/btg/ - Battletech General

>Victor looked over at Andrew Redburn. "You can see now, Andrew, why I can't blame my sister for Morgan's death, even though I would love to. Since we have no smoking gun to implicate her, there is no purpose served by even letting a rumor of her involvement slip out And, if the Blakists are behind this, shutting down the discord within our returning forces will frustrate them."

>"I can see that, Highness, and I agree." Worry furrowed Redburn's brow. "But what are we going to say about Penrose? Everyone knows he did it. Now we're just waiting for the why."

>Victor allowed himself a careful smile. "Back in the war of 3039, the First Kathil Uhlans did some fighting on Quentin, then were pulled off and the Combine took the world. Turns out Penrose was from Quentin—or will be once his files are morphed—and lost his mother, father, and the rest of his family there. He blamed Morgan Hasek-Davion for the death of his family and planned revenge. He moved to the Lyran half of the Commonwealth and, being an orphan, Loki welcomed him in, He hoped to get close to Morgan soon thereafter, but the Clan invasion kind of killed those plans. He'd given up hope, left the service, joined,ComStar and, as his luck would have it, got assigned to the task force. There his training came in handy and he got his revenge."

>The Elemental smiled. "I have never before heard a lie more smoothly constructed."

>Focht laughed. "It also explains why he wanted to implicate the Combine in the murder, since it was their conquest that killed his family. It will work and our files will be adjusted to show his personality profile did show him to be a borderline paranoid, but who isn't these days, with the Clans and all?"

>The Prince glanced over at Focht. "That could hold ComStar up to some heat for Morgan's death."

>"It is a storm we will weather."

>Victor looked to Redburn and Tiaret. "Any objections to that story?"

>Tiaret shook her head, but Redburn hesitated. "You're not going to be forgetting to get to the bottom of the mystery just because you've got a cover story, are you?"

>Victor swallowed hard against the lump that materialized again in his throat. "You have my word, Andrew, that Morgan's death will not go unavenged. When we find out who did it and get him, if you want to pull the trigger, you've got the job."

So... this is the power of... Victor promising to look into Morgan's death, eh? Not bad...

Vic's no Sir Alexander Dane.

>Has anyone ever played a scenario that involved fortifications?
I have yes. The biggest problem with them is that you either can airdrop troops on to the fort, as said, or you bomb the shit out of the fort, or ignore it. Since the average combat zone for a BattleMech regiment can be a continent, I can just leave you holed up in your base while I tear up the surrounding countryside. Pic related is a map of a game I ran for my players using BattleForce. Each hex is ~20km. The First and Third Hastati battalions were holed up in bases trying to repair and refit, while the PC regiment and the other battalion had to pin down the Vegan Regulars company before they retreated back to Draconis lines.

>Are there any canon examples beyond the usual big bunker under a mountain with turrets?
Statted? No. But we have a lot of descriptions of bases and so forth that are "normal" bases. The problem with these is that unlike a Castle Brian or a Pseudo Brian like Mount Davion is that WarShips give no fucks about air defenses, and the orbital guns from Mech Commander are functionally impossible.

So, i was thinking about buying some 6mm Merkavas, Buratinos, Marders and other modern vehicles and shit like that to proxy bt vehicles with. Is it a bad idea?

>Statted? No
The free Hexpack Promotion 1 is all fortified building for bases actually, with full stats including BV. They're listed on the MUL even.

Some of them aren't much a threat to anything though, armed with only infantry support weapons, though the best of them do have some nasty armament, and could be an issue on the scale of a normal BT game if they were used.

But in the end, they're still immobile targets, and even gun emplacements and fortified structures halving damage means they won't last too long, especially once the armor is stripped they start taking crits.

Nope, already had some folks that have posted their GHQ standins. Go for it.

>>The free Hexpack Promotion 1 is all fortified building for bases actually, with full stats including BV. They're listed on the MUL even.
Mmm. I never bothered to get the hexpacks, so I wouldn't know. Cool though.

>Or I bomb you with thermobarics while you sit inside a fort that is now exploding AND on fire

Do people really imagine themobaric bombs to be like explodium Napalm?

>dat javelin tho
user, thanks for that art. Just when I thought I couldn't be harder, you proved me wrong.

Doesn't matter what they imagine. It just matters what the rules are.

The writers are about 95% likely to have been listening to slavaboos when they were writing about thermobarics, so basically yes

I've seen pictures of people using freakin pokemon figures for stand-ins for battlemechs.

Don't worry too much about it.

