/btg/ - BattleTech General

>>50098152 #
That's a mech I've been meaning to field but never really had an opportunity to. What's the most effective way to run it?

>>50099874
At the enemy. It's not a complex mech. Get the TSM going, chop face.

>>50099893
This, it's such a simple fun mech.
TSM Stronk

For some reason, is there a TSM Awesome someone made because, reasons and PPCs love point blank?

>>50099845
>That's a mech I've been meaning to field but never really had an opportunity to. What's the most effective way to run it?
Other dudes already beat me to the punch. Right into the thick of it. 6/9/6 means it's already light-medium speed. TSM kicks in and you've got a heavy running around at 11 hexes. Charges are tempting, but you can already spam shitloads of lasers and either take a leg out with a kick or pretty much anything out with an axe. When TSM kicks in, the axe and kicks are now doing 24 points of damage. The other good thing is that it's all small-bore stuff, so it's really easy to balance out to make sure you stay at the perfect 35/26 heat dissipation at the end of the turn to always sit at 9 heat. Many other mechs are difficult or nigh impossible to get at that TSM sweet spot. The Ti-Ts'ang was made for it, and it does the job beautifully. Last game in AtB I was a bit worried because the opposition was using... reflective armor... I think. Whatever was on the Hollander III. Turns out that it's also double-weak against physicals, in conjunction with the TSM. Not much left after a 40-odd point hit from an axe. Still not sure if it applied quad damage to the internals, too, but at that point it really didn't matter.

Dracs have a similar toy in the No-Dachi 9KO, but a TSM sword doesn't have the same wow-factor as a TSM axe, and it doesn't jump.

The best heavy TSM is the custom Albatross.

>>50097934
What the fuck is that.

>>50099776

Yeah, it was a PDF upload. It was well-written, so somebody probably saved it.

IIRC it's more smut than lewds; the person giving the challenge didn't specify what he wanted out of the contest, so the story was way more explicit than we were expecting.

>>50101007
Piranha, a Clan Diamond Shark mech. 20 tons, 12 MGs, and 3 ERMLs I think.

Beside the Toro, are there other PPC+LRM lights?

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>>50101007
The 'Mech that aspires to being the Gunapult or the ARC-2RMG.

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>>50099791
New to this franchise and trying to figure out what mechs to include in a YOUR DUDES mercenary company. What are people's favorite mechs and planes and why? And would there be a point to other conventional forces like tanks or would it be good to add? And does it make sense for mercs to have battle armor? Or only conventional infantry?

I'm just discovering the Shadow Hawk, Archer, and Ebon Jaguar and they're all pretty hardcore I think, but I want to see what other cool options there are. Also not sure how easy it will be to fit them in to a merc company.

For reference, I'm familiar with the concept of the Dark Ages but don't know any details, I've read the Blood of Kerensky, started reading Jade Phoenix, and have played MWO and watched Ouchies.

>>50101127
I like almost all the Unseens, other personal favorites are the Hunchback, King Crab, Thug and my mechfu the Catapult

>>50101127
>Ebon Jaguar
Definitely one of my favorites, and part of what keeps me playing Smoke Jaguar/Clan OpFor. Frankly, what more we may have gotten from them in terms of toys is what makes me miss the Jags. Luckily /btg/ has kept me well supplied with AU Jag rides over the years.

>>50101127
The Cauldron-Born/Ebon Jaguar would be uncommon in a mercenary unit, since it is Clan technology. At least, depending your time period. Personally I'm not a fan of it due to the thin leg armor, but that's neither here nor there.

>>50099791
You forgot the Mediafire link for the full zipped archives.

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/tw2m414o1j9uj/Battletech_Archives

>>50101127
The thunderbolt is an absolute merc classic and a solid choice for any unit, the warhammer and archer are both nice, too, the Merlin is a good utility machine, and if you're playing Dark Age, the Hound is a really excellent all-rounder mercenary mech
As for tanks, yes, absolutely bringing some makes sense. Battle armor for mercs is 100% era-dependant, and conventional infantry should really only be used for paycheck padding and DropShip/base security

>>50099791
Also, the Crescent Hawks and Butte Hold links are both dead.

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>>50101127
Though it's pretty ugly, the bandersnatch is one if the best support-utility mechs ever built, especially in a mercenary context, and it is especially good at murdering vehicles.

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>>50101127

The Shad and the Archer are perfectly good choices for mercenary 'Mechs.

In the 3025-3050ish era, you can't go wrong with having Marauders (probably as the unit CO's ride), Archers, Warhammers, the trio of 55-tonners (Griffin, Wolverine, Shadow Hawk), Phoenix Hawks and bugs (Locust, Wasp, Stinger). Awesomes are awesome for their firepower and sheer toughness, Trebuchets are solid missile boats and Stalkers are the most common assault and a solid choice if you bracket fire.

>>50101576
The Banderplog is much better looking, though, and I agree, it's one of the most solid types of its era. Extra points for being a machine designed for the mercenary market.

>>50101325
>uncommon, since it is Clan technology
What would be a few lore-friendly-ish ways for me to include a small amount of Clan pieces that doesn't come off as screamingly-obvious sue-ness? There are a couple that I rather like, but I also want the unit to feel like it fits in to the setting at large.

>>50101458
>>50101698
>Dark Age
>battle armor is 100% era-dependant
>In the 3025-3050-ish era
So what's the deal with the eras? And what eras are most commonly played? Which would be the most merc-friendly, both in terms of seeing action and pay and in terms of having the most friendly spread of mechs to choose from?

>>50101804
Dark age for most variety in equipment.

A lot of people like classic battletech(3025~), the era right after clan invasion, and Jihad.
Dark age is pretty well played from what I've seen but it also has a ridiculous tech spread and some weird rules as a result.

>>50101804
>What would be a few lore-friendly-ish ways for me to include a small amount of Clan pieces that doesn't come off as screamingly-obvious sue-ness? There are a couple that I rather like, but I also want the unit to feel like it fits in to the setting at large.
If you want a Cauldron-Born, your best bet is to fluff your unit as fighting in Operation Bulldog, the Invasion and destruction of the Smoke Jaguar holdings in the Inner Sphere. The same with other Clan gear. Most mercenaries sell their Clantech due to difficulties in keeping it supplied and in good maintenance however.

>So what's the deal with the eras?
The setting is broken up into mostly discrete eras for ease of play. If you say you want to run a Star League Era game, it has X list of mechs. A Clan Invasion era force? Here's X+Y list of mechs, due to tech advancement.

>And what eras are most commonly played?
Succession Wars, Clan Invasion, Jihad and Dark Age. Some people also play the Star League era, but those are folks willing to sit around with battalions of the same mech.

>Which would be the most merc-friendly
Clan Invasion, Civil War, and Jihad. The DA has good access to tech, but most of the hiring worlds are occupied, under attack, or irradiated hellholes.

>>50101804
>lore-friendly-ish ways for me to include a small amount of Clan pieces

I'd say no complete Clan 'Mechs unless there's a really really good reason (Camacho's Caballeros got their single Clan 'Mech, a Timber Wolf, as partial recompensation for getting their shit kicked in by the Smoke Jaguars and their commander's daughter getting killed during that). Even if you'd salvage Clan 'Mechs, your employers would want it for themselves and give you cold hard cash or equivalent Inner Sphere 'Mechs in return Perhaps a few Clan weapons refitted on IS chassis, like the Avanti's Angels had.

The eras are, roughly:

>3025-3050, the 4th Succession War and before the Clan invasion: old technology all round, with Star League tech making a comeback post-Helm Core and the War of 3039.
>3050-3067, the Clan Invasion/FC Civil War era. New tech ahoy, new 'Mechs coming out of assembly lines, includes the incredibly fun era of the Chaos March (a bunch of independent planets centred on Terra and just a few jumps away from Outreach, the merc planet)
>3067-3080s: Jihad: nukes, biological weapons, cats and dogs lying together, mass hysteria. Again, more new tech, Word of Blake's homemade Mechs, etc.
>Dark Age: Lumberjack mechs, Technical jeeps, tanks.
>Current Age (3140s): Yet more new tech.

My favourite periods to play are 3025-3060ish (from the 4th SW to the Chaos March getting shut down).

Continuing from this trend, what kinda Clantech might a DCMS force be packing by the latter parts of the Clan Invasion era?

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>>50101698
>>50101576

>>50102066
Kinda rare. They actually have a shit ton of it from the Invasion and Bulldog, plus their pet Cats before they turn on them, but they tend to cluster it together in their top units.

So when you run into a Daishi, it will probably have a Vulture and Masakari buddies as well as a Black Hawk KU with a clantech loadoat. But actually running into that unit instead of your standard Dracbuilt Panther/Dragon company is not that common.

>get into Dark Age
>hear about the "Republic of the Sphere"
>oh cool, Terran Hegemony 2.0?
>it's a boring state with little to no flavor built on cultural genocide, people being dumb, and a cult of personality around a guy who didn't do anything

RotS players, folks who believe in Devlin Stone, what draws you to it?

Is the Republic here to stay as a faction?

Was it a BT fandom cultural phenomenon that I missed out on if I didn't read all those books in the early 2000s?

>>50102439
Stone was originally supposed to be Arthur Steiner-Davion but people figured it out and the idea was scrapped. Of course, this leaves the fate of Arthur forever unknown.

>>50102439
>RotS players, folks who believe in Devlin Stone, what draws you to it?
No idea, doesn't make sense to me either.

>Is the Republic here to stay as a faction?
No, they're collapsing as we speak (well, insofar as the timeline is advancing, anyway).

>Was it a BT fandom cultural phenomenon that I missed out on if I didn't read all those books in the early 2000s?
It seems to have been so, yes. I feel rather left out sometimes myself by virtue of not being an ex-military 35+ BT historian.

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What's your favorite Word of Blake variant of a non-WoB mech?

>>50102439
The republic was hated by grogs from the very first day Ghost War hit the shelves.

This is literally how it went back at the turn of the century.

>Oh wow, the Fedcom Civil War is over.
>Victor quit all the game of thrones bullshit to become the new Focht
>And the Second Star League holds hope for a more peaceful future for the Sphere
>I wonder where they'll go from here

>One month later
>Ghost war on the shelves
>Eighty year time jump assholes
>By the way, five minutes after the end of the last novel everything got destroyed
>The FWL is dead
>Everybody disarmed
>There's some fucker named Stone that nobody cares about
>But he's gone
>So is every other character you've ever known except for grumpy old Bilbo Steiner-Davion
>And somehow the one last piece of the real Star League that has been kept going the last 400 years is now broken
>Enjoy

>Also FASA is dead and Battletech will now be replaced by a plastic collectable game full of dump trucks, tanks and charicatured designs

The REEEEEEEEEEE was off the charts those couple of years.

