, and give brawlers a chance to actually close in.

>>49991537
>My question is how big of a board should we be using?
it depends on how many mechs you are bringing into the table. 1x2 is okay for 2x2 battles, you will need bigger tables for bigger fights

>>49991537
If you want more room to maneuver but keep the ranges decent, 2x2 is nice.

>>49991564
We're doing a lance each right now.

>>49991600
see >>49991585 then
2x2 will work fine

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For my Terran Hegemony-descended merc lance, introbox only, I've narrowed down options to:
>Cyclops or Banshee (Atlas is GOAT but too much I think)
>Catapult or Dervish
>Assassin or Clint
and then either another medium
>Whitworth, Hunback or Cicada
or a light
>Spider or Panther

Which would you guys pick for each option?

I thought this might be a more productive discussion than what ended last thread...

>>49991537
I generally play 3x3, but I play with a company per side minimum, so I've sacrificed table space for it.

>>49992309
You're not gonna see lances with mixed tonnage like that in the SLDF. Even companies doing so would be scratch reinforcement units. Also, did I just see an animu kid die in that gif?

>>49992359
Sorry if it wasn't clear, it's not set during the SLDF but instead descendants operating as mercs. Will probably do a 3025 game.

>>49992359
yep, kid got mooked

>>49992407
You're still more likely to see tonnage split. If you're going for a single lance only, I'd probably drop the assault simply because of how incredibly rare they are at the time.

>>49992359
>Did I just see an animu kid die in that gif?

Ideon is a hell of a ride.

Thank you Xotl and CA for contributing to the game.

>>49992309
Cyclops, dervish, cicada, spider

>>49992424
Maybe. I was using NEA's lance example as a basis.

>>49992309
Catapult, Dervish, Assassin, Clint. It's closer to SLDF style in terms of close weights. It also should play alright.

>>49992491
Whatever works for your game, anon. Going by those mechs, I'd go with the Banshee 3S, Catapult, Assassin and the Whitworth. You can share ammo for the last two.

>>49992424
On the other hand, assaults were much less rare in the old days, so a SLDF-decended unit might well have a disproportionately large number of assaults

>>49992522
Nice dubs. However, a Light Horse regiment by the SLDF reckoning (if that anon is still using them as more than just a reference as another left behind SLDF unit) consists of mostly lights and mediums. They're scouts.

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>>49992309
If you can afford a Catapult you can afford a much tougher Archer.

Or go all birmech, I've done that before.
Marauder & Catapult for fire support, Jenners for speed.

So, the MechManual or whatever it will be called, will it have rules for minefields? Someone said something about it having them in the previous thread.
And what about artillery? Arrow IV is not common in 'Mechs but it does appear.

>>49992554
I agree. Anon should specify what sort of regiment they're descended from, because it would significantly impact their likely composition (though a unit descending from a hodgepodge of several regiments could have basically any composition that anon wants)

>>49992737
Artillery isn't Tournament Legal, so it's not in. Sorry.

>>49992747
Agreed, though a Dragoon regiment would be too much for it to have not joined a House or died in the Succession Wars, I could see a Battle Regiment diversifying with Light scouting elements.

>>49992554
>>49992522

I think it's moot because a) there are numerous ways that unit composition could change in the time between ~2780 and 3025 and b) he's only fielding a small force on the tabletop, and that doesn't need to be a microcosm of the entire regiment.

SLDF-heritage mercs are all well and good, but does anyone have any RWR-based merc units?

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>that feeling when you've wanted to contribute to Battletech as a franchise for a long time, but you're not "inner circle" and your input is likely not necessary
I'm too much of a casual anyway.

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>>49993117
at least you didn't have a hand in Dark Age

>>49993144
Yeah, there's that.

>>49990694
>there's a new fire and smoke ruleset in it so you can add fire to a game without it being Dresden Simulator 3000
But that's half the fun of the fire rules

>>49991537
>if we go further, its going to devolve into rampant power gaming
You'll still get powergaming in introtech, just with ML boats instead of FEDCOM GAUSSWALL ONLY FINAL DESTINATION.

>>49993117
You get into the inner circle by contributing. Put your big boy britches on and do something.

>>49991537
2x2 is the best I've found for games where you want equal parts maneuvering and brawling. It gives scouts a chance to use their speed to not die, and makes you actually think about how you're moving and how you're setting up. You have to move to counter what your opponent is doing, and you have to keep in mind the capabilities of your own machines. It lets everything shine depending on how you use it.

That said, for casual romps for a few hours with a lance of say, a Light, two Mediums, and a Heavy, 1x2 is fine if you just want to get some killin' done over a beer or three.

>>49993208
What have you done, as an example of how to go about this?

>Working on a BT serial fic series because why the hell not

I feel like there needs to be a point where I stop doing research for this.

>>49993369
Keep on keepin' on man. What kind of stuff are you writing? Era? Subject matter?

>>49993397

3060s-ish era mercenaries. Plot is going to be about a new Mechwarrior signing on with a company getting shipped out to the Combine border for a raid.

Original idea was for them investigating a planet went dark, but the idea was getting too unwieldy.

>>49993419
Sounds cool. Making the protag a newbie will help rope the reader in and make him/her more relatable, since the reader's gonna know as little as the protag does about a lot of stuff. Era is a good choice; lots going on.

>>49993454

Yeah, lead is a relatively inexperienced, but competent pilot(St. Ives Compact born and raised, signed on with a merc unit out of military school, only major operation was Guerrero, and has no idea about all the politics).

Besides, huge amounts of infodumps are sacred to Battletech, if my reread of the Kerensky Trilogy are any indication.

>>49993490
Exposition. Something that's really hard to do well. Good luck, anon.

>>49990210
>Due to the geometry of hyper space all of the entities seen attacking the ship are the same squid

>>49993144
>>49993158
Dark Age is fine

Don't be a faggot

>>49995624
>Reading TRO:3150
>Legate Jamal still giving Stone and Levin hell on Liberty fifteen years later even with all the bullshit upgrades the CGL gave the RotS military

Heh.

Battlebump, Make Andurien Great Again edition

>>49992309
Damn! Where did you get that gif from? What series?

