Battletech General: The Man Who Sold The Free Worlds League Edition

ha ha butte hold
>implying this isn't best girl

Collision did nothing.

are there any (non-russian) eastern-european themed merc units in battletech?
I've been drinking with croatians all day and I just realized the lack of that sort of thing in battletech

Fury Protomechs when? Can you actually crowbar a Flamer onto a proto?

>Can you actually crowbar a Flamer onto a proto?
Yeah, 1.25 tons.

Excellent, So that would most likely be two Flamers and Jump Jets, if you could mount all that on a tiny babby proto.

>''''''''Free''''''''
>''''''''Worlds''''''''
>''''''''League''''''''

Andurien pls.

What was that?

Wolf cucked the sphere. Alaric did! He took an Wolf army to Terra. There was NO ONE left to cuck, da wimmiz wuz his.

>that map
Derp Age is such a hot mess

cucked. what a shitty word

damn, green dorito is going strong

Green factions best factions.

>Derp Age
I love this meme

After a few years it grows on you.

Besides being an accurate descriptor of the era. WizKids babbies get bent.

>Besides being an accurate descriptor of the era
I love this meme even more. What's next? "I like to read BT novels" or something?

Take your obsession with meme culture back to /v/.

I dunno man, you seem to be the expert.

Serious question. Have you actually read the Dark Age stuff? Because unless you're really into ETERNAL XIN SHENG or BEARS R BEST fapfiction it has very little to recommend it and even less that makes sense.

Friendly reminder to update the OP with new products, even if shitty products

TtS: Promise Land
mediafire.com/download/58qc4n2owy2gsb7/E-CAT35SN206_BattleTech_Touring_the_Stars_Promised_Land.pdf

>implying there's something wrong with the Confederation or Bears
Is this some local meme? House Liao has always been the most interesting Successor State.

I didn't think they could get worse but boy was I wrong.

Can they just accelerate the plot and stop with the stupid random planet crap?

I don't read game books. I like Dark Age because it offers the best gameplay in the series. Why would I care if you don't like Princess X fuck Regent Y or if Khan W is an incest-boy when the rules are good? All you need in a wargame are the units and a background to put these units fighting each other. Complaining about fluff makes me wonder if you want to create BattleTech threads on Veeky Forums instead of Veeky Forums

took a while to make this b8

>I like Dark Age because it offers the best gameplay
I love this meme

>getting triggered over an old nickname
That sure showed them you're not a butthurt faggot.

I agree, Dark Age is the best. Take the fluff in broad strokes and don't worry too much about the specifics - it's all propaganda in a fictional universe anyway.

Why is "Derp Age" so controversial in BT? Is it because of ClickyTech? Or the Coleman effect?

A lot of our newer players came in with the clicky stuff so they're loathe to criticize it. Plus it's the mindless video game generation so they're not really into story or putting thought into their games. More the CoD effect than anything to do with Coleman.

Solely because of clickytech. That 1) introduced a new collectible game that looked at the start as if it were going to replace/kill off old BT, and played very differently to it, and b) completely overhauled the fluff in a way that (again, at first), had a lot of breaks in continuity to the old game and, minus the fleshing out that would come later, looked absolutely fucking bonkers. That weirdo little splinter sect of ComStar taking on all the great powers and the Dragoons at once, the Great Houses seemingly missing, industrialmechs all over the place: it was one hell of a break with the past.

It's not like WoB's crusade wasn't telegraphed in years ago. That was the least of anything jarring.

>mindless video game generation
>CoD effect
you are the reason people like vroom-vroom came to us all those years ago

>defending CoD
>implying that garbage hasn't had a detrimental effect on tabletop gaming
Your pic sums your own post up rather well.

When building or modifying warships is there anything in construction to consider besides total available tonnage?

>implying i care about CoD enough to defend it
>implying all video games narratives are trash
try ditching that negative attitude, bud

But...I hate the Republic era, I do objectively like dick, and my partner spanked me very hard last night. Isn't "butthurt faggot" literally the correct description?

Sorry, but this game isn't casual anymore. Maybe you should go find another game to play like Call of Duty where its a little easier for you. Of course, you could always adapt to the challenging rules. This is the way BattleTech would have been played way back in 1984, but I'm sure you're a modern gamer who wasn't around back then.

>Can they just accelerate the plot

Honestly? No. I'm pretty sure the plan was to put the plot on hold until they could find a way to advance it without alienating any significant part of the player base.

I'm honestly not sure what the fuck you're trying to say here.

The gist of it seems to be that you're a salty grognard who can't stand them lousy kids these days, what with their vidja gaems and cellular phones and roller-skates.

I'd say you're baiting, but your post is so poorly and haphazardly laid out that I legitimately cannot tell.