>>50102704
Don't forget the initial fluff for the Republic implied that the RotS was the entire Inner Sphere, and the biker gang factions were the last remnants of the Houses. That upped the REEE.

>>50101127
In a mercenary campaign, one of the beginners was putting in some work on a Jagermech.

We were playing Alpha Strike so yeah.

>>50101089
>20 tons
>12MGs
>3ERMLs

how hot does it run and how much plastic armour does it use

>>50102704
>The REEEEEEEEEEE was off the charts those couple of years.

And was completely justifiable, if what you're claiming happened, happened. Which I have no reason to doubt.

>>50102704
Also that what we knew of the Jihad was that that tiny ComStar offshoot managed to kick the shit out of Wolf's Dragoons AND all the Houses at once before this Stone guy managed to save the day, which back then, without any context, was like being told the story of how Trinidad and Tobago terrorized Earth for many years before this legendary hero came along and saved the day and oh boy wouldn't you be grateful too just like the Inner Sphere was to Stone?

Man, the work CGL put in to make the Jihad not retarded I think will always be their greatest achievement.

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>>50102838
It runs hot only if you burst fire your MGs. And it has good armor. Clan tech is a hell of a drug.

>>50102894
>only burst fire
>implying I wouldn't hold trigger on the ni-..clanner

What about a mercenary lance running a Black Hawk-KU, a Rakshasa, an Avatar, and maybe a Thunderbolt, pretending to be clanners in clan space?

>>50103162
>pretending to be clanners
Sounds funny, make it happen.

>in clan space
Less so. There are no mercs in Clan space, only Zuul.

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>>50103181
>There are no mercs in Clan space
Of course there's... I mean there are not any mercenaries here, we are just a passing star (our fifth guy is repairing his Hunchback, he lost one of the shoulder cannons, so he is not here). Our Clan? We're -ahem- we are from Clan...er...Steel Pineapple. What? Never heard of that? You are surely lacking in Clan History, fellow clanner!

>>50103303
>Clan Steel Pineapple
I'd accept their batchall, lemme tell you what.

>>50103303
Snark Caste scum. Abjurate them!

>>50101945
>the merc planet
Say more?

>>50103552
Outreach is THE mercenary planet in the Inner Sphere for a long time. Basically, the Federated Commonwealth gave a planet to the Wolf's Dragoons as a fiefdom, and once they parked their mech arses there, they immediately went on to make Outreach the biggest mercenary recruitment and outfitting centre in the Inner Sphere. Before Outreach was big, the place you went to hire mercs was Galatea, but Outreach eclipsed it once it got rolling.

>>50102613
SHD-7CS, a Project Phoenix Shadow Hawk made for ComStar in the 3060s. Word of Blake used them in the Chaos March. UAC/5, Artemis IV LRM-15, two ERM-lasers, and all of it set up on an improved C3 system. Ten and a half tons of armor, Endo Steel chassis, ultralight engine, the good shit. I also really like the -7M, which is basically the same but with CASE and a Light Gauss Rifle instead of the UAC/5.

>>50103606
So it's Wolf's Dragoons-owned, but they let other companies stay there on lease or something? Or does it only train future Dragoons?

>>50103684
If you're a mercenary unit not on the MRB/MRBC (the old and new mercenary "watchdog" groups, respectively) you can rent space on Outreach where you can stay whilst you're on R&R or wait for a new contract, plus any sane mercenary unit would have a couple of agents on Outreach permanently to meet up with employer reps, then contact your unit when they are deployed elsewhere. The Dragoons also run mercenary training courses you can enlist in, you don't have to be a Dragoon-in-training to do so.

>>50103684
Meant to say "not on the MRB/MRBC shit list". A merc unit can get blacklisted for war crimes, contract breaches and such, and end up on that list. If you get on it, no Outreach for you, only the more disreputable places - which is exactly what Galatea became once Outreach gained steam.

>>50103752
>>50103764
Not that guys but I have a question: why are mercenaries still accepting contracts from the Dracs?

>>50103794
Like most questions, this one depends on the period. Before Takashi gave the Death to Mercenaries order, the Dracs were actually fairly big employers, even if you had to be careful not to get screwed over by them. After that, everyone got out. However, after Luthien, Teddy K, who is a lot more reasonable than his father, loosened up the restrictions and the Dracs started hiring again, and whilst mercenaries aren't exactly loved in the Combine, they're not being screwed over like they were before.

Also note that even during the Death to Mercenaries order, some Dracs, such as planetary nobles and companies, continued to hire mercenaries, although they effectively concealed them as "personal guards" or "corporate security" instead. Plus, there were honest employers in the Combine even before DTM, like Isesaki Shipping.

But the bottom line? After Teddy C3 dropped the DTM, the Dracs pay well. They have places to guard on the Clan frontier, places to raid in the Clan OZs, and planets on the Federated Suns border to guard when the DCMS units are away.

>>50103303
Clan Steel Pineapple?
I demand to speak your current Khan

>>50102704
The way you paint its presentation I can see why more than just grogs would hate it. I mean wouldn't grogs be hating 3067 too?

>>50102740
>Don't forget the initial fluff for the Republic implied that the RotS was the entire Inner Sphere
Can you provide an example? I've never heard this.

>>50102883
Eh m8? The WoB stuff was being laid down for years, right down to the factories turning out massive quantities of gear and obvious hidden units being formed. The only people surprised by that were the people who'd had their heads in the dirt since Tukayyid.

>>50104040
>Implying people would call it Forever 67 if they didn't hate it.
Six years man, six years. It makes the IllClan delay look like a speedbump.

>>50103901
Sorry cannot do, he has gone crusading, from the "southern" part of the IS, good old pincer manuever

>>50103764
Plus a unit can get blacklisted for not breaking any rules but simply being on the Dragoons' shitlist for personal reasons.

>>50104123
Wannamaker's Widowmakers pls go and stay go.

>>50104146
They weren't blacklisted, they pulled out of the MRBC.

>>50104084
Being laid down, yes, but there's a big gap between a careful reading of TR 3067 and what was sprung on BT fans as an already-over-and-done with-thing. Reading "small faction X is secretly building forces" is a far cry from "and so they fought everyone for years". It took a hefty exploration of WMDs, factionalism & false flag operations, and even more detailed breakdowns of industrial potential before it appeared believable.

>>50104224
If you say so.

>>50104224
TRO 3067 postdates the Dark Age, bro. Anything published by Fanpro does, including all the stuff like Project Phoenix, Field Manual Updates and the Fedcom Civil War sourcebook.

Last real hint we had about the Blakists doing anything before Dark Age was...I wanna say Battle for Terra or TRO 3060. That's why it was such a huge leap, and why the other guy is out of his gourd if he thinks there was any indication they had scraped up fifty something regiments of battlemechs in that time. Terra had them at what, eight?

>>50104358
>Terra had them at what, eight?

It was in the 14-16 range, actually. But that doesn't change the larger point that most of the WOB forces got hand-waved into existence with a justification which was only a tiny bit better (Terran factories) than the FedSuns expansion (magic warehouses).

The Jihad SHOULD have kicked off in the very late 3070s; which with Terra in their possession, would have been much more reasonable a time to build up their forces to the level we saw. Unfortunately, the 3067 Jihad date was prescribed by Wizkids. There was literally nothing CGL could have done about it except just "not publish Battletech at all."

>>50104358
That's right, I'd forgotten 3067 was one of the first FanPro products. Thanks.

>>50104358
Uh, no. Fluff right up to 3067 alluded to it and the novels outright told you they had been cheating the FWL for a decade.

>>50104399
>handwaved
You can say that about any faction's units, it's not an argument.

>>50104437
>You can say that about any faction's units, it's not an argument.

It's always important. If you can just make stuff up, then there's no reason for us to bother tracking any of the unit or production information in the first place. Ignoring the existing fluff and just making shit up is a deliberate slap in the face to every fan who actually cares about the internal consistency of the setting.

>>50104437
> they had been cheating the FWL for a decade.

If they'd come out with 20 or so regiments instead of the 14-16 they had accounted for, and blamed that on cheating the FWL, it would have been fine. Going from 14 regiments to 20 is entirely different (and more bullshit) than going from 14 to 50+.

>>50104437
>the novels outright told you they had been cheating the FWL for a decade

That said they were stealing money, not machines. Even that exact same novel didn't allude to their refit of Gibson Federated as anything special, still cranking out just a couple companies a year.

>>50104486
>It's always important. If you can just make stuff up, then there's no reason for us to bother tracking any of the unit or production information in the first place.
Since they don't give hard numbers, there really isn't. A good example often cited here is how the Magistracy of Canopus added like a half dozen regiments in the late 3050s out of thin air.

>than going from 14 to 50+
m8 you realize the Blakists never had 50 mech regiments at once, right? All their divisions were combined arms units, most of the ones we were given identifying Greek letters for didn't correspond to having a regiment's worth of mechs in them either. And most of the "hidden" units never appeared at full strength.

>>50104487
Money that could be used to expand factories and *buy* machines, one might presume.

>Even that exact same novel didn't allude to their refit of Gibson Federated as anything special
I was talking Storms of Fate. Which are you meaning?

>>50104571
>Money that could be used to expand factories and *buy* machines, one might presume.

The Blakists pretty much funded all of Project Phoenix through Vicore and got 2/3 of every Phoenix machine ever built. None of this said until of course, years after Dark Age happened in real time.

I was talking about Ideal War, which was one of the only real Blakist novels and the one where fake Thomas tells Paul about the fund siphoning.

Now that I think about it, Double Blind also showed the Blakists as little more than a ramshackle collection of ex Comstar malcontents.

You don't get this unified thing going until 3067. Even then the last guy from the old days, Cameron St. Jamais gets hung out to dry during SCOUR.

That was really one thing that still bugs me. We never see much of the Blakist internal politics in all the Jihad books.

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>>50104652
>That was really one thing that still bugs me. We never see much of the Blakist internal politics in all the Jihad books.
I agree, it was an important element that was missed. Stuff like the spacing of Blane being written years after the start was dumb and annoying. Seeing their Conclave and high command trying to execute the war would have been cool.

I wonder if the theory that until the near-end most Blakist divisions were operating in an intelligence vacuum unaware that they were at war with everyone is true.

>>50104652
>That was really one thing that still bugs me. We never see much of the Blakist internal politics in all the Jihad books.
Being written from an in-universe perspective, with no OOC wrap up, is the worst part of the Jihad. We never get definitive answers for enough of the questions.

