/btg/ - Battletech General

They dragged their feet with federalization so the Captain General punished them by putting a cold stop on their upgrades for a number of years. They still kicked the ass of their fellow upgraded Mariks in 3058 and then got shipped off to Bulldog. Most of the upgrades they got eventually were trading all the jag salvage they got once they got home for sweet new FWL made gear.

They're 100% upgraded by the Republic Era, but that's because they basically had to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Slow thread...

Meagre design challenge time?

C-variant for the Panther, one each for Smoke Jaguar and Nova Cat.

Nova Cat: PPC for a cERLL, SRM-4 for 4 SRM-4s with 2 tons ammo

JagPanther: Jag Harder

It's a slower, better armored Kit Fox A. Admittedly with an Ultra 20 instead of a Gauss, but I like it.

I like it

Going to put together a record sheet with that set up.

Best thing that came out from btg, only behind nuclear Schilltron

>tfw I was the one who requested it
Yay

Relatively uninspired design based on the fact that Pathers are supposed to be light support 'mechs

ROTS STRONK. Third Transfer completed, fellow Robes.

ded thred

>Nikki Minaj
>Smoke Jaguar
>not one of the Snek Clans

It's good art, but...why? Player character portrait?

Jags got the most black characters. Why would she be a snek? That one song?

In b4 "Jaguar Lives Matter" campaign

The only other prominent black character I recall is that guy who talks about "Entropy Warfare" in the Twilight of the Clans series.

>forgetting about Minobu Tetsuhara
come the fuck on, man

I concede that point. Plus I think the Centrellas are sometimes presented as mulattoes.

Appylon would like a word with you sucka.

Also Berith,

Not to mention the Centrella family

Apollyon came off as more "ambiguously brown" to me than African outright, though maybe some line in fluff confirms it. Berith is Lando though, right?

Berith is so Lando that he speaks Wookie even though that aint the right universe.

We a good clan, we dindu nuffin wrong.

Apollyon is supposed to be Polynesian.

Are they niggers?

>We a good clan, we dindu nuffin wrong.
Now i can see why the extinction of the Jaguars were justified.

closer to abos and rice niggers than regular niggers, by far

Hey Veeky Forums

I'm new to this and have been getting the general gist of the lore of the factions.

One thing I'm wondering though - do the different inner sphere powers and clans have different general tactical or strategic styles? I'm not seeing much regarding this quite yet. Can anyone give me a quick overview?

They do, and a lot of it is reflected in their force composition. While general force structure is pretty close to the same (IS: lances/companies/battalion/etc, Clan: star/binary/trinary/cluster/etc.) composition and mindset will dictate strategy and tactics. This also applied to the weaponry fielded by each faction as well; certain factions have an affinity for certain types of loadouts (ex: Davion forces and Rotary ACs).

Is there a general flavour to the tactics of each? All I've seen is mostly old Lyran Scout Lance memes.

Battletech is a giant meme of memes.

Are there any particular factions you're wondering about? Because talking about specific groups is a lot easier than sperging about every group that every was possibly relevant.

I don't know per se I'd at least like to know about the five main inner sphere factions. The clans seem to be a bit more thematic and "this is their one thing" and so I can kinda understand them tactically at first glance

Well, the Smoke Jaguars were on the receiving end of Operation Serpent, haha.

I know about the Jags' abundance of black characters, I was just making a reference to the song. It is admittedly her highest-charting song, so it could still work. Personality-wise, she is pretty Steel Viper, and hell, they had a WarShip named Anaconda.

>Dracs favour PPC boats, SHS, fast heavies and hate mediums because they are DISHONORABLU.
>Davion has a decent mix of weight classes and loves to field LLs and A/C of all flavours.
>Steiner has a disproportionate amount of heavy mechs and slow assaults, and is well known for their gauss designs.
>Marikans and Cappies field 2 of the best mechs for their era, the Awesome and the Vindicator, respectively

So, this is a 3025/3050 blanket thing.

Steiner: Heavier is better. Brute force and weight is a staple of a military that, due to political/social intertwinings isn't as focused on subtle tactics while having a strong industrial/economic base.
Kurita: Individual honor is big. Duels are a thing. Slow lights and fast heavies. PPCs are loved. Ruthless; DCMS is known for betraying mercs and killing POWs.
Davion: Reasonably honorable, uses a lot of lights and mediums. Likes lasers replacing ballistics. Strong combined arms and strategic-level work. FedCom Davion basically shores up all its tonnage weak points with Steiner stuff.
Liao: Think Sun Tzu + Machiavelli. Lot of combined arms + fuckery. Few assaults, tanks + infantry is intended to make up for that.
Marik: Mix and match. Lotta vehicles and signature mechs. Depends more on the province than the overall faction.
Periphery: Closest factions + Mad Max. Have fun.

I have to ask what constitutes fuckery at Mech scale combat.

Giant tripwires, landmines, lighting shit on fire for smoke to cover your advance, dealing with dug-in enemies using Inferno (aka HYPER NAPALM) missiles.

