/btg/ - Battletech General

Is this a house or mercenary unit?
Are they engaged in independent operations or are they deployed as part of a larger force?
The vast majority of company-sized elements will either be riding in a union or 1/3 of an overlord. They'd need three leopards if they were using those, which would be fairly rare.
If they're operating independently, they will almost certainly have a buccaneer or mule (possibly something older and more obscure like an old DrosT or Trojan if they're mercs or part of a periphery military) to carry their support gear, supplies and loot, in addition to the Union

Who would like a cool story?

I played in the grinder at Gencon for a bit, started with a Panther 8Z. For those who don't know, with the grinder they start you off with a shitcan of a mech, and as you lose mechs you progress up a quality chain. When you're on your fourth mech, you're in something very good, say a Clanner assault with a snazzy pilot.

Anyways, I drop into the game with my little shitcan, kind of distant from where all the action is going on. Right after I sit down, there's this guy that has his fourth level mech, a Warhawk I think, not positive. He's super happy because he's finally got something good. He drops about half a table away, near some random shit-level mediums and lights. He's delighted because he can light them the fuck up.

Turns come around and I trundle my Panther's slow ass within range of its large laser, and after four turns no one has even given me a look. The Warhawk player is gunning down a Trebuchet, with his back exposed to me.

Hey, I'm finally in range. Just barely, but I am.
A nice through-armor critical. Dinged his Gyro.

Failed his piloting skill roll and removed the rest of his armor on his rear torso, plus a tiny bit extra.

A 12 came up, and there went his engine in three very unfortunate die rolls.

I was all smiles, one of the Catalyst employees was watching and thought it was the funniest shit he'd ever seen. The rest of the table got a huge kick out of it.

But that guy.

The grinder was his first taste of Battletech, he'd loved it until that point. I could see the bitter anguish on his face. If he wanted to play again they'd start him over with the shit mechs.

He excused himself and said he had to go do something.

I still feel kind of bad for possibly driving off someone from the game.

House Unit (Kurita, near the Steiner border - you can guess what they're in for in 3039!)
Currently part of a battalion on garrison duty, part of one of the Legions of Vega (so on the lower end of the supply totem pole)
I was thinking a Union myself, it's so common and the right size for a company.

Their company is 8 mechs, 8 vees, and I'm thinking 4 platoons of foot (not mechanized). The other two companies in the battalion are similar, and stationed on a separate continent.

I'm thinking 3 unions for the battalion (enough to haul all the heavy stuff around if someone invades) and 1 leopard per continent, for smaller deployments or infantry moves. Does that sound about right? Is there something more appropriate but still cheap to lug infantry around in? (saw the Intruder, but that is WAY beyond Legion of Vega)

>Just use fucking laser heathsinks like a normal fucking person

>(so on the lower end of the supply totem pole)
>I was thinking a Union myself, it's so common and the right size for a company.
>Their company is 8 mechs, 8 vees, and I'm thinking 4 platoons of foot (not mechanized). The other two companies in the battalion are similar, and stationed on a separate continent
Frankly, for so shitty and mixed a unit, maybe they should all just tide around in the mule period, say that a couple mech and tank bays have been stuck in the cargo area for repair purposes along with the infantry racks. It'd not be a difficult modification, and it's appropriate for the situation
>Is there something more appropriate but still cheap to lug infantry around in
DrosT; it's ancient but a usable enough tank and infantry carrier, and they'd be dirt cheap if not especially common by the 3000s, which would fit fine with an obscure unit like you're describing

Damn dude. I get your joy and it's awesome, but I also feel the dude that you dunked. I was at the Solaris VII event a few tables over, had a great first day although I was a little behind everyone on Saturday (someone was having too much fun coming in repeatedly with an urbanmech, two stablemates were farming the everloving shit out of him). I was alright until I had an early initiative, and someone got up behind me and laid me out. Luckily nothing to serious internally, but I took over 20 damage on my Starslayer 3D and I had to burn my first of 3 Edge (a reroll token you could purchase for character points) on avoid a torso critical. 3/4 pilot, took 20+, eh okay roll a 5+ to stand. 4. Goddamnit I can't afford to fall here with a dude behind me and more nearby - Edge, reroll, feel-bad-man. 3. Oh god. Last Edge... 4. Whelp. I guess 5+ is hard to roll. Prone, basically out of the match at that point. Took too much of a beating and was already pretty far behind by that point in the day.

My takeaways from the Solaris event have been: if you can't play 14 straight hours, you're not winning the tournament. If you don't have a friend who wants to stable-team up, you won't win. Stable teams turn a 1 on 1 FFA into 2 dudes hunting people down one at a time, such a BS snowball effect. Last but not least: RNG gonna RNG, welcome to Battletech bitch.