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You're in the Valhalla club on Solaris and this guy slaps your qt3.14 tech's ass and mumbles:
>Resistance is futile, heretic.

What do you do?

>>50104860
Slam his head into the table and tell him to 1v1 me in Ishiyama, or prove he's a little bitch.

>>50104062

Not him but this was the impression I got too. The first wave of DA fluff only had the Republic on its maps and the level of destruction from the Jihad was stated to be off the charts. Everything seemed to indicate that anything outside the Republic's borders was an irradiated shithole where nobody could live.

>>50104123

Name one. Seriously. Even the Widowmakers don't count, they tried to enter controlled airspace and make landfall on a continent that literally everyone IC knows the Dragoons do not allow outsiders onto. Bitching about that is like bitching about someone who tries to break into a head of state's personal residence being added to a no-fly list.

>>50104437

The original plan was for the Jihad to be shorter, with a much smaller WoB military (and also the Bears playing an even larger part, basically winning it on their own rather than being the tipping point they wound up being).

So the old FASA stuff does imply the WoB are building up, but nowehere near the extent the Jihad wound up revealing, because WK tossed to original plan for a smaller, shorter Jihad in favour of a massive, lengthy, and destructive one that required the WoB to have a much larger military to make plausible.

CGL did their best but there are good reasons for people going WTF at the size and power of WoB.

>>50104955
>CGL did their best

No they didn't. If they did their best they would have fixed the contradiction between the production numbers and what we actually saw. As usual, CGL dropped the ball.

>>50104955
>The original plan was for the Jihad to be shorter, with a much smaller WoB military

This is one half of what pisses me off with the Jihad/Dark Age storyline. A lot of the WoB people came from ROM, and they were perfectly capable of organising a campaign of covert actions. Something like Op SHROUD writ large to screw up the Successor States would have been much better - covert actions to stir up so much shit that the people would be begging for Star League peacekeepers. The FS had the Capellan and Draconis Marches with leaders just waiting for the off to attack their old enemies, just for one.

Have any of you played Battletech on tabletop simulator?

>>50105047
What were the production numbers exactly?

>>50105048
That's pretty much what we got. The WoBM was pretty small, comparatively. Their victories were due to ROM stirring shit up and a hefty dose of force multipliers. Once those two were minimized or overcome the Militia got its shit pushed in the whole way back to Terra.

New to the game and from what I can tell each mech model has a letter code signifying who the manufacturing House is. What all are the letter codes, and are they consistent?

>>50105048

"Op Holy Shroud writ large to sucker the Houses into attacking each other" already was the opening stage of the Jihad. It takes until like 3072 for everyone to finally settle down.

>>50105097

Not him, but none were ever given in terms of hard numbers. Just an implication that the WoB might have formed another 1 or 2 Divisions.

Rather than the 40 or so they did in canon. Yeah, not all of those were active or fully fleshed out at any one time but you're probably looking at them packing anywhere between 25 and 30 Divisions when the Jihad kicks off, which is a *bit* of a disparity.

>>50105168
A good rule of thumb is, M for Marik/Free Worlds League, S for Steiner/Lyran Commonwealth, K for Kurita/Draconis Combine, D for Davion/Federated Suns, L for Liao/Capellan Confederation. There are others, but a lot of them are simply for puns (GRF-1N Griffin, anyone?) or just for cool (AWS-8Q). X tends to be an experimental model.

>>50105168
The letter codes aren't always consistent, but a good rule of thumb is:
-L: Capellan Confederation
-S: Lyran Commonwealth
-D: Federated Suns
-M: Free Worlds League
-K: Draconis Combine
-R: SLDF/Terran Hegemony
-WB: Word of Blake
-CS: ComStar
-O: Inner Sphere Omnimech

These do rise and fall out of favor, so you'll have to look up who owns what design to be sure. The Enforcer III having ENF-6M as a Davion design is a good one for inconsistency.

>>50105174
I've never seen anything to suggest only one or two. Even if they kicked off the Jihad with 25-30 divisions total, 10 of those already existed officially and given how conventional heavy their forces were 15-20 isn't unreasonable given they controlled a solid industrial base. Compare it to the Magistracy of Canopus acquiring around 5 regiments of mechs within a lesser amount of time and possessing an industrial base virtually nonexistent in comparison.

>>50105168

Not totally consistent because there are examples of M being for Missile variant and the like, but generally:

#R: Star League, but after its fall something everyone has.
#D: Federated Suns.
#K: Draconis Combine.
#L: Capellan Confederation.
#S: Lyran Commonwealth/Lyran Alliance.

Periphery uses #T for the Taurians and, IIRC #H for the Marians.

>>50105168
Not consistent at all but generally

D-Davion
L-Liao
S-Steiner
K-Kurita
M-Marik
R-Regular
G-General
N-Normal
X-Experimantal
W-Word of Blake
C-Clantech refit of IS chassis or Drac C3 refit

T/P/Q don't seem to line up with anything.

>>50105269
Almost forgot Rb - SL Royal

>>50105234

The solid industrial base is a CGL retcon.

Anastasius Focht lets them keep Terra because as far as he and everyone else knew the only thing there worth having was the Titan shipyards which remained under ComStar control for some time.

It was then discovered to be riddled with high-output factories because that's the only way to explain WoB's growth, but requires proto-WoB to have maintained its conspiracy from the very earliest days of ComStar with absolute secrecy. Which... ehh. Might not be so bad on its own, but then you start looking at all the other shit that has to go their way.

As far as it being only a few Divisions, IIRC it's in the White Flame/Blue Flame text. And since the stuff in TR 3067 has WoB re-opening a few old lines very recently, that would jive with there only being a few extra Divisions tops, rather than them actually having triple or more the forces they are credited with in the FMs.

>>50105334
I'll go back and reread some of that fluff then.

>>50105306
That's more -[any letter]b

>>50105390

I mean, the believability is arguable either way.

From the pro perspective, the books do say that's how it happened... but those books post-date WizKids and their version of the Jihad.

From the anti perspective, the stuff before WizKids was leading to a very different Jihad so they suggest a much smaller and less capable WoB... which gets explained away as good WoB OpSec.

It's clumsily handled, for reasons outside anyone but Weisman's control.

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>all these Blake-lovers
>forgetting the original faction of grand plots and losing wars

>>50105334
>>50105390
>>50105484

Don't forget that the reason everyone calls Focht retarded is that Comstar spent a whole boatload of cash and time bringing big boys like Skobel back online to replace their Tukayyid losses, then lost it to the Blakists exactly as they were finally cranking out material.

So Focht brushing that off as well as the Titan Yards and Liberty Station was absolutely egregious negligence. I guess from his view, they're basically old Comstar so who cares, the clans are a much bigger deal.

The worst part was that situation happened a second time after they upgraded all the remaining Rasalhague factories and built some new ones. The hogs kicked them out right as everything was coming online in decent quantity.

Comstar just could not catch a break between 3053 and 3082. 3130-3150 has been much tougher on them though, because they don't have those old 2750 reserves to draw on like they did the last century.

>>50105635
Well Word of Focht was run by morons. What was its draw anyway? Successor States had patriotism/honor/nobility, old ComStar/WoB had religion, what was FochtStar's draw to get people to join?
>"Hey, it's a job."
No wonder it fell the fuck apart.

>>50105694
Dark Age Comstar has reverted to old Comstar. The dudes were even wearing the robes and stuff again. Mostly I think because all surviving administration personnel from the WoB were folded back into C* at the end of the war.

Unfortunately, that fun development got kicked in the balls.

>>50105635

Same thing happens to the Wolves.

Wolves: "Let's upgrade the Rasalhague factories we captured."
Ghost Bears: "YOINK!"
Wolves: "Well, shit. Let's build some new ones."
Hell's Horses: "Ours now, suckers! Also we're blocking your access to the Homewolds, lolol."
Wolves: "God fucking dammit. Expand the lines on Tamar, at least we can defend those."
Word of Blake: "HA HA TIME FOR NUKES!"

Or the Dracs, who gave away the only two major production sites that survived the Jihad to the Republic of the Sphere, because reasons.

The writers just don't think things through, either in terms of what factions would be making a serious effort to hold or what the logical consequences of losing them would be.

Pre-Jihad what are some books that have ComGuard and WoBM RATs?

>>50106082

FM: ComStar and FM: U definitely.

Maybe EraReport 3052/3060 but I haven't really read those.

The Tukayyid scenario pack has ways to randomly generate a ComStar force too.

>>50105076
Honestly, why would we? MegaMek is a better representation of the tabletop

>>50102439
>RotS players, folks who believe in Devlin Stone, what draws you to it?
It is not one of the five Houses, not a Clan and not a Merc unit. That basically put the Republic in the Top 5 Best Factions by default.

>>50105076
>>50106339

It's kinda nice to look at actual miniatures and roll the dice yourself for things, but MM is light-years better in terms of actually playing the game. Fun concept (and I love TTS), but not as easy to execute given how crunchy BT is with numbers and rolls.

>>50106417
By that argument the Taurians are one of the top factions. You forgot to exclude Peripherats.

WOB DID NOTHING WRONG

>>50106480
Except lose

>>50106604
There's still as many forces missing as they had when they took Terra back in 3058. It's more mechs than the average successor state has active in 3130

>>50106649

inb4 wobblies had their own exodus after losing and come back in force ala Clan Invasion 2: Electric Boogaloo

>>50106736
>not Wobbies vs. Taintsnakes
>the robes finally reducing the homeworlds to unihabitable rocks like they always wanted

With the Enriyes they could do it too. Homeworlders only have a tiny handful of planets. It could be the thing that drives the Homeworlders to the Inner Sphere for IlClan. They have nowhere else to go.

>>50106791

Erinyes is massively over-rated.

It took like five years to set up the strike on Taurus.

The idea people have of it in their heads is way out of proportion to its demonstrated capabilities.

>>50105047
>implying FASA would have done any better
CGL was handed a bucket of raw sewage, and they gave us a pretty good (though not flawless) meal out of it.

Like, FASA fucked up numbers all the time. 600 million casualties in 4SW= big deal? A few billion Clanners taking on an Inner Sphere with a population over a trillion, and getting as far as they did? Come the fuck on.

>>50105048
The only reason the WoB managed what they did was false-flag attacks; playing the Houses off against each other literally was their only choice. Well, that and having lots of collaborators in the FWL and former Chaos March.

Nukes and killer cyborgs can only go so far when your enemies badly outnumber you, and have WMDs of their own.