Have you seen the Thermobaric rules? Mechanically they're better than normal bombs and have a chance to set shit on fire, and the overpressure fucks up infantry.

>Want to learn Battletech.
>No one in my area plays.
>Closest shop is in Houston, over 100 miles away.
>Can't convince my friends to try since they couldn't care less about non-mecha mechs.

I know Megamek is a thing, but is there like a tutorial or something on how to actually play Battletech? I've started to read the rulebook, but it'd be nice to have something more formal on the off-chance I do find a group.

>a tutorial or something on how to actually play Battletech
That'd be handy. It basically seems to be a game that requires you learn from someone else, which is rough for folks in your position. Best thing I can recommend is to read the rules in the IntroBox (which is what I assume you have) and to play out the intro scenarios yourself (just run both mechs). it's non-ideal, but it'll get the job done for you learning how the game mechanically functions.

Seriously though, try to find less shit friends or take the day trip to the shop in Houston and try to find someone there.

Also, where are you that the nearest gaming store is 100 miles away? 100 miles from Houston with no gaming store is either Mexico, the middle of the Gulf, or space.

IIRC, Ouchies has a short series of BT tutorial vids on youtube as well.

The assault on Ft. Bourgoine in the Big Mac scenario book is exactly what you want. And that sort of fortification does seem to be the kind of heavy base built during the 3rd war when there were no SLDF facilities to repurpose and you weren't a capital world.

>orbital guns from Mech Commander are functionally impossible.
This is actually one of the best uses for the subcap lasers. They can tag targets in orbit from the ground. And their weight and such don't mean shit on fixed fortifications.

Maybe Galveston? Can't be Beaumont as there is a game store there AND they stock Battletech. Or at least they still did when I passed through back in 2013.

Only thing I can find in Galveston is a board game shop (sounds comfy actually), but that's it, yeah. I found stuff in most other decent sized towns near Houston, so probably that.

>This is actually one of the best uses for the subcap lasers. They can tag targets in orbit from the ground. And their weight and such don't mean shit on fixed fortifications.
Right, but the ones from MechCommander were mobile and only slightly larger than two Mechs. So while you can build fixed bases, you lose the fun of mobile subcap laser cannons.

You can mount them on mobile structures too. The Rattler II mounts them and it wouldn't be tough to fab up something much smaller and more reasonable for mobile laser spam.

Seems most of the states prefer missile satts and aerospace for space defense though.

Oh man, the Big MAC. I've never cared much for the CapCon as a whole, but they've long been one of my favorite mercenary units. That scenario book is kick-ass, too. I actually kinda want to replay some of those scenarios in megamek, now

The Big Mac are one of the reasons I enjoy the Confederation.

They were willing to stick it out with the Confederation after the Fourth Succession War and were rewarded for it.

Plus as I learned, their leader Archibald was quite the businessman and had no great love for the Davions.

So what might happen if they put a Star Colonel in charge of a restaurant?

Call it Bargained and Well Done.

You could pay for your meal, or fight the chef in a Trial Of Possession to try and get it for free

>So what might happen if they put a Star Colonel in charge of a restaurant?
Anniversary dinners are right out, that's for sure

I'm smack in the middle between Houston, Corpus, and San Antonio. There's a local shop here that's opened and closed throughout the years, right now it only carries MTG and retro video games.

When I used to play Warhammer, I'd drive to Sugarland about once a month to find a game, but I just hated traveling all that way to play a couple of matches in a GW store.

I'll check these out, hopefully I can learn a thing or two.

...

>smack in the middle between Houston, Corpus, and San Antonio
Fuck, seriously? You're in the deadland. I lived in Dallas for awhile and saw most of Texas, and holy shit, you are screwed, user. My sympathies, try to get an airlift to anywhere else.

Ouchies Batreps are pretty enjoyable btw, you can learn a lot from that guy.

I only brought up fixed defenses because of the common assumptions of Battletech warfare seem to leave room for them( ie there are very few WarShips, most planetary attacks do not involve WarShips, Aerospace assets are much more expensive than AAA assets, and attackers have better equipment and better pilots than the defending militia). If you've got an enemy WarShip in orbit and you don't have swarms of Aerospace fighters, there's nothing you can do to prevent loosing badly. If they don't have a WarShip, then some quality time with a bulldozer could make the massacring of the local militia somewhat more lengthy. If the militia doesn't have a dozen AC-2s covering their base they deserve to be bombed back to the 3rd SW. It hardly matters that the raiders have Clan-tech weapons and

Why couldn't the Big Mac have been honourable and defected like the Northwind Highlanders?

