/btg/ - Battletech General

"Honor Thy PBI" Edition

Old Thread: ================================================

BattleTech video-game pre-alpha gameplay
youtube.com/watch?v=FjEeDz51pHE

(Haha!) TtS: Butte Hold
mediafire.com/download/c5ggig1wz21l8r0/
E-CAT35SN210_BattleTech_Touring_the_Stars_Butte_Hold.pdf

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>BattleTech Introductory Info and PDFs
bg.battletech.com/?page_id=400

>Overview of the major factions?
bg.battletech.com/universe/great-houses/
bg.battletech.com/universe/the-clans/
bg.battletech.com/universe/other-powers/

>How do I find out which BattleMechs a faction has?
masterunitlist.info/

Unit Designing Softwares
>SSW Mech Designer
solarisskunkwerks.com/
>MegaMek Lab
megameklab.sourceforge.net/

>/btg/ does a TRO:
builtforwar.blog(not spam)spot.com/

>How do I do this Against the Bot thing?
pastebin.com/pE2f7TR5

>Map of /btg/ players (WIP):
zeemaps.com/map?group=1116217&add=1

>Rookie guides
pastebin.com/HZvGKuGx

>Sarna.net - BattleTech Wiki
sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page

>Megamek - computer version of BattleTech. Play with AI or other players
megamek.info/

>BattleTech IRC
#battletech on irc.rizon.net

>PDF Folders
mediafire.com/folder/9q792hobnbpw3/Battletech
mediafire.com/folder/sdckg6j645z4j/Battletech

Question about VTOLs, since TW isn't very clear: does a unit using VTOL movement get a +1 TH modifier offensively and defensively in addition to its normal modifiers? TW just cites it as being "like jumping" with reference to the modifier, and I can't find the specifics for the life of me.

+1 to anything attacking them. Also applies to all airborne non aerospace units, such as WIGES and BA or infantry with VTOL capability.

Tables on pages 117 and 307 and the "To-Hit Modifiers" entry on page 196 in the VTOL section spell it out clearly.

...

>infantry with VTOL capability

The wot now?

TRO:3085, my man

I think flying mounts also use the same type of movement, so stuff like Branth riders and those Lyran LotR Giant Eagle riders probably use the same rules.

Plus also the Slyph for the clans which is even older.

I just can't get behind personal micro copters. Since you can fit four guys per section in the micro VTOL platoons I always imagined them as Delta Operators riding Little Bird helicopters strait out of Blackhawk Down.

They're not as fast as they should be but they are otherwise right on since they still have 1 ground movement for "dismounting".

Huh, thought there was something different with em - thanks user.

4 scenarios written.
46 record sheets printed.
10 map sheets currently flattening overnight under heavy books.

I bought the 4th Ed boxed set, First Strike and CityTech 2 back in 2000.

I've been waiting a long time to do a BTech campaign with a bunch of players, and tomorrow it's finally happening. :-D

Good luck! I really should bone up on some lore related stuff so I'd be comfortable running a game. I know little more than the bare bones really.

Or I could just pester my friend to run it.

That's the nice thing about the mechanized infantry rules, you can ignore the art and picture it as little birds, mraps, and jeeps if you want. You can even get micro armor models if you want minis for them.

>Since you can fit four guys per section in the micro VTOL platoons I always imagined them as Delta Operators riding Little Bird helicopters strait out of Blackhawk Down.

Well yes, their class covers both individual microchoppers and choppers that are too thin-skinned to matter in-game. So those four guys could be using an Aérospatiale Alouette III-equivalent as well.

Good luck user.

>So those four guys could be using an Aérospatiale Alouette III-equivalent as well.
[Rhodesia noises]

Congrats on joining a small and pretty exclusive club. Good luck, kick ass, and may the OP4 always roll just well enough to make the PCs sweat.

>... and here he is! Achilles' robot, the new "Matsumoto XIV", facing off with the Confederations Kobalevsky XXXXII.

Newb here, mech on the left? I have a toy of that.

>Newb here, mech on the left? I have a toy of that.

