/btg/ - BattleTech General

Looking for Interstellar Ops PDFs, full version, not the beta that's in the PDF folder links

Starting an ATOW campaign, and I don't know where we'll end up :)

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>>50157865
In my experience, not very far.

Like many other RPGs, rare is the campaign that goes beyond a half-dozen sessions. However, if your players haven't given you the run-around and dragged their feet regarding char-gen for a month or more, then you might actually be seeing the signs of a successful gaming group.

Mine though? Everyone expects that (or at least acts like) character generation is as quick and easy as picking the top hat or scottie from goddamn monopoly box.

My only suggestion is that you don't over-prepare. One... maybe two sessions ahead, tops. Otherwise the wasted effort really wears on you.

>>50158060
>My only suggestion is that you don't over-prepare. One... maybe two sessions ahead, tops. Otherwise the wasted effort really wears on you.

This, so much.

>>50158060
>My only suggestion is that you don't over-prepare. One... maybe two sessions ahead, tops. Otherwise the wasted effort really wears on you.
I know this feel. I built eight sessions worth of material for a Halo Mythic campaign back in March and I've got almost one whole session out of the group it was intended for.

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OCCUPY IS OCCUPY IS

BLAST THE FREEBIRTHS BATCHALL WAR NOW

ONE REVIVAL WAS NOT ENOUGH

THE ROCK BEST DAY OF MY LIFE

>>50158060
>BadguyPanther
Huh, I'm painting a company of pirates this color scheme. What a coincidence.

>>50158060

Also remember Shamus Young's cardinal rule.

If you know what your players want, you can use that to bribe them to stay on your plot railroad.

Unfortunately what they usually want is to get off your plot railroad.

Little bastards.

I wish the Clans had more ridicolous names/totem animals (except the Ice Hellions and Goliath Scorpions, that's a cool totem animal)
Where's my Clan Psycho Hornet, Clan Omega Tyrannosaurus, Clan Holy Dragon, Clan Techno Mantis, Clan Rampage Cow, Clan Fury Platypus, Clan Imperial Scarab, Clan Space Godzilla, Clan Cyclone Octopus, Clan Titan Tardigrade, Clan Hermit Crab, Clan Australian Jellyfish?

>>50158278
For my own case, it was a not-well-fleshed-out DC noble BBEG... maybe more like a "First boss", that was enjoying lording over the world, but then the FRR was formed. Turned out the lord was making his own private army.
(What the players wouldn't know without looking for it was that he was keeping a small share of equipment being shipped in secret piecemeal, and reassembled in an old bunker, to bolster the Ronin's forces under Marcus Kurita.)

But no, we never got there. The furthest we got to was retaking the Starport so that the new Valdherre wouldn't be ambushed when they arrived. Then the gaming group died. Never had one session where the whole group showed up together.

>>50158323
They'd inevitably get balanced out by cancer/meme clans

Clan Honey Badger
Clan Furry Sergal
Clan Sanic Hedgehog
Clan Bacon Narwhal

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Speaking of RPG campaigns I over-prepared for, (Luckily, not by too much), here's the "Opening" to my Solaris 7 Campaign.

"You meet in a bar", of course, but one player was chased into said bar by the mob, and when they track him back to it, they start mowing the place down with SMG fire.

Players are guided to safety by the barkeep, but the barkeep promptly dies while fending the mobsters off.

(Yeah I know, pro GM'ing skills, but one of those "Players giving you the run-around" situation meaning that I couldn't get them to plan around each-other or make their backstories mesh.

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>>50158568
Second part was what I was really wanting to do. Built a "Sewer" area that each players' sheets had unique skills for, so that they could start to learn the ropes of the mechanics.

...What I didn't count on was inter-party conflict caused by one player thinking that "Compulsion/Greedy" means "Compulsion/Kender", players not listening to the GM that the game was lethal, and a shot in the arm causing a low build character to bleed out and die the first hour into the game session. Cue "Why should I even care I'm not making a new character this is bullshit". My resigning to rewinding the session.

After they started getting it through their heads that they can't all be edgelords "Doing what their characters would do", and have to at least metagame a little bit to stay a party and not cause me to tear my hair out as all the dark brooding loners lone their loneliness in separate directions, the training area / escape route I built worked as intended, teaching them how to do both skilled and unskilled rolls, as well as different ways of dealing with situations.

>>50158619

Jesus christ, your PCs sound fucking terrible. Mine are all pretty chill, and while 3/4 of them are introverted social incompetents (the characters, not the players), they at least try to work together pretty well.

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>>50158646
The problem I think stems from two points
1) I wasn't running the game for people who were actively pursuing Battletech, I was running it to give my D&D 4e GM a break between sessions.
2) To describe Solaris 7 using a gamer elevator pitch, I summed it up as "Las Vegas meets giant robot gladiators in an 80s action movie". Of course, every single player took Compulsion/Addiction - Gambling.

Playing with people who knew shit all about the Battletech setting and were playing for Battletech, not just because I brought it to the table as an in-between campaign (That I privately hoped would end up being long-running). I did have some handy ideas - like pre-determining how much damage mook 'mechs would have taken in a 4-way free-for-all while the player squared off with one of them, or getting easier access to certain equipment based on their stables' standing with the various spheroid powers... As time wore on, the players would even be mid-match while the Blakists start bombing the shit out of everything, and they would need to escape a collapsing arena into Solaris city, potentially joining up with the Home defence league (I think it was called).

But like I said. Don't plan too far ahead. I crunched out a bunch of this crap, but both of the players only ever played one Solaris match each before the DM just gave up DM'ing and my campaign also disbanded as a result.

Oh, also the BBEG WoB representative was going to be a renamed Rugal Bernstein, who after getting "Killed" would come back as Manei Domini. SNK was generous enough to already make plenty of art of both versions, and I don't think my players ever did any fighting games outside of Street Fighter 2.

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>>50158646
For the record, I'm probably not much better.
One of the players was around to see me during my first year or so of "Gaming". With no experience as a player, I was expecting gaming sessions to go exactly like those Mechwarrior 2nd edition modules read like. Also had made a terrible-at-everything-equally GMPC character that was a self insert and supposed to be my descendant from a thousand-some years in the future. Partly because it was only me and one other guy when I started, partly because I just wanted to play and didn't want to GM.

While I do look back on those days nostalgically, I was a horrible GM. Now I'm just a bad GM.

I was hoping to get a chance for said player-turned-4eDM to kill off my now old and washed up GMPC from our old campaigns for fun. Never happened.

>>50158908

Yeah, I've tried to get away from "playing in my own campaign" a lot. At this point, I try more to openly embrace that part of the fun is that unlike the PCs, I get to play a ton of different characters and mechs, and at the same time get to watch them grow as both players and characters. The only reason I have an NPC in charge of the PCs right now is because they're all pretty new, and they need a bit of direction and guidance. Once they hit that magic level of competence though, I'll have to decide whether to let them off the leash completely, or stick around just as an adviser if they need one.

>>50157865

Use the IntOps FINAL from the "J Blake" archives, under Rules.

For the record, I'm currently working on that idea I'd always had - of the Hi-Scout with C3 drones?
Slow going because I'm crunching it out by hand, but so far I know the following.

1) It's going to be a bad unit. More of a proof of concept.
2) Unlike the Hi-Scouts standard Holy-Fucknuts-fast drones which were little more than an engine on a hoverskirt, the C3 Drones are heavier (At 4 tons) and slower (Tracked cruise 7, Hover cruise 11, VTOL cruise 13).
3) I made the drones Battery powered with the idea that they can be recharged by the drone carrier.
4) The Drone carrier isn't finished, but I will probably use standard fusion engine at about 5/8 (Also with the idea it helps to recharge the drones). Hoping to have partial amphibious if I can afford the weight. It's already carrying a 1.5 mil MC, so it's just more on the pile at this point.
5) Probably going to be stupid expensive, but I'm hoping the BV stays low by keeping it unarmed.
6) Idea is to attach it to a C3 Company network (Already bad ideas) that are a lance short, using the drones as spotters so that troops don't have to be sacrificed.
7) It's the C3 Remote sensor, except the remote sensors have TMMs of 4+

>>50159592
Why not just make a drone carrier with double masters? Not like it's hopefully going to be anywhere other than hidden in a hole anyway.

>>50159737
Too sweet a target, I think.
Also, if the opposing force has ECM, it doesn't deploy drones. ECM is doubly bad, because it not only knocks out C3, but the drones stop working, too.

C3 masters cost 1,500,000 C-bills each, so two makes three mil, in a tank...

If it's being useless, it's less of a target. Making it the central nexus of the network, especially being unarmed and fragile, and it might as well have a "Free beer" sign over it.

Lastly, I just hate double-MC anythings. The whole network comes crashing down too easily.

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Do you support this man being shot?

>>50160127
Not a House Lord.

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Remember to get out there today and do your part for the Republic!

Is this a balanced match?

Alpha Lance
>CRD-5M Crusader
>WHM-7M Warhammer
>GOL-3M Goliath
>CES-3R Caesar
Bravo Lance
>ZPH-1A Tarantula
>TR1 Wraith
>WVR-7D Wolverine
>CN9-D Centurion

vs

Lance Un
>AV1-O Avatar Prime
>EXC-B2 Excalibur
>HGN-732 Highlander
>BL-9 Black Knight
Lance Deux
>RJN101-A Raijin
>HSR 400-D Hussar
>WHM-7M Warhammer
>WTH-2 Whitworth

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>>50159592
FIN FUNNEL

>>50161066
Looks about right to me.
Though I'm not sure why you'd take the knockoff over the actual Cataphract.
Keep that Wraith alive and it'll do WORK lategame for you

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Gentlemen, how do we make Battlemechs spaceworthy? If we give them enough verniers they should be fine, right?