A Buccaneer for the infantry makes sense, although I'd probably drop at least one of the Leopards. Remember how many drop collars your unit is going to need - droppers are vastly cheaper than jumpers, and for redeployment purposes it's better to have one expensive dropper than five little ones.

I'm actually not planning on giving them a jumpship - the Legion has a few assigned to it, but this relatively unimportant and calm garrison world certainly doesn't need a jumper just rusting away at the star.

The Buccaneer is a nice ship, I like it. Less liked than the Union, but it actually carries more as far as raw tonnage goes - just very poorly armed and the bays aren't nicely laid out for rapid deployment like the Union.

I think 1 Mule and 1 Buccaneer on the northern continent (2 companies there) and 1 Union on the southern continent (players' company) sounds like a decent distribution. Enough to haul the entire battalion around, including non-combatants in a pinch, yet the mix keeps that rag-tag budget feeling that the Legion of Vega had at that point.

Thanks for the suggestion.

>Powerthirst Nova Cat pasta obligatory if I could find it on my drive

One of these days I'll get back to painting Battletech stuff and actually get my Clan Protectorate stuff all good to go.

>Nova Cucks

I got you, buddy.

...

I like Buccs myself. It's a good "We need you to move strategically but we don't want to combat drop" ship, like the Mule. My current mercs actually use a Mule for covert insertions and rent out their (hard-won) jumper as a tramp steamer during off-months. The unit makes almost as much on the merchant side as it does on the merc.

>The unit makes almost as much on the merchant side as it does on the merc.
Hell, you should be making a fair bit more; it's 854,000 PER JUMP to rent a mule, plus say 100-150 thou extra for the jumper. Say two jumps a month, that's two mil in transport rental alone, more than about 95% of merc contracts pay out

Battletech game Cinematic Sneak Peek

youtube.com/watch?v=MbvJtznqkBE

>Dat King Crab.

I can't decide if I like the turn-based Xcom like combat or the real-time combat of Mechcommander more for a game like this. Either way, I'm happy for another game that isn't an FPS.

I'm all for turn-based, since my experience with real-time combat usually leads into the AI or another player tearing me another one when I concentrate on one area and disregard another.

Anyone have Mercenaries Supplemental: Updates? I can't find it anywhere

Honestly, this is reminding me more and more of Jagged Alliance 2. And I have over 400 hours into that game and five mods for it. Throw Battletech on top of it instead of (admittedly awesome) random mercs in !Not-Bolivia and I'm fucking sold.
Also, HHHHHHNNNGGGHH.

>854,000 PER JUMP to rent a mule, plus say 100-150 thou extra for the jumper.

Is this from Campaign Ops? Because if so, we now have CGLnomics which make FASAnomics look sane and reasonable *and* Mercs are completely unfeasible from an economic standpoint since they'd be literally millions in debt just getting to or from Outreach with no hope of turning enough profit to dig themselves out unless they salvaged a full Clan Cluster and sold it all off or some shit.

There is not a merc company in existence that make 2,000,000 cbill a month

Well, an A+ rated mech regiment with lots of infantry support on a contract with lots of multipliers might
It is from campaign ops, yes, but it was also listed that way as far back as DS&JS. It should be noted that earlier books (as late as FMMR) noted that mercs virtually never charter a mule or buccaneer proper, instead they pay to have their gear hauled as cargo and themselves as passengers, for a much more reasonable couple thousand per mech per jump
>*and* Mercs are completely unfeasible from an economic standpoint since they'd be literally millions in debt just getting to or from Outreach
This has always been a huge hole in the games economics; it's always been bankruptingly expensive for mercs who don't own their own dropships to get around unless they pick up a contract with employer transport included, which are rare, especially for smaller and newer units. It's even worse when you consider the periphery; the 20 jumps from outreach to a job out there would cost more than the entire contract pay, a lot of the time

If he can't handle 'for the same reason its awesome', then he can't handle. BT aint for everyone, don't feel bad. That's what the grinders are for.

Reminds me more of Silent Storm than the greater granularity of JA2 or 7.62. The thought of an actual good, maybe really good turn based game has me so pumped. Squad level turn based with RPG choices has always been my my jam.

Three Unions sounds about right. If the vees aren't too heavy, I think there's a even a canon variant that does almost exactly what you want.

Buccaneers and Mules, like another anons suggested, wouldn't be unfair though.

>they'd be literally millions in debt just getting to or from Outreach with no hope of turning enough profit

The unit doesn't *need* to work out of Outreach though. Keep a hiring agent there on retainer, and scare up contracts near the unit's current position. If you're near the periphery you shouldn't even bother with Outreach.

