Battletech General - /btg/

Regular LRM carriers are still about the best bang for the buck. You just have to protect them.
>cheap guns and loads of them
>cost about as much as a bug cbill-wise
>only 800 BV and change

I find myself running out of ammo for them more often than they explode.

>5
>not 7

+2

Yep, +1. I was playing Megamek with a friend and that happened to my Black Hawk KU-C. We were both going for the same spot for long range fire.

The (actually accidental) SRM carrier ambush was me doing it to another friend. I didn't expect to find a Victor parked just round the corner when I moved to shore up my flank and punched the All The Missiles button ASAP.

If your Heavy LRM Carrier is being shot at, things have gone wrong.

That's why I mentioned the Heavy carrier, it has enough ammo for more than 9 turns of fire. Plus a turret so if it does get flanked it's not SOL. Oh and 33% more firepower.

No, it's +2. Minimum range 6, so 6 is +1, 5 is +2, 4 is +3, etc.

>If your Heavy LRM Carrier is being shot at, things have gone wrong.
Or they have something with 7+ jump

This is why you run lances of three HLRM carriers and either a Demolisher or Schreck or Alacorn as a bodyguard

They only move 2/3. You could use field guns for bodyguards without issue.

True. I always forget about those

I go with Hidden Unit Rules Kanazuchi Squads whenever I can.

>happy Drac noises

You shouldn't. Gauss field guns give you twice the firepower of an Alacorn at for the same BV

For semi-guided LRMs can you only fire that munition if you have a target painted? Can't fire it as standard LRMs otherwise?

Sure, they were just introduced while I was outta the game, and I haven't run into any on the table since I've been back is all. I can see how they'd be terrifying, though

Are there any factions that use only Star League era military designs out there?

How effective would such a force be on the field?

Comstar. Tukayyid. Nuff said.

The Field Guns only have 8 shots each. An Alacorn has 16 per GR. Also in groups where it matters, Field Gun infantry are Advanced rather than Tournament-level.

Only the SLDF or Clans in their very early days.

Fluff-wise they did well, but game-wise there's a world of difference between a non-Royal Hussar and a Nightstar or non-Royal Highlander. Case-by-case approach works better.

What do you even mean by that?

ComStar had some 3050 stuff and new Clanbuster designs.

>The Field Guns only have 8 shots each. An Alacorn has 16 per GR.

Which is still the same total ammo for equivalent BV except you get the ability to put twice the number of shots downrange per round and split your targets.

But honestly it's more fun to take the advanced autocannon ones. No jams and no penalty for it isn't a bad thing. Plus people tend to get less upset. Even in the old days it's not bad to take AC2 ones instead of a Pike or AC Carrier.

I thought they had some current designs (relative to 3050) too?

Clanbusters were last minute refits of cache material. And they didn't have anything but cache stuff mechwise. They didn't start making their own new machines until after the schism in an attempt to rebuild, minus some tank and v's lines they kept going through the Succession Wars.

Of course, they lost all that progress when the Wobbies took Terra and had to start over again in what was left of Rasalhague

>Of course, they lost all that progress when the Wobbies took Terra and had to start over again in what was left of Rasalhague

>2 RAC/2 platoons per floor of a hardened building

>Then they lose Rasalhague to the Bears and have to start over with jack shit
>Then Blackout and lose almost all their infrastructure
>Then destroyed by the RotS and bankruptcy

I forget what their base world was in the DA. New Earth? Terra Firma?

Buhl's guys were on Epsilon Eridani

I'm awful taking photos, but this is a little something I've just finished.

I'm planning painting all the starter box mechs at this level. Simple base and no emblems, but applying some sort of pattern if possible.

...

>old school Davion BoG scheme
Beueno

Yes, the enemy jumping 7 behind your LRM carrier is :things having gone wrong" because you didn't adequately screen your LRM carriers, or provide enough deterrence to keep the jumper away (unless you were using them as bait and there's a pulse laser Ontos nearby that's about to melt that Wraith, in which case nice ambush).

Who here has used the hexless minis rules? They kinda interest me, and I'm wondering if they create any notable gameplay differences in practice

Looks pretty clean to me. Whole company of mechs is gonna look pretty spiffy on the table.

Post more, that dervish looks rad as fuck.

I plan to use other motiffs for each mech. Just want them to looks distinctive and easy to differentiate.

As soon as I have time to take some better photos I'll post them in the Battletech general. But later I may make some fast ones for you.

