/btg/ - Battletech General

I remember a campaign in Against the Bot where the 'Mech in one of those Star League cache missions was a Pillager. Since ATB (still) doesn't work out the "give the 'Mech to employer and get a similar one as replacement", I promptly jacked it and put a 2/3 pilot into it. The very first game, he took out three enemies with seven shots, I think. The Pillager gets my seal of approval.

Master Unit List is borked.

Of course it happens in the days before we start a campaign.

Mercenaries pick up a surprising amount of new tech. Some mercs go pirate, some hang up their mercenary hats and join a faction as regular troops.

Salvage is always a key route for technology spreading.

For legit buyers, the Lyrans and FWL were putting a lot of mechs out on the general market.

They're probably doing updates to incorporate the new material from CM: Davion &c.; keep an eye out on the back end for more Shimmyseen when they're done.

you can't use their search, but you can still search google for "unitname site:masterunitlist.info"

Sweet!

Thanks for that.

also, sarna articles for mechs generally have a link to the corresponding MUL entry in the references

CS/WoB went up to 6 BA/36 squishies per L1 by the Jihad. Can't remember the exact date, though.

battlebump

Sorry, but the Russian stuff still looks nicer than shimmyseens stuff. Alex's mech design is too good to be beaten by a long shot, other than his very early stuff like the banshee or the battlemaster. Still, better the shimmyseen stuff than the regular iwm crap.

On this note, does anyone know if insane kangaroo is pirating off the Russians or he's pirating separately? IIRC he has stuff the Russians don't, like the marauder. I've ordered a few mech from him, and other than bubbles, it's not too bad.

I wont deny a lot of the MWO mechs are going to look better than my stuff. They've got more budget and more aesthetic direction there (PGI I mean).
Mine will be legal though :)

I dunno. I kinda like the shimseen better because the MWO designs just look a little to same-y in my view
of course, I still have some MWO minis and fully plan to mix them in with my shimseen in the future, as replacements for the 'reseen' and other various jihad-era upgrades, but I wouldn't like them to be the standard look for those machines IMO

The problem with PGIamongst the myriad of other problems is that things get far too samey with just FD being pigeonholed into a certain art direction.

Frankly I like having multiple models showing off different looks/years but clearly being the same mech. Having the Shimmyseen Marauder next to the MWO model would be pimp as fuck.

Also someone needs to make an updated version of the Awesome that made it look like an angry 70s government building. That was by far the best look for it.

>Mine will be legal though :)

Golden calf stahp it, plz

(You) here. Sorry mate, didn't mean to discourage you or anything, so don't take it personally. If anything, PGI's battlemaster looks like arse compared to yours.

Your stuff is very nice, by leaps and bounds better than the iwm shit, just that I prefer the mwo stuff. Like you said, you're 1 man sculpting against a whole salaried team, so it's not a fair comparison.

Will CGL be printing your stuff in plastic from now on, or will IWM be involved? IWM is cancer

My $0.02 on the whole thing:

Battletech has always had an aesthetic that supported a myriad of oddball designs and as many different appearances and silhouettes as one could imagine. They weren't all good, of course. But there was something for every taste. MWO/PGI's art direction has taken a more uniform approach, but when you look at things like MBTs in real life, you'll notice that they all look VERY similar to each other, with some cosmetic/profile differences based on where certain components are, etc. This is because there is such a thing as the objectively best way to build something, and so many MBTs follow this basic pattern to great success. So it is, in my view, with MWO style Mechs. They do all look very different from each other, but share so many design queues that it just looks like some engineering/design features were hammered out over time and most 'Mechs fell into line with these trends.

So to me, MWO stuff looks more "realistic" but the Shimmyseen stuff is more in keeping with the general FASA aesthetic that was established long ago (though several look like crosses between the MWO and Unseen, I can't blame CGL for targeting that aesthetic). I personally prefer the MWO stuff for the most part, but that's just an opinion. Your results may vary. But it might put PGI's art direction into a bit of perspective for some, as well as help explain why it's so popular. Alex has a ton to do with it of course, but trying to make things like armor plating and AMS modules and whatnot uniform across all platforms really makes them feel like actual, realistic war machines (even if we know 'Mechs are actually pretty bad as an IRL combat concept, especially at those heights).