>>49996174
That's Space Runaway Ideon, by none other than Yoshiyuki "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" Tomino.

>>49996043
Fuck you buddy, andurien was always great.

>>49996201
Damn, that japs depression translated to some grisly anime.

>>49995683
Can you tell me more about this whole situation?

>>49996616
Basically, Levin has had 15 years with his best buddies Lakewood and Sinclair to put down the rebellion in his state. He had nothing better to do once the Fortress goes up.

Instead he kills the Comguards and dicks around with spoiling raids outside the wall and builds up a massive army that has done about as much real fighting as the Comguard prior to Tukayyid.

And so the rebels still tell him to fuck off. Most of his worlds outside guarded factories and some key loyal groups are like the native west or the Mormons before they were brought to heel. The US claimed them as US territory but they were other small nations and rogue states within the country. Then again, he's trying to wrest power from the planetary nobles. Not one or two, but all of them in his realm. Nobody has ever been stupid enough to do that, especially not to core worlds that have learned they had to fend for themselves with their local governments since the fall of the Star League.

>>49996682
Wait, so while the RotS is doing the whole Fortress Republic deal, the planet's inside the Wall are telling the Republic to fuck off? Who are these rebels? What worlds do they hold?

>>49996917
Their main power base was outside the wall and consisted of old Marik worlds as well as a couple Azami worlds, at the least the ones in open rebellion. They pretty much all got conquered and folded into other governments once the wall went up and the feeding frenzy on the republic really got going.

The ones under the wall are mostly acting like Sandoval did with his Swordsworn back when, doing their own thing but paying basic lip service back to Terra. "We are always patriots of the Republic, and as such we cannot condone the Exarch's blatant violation of our rights." From the people's view, dissolving the senate and denying them a venue for representation was the coup, even though it was the Senate who was planning to turn the Exarch into a puppet position.

So the whole thing still kind of stays around because the "rebels" are largely remnants of the old system, a system that has long predated the Republic. Levin has just held everything together with sheer military force.

What I wonder is how they'll react now that Stone is the one back and telling them to go fuck themselves. Seems places like Liberty don't give a shit.

>>49996996
We need a new Terran Hegemony, not a Stone dictatorship.

Where's Aken Bosch when you need him?

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>>49997221
Make Terra Great Again

Anyone have a good copy of the Invader Clan pdf?

Mine is corrupted or something right on all the pages about Clan Nova Cat.

>>49997316
Here you go. It's the proper Catalyst rerelease that you can Ctrl-f through instead of a straight scan.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/3u96fv6v99slpnu/Invading_Clans1.pdf

Now if somebody would only do the same for FM:FWL and Rolling Thunder (fixed) for me.

>>49997413
Thank you so much man, I really appreciate it. There's quite a few I wish I had real searchable releases of and this was one.

>>49997413
Ditto for FM:FWL and Rolling Thunder.

>>49997413
>>49997563
I hope this is what you guys are looking for.
BATTLETECH - Rolling Thunder and Field Manual House Marik (Free Worlds League) - -
http://www.mediafire.com/file/n0zex7k1liynuqk/2015-10-28_FM-FWL_a_RollingThunder.rar

>>49990427
>And then of course, it's mechs-only, which is a new approach

Smiles and Enthusiasm : Gone.

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>>49990210
>Be an Ausfag
>Thinking about getting Battletech boardgame for a while
>No one to play with
>Only person to play with is my girlfriend but she only wants to play out of pity for me not being able to play with anyone
>Try and explain the general story to her only to get
> "Honey, I dont know what any of that was, only big robots"
Does it get better /tg/?

>>49998423
Well, she got the most important part right...

>>49998423
I'd say she's gotten it right. Disregard haters, acquire giant robots.

>>49998423
She was trying to tell you she wants your big robot. Or is all you have a dinky ProtoMech?

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>>49998423
How can you play Battletech in Australia?
All the rulebooks are in English

>>49997967
You put in the original house book for Marik, not the Field Manual. Thanks for Rolling Thunder. It's way better than the old blurry scan with missing pages.

>>49998692
At least I got 1 for 2. Glad I could be of some help.

>>49998706
Any help is appreciated, trothkin.

Now we just need to find that FM.

>>49998717

I have the field manual, the old one (printed in '97); I could scan some of the pages if you're looking for something specific.

What made the Ghost Bears hate the Nova Cats so much that they targeted civilians?

I thought shit like that made other Clans target you.

>>49999659
Shit like that generally makes other clans hate you, unless you're writers pet.

>>49999640
Not him, but I'm the original guy who asked and I have the paper version. I just really wish I had a pdf for quick reference. Also, it's the only Field Manual I don't have a pdf of.

>>49998068

Get over it, man. The point of the game is the mechs; it's only reasonable that if they want a quick-reference document that they're going to focus on the unit type which makes up 95% of what actually makes it onto the board.

>>49999659
Honestly, it was because it was the dark age and everyone was expected to act unnecessarily edgy at every opportunity, no matter how little sense it made.
See also: Jade Falcons, Julian Davion, ect

>>49999659

The Ghost Bears are just sort of dicks like that. Dark Age edginess doesn't help.

Just be grateful they weren't the Snow Ravens.

>>49999893
>Julian
>Edgy

How? He always seemed like a straightlace soldier boy to me. Caleb on the other hand...

>>49999659
The Cats were abjured. Genocide mode on abjured Clans is practically overall Clan SOP.

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>>49998423
>Honey, I dont know what any of that was, only big robots
>"Everything after 3025 is shit" and "I haven't played since my group disbanded in 1992" are the most common mantras for 9/10 people who come out of the woodwork

The situation isn't that much better.

Long story short: expect to have to teach everyone how to play.

>>49999953
>Teach my buddy how to play
>He's the one that winds up dragging me into learning Aerotech and running real campaigns

I never would have known the joys of Dropship combat and close air support without him.

>>49999953

Which, while time-consuming, isn't too bad really. You get to watch them grow as players and develop their own interests in the game.

>>50000000

witnessed, but wasted

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Now I have to think of some way to integrate Cirno into BT.

Maybe a battle on a frozen world?
A PPC variant that shoots ice-rays?
A combat coolant truck?

