/btg/ Battletech General: PoliceMech Edition

Nice locust and stinger

Flashbulb Hatchetman. Come at me AC units.

>stinger

That's this one.

Are you the same guy with those great graph paper TROs? For some reason that stuff looks a bit familiar

>Are you the same guy with those great graph paper TROs?

You mean like this one? Yes.

Damn, those are pretty good.

This thread should not be on page 8.

Heh... beat me by the time it took me to look up a file in my "Battletech" folder!

>Damn, those are pretty good.

Thanks!

I was so pleased with this one ... then some kind soul on /btg/ pointed out that my math didn't add up!

Gentlemen behold!

Could someone start putting the Links to the places that sell the minis I always have to come back every couple of threads and ask like an Idiot.

I know Iron Wind Metals, there was one or two others.

FRP Games is the other big one, along with Warhansa for the russkie mechs.

Just bookmark warhansa you goof

Thread seems slow.

Ok, I need one more lance to fill out my FWL company. I have the lance my players already put together and one of NPCs /btg/ helped me out with yesterday.
Yesterday's lance of modified mechs here:
Blackjack BJ-1X Archer ARC-2R Grasshopper GHR-5Q Cyclops CP-10-Z Ironically enough my original lance for the company already included a Cyclops and a Grasshopper (as well as a Quickdraw and Cicada).

So now I want to throw in one last lance of preferably factory standard 'mechs appropriate to the FWLM in the mid 3060s.

Recommendations?

Archer-4M
Trebuchet
Wolverine-M
Awesome-9Q, what the shit are you thinking, building a FWL unit with no awesomes?

I'll toss you a few pilot personalities, and mechs with a minimum of customs (probably only 1/4) in a bit, when inspiration strikes

it's called purple bird bait

What (if any) optional rules do you fellows generally play with/ prefer.
Personally play with quite a lot if not all tac ops stuff, but torn on if i should keep playing with woods-cover or not.

Woods tiles absorbing damage definitely increases the lifespan of light mechs and vehicles, but i feel like it just invalidates too many weapons and turns the match into a contest of who can destroy nature the fastest. (In a 3025-3030 campaign anyways)

Hey, so what are the players piloting? It seems like you could use some scouts if they aren't already doing that. Let me know; I have some ideas for rides/pilots if you need speedies.

Is that fucking Strike Witches, BT edition?

Floating criticals is really the main one we use.

We've started using some of the weather/terrain ones.

Some of the movement options like Sprinting and Evasion, Extreme Range shots, as well as a couple other options. It depends on what we're doing really.

I did this as a joke when I made the OP a few weeks ago, either it's quietly gotten out of hand or everyone's oblivious.

I'm okay with either result.

It's kinda the result of this thread dying repeatedly because nobody has their shit together and so mobilefags are starting most of the threads, but partially (as one of those mobilefags) because I think it's funny

>80 tons
Aren't Landmates at most Protomech-sized?

Do you have more?

lets see how long we can keep this going. At the very least its a neat way to date the threads

Does someone here have the record sheet of the MAD-SD Marauder Douglas?

>Aren't Landmates at most Protomech-sized?
Yeah, they're oversized PA.

Where get?

So what was it that ayy liaos kept yelling to justify their genocidal tendencies?

>Aren't Landmates at most Protomech-sized?

Yes, but if you're trying to argue that the world is better off with *fewer* things inspired by the artwork of Masamune Shirow, I think you'll be fighting an uphill battle.

>Do you have more?

Yes. Every once in a while I toss a few out here, usually when this thread could use a bump.

SO, does warhansa get away with what they are doing because russia? I love the figures and have been waiting to order because money (just moved, been dropping thousands on furnature and shit) but they got an article on beasts of war and now I'm scared that someone might try to shut them down.

This is a pretty bitchin readout. My favorite part is, no joke, the text boxes: They are so clean, good handwriting, and they have such sharp edges that overlap the art without visible erasure lines. I LOVE IT.

Yeah, they get away with it because Russia.

>article on beasts of war

Oh god what, no, where, WHY?!

The LAST thing we need is for other websites to publish them! Word of mouth was what kept us chugging along.

While jewnited slaves of america can't really sue the russian guy(s) for copyright bullshit, they can still shut their paypal and website down and make transactions and ordering difficult.

Beasts of War proving they're retarded as fuck as always.

>This is a pretty bitchin readout.

Thanks. This one might look familiar.

>when this thread could use a bump

Page 9? Emperor's Teeth!

SO your saying, funding be damned, i should order asap.

Hah, that's pretty funny. Is this a hobby of yours? I dig it. When I custom build mechs I always get too hyper focused and make shitty machines...I'd be interested in seeing more of your tech readouts, and requesting a few if you're bored. I love crossovers.

>SO your saying, funding be damned, i should order asap.