In Battletech, it's the 60 ton RFL-3N Rifleman.
In Macross, it's the Destroid Defender.
In Robotech, they referred to it as "Raidar X".

Problem with that is that four guys in BT can't take on larger forces reliably unless you're using a bunch of optional rules and the disparity in equipment and experience is massive.

I love the idea but I just don't realistically see them doing anything but patrols and spotting .

Were the Cicada -3F and -3G only made in the FWL?

IIRC the Cicada is only made in the FWL, so yeah.

If you want to see who uses them check the MUL though.

My robotech box set has them listed as Defender Destroid. Sorry for shit pic

>My robotech box set has them listed as Defender Destroid. Sorry for shit pic

Oh. I was going by the TV show and the old die-cast toys that Matchbox turned out (pic related) in conjunction with it. IIRC, Palladium also used the same names for the Robotech RPG that they made.

Really, we're all talking about the same robot, though.

Yea, 4, maybe 5 different names for the same mech.

On another note, who want to glue a literal 2 gallons of splines together for me? I never got around to it after receiving robotech RPG tactics, so I litterly have a box of 70 spline sheets.

For those that have played Alpha Strike is the points system good for balance? I want to demo a few games with a Star of Falcons against a couple lances of Lyrans.

They're both at 300 points and the Falcons have a distinct advantage in piloting skill (4 skill 3s and 1 skill 2, compared to the Lyrans 6 skill 4s, 1 skill 5 and 1 skill 3) but I'm worried that the numbers advantage will outweigh that

The point system is pretty good at the moment. It has a noticeable hole with low-armour, high-TMM units, especially if they have high firepower to go with it (Dashers, for example). However, we're working to patch that right now.

Numbers definitely matter, though I can't tell you how 8 on 5 is going to go, but terrain use is really going to make the difference. Also, can the Falcons hold the range on the map you're playing on? Because they'll hit once in a while at long whereas the Lyrans are going to miss the vast majority of the time.

There's lots of variables.

It's going to be a city fight since I have a ton of printed dropzone commander buildings

Shrike 1: Skill 2
Loki Prime: Skill 3
Thor B: Skill 3
Mad Cat Prime: Skill 3
Jupiter 1: Skill 3
-299
VS
King Crab 009: Skill 4
Atlas III D3: Skill 4
Zeus 9S2: Skill 4
Eisenfaust 7X: Skill 4

Griffin 6S: Skill 4
Wolfhound 5: Skill 3
Uziel 2S: Skill 4
Ghost 5O: Skill 5
-300

This is out today, I'll upload it soon

M8, what are you going on about? Do you mean sprues?

Dang, that plagiarism was insane...

Dude! Did you stat out literally every mech ever seen in the US in the 80s while bored in school?

Just give em Mauser 1200s?

[happy blakist noises]

>Yea, 4, maybe 5 different names for the same mech.

It gets more confusing when Harmony Gold applies the original Macross name from one mech to a different mech in the same show!

>Dude! Did you stat out literally every mech ever seen in the US in the 80s while bored in school?

No, I eventually stopped in the early 1990's.

What does /btg/ think of X pulse lasers?
Also I can't be the only one who dreams of a Victor Li with freezers can I?

X pulse are what IS pulse were always supposed to be

>What does /btg/ think of X pulse lasers?

Pretty pointless really. By the time they're available, and at the rules level you can get them at, you might as well be equipping your experimental/well-resourced designs and units with Clan tech. Doubly so in the Dark Age where you can get things more easily from the Foxes.

They run too hot to really be boated. The Large especially. For 14 heat, I'll take an ER PPC and 8 hexes of range, even if I don't have the -2. The Medium is aggressively okay at best.

I like them, but only because my flesh melts off when I think about mounting Clan armaments on Inner Sphere hardware.

In a cityfight it's going to depend on who can keep together and who is going to let themselves get broken up. The range advantage is lost unless you've got some long boulevards. None of the units posted wind up using the current PV broken spots. Overall, it seems okay, and I'd be interested to hear how it went for you and how you felt the PV represented how things were handled. Have fun.