>>49999918
Yeah, caleb is who I meant , sorry. Got them mixed up

>>50000294
Ironically, Caleb did all that stupid shit because he bought into the Davion legend so completely.

>I can fuck an enemy princess if I want. Even daddy dearest did that. I'm the First Fuckin Prince of the Federated Suns
>Davions aren't weak. We've been at the top for a fucking century!
>Lose? Impossible. I'm a fucking Davion!

It's almost meta.

>>50000694

I mean, hubris certainly isn't an unrealistic way for a faction to fall from grace.

okay guys, I've got the following "problem": I have never played BT and I want to learn it. Yet all my 2-3 friends who would also play it don't know shit about BT except and never experienced a BT game except MWO (which they found boring because most of the time you have to wait to find a fucking game). I want to give me and them an easy start, but I don't know where to begin. Do I have to read 100+ pages of rules or do some simplified rules exist, preferable for 3025 in the beginning, and maybe Mechs only.
We want to use the TableTop Simulator, so if anyone has any good recommendations: I'm as open for it as a 0$ hooker.

>>50000694
The hilarious bit is that if he wasn't crazier than a shithouse rat, he quite probably could have done all that legitimately

>>49998423
Chicks dig giant robots.

>>50000908

Personally, I'd recommend using MegaMek - it's not flashy, but it automatically generates the numbers and rolls for you, dramatically simplifying and speeding things up for you. If you're set on using Tabletop Sim, there were some guys who did an intro YT vid.

Vid part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsOG9w2iD80

Vid part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q02giITJa8M

If you'd like, we could arrange something and I could teach you the ropes of the game. I've had to teach like 3 people in the past 2 weeks how to, so how to explain stuff is still fresh.

>>50000908
Only rules you need to know for a starter game can be found in a couple pages. The original manual was tiny. There's just a bunch of optional and special case stuff that makes up the big books. Flip through the old master rules or even third edition for the basics. Total Warfare has the full nitty gritty when you're ready.

The game itself has 3 phases per round
Move
Shoot
Clobberin' Time

You roll for movement initiative at the beginning of each round. The person who wins moves second. This is advantageous because you can react to your opponent moving. You alternate between players each time you move a piece like chess. You choose which of your units to move each time. They're not in a set list order, ie you can move your archer as your first machine the first round and as your last machine the next round.

Movement is different for each machine. Their movement points will be on the record sheet. Walking/Running/(Jumping if they have jump jets). Different kinds of movement cost different amounts of points. Slogging through a forest is harder than running over open ground and what have you. There's a small table for this.

Once everyone has moved, you enter firing phase. All weapons fire resolves at once at the end of the phase, so don't worry about something exploding before you get to use it in the phase. Numbers to hit are based on the skill of the gunner+range to target+what kind of movement the gunner used+how far the target moved+any intervening cover. Sounds like a lot, but really simple once you do it once or twice. There's tables on the sheet that tell you modifiers and brackets. For example. 4 Gunner, Ran +2, Medium Range +2, Target jumped 4 hexes +2, Target in Heavy Forest +2. So you would have to have to hit perfect boxcars with 2D6 to tag him with that gun.

Make note of the heat from your guns and movement.

This is the part where everything takes damage at the same time.

1/2

>>50000694
>>50000917
At least he raped that dumb sue cunt.

>>50001114
Physical phase, you can punch and kick or do a lot of other mech kung fu. This is based on your piloting skill and how much the enemy moved.

All damage is resolved at the same time, just like firing phase.

Now you add up all your heat and see how much your machine can bleed off (the number of heat sinks tells you how much heat you can dissipate a round)

Then you roll initiative again and begin the next round.

That is the essence of the game. There's more things you have to know like how much damage a mechwarrior takes from a head hit, how critical work once you punch through the armor and start wrecking internal systems, what are the effects of overheating, when do you have to make a piloting roll for running on a damaged leg or entering water. But all that stuff is pretty much right in front of you on the record sheet. Even then, it will become second nature soon enough that you won't have to look at it all the time. You won't have to be flipping through a rulebook for special stuff until you up the tech level or start adding all sorts of other kinds of units to the game.

The nice thing about the game is it is as simple or complicated as you decide to make it.

>>49999659

Cats were Abjured, they were involved in the Combine/Dominion Wars, and they were *really* pissed about the Trial of Vengeance.

Cats to them were like one step above the Wolverines, and we all know what happened there.

>>50001617
What's the Trial of Vengeance?

What is your favourite IS Assault Mech and why isn't it the Zeus?

>>50001841
My favorite IS assault mech is technically a solid heavy.

>>50001776

Nova Cats were buttmad about the Abjuration which the Bears voted in favour of, so they initiated a Trial for the Bears' new Leviathan II, Rasalhague.

Wound up costing the Bears a lot of their ships even though they won.

>>50001943
Why did the Bears vote in favour of the Abjuration when they were Wardens and had moved to the Inner Sphere too?

>>50001994

The Cats allied with the Inner Sphere directly and fought against the Clans on their behalf, in a lot of cases dong so by deliberately losing Trials.

>>50001994
Bears are retarded since they themselves got abjured by the Taintsnakes

>>50001994

Intelligence has never been a Bear strong suit.

>>50001022
Thanks mate! I'd like to prefer reading the stuff for now, since studies occupy most of my time. But thank you very much for the links! I guess I won't hook them for MekTek, since the TTS provides better visuals for my casual friends.

>>50001114
>>50001169
Thank you for your explanation! That'll come in handy. It sounds easier than expected, indeed.

Okay I tried once and only partially succeeded. I had an old copy of Rolling Thunder that was good. I hope this batch has the missing House Marik Field Manual people are looking for. Let me know.

BATTLETECH - House Marik Stuff -02 - -
http://www.mediafire.com/file/iykznbobs0imo48/2016-10-28_HouseMarikStuff-02.rar

>>49998423
Where you at?

>>50000218
You could quit being a faggot, that would be a new approach.

>>49990210

I know very little about bt, are there actually giant Tyranid like bugs in the setting or is this pic some sort of a joke? Always considered bt cool partially because of it's focus on humans.