Yeah, pretty much. The longer this goes on, the more I suspect Catalyst, Microjew and Piggy are trying to bring down the hammer on their operation.

>Is this a hobby of yours? I dig it.

It used to be, about 25 years ago.

>When I custom build mechs I always get too hyper focused and make shitty machines...

I was typically more interested than the aesthetics than the practicality in terms of game play. There are always the worthless tractors that we tend to ignore (Assassin, Charger, Banshee) in favour of the mechs that can actually dish out the punishment (Awesome, Marauder, Warhammer). The three gauss rifles on the Devastator (which later became the Achilles - apparently "Devastator" was already taken - by a tank, as I understand it) are an obvious lean toward the latter, although I'm sure if I had really thought about it, it wouldn't have been too hard to squeeze a 300XL engine in there!

>I'd be interested in seeing more of your tech readouts, and requesting a few if you're bored. I love crossovers.

It would be neat, maybe, to create another one. I think I'd have to take a read over the updated mech construction rules first, though. I understand they've changed in the last three decades. What the hell is a "partial wing?"

to be fair, most of the mechs on their site ARE basically stolen. I'd be kinda mad if someone took my designs and made money off them without my permission. Plus with how copyright law works, shit gets hairy fast.

Though I did email them a while back, and they said someone else designs the mini's and they sell them, so they might have some kind of legal insulation planned.

>it wouldn't have been too hard to squeeze a 300XL engine in there!

OK, so had I done that, that would've increased the mech's engine tonnage from 8.5 to 9.5, and increased the weight of the gyro from 2.0 to 3.0. Additionally - and I can not for the life of me remember why it isn't on any of the readouts I have - the laser in the head was supposed to be a medium *pulse* laser ("Sutell VII Tandem Mount Twin Laser") instead of a regular medium laser ("Sutell VI Medium Laser"). That means I have to find three tons, which is easy: lose the machine guns, anti-missile system, and half a ton of armour.

The more challenging piece is re-arranging the criticals so they make sense. A 300 XL engine can hold 12 heat sinks, so I'm good there, but the combination of the three XL engine slots on each side torso plus the seven necessary for each gauss rifle means I have only two left to spare on each. However, if I move both remaining medium lasers into the center torso, and distribute the five tons of gauss rifle ammunition between the right arm (8 rounds) and the side torsos (16 rounds each), that should make this design quite a bit better.

A TAC on either side torso is still likely to ruin my day, though...

>so they might have some kind of legal insulation planned.
Well yes, they're Russians. They'll just switch to bitcoins.

It is a combination of several Heroscape and MtG:AotP sets. And it is about the size of one map sheet.

I believe it is Megamek, so you can print the sheet through megameklab.

Borzinglas!

>Partial wing
Adds jump MP and heat dissipation while the mech us in atmosphere.

bampu

mad respect for hand drawn mechs

>mad respect for hand drawn mechs

Thank you.

Slow day on /btg/. I guess that's what happens when you have a general thread for a game that's played almost exclusively by (fairly) responsible adults who have real jobs.

Honestly I am just bored of Battletech. The next releases don't interest me and ilClan release is too far away to keep me here talking about the game.

Every thread I frequent on this board is slow. I actually think Veeky Forums has been hemorrhaging people for a few years now. It seems really sluggish these days, and it's summer (or was till recently), so it felt really off. /btg/ has usually be slow-ish, but yeah, I agree, taking 3-4 days to fill a thread is pretty bad.

What should we discuss though? People have proven to be rather binary on their feelings of the new HBS game, and no new books are really enticing enough to talk about. I mean even CGL is bored enough to just release memes, and IWM is slow as ever getting sculpts out (but at least the reason is decent now, with Shimmy and that one sculptor enforcing higher QC on their product).

So where exactly does the BV system fail? I'm trying to figure out edge-cases where it produces goofy/broken results.

>What should we discuss though
AUs, waifus, WarShips? We could dig up and review bad fanfiction like the star wars general does? Do a roleplay thing like the old fan grand council?
We could have a pornographic writing contest? We could host a bake sale?
create and fluff out a mid-sized periphery state and then all run campaigns in it?
I dunno man

Very fast, very light clantech machines, mostly. Also, swarms of Savannah masters. It also kinda overcosts more skilled pilots, but there isn't a TON else

Why only fast clantech machines? Not fast machines or clantech in general?

A complete overhaul and merge of StratOps and TacOps while stripping out aerospace rules for a separate "grand strategy" book.

It works well enough for both of those things individually. The trick is, speed multiplies weapon value as part of BV, and pure IS-tech can't mount enough WV for this to be a real problem, but with clantech you *can*. The dasher is a great example of what I'm talking about here

Have you SEEN the BV on the Dasher D?