>>50106877
You're forgetting where it just jumped in and wrecked the shit out of Lopez without any long setup, multiple impacts on every major city.

Remember, Taurus was just one place they struck. All those other unexplained asteroid impacts in the first couple books were also the Enrinyes.

>>50106885
I like the part where even in the 3070's, Word of Focht was still 20'ish percent Blakist. There was not a single thing they did that was a secret.

>>50106933

They weren't though, it's physically impossible unless they managed to refit Erinyes' jump cores multiple times after making super-jumps.

WoB just had multiple sites doing the asteroid schtick, and that was quite limited- Taurus, Lopez, and the Azami homeworld are the only times they used it. If it was a more viable and less time-consuming thing they would have been deploying it far more often, but it has severe limitations.

>>50106951

20% might be the ComGuard. The rest of the organisation was so highly infilitrated that you might as well call them WoB, especially C* ROM.

>>50107016
You forgot Necromo and Shinonoi

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Fooling around with an Archer that shoots Arrows. Concept, maybe something in the SLDF days, a Battlemech version of a MLRS. It does work, actually, and as long as it doesn't move can sit back and lob two missiles for 15 turns before it winchesters. I shifted the armor slightly so that a fall won't risk breaching a rear torso, and so that it's still got enough armor to take a couple PPCs to the front end without breach, but had to shave off a ton there.

I suppose it'd be counted as a failure; the general lack of mobility even for a 'Mech plus the lack of backup weapons and the not-very-deep ammo bins (for its output) is the reason why the SLDF never put the design into production. I kinda like how it turned out - useful, but not great, and not really the kind of machine that would find its way into mass production. Just an footnote paragraph in a copy of Jane's Fighting Battlemechs 2740, maybe with a rare photo.

Thinking of MLRS, more makes me think of RLs or MRMs.
Anyone ever do MRM archers? I've seen the RL boats.

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Looks like alex did some work on the assassin.

>>50107527
>two cockpits

Which one is the one used?

>>50107527
Not bad at all.

>>50107593
The official one is the tiny one in the nose, but most people have preferred the top panels since the 80's. The miniature especially paints well that way.

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>>50107593
there is definitely conflict about where the cockpit is

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>>50107593
>>50107800

>>50107527
WHITWORTH WHEN?

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>>50107593
Why not both?

>>50107151

Either way. Erinyes can't physically have been present at all those places without super-jumps and then somehow managing to replace her own core more rapidly than their attempts to fix the other stranded Aegis (Immortal Spirit?) managed.

The other problem you run into is a metagaming issue, if it was really so easy to just lob asteroids at planets we may as well all pack up and go home because there's no point playing, much less discussing canon or hypotheticals because kinetic bombardment beats everything and that's just how it is. Which I find kinda boring, YMMV.

>>50107357

MRMs are terrible. I mean, you can go ahead and stick a pair of 30s onto an Archer-4M, but it's so much worse than LRM-20s with Artemis I don't even know why anyone would bother.

>>50108242
I like this Assassin, save for the Command Console. I mean I get that's the point of the joke but I'd rather give it a MPL or something on the other arm or in the head to back up the capped LPPC.

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>>50107593

>>50109468
Flavor, lulz and rage. I know and agree MRMs are shit. I've just never seen any done. Double MRM 20s with Apollo and some decent lasers?

>>50107357
I would consider it, but I don't run customs.
It might work with a C3 network... but I'd probably make it into MRM20s and run a C3 master in it with the freed up space. If there were free space and tonnage, maybe the Apollo FCSs, but heatsinks and medium lasers might be the better option.

>>50109478
CC is three tons and one crit, and it has a crit spare. Easy to swap it out for making the MMLs into 5s. Can also swap the capacitor for a TAG while you're at it.

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>>50109504
I haven't had an excuse to post this in ages. Thank you.

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>anons discussing Archers with alternate missile systems
>decide to go full retard
I regret nothing. The FWL deserves this.

>>50109859
That looks painfully canon.

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>>50109859
>Streaks
Plebbiest of pleb. Get ready for 60 jumping LRMs.

>>50107688
I always assumed the nose panel was a window for some optical sensors.

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>>50109558
Tried it as a Vanilla archer 2R refit.
Swap LRMs for MRM20s
4 tons MRM ammo
one 5-ton Master Computer
One ton left to play with. Either CASE or spare heatsink. Armor is already almost maxed on the Archer. CASE requires a factory refit. Adding the Master Computer means this is already a D-class maintenance refit, and I definitely have room to use specialty armor like FF, but since this thing feels like a Militia refit as C3 started getting popular, I'm trying to keep the maintenance costs and complexity down by staying with standard armor.

Good idea to add DHS - counts as D-class refit, and this mech is likely to want to brawl just as well as to spam MRMs at 15 hexes.
Good idea to move the two rear MLs into forward facing, but can be left as-is, since 2 MRM20s + 2 MLs + Running = 20 heat. I moved mine to face forward since I had the extra ton of space put into heat sinks.
After doing this, I noticed I had WAY too much ammo for the MRMs, so I chopped two tons out and replaced them with DHS. It can now Alpha strike while running and generate no heat.

>>50109897
>pure Clan tech
Rubbish.

>>50109874
I dunno whether to take that as a good sign or not.

>>50109951
That looks super fun to play.
>>50110000
Nice quads!!
It was a compliment and feeling it's so spotty could be a real mech.

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>>50110000
>Rubbish.
IT'S THE WAY OF THE FUTURE. FUTURE... Future... future...

But if you have that much of a problem with Clontech, have a "field" refit.

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>>50107357
>MRM
I made one for an Omni-Archer that we cut from the TRO so that everything was as original as possible except for ONN stuff. I never did up any fluff, but here you go.

Why the fuck do I have 48 Archer variants including this Omni?

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>>50110034
>ALL Clantech Weapons
>Case
>DHS
>Almost double the BV
>Overall costs less than my MRM militia refit.

さすがマスターコンピュータ!

>>50110034
Kinda min max but so brutal.

>>50110102
Thanks!!
I just feel for flavor and canon and fluff a MRM archer HAS to be a thing. ERLL seems like a good fit since decent whack and distance.

>>50109951
Not bad, Anon. I rarely like MRM machines but the little lore blurb sold me.

>>50110025
Hey, thanks Anon. I like to design "plausible" stuff mostly, but getting crazy can be fun too. Mixtech tends to classify as "full retard" for me, but I'm an old coot.

>>50110034
Can the MPLs at least either be IS MXPLs or something? Literally all you did was re-label it "Mixed". I'm onto you, FUTUREFuturefutureanon. But you're right, Clan tech will probably the be the default come the Great ReBootening.

>>50110114
When you're chewing up Steel Vipers at the Cluster level every 3 months, you tend not to care about "cheap" or "militia." Also yours is in PDF, so too lazy, didn't load.

>>50110118
A fully clan version, two of its brothers, a Bane 3, and a Ryoken with the head ERML replaced with a TAG anchor my "Jesus Christ, Clan Semi-Guided LRMs are OP as fuck." Star.

>>50110164
>Can the MPLs at least either be IS MXPLs or something?
Check the year. MXPLs didn't exist then, and it's battlefield salvage.

>Literally all you did was re-label it "Mixed"
Swapping bases takes forever in MHQ, anon.

I just want to let all you know. I love seeing others builds. I have all these ideas but I feel I min max too much or meme too hard and hate them and chuck plans.

To all you posting build mechs godspeed.

>>50110179
>check the year
Who actually does that for something that's not presented with attached lore? Most people never change off the default date SSW tacks on the design.

Also I was being cheeky; it can't be Clantech with the numbers filed off. The DHS are IS tech! 110% legit! To be fair, it's a good field refit, if you have the spare stuff laying around.

>>50110208
I wish we did more custom designs and stuff, but a lot of times, unless they're pertinent to the current discussion, they are ignored. I used to make an effort to comment on them all when I popped in, but when that became fruitless I gave up.

Don't sweat the min-maxing angle; that's what most people want here. They don't want "flavor" they want "crunch". So get on with your bad self Anon. Meme machines have their place too.

>>50109951
>CASE requires a factory refit
I honestly think CGL made that rule entirely to fuck over mercs, because it really does make absolutely no sense

>>50110255
Thanks anon. I'm pretty new to getting deep into BT and this is the best place for it. I know a lot of people like min max but I enjoy seeing how take flavor.

I won't deny : >>50099915
is me. I'd love to see this. I can't make one that's not trash. I don't expect a winner but I just want to see it.

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>>50110255
>Who actually does that for something that's not presented with attached lore? Most people never change off the default date SSW tacks on the design.
I fluff everything, even if I don't post it. No one would read the fluff, or would complain about it. And at this point, what I'm working on would spoil the TRO to an extent. Except for this. I have to pare that down to a paragraph.

>>50110258
Agreed. CASE should really have always been a thing anyway. I thought about house-ruling it as such:

>Introtech/No CASE
When ammo explodes, roll 2d6. On a 9+, the failsafes in the bins, well, fail, and ammo explodes as normal. A roll of less than 9 means it functions as CASE. Represents CASE being "lost" but not truly; it's just been cheaped out on.

>>50110164
>Not bad, Anon. I rarely like MRM machines but the little lore blurb sold me.
I'm a proponent for the idea that "If you're going to customize, use the Strat-Ops rules". With all the power-gamers out there, I try to avoid custom builds. I don't want to bother getting beat up on for three hours if I was doomed to fail from before the first die-drop.

...unless of course, the point of the scenario is "You're doomed but make them pay for every inch of ground" like planetary militias during the first waves of the clan invasion. Even then, I'd rather see canon designs and configs.

>>50110284
>fluff everything
I fluff what I like/put serious effort into. For the load of good it does me. But, I do it for me, so it getting ignored is whatever.

>TRO
I'm sure all the stuff I submitted that was "under consideration" got tossed. Still, glad I contributed to the cause, even if money is all you dudes ended up taking from me. Don't rush it; not that I need to tell you. I'd rather have quality over speed. I know you'll deliver; you've wasted too much time not to, frankly. And all that lovely art would go to waste.

>bothering to fluff a pretty bog standard Gauss Dragon refit
Godspeed. I thought I was a dying breed.
>that -8R
What the Tittyfucking Christ RotS what did you do to that poor Dragon? That's a lot of PPC.