10/10

The problem is artillery. Not very useful against mechs in the field (guided munitions excepted), but if you decide to hole up somewhere, you make it very easy for the attackers to decide that it's howitzer o'clock and pound you into the ground

So that's what a Lyran traffic rush must be like then.

Large support vehicles can mount them too, though the weights mainly restrict you to large naval vessels I beleive. A big sub probably would be one of the best platforms, if only because it can be easy to hide from orbital eyes until the last moment.

Mobile structures can actually mount full scale capital guns as well, though this means it would have to be pretty big.

>It hardly matters that the raiders have Clan-tech weapons and

Fixed defenses being bypassed is a story older than history. With FASA-nomics it's impossible to defend everything you've got on a planet, even ones as ridiculously centralized as BT's are. Fortifications are for places you have to defend and that you know the enemy will want (starport, mech factory, rail yard, usurper's palace). Something is only worth defending if you are willing to put 2 companies of vees and supporting infantry on it. If it isn't worth that than why bother defending it all since they'll be rolled over by a Leopards worth of mechs, just let it go (or booby trap that booty). If what you're defending can't be moved or hidden, then why not use some combination of water, rough terrain and physical obstacles to restrict enemy movement around it and construct fighting positions to maximize the value of your defenders. Artillery can harass enemies outside of your bases assuming you've got spotters and you'll want spotters since indirect fire arty can be protected by LOS blocking walls or pits from ERPPC sharpshooters.

"Build WALL!" is by no means an infallible plan but by shaping the battlefield strikes me as a cheap way to stick it to those space gallivanting no-good-niks who won't get off your lawn.

Buying? 15 dollars a set

link?

Which one of you is responsible for this?

It'd be interesting if someone showed up to a game carrying some of those in a Crown Royal Bag.

We already talked about how crap they are.

After reading some of the BT novels, I'm actually sympathetic to Sun-Tzu now. Reading how he's given the Stackpole treatment it feels just to know he later craps on most of the other major IS characters.

He is definitely one of the more interesting leaders in the Inner Sphere.

Especially given the situation he inherited.

Battlecorps, better wait for a reliable store

yah, no kidding. I'll keep my eyes open

TAG+ArrowIV is going to wreck face versus militia no matter what ie the guy who brings a real military wins. As for vees getting kicked around like it's the World Cup, is there a rule preventing vees from shooting a mech not in their hex when there is a mech in theirs, because the vees should be covering their platoon-mates. Ideally, the defender would have mechs to bring to the hex-stack battle but poor militia is poor so likely the best you get is a range 0 infantry platoon. BT infantry (& BA too) are generally worthless because they are slow and short-ranged. Bringing the enemy into a close quarters battle inside a fort reduces those drawbacks measurably.

Have you ever used nuclear weapons in your games, /btg/?

No, despite owning a beautifully painted Great Turtle to bomb. Life is suffering.

Samurai Dragon, best Dragon
Kentares IV best day of my life!
because without faction-posting \btg\ is dead

I've used them as plot points in campaigns a few times, but never on the table; never been a especial fan of the jihad or any of the other 'loltotalwar' eras.
Hell, I don't even detonate them much as plot points, more using them as a "destroy the nuke before they set it off/track the nuclear arms shipment" kinda plot point, mostly, which is probably somewhat ironic considering my preferred factions

>which is probably somewhat ironic considering my preferred factions

Which are?

Well, it's a double-tap, hilariously enough. My primary faction is the bulls, and though I only play FWL occasionally, my preferred unit is the first Regulan Hussars. So two of the groups who went the most nuke-crazed in the jihad (my other main faction is the FedSuns, but I don't think they were much more nuke-crazed than anyone else in the jihad)

Anyone know where to get more of these or what they are? I bought them in a lot on ebay and need a couple more.

Ones on the right look like elementals, which you can get tons of from IWM. Not 100% on the ones on the left

The obvious answer here applies. Overall, they're not really that fun, except as a board clearing device. Except for testing a design for the TRO, they're used a lot like another obstacle (Your scout company just got nuked by a trigger happy RWA officer, find a way to flank his targeting zones and neutralize the battery), or like how StarCraft opens a mission where you start to build a base by wiping out whatever enemy faction has a base in that spot. Unless it's a Castle Brian attack, I don't really let my players use them, but that's just because it can seriously bog down a game.

The ones on the left are the old BT standard infantry. I think Ral Partha sold them in Davion and Kurita flavors.Couldn't tell you if IWM still sells them.