>more BV than the Stormcrow B

>"responsible adults who have real jobs"
>btg threads often full of disgruntled REEEE and aggressive factionfagging

laughing_frobisher_fishpeople.gif

I think it overprices undersinked mechs, but that's a hard one to get right what with bracketing effects.

It seems to overprice mechs with both jumpjets and targetting computers.

Check out the Blood Asp A for an example of both those things in action. The Gyrfalcon 4 is another one.

Force multipliers in Introtech games. It's horridly broken when used in that manner, but elsewise it's pretty decent, assuming BV2.

>create and fluff out a mid-sized periphery state and then all run campaigns in it
This is a rather interesting idea. We've done the AU thing to death. Hell, it might make a decent quest or something, god forbid.

I guess my first question would be: Where would you even set it up? Are we talking Christmas land here where we can put it anywhere, or is it gonna be located past all the near-Periphery states, but not quite deep yet? I mean what did they actually do with the worlds of say, the Oberon Confederation after the Invasion Corridor was left to rot? I never actually looked into that myself.

>btg threads often full of disgruntled REEEE and aggressive factionfagging
Yes, and sadly those things aren't exclusively the providence of schoolchildren. Look at the OF crew, they're majority over 35 and they're actually worse than this place

>I guess my first question would be: Where would you even set it up? Are we talking Christmas land here where we can put it anywhere, or is it gonna be located past all the near-Periphery states, but not quite deep yet? I mean what did they actually do with the worlds of say, the Oberon Confederation after the Invasion Corridor was left to rot? I never actually looked into that myself.
Pseudo-clan states propped up by the Spheroid Clans as buffer states/early warning tripwire for the Homeworlds. Show up in ISP3.

>Dasher D with clan pilot has more BV than any pure IS-tech mech, period

>Dasher D with clan pilot out-BVs some superheavies
holy fucking shit

Force multipliers have been dead for something like two-three years now.

Huh, that makes sense.

Hm. I haven't ever heard that mentioned. I guess I never looked either. Good to know. Did they replace them with anything else? Cause I mean 12 cheap units vs 4-5 expensive ones is still kinda fucked for the dude with the smaller force, depending. It wouldn't matter as much if it were 12 against 8, say.

They just axed it outright. Presumably it was simpler than creating a whole new FSM and then finding out that was broken as well.
They put up a free copy of the BV chapter completely revised on the website a few years back that's miles better than the old one (same rules with the exception of the FSM change, but all errata and examples that actually tell you something).

Huh, neat. Well, I guess I'll be omitting it from my games once again. We had some small trouble with force balance in lopsided games so we tried it and man, did it suck. So we'll just toss it and try to play more balanced matches from now on and not to so much crazy 12-on-4 nonsense.

Force balancing now is basically, "we expect you to not only set the BV for the match, but also the expected size and force parameters of the game."

So instead of, "bring 10k BV2" and that's the entire thing, now it's intended to be something along the lines of, "bring 10K BV2, mainly Mechs, with no more than 4 vees, 4 platoons of infantry or BA, and no aerospace." Which IMO is a more sane way to handle things anyway; force balancing is never going to be more than an estimation no matter *what* you do given the vagaries of terrain and unit synergies.

>Where would you even set it up?

A) This is a cool idea.
B) I would set it up between the Circinus Confederation and the Rim Collection.

Also, my suggestion would be each person involved details one world and one battalion of troops (we can group battalions into regiments later based on like composition and fluff). With the usual size and participation of these threads, that's going to give us something like a dozen worlds and battalions, and a 10-14 world Periphery state with 3-4 regiments of troops is pretty much right in line with the expected troop sizes for a secondary Periphery power. If you get 3 clearly different people saying "do a rewrite" for a particular world/unit, then a rewrite is needed (to control for blatantly BS writeups).

The part that's going to cause fights is the accepted power level of the faction. Some people like Periphery powers as complete shitholes where a working Vedette makes you a warlord, some people like their Periphery states able to take on the Fedsuns and win, and sane people like their Periphery powers in between those somewhere. Without a line developer-like personage to say, "fuck you, here's the power level, deal with it", it's likely to devolve around this point. Shit, that happens with CATALYST sometimes, so obviously it's likely to happen to *us*.

>No relevant image, but I'm OK if this is useful visual cue for developing our state.

That's pretty much how you're supposed to balance BT games. BV2 is a starting point, but you're also supposed to feel out the rest with common sense. Playing with similar force sizes is one of those common senses.

I need a year/era that doesn't have the Periphery stuck marveling at the wonders of TRANSISTORS AND MICROPROCESSORS. Otherwise, I'm in. Preferably some sort of production for a 1.5 tech heavy and light, or the classic unseen.

Space Poles? I'm down for that.

>Where would you even set it up?
OP here, I was thinking somewhere in that big gap between the TC and OA, since it's really pretty damn empty
I like your worlds/battalions idea, I like it a lot.
I was thinking of a powerlevel of about marian /circinian-tier, but maybe with a small but working mech factory.