>>50161772
fuck off

>>50161772
They're already spaceworthy if they have jump jets.
They just have shit MP compared to aerospace fighters.

>>50161539

>Though I'm not sure why you'd take the knockoff over the actual Cataphract.

GR + ER PPC vs LB-10X + U/AC-5 or ER PPC + LB-10X.

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>With the Manei Domini out of the picture, the Ebon Magistrate’s Shock Troops are perhaps the deadliest soldiers being fielded today. Deployed in seven-man squads, these men and women can take on whole platoons. Three man-portable plasma guns backed by Ebony rifles provide a potent offense while dermal armor protects them. Mixing fanatical devotion with upgraded eye implants gives them an edge that few can match.
>Average a sixth grade education

Holy *shit* the wank here.

I'm starting to understand all the dislike of the Magistracy of Canopus over the last few years.

>>50162290
It's insufferably dumb, and if the Bears, FedSuns or Taurians had some blurb like that you'd never hear the end of it here, but what can you do? Fem fetish faction.

>>50162290
>Holy *shit* the wank here.

Yeah, it's really bad in the late Jihad and through some of the Dark Age stuff.

I don't really have a problem with the MoC getting some badass cybercommandos (especially once they hooked up with the Capellans; cross-training with Death Commandos would generate some impressive results), but the huge issue is that these badass cybercommandos pretty much literally came out of NOWHERE.

The original reason the Ebon Magistrate was a highly effective intelligence service was that they embedded themselves into the Pleasure Circuses and since everyone lets the Circuses into their realms, they had a slightly more easy access to the high-profit core worlds of Successor States than other traditional intel services. They got intel through a VERY highly-developed HUMINT program. Basically, in the pre-FCCW, pre-CapCon-sucking days, the Ebon Magistrates were the one "nice thing" that the MoC had access to. That shouldn't be a problem.

Somewhere along the line, somebody got the idea that Ebon Magistrates were all Shadowrun-style hyper-chromed street samurai James Bond types. If that concept had come around as a *result* of the Jihad and all the recovered tech they had to work with and the cyber-commandos had rolled out in the Dark Age, it MIGHT be OK. But the way they actually did it? Coming out with a huge number of commandos prior to the Jihad? Yeah, it's complete fan-wank and Herb should have bitch-slapped Kit for pushing it.

>6th grade average education

This, however, isn't a problem. A couple hundred home-schooled illiterate farmers will mathematically negate a single highly-trained person, and at BEST, the Ebon Magistrate is pushing ~10,000 personnel. That's out of a 70 billion (with a "B") person population in 3130**. You could give the entire MAF 2 PhDs each, and the average education in the MoC wouldn't even budge.

**source: http://www.warrenborn.com/Fiction/Touring%20The%20Stars/TouringTheStars45.html

>>50162594
>cont

A further thought about the prevalence of cybernetics in the MoC post-Kit (ie, post-3057).

I would have LOVED to see that shift in the faction clash with the MoC joining up with the anti-cybernetic FWL (instead of joining up with the CapCon). There's a built-in story there, because allies who fundamentally differ on parts of their worldview is compelling. When the FWL and MoC basically just *exist* next to each other, then it doesn't matter. But if they'd been allies, this would be a built-in point of conflict, and that creates interesting storylines.

>>50162594
The sixth-grade education is *for the MAF*
The national average is probably worse

>>50162675
Aw shit, that sucks for them. Still, I'm sure most of the Ebon Magistrate (hard to type that with a serious face) are literate.

How important is literacy and grade-school education to being a soldier anyway? Just point a gun and shoot.

>>50162594
>>50162632

Mate, I wish English was a better language, because I keep thinking of you as an "MOC fan", and that's not a fair word to use.

When we say say somebody is an FWL fan or Cappie Fan, we're talking about people like MadCap or Medron who defend their faction at all hazards and who think that their faction is literally perfect: incapable of making mistakes or being wrong, and everyone who doesn't like their faction is themselves an actually bad person IRL.

You acknowledge the things that are wrong or dumb about your faction, and while you do defend your faction, you draw a line between what's worth defending and what's not. That's the way I wish more people were about their factions, and I don't know what word to use to describe people who do that besides "fan", which unfairly dumps you alongside Medron and MadCap and Kit and Ben.

tl;dr, English is stupid. Jeder sollte Deutsch sprechen.

>>50162710
>How important is literacy and grade-school education to being a soldier anyway? Just point a gun and shoot.
Anyone who's ever had the grave misfortune of interacting with the Afghan National Army will be able to tell you that it's pretty fucking important

>>50162772
I feel like fan (for reasonable types) VS fanboy (for kit, medron, madcap, ect) works well enough in english

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>>50162789

>>50162675
>The sixth-grade education is *for the MAF*

I'm sorry, I remember that quote as applying to the MoC in general. I'm more than willing to admit I'm wrong, but could you source that quote, please?

With that said, it doesn't change the basic point all that much. The MAF is going to have a population of somewhere around 1.5 million once we include all the infantry and support staff and so forth. A few thousand commandos who have, say, equivalent to a bachelor's aren't going to mean much.

It's actually an interesting question I haven't really considered. >>50162710
asks how important a traditional school education is to a soldier. It significantly depends on the equipment and doctrine of the military unit in question. If the equipment you're using is black-box/non-user-servicable, then you could probably train your basic infantry more or less "by rote" and get some servicable results. Especially en masse or against poor opponents (see also: pirates, farmer uprisings). Even fairly complex machinery can be operated by people with a very poor education: anyone who's been in the Army and has talked with 19Ks (M1 Abrams armor crewman MOS) can attest to that.

I would maintain that it's probably not unreasonable for the AVERAGE education across the MAF to be at a 6th grade level. The mistake is in thinking that the level of education in the MAF doesn't go higher than a 6th grade level. Among special forces (which is what we're talking about, really), specifically, education level would *have* to be very high simply as a function of their jobs. But when there's only a few of them, you can have very high education levels among a very small number of people and still have a very low *average* education level among the troop population writ large.

>>50162772
>When we say say somebody is an FWL fan or Cappie Fan, we're talking about people like MadCap or Medron who defend their faction at all hazards and who think that their faction is literally perfect: incapable of making mistakes or being wrong, and everyone who doesn't like their faction is themselves an actually bad person IRL.

I thought we just call them "fags". I've seen the word "fan" be thrown around harmlessly here before a lot, and while NEA is a MoC fan he's sometimes also a MoCfag. Just depends on his mood and the point being discussed, I think.

>>50162710
Old school frontier 6th grade education was pretty decent. They were actually taught more than a lot of the warmed over nannying you have leading into a modern liberal arts degree, in America at least. An 1850's settler kid could do more advanced algebra than the girl who got a C in Freshman Algebra.

Though I suppose that's more standards shifting than anything, what with undergrad becoming essentially the new highschool in terms of job qualification the last thirty or so years.

With the dearth of institutions of higher learning in Battletech, either education has moved back toward the older ways (which considering you have whole planets without colleges that still need doctors and engineers and everything else is pretty likely, thought they say the master apprentice system is super common but not institutionalized the way it is in grad school) or the newer trend is exacerbated and 6th Grade is now equivalent to 4th or 3rd grade education. At least it's still literate.

>>50162918
>either education has moved back toward the older ways...or the newer trend is exacerbated and 6th Grade is now equivalent to 4th or 3rd grade education.

This is a really solid point, and one that I don't *think* is dealt with in the primary source material anywhere.

Honestly, this would be the sort of question that actually should go up on (*spits*) the OF in the Ask the Writers section. "What does an education level of X actually mean?"

>>50162916
>is a MoC fan he's sometimes also a MoCfag

To be clear, there is not a single person in the Battletech fandom who likes a faction who does NOT exhibit this behavior regarding their faction sometimes.

>>50162890
Beyond education, there's also the extremely important question of what kind of service culture a parent culture and as importantly if not moreso military history like that of the MoC would create

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>>50162290

If the timeline had just stayed in 3025 when Battletech was good, none of this fanwank shit would have happened. Yet another reason why there's no reason to play anything beyond that date.

I got a weird question. Are there any recipies in Battletech fiction? Like for beer, or food or anything, anything that would fill out the fluff. I seem to recall some people making real world drinks called the PPC and whatnot, but I don't know where they are at this point. Anybody heard of anything like this?

What would be some cultural foods for various factions in BT? Would there be a lot of hikikomori in the DC eating ramen all day and junk food?

This is just merely a fluff question.

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>>50163193
>reaction image makes no fucking sense whatsoever
>bait text

>>50163272
Well, there's this for drinks.

http://home.arcor.de/cwaidner/archives/downloads/bartender.txt

>>50163082
Frankly, it would be pretty fucking terrible. The biggest killer would be the fucking bribery for rank system, especially considering how most people with money in the MoC would have made it. I mean, it's universally known in western militaries that butterbars range from dumb and mediocre at best to downright atrocities at worst. Imagine how much worse it would be if rather than just dumb collage kids, your 2nd LT was an actual pimp or opium salesman. Add that to the general hedonism and poor education of the rank and file, and you'd have a recipe for something downright BAD

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>>50162290
>I am mad
>mad at minefields

It's like... they basically got nothing but somewhat tough minefields and you're really mad about that.

>>50162710
>How important is literacy and grade-school education to being a soldier anyway?

Important enough for grade-school to have become mandatory in Europe for military reasons during the long 18th century.

>>50162999
That's really not true though. I think the Internet has coloured your perception of the matter. I know I don't act that way.

>>50163393

How is their system materially different from Britain's? You had to buy officer commissions there, too, and while they had that system, they had the best Army in Europe for quite some time in the 1800s. Just requiring a commission purchase doesn't guarantee a shit military.