>>50003681

It's a picture from a book of rumours that go around in-character, that there are void creatures that attack ships and can alter the behaviour of people on board them. Think Daemons, basically.

BT does have aliens but no intelligent ones.

>>50003768

anywhere I can read about it?

>>50003812

Mysteries of the Void section in here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/25e2uqqdb322s60/Interstellar+Players+2+-+Jihad+Conspiracies+.pdf

>>50003894

Blessings of Aketosh upon ye

Ok so what differences are there, other than weight and size of components, for retrotech vs standard tech? Because i'm struggling to see why people wouldn't take more of it due to its BV value.

Can anyone elaborate? Or point me to the rules for such things?

>>50004404
Retrotech armor is fucking trash

>>50004428

How so? Could you explain that? Its BAR 10 isn't it? Is it that it just weighs more for less protection or something?

So btg, what are the most common fake rules you encounter when playing BT? Not one-off oddballs, but ones that seem to keep coming up again and again. Stuff like the classic "hatchets always roll on the punch table" and the like.

>>50004589
Partial cover means shots hit on the punch table?

>>50004589

The unit doing the shooting rolls crit locations rather than the one being shot.

>>50004589
I am sure MegaMek is responsible for many rules misinterpretations

>>50004589
Standing still is a -1 TMM, though I'm sure that's an official optional rule from somewhere. I like it though, keeps people from playing turret tech.

>>50004589

Gonna second "melee weapons hit on punch table", and particularly "ultra autocannons can be unjammed, similar to RACs". Without that, the added tonnage and risk of becoming completely useless make it more of a hazard to use them.

I've had trouble getting new players to understand the way cluster weapons work sometimes. They want to apply the cluster hits as one big chunk, rather than breaking down the damage into however chunks work for the weapon.

>>50004589
"Tag-designated targets enable indirect fire with standard LRMs"

>>50004802
I mean, it should...

>>50004528
It weighs more per point, thats why the Mackie has 20 tons of armor

>>50004802

I didn't know that it didn't. Huh.

Question for lorefags:

I'm a BT old hand getting into the post FCCW-stuff. I know the RotS caught up with ComStar and wrecked their shit in the 3100s. I know ComStar was using the Uraeus and the Kheper. My question is, what other stuff did ComStar have? Tanks, BA, ASF, other mech chassis, factories, etc.

>>50004911

I think most of the information you're looking for is consolidated in Turning Points: Epsilon Eridani.

>>50004802
Read the rules for the recon camera, they say it can designate indirect fire for conventional LRMs like a TAG, that's right even some of the writers don't know TAG doesn't do that.

>>50004713
Once upon a time Hatchets did, it's just that they haven't picked up a rule book since the hardback master rules

>>50004911
They had the continent of Australia on Terra, Epsilon Eridani, the fleet base as Luyten, and that's about it I think.

>>50004625
That was the way partial cover worked, and the current rules used to be an optional rule.

>>50004995
>>50004911
Plus TP: Epsilon Eridani includes this:

>For more information about Epsilon Eridani during the Dark Age, Malcolm Buhl’s Blessed Order, and the ComGuard’s reformed First Division, please see Era Report: 3145, Era Digest: Dark Age, Field Manual: 3145, Technical Readout: 3145 Republic, and the MechWarrior Dark Age novels Target of Opportunity and A Bonfre of Worlds.

Other things of note:

The ComGuard actually has a better chance of getting the Doloire than the Republic does on the RATs
ComStar was somehow making the Celerity before the RAF nicked it
You like the Terran hegemony? Well ComStar decided to make the Pollux II and the Dragoon AEM-05C just for you!

>>50005068
Wait so if the recon camera can't designate like TAG what is it good for?

I always though it should let your mech see as if it were one level taller.

>>50005099

No, they never have.

Even as far back as the BT Manual they rolled normally on the to-hit table. The source of the confusion appears to be that they take to-hit penalties for damaged actuators like punches do, so people thought they rolled on the punch table.

>>50005138
Yep. Used to be +3 to-hit, but if you hit, it was on the punch table. I actually prefer the new system.

>>50005099
Okay, so it's not a figment of my imagination - all I had for years before getting back in to the saddle a month or two ago was the BMR and Classic BMR for stuff like that.

>>50005186
>>50005068

TAG allows you to spot and fire without a penalty.

Ordinarily if you fire and spot you take a +1 to-hit modifier, so the Recon Camera is still doing something for you.

>>50005228
The Recon Camera rules really need to be clarified, see questions about it reasonably often.

>>50005208
Hatchets didn't EXIST in the BT manual

>>50005693

I don't know about the 80's manuals, but Pg 128 in my BMR book (Pg 138 CBMR) has it clear as day.

>>50004802
Hah. Man did I rewritre those sections to take care of that. I went through every last thread on the TW rules question forums back to 2008, and sometimes it felt like variations of this one were 25% of all questions.

>>50005693

Back then they used the Club rules. Clubs were full-table, with Punch to-hit modifiers if arm actuators were damaged.

The BT Compendium 1640 says the same thing on p. 31. The updated Compendium 1691 does on p. 46 and 117 as well.

They've literally never been a punch table weapon. People just think they are because the rules refer to punching to-hit modifiers for damaged arm actuators.

>>50005902

That section says that if you have a Hatchet you can make a Clubbing attack with one arm, and to use the Clubbing rules in the physical attack section.

Clubbing attacks are full-body and always have been.

If a attack doesn't specify a different location table (eg Punches with the Punch table, Kicks with the Kick table) it used the normal hit location table. Clubbing attacks did not specify the use of the Punch table, QED.

Clubs hitting on the Punch table has never been an actual rule, just a popular misconception.

>>50005166
I miss Word of Blake/ComStar

>>50005208
>I actually prefer the new system.
It's definitely the better option from a gameplay standpoint. The old way makes more logical sense though, but that's not always good for the game.

>>50005240
I think the issue is less clarifications, and more about errata. Kind of like how you still see people talking about ghost targets as if they used the old rules.

>>50005916
>They've literally never been a punch table weapon
Technically hatchets now can be a punch (or kick) table weapon, though you eat a +4 to hit to roll on it.