>the general FASA aesthetic that was established long ago
the general fasa aesthetic is a scramble of decades of art made by enthusiasts and lowest bidders.

bt would benefit greatly from unified art direction, but with no money and cgl's horrible reputation with freelancers, it's never going to happen.

>the general fasa aesthetic is a scramble of decades of art made by enthusiasts and lowest bidders
It was still their choice to do that. I mean, ultimately the game was made by mecha fanboys who wanted giant robot combat, and they borrowed from their favorite source material to make it happen. You do what you can with the cash you have, but it's pretty obvious there was little art direction in the early days; hell, probably even into the 2000s.

>bt would benefit greatly from unified art direction, but with no money and cgl's horrible reputation with freelancers, it's never going to happen
Yeah, they really do need to just stable some artists and get things on an even keel, but that won't happen because stable artists cost more than freelancers, and so you end up stuck with getting the screws to you when freelancers decide they can manipulate your demands by manipulating their deadlines. You have to release product when you're a small company, and so if an artist dicks you over by waiting till the last minute, you take what you get. They're lucky they have artists who are as involved as they are. If only they could get writers who are as involved in their craft from the same angles that Shimmy and his ilk are.

>If only they could get writers who are as involved in their craft from the same angles that Shimmy and his ilk are.

they have, at times. cgl doesn't pay on time so they drift away.

I really like your WHM, WVR and MAD. The LCT is awesome. Made me play more with those bugs. The SHD both look quite good. Keep up the good work.
PS: WSP, VLK and OTT also look better than the MWO designs. I am just not a huge fan of those in general.

>PS: WSP, VLK and OTT also look better than the MWO designs.

That won't be hard when none of those are actually *IN* MWO yet.

I had seen a VLK at the MWO background and thought it existed. But you are right it was a fan design. No wonder it looked worse than shimmy's

>does anyone know if insane kangaroo is pirating off the Russians or he's pirating separately?
He's not pirating. They're working together, they just do some things differently.

>Alex's mech design is too good to be beaten by a long shot,
Ironic, considering that he designed the Shimmyseen Beemer.

Personally, I prefer the way Tony has taken the opportunity to add distinctive design cues to individual manufacturers, and the way he better incorporates elements from the previous iterations of the designs, than Alex usually does.

>Will CGL be printing your stuff in plastic from now on, or will IWM be involved? IWM is cancer
He can't answer that, if his NDA is anything like any of the ones I've signed for other companies.
That said, it would be literally retarded of CGL not to make those models available to IWM, especially since CGL can only sell "boxed sets" under their license - which means that any singles would have to come from the aforementioned cancer ward.

I'm not the biggest fan of the LCT or WHM, but I really like the WVR, the Beemer, and the Bugs. I think the changes to the shoulders of the GRFs is kind of stupid, but whatever.
Everything else I'm neutral on so far.

In general, I think Shimmy's design skills are about as good as the Unseens', just a bit more polished, high-poly, and "modern" and a bit less clean and tight. Shimmy's making models and sculptures, static art; Miyatake, Kawamori and Okawara were ultimately making animation. Their designs are informed and influenced by that.
Alex is largely pumping out game models, which have their own requirements, for a company demanding uniformity of design to create a specific "feel". I also don't like that aesthetic.

Not every armored vee is an MBT. And even among MBTs, I can literally (as I did three weeks ago) buy a handful of random 6mm armor and correctly guess the nations of origin of a dozen vehicles without any fucking idea of what they were.

> I think the changes to the shoulders of the GRFs is kind of stupid, but whatever.
Is there a shimmy GRF? Have not seen it yet.

It's on the front cover of CM: Mercs and in the pic I posted in . As I said, I think the >shoulders< are kind of stupid, but I like the rest of the design well enough and I can always do a little remodeling.

it's on the cover of the new succession war book.

Always thought it to be the unseen one. Of course CGL wouldn't use an unseen on a cover. Stupid me.

>Kawamori was ultimately making animation.

I'd argue a bit on that considering Kawamori's main idea was to make stuff that could be made in reality (in his specific case, toys).
He even built that stuff out of legos to figure out a transformation sequence...

Valkyrie's design is plain because it is based on a real plane and real gear doesn't pollute itself with greeble like Star Wars and all of "realistic modern designs" do. That it's easy to animate is just a bonus. Everything else was simply design to fit in with them.