To Herbert A. Beas II, Joel Bancroft-Connors, Craig Erne, Chris Hartford, Ken’ Horner, Nick Marsala, Mike Miller, Jim Rapkins, Ben H. Rome, and Paul Sjardijn, I would just like to express my heartfelt feelings on A Time of War, a product you all invested such great amounts of your lives into.

*ahem*

I HOPE YOU COCKSUCKING MONGLOIDS ALL DIE IN A SHIT FIRE FOR THIS FUCKING ABOMINATION OF A CUNTING RULESET. IF YOU HAD SPENT 5 MINUITES RUBBING YOUR TWO COLLECTIVE BRAIN CELLS TOGETHER YOU MIGHT HAVE COME UP WITH A SYSTEM THAT DOESN'T SUCK GORILLA BALLS, BUT YOU WERE TOO BUSY SUCKING AN ANACONDA'S COCK AND THIS FUCKING SHIT CAME OUT. THE LAYOUT IS SHIT, THE RULES ARE UNBALANCED, YOUR LIFEPATH SYSTEM SUCKS, AND WHY IN GOD'S NAME DID YOU THINK THIS EMBARRASSMENT OF AN RPG WAS PUBLISHABLE? YOU WOULD HAVE LITTERALLY BEEN BETTER OFF STEALING FATAL'S RULES. DIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIE

...

...we you to use Mechwarrior 3e...

I actually find ATOW easier than MW3 for some reason. I think it's just long experience combined with a few choice houserules to mitigate the utter stupidity of how Equipped and issued gear works, among a couple other things.

battlebump

ITG in da house!

I think the foundational issue I have with aToW is that "We're changing the 2D6 mechanics just because"

The game could easily have been done to play almost exactly like standard Battletech if they'd just made modifiers affect the TN, and not the die roll.

Instead, the system feels like it's been turned on it's head.

Also, Herb had a strange way of doing the math for animals HP. In trying to make it work with TacOps' mounted infantry rules, in the Beta, he ended up making Elephants that could take Heavy Gauss Rifle rounds and survive, but be punched unconscious by an average Mechwarrior. I think they "Fixed" it in the new version by halving the HP... but it's not much better. Also, just about everything that has taken fatigue damage can "rest" and regain something like half of their fatigue points, waking back up immediately the next turn after falling unconscious.

Still, the fact that it is a 2D6 system and doesn't hide the damage-to-wounds table in some obscure place in the book instead of dead-center in the tables section at the back is nice. It is also a lot easier to wrap your head around once the game is in play. Chardev with the lifepaths is a nightmare, though. Also 75 pages of "Equipment" to pour through only to discover you can't touch a third of it until you blow something like 400 XP in Equipped. If only it were color coded to reflect that.

It has problems, but it's what happens when you put all the work on one guy, and during the beta he said "I don't want your opinions on the system, I just want you to check for errors"

Also I find it strange that whenever I asked the devs how to get around the fact that the lifepaths system dumps you with more level 1 skills than you can effectively fit on your character sheets if you deviate in the least bit from a vanilla character, they would tell me to "Just use the points-based chargen"... the one that the book said was for NPCs only.

It's a bit silly, but on the other hand... if we've had jump-pack infantry since the game was founded, some heli-packs aren't the silliest thing out there.

For that matter, FWL dragon-riding infantry.

>FWL dragon-riding infantry.

It blows that they don't exist anymore, if only for the fact that the space dragons are endangered as fuck if not extinct by the DA. Yet the lesser branth still clogs up spaceports and dropships all over the sphere like super space dragon rats. It's just not fair.

Yea, sorry. Too many words in my noggin.

t.Coleman
Dark age really does have to destroy everything even remotely fun or silly about the setting, doesn't it?

>The last of the five original great pirate worlds becomes a regular member of the FWL by the DA

Yes. Yes it does.

