/btg/ - BattleTech General

The Cruiser-Class Cruiser.

For when you really need a space dildo that doubles as a keg.

should have said something simpler like "your mum's using it" or something. instead the end is clumsy and ruins the joke.

In BattleTech? None - there's too many projections and fins sticking off of all of them to make a good space dildo.

Now, in the Honorverse? THOSE are some genuine space dildos, for the discerning connoisseur of zero-g-optimized dick substitutes.

>no semaphore paddleships allowed
Speaking of it...

Anyone have a good picture of the original Aegis cruiser design?

News on the TRO? Are you going to show us new commissioned art?

I thought it was a serviceable enough quip.

I suppose I'm gonna go with Atreus on this one.

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Probably either the Monsoon or Vincent. Wagon wheel gets an honorable third-place mention

Triple Penetration with Purple Burd-chan.

Guaranteed pregnant. Who's the father?

Speaking of the OF, have they deleted the thread where shimmy and a few anons brutally mocked Kit yet?

>there's too many projections and fins sticking off of all of them
Something about it is endearing to their designs.

It makes sense that HH ships are designed to go up peoples' asses
Seeing as that's where those books came from in the first place

....what the fuck? Those are my ships, but I don't remember taking that picture and I don't have it on my computer.

And yes, I agree. The 2750 art style is just endearing, and I don't know why. 3057-style art is just "generic sci-fi spaceship".

I think that goes without saying, user.

Falcons are closest to Tharkad, so them, probably.
Kids gonna be raised in the Chaos March, though.

Don't know what to say, I got the pic here and saved it because it's hard to find nice pics of the classic 2750 styles.

You have screen caps of it? I think I missed it.

It's still there actually. No response since the 14th though.

>3057-style art is just "generic sci-fi spaceship".
Hell, it's BAD generic sci-fi. They look like they're the ships from a crappy RTS from 2002 that you find in the 5 dollar bin in a dusty old computer store

Although your post does remind me of how happy I was to find an unopened copy of EarthSiege 2 for $5 in a dusty old computer store in a small town.

bump it

I'm already the last post in the thread. And Kit ignored Muninn and Shimmy for easier bait.

>And Kit ignored Muninn and Shimmy for easier bait.
Of course he did, he's a complete bitch

Not yet, oddly. Not gonna directly link it in case they decide it needs to be closed, but it's the "how to" thread on the general discussion forum.

In TRO 3050 it's mentioned that the AFFC gathered all three regiments of the Eridani Light Horse, as well as the 4th & 8th Deneb Light Cavalry, 3rd Royal Guards, 17th & 20th Arcturan Guards, 10th, 11th, 19th & 32nd Lyran Guards, 11th & 12 FedCom RCTs, and 1st Kathil Uhlans.

Why didn't we get a cataclysmic battle between all those regiments and the Jade Falcons?
Instead it seems they all left and Sudeten was just defended by the Grey Death Legion.

Say all those regiments, minus the 10th Lyran Guards since it was detached for the attack on Twycross, were in place and commanded by Morgan Hasek-Davion. How many galaxies do you think the green birds would use to attack? How might such a battle go? Could Morgan outfox the Falcons?

I'm a Falcon fan but I'm interested in such a what-if scenario if AFFC could manage a win.

*Sorry, gathered those 15th regiments & RCTs on the world of Sudeten during the initial Clan invasion.

>le Army Group Sudeten meme
Hasn't this been done before? The answer is almost certainly "Morgan stomps anything short of multiple galaxies"

Sorry, I didn't know it's been discussed before, I don't think I've ever seen it in a /btg/ thread. I'll check the archives.

I should put up another blog post, shouldn't I.

News is a slow but steady trickle of donations and emails, work continues, and new teasers Soon(tm)

That screenshot always induces some serious nostalgia

>Could Morgan outfox the Falcons?
Depends on how much artillery he brought and if he could get and keep the initiative. Enough throw-weight and he could easily wreck them, and if he can keep the heat on, throwing enough beef against isolated stars and binary/trinaries, then he could probably also do it

How many of those are RCTs? Just the last two?

All the AFFC units except the 1st Kathil Uhlans are RCTs.

So if you exclude the 10th Lyran Guards on their mission, we're talking ten RCTs and four mech regiments with integrated conventional support.

It's game over for the birds unless they bring in WarShips, and even then, the FedCom would have enough fighters to massacre anything short of a battleship and probably hurt one of those real bad

By that time they'd bid away using their warships due to Turtle Bay, so it'd be a slogging match on the ground.