Looking at HB:MPS, an ensign rank costs $10k unless you want to go into a prestigious unit. That's less than a year's salary for an officer, so I can't imagine they couldn't get a loan for that, even from the state if you're talented enough. And the text does explicitly say that even if you have the money, you have to pass through a battery of tests as well and be approved for the rank from higher command, so you aren't going to end up with a completely degenerate opium saleman as your CO just because they bought their way into the MAF on a whim.

If anything, it's not a bad system, if you consider the "skin in the game" principle to be founded on reality.

>>50163574

have you ever defended your faction from criticism instead of just agreeing with the critic? (Yes, you have. Don't lie.) Then you've engaged in factionfaggotry.

so yes. Everyone does.

>>50163393
Plus the rampant sexism against the sex actually geared towards soldiering. I know it's probably silly complaining about realism in a universe with mechs, but I can't see why men would let themselves be politically and socially dominated by women.

>>50163621
Nope. If I can't cite a book to support a view I don't get involved in a factional debate. Why bother without proof?

>>50163708
>Plus the rampant sexism against the sex actually geared towards soldiering.

Does that really matter in a setting where even an Urbanmech with nothing but a light laser is enough to terrorize and control a city's population?

>>50163921
I feel like I already referred to that in my post...

>>50162290
It would be bad if the MoC had a stealth battlesuit, but they don't so... They have a highly trained cybernetic commando force that is outclassed by DEST, The Rabid Foxes, Loki, and the Death Commandos. The only reason they aren't outclassed by SAFE is because even with Achilles suits they will deploy to the wrong planet or something.

>>50164009
Jokes aside wasn't Eagle Corps pretty good?

>>50163708
...but the sexism isn't "men are useless" it's "men are great grunts but have a poor temperament for command"

>>50164084
You can have an amazing special forces unit but it's useless if the rest of your intelligence apparatus can't point them at the right target.

>>50164192
But that's objectively wrong and dumb to even assume. Even in the BT universe the number of successful female commanders is vastly dwarfed by the number of male ones.

>>50164084
>>50164211
...but to answer your question yeah I think they were decent.

>>50164231
>But that's objectively wrong and dumb to even assume.
Welcome to sexism.

>>50164211
Where did the "SAFE is useless" meme start? Someone on the OF suggested it was a joke stemming from the lack of fact checking in "Ideal War" when the author wrote that the Smoke Jaguars had used nukes on Turtle
Bay, and Stackpole flanderized it in "Bred for War."

>>50164231
From the MoC point of view. Hans was a great strategist, but a typical male warmonger. Kerensky turned his back on the people he was sworn to protect, someone with some mothering instincts wouldn't have. Amaris... everything, the RWR really needed a woman running the show... Just like real world sexism, wrong but easy to defend.

Safe sucks get ovet it. Clan watch operations look good compaired to them

>>50164363
OG House Marik book IIRC. They were said to be the most ineffective of the intelligence agencies because of the amount of enemy agents infiltrated into them.

So basically your secret agency is shit if it can't keep secrets.

Not that somebody like C* isn't worse in that department after the schism.

>>50164363
The original intelligence operations handbook I think

>>50164450
I'll have to dl that and read it.

>>50164451
Those novels he listed are older than that. Anything fanpro is automatically post-fasa and therefore post OG novel era.

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>>50164443
Too right m8

>>50162890
Hey NEA, we never got your thoughts on the "MOC as a FWL province" idea a couple threads back. Any ideas? I'll copypasta the original post if y'all'd like

>>50164451
>>50164450
>>50164443
>>50164363
So, looking it up, the 1993 Intelligence operations hand book points to the fact that SAFE answers to a Committee in Parliament as the historical source of their incompetence, it goes on to say that Thomas Mark is taking steps to rectify the situation with the help of.... WoB ROM....

>>50164470
Noooo.... Not the Guide to Covert Ops for 3rd ed mechwarrior, the Intelligence Operations Handbook for 2nd ed Mechwarrior.

>>50164587
Damn democratic trappings.

>>50164443
>SAFE "killed a coordinator and pinned it on the Lyrans" is worse than the Clan "can't even keep their scientists under control" Watch

>>50164789
He's harmlessly meeming.

Since it's frankenmech edition, can we get a design contest going? Make a production Frankenmech a la the Cataphract for 3145. Not enough of those running around.

Bonus point for amusing fluff.

>>50165211
I've got a broke leg and am stuck on my shitty laptop.
So yeah, I've got nothing better to do. I'll get this done tonight.

Newbie question about the fluff. I perused the old Shrapnel collection of stories and wanted to know about the fight between and old Warhammer against an Atlas. I know how that one ended, but has there ever been anything in canon about that type of match up where the underdog nailed something that clearly overpowered it? I love stories like that.

>>50165286
There's a short story in one collection where a bunch of farmers get some shitty WorkMechs and the like to fight a terrifying menace and his Urbanmech. They lose.

>>50165286
Two words. Gray Noton. The man made a career out of that shit with a bog standard Rifleman. He was just that good.

>>50165286
A Warhammer easily beats an Atlas at long range, since its movement allows it to keep the Atlas at a range that is good for the PPCs and bad for the AC/20.

>>50165286
The entire GDL series desu

A frankenmech using Cataphract parts on a Marauder

>>50165311
BUT CGL SAID IT WAS A RIFLEMAN II, BECAUSE THERE'S JUST NO WAY ANYONE COULD BE THAT GOOD. DON'T YOU BELIEVE THAT HE SOMEHOW GOT AWAY WITH THAT FOR A DECADE+, OVER WINNING IN A RIFLEMAN?

>>50165341
That's just recursive. A Cataphract is already a Marauder/Shad Frankenmech.

>>50165371
>BUT CGL SAID IT WAS A RIFLEMAN II, BECAUSE THERE'S JUST NO WAY ANYONE COULD BE THAT GOOD. DON'T YOU BELIEVE THAT HE SOMEHOW GOT AWAY WITH THAT FOR A DECADE+, OVER WINNING IN A RIFLEMAN?

Funny enough, CGL just made a rumor about it like space squids and blakists with hyperspace bases on the surface of the sun. But man did I hate seeing those posts you're making fun of on the OF back when I actually used to visit. And that was years ago.

>>50165371
>That's just recursive. A Cataphract is already a Marauder/Shad Frankenmech.
That's the point

NEA's defense is good, though he does confuse a few things. The Ebon Magistrate isn't the entire Magistracy intelligence organization. The Magistracy Intelligence Ministry is the overall organization, and it got its start like NEA said, with its main claim to fame being its Human Intelligence operations based around the pleasure circuses (though its very very very early years was more of a SpecOps-type of usage).

The current MIM is much like any other intelligence organization.

The Ebon Magistrate however, is a sub-group inside the MIM, similar in scope to the Rabid Foxes. It isn't the entire MIM. The entire MIM isn't running around as cybernetic monstrosities, though it wouldn't surprise me if MIM members had access to cybernetics to help them along in some cases.

As for the education system, the Magistracy has had issues, but I'll point out this line from the 1st Edition Periphery book.

>The average Canopian soldier enters service at the age of 16. If the individual is male, he will typically have the equivalent of a 12th-grade education; females have slightly higher education backgrounds.

This is on page 96 of the 1st Edition Periphery book, and repeated on page 38 of the 2nd Edition Periphery book, just incase people hate the 1st Edition book.

>>50158323
Imperial Scarab sounds dope. Psycho Hornet and Cyclone Octopus also have potential.

>>50158619
>all the dark brooding loners lone their loneliness in separate directions

I quickly started telling players during character creation "DO NOT make an edgy, antisocial, back-stabbing lone ranger. You must have a reason to hang with the party, even if that reason is only 'I trust these guys not to stab me while I sleep'"

>>50159592
Hurry up, I wanna see.

>>50162290
>better than Death Commandos
>better than DEST
>better than ROM - even post-Jihad ROM
>better than Rabid Foxes
>better than Eagle Corps

Fuck Loki tho

On the one hand I have a hard time imagining the male EM operators being that motivated, and on the other seeing the women being able to compete with top-tier male agents from other states, and on the gripping hand they don't seem to actually *do* much.

IMO the EM should have stuck to HUMINT and sneaky bullshit instead of pulling ELITE OPERATORS OPERATING OPERATIONALLY out of nowhere. See also >>50162594. Speaking of which...

>Somewhere along the line, somebody got the idea that Ebon Magistrates were all Shadowrun-style hyper-chromed street samurai James Bond types.

This is really what a lot of the FWL intel community should be about, as they fuck around with the megacorps. Just as the MoC having chromed-out agents would be neat conflict with the FWL, it would be nice for the FWL's agents themselves being stuck between competing with the corporate guys and the nation's dislike of cybernetics - especially after the Jihad, when they're wondering just who got a little too buddy-buddy with the WoB...

>>50162632
>interesting storylines
Can't have that, sorry - this the the Ghost Bear Power Hour feat. Xin Sheng

>>50165311
That wasn't a standard Rifleman

>>50165514
>Clan Imperial Scarab
Oblivious Egyptian themed clan

>Clan Psycho Hornet
ALWAYS ANGRY ALL THE TIME WHY AREN'T WE KILLMURDERING YET?

>Clan Cyclone Octopus
Experts in rapid siegebreaking tactics, very tactical

>>50163393
>>50163595
Too lazy to download their pdf and read it, but here's what Sarna says: "Instead of attending Officer Training School, those selected as officer candidates (where there is a marked bias toward females) are posted as military aides-de-camp to an officer on duty in a regular line regiment. Nowhere is the concept of on-the job training taken more seriously than in the MAF. An official commendation from a candidate's "sponsor" makes it possible for him or her to purchase their first commission (often with their sponsor's assistance)."

So they do get informal training, and purchasing a commission isn't apparently too difficult at the low levels. However, iirc they also purchase non-com ranks, and it gets much more difficult for the officers as they go up.