Fluff issues*** aside - BattleTech's *always* had issues with fluff - MechWarrior: Dark Age was a collectible game. Collectible games are a fucking cancer, and that's a term *I* do not use lightly. I watched a guy buy a case of boosters and get nothing but fucking IndustrialMechs except for a *single* actual Mech (...Catapult, maybe?). If nothing else, negative gameplay and collectibility issues during the initial run of the game soured a LOT of people on the game, and predisposed them to hate everything about it, including the storyline.

***There ARE actual fluff issues, though, insofar as Weisman deliberately wasn't trying very hard to figure out the "how" of "how we got from 3067 to Dark Age". They literally thought it wasn't ever going to really matter, since BattleTech was "dead". CGL's done an OK job of backfilling and "polishing the turd", but the initial look people got back in...2002?...was really, really bad.

>Sorry, but this game isn't casual anymore.

I mean, for god's sake, if *I* of all people can recognize your bait...

except clickytech has been dead for almost ten years

seriously, CBT stands on the precipice of a new age, and age of new players unsullied by memories of shitty plastic mechs in blind boosters, ready to enjoy the freedom of choosing what shitty/good metal/resin mechs they want to order from IWM/Russia

Not the fact that they did it, but the fact that they were so good at it, that they were able to fight so man and so well. It took a long long time before we understood just how it was they were able to do it: WMDs, playing off inter-House factionalism, the mass arming detailed over several books that weren't out when the clicky game came out. I remember a lot of disbelief at the time that took years to dissipate.

They were so good at it because they fought the way people should fight: using false-flags, force multipliers, denial of area tactics, being strategically flexible by opting for local superiority in operations, etc.
Really it just highlighted how dumb most of the Successor States were. And the mass arming thing started years before Dark Age.

This.

I really hope they saw what happened to another ancient, surprisingly loved setting recently that was replaced and took notes on the backlash.

Salvaging the current mess into something to go forward from would take effort that make retconning the Jihad into something passable look like a few lazy weekends of work.

So, it's on hold forever, isn't it?

It's like 3067 all over again, baby

Learn to love it.
Because if they go charging ahead, you'll probably regret wishing for change.

Now you've got it.

>IlKhan Never

Yes, I know. My point is that this wasn't detailed when the Wizkids started out, not that it didn't happen at all. And the mass arming thing was merely hinted at, in books like TR3067, not really detailed the way we got in the post-clicky Jihad sourcebooks. It's a big leap to go from, "hmmm, some shipments of unspecified size seem to be being rerouted to unknown sources" to "takes on the Houses". That leap, which wasn't covered at the start, is where a lot of the game's initial unpopularity amongst the old-school fanbase came about (in addition to all that other stuff I already covered). Combine this with the appearance of the Sphere and the stories of mass disarmament, and much of the universe didn't seem believable anymore. The writers did a much better job later filling this in, but even they've said that they saw their job as wrestling with the shitshow that wizkids handed them.

NEA, do you have any pdfs of fleet TO&Es?

I've been reading the Liberation of Terra series and have warships on the mind.

>NEA, do you have any pdfs of fleet TO&Es?

The canon ones? Not really, I usually just go look at my sourcebooks (and we don't have enough information on pretty much any of the LoT-era fleets to create a complete OOB for any given faction). If you mean the alternate OOBs I did for WoB, C*, and the SLDF at some user's request, I can post them up if you'd like.

Any fan-made ones are fine.

...

...

(apologies for the filenames; I tag stuff I make just for /btg/ like that so I can find it easier)

These are cool. Do you have more?

I don't; the other modern IS factions (aside from the FWL) don't really have "fleets" per se as they have a couple of task groups at best. There's not a lot of point to doing a Davion fleet writeup when all they've got is a half-dozen Avalons and a ton of Foxes, for example.

In the case of the FWL, their actual fleet organizational scheme is perfectly valid, save for the mild confusion over what actually constitutes a Thera task group.

I'd love to do it for the older factions (2750-era Davion, for example), but AFAIK we don't have the sort of complete hull listing by class we'd need to actually do the project.

Sorry, I meant if you had TO&Es for warship games you've done. I assumed you might.

The blueprints date back to before the Star League fell.

I think you're confused.

Ooooohh...

Ah, I don't normally keep those around for 1-offs, but I do have the OOB for a naval game I ran several years ago as part of an ongoing campaign. The PCs were an SLDF Mech unit that got caught on Terra during the Amaris Coup, and had to escape the system. (note: the periphery-flagged units in the scenario were "interned" in Sol space, but were mainly there to make the scenario more interesting, while the Davion ship was there for major plot reasons). All of the "unknown" P/G scores are 4/4.

This was a low-complexity scenario intended for people relatively new to WarShip combat, which is why there's very low numbers of parasite craft. I don't recall what the Rim Worlds DropShip classes were, but I'm reasonably sure they were assault ships of some sort.

Neat. The Canopian contingent is huge relative to their fleet. Were they part of Amaris' machinations?
The Anguirus and Saint Martinian are meant to be SLDF warships subverted by Amaris too?