>>50006189

>Technically hatchets now can be a punch (or kick) table weapon, though you eat a +4 to hit to roll on it.

Yeah, but I was responding to the assertion that they'd always been a Punch attack weapon until TW changed it to full-body with an option for Punch/Kick.

They'd always been a full-body weapon, but TW introduced the option for Punch/Kick.

Physical combat in BT in general should be less shit

>>50006851

As in, stronger, or more refined/more options? Because I feel like it's reasonably strong as it stands.

Anyone else miss the early days of Dark Age when industrial mechs and agricultural mechs were common?

>>50007409

Nope.

Personally that was one of my major misgivings with the Dark Age. The communications from WK made it seem like those were all that was left and actual 'Mechs were gone completely (actually it was just that 'Mechs were really rare, both in terms of the random packs and lore).

I play BT because of the 'Mechs, losing them takes that away.

I mean, god speed to you if you like that stuff but it wasn't what I was looking for.

>>50007409
No.

>>50007409
Christ no
I like my BT a bit Mad Max sometimes, but not like that.

>>50007409
Really liked the look of the forestry mech, hated the MtG booster pack sales that lead to having a fuck ton of shit you dont want and loads of construction/mining mechs.

They were mech technicals which seems to be a decently unique idea, closest other robot media with that idea is Patlabor going in the other direction.

>>50007409
Yes, but also no. I really like the idea of industrialmech technicals in the hands if militas and other chaotic weirdo groups, but I sure as hell hated them in random booster packs and as a substitute for real battlemechs rather than supplementary units like tanks or infantry.
Like, a bunch of whackos from space idaho with armed agromechs trying to retake a planet for their granddaddy's successor house? Hell yeah.
But actual militaries being forced to use that shit because loldisarmamemt? Fuck no

>>50008037
>I really like the idea of industrialmech technicals in the hands if militas and other chaotic weirdo groups, but I sure as hell hated them in random booster packs and as a substitute for real battlemechs rather than supplementary units like tanks or infantry.

Yeah this. Mechnicals are fun if used in the situations technicals tend to get employed in in real life.

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>>50007409

Not when they were common at the expense of actual battlemechs. Given that I lived in bumfuck nowhere, these were the only mech minis I could get my hands on, and nothing pissed my 12yo self off more than OH BOY ANOTHER CONSTRUCTION MECH I'LL JUST PUT IT ON THE INDUSTRIAL MECH MOUNTAIN

Add to the factions that we were restricted to, all the weird/ugly shit, it was misery.

>>50000218
We already had Cirno in BattleTech. Have you heard of Clan Ice Hellion?

>>50001994
Hypocrisy is a core quality of every Clan's culture.

I mean, that could be said of almost every faction in the game, but the Children of Kerensky really do make sanctimoniousness into an art form.

>>50006851
Physically combat is pretty good in BT, though. It's rather useful and has a great feel to it. It could be refined, yeah, but that applies to many aspects of the game.

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>>50004589
Oh... nearly forgot myself.

Players thinking that Damage arcs for determining what hit location table to use are the same as firing arcs.

Really fucking common error.

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>>50004874
You could argue the same for NARC, but LRMs are general purpose missiles with little/no guidance.

NARC is radio-homing
TAG is laser-homing

Also, why would anyone take semi-guided LRMs for the BV and C-bill cost jump if standard LRMs are effectively the same?

For that matter, how are vanilla LRMs effectively the same as those from the succession wars years equipped to home in on laser-designator signals from forgotten star-league equipment? That, and regular indirect fire is dependant on the spotter radio'ing the information to the firer, though whether that's verbally or via digital signal from the commodore 64 targeting computer I can't remember.

tl;dr: I disagree.

>>50008071
>>Yeah this. Mechnicals are fun if used in the situations technicals tend to get employed in in real life.

Black Hawk-KU down?
I'd watch that Bey film.

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>>50007409
When dark age hit, we had never seen anything like chainsaws and drills on a 'mech outside of Solaris, and even then, they were pretty rare. Likewise, we'd been told that 'mechs needed huge amounts of power to run, thus why they relied on fusion engines.

Suddenly we were burdened with a bunch of bright yellow dieselpunk industrialmechs that looked like they took a page from "How to design robots" from Games Workshop, and redesigned classic mechs that somehow managed to intentionally make mechs look like plastic toys.

Eventually, industrialmechs would grow on me (mainly when they started to get TRO entries), but my initial reaction to Dark Age was one of revulsion and betrayal. I still generally don't like the clickytech aesthetic. Some exceptions, but not enough to upset the rule.

>>50008767
Awesome, thanks.
Pretty much all of this is going to be addressed in the Manual. if you recall any more, keep posting them.

>>50008767
Wait, what? Apparently I've been playing battletech wrong. How are they different?

>>50008983
I can see the credits for Black Hawk-KU Down in my mind's eye.

>VOICE OF THE DRAGON STUDIO presents
>a KUROSAWA/BEY film
>starring JOHNNY TCHANG
>and GREENBURG'S GODZILLAS

>>50008242
I kind of wish that punching would be buffed a bit, in order to make it more attractive. All of my games are just kick-fests. It doesn't help that most mechs carry weapons in the arms and therefore can't punch anyways, but very very few have any weapons in the legs.

>>50009567
When you're shooting out, it's based on the three front hexes, the rear arc is a V from the back rear hexes, and the rear arc is what's left.

But when you take damage, you imagine a line from the center of the opponents' hex to the center of your hex, and whichever hex side it passes through determines where you take damage from.

There have been cases where the differences are minute, but there. It usually involves the narrow band where a shot passes through one of the front three hex-faces, but still falls in the side firing arc.

>>50009696

Yeah, about the only times I use punches are when I know I'm hitting sweet internals.

>>50009726
>the rear arc is a V from the back rear hexes
I should have checked before posting. Meant to say "Side arcs are Vs from the back rear hexes"

>>50009696
I'm just throwing darts here, but do you think a flat +1 to hit on punches would make them an even choice, or would it make TSM HEADPUNCH STRONK too powerful?

>>50009739
I'd say that if punches were also given a chance to knock the opponent over, it'd help.