Historically there are a lot of issues with purchasing ranks, and those issues should impact the MoC more than they seem to do. The British weren't good because of the purchase system, but rather in spite of it, or at best it balanced out and other factors pushed them ahead. Also, the purchase system was around for quite a while, and the British army had a lot of ups and downs throughout that time. For a decent chunk of time the British army was largely irrelevant.

>>50165423
I've got it!
CAESAR parts on a Marauder!

>>50165685
Let's spice it up
Caesar parts on a Rakshasa

>>50165514
Women operators are no less skilled than male.

>>50165641
Yeah it was. Read the Warrior Trilogy again instead of the ramblings of conspiracy nutters in the Jihad.

>>50165742
They might have the same technical training, but barring subdermal TSM or something, the men will be better physically.

>>50163595
Britain never had a great army in the 1800s. We depended on coalitions and getting others to do our fighting. Left on our own you got shit like Isandlwana and New Orleans. What few accomplishments our prisoner army had were done in spite of our officer corps, and they ended the system of buying commissions for a reason.

>>50165742

Except for the -4 to STR, though.

>>50165665
A lot of that smells like retcons, tbqh. Will look into it.

>>50165791

It was good enough to beat Napoleon on multiple fronts. That's good enough for any rational person's analysis.

>>50165822
The Russians, Prussians, and Austrians did the bulk of the legwork.

We beat Napoleon with our gold and navy. Basic history m8.

>>50165641

Not sure if meming or actually that stupid.

Yes, it was a standard Rifleman. Not only do we see it in action in the Warrior trilogy (including when Justin takes it out for a spin personally) and it is emphatically a bog-standard RFL-2N.

That aside, he was fighting on Solaris, where the 'Mechs are regularly inspected by the gaming commission and wired with advanced sensor links (see the BoK chapter where Kai takes Yen-lo-Wang out for a spin) with the arenas themselves boasting advanced sensor suites for the audiences.

There is absolutely no way an extra 20 tons could have been hidden in the face of that, much less a LPL/LB-10X combination with DHS.

Gray having a Rifleman II is purely a canon rumour spread by idiots whodon't think things through and favoured OOC by OF-tier morons who also refuse to believe anyone could be that good. But Justing cleaning up in a Centurion is totally believable, because reasons.

>>50165822
Moron or just American?

>>50165470
>>The average Canopian soldier enters service at the age of 16. If the individual is male, he will typically have the equivalent of a 12th-grade education; females have slightly higher education backgrounds.

That is some retconned fanwank bullshit right there. What do the original sources say?

>>50165815
it kinda was. neither periphery 1st or second edition mention anything of the sort. I could easily see it being introduced between 3061 and 67 as the result of the capellans taking one look at the system and going OH SHIT NIGGERS WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, neatly tying everything up without the need for retcons

>>50165865
Get over it, Medron

>>50165864
Americans would sure attribute New Orleans to Jackson instead of the British being a bunch of fuckups.

>>50165865
Wouldn't the Periphery handbook be the OS?

>>50165926
he's blatantly shitposting

>>50165861
The argument arises from MWO and Randall making his mech a different one, I can't remember if it's an upgraded Rifleman or a Rifleman II or what, but tl;dr Randall's a fag

>>50165978

Randall is an idiot, but IIRC the short story he wrote has Noton in a standard RFL-2N thinking about a custom job that's almost finished elsewhere... which he never, ever actually gets to pilot in canon.

Not that it would matter when we know for a fact that what he pilots on Solaris and in the Warrior trilogy is a RFL-2N any way, even if he did have access to a Rifleman II.

>>50165925
He ignores that part anyway, as if Waterloo and a tertiary front in Spain were the whole of the 1800s.

>>50166037
Americans tend to overrate the British army in order to make their own defeat of it seem more impressive.

Okay, legitimate question. I know we hate Randall, but what are the more egregious things he's done?
All I know of is the relatively stagnant state of MWO and the monthly mechpacks, which are kind of fine with me desu because the gameplay is still fun to me.
Please don't burn me at the stake
>inb4 clantech(it's the most balanced clantech has ever been, even if it is still somewhat op)
>inb4 microtransactions(it's f2p, and the MTs aren't necessary with all the free MC they give out.)

>>50166056
This is probably true

>>50165211
Well I mean, if it's meant for production, is it really a FrankenMech? I can't see using the rules for making them applied to a mass-manufactured line unit. Wouldn't you just be making a custom unit then saying "guise it's made from Hunchback and Stinger parts"?

>>50166097
Betrayal of Ideals and all of that shit being accepted is a big one, even if he didn't write it.

>>50166139
It's not REALLY a frankenmech, no, but I'm sure by 3145 there's a lot of mothballed mechs from the 3020s that just aren't useful in their current configurations.

>>50166097
Randall is CGL far more than MWO. People dislike him more for letting Coleman slide for Porchbux more than anything.

I haven't had too many complaints about him running Battletech other than not getting more fucking paperback novels and the trouble with keeping box sets in production.

File: Dervish.jpg (234KB, 618x836px)

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What is the best old school medium fire support mech and why is it the Dervish?

>>50166208
This and having the attention span of a gnat.

>>50166056
It's more like the British of the early 19th Century were like the Spanish of the 16th Century or the Americans of the late 20th Century. Individual units may not be as highly trained on average as some of their contemporaries but there is no denying they are the global juggernaut of the time. Saying the army sucks flies in the face of that.

>>50166216
Because jumping, hotloading and infernos

Davion warcrimes, here I come!

>>50166216
Because the Dervish is really good? The only bad thing about it is the SRM ammo.

>>50166097

I think it's pretty hard to deny that with him as Line Dev meaningful content has come to a screaming halt.

At least under Herb micro-content shit like XTRs and Historicals were coming in addition to major plot-advancing SBs.

Now it's all we get and I'll believe ilClan is a thing that's actually happening when it finally releases, because it keeps getting pushed back in favour of literally anything else that doesn't move the timeline forward.

It's gotten so bad that it goes beyond Randall just not really wanting to engage with BT because of all the other shiny objects distracting him. I'm genuinely starting to think he's as much of a 3025 grog as Weisman, with no interest in the game beyond that and as company head no reason to do anything about it because no-one else is gonna breathe down his neck.

Randall's also a horrible SJW cuck. I mean that gets thrown around a lot but for him it definitely applies.

>>50166399
I don't know. They pulled this shit before with Year of the Star League before they started the proper DA material post-Jihad.

So this could just be Year of the Grog

>>50166253
Navy was a juggernaut. The army was not at all. Comparing it to the Spanish of the 16th century or modern Americans is indicative of misunderstanding or poor education. The army juggernaut of the early 18th century was objectively France, followed by the Prussians, Russians and even the HRE/Austria.

>>50166473
Only if you're talking about continental Europe. Remember, at the same time Napoleon was doing his thing, Jefferson essentially strongarmed him into the Louisiana purchase with an ultimatem because they didn't have enough troops to cover their holdings.

>>50166441

Years.

The OF 3025 only, final destination chorus have been extremely vocal about getting more support for the SW eras (3rd and 4th, mostly) and are now getting that.

The HBS game is only going to add pressure for more, and they've been looking for reasons to avoid advancing the plotline ever since the OF went up in flames over the 3140s stuff.

I've never objected to dipping back into past events as such, but it appears that will be the focus of major products for the foreseeable future. Which means the next 2-3 years at least.

>>50166526
>at the same time Napoleon was doing his thing, Jefferson essentially strongarmed him into the Louisiana purchase with an ultimatem because they didn't have enough troops to cover their holdings.

No, Napoleon made the offer and it surprised the hell out of the US.

>>50166542
I'll start saying the sky is falling once we break the record for Forever 67. TRO:3150 was released mid-2015. It hasn't been all that long just yet.

>>50165665
The bit about serving as aide-de-camps comes directly from the 1st and 2nd Edition Periphery books.

And nothing has ever been said about purchasing noncom ranks.

>>50166555
The office of the president sent him some back channel communiques that essentially said parts Louisiana Territory would be taken by force once he was at war with Britain if they didn't make a deal. Mostly it was about New Orleans. The surprise was Napoleon offering up the whole territory to bargain, not the deal itself.

>>50166576
>And nothing has ever been said about purchasing noncom ranks.

I swear I've seen something about that as well, so it's not just him

>>50166526
Jefferson didn't strong arm anyone but his female slaves like the Americunt he was.

What do you guys think of doing a BTG TRO:Refits for 3145?
Lord knows there's a lot of mechs that are a bit underpowered in the DA timeframe and could benefit from updated weaponry/equipment.

>>50165756
Read the totally canon MWO entry, fellow wrong grog friend

>>50166526
I mean we can discuss that, but ultimately while Britain was clearly *the* world power of the age it was due to the Royal Navy and our economic weight, not the army. The army was literally an afterthought.

>>50166654
/btg/RO will include a refit section, just send your ideas to them. Muninn said the standards for that section were a lot less stringent

>>50166654
Well that's part of the ONN for the TRO, like a Carronade I made for my table, but it depends on what your refit entails. If it's all Clontoch all the time, it might be a bit over the top;.

What are some assault vehicle options for the FWL? Do they import most of their tanks?

>>50166654
refits are my fetish, so I'm down

>>50166765
No clantech here friend. I can make due without the tech of some space furries.
I was thinking more along the lines of a MML Dervish or adding Tcomps to pre-renassaince mechs

>>50166654
sure, why not. It'll finally give me a reason to actually start using MML over HMP

>>50166875
Besides not being dated as hell and kludged together?

>>50166904
well, I'm dated as hell and cludged together, so I don't really see a problem

>>50163193
>only play 3025
>posts a mech from 3055

anon I...

>>50166708
To where do I send this?
email?

>>50167061
Go to the built for war link in the OP.

Slow day. What gives?