>SC
>LC
>CR
>LSM
Unfamiliar with this ones. I'm guessing LC is just Light Cruiser, CR is generic Cruiser.

Are these mechs reasonable to find in a post-Tukayyid solahma formation?

>AS7-D Atlas, CP-11-A Cyclops, IMP-2E Imp, ON1-V Orion, FFL-4B Firefly
>GHR-5J Grasshopper, TDR-9SE Thunderbolt, OSR-2M Ostroc, SDR-5K Spider, MCY-97 Mercury

Yeah, I don't know what the hell I was thinking on some of those.

>SC
No clue. Should be BC for Battlecruiser.

>LC
Light cruiser indeed. See below.

>CR
Cruiser. Since BattleTech differentiates between "light", "heavy", and "regular" cruisers, whereas the real world just had light cruisers and armored cruisers, I needed something between LC and CA (I know "CA" means "Cruiser, Armored", but that's close enough to a heavy cruiser to work).

>LSM
This one actually makes a LITTLE sense. "Landing Ship, Mech". Because the Robinson is basically an assault ship in the "Marines" terminology. It's a transport ship intended to directly support its embarked cargo during an invasion.

>Landing Ship, Mech
Hey, that does make sense. Reminds me of that one Drac warship devoted to carrying 108 mechs.

>Implying a solahama formation should have mechs.

The Robinson is actually canonically a major inspiration for the Dracs Kyushu-class frigate. The Dracs captured a couple of Robinsons (IIRC, Block I's) and took them apart; those findings later got used as the primary source for the post-Tukayyid WarShip designers.

As the Successor States lost certain technologies, they could no longer build 'Mechs which relied on those technologies - but that doesn't mean they lost all blueprints, molds etc for those 'Mechs. So when the Helm Core was decoded, Irian could restart production of high tech Guillotine and Hermes, Kathil could restart production of high tech Marauders, etc.

On which point do you think I'm confused?

Muh Falcons do and always have.

They were discussing a specific variant made in a specific year, which was then simultaneously made available to another faction because it had captured a factory two decades earlier that made different variants of said mech. As another user observed, it was bad fact checking for the TRO.
Your confusion lies in the nature of what's being discussed. I hope it's gone now.

You're taking it for granted that the MUL has the date right, which isn't guaranteed. Dates of "3049" especially (as with the GRF-3M) originated as placeholders for when the proto-MUL had no better data available.

...or is blaming the TRO's fact-checkers for a date retroactively assigned by a different group of fact-checkers twenty years later, in fact, the joke?

In which case, yeah, mea culpa, mea culpa, 2subtle4me.

>That leap, which wasn't covered at the start, is where a lot of the game's initial unpopularity amongst the old-school fanbase came about
Remember how the very first hints of basically anything to do with the background of the DA were those shitty Touring The Stars articles online?
That was one of the more aggravating fluff things they did, from what I remember of those days

>everything is b8
Stupid fuck

I actually tend to point out the MUL is not infallible.
The observation of yet one more error just works as a better reasoning than anything offered.

Don't fall for it, he had nothing left but to cry wolf first.

Interesting. It's a shame the massive planned Drac fleet never happened.

Where do you buy your minis from? Closest gaming store closed down recently.

Following a discussion I saw last thread about the Davions putting Rifleman mechs in front line units because of a lack of heavy mech industry, I looked at the books from back when. It surprised me somewhat to see that the Davions had a mech industry second only in shittiness and/or lack of numbers to the Capellans. Given the size and potency of the AFFS I had expected more, but I suppose necessity is the mother of innovation.

>Given the size and potency of the AFFS I had expected more
The davions have lots of good mediums, for one thing.
Also, basically the whole schtick of the pre-fedcom AFFS was professionalism making up for lousy gear. Basically the canadian army in space.
Part of what made the FedCom so terrifying was that it opened the door for the poorly-equipped but skilled units of the AFFS to be reequipped with really good shit

FRP Games. Just don't trust the pre-release dates.

Do we have mech weight distribution charts for any eras past 3025? I feel like later eras would have a lot more heavy and assault mechs than 3025 did, but I can't really find anything on it

-Higher SI = More amour.
-Use NACs for raw damage, NPPCs for range.
-Missiles are pretty bad.
-Always carry a Large Naval CSS. Carry a HPG if you can.
-You can't mount enough armour to significantly slow ASFs down or enough guns to actually threaten them unless you're building a Leviathan II, so be prepared for the inevitable outcome.

Is this a 3060s SLDF Fleet? I'm guessing so from the designation and the Avalons. Though the huge amount of Achilles is throwing me.

I have no idea what's going on with the Avalons given the rest is SLN, but the Achilles is from 2582.

Fleet's user here, those were from an alternate Jihad game my group did last year. I asked NEA to organize some of the ships up into a fleet and he gave us an SLDF style formation which worked well.

It is beyond me why the Combine decided to take a longer route to New Avalon like they did.