Where can I find that Russian stuff and order it?

warhansa.com

They are ripoff of the oficial models?

I'm pretty new and I don't recognize all the models

They are resin casts of 3D prints of the Mechwarrior Online in-game models.

There are some that are their own re-imaginings of popular mechs, like the marauder/ matador.

>ripoff of the oficial models?

how? the models are obviously a massive improvement over the old ones, what made you come to the conclusion that they're rip offs? They're from the far superior MWO designs.

To create the CBT/IWM mechs, you actually have to actively try to make them look bad. I've seen sonic fanart look better than the "mechs" they produce.

Alex is evidence that you can polish a turd.

In fairness, that reputation goes all the way back to the beginning with FASA. Tracy Hickman and Margret Weis were originally contracted to write the very first Battletech novel, but FASA wouldn't guarantee they would get paid by X date, so they declined. The contract went to Ardath Mayhar, who wrote The Sword and the Dagger, and didn't get paid for her work until three years after the book release.

Plus the whole "Stackpole stops working for FASA because he didn't get paid" thing, and several sourcebook writers not getting paid. The guy who wrote Rolling Thunder (Michael Hebert) works in the library at Miami University (Oxford) - I know him personally and he STILL hasn't gotten paid for writing that sourcebook.

At least CGL comes by their terrible reputation honestly. It runs in the family, as it were.

>almost a month without new products to talk about

Damn

Where are the Poles of the Inner Sphere?

>Wearing jewelry AND makeup to the olympics

God damn those executives must be dumb as shit for making her wear all that.

Huh, I didn't know Jim was a Jolly Roger before he joined CAG-9. And a Mutha Mike's RIIO, no less. Learn new shit every day.

>Valkyrie's design is plain because it is based on a real plane and real gear doesn't pollute itself with greeble like Star Wars and all of "realistic modern designs" do. That it's easy to animate is just a bonus. Everything else was simply design to fit in with them.

That's the thing, though.
>plane
>real gear doesn't pollute itself with greeble
Planes have different requirements than tanks or trucks or walking 'Mecha. Planes have to slip smoothly through the air. Kawamori worked on the Valkyries and Miyatake worked on the Destroids because they had >different< design sensibilities, not because the producers wanted everything to be the same. The simplicity of both is still ultimately a result of the animation, not just trying to "fit in" with the Valks. Look at the Armored Valk - one of the few "ground-pounder" valk designs - and you can see it's built-up and more-crunchy than the Valk. Same with the Strike Supers.

>They are ripoff of the oficial models?
To be a ripoff they'd have to be replicating something that IWM or Catalyst is producing..

At least her earrings are studs. Can't you see her catching the tip of a javelin in a hoop?

There's going to be all kinds of bits on any kind of ground based armored vehicle, particularly lift rings and other attachment points, antennas, optical gear, and other sundry bits of equipment.

To extend a plane's life you design new engines that fit inside the old casings and tweak the 'trons and disposable stores.

To extend a tank's life you strap on more armor, new weapons, the guys who have to live inside the fucking thing strap extra gear to the outside, you put tools on it to help you dig out. You add Chobham and blowout panels and throw a sandbag in that fucking shell trap on the right front side and some infantry asshole tapes a couch cushion over the spot he has to ride on.

Shimmy's hitting a half-way point here between those two aesthetics. The panel lines are exaggerated so the model will still visibly have them and be easy to paint, but "real" tanks still have panel lines (and gribble fucking everywhere.)

I mean, I was an aircraft maintainer, I love planes with all my heart and I have since I was like three, but they have different needs than walking tanks and they always will.

I was gettin' there :b
But yeah - ultimately a plane is something you drive around in for a while before you go home. A tank is something you fucking live in on campaign.

...

Ultimately, I'd rather drive this Thud than the one in 3025 - but they don't exactly post pictures from the front lines in Janes', either.

My impression's always been that ground vehicles are always clad in shit because it's easy to let them carry stuff around which is always preferable to carrying that stuff on your back.
When you have a 10+ meter tall robot, getting your bags all the way up there and securing them in some special way that walking doesn't get them off would be a pretty fun challenge most wouldn't even dare attempting.

Plus, I was talking about greeble-clad by design, not necessarily by the soldiers themselves.

