Battletech General: Real Man Edition

Were there any specific periphery variants of the TRO:3025 mechs?
Like the Warhammer-6K or Pixie-1D, but for the periphery

Alt-history question:

How successful would a Marian invasion of the MoC be if they got ballsy and decided to hit them within a couple years('42) of the Andurien Secession instead of just raiding the shit out of them?

Do ultra/ac cluster over the amount of shots fired? A friend i was playing with was saying an ultra ac 20 rolls on the cluster table in the 20 column with the damage in groups of 2. when I read the rules it seemed like the cluster was based on the amount of rounds going out, in the UA 20s case that would be 2, so it rolled on the cluster table under the 2 column with a chance of 1 or 2 hits.

Off the top of my head, the Banshee 3MC was made by the Magistracy.

And the Marians slapped rockets on a lot of 3025 mechs, such as the Locust 1V2, but of course those weren't around during the Succession Wars era if that's what you're looking for.

You are correct, two shots at 20 damage a piece.

Maybe your friend was confusing it with the LBX 20 when firing cluster, as that would be rolling the 20 column in 1 point damage groups.

Anywhere near the border with lyrans. Youre bound to salvage a zeus or some other scout.

The whole point for ultras is to miss, jam, and on occasion deal double damage. your friend has made some kind of bastardized lbx.

Okay, so, uh... I ordered the following from our eastern comrades;

Battlemaster, Mauler, Victor, Awesome, Orion, Dragon, Cataphract, Jaegermech, Hunchback, Cicada, Blackjack, Trebuchet, Commando, Raven, Spider and Locust.

Can I build starting set games out of these?

Highly doubtful. They had like two or three regiments of mechs, and they'd have to leave some at home to keep the circinians off their ass. Plus, if it looked like they were actually threatening the MoC, the Taurians would jump in and a couple regiments of mostly heavies is more than the Marians could handle

Aside from the Banshee, none that I can think of.
I could post some ideas about how their variants'd look, if it interested anyone

>have a 290 tonnage lance in mekhq
>have to fight 15 elite clan mechs totalling 870 tons

How are you supposed to win this.

By reinforcing yourself with the rest of the battalion. AtB oppositiongen is trash

>I could post some ideas about how their variants'd look, if it interested anyone
Yeah sure, just fuck my shit up sempai

>Can I build starting set games out of these?
Absolutely. What era are you looking at, and what size forces are you thinking about?

>Can I build starting set games out of these?
Outside the Mauler, you should be good.
Everything except it has introtech versions. Though you could very easily roll the Mauler as a Daboku and just ignore the CASE.

I seem to recall the -8T Awesome was a Taurian refit

I was thinking of starting with succession wars era matches, then expanding to clan invasion should the minis pique interest at my club. Our russian friends have most of the initial clan omni lineup, too.

Nope, it's a straight FWL variant, though the designation is rather misleading, like the actually-davion Locust-1M

wut

Kari Marita joined the Opacus Venatori.

Plenty, have a look at TR: 3067.

Well, here's my thinking: the MoC and OA are in a similar situation, so their refits would look similar. I would think lots of sorta-davion style "less explosive ammo, more armor and HS" refits on their heavies and assaults, ESPECIALLY the assaults; they've got maybe a double fistful in their entire militaries and they need them to last. Though, I could see the MoC building overgunned shads, like say a shad with a PPC on the shoulder and a second on the arm, no other weapons, with no JJs and half a ton less armor , like a cheap Warhammer, on the principal that even if it runs hot as hell, it can still cause a proper heavy serious trouble.
For the Taurians, I'd expect a lot of Kurita/Davion-style PPC and more HS refits, given their love of heavies and PPCs. Marauder-3Ds from the factory would make sense, though they'd stubbornly insist that it's a 100% original variant. Possibly, their shortage of media might see a lot of 4/6/4 jumpy heavies instead, as substitutes for medium troopers, if you wanted them to be unique in some way
The minor states would most assuredly be all over energy weapons/no ammo refits, seeing as they want to conserve their mechs.

>their shortage of media
*shortage of mediums
Goddamn phone autocorrect

Sagittaire, Fafnir, Thanathos to name a few. Every major conflict spawns some new designs.

If i shoot at a mech that has lost an arm in the current turn and i scatter on to that arm with my next shot what happens to the damage from my shot?