>The last of the five original great pirate worlds becomes a regular member of the FWL by the DA
>all three of the major periphery states are effectively gone
>the circinians are dead
>the Marians aren't even pirates anymore
>the home world clans are gone baby gone
>all the WarShips are gone, except for lolbears and arbitrary atrocity ships with the falcons
>virtually no interesting merc units still exist
>not even the last bandit kingdoms standing are active anymore
>this all died for incest and pointless edge
Sadness covers me like a blanket.
Tuck me in, let me die

It'll all be better when Ulysses Banacek comes riding through the sphere at the head of the Cloud Adders.

>TFW

>>virtually no interesting merc units still exist

>Reminding me that Wilson's Hussars are gone
We all knew they couldn't defy the odds forever, but it still fucking hurts. And there's still no art of a Wilson's Hussars mechwarrior with an "I survived 35 years on Butte Hold." t-shirt

>Reminding me that Wilson's Hussars are gone
Of all the jihad's sins, killing those boys was up there.
I mean, what kind of edgy miserable faggot would you have to be to kill of the guys who's entire schtick was that they were always nearly dead but somehow survived everything?
Like, for fucks sakes, I'm pretty sure that that even medron fucking pryde keeps them alive in his AU and he's the genuine king of the faggots

>hello darkness my old friend

>>all three of the major periphery states are effectively gone
OA were boring, RA are better. The Taurian future is bleak but I suspect a merge with the breakaway faction is on the cards. The MoC has its alliance with the CC but that hasn't wiped it off the map any more than absorption into the Star League did. Wait until Daoshen dies - and he will, quite likely in ilKhan - and they'll be out from under the thumb.

>the circinians are dead
And nothing of value was lost. Generic pirate kingdom. Their end was more interesting than the rest of their history.

>the Marians aren't even pirates anymore
They weren't really pirates even as far back as the 3060s. They still do some shady raiding.

>the home world clans are gone baby gone
Remains to be seen. None bar the Blood Spirits were as entertaining as the IS Clans anyway.

>all the WarShips are gone, except for lolbears and arbitrary atrocity ships with the falcons
The Wolves and Snow Ravens have some. There are a handful scattered around the Great Houses too.

>virtually no interesting merc units still exist
Oh they exist, we just don't have the sourcebooks. Remember that we didn't know shit about a lot of merc units until we got the two Merc Supplementals.

>not even the last bandit kingdoms standing are active anymore
Isn't there a new Oberon Confederacy or something up in the Barrens? I know there are pirates up that way anyway.

How is it edgy? Their luck ran out, that's all. They went up against the Word of Blake and got raped. I liked them and I felt bad for them too, but you don't see me suffering full rectal prolapse over it.

>I mean, what kind of edgy miserable faggot would you have to be to
Look at literally everything they the current gang of writers have turned out, and you'll see. I actually really honestly suspect that one of them has an actual honest-to-god fetish for meaningless killing of large quantities of civilians. Like, EVERY FUCKING FLUFF SOURCEBOOK in the last who knows how many years has involved said presumed fetish as a major element, without fail. Ever wonder why?

"Plagiarism" is a strong word. FASA paid licence fees for the usage rights in all good faith.

They had no right to, actually.
Imo, the only bad part about it was not placing a big sign "this was made by X and Y and licensed".

Now Robotech crew deserves a chair. They specifically removed any trace of credits and claimed they made it, abused rights they never had (both towards Battletech and Macross), paraded it as their own work. Bully the license out of everyone.
Shut down Macross on a global scale and contained it in Japan. Absolutely shit-talked the fuck out of Macross and the original crew while living off of it.

Like, the only reason they haven't been put to court was because US decided to assfuck Japanese during the Cold War and the law was such that as long as you were from US, no matter what Japanese said, you were in the right.

And that's not even getting into the whole thing of stealing Battletech designs, claiming ownership even the retarded law didn't give them ownership of, abusing the ever-loving fuck out of fans that know no better and lying to them out of the ass,...