Also this miniature took much less time than I usually spend on them, one week instead of a month, and not working everyday on it. It may be also that the starter box figures are, most of them, very small and simple.

The next one will be the Jenner, with a Kurita scheme. After that maybe the Atlas with a mercenary pattern.

Will this Yen-lo-wang Centurion look weird next to regular Battletech miniatures?

Also, where can I find rules for it? The chassis is easy to do as well the Hatchet, but what about the shield?

It's gonna look weird, because it's at a significantly larger scale (~1/144) compared to CBT's ~1/285.

>Will this Yen-lo-wang Centurion look weird next to regular Battletech miniatures?
Ja. MWDA minis are approximately 50% larger than regular battletech minis
>but what about the shield?
Tech Manual should have everything you need

Shield is in TacOps.

1.5x normal BT size, so way too big.

Technically that Chassis is the DA Omnimech Centurion and not the real Yen-lo-wang as well. On the plus side, you can equip it however the hell you want.

DA Wang doesn't have an official record sheet, but I'm sure it was described in one of the early DA novels.

Ah, OK. Man, the current generation of rulebooks is a complete clusterfuck

I wish they would consolidate all the rulebooks into a single PDF. Makes sense with dead tree versions to split the rules into different books, since someone who just wants to play the basic game doesn't need the stuff in Stratops or Techmanual, just Total Warfare, maybe Tacops if they wanna use some of the optional rules. Where every page is adding a not insignificant cost to the book, having everything in a single hard copy would be a huge expense for something a lot of people wouldn't get use out of. But for an electronic format like PDF? Hell yes, give me something with all the rules in it so I don't have to jump from book to book, hoping that each ones' errata hasn't changed page numbers so that page references given still match.

>I wish they would consolidate all the rulebooks into a single PDF

Given how many people CGL actually has working on Battletech full-time, that would take them like 2 full years of doing literally nothing else to put together. Can you imagine how many page references would have to be done from scratch? You're talking a literal 1000-page document with 30-50 pagerefs PER PAGE. Lowball it and say there's 30,000 pagerefs in the document, and remember that Herb said that he could do about 100 pagerefs in a day of work, tops. That's pretty much a year just for the inline pagerefs. And then there's the index...

Maybe if there were more than 2 people actually writing Battletech at the company this would be possible. But CGL as it stands? No way in hell.

Urbie with an LRM20 in place of the AC/10. 3 tons of ammo, either Swarm-I or Semi-G.

The Urbie is literally perfect as a dedicated, cheap weapons carrier. AIV, Gauss, LRM... hell even light artillery cannons.

Amen. I miss Master Rules so much.

>semi-G LRM urbie with TAG
IT'S TIME

Problem is, a Hetzer can do everything the urbie does in those roles, but better

Jump.

First Succession Wars is up, but I am working
Save your money!
I'm uploading it for you in 1, 2 hours max

And this, right here, tells you have much priority BT has with CGL. Its pathetic and sad and makes me wonder why I bother with this 'might as well be dead' game.

And then I remember how much fun i've had with it and how much is possible with it and I say fuck CGL and keep on truckin.

Kind user, fair user. Protector of fellow gamers pocket books everywhere. You shall not go unrewarded in the great game store in the sky.

Just a teaser

Check the blog

WOLVERINES!

I'm wanting to make my own Pirate-sort-of-Mercenary force that's rather large and competent(Enough so they have their own shoddy ramshackle mech designs and are capable of Combined Arms warfare).

Is it possible for mercenaries to have battlearmor? The era they're in is around late 2900s to mid 3000s; right when the Clans roll in.

Basically, they're army pre-contact is made up of a few lances of light and medium mechs that favor speed and attack, with a couple lances of heavy mechs that hang back and pound the enemies with lasers. The ones that hang back are also accompanied by LRM Carriers that act as a sort of mobile artillery.

Then there's a few platoons of foot troops transported by tracked APCs, along with a handful of battlearmor squads.

They also have one or two lances of medium tanks to support the infantry.

And they're all shuttled around the 'Sphere taking jobs from whoever. And if they can't find jobs, they just loot and pillage.

I feel they're a bit too mary-sue. Thoughts?

Dat Wolvie!