If i shoot at a mech that has lost an arm in the current turn and i scatter on to that arm with my next shot what happens to the damage from my shot?

The damage transfers as usual.

Now if shooting from the back does it transfer to the front or rear of a torso.

Rear.

So how fucked am I if I wanna mainly do fighter jets and mechs? Would I just end up bogging the game down even more with this shit?

Fighters will slow the game down a bit until you get the hang of them. After that it's not too bad.

How differently do they play from mechs? Any pros or cons?

The default rules for fighters are dumb because ANY damage at all forces them to make a PSR or crash. A 4/5 pilot will fail that PSR roughly 1/4th of the time.

Its also really easy to hit fighters because their speed doesnt affect how hard it is to hit them.

Wolf's Dragoons killed everyone, even if they tried to surrender or were too wounded to continue.

I remember it being a focus of a debate on the OF about whether or not Condition Feral was a war crime.

Last thread had us talking about the lovely MWO minis. Here's some pictures I scrounged up of them.

Apologies that some of them are rather small-ish and blurry.

Yeah I remember that discussion. Star Cap Mara trying to argue that it wasn't a war crime because the Dragoons weren't *trying* to take prisoners or some shit.

For the most part, the MWO minis from our russian friends are rather nicely scaled, only the locust seems a bit big.

And lastly a picture of the MWO warhammer someone had 3d printed. Not part of the russians catalogue, but nice to look at either way.

Not exactly
>If any unit refused a single opportunity to stand down, they were eliminated with extreme prejudice.
So they did ask politely first :-D
btw, "extreme prejudice" - remember that opening scene from Robot Jox?

Not how law and war go, but I get that's how Wolf's Fanboys choose to delude themselves.

the sad thing is there are people who think that's an argument. i hope they never serve in a military or they'll fuck up and be sorely disillusioned.

hey, I didn't say it wasn't a war crime. Hadn't read that discussion you guys mention and hadn't given it much thought before, but it is a bit harsh, I agree... just pointing out that some dumb/lucky/cowardly bastard here and there was spared - and probably got away asap, then joined first train off the planet. But yeah, those were individuals, not large units.

again, NOT an argument. Minor detail. Not defending Condition Feral. Jeeezus, suddenly it's so serious here...

Eh, to be fair, Waco and the rest started off with firebombing a city and the Home Guard. At that point, Condition Feral was the only response possible. Both sides fucked up, just the Dragoons had better PR. And y'know, didn't start it.

i didn't say it was an argument for you. if you think it's too serious then calm down.

>didn't start it by forming the AMC and attacking WoB assets off world
>didn't start it by rigging the merc trade and condemning down on their luck units to temptown, while outright blowing some units out of the sky for no reason

The Dragoons got what they had coming. Didn't start it, lol

Dragoons started it by existing and by being Clanners. Anything was justifable after that point.

It's similar to the (correct) argument that "it's not a war crime if they're Davion civvies."

Well if Davions would stop squatting on ancestral Capellan worlds like Tikonov, Chesterton and New Syrtis, we wouldn't have to keep trashing them.

fuck, I don't know if I want to go IS or Clan now

IIRC Condition Feral didn't go into effect until Wolf was found dead. As if everything else wasn't too bad until that happened.

My biggest problem with CF is that it is even a thing; instead of a bunch of the Dragoons just going apeshit from anger and grief because of all that had just happened in their own neighborhood, for some reason somebody thought the entire unit having an established SOP for going apeshit was a thing that needed to exist. I just find it stupid as hell.

ditto.

It's like saying, "Hold on guys, we're *all* going full edgemode by orders now."

>didn't start it by forming the AMC and attacking WoB assets off world
>WoB invades a number of planets in the region to start the Protectorate
>Mercenaries are totally in the wrong to stop expansionism for money.
When [insert faction here] invades, it's wrong. But when cyborg shitheels do it *and* turn off the phones, it's okay. The AMC was dumb, but "muh Blake" is dumber.

>didn't start it by rigging the merc trade and condemning down on their luck units to temptown,
I don't even. ComStar controlled MRB did the same thing, and wasn't even as polite as sending a unit to Temptown.

>while outright blowing some units out of the sky for no reason
>Muh Widowmakers
>Jump in a pirate point, all of your radios are "broken", think a Warship would escort your sorry ass to orbit.
That they walked away at all is impressive.