>>50110284
>I fluff everything, even if I don't post it. No one would read the fluff, or would complain about it
I'm in pretty much the same boat here. Aside from simple refits that don't really need much explination beyond "X builds kits to refit [introtech machine] for [customer] and they're popular with group Y and Z", I like to write fluff, but since it's mostly AU stuff and also often for factions that tend to start arguments, I just leave it out. Plus posting designs without anyone else saying anything seems somewhere between pointless and possibly ego-ish

>>50110307
I like doing custom stuff, but stuff that is more like "canon" designs than the overly-tweaked customs you usually see. I don't play with customs though; canon-only on my table.

I'm kinda drunk BTG and this was months ago but someone gave me a dope fluff mech.

I'm still thankful for it.

Was the "goth" a dragon captured dragon with a hatchet and MLs I'm quite pissed I can't find it on my PC but I have been boozing hard tonight.

>>50110375
>Goth
Wrasslehog refit? Sounds like.

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>>50110179
I've been playing for a while, and BV has been my primary concern, not C-bills.

Megamek campaigns, I deviated from the usual DCMS, went Canopian in the Dark Age with FM:3145 tables, so while I was familiarised with how hard it is to maintain stealth armor, I didn't use C3.

Turns out C3 Master computers are more expensive than I thought. I ballparked about 800,000 C-bills. Turns out they cost a few C-bills shy of a Locust at 1.5 Mil.
It's more expensive than the fusion engine.

>>50110343
>I'm sure all the stuff I submitted that was "under consideration" got tossed. Still, glad I contributed to the cause, even if money is all you dudes ended up taking from me. Don't rush it; not that I need to tell you. I'd rather have quality over speed. I know you'll deliver; you've wasted too much time not to, frankly. And all that lovely art would go to waste.
Muninn's got the big list of who submitted what, though I think I ended up getting the most designs tossed. I've got like 30 vehicles that got sent back, including a bizarre Capellan mixtech Rotunda-like "Q-Car" with 4 SRM-6s and stealth armor. I regret nothing.

>What the Tittyfucking Christ RotS what did you do to that poor Dragon? That's a lot of PPC.
One of my players wanted a TSM 60 ton mech for the DCMS. I obliged, in a Monkey's Paw like way. The TSM can work out okay if you pay attention.

>>50110353
>Plus posting designs without anyone else saying anything seems somewhere between pointless and possibly ego-ish
Ouch. I just build customs/refits as a boredom reliever. I used to do it at work in between calls so that I didn't lose my mind.

>>50110418
>Megamek Campaigns
For whatever reason, the AtB campaign I was using based your pay off of 10% of your assets, which meant once I got XL engines, my pay skyrocketed. With combat bonuses, I could make 500 million in profit on an op. It was absurdly hilarious. Which was the only reason I kept going with the game, really.

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>>50110409
Lyran captured dragon.
5/8 hatchet if memory serves right a LL too rest armor and HS.
I'm sadly pretty faded and my old PC died.
Someone made this chop.

>>50110439
I don't think that about anyone *else* posting mechs unprompted, it's purely a personal thing.

>>50110439
I think I'm doing the same thing. Contracts for 600 mil.
But then, you really need to be playing 3025 to be able to afford it otherwise.
So much of the campaign system is set up to be hardwired for 3025/3050 play, like if you're limiting what you can buy based on campaign types, the absolute highest tech level still includes stuff like ER PPCs, forget goddamn X-Pulse Lasers, Radical Heat Sinks, TSEMPs, Vibro-Blades, and IJJs.

>>50110439
>though I think I ended up getting the most designs tossed
I'm betting that's more due to quantity than quality, CA.

>a bizarre Capellan mixtech Rotunda-like "Q-Car" with 4 SRM-6s and stealth armor
I should have submitted more Vees. I know you needed them at one point. Oh well. I like the sound of this thing.

>>50110456
Classy. I dunno why I thought Wrasslehog; Goths aren't even from anywhere near Iceland or Scandinavia. Well, Germany is KINDA close...

>>50110530
I wish that the Hi-Scout concept was expanded upon.

I always thought it'd be neat to create a version of C3 computers that only weigh a half-ton, and only transmit targeting data. Make drones to carry it, Make a new (uptonned) version of the Hi-Scout carrier with a C3 Master computer, and attach it to understrength C3 companies.

>>50110530
I'm pretty faded and on a new comp so useless but I was so happy I was getting back into BT and everyone ran with it made a pile and the lulz chop pic. It's what cemented me to this group.

Now I feel a dick all this ass kissing and can't find specs. Drunk or not.

>>50110550
>mfw I am getting images of a Cyclops with a Command Console, C3 Master, and Drone Control installed launching a ton of spotter drones and sitting back with like, a single Gauss Rifle or LRM20 as its only damage contribution
It's a good daydream.

>>50110552
/btg/ is a pretty cool place. Dickbaggery is usually limited to those that don't actually play and come to stir up shit. Enjoy Booz.

>>50110550
I have been known to use the C3 Master Skulker as a cheap as fuck master for mechs (BV 230). Nobody ever suspects it's the one carrying the unit. Used to be almost unfairly effective when you didn't need LoS for C3 before they fixed it.

>>50110635
>LoS for C3
This is such a dumb "fix". Always bothered me. The system was actually worth it before that change.

確かスペインかどっかのニュースでトランプ氏にメキシコ政策とかでトランプ型メックがギター持ったメキシコ人と戦う映像が流れた、誰か知らないか?

>>50110650
Agreed. Taking C3 down to 3 and 5 percent might have been acceptable alternatives.

...But when Steiner players are bringing six gauss rifles in their lance, or clanners have got the old PLTC combo no TMM on your Spider or Crow VTOL will make up for needing to expose yourself for C3 networks.

>>50110709
Well, you might agree with me on function, but I doubt you do on implementation. I always thought the Dracs and Cappies should have traded innovations; the Dracs love duels so TSM would have been great since "SHS not DHS okay". Conversely, the Cappies focus on EW and command networking would make more sense as a C3 testbed. I mean I could always AU it but eh, I just wish it had been done that way from the start. Why would you give the IS faction that is expected to fight the most like the Clans the one that makes them fight as a group? Hell the FWL developing it makes more damn sense. Or the Steiners.

>>50110255
>>50110284
>>50110343
>>50110353
>>50110439
>>50110470
>>50110530
How about we just agree that the rest of this thread is a free-fire, post-one-review-one zone for custom mechs and vees and battle armor, guys?

>>50111154
Sounds good. I don't have anything new to post, but if something hits the pavement while I'm still awake, I'll take a look at it for sure.

>>50111154
>>50111314
I'm really quite drunk, but if I have a moment of inspiration and finish up my current project of a WoB Mackie, a RoTS Emperor and and primitive Vindicator, I'll be sure to throw them up here and review anything else I see
>>50110439
And again, because I's an apologetic drunk, sorry CA, I didn't mean to insult nobody

On the subject of C3, rather than buffing it, maybe ECM needs to be nerfed a little?

Namely get rid of the part where an ECM bubble blocking LOS between the master and a slave outside the bubble cuts the link part. If not entirely, at least make it so that as long as the slave has LOS to another slave that has unrestricted access to the master then it can stay linked.

As is, it's can be way too easy for a single ECM to block off a lot of network even without putting things in the bubble.

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>>50111357
>And again, because I's an apologetic drunk, sorry CA, I didn't mean to insult nobody
All good brother. I know not everyone likes the customs I post, I just want to get mechs out there.

Anyway, have a brawler Bushwacker.

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>>50110409
>>50110456
Here was my take

And for the 305X refit, here's what you do:
Give it TSM.

>>50111357
>Primitive Vindicator
I am extremely interested in this. I'll keep an eye out.

>>50111374
Making it so the ECM unit has to actually have the Slave unit in the bubble makes sense to me. The LOS thing is just weird unless the C3 uses like, microwaves to talk to other units.

>>50111415
Man, this thing has me torn. It's a brawler, and it's good at it, but the CASE is basically just there to save the pilot since the ammo popping mission kills it anyway. Not that there's much to use that tonnage on... I guess more armor? Still, the MML5 makes for a decent swap. I'd actually prefer it to have two MML5s in place of the old LRMs and brawl that way, but I love MMLs too much, I'll admit it. Favorite missile system along with RL10s, by far.

>>50111582
Not bad. Doesn't run any hotter than any other Introtech heavy, and as a brawler, you have some decent options. I dunno if it'd use it, but it's pretty neat. It's odd to see a Dragon without LRMs, but they don't make a ton of sense on something like this.

Though, part of me wonders why we have to rely on LB-Xs to get critseeking at long range. All we got were Mech Mortars and those things, while I love them to death, are hot garbage sad to say. I wish we had gotten like, Boosted SRMs or something like that with Large Laser range brackets at maybe three times the weight of a standard SRM?

>>50111691
>I am extremly interested in this. I'll keep an eye out.
well, I'm too damn drunk now, but watch this thread in 10 or so hours

>>50109620
Might want to fix the out-of-order frames before the next time you use it.

>>50110783
FWL developing it makes even.more sense than the Cappies, since they were buddies with the Blakists and love cheaper ranged weapons that need the accuracy to be effective, while the Cappies have stealth armor which renders C3 pointless.

>>50112446

Why would the FWL develop it almost a decade before the WoB even existed?

I mean, I agree that it doesn't make sense for the Dracs to have developed any way but if you're looking for the most logical faction to have done it you're looking at the FedSuns due to their doctrine and the NAIS. OTOH that would mean giving them even more of an advantage over everyone else because like fuck they'd have mostly been given bad 3050 designs that rip out a LL, ML, or SHS to randomly slap a C3 system in. As it was they got some of the best ground-up C3 builds any way.

>>50112488
I don't mean they should.have developed it in 3055 or whenever, but give it to them in 3062 or something - fuzzy on dates for that period - and make it fairly FWL-exclusive among the Houses. That, coupled with SG LRMs and LGRs ought to give them a good tabletop feel. I still feel that they need something else but I don't know what.

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I swear I just posted this. Forgive me if I did.
I recently started watching the Hyper RPG Battletech campaign, and though I've played a number of the Battletech RPG systems, I'm a bit disappointed that this didn't use one of the official ones. What system exactly are they using?

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>>50113718
...never mind. "Homebrew".

>>50113718
I feel like I don't recognize those mechs...

>>50113970
With good reason. PGI's take on the Centurion was very liberal, and you're only seeing the Griffon from the back.

>>50113970
Where have you been in the past 5 years?

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>>50111154
>How about we just agree that the rest of this thread is a free-fire, post-one-review-one zone for custom mechs

OK, but we're barely half-way to the auto-sage point. This one was the result of a design challenge about four or five threads ago. The sketch is supposed to be the "Headhunter"; you can imagine it slightly different for the "Sabretooth".