>ground vehicles are always clad in shit

When I did my national service, we often wondered how the fuck our vehicles didn't simply sink into the ground with all the kit we piled onto them. In addition to the personal kit, there was the requisite tent, tent stove, fuel for the stove, a coffin-sized crate for platoon pickaxes, saws, sledgehammers and other crap, ahkios during the winter, ammo, plus of course the troops themselves. You can't believe the speed we were taught (and expected) to pack all that shit in, on and around the vehicle.

I am always impressed by the amount of militaryfags in btg. Did your profession attracted you to the game or vice versa?

Nope, to me it was the Crescent Hawks' Inception and Mechforce on the Amiga. I did my national service later.

>I am always impressed by the amount of militaryfags in btg. Did your profession attracted you to the game or vice versa?
I've been a wargamer since I was a kid, and fascinated by the hardware. I didn't get seriously into BT until I was in, but I'd played it before I started. I also got a lot of guys into the game while I was in, and most of my play-groups have been military or mil-brats.

I like it because it's an old-school, immersive military combat sim with a heavy historical component and a shit-ton of variables to tweak. So do a lot of the guys I play with. Even the utter insanity of the rules is part of that - 40k is "this is what you can't do" and BT's rules are "Yeah, fuck it, someone already tried that in 1989, and we formalized their house-rules for punching a dinosaur in the dick while giant grasshoppers spit on your 'Mech in 1992"

That's a pretty unfair comparison right there. That thing used to be a truck before they stripped it of absolutey everything and all the stuff on it is something they absolutely require to survive in the desert they used them in.

Did you read the rest of my posts or just see the pink jeep and get pissy?

I mean, I do basically consider the LRDG Rovers and jeeps to be proto-Technicals, but think about it. What is a Stinger pilot on long-range patrol gonna do to survive? The poor fucker has to be poured into his cockpit, and you can't keep your edge sleeping in a frigging car for more than a day or so. So he pays the unit techs to weld on compartments in the back between the jet intakes and stuffs his tent and a camp stove in that shit. 300 years later his descendants have built hidden compartments into the legs where some of the old replaced trons used to be, strapped chicken wire over the hip joints to keep those goddamned infantry from clamping det-packs on them, customized the sights built into the arms, and clipped a couple bangalores under the winglets on the back to let them blow tank traps.

...

I agree with you. I think the problem is that battletech's scale is simply too small for that level of detail. If I ever get around to doing my 1:72 battletech stuff it'll be all greebled up, but the current scale is just too small.
Also, my 0.02 C-bills on the TRO thing is that the TRO images should be taken as publicity shots from the manufacturers rather than pictures of the mechs in the field

Who started the Succession Wars, the Steiners or Kuritas?

Amaris

The Camerons, really

It was clearly the communists and their second Cold War

Lyrans and their surprise attack on Bolan

How often does the Russians update? I want a kodiak. I hope that'll be their next mech.

What else should I use to get into this if my only exposure has been reading the Blood of Kerensky trilogy after thinking MWO looked really neat?

Burd space at a guess.

Introbox.

Get the Russian miniatures and buy the total warfare book. The starter box miniatures are very hard to prepare and look like shit either way. Do you have a gaming group? If no, don't even bother getting total warfare. Game is very rare, very niche and very hard to find players

Redpill me on LAMs.

I'm new. How often is combined-arms warfare seen in the fluff? Is is viable in the wargame? The tabletop RPG?

>How often is combined-arms warfare seen in the fluff?
Somewhat uncommon in the novels, but very common before the fall of the Star League, and somewhat common in the years after the Clan Invasion.

>Is it viable in the wargame?
To an extent. Vehicles are less durable than Mechs, and infantry are a speedbump or a tripmine. They do work well when each element plays to their strengths.

>The tabletop RPG?
Not a huge amount of overlap, since Mechs are pretty much a "rocks fall, everyone dies" enemy if you're a PBI.

>very common before the fall of the Star League, and somewhat common in the years after the Clan Invasion.
and extremely common in the republic of the sphere and afterward

>and infantry are a speedbump or a tripmine.
They also have a third role if properly built, which is sitting in a bunker and screaming "SO COME BRING ON ALL THAT YOU'VE GOT" and bringing a X hex zone of death with entirely too many field guns

Women are whores. Protect your essential liquids.