In my estimation it would have probably wrecked the Falcons even if they won due to the losses their front line galaxies would sustain, plus since their rate of advance was slowing anyway. It would be interesting to see how those sorts of mass losses might influence matters in the Refusal War.

>GREEN BURD limps along until getting divvied up by Hellions and Hell's Horses

HELL'S HELLIONS IS GO

Whelp. The birds are 300℅ fucked, then.
If he could somehow lure them into an extended siege, Morgan could probably eat their entire touman, without even using the mechs. Fifty plus fucking regiments of infantry and thirty plus of tanks, plus five or so of artillery all dug in? That'd be fucking impossible to crack without nukes or orbital bombardment, as the SLDF well learned from the reunification war. Hell, even if they tried that, the fighters would make it pretty damn hard, put some holes in the naval touman, on their way out
On the offensive, that'd cause immense damage even so; the artillery alone brings heat like you wouldn't believe, and by keeping his forces together, he could hit even entire galaxies at 5:1 odds, which'd be all massacre all 24/7. Plus, twenty fighter wings can carpet bomb like it's Japan 1945, after blasting whatever aircover the clanners bring with equally nasty odds.
People really underestimate the conventional units in a RCT; they're just as dangerous as the mechs, sometimes even more so.
So basically, with that giant sledgehammer of a army group, morgen could put biblical heat on the birds and pretty much anyone else who wants a go, too

I think it's more than twenty fighter wings too. At least a few of those RCTs have aerospace brigades of 4-6 wings.

Even against all the combined forces of Gamma, Delta and Vau galaxies? That's something like 15 frontline clusters plus a couple Eyrie clusters and three solahma clusters in support. Assuming the Falcon Guard and Jade Eyrie clusters are still on Tywcross.

>fear le AFFC XD

This really depends on whether you're talking fluff or tabletop, man.

At the time we literally have lightly reinforced Clusters facerolling entire RCTs in a matter of hours. Fluff-wise, the AFFC is hard-core fucked.

Trying to bring the tabletop into things completely fucks the Clan Invasion sideways since even shit-tier Podunk militias have enough artillery support to smash a Cluster by themselves, never mind an RCT.

TL;DR: The Clan Invasion really doesn't hold up once you start to think about it. For either side.

>since even shit-tier Podunk militias have enough artillery support to smash a Cluster by themselves,
Probably not, actually. The average military would probably have a company at most, not really enough to do real damage . Artillery really only goes from annoyance to armageddon when you can get a fuckton concentrated on a small target area, which is a very rare situation in battletech

on the tabletop, non-arrow IV homing artillery is useless without elite pilots direct firing or against static targets.

Artillery rounds taking several turns to arrive after calling in artillery support basically turns it into a toss up of whether it hits the correct hex or not, and a 4/5 crew only hits on the correct hex on a 11+. Spotting only reduces the to hit penalty by -1 per miss.

So yea you can have a long tom firing 30 map sheets aways, thats cool and all but in the 10+ turns for it to arrive and to hit the correct hex, the target is not only long gone, the battle is over.

>This really depends on whether you're talking fluff or tabletop, man.

This can't be repeated enough. For example:

>the FedCom would have enough fighters to massacre anything short of a battleship

Tabletop-wise, absolutely 100% true. Fluff-wise, ASFs get utterly raped by WarShips, outside of Miraborg-style kamikaze maneuvers. In WarShip fights in the fluff, ASFs might as well not even *exist* when it comes to WarShip combat. And outside of dedicated Mech-killing Vees like the demolisher, the same is largely true for Vee vs Mech combat. If you're going by universe fluff, the conventional assets of an RCT don't help against Clan Mechs, and a preponderance of IS ASFs don't help against WarShips (if they're around).

And yes, I think it's stupid. I'm not agreeing with it. I'm just pointing out that there's an absolutely tremendous disparity between a semi-balanced tabletop game, and the universe fluff where no "balance" exists in any way.

strange, could have sworn i posted this already.

Artillery is generally useless unless you use homing arrow IVs combined with TAG or are firing on static positing for a very long time, or using elite pilots direct firing on light mechs.

The +7 penalty for firing artillery indirectly is brutal. Each miss only reduces the penalty by -1, and only if the artillery doesnt move and has a spotter. A 4/5 crew hits on a 11+.

Not to mention the several turns that the artillery will take to arrive basically means that your chance of hitting the target, even with a 100% hit chance, is a pure gamble.

Yea you can have long toms firing 30 map sheets away. By the time the shells arrive, your lance might be dead. Not that it matters, because the shells would scatter anyway.