>>50113996
Iraq and Afghanistan

>>50114005
Odd places to vacation.
Get a better travel agent.

>>50111582
Thanks so much, this cures my hang over.

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Just curious but what are some blurbs you saw in sourcebooks that you wish were expanded on or explained but never were?

One that always caught my eye was how the commander of the 3rd Oriente Hussars apparently murdered the Blakist agent Satoshi Fujishima for some reason years after the WoB took Terra.
Why that agent? Why the CO of the 3rd? Why after he'd already guaranteed Terra's fall? Who was Colonel Matthews' master? Was it Thomas Halas?

>>50114005
Not my problem you chose to play pre-Age of War.

>>50114701
Jesus anon, I had dinner not ten minutes ago, but that made me crave good bbq.

>>50114701
Satoshi was killed in 3058 at the tail end of Operation Odysseus, not years afterward. What's your source?

>>50115106
I meant that the revelation was years after, I messed up what I was trying to say. Or was Theresa Matthews' name dropped with regard to Satoshi before FM:U?

>>50115130
Matthews was ex-SAFE and likely a C* ROM agent. I find it interesting that her whole unit got so infested with blakists that they killed her and defected a couple years later though.

>The Titan Yards held out until 3062
Huh, I was not aware of that.

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>>50103333
Check'd

>>50114701
Shit like why in FM:U the 6th Free Worlds Legion had a mini civil war when their commanding general was assassinated. FM:FWL gave no hint about this.

Battlebump

Sorry if someone's asked this before but what 'Mechs in the introductory box set would be appropriate for a ComGuard/Word of Blake Militia force?

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>>50111691
>Man, this thing has me torn.
Well the original has an LRM5 in place of the MML5, and it exists solely so that I had a variant that matched mini.

Someone take this non shit Crud.

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Am I the only one who thinks Battletech should (have) modified its game system?

The rules FASA devised are pretty bad for variety or expansion. The gameplay is fun BUT the construction rules are pretty bad.
They were bad already with a ton of shitmechs at the start and the first expansion, the Clans, screwed it up completely to shit and back.
Now the setting has a bajillion mechs with minor differences, weapons which are mostly the same and don't even have a real use in most cases, et cetera.
In my opinion, this is a thing that hould have been tackled back in the day, not attempting to "add new rules" with new eras and "different" robots.Stuff like DA or Alpha Strike miss the point entirely and think the gameplay is to blame, completely missing the mark.
Aside form that, everything ever has been dancing around this stupid status quo for ages.

>>50117840
A crud that doesn't suck?
fucking dropped.

>>50118252
Those things you consider shitmechs often come into their own in different scenarios.

Like somebody might say the Charger 1A sucks but in a 3rd War campaign where it's pretty rare to run into proper kickass heavies or assaults outside big operations, the thing is king kong of physical combat. There is so much salvage you can get with it by kicking, it's insane.

Or somebody might say the Vulcan 2T sucks, but they've never used it for tank crippling and vtol swatting duty. Focusing on machines optimized for nothing but mech combat simply isn't fun or interesting.

And the status quo hasn't been the same. But it seems like the people who say that it is would only be satisfied by one or more great houses being utterly and irrevocably destroyed RWR-style.

And the first expansion was the TRO 3025 mechs with multiple classes of autocannon. Clans were the 4th, after the Star League mechs.

>>50118556
I wasn't talking about a status quo in the story, but how the universe works.

If using limited means to an end is what is the fun part of the game, why not tailor the construction system and stuff in it towards that?
Allow more interesting use-cases for mechs, make more of these, communicate them to people,...

The current crits/BV/ system does not work well with it unless you try and try really hard.
It's holding the setting back is what I'm saying.

>>50118556
Why isn't there a Main Battle Mech?

>>50119561
there is, it's called the Nightstar.

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on the off chance the guy asking for it is still here, here's the primitive Vindicator

>>50119661
primitive mech
erppc
wat.

>>50119789
Retrotech, son. I figured that the cappies would want to use the same weapon as the standard vindicator-3L to ease logistical concerns, though a standard PPC is a better choice for sure.

>>50119900
I mean, it really should be matching to the 1R, so it should logically be a normal PPC. ER weaponry on a primitive mech doesn't make much sense, since primitives are usually about saving costs and ER weaponry is expensive.

>>50119900
Primitive is a different beast from Retrotech though. Primitives are the first mechs, Retrotech is just "we can't make good mech parts."

>>50117388
Bump for this?

>>50120626
Basically all of them. They're mostly old Star League mechs, meaning they're all usable in phone company forces.

>>50120651
Doubly true for the WoB when you consider the Protectorate is worlds from every Inner Sphere nation and they have tons of war material on top of that from the FWL, Capellans, and public selling factories.

>>50120424
I do tend to use the two words interchangeably, when I probably shouldn't, but ah well. Making it a proper primitive would be super easy, though. Just switch to a normal PPC, replace the rockets with a LRM 5 and remove a ton of armor for the ammo. Easy.
>>50120181
It's a very simple change to fit it to the -1R, but I kinda figured that by the 3070s when this thing was designed, there'd be more -3Ls than -1Rs running around, but really these machines would probably be armed with whichever PPC assemblies were lying around when it was slapped together, so there would be a mix of ERPPC and regular models running around

>>50120424
Retrotech just means making primitive tech after the original primitive era. The agromech plant converted to crank out old model hammerhands for example was called retrotech even though it was a straight unaltered primitive model that hadn't been produced in six hundred and fifty years.

>>50118252
Hell, the construction rules are probably more fun than the actual game.

>>50120651
>>50120732
I see. Do any in particular stand out as options? I want to make a force masquerading as mercs to face a Davion lance as made by NEA in his pdf suggesting faction lances.

If anybody's interested, I put up a Discord server for /btg/. Join if you like; in function it's similar to IRC.

https://discord.gg/3KuMhXf

>>50121808
>in function it's similar to IRC.
(Crix) shitposting, politics, and Nidhogg constantly asking questions?

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>>50121956
Not until people join, but Liao got a headstart on the shitposting already.

>>50121999
Well, you did provide a channel for shitposting. What was I supposed to do, ignore it?

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>>50114701
Not so much the sourcebooks, but considering that the Battletech cartoon was my first exposure to the series (Though it would take me a while to realise it was shared a connection with that MechWarrior 2 demo I was playing), I always wanted to know more about all the characters from that show, and maybe the "Real" story of the 1st Somerset Strikers.

As bad as the cartoon was, it seems to me like it was par for the course for the early 90s, and I honestly thought the character designs and personalities were really likeable.

Of course, we know Franklin Sakamoto knocked someone up and produced the Dark Age coordinator, and Adam Steiner did a stint as an ever-grumpy archon, but I always wanted to know what happened to the rest. Did Ciro move up the Jade Falcon Ranks, and how did he deal with being discriminated against as a freeborn? What happened to gruff old Miles Hawk Hawkins? Valten Rider? Dr. Nakamura and Captain Frestadt...

I read the sourcebooks, but often it's just so much information coming in and the names of each of the regiments starts becoming a whirl in my head, especially when they start abbreviating and calling them "The 3rd" and "the 7th" that a lot of the information gets forgotten.
a lot of those other fiddly bits just end up fading from memory.

>>50121361
This could be done with two categories of 'mechs, depending on time period. From the start, WoB was buying mechs from FWL factories to fill out their ranks (in addition to all the new designs produced for them at WoB-affiliated factories). These include:
Cicada
Hermes II
Hunchback
Trebuchet
Orion
Awesome

Later on in the Jihad, various factory worlds fell under Blakist control, giving them access to some other designs, a lot of which got funneled into Protectorate Militia units, including:
Commando
Catapult
Grand Dragon
Banshee
Zeus
Atlas II (substitute the Atlas, it's close enough)

And of course, as already mentioned, everything else in the Intro Box has been around long enough for Blake forces, especially false flag Blake forces, to have access to at least a few.

>>50121361
The thing that Comstar, Word of Blake, and Mercenaries have in common is that they all come from different parts of the inner sphere and different walks of life.

By definition, you're going to see a smattering of different mechs in any one of those.

For me, I've always saved the Pirate/Merc stuff to take up any leftover mechs I've had. My second introbox got painted up to be two eight-mech forces, and the leftovers got made into random mercs and pirates.

You could do the same with your Comstar force, though if they're masquerading as mercs, you might not want to paint them in the trademark pure white of Comstar/WoB, but probably use some kind of Camo-scheme.

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>>50122406
But yeah... like anon said, If you're doing Comstar, it's more general, but Word of Blake was very cozy with the FWL, and a good chunk of FWL-made designs and equipment are in their roster. Notice the Vanquisher with dual LGR, the Legacy with dual UAC10s... If you're making it for before the schizm, then general purpose, WoB after the schizm would mean a good chunk of FWL mechs. Having about half of the introbox mechs you choose being FWL standard designs would help to separate the Comguard from WoB.

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>>50121315
>Hell, the construction rules are probably more fun than the actual game.

How long did it take you to figure that out? Battletech isn't the only one.

Hey does anyone have a list of mech "genealogies"? For example, the Catapult->Catapult II, or Bushwacker->Barghest

>>50123203
There's the griffin family, which includes the griffin, lineholder, marshal and oddly the bushwhacker

>>50123203

Aside from IICs and Omni versions of standard 'Mechs, here are some:

Stinger, Wasp, Phoenix Hawk, Shadow Hawk -> LAM variants
Catapult + Marauder = Timber Wolf
Marauder -> Maelstrom, Dragon Fire, Nightstar, Marauder II
Raven -> Sha Yu
BattleMaster -> Templar, Templar II, Templar III, Warlord
Rising Star -> Legacy

>>50123370
>Rising Star
The hell is a Rising Star?

>>50123732
The thing that never was that became the Legacy.

>>50123785
Ok I'm gonna need some deets on this because I have no idea what you're talking about. There was some kind of proto-Legacy that existed? Why doesn't it now? Who made it, what is its story?

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>>50123732

No stats, it's just mentioned as the design the Legacy is based on in its fluff.

I imagine something like this though.

>>50123802
>>50123802

It was an assault 'Mech built during the Star League that never performed well, apparently because the targeting system was defective somehow. Only a "few hundred" were built which given the number the SL churned shit out in indicates how little they cared for it.

Literally nothing else is known. However what I posted in >>50123830 is just a down-teched version of the Legacy and I think is a reasonable guess at what it might have been like.

>>50123830
Man, if that mech was real, it'd be pretty damn solid. It even has a bitchin' name. Wonder if we'll get a Rising Star in an XTRO eventually (I'd have loved to see it in Boondoggles or maybe in Boondoggles 2 if they ever do it, for instance).