...but while punches are weak and have a lower chance to hit, I don't discount them entirely. So long as you are using both hands it's still worth it, and not risking a fall is sometimes really important.

>>50009789
>I'd say that if punches were also given a chance to knock the opponent over, it'd help.
not actually a bad idea, but if they forced a PSR without making you take one, then they'd be strictly better than kicks. maybe let punches do the same PSR thing as kicks at the pilot's option? so you could risk it to knockdown punch, or stay safe and standing.

>>50008880
fluff reason is that ECM is extremely common and effective on the mech battlefield. LRMs and the like have very sophisticated guidance systems compared to ours, they just need special equipment to cut through the ECM soup
to actually be effective.

>>50010815
Frankly speaking, with ECM that strong you wouldn't even bother using unshielded infantry and you'd have to be careful to not set shit on fire.

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Page 9, already?!?

Punches seem to be great when you get some of that sweet rear torso meat to slug at. Even lighter mechs can wreck house pretty fast.

They do "feel" weak but imho (as a pretty crappy player who loves some mech brawling) I feel they are about right in regards to mechanics.

>>50012603
I think the problem is that kicks seems better every time, even with the chance of falling

>>50012894
This. Only two targets vs 6 and all damage is on one spot instead of two and only one attack roll that's easier, and if you manage to break something in a leg, that can basically mission kill the machine, guaranteed.

So kicks are just always better unless you're in the rear armor or have guns in the legs.

>>50012894

It's a risk/reward balance. Overall I think kicks are better, but the whiff and whiffed piloting roll has ended many a mech. Unless we're talking TSM punches. TSM punches are hilarious.

>>50009739
>>50009789
Or maybe rather than buffing punches, reduce the kick to a -1 to hit?

>Wetfab!
>Nanotech!
>Quantum!

things battletech players don't know how to say

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>>50013507
Fuck, the game doesn't even have androids!

Unless you count the lovedolls manufactured in the Magistracy.
<<<

>>50013507
>>50013555


That's one of the things I enjoy about the series though. It's not high-concept science fiction. It's medieval warlords in space with giant death robots.

>>50013555
>Fuck, the game doesn't even have androids!

Yes it does. They're just only on the wealthy capitals and the core worlds. Even places like Glengarry say they could afford to import a few but prefer human servants.

There's even some security bot versions like the old ones in the Kell Hounds sourcebook.

>>50013507
And that's fine, because that shit is fucking trash

>>50013640
Oh yeah I remember that.
And also in my homebrew campaign the Malthus Syndicate used to manufacture sex dolls on Dustball.

At least until they released a "Melissa" model in 3024.

Katrina had the 4th Guards smash the factory flat.

>>50013849
>Bro, it was just a prank

Allow shooting arm-mounted weapons and punching during the same round, perhaps with a penalty to punching.
Would this make punching a bit more useful?

>>50014163
No. The numbers for punching already being shittier than a kick is one reason people don't do it much on top of breaking that sweet big kick chunk of damage into two clusters and scattering the damage worse by having 6 locations instead of 2.

Making punching as easy as a kick and leaving the rest of the rules the same would make it far more useful. That will let you give a bump in effectiveness to hitting with the melee weapons as well.

>tfw shanking a bitch for the glory of Blake with a retractable blade at -4
Oh, yeah. That's the stuff.

>>50014163

Could be a bit too good, especially on assaults with big arm weapons that sit still.

Punching is fine. You can almost always get two hits in, head hits are a 1/6 chance, and even if you aren't doing 10+ damage there's still a consciousness check at the end of it.

Kicking is risky, especially with regular pilots. The trade-off is more concentrated damage but 'Mechs often have better leg armour than torso armour too.

>>50013849
>sex doll of a 14 year old
Ugh, no magical realm stuff please

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Does your unit has a mascot, btg? Do your soldiers take care of it with love? Do your mascot love you back?

>>50015832
We *cough* Adopted a Lizarat *cough* recently. She's really cute.

>>50015832
A tiger cub named Felix.

>>50015832
Yeah, its a pachirisu that survived a forest fire one of our Firestarters set to flush out some infantry during a raid on the dracs

>>50015832
A pair of extra large Rock Gila taken from a pirate gang they slaughtered. Low maintenance, sufficiently scary looking, and tough enough to take regular interstellar travel. They eat the Vrikk and Lesser Branths that infest the ports they visit so the drop crew loves them even more than the mechwarriors.

>>50015832
They had a dog, but then it had puppies, so now they have many dogs.

IMO the issue is not punches or kicks, but things like DFA, charging, etc. not letting you fire guns or leaving you sitting out in the open or both or whatever else. DFA in particular is a sort of "money shot" that gets people into the game when they see it happen or remember it from the vidya or whatever, but it's very hard to actually make work. I sure was disappointed when I found out how bad it is.

Also, a bunch of the physical weapons are pretty crap.

>>50016709
DFA is great when you use it as what it's meant for, a pure desperation move. Like when your machine is shot to hell and all your guns are broken or run dry. It helps if your target lacks point blank guns too or you come at him from behind. I had a Whitworth once that had the arm ML's wrecked, double engine hit and lost sinks so it was on a one way path to overheat and shutdown, and no LRM's left. So I DFA'd the enemy Awesome that was tearing apart the rest of the medium lance. I crushed the cockpit, it was glorious.

I agree on the physical weapons though. Most are complete garbage without TSM.

Any good SFE laserboats with melee weapons or TSM?
I'm forcebuilding and mostly interested in 50s-60s era

What are really common mechs in the Nova Cat touman during the invasion?

Like how the Wolves had loads of Man o'Wars and Ice Ferrets, the Falcons had Summoners and Kit Foxes, and the Jaguars had Warhawks and Stormcrows.

>>50017230
>SFE TSM laser boats in 3050
I think you're SOL there.
There's like, a Banshee?

>>50016838

One of the most terrifying things I've ever faced was a Gunnery 4, Piloting 0 Marauder II in a 3025 tournament. The guy who played that force just fired what he had on the way in and relied on the massive piloting differential to crush people with DFAs. And since the fucker is a zombie design, killing it takes a *lot* of effort.