Three Unions would have worked nicely, but it wouldn't have fit the whole "Motley Crew" feeling that I'm shooting for with the pre-Theodore Legion of Vega. Eventually if the unit survives the 3039 invasions they'll get better gear - they might even be able to wrestle some of the hands of those money-grubbing Lyrans.

Where would I look if I wanted to find tables for rolling up a random force for a House or Clan in a given year? I swear there are tables for it but I can't find them in my core books - which peripheral products have them?

can we get the map user in here?

i need the proper scale hexes to overlay on sum urban terrain.

I'm happy for turn based. Real time is too stressful for me.

Looks like it's going to be a lot like Mech 2: Mercs out of the battles, which is another thing I'm super happy about.

Total Warfare's are circa 3067, A Time of War has some for 3075. Otherwise look up era reports/digests and field manuals, many of which are obviously dated, though the faction specific FMs tend to fall at varying points in the late 3050s to mid 3060s. Brush Wars also has some for the specific conflicts it covers, as does Wars of Reaving/WoR supplemental.

Found em, thanks man.

>MFW not a single Assault lance in the whole battalion my players are in

XOTLs RAT up to 3050.

I love you.

I went and checked, the DS cost is to hire it for the whole run while the JS cost is per Jump.

>The unit doesn't *need* to work out of Outreach though.

Maybe not but in canon a lot of mercs traipse back to Outreach between contracts.

The Era Reports and the entire Historical: Whatever series all have RATs, which are also the most recent and (frequently) most accurate ones out there thank you, Xotl. While they're "snapshots" of a given year, you can basically use the previous Era Report up until about half-way through any given time break, then start using the "new" one.

The only bad thing is that Xotl said he wasn't continuing the project past 3057. So we'll never get stupidly accurate RATs for the rest of the setting unless CGL gets its finger out.

The big ones with their own ships and those in need of R&R and refit, most likely, but the smaller ones could just leave the negotiation team on Outreach or Galatea and communicate via HPGmail.

>JOB OFFER STOP FWL OFFERS GARRISON CONTRACT ON LES HALLES STOP DETAILS ATTACHED STOP SEND YES OR NO STOP HOPE YOU ARE DOING WELL STOP

>FUCK YOU AND THE FWL
>STRONG REPLY TO FOLLOW

>the DS cost is to hire it for the whole run

Wait, has that been changed? Since every table of transport costs I can remember is the price of dropship hire per jump - hiring one Union (150k) for four jumps would be 600k C-bills plus the jump fees.

As far as I know it used to always be a flat cost to hire a DS for a job regardless of how far you go while you pay per collar per jump for the JS. FM: Mercs Revised says you pay once for the DS according to the chart and per collar per jump for the JS on p. 166.

Campaign Ops makes it .5% of the ship's cost per month which is a massive kick in the balls for any Merc company. Have fun trying to stay solvent when a fucking *Leopard* sets you back 1.25 million per month of travel time where it used to be less than a quarter of that.

>all those playtesters listed
>not one of them actually playtested a god damn thing

And before someone spergs out over the Leopard actually costing 850k-ish, I factored the JS Collar into it as well.

It wasn't for the whole run, though: this one's from FM: Mercenaries (non-revised), but in this one the cost for each additional jump was only 50% of the whole cost. I'll see if I can find the earlier ones.

And this one's from Merc's Handbook 3055 - here it's full cost per jump. But unless you need to combat drop or want a dedicated carrier for your giant robots, you can always mothball 'em and stow them in a cargo hold if you can find a dropper going your way for a cheaper transit.

Either way the cost to hire a Leopard went up from an absolute maximum of 440K per month (1 jump per week at 60K for the DS and 50K for the collar) and the new system triples that. Most merc commands can expect a month of travel to or from their contract destination at minimum, with the Clan front line being like 6 months away from Outreach.

...

What are some battle armor transports available to the FWL?

Aside from Omnis and generic APCs?

Just the Maxim, AFAIK. Couldn't find much else on the MUL.

They have a BA dropship, though, designed to carry and drop a large number of battle armour - to the tune of 60 or 80 people in one go.

In Dark Age, you've got the R10 ICV, which is an omnivee transport. The prime can tote around a lot of BA, including the exterior, and the more heavily armed variants can tote on the exterior and slightly less internal capacity.

sarna.net/wiki/R10

What's it called?

The Seleucus class (which I didn't remember at all). Carries 80 battle armour troopers and 12 light vehicles.

>tfw russian bro features your robomechs order on his facebook page

I like to think this is his way of saying "thanks for supporting me."

I miss the old days...

Also there's a BA small craft.

Glorious Xi Sheng.

>Xi Sheng
>Xi

gwailo detected

Had a go at Alpha Strike tonight after spending some time away from CBT. Meant to take more pictures, but meh.