>>50123894
At least two "Rising Star" submissions were sent in for /btg/RO. One was literally the Legacy with slightly different configs renamed for the Republic.

>>50123370
There's a Raven II now too.

>>50123928
Did you select one?

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>>50123830
That's badass. I would use the fuck out of that. I love AC/10s and SRM4s in the Introtech era. Also, good on you for only using one ton of SRM4 ammo; 25 shots is a hell of a lot.

Okay, so I got the urge to design a 'Mech with some fluff attached, and got a kooky idea, so I ran with it. It's silly, but I like it overall. I can't recall reading about a 'Mech being designed accidentally like this, or at least coming about through this sort of mistake. The 'Mech itself isn't really much to write home about (just a glorified Jackal with more speed and more gun) but the idea of a "Boomstick Spider" makes me chuckle a little.

>>50124505
Oops, just noticed I forgot to change the type of PPC in the "Armament" section. Damn. Oh well. I was waffling between the two types available in the FWL and I went with the Starflare. Not sure why, actually.

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>>50123203
This is an idea that has entertained me off and on. Usually I throw together some kind of line diagram in a spreadsheet, but I tried throwing together a nicer graphic for the Atlas as an exercise.

* It's never explicitly said that the Atlas III is developed from the Atlas II as opposed to, say the AS8-D the Feddies built earlier, but the weapons layout on the Three is pretty similar to the Two so I went with it.

>>50121999
You got a higher res of that?

I'm playing a mercenary game and I'm thinking to head out to the periphery since it's early 3051 and I don't want to get murdered by the clans. I don't really know much about the factions there, who should I head for?

>>50124807
The Taurians fight against the Tortuga Dominions quite a bit, so there's plenty of action to be had there. The MoC has to deal with raids from the Marians, so that's a thing too. The OA is quiet, but they might like the idea of hiring mercs since their own 'Mech forces are quite lacking.

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>>50124750

File: .eJwFwdsNhCAQAMBeKIB9gCJ2QBUXRIImKgTWr8v1fjNf9fZLreoQaWMF2M-Rat_1kNpjybrUWq4c2zl0qjdEkZiOOz8ygM1iHRlmpokYF--BrZ0NoSck79yMiLBJ-YQQdHuK-v0B_y4iLA.N9XelQT6QcBD9LPRK38N8RHJtEQ.png (75KB, 661x716px) Image search: [Google]

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>>50124750

Alright /btg/, I'm running a Steiner force against a Clan Binary at 25000 BV, city fighting. R8 my list:
2 LCT-3S
2 HBK-5S
for the bait and switch

BSW-S2
ON1-VA
AXM-1N
GLT-4L
Heavy Lance

BRZ-A3
AS7-S
KGC-0000
HGN-733C
Assaults

2x Typhoon UAV
2x Hetzer WAG
2x Drillson Hover tanks with SRM.
3 SRM jump platoons

How does this sound?

I have a friend who's interested in playing BT, but he nearly exclusively wants to run stuff to fuck with people, like minefields and tripwires and shit.
What's the best way/best units to do this in megamek?
How do you get minefields in 3060 era?

>>50124807
Do you want a steady diet of pirate-fighting for mediocre pay and good salvage? Does the idea of discount introtech heavies interest you? Are you alternately willing to pretend to be worried about davions while sitting on the border? The taurian concordat gets you pretty much that
Do you like getting paid in liquor and whores? Are you willing to deal with the space ANA as your backup? Do you like good salvage terms and plenty of pirates to fight? Then the Magistracy of canopus is your thing

Those two are your best bets.

The minor powers are also possible, but probably worse choices.
In general, pay and support are shit, but salvage rights are pretty good
The Lothian League is cold as hell, and it's mostly garrison and pirate fighting work. If you take a long contract, you'll eventually go up against a full-fledged marian invasion, which if you're large and tough you might actually be able to stop.
The Illyrian Palatinate is essentially the same deal, but you also have the option of bootleg solaris duals to get free shit.

The Circinus Federation is not so much untrustworthy as totally fucking unstable, but some marginal garrison work is available if you're desperate

The marian hegemony is possible if you want to work for a bunch of romeaboo slaver bandit kings with dreams of conquest in their heads

The Rim Collection would be a nice gig, but they've got all the mercs they need and aren't looking for more.

The Outworlds Alliance is the third major state, but they don't really hire mercs much

>>50124868
>>50125088
So it looks like the taurian and canopians are the best choices. Which do y'all think would be a better choice?

>>50125272
From a strictly objective, mercenary perspective, the taurians are a better choice. Better regular forces backup, better support, a fondness for stable long-term contracts, but from a roleplaying perspective the Magistracy is really attractive. Like, imagine how attractive an entire nation that's essentially a combination of vegas, the wilder bits of bangkok, and an arab's dream of california is to the guys who make up most merc units. Compared to the well-known fanatical stubbornness and conservatively boring nature of the taurians, the magistracy is literally a wet dream come true for joe mercenary, and that could very well tip the scales

>>50124556
This is pretty neat

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>>50124556
>AS7-K
>"Upgrade"

>>50124556
Which program did you use to make that?

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>>50125981
It was a web app.
https://www.draw.io/
Been a while since I did this, so I don't remember how user friendly it was. Couldn't have been too bad.

>>50124925
>2 LCT-3S
I would try to change this to something jump capable. I'd suggest the STG-6S Stinger, or maybe Wasp-1S. Judging from your choice of mechs you are either playing Civil War period or later, Stinger if any era is fine. Wasp if you're limited.

Have you considered trying the Nightsky for this mission? The Pulse Laser/Axe combo is nice.

>BRZ-A3
can't go wrong

Long story short, I'm seeing a lot of big, scary AC20s in this force. That works fine, but especially in urban combat, I'd suggest more jump-capable designs. Maybe some Hatchetmans, or the Penetrator...

>>50126017
thanks. This will come in handy for work related stuff.

>>50126017
>been looking for something to make TO&Es with
NOICE

>>50124925
Frankly, locusts are useless against clanners. Drop them, and add as many SRM vees and/or mines as you can afford.
Try placing minefields on top of buildings, nobody ever expects it and it assmangles every last jumping clanner in a city

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>>50124556
I tried a different approach using Excel.

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>Boiled Dungeness Crab with Fennel

>Mince enough of the most tender fennel fronds to make 2 tablespoons, and mince enough of the bulb to make 1/4 cup; set both aside for the Fennel-Lemon Tartar Sauce.

>Coarsely chop the remaining fronds, stalks, and bulb, and place in a large (at least 8-quart) pot.

>Add lemon slices, 1/4 cup salt, and enough cold water to come within 3 inches of the top of the pot. Bring to a boil over high heat.

>While water is heating, set crabs on a rimmed baking sheet or tray, and put them in the freezer. (This dulls their senses to make handling them easier. The crab should be well chilled but not frozen; don't leave them in the freezer more than 30 minutes.) When water has come to a rolling boil, grab each crab securely at the back of its shell, and gently but swiftly drop it headfirst into the boiling water.

>Cover pot, and return water to a boil, reducing heat to medium if necessary to prevent water from boiling over. Cook crabs 18 to 20 minutes. Carefully drain. Clean crabs, and serve hot or chilled with Fennel-Lemon Tartar Sauce, Bloody Mary Cocktail Sauce, and Ginger Butter.

Bluepill me on the DC, they have quite an interesting amount of mechs and I kind of like most of their -K variants

>>50126770

Their mechs are "interesting."

By which I mean shit.

The 3025-era ones are about par for the course for those days but between 3050 and the dark Age they get shat on from a great height. Anything they get that is genuinely good is either fluffed as being incredibly rare or is immediately liscenced and exported to other factions.

Fluff isn't kind to them either, until the Dark Age.
I'm not saying don't go Drac, but if you do go Drac, be prepared for inordinate levels of suck for most eras of the game.

>>50126813
Well, that IS what you're signing up for when you choose the villain faction.

>>50101007
a nightmare if you ever let it get within 1 hex of you

>>50126813
mrm's lol

>>50126813
The Lights, I can agree with you on. Same with the Medium roster. The heavies, most people point out the Dragon, but it's the Quickdraw that pisses me off to no end, putting almost half of it's firepower rear-firing, because we gotta keep those smarmy Leaguers/Dracs in check...

...And then, the Charger 1A1 - the only Assault Mech the DCMS can produce until a few years before the War of 3039.

I'd say that things start to go better for them around the Jihad when they start smartening up with their mech design, like more one-C3Master mechs, and SNPPC or HPPC refits. Also finally stripping the MRMs off the No-Dachi and putting some Pulse Lasers on that thing. Losing Omnimech facilities sucks but the first batch of IS Omnis were mostly kind of "meh". I just lament the loss of easy BA transportation.

Dark Age though, Not sure how to feel yet. I haven't yet tried the Rokurokubi or Shiro, but they have me worried.

Also, "DCMS Haet Victor? Haet Wolf-Trap? HAVE MORE!"

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>>50127717
Worth noting:

DCMS as a faction for making an army? No problem. The DCMS actually has access to some really sweet designs that I like using. The Kurita Wolverines are consistently great, save for the shitty MG array/Sword/SNPPC/Streak4 one that has TSM that you have to sacrifice your firstborn child to activate. Standard Panthers are cheap fire support that can be scary if you spam them against players who play a few big, slow mechs. The K-versions of the Catapult are good, and they've always got staple mechs like Grasshopper, Crusader, Warhammer, and Marauder to fill out the ranks.

It's when you start using the RATs that things start to hurt. The DCMS's biggest focus since the 90s has been C3, but you start letting randomisation dictate what you can take, it's usually impossible to set up a network. That, and when you get stuck with those stupid-as-fuck dual master mechs, that's 10 tons lost Couple that with the fact that a complete C3 Company network is going to cost you 60% more, derpy dual masters aren't what you want, either.

MRMs... for as bad as they say they are, they have a time and place... and said time and place is usually hard to find. My MRM Crusader hasn't always been on the short end of the stick, but the TNs needed to land those things mean that you've got to put it against big slow targets, or targets that are prone and adjacent. C3 networks help by letting you park and get a minimum range mod, but on their own, they're a gyp.

Best advice I got? Try not to go into the heavies category or above. Kurita loves engines, and makes so much shit like the dragon. Everything is scooting around at 5/8/0 or more. Too much engine, not enough guns. The Maelstrom is exactly the kind of mess I'm talking about. As the DCMS starts to shed the dumb and bring IJJ heavies, you'll fare better. Assaults suffer the same issue.