Also, era. I was thinking to write background to either 3025 or 3058, make it kinda like a "missing section" from periphery 1/2e, anyone have thoughts on that?

I'm down for Space Poles. Era doesn't matter to me. I'll leave that to you experts.

Space poles sound good, but what should they be mixed with? Battletech nations always have some weird two-part ethnic bit.
I'm voting for afghans, myself. Their antics need to make it to space

>Space Poles

I would actually mix the Space Poles with something like Space Canadians for a very important reason: write what you know. When you don't write what you know, you end up with the 80's-era stereotypes from the 3rdSW...or WORST-case, you end up with something from John Wick like L5R. I can safely admit I personally don't know a huge amount about the cultural values of Poland (while I can fake Canada based on the people from the Demo Team and all the hockey people I know), so in essence, the "Canada" half can act as a crutch to the writing.

>Power Level
My views on Periphery power levels should be relatively well-known, but I'll reiterate them in short form:
>A periphery power needs to be capable of meaningfully interacting with neighboring powers in a military fashion. This is a wargame first and foremost.
>A periphery power needs to have sufficient unit variety available to it to remain interesting to players for more than a 1-off game. (As an example NOT to emulate: 3rdSW MoC, with really only 2 flavors of bugs and SHD-2Hs available to them).
>A periphery power should not be so inept or weak that a neighboring power could ignore the Pirahna Principle and destroy them, nor should it be so well-equipped that it can take on a Successor State in direct combat with ANY meaningful chance of success.

If given my preference, I'd say that our hypothetical state would be best set in 3058. It should have ready access to roughly half of the Level 2 technologies, and extremely limited access to the rest (if it can access them at all). Perhaps 20-33% of its total standing forces should be upgraded. It needs to be able to *produce* at least 2 Mech units in each weight class, so there's actually options for players to choose from. I feel that - again, for a 3058-era game - this is pretty close to the bare minimum a faction should have in general. I understand if others disagree, but I feel this gives a nice median point in the Periphery Power Level debate.

Things I would like to see:

>Colorful conventional forces
>IS Interim tech like Dead-fire missiles that didn't take off in the IS but is considered "hot" out here.
>Use of a tech item or three that doesn't get enough use in the IS.

As mech production goes, I'm voting for the wolverine, so that all three members of the 55 ton trio are built in the periphery

Also, I'm thinking that these guys should have one of those mercenary regiments that are essentially a house unit, they've been around so long. Those seem pretty popular in the periphery

I've got your CO right here.

>Wolverine production
Yes please.
>Long Term Mercs
eh...maybe?

Pardon the date but its the best I could do.

I figure these are the three most likely locations for our proto periphery power. Which do you prefer?

Personally I like the third option. That's a lot of open space that's never really been used.

When did the CapCon reclaim half the Tikonov Reaches?

Prefer #1. Mainly because there's the greatest variety of stuff around it; two periphery powers and two successor states are within reasonable reach. #2 and #3 are both pretty one-note. And a periphery power within easy reach of a Clan OZ is basically meat, which by itself would disqualify #2 and #3.

1 could be a problem unless the faction tells the Word to fuck off, otherwise the Jihad ends with Regulans selling oops insurance. 2 is along the eventual Ice Hellion invasion corridor in the 70s, and in the 3050s is an area full of pirate havens. 3 is basically empty space, and then the Ravens trundle through. I'm not interested in signing up with the Ravens.

1) As says this one has the most options for toys and plots.
2) Ice Hellions could be a problem plus they're close enough to other Clan corridors to be easy pickings for new Sibkos.
3) Great open area but yeah...don't want to deal with Ravens.

I'd say either #1 or directly across the sphere from it, near the Tortuga dominions.

youtube.com/watch?v=Aw2GiQ8vsrs
Because somebody had to make the obvious joke.

The trouble with somewhere SE of the Fedsuns is that...
A) Its a big expanse of nothing but Fedsuns just like #3 with the Dracs.
B) You have to deal with Randis
C) You eventually will have to deal with Ravens again in all likelihood.

C3 systems are overpriced BV wise, I believe. It's simply better to put better pilots in your mechs than it is to set up a C3 network.

Fuck, wrong link.
youtube.com/watch?v=75zmIj_4LFQ
There. NOW obvious joke is obvious.

That video reminds me, are there any particularly Christian factions in BT?
Or do I have to stick to the WoB for religious fluff?

based Sabaton

Oh and don't forget that if you're starting in 3058 remember that the Smoke Jaguar OZ is pretty damn big, to the point that area 3 may have frequent clan strikes.

Sure it's only near one great house, but it's near two major periphery states, one minor one, a bandit kingdom, and the jarnfolk in the deep periphery. That's a pretty decent array of neighbors