He lost like three games.

>>50017230

There aren't many things that combine an SFE and TSM at all, and I can't think of any in that era.

>>50017452

Mist Lynx, Adder, Shadow Cat, Huntsman, Mad Dog, Summoner, Warhawk. Maybe Stormcrows, IDK. We never got a phone book for them like we did for the Wolves and Falcons.

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>>50017230
Nothing canon that I can think of. There's a LFE berzerker which is kinda close I guess?
If you're willing to do customs there's this thing I saved, from some guy's AU which you could safely pass off as a griffin refit with some crit shuffling

>>50017519
What about the Nova? Was that one of theirs?

>>50017230
I think you can straight-swap a 250SFE into a nightsky and it'll match. That's all I can think of

>>50017230
A couple of the Osts might work, iirc, although they all rely on fists and kicks instead of hatchets or swords.

New to the game, have no Unseen/Reseen minis and my gf says she wants to buy me some as a gift.

What are like the essential 10 to have?

>>50018077

The Nova was made by the Hell's Horses, and by the time of the Invasion hasn't been manufactured for over 100 years.

Supernova is a Nova Cat one though.

>>50018487
Thunderbolts, Archers, Griffins warhammers (two of each) a rifleman and a shad. All can be found on ebay without much trouble, and not TOO expensive.
Though wating a bit for the shimseen might be a good idea

>>50018627
>wating a bit
If you mean "waiting forever", then sure. Anon's relationship may be over before we get the shimmyseens.

>>50018503
I thought the Nova was pretty common.

>>50018701
Ordinarily I'd agree, but they've actually produced physical prototypes, which means that there's actually something going rather than palladium time

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RWR Stronk.

>>50018824
REMOVE CAMERON
rEMOVE CAMERON
STAR LEAGUE RASKAL fUCK

>>50018749
>CGL
>Doing stuff in a timely manner.
Look, I want it to be the case too, but I gotta be realistic about this. CGL just doesn't do shit quickly. We may have a few years yet, since it's been over a year since the first physical prototypes and there are a bunch of them around now, but nothing on the product itself. Sometimes people make cool stuff that goes nowhere.

>>50018970
I guess somebody could always lift a few of the prototypes at the next con and mail them to our slavic pal if we want them early

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Despite my disdain for the Capellans, I've made a Lao Hu. I'm just rooting in my customs archives on a slow night.

>>50019002
If I didn't have morals, I might consider doing so (I'm a fair hand at the five finger discount), but alas, morality holds me back.

Still, I do hope CGL gets off their ass and delivers the goods. We'd all shell out good money for those minis at this point.

>>50019022
I used to like the Cappies when they were underdogs. Like I wanted St.Ives reclaimed and Tikonov too, and I wanted some cool toys.

But everything going Sunny's way got old. We don't need George Hasek to be retconned into a retard and the Canopians to suck our dicks nonstop to be a good faction.

Pardon the grog moment, but I honestly miss the days of our exhausted late 3rd Succession War regiments that had character besides "lol Han", when the Northwind Highlanders were House troops instead of Sue mercs, and even the days of clinging to life as a shattered husk of a state under Romano and her purges. It felt like an honest, fun faction wondering when the axe would fall.

Winning is surprising boring

>>50018749

They've done more than that. You can purchase the new Shad through IWM now. I belive the Wasp, Ostscout, and Locust will be out by the end of the year too.

>>50019069
>Winning is surprising boring
No surprise there: without challenge, what's the point? Just being on top isn't interesting, you need the fight, the challenge, the thrill of knowing you might lose.

>>50019069
>>50019117
I agree wholeheartedly, but the problem is that the battletech writers really don't know how to write anything aside from unstoppable juggernauts, miserable jabronies or people who don't do anything

>>50019204
Welcome to why loving BattleTech is suffering: your factions are either juggernauts (boring because winning isn't interesting, as seen above), scrubs (boring because limitless losing sucks), or irrelevant (boring because no content is the definition of uninteresting). The fourth option is that your faction is murdered due to stupid bullshit, which is the same as them being scrubs for why it sucks.

A dose of competent writing wouldn't kill BattleTech. I trust that the people running the game love it and feel like they're just lacking a few talents to make it great.

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>>50018487
>have no Unseen/Reseen minis
>What are like the essential 10 to have?

Stinger
Wasp
Locust
Phoenix Hawk
Griffin
Shadow Hawk
Wolverine
Rifleman
Crusader
Thunderbolt
Archer
Warhammer
Marauder
Battlemaster
Longbow

That's fifteen, not ten.

>>50019590
>Crusader
>Essential
uhavinalaugh.webm

>>50019367

They wrote themselves into a corner when they designed the setting - the two "protagonist" factions started off obviously bigger and more powerful than the two "bad guy" factions.

The only way to make a challenge is to either give the bad guys some bullshit secret weapon or make the good guys deeply incompetent.

>>50019677
Well, it is.
Even though nobody really likes it, it still is by fluff a very common machine

>>50018733

Nope. Actually very rare. The Wolves had the most seen in the Invasion, and that was like 10 or something.

It's just a design everyone has.

Simple design challenge:

Design a variant of the Marauder II for the FWLM in the early 3030s.

>>50019794
Or have the baddies get ahead with dirty tricks the protagonists are unwilling to resort to. For example, the Clans refusing to allow WoB troops to surrender or to allow them safcon.

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>>50020023

I think the only less Marik machine you could get would be something that's actually from Clan space, but here.

>>50020206
>2 LLs per arm
>Not 1 Blazer per arm
You had one damn job, Mariks be damned.

>>50020023
You mean the mech available literally only to the Dragoons, Kell Hounds and mercs they liked?

>>50020221

No tech level was specified and besides if I was going to mount Blazers it would be alongside Freezers, which SSW can't handle.

>>50020206
Makes for a great one-of-a-kind ride to stand out in a campaign.

>>50020241
Yep. Problem?
>merc unit gets sale approved
>loses mech in raid or a few years later gets a contract
Wow, it's nothing.

>>50020257
Hey, he didn't say no Blazers either. Just sayin, blazers need more love and attention.