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>>50126813
>Fluff isn't kind to them either, until the Dark Age.
They actually don't do too badly. Yes, they constantly get Worf'd by the AFFC, and the Smoke Jaguars and Nova Cats came knocking on Luthien's door - the only reason they managed not to die is (Surprise!) Hanse Davion realising that he'd be next on the clan chopping block if the DC fell.

But from there on out... the DCMS does most of the heavy lifting in Operation Bulldog and walks away with most of the spoils, gets a pet clan, has the coordinator become head of the second star league for a bit... all in all, not too shabby.

The issue is that the whole "Black Dragon Society" thing was overdone. Every conflict they had seemed to be instigated by those guys, and even the ISF couldn't ever get the job done right in putting them down.

As for the life and times, FM HK, all the Victor Milan books and other DCMS-set novels made it seem to not suck quite as badly as the the first housebook would have you believe, with what seemed like a strong and vibrant middle class. Unlike what Shrapnel would have you believe about Sex-offender barons and cannibal infantry. But Ben Rome decided "Ha, No, Fuck all of the progress under Theodore, the DC is a goddamn shithole and everything sucks forever", so everything I read about is pretty much just headcanon now.

>>50127828

>The DCMS's biggest focus since the 90s has been C3, but you start letting randomisation dictate what you can take, it's usually impossible to set up a network.

People often say this but the source material really doesn't bear it out.

Going by the unit fluff and deployment rates, the only factional tech rarer than C3 in 3067 is Stealth Armour for the Capellans. The best-supplied and most modern-thinking units are barely cracking a C3 Company per Regiment, and a lot of those are split into three separate Lances, one used in each of the three Battalions as a command unit.

Then there's fluff that has the old, 3025-standard Dragon- not even the 3025 *Grand Dragon*- as the single most common 'Mech in the DCMS circa 3067, with entire Battalions still consisting just of that.

RATs are a complete non-starter unless for some reason you're rolling against a Periphery or Capellan force because those are the only ones on a similar level for tech and unit optimisation. You don't even get as far as worrying about C3 networks before being kneecapped by those.

>>50127912

>gets a pet clan

Another meme that needs to die in a fire.

The Nova Cats were nothing but trouble for the Dracs since they joined the IS and made a point of being dicks with tech-sharing agreements.

As for Bulldog, agreed, but the way the Clan Salvage rules work we're mainly talking about things like Hatamoto-Chis with Clan Endo Steel refits and other minimal effects rather than full-on Clan tech or significant rebuilds, which kinda sucks. The novels also heavily marginalise their involvement in Bulldog, making it look like they stood idly by while Victor and company did all the work, which isn't helped by the sourcebook having their flagship regiments like the 2nd Sword of Light herpind every derp possible.

The Black Dragons are probably the worst of it though. Every god damn plot twist for the Dracs after 3052 is some variation on "Oh, you thought the last round of purges you did got rid of us? Haha no, that was you killing off all the competent loyalists, allowing our power and influence to grow!"

>>50127922
>Then there's fluff that has the old, 3025-standard Dragon- not even the 3025 *Grand Dragon*- as the single most common 'Mech in the DCMS circa 3067, with entire Battalions still consisting just of that.

Can you cite that?

>>50127960
>Another meme that needs to die in a fire.
Like the Nova Cats did? :^)

>>50126026
How does minefields work in megamek, I can't seem to get it to work correctly.

Anyone have a pdf of Field Manual ComStar that lets you word search and is whole. I have a scan with corrupted pages (like WoBM 4th Division)

>>50129218
You set the amount of hexes and mine type in the lobby before the game. Then you set the locations and density in the deployment round.

>>50129657
Do they only work in your deployment area or anywhere on the map?

>>50129784
Anywhere, including water hexes.

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>>50127912
For a minute I thought the aerospace pilot was carrying a sword as part of her flight equipment.

That would be about right for the Dracos.

I've seen anons mention that the early Dark Age fluff suggested the Republic of the Sphere was all that was left of the Inner Sphere. Can anyone provide some citations or passages showing this. I've never seen it before.

>>50130713
I got nothing. All the original dossiers and stuff going back to the original DA release include the Houses in the historical overview. Even all the dossiers for the game have always been O5P (Order of the Five Pillars) with a giant Kurita dragon stamped on them.

I think it may have been a misunderstanding based on how many famous factional worlds were now held by the Republic. Like Levin's Dossier says his uncle owned a parts manufacturer on Hesperus II and sort of implies it was part of the Republic.

I did find the old references to people purposefully limiting fusion plant production so it couldn't be used for mechs or combat machines though.

>>50130925
I suppose so. I guess folks just misremember fluff sometimes. An anon said he thought TRO 3067 estimated the WoB had made only 1-2 secret divisions, tops, from the White Flame/Blue Flame pages. Checked them out and they don't say that.

>>50131119
It's probably more that the information on the wider sphere was hidden in the dossiers and shit for the actual Dark Age game. Which being only in rares for a collectable game is pretty hard to get a whole picture of. And as far as playable factions, you didn't have an actual house in that game until I wanna say the third or fourth set, years after the initial release. The first few novels sure only cared about the republic mini factions too.

It took three or four years before we got any important info publicly available on what was going on in the rest of the inner sphere proper. So people knew that the houses were still there, but nobody had a clue what was going on with them until Liao rolled up and tore into Prefecture Five.

This seems as good a place as any to ask.

I've played a mercenary atb megamek campaign last year, with as much verisimilitude as possible but got bogged down with managing several dozen units and all the repairs and gave up somewhere like a dozen years in.

I've been getting the itch to start one up again, but every time I think of the logistics I hesitate.
Has there been any progress in making that sort of thing more reasonable or are there any alternatives ideas to having an easier go at it?

>>50131261
It seems like a fairly bold marketing decision to make.

>>50131273
>any progress
>progress in my BT
Look, I appreciate where you're coming from here, but BattleTech doesn't really progress.

>>50130713
Not the guy, but here's excerpts from the very first Dark Age fiction ever released, Stackpole's "The Inheritance of Duty":
>terrible things were done. Whole cities were laid to waste. 'Mech companies were broken. Ruling families were deposed and exiled. Social orders were overthrown. It was a time of complete and utter chaos, and would have been the armageddon the Blakists desired, save for one man: Devlin Stone.
>He escaped from their camp, freed
friends and returned with enough 'Mechs to smash the Blakist forces on Kittery. In short order he and his comrades liberated a dozen worlds and created the Kittery Prefecture--the first prefecture.
Note that Kittery isn't anywhere near Terra, it's by St. Ives, more than halfway to Taurus; combine that with a "Republic of the Inner Sphere" and (for a long time) no mention of the Successor States. None of the three are damning on their own, but taken together they paint a clear picture.

There may be more or better examples in the works that followed, I don't know. This is just what started the ball rolling.

>>50131300
And why should it?

It's still 3030 in my book, and we're still drinking to Hanse's firstborn. Cheers!

>>50131302
Interesting that the Kittery Prefecture we got in the Jihad books was like only five worlds.

>>50131273
>Has there been any progress in making that sort of thing more reasonable or are there any alternatives ideas to having an easier go at it?

There's chaos campaign for people who want campaign lite. Those of us that like the grit tend to have our own custom spreadsheets to handle the crunch.

>all the repair, maintenance downtime and customizing modifiers in one easy sheet
Oh excel, you are still so wonderful, except the new subscription based one. That can eat a dick.

>>50131319
Oh hey, I didn't realize that. Good on Catalyst for remembering that Capellan star systems tend to have extra inhabited worlds.

>>50131280
What's crazy is it paid off. They pissed off all the regular battletech fans but they channeled that MTG magic and dredged up a whole new fanbase out of nothing. Between 2002 and 2006 or so it was the most popular game of its type. There are still to this day more clicktech figures than all the Ral Partha/Ironwind pewter ever made.

Kind of scary when you think about it.

>>50131388
Lol I'd buy that from them

>>50131409

Wait seriously? I never got into it because a) old grog and b) was poor as shit at the time, but I had no idea it was so popular.

Well dammit. Just had a dude drop from my campaign. Anyone have Sundays free and want in on a 3027 campaign?

Crazy request but I need to know 'Mech designs named after cats.

Got some down, like the Shadow Cat, Ebon Jaguar and Nova Cat.

Partially I'm curious after seeing that list of "hawk" mechs.

>>50131920
Cougar, Mist Lynx come to mind.

>>50131920
Arctic Cheetah.

>>50131920
Ocelot, Panther, Jaguar.

>>50131920
You forgot the Mad Cat :^)

>>50132292
>mad cat
>mad dog

One is an actual Clan name
The other is an Inner Sphere designation

Sounds like a lore fuckup to me.

>>50132439
the vulture is the mad dog
mad cat is the timber wolf

>>50131920
Cave Lion ^_^

>>50131920
The Pussy.
Grab it.

>>50132461
A rare case of the Inner Sphere names being better than the Clan ones

>>50132461
Vulture is a cooler name anyhow.

>>50132439
Mad Dog was a pisstake on Clan Wolf.
Mad Cat came about because IS computers couldn't figure out what the fuck Clan omnis were.

Started playing the BT RPG as mercenaries, we're naming our company but can't come up with anything. What name should we give it, /btg/?

>>50132619
Sons of Waco

>>50132571
So Mad Cat came about because IS computers just threw their hands up in the air and said "fuck it, some inhuman son of a bitch frankenstein'd a marauder and a catapult into one death machine"?

>>50132619
I've found that [company commander's last name]+[intimidating noun] is pretty standard.

>>50132659

Yep. IIRC it's in the book where Phelan Kell gets captured by the Wolves. His Wolfhound couldn't decide if the Timby was a Marauder or a Catapult.

>>50132659
Yeah, it kept on flopping between MAD and CAT.

>>50110694
What's up with the moonspeak in /btg/? I've seen it a couple other times. GoogleTranslate says something about Donald Trump and playing cards.

>>50132754
>not ignoring moon runes like every other shitpost

>>50132537
Mad Cat, better than Timber Wolf? No thanks, the Clan name is way better, and fits given it was, you know, made by Clan Wolf.

>>50132697
Ironically the DI made a good call considering they were way out on the Rock at the border of the Deep Periphery. That's the sort of place you tend to run into weird frankenmech abominations.

I forget what the hell the Hounds were doing out there though, smack in the middle of the Oberon Confederation.

>>50132834
I haven't seen somebody so wrong since the retards that use the retcon clan name of Ebon Jaguar for the Cauldron Born

>>50132697
First Btech book I ever read. Picked randomly.