Oh I agree that Feral itself was stupid, but the reaction made sense. Having a special "fuck everybody" directive is retarded.

And for the record, I don't like the Dragoons, but it's tedious to see the same nonarguments presented as "proof" the Dragoons are dicks, when there are better reasons.

>Waco's Rangers start out with a massive bombing campaign and then rampaged through a city, killing as many civilians as possible
>Half the AMC are WoB turncoats
>The legitimate planetary ruler is killed and the place is over-run by WoB agents, WoB-employed mercs, and the Dragoons have no way to tell who's who
>Non-Dragoon personnel are told to stand down and GTFO while shit is sorted and given one hance to do so, with false-flag attacks continuing throughout

But it's a war crime XD. Jesus fuck. Feral wasn't nice, but what were the Dragoons supposed to do?

Oh, right, the Dragoons are hated around these parts because reasons, so they should have just lain back, thought of Kerensky, and let themselves be fucked completely.

ASFs and bombs are also very under-valued by BV for what they can do. You take the good with the bad, and learn to use them effectively instead of buzzing LB-10X emplacements at Altitude 2.

>XD
>the only options are to slaughter POWs or "be fucked completely"

Oh right, we get bleed off from the OF regularly.

They didn't take POWs, dipshit.

Anyone who wasn't a Dragoon was told to stand down or be wiped out. Anyone who they knew was involved in the massive, indiscriminate, unprovoked and utterly disproportionate massacre of civilians was killed.

They had a shoot on sight/no prisoners policy, not some fucktarded Dictum Honorum bullshit.

>WoB gets invited to help stabilize chaos march planets abandoned by everyone else
>"derp durr better call people shitheels for lack of an argument"

>widowmakers had it coming despite it not even being a crisis

>nonarguments

Really going to have to try harder. I'm sure you're poorly defending the Dragoons because you "don't like them" but put a little effort in.

>When [insert faction here] invades, it's wrong. But when cyborg shitheels do it *and* turn off the phones, it's okay. The AMC was dumb, but "muh Blake" is dumber.
Why is the only argument you can make to shit on factions instead of discussing the facts?

>calling names childishly
>forgetting that the order to not take POWs came *after* Jaime's death
Either a kid or a moron. Either way just fuck off /btg/

>all of your radios are "broken"
Are you implying they got themselves killed on purpose? Or are you minus an argument and trying to blame the victims of excessive force?

>WoB gets invited to help stabilize chaos march planets abandoned by everyone else
Sure, and when they ran out of those, the Word destabilized some planets and invaded others.

>widowmakers had it coming despite it not even being a crisis
Heave to, or get shot down. Or do you ignore air traffic control, plus a wing of response aircraft, when flying into the outskirts of a major city because your radio is out? Apparently so, in this case.

>nonarguments
"Clanners, so they deserved it" and "Existed so they deserved it." Yep, real good arguments there.

The Widowmakers jumped into a system full of armed mercenaries at a pirate point. Generally the location of choice for a planetary invasion. Then their ship started a burn for the planet, and to the Dragoons, were ignoring calls that they were violating restricted airspace, rather than having radio trouble. Next, rather than thinking "Huh, that Warship is getting real close, I wonder if it's trying to tell me something", they assume it's an escort, and continued their burn. Were the Dragoons overzealous? Yes. Were the Widowmakers fucking idiots who were lucky to survive? Also yes. But of course, this is "Dragoons are clanners, so they must be gigantic cunts" country, so the Widowmakers should have been given a parade and the Key to Outreach for showing up.

WoB were the ones *causing* the destabilisation of the Chaos March with their covert operatives, especially the Manei Domini who were revealed in the Guide to Covert Ops. The Dragoons and their intel division were getting fucked by them but trying to keep the region calmed down, and all the AMC did was fight for free if called on by legitimate planetary governments to stave off WoB aggression.

Yeah, and after Harlech was wrecked, and after the Home Guard were killed, and after numerous civilians were slaughtered.

It's not like the Dragoons rolled a D100 on a reaction chart after Jaime's death. Shit had been getting progressively worse all day and nothing they'd tried- up to and including Jaime Wolf taking to the field personally- had worked.