>>50020461
Don't feel like you need to rationalize it, a lot of people here argue just to argue. It's not like it's the Orion IIC or something.

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>>50020206
As a Nova Cat and Marik player, I like it.

>>50019367

I don't know about competent writing, but as a published writer, I'd love to take a shot at BT.

>>50020992
justdoit.gif

Seriously, with the very recent loss of Ben H. Rome, CGL could use some help. Are you thinking sourcebooks or novels/short fiction, by the way? Are you prepared to wrangle with a work with a bunch of other neckbeards, each with their own ideas for what's best, on our favorite shared universe?

>>50021340
inside info: Benny is gone because CGL doesn't actually want help.

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>>50020023
I regret nothing.

>>50021619
deleit this

>>50017519
>One of the most terrifying things I've ever faced was a Gunnery 4, Piloting 0 Marauder II in a 3025 tournament. The guy who played that force just fired what he had on the way in and relied on the massive piloting differential to crush people with DFAs. And since the fucker is a zombie design, killing it takes a *lot* of effort.
I've actually got a custom marauder II built around doing pretty much exactly that, but even more so. it keeps the original weapons loadout, but goes to 15 DHS, enabling it to carry thirty-three tons of hardened armor and therefor pretty much devour any sort of gunfire anyone would try and throw at it while it's on it's way in to mario stomp your ass

>>50021340

You're talking to an insane man who would try to do both because I have no idea what self-control is. But the novels would appeal to me, just because for all the stuff behind it, it's an appealing setting on a couple levels.

>>50022471
Just remember, in order to be defined as a "decent" Battletech novel author, you only need to write well mechanically and do a minimum of research. If you've ever played the game, you're already a leg up on most of the previous ones. And if you've ever been to Sarna.net, you're probably on track to be the best they've ever had.

>>50022525

But...but..

I don't have any creepy fetishes to insert or any go-to lazy tropes!

>>50022537
>I don't have any creepy fetishes to insert or any go-to lazy tropes!
well hell, a hot-blooded protagonist and his reverse-trap childhood best friend are an easy insert so you can tick the box and keep on going with what you've got in mind

>>50022375

If you want to play with it a bit more, an LFE with Endo and a Compact Gyro lets you fit AES to both arms and add a second pair of Medium Lasers. Armour tonnage stays the same.

Can't find a satisfactory way to give it iJJs though.

>>50022610
>Can't find a satisfactory way to give it iJJs though.
IJJs barely work for heavies, and completely shit the bed for assaults.
but I just gave it a try, and if you use endo, and TSM, you can have 38 tons of hardened, six MLs, two PPCs, two SLs, the LL ten DHS, and be the fucking terminator with headcapping punches and leg-removing kicks and being near indestructible, while still going 3/5/3

>>50022662
>and if you use endo, and TSM, you can have 38 tons of hardened, six MLs, two PPCs, two SLs, the LL ten DHS, and be the fucking terminator with headcapping punches and leg-removing kicks and being near indestructible, while still going 3/5/3
I thought your original was bad, but I would actually slap you for bringing that to the table against anything but stealthgauss, gausswall, clans or mixtech cheese

I can see it chasing Urbies with it's hatchet raised high.

>>50022895
If only it was built in a program that didn't cut half the weapons off.

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>>50022915
whoops,
damn MegaMek doesn't print heavies.

>>50022662
>while still going 3/5/3
3/4/3, due to hardened armor penalties.

>>50023149
He's talking about with the TSM on, if he can keep it going full time.

>>50023202
LL+ PPC +2ML+SL +jump or LL+2PPC=TSM each and every day, forever, or 6ML+ LL+jump if it's melee time, because the penalty don't really matter, then, although if it's running, adding in the SLs balances it perfect

>>50023149
>>50023202
Technically it would be 4/5/3, not that it really matters much. Not a lot of instances where you'd not want your TSM monster heading in top speed.

>>50021730
Why?

>>50013507
>Wetfab!

That shit's mostly an Elon Musk-level pipe dream; I rarely see any scifi RPG seriously address it, save maybe Transhuman Space. Still, the Genecaste probably can make dwellings out of organictech, so...

>Nanotech!

How else does BT's super ablative armor work? NANOMACHINES, SON.

>Quantum!
What are K-F drives?
What is Fortress Republic?
What is Phantom Mech Ability?
How else do you explain FASAnomics working?

>>50024851
That Elon, what a nutter. Him and his products and achievable goals...

>>50024943
>tfw real life is technologically more advanced than BT

>>50025296

Just another reason why battletech needs to be completely scrapped and rebooted.

>>50024851
>What are K-F drives?

Just a quick out of topic question here: Why do JumpShips use the KF-drive instead of using a fusion reactor like the dropships do? I was irritated when I read "Operation Excalibur" where a dropship's energy outburst hit the sail of a jumpship and thus gave some energy to it. Also by using fusion reactors you would avoid the loading time. Was Operation Excalibur just shitty writing and the KF-drives are more powerful than any fusion reactor or does BT in genreal just have shitty writing?

>>50026270
KF drive doesn't create energy. It creates a KF field. Jumpships have fusion plants as well, but they're only used for station-keeping thrusters and emergency power.

You can hot charge a jump drive with the fusion generators onboard but at great risk of wrecking the KF core. KF drives like a slow trickle charge.

>>50019846
Yeah you're right, I just looked through the Jaguar TO&E for 3059 and only found like 13 in frontline and secondline formations together. I really thought it was a more common mech for some reason.

>>50020206
>>50021619
Both are neat. Can't decide between the two.

>>50021730
What's the joke I'm missing here?

>>50026412
It's just classic Grasshopper/Catapult syndrome, way over-represented for how many are actually supposed to exist.

The Clint is probably the epitome of that. I swear you see almost 15 die in the novels before the Lyrans rebuilt the line.

>>50026435
>What's the joke I'm missing here?
I'd guess LRMs on a Marauder?

>>50026407
Ah, thank you very much!

>>50026497
Sorry, I'm used to putting LRMs on everything myself.

>>50026439
Another good point with the Grasshopper. I swear everyone (including myself) loves to throw one in a company.

new thread

>>50026731
>>50026731
>>50026731