>>50167204
Nov 8th, bud. America has to decide if it's going to be fucked or extra fucked.

>>50166945
Even us suspender and beard types have our retards, anon. Best to just shrug and move along.

>thread is having a discussion (or was) about british and french military prowess in the 18th century, give or take
>murrikans are off deciding if a cucked female lich or a spraytanned clown are going to run the country for the next four years
As an American I can do nothing but shake my head and look for cheap tickets to "Anywhere but Here".

>>50167216
>deciding between Katherine Steiner-Davion and Jacob Bannson

Top kek

>>50167301
>implying it's not the international corporations and banksters that run that country and make the demands based upon which said sockpuppets will have to make their "decisions."

>>50167301
Australia's nice. The politics are just as fucked but at least there are kangaroos and it's out of the way of most nuclear fallout.

>>50167369
Why waste the shots on something that's already a hellhole?

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>>50167352
I'd vote Bannson just so Jack Farrel would be in charge once he got impeached.

Honestly the vote is really between the vice presidents at this point, because you know neither of them will last more than a year in office.

>>50167375
It's not so bad - only three people in my apartment block have been eaten by spiders this month.

So as a follow up to my earlier post about refits, what needs updating for DA?
So far I have a Cicada and a Dervish finished, and I'm thinking about the following:
Grasshopper
Vulcan
Shadow Hawk
Vindie
Victor
Pillager

where's that chart where you roll to see what whacky DA tech you're supposed to be using?

>>50167478
Back of the ER3145.

>>50167394
>Race Bannon vs a cuck

I say that as a democrat

>>50167489
No, the "build a mech" one that's been posted here a few times.

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>>50167513

>>50167436
Tempest
Hercules
Griffin
Rakasha
War Dog
hell, most of the 3055 and 3058 machines need them, really
maybe the OG warhammer and thud and marauder?
the enforcer?

>>50163193

This is what grognards ACTUALLY believe.

>>50167530
I thought there was a bigger list that was more dark-age-y. That's mostly just changing armor types

I guess what I'm really after is the tech that makes you go "OK, this is a DA mech"

>>50166157
Do a lot of people dislike Betrayal of Ideals? Never read it.

>>50167436
How about the emperor? Only the CapCon got a DA variant so far

>>50167730
Who really uses the Emperor in significant numbers besides the cappies though?

>>50167700

It's standard Blaine Lee Pardoe guff.

The good guys are super duper awesome and democratic and hated because they're just so damn perfect, while the bad guys hate freedom and are so fucking dumb it's a mystery how they're able to keep breathing.

Add to that CGL's fetish for inserting Wolverine conspiracies into fucking *everything* and, well...

>>50167737

The -6A is IS general and appears on AFFS RATs.

>>50167812
The AFFS gets EVERYTHING though

>>50167737
It was pretty widely spread, with reasonably common variant models from starcorps for everyone but kurita, periphery exports by st.ives and a good supply of primitive chassis for upgrading from the marians and IIRC someone else

Can someone post the guide to variant naming again pls?

>>50167912
There isn't one

Who was it who is so into VSP lasers?

>>50167762
Ah, I see. I rather like Wolverine conspiracies, but they can grow old after a while.

I have a soft spot for Pardoe. I mean, he did write Exodus Road, which I thought was genuinely really good. Then again, Trent was sympathetic and understandably bitter, and the villains were the ever despicable Smoke Jaguars, so maybe the glove fit that time.

On the other hand, he gave us the Archer Christifori books, which while fun adventure tales, have the Manichean politics that were so common during the FCCW, as well as numerous bizarre comparisons to the American Civil War. With the blue guys being Confederates, no less.

>>50168006
Wizards of Broadband

>>50168019
I tolerated Highlander Gambit. I absolutely hated Impetus to War. Same for Roar of Honor.

>>50168019

Pardoe, like Ben Rome, sold his soul to the devil in exchange for one really good book.

The rest are utter shit.

File: Orion_variant_tree.png (102KB, 2068x993px)

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>how many layers of Onions can you peel off before you find the core

Updated Orion family tree.

Am working on Woodsman, Crab and Hunchback. Post suggestions that wont cause severe carpel-tunnel

>>50168298
Hetzer pls

File: Atlas Variant Tree.png (84KB, 2135x706px)

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not done by me but some other anon's Atlas tree

>>50168298
The Stalker, maybe?

>>50168298
I briefly looked for my variants, and I'm not sure why. I need help.

>>50168345
Oh, that's a good one.

>>50168298
The Awesome might be good

>>50166811

>What are some assault vehicle options for the FWL?

Ontos and the DA thing they get, Bulwar or whatever. Everyone has some Demolishers too.

>Do they import most of their tanks?

Apparently not and their locally built stuff is shittier than anyone else except arguably the Dracs. If you want decent assualt vees you need to ignore the source material and cherry pick or play one of the (former) FC factions.

>>50168673
Check the 3145 RATs as well, Liao gets some clan stuff, i'd bet Marik does as well

>>50166811
Ontos all day erry day.

You're better off taking their carriers and stuff like Manticores honestly. Assault tanks are rarely good. Only examples off the top of my head are the Shreck and the Alacorn.

Heya /btg/, mind giving me some lore aid?

I'm running a MechWarrior game, and I want to include a little bit of transhumanism (My players are big on that), and I was wondering if I could get pointed in the right direction for what sort of cybernetics and interfaces are present in BattleTech?

>>50168858
Check out the Word of Blake and the Manei Domini. There are also the basic medical-grade cybernetics, as well as "pleasure" cybernetics/bionics that let you turn yourself into a mermaid or a catgirl, but I'd keep that info from them if I were you. As far as using them in a BattleMech, you can get an Interface Cockpit that you plug your cyborg body into and your brain completely replaces the controls and gyro. So if you really wanted to, you could basically become a Dreadnought from 40k but in a Warhammer instead.

>>50168858
It exists even in the dark days of the 3rd war. Even Justin Allard had a robot arm with a laser pistol.

Unless you have the very best doctors though, those augmentations keep you from piloting a mech until they reach their former Star League level a little after the Clan Invasion.

SpecOps of all states use cybernetics heavily after that
ROM has always been into cybernetics but the Manei Domini take it to a whole new level later
Clanners are famous for fixing up their soldiers with that kind of tech, though it has a heavy stigma attached to it socially, a kind of "You lost" or "You're old" thing that mimics the ancient "Men with scars didn't get them by living good lives"

>>50168858
Canopus has catgirls

Clanners can replace body parts, they just choose cybernetics because its faster.

>>50168858
Very limited by your standards. In 99.9% of cases it's limited to basic prosthetics, cosmetics and some minor combat enhancement. A VERY SMALL amount of brain-computer interface gear exists, but it in every case causes drastically reduced lifespan, insanity or both. No mind-uploading, nanomachines, brain transplants even, none of that eclipse phase horse shit

>Bannson is going to win
Holy shit

Katrina Steiner btfo

>>50168939
>>50168903
>>50168893
Thanks friends. Any attempts so far at lobbing off the limbs and directly interfacing the body into a Mech? Or is it just E.I. and the like of mental linking?

>>50169419
Look up interface cockpits and ProtoMechs, which are the closest thing. And the former is closer to the Mobile Trace System from G Gundam. Otherwise no, the setting doesn't really allow mechs to work like that.

>>50169419
There were some quadruple amputees in the WoB's military strapped into 'Mechs and sent screaming at the enemy, but they were basically kamikazes because the tech necessary drives you nuts pretty fast.

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>>50169419
You don't need to lop off limbs. Blakist VDNI is just circuitry grafted to the nervous system. A bunch of the top level Blakists did the limb chopping thing for the improved out-of-mech combat enhancement.

Speaking of unlikely upsets and big events, who wants to bet the WoB remnants were behind Gray Monday? The only people with the knowhow to do such a thing would either be them or the Society.

>>50169658
The perpetrators are implicitly the Republic, due to the fact that basically right afterwards the Wall goes up.

>>50169658
An anon observed that the WoB remnants were actually pretty big relative to Dark Age era forces. I wouldn't doubt it, especially if Blakism was on the rise again in ComStar itself.

>>50169470
More WoB pics please?

I swear to god if the baddies of the next one are also wobbies I'm gonna shoot myself

>>50169676
No way. Read Sword of Sedition. It took three years for the Wall to go up, the guy Stone left in charge straight up and quit, and Levin was only told about the Wall option after half his state was torn apart.

Not to mention, the first thing Stone does when he wakes up is drop the Wall. Like that's a smart move. Just when I think I can't hate the guy more.

>>50169701
>Not wanting them to be the good guys who REMOVE CLAN once and for all

>>50169701
They're an interesting faction. The whole cult of Blake has been a pretty integral part of the BT setting from the get-go. The first House books were done from their point of view trying to conquer humanity. You don't have to agree, but I'm just saying they're fun and not worth getting annoyed over.

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>>50169678
>More WoB pics please?

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>>50169783
I totally forgot the Lightray even existed. Has anybody ever used one on the table?

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>>50169818
Here's one thing you'll rarely see, Xin Sheng Capellans losing badly

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>>50169849
Reminder that Kirc Cameron-Jones was tapping this every night for years

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>>50169871

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>>50169899
I have to say I love the Vanquisher. Always seems undegunned as hell but it always seems to carry its weight.

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>>50169938
You know something interesting? They actually took this facility somewhat intact. You see it in 3135. I think it's why the Republic were able to continue so many of those Blakist programs.

>>50169818
Yes, used it a few times

>>50170037
And what did you think? It's not like it's a terrible design. Don't tell me its forgetfulness curse got you too

>>50169701
They're the best villain faction, though. They have legitimately sympathetic goals (ending the warmongering Houses and their petty squabbles, eliminating the Clans as menacing invaders, enlightening humanity and bringing a new golden age of peace), but go about in the most monstrous way possible.