Ded thread
Ded game

We could talk some AeroTech. I'm surprised how many different types of DropShips the FWL manufactures and yet they only make like five types of AeroSpace fighters.

maybe not the best place to ask, but is anyone else having trouble with megamek, or java in general having graphical issues when it comes to dropboxes or context boxes? I can't spend more than 2 minutes in the menus before it starts glitching out and overlapping.

Anyone know where I can find a Time of War character sheet that actually has enough skill and trait space?

Wait what, isn't half the char sheet in the back of the book dedicated for skills?

Maybe it's because I'm making a clanner but I have (after finishing creation) 21 traits and 34 skills...

Comparing it now to the sample characters I think I fucked up somewhere...

Also I some how ended up with really mediocre attributes... pls halp

Drop a bunch of traits and skills, pick a few you want to focus on with the saved up points.

This is intended. AToW sets out to make Clan characters shit because reasons.

You can drop skills you get from a package?
Also what happens to excess xp from the 5000 you use to buy modules?
Even so I somehow have triple the traits of the sample elemental pilot and significantly worse stats

Anyone? I've tried going back several versions of java, and that didn't fix it. maybe a memory issue?

Shimmy, unless you're hip deep in sloots, you're being a twat. Actually, even then.

>Also what happens to excess xp from the 5000 you use to buy modules?

You spend it on more shit. Also don't forget to optimize your XP, take disadvantages to the max and roll for extra XP using the life events table in the Companion; you get a big enough bonus from being a trueborn warrior in an Invading Clan that it should offset any shit rolls.

Yet more questions, but does anything happen to the rank trait if a clanner goes dark caste? It doesn't seem to affect it, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

I'd allow a player going that route to trade off their Rank points. I have a better handle on ATOW chargen than most but I still houserule a ton of shit in my games.

Cool. This is my first time with AToW and I'm still trying to work the kinks out of my character. Party is going to be a merc unit in the first weeks after the FedCom civil war ended, trying to make a clan elemental burnout who wound up on Solaris VII, learned how to pilot a mech, and is now the chewbacca-like sidekick of another player's Solaris born champ. Any recommendations on what modules I should use to emulate this? Would I need Dark Caste if I want to sever ties with the clans?

>Any recommendations on what modules I should use to emulate this? Would I need Dark Caste if I want to sever ties with the clans?

That's one way, another might be Clan Warrior Washout. Alternatively you could go through the straight normal Clan warrior paths, and just say that after your Tour of Duty your Elemental was captured and made a bondsman to some Inner Sphere person or another.

You don't really need to be a washout to be a Clan Warrior on Solaris. The Smoke Jaguars scattered everywhere (though personally I find "Oh, I'm an ex-Jag" overdone in both canon material and non-canon stuff) while the Jade Falcons had an embassy there too.

But Dark Caste is the most likely.

Did you try uninstalling and reinstalling java? Fixed a megamek problem for me awhile back.

tried uninstalling and reinstalling

tried installing older version.

Found on forums where some recording software that came with my drivers can cause issues, uninstalled that.

Thought I was fine, then got halfway through match and it started back up.

This is something that I overlooked when I was having problems, but are you up to date on Java?

I was having issues with MM for a while, when I realized my PC hadn't updated Java in ~4 years or so.

Is your graphics card Nvidia? From what Google tells me, there have been bugs with the latest Nvidia drivers, so you could try rolling them back to an earlier version.

Hi I want to start with Battletech what is the safest way to go?

I was considering buying the introductory box and after that purchase total war if I like the game

The Introductory Box is the best value for money in the industry for the units you can use. I do recommend holding off on purchasing Total Warfare until you become much more comfortable with the rules however, as the book can be rather impenetrable to newcomers.

Seconding the intro box. You get all the rules you need to learn the standard game and you also get enough tiny giant robots to fight with.

Care to elaborate? I love some drama and maybe the attention will help you

I'm trying to get some art done and hoped Shimmy would show up without forgetting or getting sidetracked by wimmins.

Just a correction. The introductory box has all the rules you need to learn the introductory game. The standard rules are covered by Total War

I'm wondering.
How many people here or playing Battletech in general have never seen SDF:Macross, Dougram or Crusher Joe?

I've seen all three. Dougram is fantastic. /m/ has a channel playing videos of it right now along with other shows..
taima.tv/r/mog-3

Sup, my man
I have never seen it nor have the desire to watch any of the three
Just to be clear, I don't hate these shows, but they never caught my attention
Why are you asking?

I also play Advanced Squad Leader so the big rulebook inst a problem for me.

I want to paint my minis in a green and purple scheme is there any faction with that colors?