I only drink distilled water and pure grain liquor, am I safe?

More depending on the faction you play. Davion, Marik, Liao are said to use combined arms. Kurita is opposed to them. WoB/C* is a big combined arms fan. Mercenaries can be what ever you want. Front line units are more likely to have a lot of mechs and few vehicles. The opposite for second line and melitia. Clans don't use many vehicles except for stone lion/hell's horses.

No, you can still get divorce-raped unless you wear a body cam at all times.

Waiting on the Vindi and the Cyclops here myself. Torn on whether I should get the Locust or not too.

You can get a vindicator from insane kangaroo on ebay. It's metal, and I can't determine the quality of the details, but it's there.

Russian updates like once a month or so. Next update will supposedly contain at least one of these three: Enforcer, Griffin, Wolverine.

Wake up, /btg/!
Need some coffee or something?

Funny you should ask. I just spilled most of mine all over my fucking desk. Now I'm angry and without coffee, but still awake. Think I'll see how badly I can miss my mouth with a fork soon, too.

The rest of the Sphere was insanely jealous of the Von Rohr's poseability.

You know you're evil when the 'Mech named after you does the Shadaloo salute.

>Usain Bolt wins another medal

I got my first box set when I was 11 or so and joined when I was 18. BT has been a faithful companion through 14 (and counting) years of service and many many (many) thousands of kilometers of travel.
I didn't start serving because of BT, though. My family has been in the military for the last 70 years or so... At this point, it's the Family Business, I guess.

Been a fan of military history and war games since I was old enough to go to Pearl Harbor and play Battleship. Picked up my love of Scifi later and the two merge well in Battletech. Picked BT up in 97 and was off and on till 2009 when I found a good group. Didn't join the Army till 2011 though.

If anything being in the army got me more into BT. I've certainly become unusually attached to my Artillery in game now that I have experience with the real thing.

>war games since I was old enough to go to Pearl Harbor and play Battleship.

Playing a game of Battleship at Pearl Harbor of all places seems to be in shockingly poor taste.

"You sunk my Battleship!"
"It's OK, it has plenty of company."

First militarily significant site visited
>age 5
First war game(if you can call it that)
>age 5

Both completely unrelated despite what the sentence structure may suggest.

Still playing around with the idea of 1/72 Mech-models.

I'm stuck on the legs of this OC doughnutsteel re-imagined Lancelot, so figured I'd at least try and see how the thing looks in 3D and check if it can actually stand on its own.

I was medically DQ'd and thus was never actually able to join the military, but I was raised an army brat by a battletech-playing dad. From the age of maybe 7 he'd give me the joking rank of second lieutenant and let me drive a single mech (almost always a Thud) in his games, which I did for years until I started running my own battletech games. I'm currently plotting to do the same to my nephew whenever he visits, as soon as he's old enough

Its already on par with IWM, keep us posted!

Id beef the legs up a little bit to be more in-line with the torso.

I'm trying to put together a reinforced lance of introtech all-energy 'Mechs, and so far I've got the Marauder-3D, Warhammer-6D and the PPC Hopper, but after that I'm drawing a blank. Are there any good offers?

...Awesome-8Q? It's all-energy, all the time, and serves as a solid anchor to such a force. You can then finish the lance with a pair of Meds or Lights (maybe a pair of modified Jenners that drop the missiles for heatsinks/meds?).

Awesome, charger "challenger" refit, Marauder-II (the introtech model is more or less literally a fat -3D), Black Knight, Flashman, triple-ML Locusts, plenty of things

Well fuck, I forgot to mention the Awesome. It's the ride of the lance boss, actually. I was thinking about something more mobile for the two others (I'm thinking a six-'Mech lance specialising in raiding), so I may have to go for something lighter, like the laser Locust, but I'd prefer something with hands for at least some of them which would mean customs.

There's the Hunchback-4P, which has hands and is a very nasty energy boat. Then there's the Steiner Griffin, which is only a LRM-5 away from being an energy boat, a custom model trading it for a ML, a sink and a ton of armor would make it a really nasty mech

Awesome has a hand, Grasshopper has hands, Black Knight has hands, the Challenger Charger has hands (I think), the Spider (all energy, baby) has hands, lots of mechs have hands.