Dark Age fixed the setting, though

>The Free Worlds League Parliament responds to Katrina Steiner's peace proposal.hpg

More like Derp Age

>Invented all the dumb Clan combo states
>Mechs all overheating from running like they got fucked up sinke because of clicktech mechanics
>New Terran Hegemony except without everything that made the original cool. Their military headquarters are in Santa Fe for fuck sake.
>Fortress Republic
>Broke up the Free Worlds League

And that's not even scratching the surface.

More like my favorite meme

Is there a pdf of the updated Alpha Strike available so I don't have to constantly refer to this 42 page monster?

>They had no right to, actually.
user, about five years before they paid for the use of those images, nonwhites who weren't citizens didn't have the rights to hold IPs in the US. Whatever the Japs created, anyone in the US was actually free to steal and call their own, down to getting trademarks an copyrights registered on it.

And seeing how fucked-up US law is, HG basically figured they'd roll along pretending that the old state of law was still in action because it effectively is until somebody sues.

>>Broke up the Free Worlds League
Sorry m8, but that was literally the most interesting thing to ever happen to the FWL.

But it literally happened like this.

>All you stupid assholes ignored us so long, we have the biggest economy in the sphere, the biggest modern warship fleet outside the clans, and are under the best captain general in the better part of a century! Bring on a war, we're ready for the spotlight!
>Ghost War comes out
>Now you all are broken, scattered and just plain broke.
>How?
>Uhhh, Jihad?

FWL stuff was fine in JHS and made it work, but the original DA idea and execution was completely asinine. Overnight the FWL went from top nobody to the new Capellans, that one stretch of territory that only existed because everybody else had too many bigger threats on their borders to take advantage of them.

Yes. The second printing came out a long time ago, and there's a second printing errata doc that's much smaller to go with it.

see the problem is I don't want to have to buy it again just for that.

You shouldn't have to. As far as I know, any place that sells the pdf should give you and update to the second pritning at no charge. Both the Battleshop and DriveThru work that way. I can't imagine anywhere else working differently.

In that case it's off to the Battleshop I go. Cheers

Now for the bad news. For the Battleshop, they send an email to you whenever the new pdf is ready. Unfortunately, the link is disabled after a while IIRC, and then you have to ask them to reset your download access by giving you a new link. Considering the number of people who've had problems with anything involving communication with the shop, you might be in for an annoying time. Sorry man; best of luck.

It really wasn't, and it was handled like an absolute mess. FWL got flanderized hard with the "lol civil wars" shit when historically until the Jihad they'd had no more secessions or civil wars than anyone else. The "civil war" schtick was only theirs in the 3025 era because it was set up that of all nations they were the ones to recently have had one, thus explaining partially why they didn't really get involved in the upcoming 4th War.
CGL just looked at that and said "lol well that's all they do now hahaha fuck 7 1/2 centuries of literally having no secessions".

>CGL just looked at that and said "lol well that's all they do now hahaha fuck 7 1/2 centuries of literally having no secessions".

That was like five years before CGL even existed though.

Fair enough, technically it was WizKids/Topps or whatever. CGL still handled it like a mess. Granted it was a retarded thing to be handed, but damn they did a poor job. That FM for the post-Jihad FWLM is cringey in its laziness.

>Regulans become periphery pirate tier in their equipment
>By the DA, they're the ones that get shuffled all the dumb Wizkids Solaris mechs like the Neanderthal

I never thought I'd see the day when the boys who were "All Warhammers and Marauders, all day long. You won't share your PPC's with us? Fuck you, we'll build all we can and stuff LL's in the gaps." be reduced to that garbage.

Different name, same fuckers.

You're thinking FanPro, who kept the Battletech stuff in print and are responsible for a number of the current RULEbooks (and their shit layout). Wizkids was the ones that did the fluff fuckery, and few to none of the people from there left for CGL when MWDA ended.

I swear we need a fucking CHART of the companies and crew, given how frequently this shit gets mixed up by /btg/.

The FWL provinces had been fragmenting into ever smaller pieces, and opposition to federal control was growing, from mid Star League right up to when Thomas seized control. FASA was consistent on that. You're not wrong, though- Thomas gave us the good years of 3050 to 3067 where the FWL had only as many rebellions and shit as the other Successor States.