>>50170046

Not him but it's OK. Like a non-jumping Wraith.

Really needed some better C3i variants but the basic idea is pretty solid.

>>50170095
They are way more about eliminating the Clans. They don't really care about the Houses as an organization. It was all the troops raised from the core worlds that had gotten fucked over by the houses for centuries that had a bone to pick with them.

>>50170131
As a Terran Hegemony player that's why I played WoB too. Feel 50/50 about RotS right now. Love their sigil though.

>>50170131

The stuff about them going after the Clans is total bullshit on the face of it though. They'd never have gotten the SL on side even if it had still existed and didn't have the forces necessary to make a plausible run at the Clans on their own.

Honestly it just reads as an after-the fact "but we didn't really mean to do that thing old-school ComStar which we're the heirs of have always been about and which we've been clearly working towards ever since the WoB existed, what we *really* were going to do instead was fight the Clans! We were totally going to be the good guys, but YOU wouldn't let us!"

>>50170159
I'd say they probably wanted to do both, and the Clan bit was a planned end-goal after they had the Inner Sphere under them.

>>50170131
True, that's why they have the MD, after all. But it's pretty clear that once the Houses' have worn each other down, they will be burned by Blake's Light and swept to the dustbin of history. The old ComStar book seemed to indicate that the Houses at minimum needed to be reduced to powerless puppets. I could be wrong, though.

>>50170159
They basically had 3 goals

1. Establish a large base of operations.They got Gibson and later Terra and the Protectorate so they were golden
2. Kill Wolf's Dragoons
3. Get Bulldog II:Homeworld Boogaloo rolling to increase their influence with the Star League

It wasn't a bad plan honestly. Probably would have worked too if Victor's siblings weren't such pussies. I would have counted on Victor saving the league too if I was a betting man in universe in 3067.

>>50170197
If they could figure out a way to neutralize the Bear Levs, and waited til like the mid-3070s to build their forces, I'd say they probably could have swept the Clan OZs clean with SL/GH support.

But those Leviathans are a serious crimp in any plans of "removing Clans"

>>50170216
They still killed two of the things anyway. One at Dieron and one at Terra. And the fucking bears threw both the surviving ones at Terra.

Also, I never realized the Lev III wasn't a refit of the Wrasslehog until now and that they actually have two of those monsters in the DA while everyone else had jack and shit. Damnnit Ben, I know you loved the Bears but that is a bridge too far.

>>50170229
Ben didn't make the Lev III, that was Jellico, who actually thinks that the Nova Cats were protected by fiat and got way better toys than the Bears.

>>50170229
It cost a lot to do it though. As a "from Hell's heart I stab at thee" moment that's fine, but losing half their navy taking on just one Clan offensively isn't too terrific.

I'd say they'd have needed to do some seriously ROM shit to knock out at least one Lev before any Operation REMOVE CLANS got going.

Still can't believe they got a damn Lev III though dude. Crazy.

>>50170216

Take a look at the forces necessary for Bulldog/Serpent.

Then realise those were against a terminally weak Clan that wasn't able to effectively fight back.

Now multiply those five or six times over to account for the size of forces in the other OZs.

They'd basically need to mobilise *all* the military forces in the Sphere. At once.

It's not even vaguely plausible.

I'm sure someone will be all "and that's where the tailored bioweapons, nukes, and asteroids come in!" but no. Just no. That shit came in to explain the devastation of the Dark Age backstory, *and* would piss the Houses off, *and* would be enough to unite the Clans. It's a terrible idea on so many levels.

>>50170229

To kill the Levs they Zerg rushed them and sacrificed entire fleets. One was at Earth too and swarmed under the SDS, which they couldn't send elsewhere.

You're literally looking at a minimum of two Thera task forces per Lev II to fight them on even terms otherwise. Shit is whack.

That's why I stopped writing my article about the Leviathan II. There was no point. The "how to use it" section was just an extended essay on the virtues of its ASF complement and how its armour made it almost invincible and the "how to fight it" section was all about how you had to gather a fleet larger than anything that was really feasible for anyone and accept it was a suicide mission if you wanted to bring one down. At which point, congratu-fucking-lations, now what are you going to do about the other Levs they have?

>>50170275
>"how to fight it" section was all about how you had to gather a fleet larger than anything that was really feasible for anyone and accept it was a suicide mission if you wanted to bring one down.
Should have started with "spend 30 years dumping one third of a Successor State's income into WarShip production"

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>>50170253
This reminds me. There was a shit ton of Aero images in the hotspots series. It was actually pretty refreshing.

>>50170275
They didn't need all that at all. It was crazy overkill. Fighting the others is perfectly plausible. 72 divisions of ComGuard defeated 25 Clan galaxies at Tukayyid. 52 full-strength WoBM & MD divisions could take 13 Ghost Bear galaxies. The Wolves and Falcons are chump change after that. Green Pigeons couldn't handle Adam Steiner and Archer Christifori for pete's sake.

>>50170275
>they Zerg rushed them and sacrificed entire fleets

I give them credit for knowing which ship to focus fire on. It's the only reason any of the Combine warships survived that fight.
>and the bears killed the Lair of Mighty Wyrms anyway in the Second Domnion War
Jesus fuck, can Hohiro catch a break for even once in his life?

>>50170292

So you can have even more Foxes or Agamemnons? Yay.

Less snarktastically, of the stuff the Houses actually had around you need like 4 Mjolnirs to get close to one in a straight fight, in addition to ASF in a fleet action. The House navies are nothing more than cannon fodder in such a fight. Two Thera task forces per Lev is not hyperbole, going by the stuff people actually have you need those supercarriers to negate the Lev's internal complement and the accompanying ships to do the fighting.

You could *maybe* get away with one Thera task force if everyone is stacking their dropship collars with nothing but Vengeance carriers loaded with Shivas, but I'll give you two guesses and one hint as to how likely a formation like that is in canon. Hint : Never fucking happen.

>>50170366
>tfw I had a campaign where a crippled Vengeance was hanging in orbit with a fraction of its fighter compliment and my players were still too scared to try and take it on

People don't realize how scary aerotech stuff is until they actually play some aerotech. I've had whole fighter wings blown out of the sky by a single union just because of the armor on that bitch. Taking on actual warships is unreal without newtech.

>>50170324

>They didn't need all that at all.

That was what they were projected to need against a Clan as strong as the data Trent handed them indicated. Nobody was prepared for how abysmally awful the Jaguar command ranks were or how rapidly they'd collapse logistically.

However, the other Clans were nowhere near as weak as the jags militarily, nor so ineptly lead, nor so lacking in logistical depth.

>Muh Tukayyid

Happened because the ComGuard basically terraformed the entire planet into a giant trap and lured the Clans into fighting on their terms, with Focht in command. They have neither the home ground advantage or Focht in command in this scenario either.

>Jade Falcons

Falcons actually enjoyed a net gain of worlds during the FCCW, with several remaining contested to serve as training grounds for Eyrie Clusters in the future. The Falcons succeeded in their immediate goals wit a pretty good long-term result; Audacity etc was aimed at stopping them from *really* fucking up the Alliance during the Civil War, and while it achieved that it also sowed the seeds of where the Alliance wound up long-term so it's very hard to see it as any kind of real success.

>>50170419
Meh, I don't agree based on what we've seen. I'd go line by line but the Yank race is too distracting.

>>50170396
Even if you have your own warship you don't want to fight a warship. The only sane way to take a warship is to nuke it.

>>50170464

Levs are nuke-proof thanks to their AMS coverage.

They can't be Thresholded so you can't crit out their AMS bays and then follow up with a nuke.

Even if you somehow managed to negate their AMS they have 1,000 armour on every facing which is enough to tank any nuke hit short of a Peacemaker.

So, yeah. Have fun.

>>50170482

Should have said enough to tank even a Peacemaker, derp.

Peacemakers are the biggest Nukes go, they do 1,000 capital damage.

>>50170464
I've had okay luck in warship fights. I usually only lose about 33% of my fleet compared to my best guy. That's likely just the rarity of playing against other aero players though.

But I also remember once taking an Intruder, a couple troop transports and some heavy fighters, equal BV against a piece of shit Quixote like the Vendetta and getting thrashed, even when carrying full 30 point ship to ship missiles. It's the armor on those things that's just killer.

>>50170517

>equal BV

not to put too fine a point on it but here's your mistake.

BV barely works with DropShips, applying it to anything larger is useless. Equal BV in ASF will annihilate most WarShips too.

When I play aero games it's either a mirror match or has been eyeballed by both players to determine whether it's a fair game or not.

Personally I can't even blame them for the BV state of affairs in space, and I find very little to complement CGL on in any area. The rules are arcane, a lot of the assumptions baked into the BV system just plain don't apply to anything larger than an ASF, and the canon designs are just all over the place in terms of quality. If they made something that appropriately handled canon designs it would be completely fucked for customs, and vice versa. At least the status quo is just laughable across the board.

>>50170568
Yeah, usually when I play we say X cruisers, X destroyers, X battleships, etc and ballpark the BV so it's fairly close.

I'm just saying that taking something that would have been called a "warship" in an invasion fleet in the year 3000 and taking it up against even a garbage SLDF proper warship and barely scratching the paint is a sobering experience.

>>50170482
Tell that to the crew of the Great Bear.

>>50170596
>tfw the bears were so mad about that they fucked the O'Neil yards six ways to Sunday when the Blakists had the patience to wait four whole years to take it intact when they stole it from Comstar.

Those shitty tubebabies may say they want Terra but they have no respect for any of the classic infrastructure there.

>>50170590

Yeah, been there too.