If I wanted to play a Rasalhague anti-clan rebel unit in the modern era what mechs (if any) and vehicles might they field? Old stuff from the FRR RAT and stolen Ghost Bear stuff? Did motstånd ever use mechs?

A: What era is "modern" for you, and

B: If you mean the 3140-ish time frame, resistance to the Ghost Bears has literally been reduced to spray-painting vandals, so... have fun with that.

What are the mercenary commands most traditionally associated with the Lyran Commonwealth? Aside from the Kell Hounds and GDL.

Able's Aces were once upon a time LC mercs, before they moved to the periphery.

Actually, I mixed that up a bit. They were Fedcom mercs. (One of the minor characters I think had been an Elsie before he retired)

Hansen's Roughriders and Mobile Fire off the top of my head

I'll add Cranston/Rhonda Snord's Irregulars and the Grave Walkers.

Looking at the military powerhouses in the IS during the Clan invasion era, which ones would be most (and least) likely to use combined forces of 'mechs and vees?

Feddies the most.
Dracs, hands down, are the least.

Didn't the Cappies mix mechs and vees?

If you mean the Augmented Lances, those came after Bulldog. The Feddies have been using RCTs for a long time, which is the sort of combined arms I took the question to regard. Free Worlders also have a long history of combined arms IIRC, and the Lyrans more recently adopted RCTs.

They're not exactly a military powerhouse at that point though.

There was a thread ages ago (I think) where some user posted the shenanigans of some batshit insane Battletech fan community that apparently makes outrageously hilarious campaigns and AAR:s and shit, evidently becoming even crazier as time goes by.

I had to go to work and forgot all about it until today. Does anyone know what I'm talking about or did I dream this shit up?

I remember them to. They were a local group from somewhere in the midwest. I think maybe cleveland or KC?

Do you mean Team Cincy?

>forums.cincybattletech.com/

Ah, yes. Cincy. The worst thing to happen to Battletech, including Porchbux. It's too bad we can't get an insane gunman into one of their games.

Can't mention it without conjuring up our resident shithead, whereupon the second resident shithead and/or samefag will pop up saying "I have an unreasonable hate for Cincy too!" Whereupon which people will defend Cincy and denounce you for a shithead. There, your you has been supplied for another day.

>whereupon the second resident shithead and/or samefag
I can 99% assure you that it's samefagging, like the anti-taurian shitposter

Oh yes, the group that exemplifies fun, teamwork, and competency in battletech is the worst thing.

Please, tell me more of your wrong opinions.

>Oh yes, the group that exemplifies fun, teamwork, and competency in battletech is the worst thing.

It is, because it gives unrealistic expectations for everyone else. The best thing for cincy to do would be to call it a career and everyone involved never play Battletech again.

You seem upset. Would you like to talk about it?

>but if you decide to hole up somewhere, you make it very easy for the attackers to decide that it's howitzer o'clock and pound you into the ground

This. One of the guys I play against is very good at hiding big snipey units like Stone Rhinos. I read up on the indirect fire rules/spotting, and brought along a single Ferret for 50bv spotting for a healthy number of Sniper field artillery pieces.

"On my command - UNLEASH HELL"

Yeah. A guy I used to play with was big into Liao stealth cheesemechs (like that goddamn pillager), and artillery was basically the only way to deal with those assholes once they're in heavy woods

>and artillery was basically the only way to deal with those assholes once they're in heavy woods

Oh, man, I can see how that went down.

"I'm about to go Alfred on your ass."

"What?"

"The *entire* forest."

What about airstrikes? Does stealth help against strikes and bombing runs?

Only one spotter? You need a lot more than that for Stone Rhinos, fuckers have LPLs. That said, the St. James, fire rules, and reducing terrain are all good counters to woods-parking faggots. So is aerospace, and they can't bitch about that not being in the core rulebook.

It's almost like there was a reason arty and fire were in the 4e Master Rules..

Airstrikes work just fine, but I prefer artillery on account of it doesn't take lawndart rolls every time it shoots if the other side has thought to bring a single LPL or LBX.

>Only one spotter? You need a lot more than that for Stone Rhinos, fuckers have LPLs.

Only if you're not playing on a 50x50 map; I just park the Ferret in a corner and climb to altitude 20 or something.

for your MegaMek.exe pleasure.

...

>on a 50x50
Well, at that point you're looking at a 2-3 turn ToT, and pretty bad deviation. I personally like pre-plotting the "best" hexes in advance, dropping a stick of napalm into the other woods on the table from something like a cheap Thrush, and then vigorously applying fast backstabbers as required, but it does get old after a while.

...