And I was under the impression that the main difference between Wizkids and Fanpro and CGL was the presence/absence of Stackpole and Weisman.

It actually would be nice to have a graphic showing who was responsible for this shit.

Goodnight you magnificent bastards. ;-;

Its just a little sad how "raped by Word of Blake" seems to be like 50% of what the Jihad has to offer.

So Veeky Forums, who are your favourite regiments/mercenary units that didn't make it to the Dark Age?

Initial Dark Age was like 99% Weisman.

Raped by Word of Blake was often interesting when it wasn't a standard fight.

Like napalming the capital of the space amazons to the ground. Or nuking the capital of Regulus WITH THEIR OWN NUKES.

What was retarded was stuff like Case White "Haha, 1/4 of your ships actually had enough double agents on them to mutiny or sabotage before you even engage our space defenses."

Or stuff like SCOUR where it was "We landed on former Chaos March planet X to get rid of the Blakists. Oh no, our assault is going bad. Throw the Hussars at them. They're expendable!"

I guess the MAC counts since they went full Capellan stooge and the Nightriders are dead?

>You will never have a CO so ballsy that when a Lyran black market trader stiffs him on essential gear for the unit, he retaliates by making a raid on the factory itself to balance the books
>That factory is Defiance Hesperus
>And he actually pulls it off

Balls of steel.

2nd Sword of Light.

Greenberg's Godzillas.
They just kinda vanished during the timeskip

Shit, now I want to see a battletech version of the accompanying letter

The provincial growth was actually in the Feds favour. Heck, Camlann vs FW is half the reason Resolution 288 passed. As the reactions of the provinces in 3014 and 3030 showed, a lot of the parliamentary squabbling was due to war weariness from two centuries of nonstop conflict, not opposition to Federal power.
All of that got pretty much ignored for "lol civil wars/secessions". And then there is how all the established FW government, and the FWLM, got mostly ignored during the Jihad. Not like that's new though, what with the FedSuns government turning retarded in the lead up to the FCCW.

Anyway I just think the Jihad writing wasn't that great and it ignored a lot of established things is all.

Is there some kind of meme here that I'm missing?

Dude... DUDE.. How NEW are you?

Does CGL actually hire any mechanical designers/engineers or do they simply tell guys like Shimmy to draw whatever?

The Free Worlds League Parliament to the Steiner Archon!

O Archon, Lyran devil and damned devil's kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of ruler are you, that can't slay a leech locust with your naked arse? Amaris excretes, and your army eats. You will not, you bitch of bitches, make subjects of Free World sons; we've no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, fuck your father.

You Kuritan scullion, Davion wheelwright, brewer of Taurus, goat-fucker of the Magistry, swineherd of the Outworld Alliance, pig of Circinus, Periphery thief, catamite of Marius O'Reilly, hangman of Kentares, and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our prick. Pig's snout, mare's arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw your own father!
So the Free Worlds declare, you lowlife. You won't even be herding pigs for the Mariks. Now we'll conclude, for we don't know the date and don't own a calendar; the moon's in the sky, the year with the Lord, the day's the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!

-Duncan Marik, with the whole Free Worlds League Parliament

A meme that is 125 years old.

Okay, you must be very new, but the thing is, if you see something you don't recognize, just do a search on it.

He's pretty fucking new, I suspect.
Here it is, you newfag. So the sultan of the ottoman empire sent a letter to some cossaks in what is now southern Ukraine telling them to surrender, and they sent this back
Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan!

O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil's kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are you, that can't slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil shits, and your army eats. You will not, you son of a bitch, make subjects of Christian sons; we've no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, fuck your mother.

You Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-fucker of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, pig of Armenia, Podolian thief, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig's snout, mare's arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw your own mother!

So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. You won't even be herding pigs for the Christians. Now we'll conclude, for we don't know the date and don't own a calendar; the moon's in the sky, the year with the Lord, the day's the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!

- koshovyi otaman Ivan Sirko, with the whole Zaporozhian Host.