Thought the write-ups for stuff like the Fortress or Overlord where they're called out as being tough, powerful ships would actually be backed by their performance against a Squadron of decent heavy ASFs.

lolno

In other news, fuck this shit. 2016 worst year ever. Fucking Cronulla Sharks win the NRL, now we get President Trump? Alcohol is my only refuge, in true Australian style.

>>50168903
>Even Justin Allard had a robot arm with a laser pistol.

That was a shitty non-magic one that required extensive rehabilitation though.

>>50170608
President Trump is fucking great. The asian stock crash will mean nice cheap exchange rate for weeb goodies and the man himself will get impeached within a year. Maybe we'll even get a nice interest rate rally from all the panicking for the savers to finally not be fucked over for the first time since the crash of 2008.

>>50170596

>things that happen in narrative WarShip combat completely ignore the results that should be generated based on the designs involved and the rules for them

I am shocked, anon. This has totally not been a thing ever since, you know, Turtle Bay which was the first time we really got to see a WarShip in action.

Even the stuff in Twilight of the Clans is basically rule of cool.

It's a lot easier to write "and then it was nuked until only a radioactive cloud remained" in a sourcebook than it is to get that result on the tabletop. Due in large part to the authors not really understanding the Aero side of things any way.

>>50170608
The wall is being built.
The Clans will pay for it
MAKE TERRA GREAT AGAIN

>>50170608
don't be a silly cunt

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shit, it happened

>>50170641

We were gonna get reamed on the trade deal Trump wants re-done because it's not favourable enough to America.

A trade deal that would have meant I'd need surgery for ulcerative colitis because the American pharmaceutical sector was buttmad about not being able to extract enough money from patients here on.

Not that I'm particularly a fan of Hillary but at least she just wanted to overturn that deal and go on as things are currently.

So yeah, kinda bitter. Would be nice not to get a colonectomy, along with all the other bullshit likely to get unloaded on us now.

>>50170727
make your cuntry great again too

>>50170736

That would require us to have ever been great in the first place though.

>>50170746
Australian, right? You're a pretty great country, come on.

How is the BT community over there?

>>50170752

About 20 people play locally. Rare to get all of them together at once but tournaments can get 15 or so pretty regularly.

Of course this is Australia so by "locally" I mean "within 3 hours driving distance."

>>50170627
>and the man himself will get impeached within a year
Pretty sure the Reps are going to close ranks and start executing potential traitors on the steps of the congress before they let that happen.

>>50170878
>implying they wouldn't want the current VP or even better the actual Republican Senate leader in his seat
Do you even line of succession?

Suggest me a good common IS assault, with both energy and missiles, something like an oversized Thunderbolt or a Stalker but with a battlefist or 2, without it suffering from "it's a solid heavy" deal
I usually use the Awesome, Thug, and Atlas, with the occasional King Crab or Marauder II

>>50171164
>Common IS assault with energy and missiles
Stalk...
>And also battlefists
Fuck you, have a Battlemaster.

>>50171171
I'd appreciate a Battlemaster more if it didn't feel a bit undergunned for an assault

>>50170627
Obongo didn't get impeached, Dubya didn't get impeached, and neither will Trump.

Try to drink something other than liberal media kool-aid.

>>50171274
Obama also had much more popular support and didn't have a quite frankly crazy 100-day plan.

>>50171274
Not even the roman Republicans thought that having your dick sucked was a crime against the state.

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>>50171207

340 engine will do that, at least before DHS. The 3050 upgrade, while still an improvement on the original, kinda fucks things up too.

For my merc company I run these, the fluff being that an ancestor who had a BLR suffered engine damage on the Marik/Steiner border during the early 3rd SW and they jammed a Stalker engine into it to get it running. When the pilot got it back home he made use of the extra tonnage by packing in another PPC, SRM, 2 MLs and heat sinks rather than going back to the 340 engine. In the 50s his descendant upgrades to CASE, some Pulse lasers, and ER PPCs.

But honestly if you're looking for a fat heavy the BLR pretty much fits the bill, its loadout is quite similar to one of the Thunderbolt variants.

>>50170046
It's fine, I guess? Nothing really stands out, and I occasionally confuse it with the Bloodhound for some reason. It's a bit too heavy for the speed it moves at.

>>50170095
>villain faction

u wot m8

>>50170608
>In other news, fuck this shit. 2016 worst year ever. Fucking Cronulla Sharks win the NRL, now we get President Trump? Alcohol is my only refuge, in true Australian style.

qq more cunt

But seriously, you in melbs or nah?

>>50171699
Honestly my ultimate Assault, barring experimental and clan tech, would always turn out something like "Thug 2:now even more zombier", or "the pleasure of twin GR/AC20, now with jumpjets", or "slightly fatter Awesome with a battleaxe" with the occasional hand-held Rocket Launcher array (love the weapon concept, wish it was introtech, it's a nice slot filler)
Of course keep in mind I'm a newbie who never got further than the 3060

>>50170608
>In other news, fuck this shit. 2016 worst year ever. Fucking Cronulla Sharks win the NRL, now we get President Trump? Alcohol is my only refuge, in true Australian style.

Prepare your CT Rear.

>>50171779
Critical hit to my torsos

>>50171779

They'll be eviscerating me from the front via keyhole surgery, from what I understand.

>>50171706

>But seriously, you in melbs or nah?

Nope.

>>50170419
People tend to forget that the clans are ultimately lightning raiders and berserkers, they are extremely bad at total war which is exactly what happened at Tukayyid and bulldog. Clans tend to trade people for territory which is fine when you have some time to quickly replace losses which the clans are very good at. But that is the opposite response from what you should do when attacked by numerically superior force that doesn't relent. You may kill the first wave but the second wave will catch you with empty ammo bins and holes in your armor. If you can bleed a clan dry before they can resupply you beat them.

>>50171859

People also forget that a 3:1 ratio, on average, of Regiments to Clusters is needed to achieve that in pitched battle, and that the other Invading Clans haven't been bled dry by Luthien, Tukayyid, and nearly a decade of ongoing, highly successful raids and guerilla programs.

The Jags were in a uniquely bad position among the Clans.

I mean, you can debate how necessary the 3:1 ratio is given tabletop performance where a single Regiment and its attached support forces should absolutely wipe the floor with a Cluster due to simple vehicle spam and artillery if nothing else but fluff-wise those are the forces required, so...

>>50171901
You're forgetting that the wolves and falcons were fucked by the refusal war and that the cats and WiE were on the IS side by that point negating some of the tech edge. The bears are more of a problem but mostly due to the Lev IIs being total bullshit. I'd kill the wolves and falcons and then give an ultimatum to the bears and hope they blink. If you have to take them then basically ignore whatever systems have a Lev II and attack the rest. If they move the Lev II then have your space forces jump out of the system and attack the place the Lev came from.

Also 3:1 gave the IS an overwhelming easy victory. 2:1 odds would likely still result in victory just with more losses.

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Sup BTG, long time no see stopped by to see how you guys been doing. Steiner for president, yo.

>>50172079

>You're forgetting that the wolves and falcons were fucked by the refusal war

No, I'm not.

Bulldog pitted ~91 Regiments (or borrowed Clan Clusters, analogous to a Regiment on the offensive) against ~36 heavily understrength Jag Clusters.

By '67 the Falcons have about 40 clusters in the Sphere, none of which are in as bad a state as the Jags.

Then there's the Wolves, who are also stronger than the Jags prior to their fall.

So you're looking at somewhere north of 200 Regiments just for those two Clans. And this is without considering the hard-on the authors have always had for the Falcons. And who's going to command that force for the IS? Focht is gone, Victor's not acceptable any more, and no-one else who could be put forth as a candidate has either the skill or a patron nation with enough clout behind them to get the position (unless maybe they nominate Talon Zahn and he gets in thanks to Eternal Xin Sheng).

After the FCCW, for the Lyrans to match their Bulldog contribution (and remember that they'd be the ones doing the heavy lifting this time) they'd need to send at least 1/6th of their forces. The Drac contribution to Bulldog is, no shit, larger than the entire LAAF of 3067.

The Bears are not a non-factor in this scenario either. They left the Jags twisting in the wind because seriously fuck those guys but a concerted effort to kill two more Clans *is* gonna draw their ire, Wardens or no.

The IS in the late 60s is too war weary to even be drawn on it, much less politically willing to back an operation that's going to need to be at least double the size of Bulldog to even get off the ground.

WoB's best hope with trying to instigate another war between the IS and the Clans is that it pisses the Clans off enough to unite and strike back, embroiling both sides in a destructive and escalating conflict that they can take advantage of once they've been sufficiently weakened. Actually ponying up enough military force is right out.

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I think Hogarth just became our president.

Good, let's build a wall to keep the Clanners out!

>>50166638
>delicious bait
Mate, I'm not a real big fan of Tommy J, but Americans were hardly the only people forcefully fucking their slaves; it was common throughout British colonies until slavery was banned (basically any slave-holding society, really: Romans and Ottomans did it). To say nothing of what happened to native women throughout the Empire.

The sad history of humanity is none of our ancestors were particularly good people by our standards.

>>50172316
Hell, we're not particularly good people by our own standards.

>>50172252
Love that pic. Today is a good day to Alpha Strike.

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>>50166638
>>50172316
Actually the Jefferson thing is a myth.

The sad history of humanity is nobody fact checks anything anymore.

>>50172809
Who fact checks the fact checkers?

>>50172835
People with Phd's, Artificial Intelligences, The Illuminati, Alien God-Kings and Alex Jones.

>>50172856
Aww no reptilian overlords?

>>50171901
>muh ratio
Maybe in 3050. By 3059 it was company again binary, and by the FCCW it was regiments taking on clusters in even numbers and winning. Just like Ulric knew would happen.