In a typical lance vs lance fight, you could have a company of long toms firing from 1 map sheet away and it wouldnt make any difference unless you get VERY lucky.

Or if you bring an unholy fuckton of it. Thirty tubes and you can have literally three hundred shells in the air when the first ones hit. With that kind of mass fire, you can pulverize an area pretty damn good. This is what the soviets knew; if it isn't guided, you had better bring a fuckton

Chose your pre-designated hexes more carefully. 5 hexes per piece and an intelligent reading of the battlefield can cover a LOT of ground. Especially now that Long Toms have a 5-hex blast diameter instead of a 3-hex diameter.

The force orgs with artillery doesn't cover all the artillery the unit has. Field guns and emplacements are a thing.

Either way your typical shit-tier Militia has a couple of Infantry regiments and some Vee battalions, mostly Vedettes and Scorpions. Hole them up in defensible terrain with your artillery and the Clans are gonna have a shit of a time breaking through the artillery rain, A/C storm, and absurd amounts of infantry thanks to the TW rule changes to how tough they are. Plus their conventional fighters.

Factor in that in fights against planetary militia the Clans were fielding a mixed Trinary or so and you can see how much worse this is going to get.

>Either way your typical shit-tier Militia has a couple of Infantry regiments and some Vee battalions, mostly Vedettes and Scorpions
What? No. On average, it's more like a battalion or two of pure rifle infantry and a company to a battalion of light armor.
>conventional fighters
A single squadron at most. Two or three ASFs would blow them outta the sky, no problem. So a standard star covering the clanner mechs could take out the air, then kill the artillery for a proper "muh batchall"

A lance vs lance fight in standard conditions can end in 10 turns or less, unless at least one player is being a cunt and jumping around with griffins into heavy woods or something.

Aren't pre-designated hexes an unofficial rule or something? And more bv in artillery just means more on board units for your opponent to overrun you with before your shells even arrive.

When did artillery blast diameter get buffed?

Field guns and emplacements arent really artillery, unless you are talking about actual artillery pieces (sniper, long tom, thumpers, arrow iv).

>A lance vs lance fight in standard conditions
Which isn't the kind of situation where massed artillery is used. It's a thing for battalion+ level fights, at the minimum

>What? No. On average, it's more like a battalion or two of pure rifle infantry and a company to a battalion of light armor.

Have a look at the forces the Clans fought some time. Seriously. That's about what they were running into according to what's in the WCSB, JFSB, and Invading Clans.

>Two or three ASFs would blow them outta the sky, no problem.

Maybe if they were grounded and shut down. A single Squadron also sounds on the low side, but whatever.

Basic point is that the Clan forces would have been wrecked if you play it out on the tabletop. The TW changes to vee and infantry survivability are bad enough by themselves but you've also got the LosTech retcons now too.

>too many fins and projections
But realistic ships would need those to dissipate heat and whatnot. Ah well, it's just Battletech anyway.

>The TW changes to vee and infantry survivability are bad enough
Uh no. The typical infantry platoon has no field guns (unlike what most people use on the tabletop) and only auto rifles and up to 2 support weapons (probably SRM launchers) per platoon. That has no ability to hurt the typical mech in most conditions.

A single clan mech can take on an entire lance of vedettes or scorpions with barely a scratch, more if its actually trying to stay at long range.

And in the fluff we have factors like morale too, a conventional infantry company is probably going to rout after a single elemental points eats half of them for lunch while auto rifles do jack shit against armor designed to stop a PPC.

Who plays battalion level fights on the tabletop?

Conventions?

>When did artillery blast diameter get buffed?

Long Toms, specifically, got errata'd to deal 30 damage to the target hex, 20 to each adjacent hex, and 10 to each *further* adjacent hex. Which makes a 5-hex total diameter. Snipers and Thumpers also got a damage buff, but it didn't increase their blast radius.

Re: predesignated hexes, I'd actually have to go back into TW and look. That rule has definitely appeared in print (ie, it's not "unofficial"), but I don't know if it's a TW-era rule or not. I think it disappeared in the move from BMR to TW.

Artillery is a moot point anyway. HE bombs from massed conventional fighters are the most BV efficient way to wipe out Clanners, regardless. It's also one of the least fun way to actually play a game, but as long as we're theorycrafting...

Cincy. Toronto. CA's boys. I think a group in the UK does too

So nobody who actually matters a damn, then?

If any real battletech players play games at that scale, let us know.

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>Uh no. The typical infantry platoon has no field guns (unlike what most people use on the tabletop) and only auto rifles and up to 2 support weapons (probably SRM launchers) per platoon. That has no ability to hurt the typical mech in most conditions.