Here's to you, user

>Is it possible for mercenaries to have battlearmor?
After say 3055 or so, sure
>The era they're in is around late 2900s to mid 3000s; right when the Clans roll in.
The clans arrive in 3050, man, and it's a good 5-8 years after that before anyone but the very top of the pyramid merc-wise gets them, and another decade before anyone on the low end has them in any numbers

>not Kopis "Dark Alley"

Yes

Nice work user. You might try getting transfers to put the Sword and Sun on the other side or something.

what said

Nobody in the IS has true BA until after 3050. ComStar has PA(L) and that's it. I dunno about exoskeletons.

Pirate/Mercs having their own mech designs then...well, if you mean "we convert all out Stingers to this other loadout" that's probably ok, but making an actual new mech wouldn't really be a thing.

If they loot and pillage, they damn well better have an employer, because everybody will kill pirates.

>I feel they're a bit too mary-sue.
Yes

>Enough so they have their own shoddy ramshackle mech designs
Do you mean mechs of their own design, or just old, bootleg mechs?
Because the former gets a hell no, while the latter is very plausible
>And they're all shuttled around the 'Sphere taking jobs from whoever.
That's fine, though they'd need to own at least one of their own DropShips which isn't common but is by no means actually rare.
>And if they can't find jobs, they just loot and pillage.
Now, that's a problem, because if they do that, then they're straight pirates and nobody will hire them as mercs; pirates are the common enemy of all mankind, after all. At best, other pirates might subcontract them, but they'd never find legitimate work again

>I feel they're a bit too mary-sue. Thoughts?

If you're a merc with Mechs you're already mary-sue, so you may as well go whole-hog.

Also, Battlearmor isn't a thing at all until the Clans come in. You could maybe fluff using PA(L) suits for your infantry, but certainly nothing heavier and nothing with Mech-grade weapons.

They could have frankenmechs.

I was mainly thinking they'd be hired by the Lyrans or the Mariks, and they'd raid tiny Periphery states if business was slow.

I'll get rid of battlearmor all together and make the overall force smaller.

Perhaps make them pay tribute to some bigger, badder pirate/mercenary group?

And by "their own designs", I mean they take other mechs they scavenge and completely gut them and build them from the ground up. Like Frankenstein.

On second thought, just drop the whole piracy thing altogether. I jsut thought it would be a way for them to make money when unemployed.

Exactly. They have some auxiliary platoons of Engineers and junk-collectors that are just scavengers. Perhaps that too is a way they make money.

Aha, I found what I was looking for.
Behold!

>I dunno about exoskeletons.
IIRC, outside of industrial models, which are reasonibly common but useless in combat, they're limited to a few gladiator models on Solaris VII, a handful of infantry units use light ones to let them carry more gear, and the taurians have a space combat model that's presumably useless for ground use.Oh, and the Bounty Hunter has his suit, and there's maybe a double handful of similar suits in all of the IS
In short, very little of real value, and what there is is very thin on the ground

It's about time my local group of players expands their rules knowledge from 'mechs to vees.

What would be some decently common combat vehicles that might be seen in a variety of forces?
My preferred era would be late SW/Clan Invasion, since that's what most of us have stuff for.

>people bitch about CGL not giving BT enough attention
>happily pirate products, making it less profitable, making it less likely that they'll put out more products

>What would be some decently common combat vehicles that might be seen in a variety of forces?
Vedette, Scorpions and missile carriers are king, of course. Maxims, Pegasi and condors are common hovercraft, with Plainsmen being not quite as common but just as widespread. For heavier tanks, the Po, Manticore, Brutus, Demolisher and Partisan are all quite common and widespread

Yeah. The Zooch's armor being better is a huge advantage.

And I'd probably spring for a Fenrir II over a Kopis if I couldn't rumble with the Zooch.

Most mercs are looking for a contract where they can sit around on the periphery edge of a major state pulling garrison duty for a decade.

>cgl puts out shit products with crappy writing, abysmal fact-checking, and minimal relevance
>expect us to keep shelling out even though their shit products are overpriced

Yeah.

Nah.

You're a cunt.

>CGL makes shit products
>/btg/ refuses to buy
I see no issue. I'm just waiting for IlClan (never).

It's their decision to push the electronic stuff. I still buy all the paper stuff minus record sheets.

>wheels
>no JJs
>motive crits
Yeah nah.

>it looks a lot like the MWO one
I'm happy and a bit disappointed all at the same time. What an odd sensation.