The Dragoons tried to communicate and fired warning shots first. The Widowmakers attempted to make planetfall and, IIRC, their planned route was to pass low over or land in the Outback, which the Dragoons had made clear for literally decades was verboten.

All they had to do was come to a halt and launch an ASF or small craft to relay communications, but nope.

>"Clanners, so they deserved it" and "Existed so they deserved it." Yep, real good arguments there.
You mean the arguments you invented?

This is literally like discussing it with an autist, Christ.

>Yeah, and after
completely unrelated to those posts

>WoB DID IT!
I think you'll find it was the Great Houses who abandoned those worlds to fend for themselves and be fought over. The AMC trying to maintain the status quo of constant warfare was a reaction to WoB being invited to form a protectorate and secure some of those worlds.

Blame the WoB for the Jihad but the Protectorate before that was a good thing and the AMC was formed to destroy it.

Are you blind, or is your head so far up your ass that you just don't bother?

>Dragoons started it by existing and by being Clanners. Anything was justifable after that point.
>It's similar to the (correct) argument that "it's not a war crime if they're Davion civvies."

I'm done with this, I've been baited enough.

>hurr they're Dragoons death is too good for them even if it's slow, painful, and public, fucking clanner fiat

Yes, it very much is. Unfortunately, you're the autist who's immune to facts and logic.

Hate on the Dragoons if you want, I couldn't give a shit. Not every faction appeals to everyone. But at least stop with the bald-faced lies.

dude are you the same autist from last thread? just fuck off with your nonsense.

>strawmanning
>inventing arguments no one made
>calling people liars
>screeching they must hate the Dragoons since they disagree with your fallacies
Top autist.

>>hurr they're Dragoons death is too good for them even if it's slow, painful, and public, fucking clanner fiat

So you admit you don't intend your posts be taken seriously?

Dragoon fanboys, man...

At this point I think it's just contrarian trolling. Notice how quick he jumped to calling names and sperging greentext?

There was asstarded greentext with those literal arguments, man. Maybe you're posting from nega-reality where the Dragoons really did all this bullshit but if you could be bothered to read the sources instead of going off OF morons and meme-posting here you'd quickly see the facts are different.

There's no point continuing the argument though since you obviously want to bitch and whine about the Dragoons and memepost about how great the WoB is, so have at it. I'm out.

So given the animal motif with the clans and the fact they build totem mechs and animal like protomechs, was elemental armor intentionally designed to resemble a toad?

Or was that just coincidence?

Elemental armour was around a long, long time before we started getting things like the Mandrill or Thunder Stallion. Probably just a coincidence.

>war crime

I thought they threw considering anything a warcrime out the window during the Sucession Wars and since?

Personally, I never got why they were called toads. Must have been the early artwork.

Because they hop around with their jump jets like frogs?

iirc elementals were based off underwater gear, and were originally designated as Water Elementals? Not explicitly toads though.

It's the torso/head shape being vaguely similar. Plus from a mech's perspective they're small and hop about.

Becasue Vic did it, and all the kids wanted to be cool like him.

Sayonara, tard.

Do they still manufacter the original diving suit the elemental was based on?

So I've been reading the old Warrior books since I haven't read them in years, and ye gods does it all come back WHY I haven't read them in years.

The Stackpole writing style. The "It's written in Capellan/He's speaking in Capellan" vs plain ol' English and not, say, Davionish. The supposedly elite Sword of Light being composed of complete pillocks, and same for the Genyosha. The DEST commandos that in the GDL books nail the rebel camp with a perfect HALO drop, stealth and gunfire, attacking everything with katanas with no guns in sight. But I very nearly threw the fucking e-reader out the window when I got to this bit (which I did not remember at all):

>A loud, screeching signal howled into his neurohelmet for a second or two before the computer cleaned it up. "Hello! Hello!" The voice, which Dan had never heard before, hesitated with the words and almost succumbed to converting the Ls into Rs. A Kuritan!

It's fucking Benny Hill all over again. Herro evelybloody!

The combat version became the Undine battle armour I think.
Fate of the original I don't know.

>vs plain ol' English and not, say, Davionish
While I agree with everything else you've said, people in the Battletech universe call French "Davion" from time to time, so there is a 'speaking davionish', it's just French and not English

A stationery LB-10X hits an altitude 5 ASF (4 after the altitude loss from striking) at medium range, -3 for cluster, +1 or +2 from angle modifiers.