You are aware that Infantry take fuck all damage from 'Mech weapons now, and if they're on the defensive you can expect emplacements and field guns, right?

Or are you just going to keep trading it up to pretend you have even the vaguest idea of what you're talking about?

Wait, I think I can answer that.

>Uh no. The typical infantry platoon has no field guns (unlike what most people use on the tabletop) and only auto rifles and up to 2 support weapons (probably SRM launchers) per platoon. That has no ability to hurt the typical mech in most conditions.

You are aware that Infantry take fuck all damage from 'Mech weapons now, and if they're on the defensive you can expect emplacements and field guns, right?

Or are you just going to keep tarding it up to pretend you have even the vaguest idea of what you're talking about?

Wait, I think I can answer that.

Hey /btg/, are there any youtube channels worth watching for Battletech?

I'm trying to build introductory lances for me and a couple of friends to start playing giant robots with.

Do you build them by tonnage, or "bv"?

Because I was thinking of building them with an assault, heavy, medium, light lineup, along with a 240 maximum tonnage limit.

No idea how to balance a clan equivalent though.

Ouchies has a lot of BT batreps that are pretty good: youtube.com/user/Sorrigan

BV is the best route.
Tonnage is only viable for introtech only, with designs of similar levels of optimization and only for extremely rough comparison.
BV is 100% the way to go. 3500 is a good total for introtech lances, plus or minus 100 or so

I see. Are there any online, mobile friendly applications one could use to calculate these BV setups?

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Here, try this. NEA made it last year.

>>ditch my 2 bugs for something punchier

Phoenix Hawk, Griffin (perhaps the -1S model for more close-in power) and Wolverine are all solid choices.

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>recce
CF Detected

When did that errata happen?

Not that I'm aware of, but you could use Megamek or SSW to calculate the BVs.

How many emplacements and field guns do you think militia have on a company level

4 or 5 years ago, IIRC. It was one of the first few artillery erratas, maybe about the same time as when they reduced artillery scatter to something resembling sanity.

But don't you enjoy playing WWI in space?
Oh, who am I kidding. WWI artillery was probably more accurate than BT artillery.

>But don't you enjoy playing WWI in space?

Funny thing. The reason Ben said that they changed the artillery rules is because they had a group firing artillery and had the shots land BEHIND the firing unit. The original TacOps scatter rules was (IIRC) 1d6 hexes of scatter per point of MoF. Get a 20-hex indirect-fire shot (hitting on 11s as mentioned upthread) and roll snake eyes. 9d6 averages out to about THIRTY hexes of scatter.

Lots of scatter is fine. To a point, more scatter is more fun. Or being able to hit your own units with artillery is fine. Hell, having artillery land on itself is fine. Having artillery scatter so it can land behind itself is completely bullshit.

Numerous revetments and fixed defences around targets of military value (ie, where you'd want to defend). Field guns dependant on how valuable a planet is, but again at least a few especially for defending valuable locations.

Alright/btg/, let's get back to mechs:
Post your 8K BV army lists, up to 3062-era

I don't see any damage change in the tacops errata....

Dude, it was long enough ago that even Sarna has it up to date. sarna.net/wiki/Long_Tom_Artillery_Piece

>The reason Ben said that they changed the artillery rules is because they had a group firing artillery and had the shots land BEHIND the firing unit.
That's a pretty impressive headwind. Serves 'em right for having a battle during a hurricane, eh?

To restart some actual BT discussion, I received a couple of BT models today, including a pack of Elementals.

How would you base them?
I'm currently torn between 3 per-base, giving me 10 stands, or 5 per-base (the canon amount), giving me 6 (more populated) stands.

I'm thinking 5 per base would look better, but I'm not sure how often I'd want to field more than a Star of Elementals, especially with Alpha Strike gaining some traction locally.

TacOps, pg 180, under the heading of "Pre-Designated Hexes". Though as many things in TacOps, it's an "if all players agree" thing.

So what Sarna has it? TacOps errata says 25/15/5.
I cant find 30/20/10 anywhere.

I would field two or three per base. 5 looks quite cluttered imo.

I remember this from a few months ago. Talking about a mech like this. Think it got the moniker goth.
someone made this chop

sarna doesnt take precedence over the rule books or errata dude.

SO maybe give me some source for that?

I ended up varying things a bit; two bases with five, two bases with four and four bases with three Elementals.

Now to put on the basing paste on them and the lance of Panthers I also received...

>lance of Panthers

Very honorabru.