If you own your own DropShip, pirate hunting, either for a successor or periphery state can be a pretty good gig, if you can get a good salvage percentage (which is why the periphery states are sometimes better employers for this). Killing and salvaging even a single Wasp makes you quite a lot of money, after all, and pirates tend to be pretty easy targets

>If you're a merc with Mechs you're already mary-sue
Frankly mechs shouldn't even exist. BattleTech should be about tank armies.

please respond

This. I have a group that specializes in this, and when they have no work, resorts to raiding whoever they can get away with raiding that's not their employer; they prioritize pirate/freehold worlds that are hostile, but will also raid nearby hostile states in a pinch (with permission). I was originally gonna have them be pirates that moonlight as mercs, but the opposite way is better, since as has been stated, piracy is generally frowned on, but legitimate raiding is not (just make sure you have a 0 pay full salvage rights contract and you're good to go). Though maybe I should instead go full pirate, and just allow them to be bribed into attacking other people. That's a lot like being a merc and a lot less dealing with the MRBC.

And hands. Make sure you have a lot of mechs with hands.

Mech equipped pirates must literally only be in it for the lifestyle and not money at all. Otherwise I can't see why they wouldn't sells their mechs for millions of C-bills and retire.

Would mercs have aerospace Fighters?

Sweet.

I might try scratchbuilding a few of those, then.

Probably because they've got crappy old mechs with re-welded frames and cheap after-after-after-aftermarket parts that were obsolete 20 years before they were new.
A pirate would be lucky to get a couple hundred k for their shitty mech.

There are aerospace mercs. Most groundpounders probably subcontract air support if they need it.

>Would mercs have aerospace Fighters?
Yeah, but most don't have very many.
Very few mercs do hot drops on targets with aerospace defenses, so they don't need them so much

This but also yeah, the appeal of freebooting it is pretty high for some people. Think those folks that work jobs they love for little money, but would rather do that than make a lot but be unhappy with what they do. Pirates are like that. They believe they are good enough to flip the establishment the bird and do what they want, including stealing your toaster with their Wasp, because fuck you man.

The vast majority of pirates are wanted men; they raid because any legitimate means of living, even selling their mechs and retiring, aren't open to them

Most of them are actually the defense forces for independent worlds. They just raid to get stuff their shit level A/B tech level world can't manufacture or get through normal channels.

Here's the thing, though. You, Joe pirate, sell your wasp and retire. Problem is, you're still living out in the shit parts of the periphery, and one day, another pirate who DIDN'T sell his wasp shows up, takes all your money and stuff fyou bought with your wasp money, and shoots you. If you still had the wasp, you could fight back and have that not happen

Yeah, sure. You try it. Go ahead. Last guy that tried to make ONE fucking quality product took six times as long, cost him an arm and a leg (easily 3 times the cost of a standard TRO production) and had just as many issues.

So if you think you're gonna wait a long time for Ilclan, we'll wait even longer for your fucking ultra-fact-checked, brilliantly-written, exhaustively-edited masterpiece that sings to all BT fans everywhere causing them to burst in a jizzplosion.

Hey. Hey, asshole. I'm waiting, hurry up.

It constantly surprises me that I see almost no mercs bothering with conventional fighters. I realize you can't launch them from aerospace bays but a couple of Guardians or Jump Bombers in the closest Light Vehicle bays prepped and ready to roll the moment the doors go up and ramps go down seems like a good idea to me. Bush pilots seem like they would be a larger pool of manpower than mech jocks. And such fighters are dirt cheap too.

Making a fan TRO will naturally take longer. 3150, for example, had something like 80 people involved all told, and it's the job of some of them. Meanwhile Steve Satak had a full time job, a wife and kids, and Lord knows what else going on while doing 3063 on the side.

I don't know if it was six times the cost, that seems rather exaggerated.

>It constantly surprises me that I see almost no mercs bothering with conventional fighters
I feel similarly about civilian DropShips; they're they're just plain better for about 90% of mercs, what with the rarity of hot drops and the value of all the extra cargo space.
Personally, I came to Battletech from the Robotech tabletop RPG, so I've always had a strong mech-jet fighter association, so I always try to bring at least a squadron of conventional fighters and a bunch of VTOLs, both combat and cargo. Planetlifters can be a godsend, I tell you what, most especially for artillery. Like, a squadron of them can haul a lance of bugs, a company of rifle infantry and a few arrow IVs on trucks. Hell of a thing to surprise-dump behind the enemy