Attacking any mech with a LB-10X therefore gives you roughly a 1/4th chance of crashing the fighter, before movement mods or other crits.

Doesnt even need to be a dedicated AA mech. This is pretty dumb since even 100 ton fighters crash at the same rate as a badly armored fighter.

It basically encourages people to use ASFs as sucidal bomb trucks with no weapons/armor because they are going to crash in a few LB-X shots anyway.

With the advanced atmospheric control rolls modifier, damage thresholds actually matter for ASFs. But they are still pretty easy to core because roughly 1/4th of shots will hit the rear armor of an ASF when fired from a ground unit, and that usually has very little armor.

Attacking a clan mech with ASFs is nearly sucidal as well, as even without control rolls, since large pulse lasers lets them shoot you at gunnery mod or less, and ER large lasers you at short range. While clan mechs get increased range to shoot down ASFs, ASFs with clan weapons don't get increased altitude to take advantage of their longer range so they get fucked when trying to attack ground targets.

Don't you have to make a lawndart roll for EACH PELLET that hits?
So it's actually even worse than that

pretty sure that its for each attack (so once per lb-x weapon that hits). Also pellets vs ASFs are grouped into 5 point groupings anyway.

I have to admit I don't remember French being referred to as "Davionish" at all. "Merde! Pardon my Davion" etc.

I do remember Davion English being referred to as something that I immediately associated with the posh RP or Estuary English, which does fit with the New Avalon and Camelot-on-the-Crucis theme. This was possibly in the Caballeros books.

this doesn't seem accurate, they have an AP rifle in the left arm. Elementals are also undertonned, they have about 0.12 tons of free space.

It's weird that they have so much free space given that the clans supposedly abhor waste. An elemental with 2 MGs and 3 shots of SRM-2 ammo suddenly becomes a much deadlier ranged threat, rather than a nuisance.

And burst fire BA MGs lets you do some very stupid things.

tfw can't get a good pic of the Cicada because I think the urban camo is screwing with the camera's ability to focus on it... need to go borrow a better camera.

>do remember Davion English being referred to as something that I immediately associated with the posh RP or Estuary English, which does fit with the New Avalon and Camelot-on-the-Crucis theme. This was possibly in the Caballeros books.
I think I remember that too.

ASFs require a lawn dart check if they've taken any damage during the Weapons Fire PHASE. Hit it with 1 pellet for 1 point of damage total? 1 PSR. Hit it with 200 pellets from 18 different LBXs? 1 PSR.

The trick with ASFs is that they suffer stacking penalties to their PSR based on the total damage dealt. So whereas if you do 21 or 210 damage to a Mech, it's only got a +1 penalty to its PSR; on an ASF, 20-39 damage is a +1 penalty, 40-59 is a +2, 60-79 is a +3, and so forth.

On top of that, just "taking damage in an atmosphere" is a +2 penalty to that PSR. The fact you're an ASF gives you an inherent -1 bonus (so it's a net +1 penalty over your base Piloting on all Lawn Dart checks), but 5-rated pilots are still insanely crash-prone. Do note that the Demo Team has a universal rule for their events that ASF pilots swap their Piloting and Gunnery skills for a given value: a Regular ASF pilot is a 5 gunner, 4 pilot. This goes a TREMENDOUSLY long way toward balancing ASFs; it discourages 1-hot bomb trucks because you're less likely to hit with your 1 shot, and it makes flying ground support not *quite* as actively suicidal.

Finally, ASFs are one of those parts of the game that either is useless or dominates the meta. There's not much middle ground. If you can't/won't change the way you build forces and play to deal with ASFs, they dominate. If you do, then they tend to get caught in C3-assisted flak nets and shredded on their first pass. The errata no longer requiring LOS to Hex 0909 to shoot at them (if you aren't the target of the ASF) went a HUGE way towards nerfing ASFs. All you need is a LOS to their *flight path* on that map.

>But I very nearly threw the fucking e-reader out the window when I got to this bit (which I did not remember at all):
>>A loud, screeching signal howled into his neurohelmet for a second or two before the computer cleaned it up. "Hello! Hello!" The voice, which Dan had never heard before, hesitated with the words and almost succumbed to converting the Ls into Rs. A Kuritan!
yeah I was triggered as fuck by that too