>>50172184
Equipment wise both of those Clans were worse off than the Jags, who while lacking in logistics depth had really well equipped clusters. The Wolves and Falcons were bringing BattleMechs into frontline clusters and vehicles into secondline while the Jaguars had so many omnis they had 'em in secondline formations and solahma units equipped with IIC mechs and BattleMechs. A concerted effort spearheaded by a full strength WoBM and Shadow Divisions would have torn through the Falcons and Wolves as easily as the Jaguars.

>>50173000
>>50173041
Good points.

>>50173000

>By 3059 it was company again binary

... of the most elite members selected from the very best 10 or so IS regiments available in Clan Trials. Not in general combat.

>and by the FCCW it was regiments taking on clusters in even numbers and winning

That never happened. When single Regiments in the FCCW faced off against a single Clan Cluster the Falcons bid down to meet them.

The 3:1 ratio was given as the requirement for Bulldog in 3058. By '67 things have improved but are nowhere near the 1:1 ratio you're proposing. Maybe 2:1 at the most generous.

>>50173041

The Wolves and Falcons had Omnis in second-line Clusters, and the rise of vees in Clan units is a post-Jihad phenomenon, not a pre-Jihad one.

Serious question here, no snark. Are you arguing that because it happened to the Jags it could happen to the Wolves, Falcons, and Bears or have you looked at the actual states of the militaries listed in FM: U?

Because I've taken a long look at the latter and accounted for losses and such. The Lyrans field around 38 regiments which isn't enough to secure their borders much less provide the base of an anti-Clan task force. The Suns is down to about 48, and you can imagine how eager they would be to help out the Lyrans. Dracs have a bit over 52 and again very little desire to help anyone else. The Capellans and FWL were sitting relatively pretty at 42 and 66 respectively but the Capellans had no interest in the Star League after using it to screw St. Ives out of existence.

Even if the political will for another go round was there- and it really, *really* isn't- the state of the IS militaries isn't at the level where an assault is a realistic prospect.

Maybe if the SL had held together for another 10-15 years and there were tensions with the Clans. And the Reavings had happened.

But 3067 as set up? nah, not even.

>>50173197
>or have you looked at the actual states of the militaries listed in FM: U
If you did you'd see the Wolves had 29~ clusters in their OZ most of which are understrength. Literally as bad off as the Jags. Come on, man, at least try.

>>50173197
>Maybe if the SL had held together for another 10-15 years
>But 3067 as set up?
Actually if you read that was what I said.

>>50173041
Sure, no one can make a good argument in favour of the Falcons or Wolves surviving a concerted assault but the Bears are the elephants in the room.

Their touman is better off in size, equipment and arguably training than the Falcons and Wolves, plus they have those Leviathans. With those warships they're hard to touch.

>>50173197
>That never happened.

Numerous times in Operation Audacity. Falcons had to bring entire galaxies to worlds when in 3050 they'd have brought just a cluster or less.

>>50173218

The Wolves and Bears were discounted as targets because trying to take them out means opening two flanks to reprisal. There are reasons only the Falcons and Jaguars were under serious consideration, and the posited scenario is that the IS goes after the Wolves and Falcons (plus potentially Bears) simultaneously any way.

>>50173238

Not seeing that anywhere in the thread.

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Newbie here, I want to work on building a merc company starting from the lance I usually deploy, do I have to use particular rules for the 3 lances to choose?
So far I'm thinking about something like 2 mech lances + a combined arms "lance", using common mechs and vehicles who can keep up with the times
I need a bit of help for filling the "army list"

>1st lance
Warhammer, Archer, Griffin, Marauder
>2nd lance
something like 2-3 Rhino plus a more mobile unit like a VTOL or similar, maybe a light mech
>3rd lance
Here's I'm a bit unsure: I want to deploy something with a Stalker, but I don't want to make another fire support lance

What would you guys suggest?

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>>50173253
If it's about a WoB-spearheaded invasion of the Falcon OZ though it's hard to see anyone supporting them if they use WMDs. It'd have to be strictly conventional. But yeah a hypothetical full-strength Blakist military could probably do the job mostly solo. Throw in the Wolves-in-Exiles, Kell Hounds, ELH and some mercs and ComGuard for support and its too easy. Say two W-i-E galaxies plus the Kell Hounds hit one Falcon galaxy, the ELH plus some ComGuard hit another galaxy, and then the WoB hits the rest. For the robes that'd be seven divisions *per* galaxy. Falcons would be toast. And the Wolves would be even easier prey.

>>50173274

Yes, because they wanted a quick and complete victory the way the Wolves were doing in the latter stages of the Invasion, not because all those forces were strictly required to get the win.

Shit, look at the battle Sharon Bryan commanded at Melissia. The Falcons didn't need anywhere near the size of the force they used to rout the Lyrans, really all they needed was the Elemental headhunter unit and a Cluster to take advantage of the disintegration of Bryan's unit.

It's a matter of choice rather than necessity. The Clans could (and did) still roll up IS forces using a much smaller unit. They just recognised the additional time and effort involved wasn't worth it when a larger force could do it more decisively.

>>50173317
>Not seeing that anywhere in the thread.
I said it right in the beginning phase of the discussion: >>50170216
Right after the can of worms got opened. Of course 3067 is too soon, the Word's military was tiny then.

>>50173347

>3rd Lance

APCs and Infantry?

>>50173358
>Sharon Bryan
Literally the exception. Even Adam Steiner pointed out her command style was from 3050 (again, the obvious) and out of touch. When Adam and Archer went on their counteroffensive with a handful of escort regiments they trounced multiple clusters at a time. Leadership is the point there.

>>50173376

OK, fair enough. Missed that.

I still think a mid-70s assault relies a lot on the Reavings happening, which may or may not go ahead to the extent they did without the Invaders being as distracted as they were in the Jihad. Without those the Clans get another decade to build up, too.

>>50173391

>Literally the exception.

Literally the norm for the Lyran forces. Nondi and Sharon were representative of their command style, while Blucher, Christofori and Adam Steiner were massive outliers who had a lot of luck and Pardoe power on their side.

Audacity relied on disrupting the Falcons to make them halt their attack due to supply issues and was successful in that light, it wasn't a behind the lines rampage that completely BTFO'd the Falcons.

>>50173393
It's cool. If it helps context everything I was arguing (can't speak for others) was from the POV of a mid-3070s WoB with some teeth.

I mean what they had even in the first 13 months of the Jihad was tiny. For the hype that goes on about them getting wanked figures for secret forces, they only deployed like the equivalent of 8 extra divisions of troops in those first 13 months. And after that they had captured Lyran factories and the FWL at their control to streamline production for more units.

Just saying, I don't see a 3067 Jihad against the Clans happening at all. Propaganda.

>>50173414
I mean you're listing two Lyran commanders who do it one way and three who do it another and calling one the outlier... But alas.

Plus it was a serious rampage, if that's the word to use. They captured a warships, rekt the Falcon Guards and rekt a fair number of other clusters. But you did make a strong point that is hard to refute: It's about the author. If Pardoe wrote it, of course the Inner Sphere would win :P

>>50173424

All good.

>>50173465

Audacity wasn't the only thing going on during the FCCW, the Falcons managed to capture several worlds and have a number of others declared trial zones where they could go to fight and attempt Trials of Possession or season their Eyries.

The Warship capture was more luck than anything (it was undergoing repairs and suffered a lucky hit) while the Falcon Guard got stomped due to a technical malfunction on Ravill Pryde's machine. They were always a meme unit any way.

The fighting on the border was pretty one-sided.

>>50169740
>>50169723
>>50170095
To be fair I am just salty about the GDL and other mercs I quite liked.

>>50169871
Who is she again?

>>50173626

Naamah.

>>50173626

Probably another Canopian cybernetic tranny whore. They all look alike.

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>>50173779

>stripped my fucking image

>>50173591

GDL died to the FCCW, which is a whole other brand of stupidity.

>>50173884
Alex Carlyle was "Oops, we forgot he was part of the Royal Guards on Tharkad" and never confirmed as KIA until later. Not that the GDL could have been reformed, since their rep was spotty without Grayson's personal reputation for fairness and the Helm Core.

>>50173826
MoC isn't too bad pre-FCCW.

>>50173884
Still wish that William Keith could have written his particular ending instead of The Dying Time. Seriously, fuck that book.

>>50173940
What was his going to be?

Never read the Dying Time.

>>50173961

Rumour has it he was going to write one of the novels set on Huntress during Serpent and that the Legion would have collapsed after Grayson, sick of the destruction of the post-Helm wars, wandered off alone into the jungles never to be seen again.

>>50173940
He was soured on BT a bit after the FASA devs of the time said they wanted a GDL novel or two to cover what they did on Sudeten and Pandora, then pushed for a time skip. Supposedly he has/had the manuscripts for such novels around. Also, BT paid for peanuts.

>>50173961
The Dying Time has Grayson dying of cancer at the start of the novel, and ends with basically everyone bar the Brewster heir dying on Hesperus II when Katherine uses the GDL and two less than utterly loyal units as bait to draw the rebels in. Lori dies because her Victor is beat to shit in the factory, and she runs to hide in a storeroom and gets a grenade for her troubles. McCall got curbstomped by a Guillotine and a Rakshasa

>>50173919

The MOC was always bad, and anyone who supports the mere existence of the tranny SJW faction is equally as bad as a Killary supporter. Hopefully, both groups can be cleansed over the next year.

>>50174022
They were fine pre-FCCW when they were down to a realistic size and limited capabilities that reflected their weaknesses. I've enjoyed running campaigns set in the Magistracy then. It's once the Sun-Tzu magic hits them that they become boring as fuck and pretty much unlikable.

>>50174100
New thread!

>>50173999
It wasn't even that everyone died, it's that they died like pathetic bitches. It felt more like "Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies" the book, rather than allowing them to go out with a bang.

>>50172114
#MAGA - Make Atreus Great Again!

How you been dude? Figured you'd been eaten by train hobos or something.