Also the classics of urban combat, the "demolisher/hetzer/SRM carrier waiting for you to come around the corner"

Since covered the great houses well, I'll only talk about the periphery states and ComStar. This is for the the 3025-55 era, roughly

Taurians: seem to have a strong preference for multi-role mechs with a gun for every occasion, build primarily heavy and lightweight machines; common fanon has them using heavies a lot and being somewhat slow and inflexible as a result. They're also a big fan of combined arms, and use oversized formations; they deploy tanks in lances of six, with three pair subunits, mechs are in regular lances.
Magistracy Of Canopus: Likes highly mobile mechs, and hit and run attacks. Typically uses mercenaries to do their heavy lifting. Doesn't use combined-arms tactics per se, but makes extensive use of tanks. Military is quite green on average, and commanders are of dubious quality
Outworlds Alliance: no getting around it, their ground units are pretty shitty. They mostly rely on their air force, which is the best around. Some ground units are skilled at foreward observation for air strikes, but on the whole they are not very skillied and very poorly equipped

Comstar: not really combatants until the clan invasion, most units are very well-trained but green. Equipment is high-tech, higher than anyone else, and they are primarily equipped with old Star League mechs, several of which are extinct outside of their military. They organized their units by sixes; each formation is made up of six of the next unit size down, with the smallest being a single mech, tank or infantry squad of six. In later years, the Word Of Blake, a comstar splinter faction, uses the same force organization

It's actually 36 infantry to the L1. 6 BA though.

Oops, my bad. Got those two mixed up

/pol/ wanders into Veeky Forums again ...

I wonder how the Inner Sphere would work if the major states were democracies and all the great houses were political parties? Would we see ads like "Grab Canopis By The Pussy"? "Make New Avalon Great Again"?

>calling a spade a spade is OMG EBUL /pol/!

Wonder what your life going to be like when you leave your little comfort zone basement.

whoops, misspelled princeling

What ways are there to enhance TAG accuracy? TComp, AES, "twinlinked" (aka just putting two on the same mech)...?

TAG doesn't play with Tcomps.

AES definitely. I believe it works through C3 as well and comes for free on things that have a C3 Master, so...

It's a shame you missed all the Nicki Minaj threads here then, you could have put your two cents in.

Is there a nice IS ac-20 toting heavy like the Thunder but pre-clan invasion?
I know there's the Shootist (which is also one of my favorites from MC2) but apparently it's on the "basically forgotten unless you're ComStar" group

It has been previously noted that there is not. Introtech AC 20 heavies are oddly nonexistent.
Thus we went and made some variants.

Always struck me as strange. "Here's the biggest ballistic bitchslap we have. Let's not put any on our heavy mechs."

An introtech mini-victor (heavy, AC20, JJ) would've been quite interesting, especially if capable of working in tandem with something like a Grasshopper

Most of the 3025 Heavies are Unseens, and those were made when the rule set only had the A/C-5.

Still doesn't make it any less weird IC, but there's an OOC reason for it at least.

Depending on how you do it, it could actually be kind if boring, given the same weight issue for introtech 75-85 ton mechs. You could just drop the Victor to 75 tons and call it a day.

Best introtech heavy AC/20 refit is the Jagermech. Replace all baby ACs with two AC/20s and three tons of ammo. WILL YOU DARE TO BELIEVE YOU CAN SURVIVE?

Maybe a catapult K with twin side torso AC20?

>Maybe a catapult K with twin side torso AC20?

Slow day in /btg/ again. We must all be responsible adults at work.

working on TO&E's

Or cleaning their room in Mom & Dads basement.
You have to do this once a year or so or the empty pizza boxes revolt.

I don't think anyone who plays BT is young enough to do that.

I'm not *at* work, but I am getting ready for work.

On a related note, is there such a thing as mechbuilder software that works on a phone?

>I don't think anyone who plays BT is young enough to do that.

I agree. The image in was from a tournament flyer I made sometime around 1992.

Is there ever a fluff explanation for WHY there are noble families in the future? And why the names barely change? Even in the nations where its a selected position? Are the writers just too lazy to come up with more than nine or ten last names?

People who were close to rulers got granted superficial titles which in turn led them to believe they were some sort of nobility?

Either way, noble is just a fancy way of saying elitist.

You'd be surprised user. I know two casual BT players in the area who are in similar states...though in one case its 2L soda bottles instead of pizza boxes.

Working on the next huge chunk of our overarching campaign. We're moving out of the Chaos March and dipping our toes into the St Ives conflict. Its Jan 3061 and i've got a shitload of planning to do since i'm primary GM again.

Short Answer: The original writers @ FASA were reading a lot of Larry Niven & Jerry Pournell, or Weber, or Anderson or ...
There were a lot of Sci-Fi authors writing about Feudalism in Space back in the seventies and eighties, it's sort of a trope.
see: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FeudalFuture

Longer Answer: Read the House books, they'll explain how the great houses formed and developed.

Imaginary Answer: After the 2016 Us Presidential election people were so disgusted that they gave up democracy forever,.

I do know that the Outworlds Alliance at least has some mechs - any information on how they operate or what tactics they use if they're there mainly to support an airforce? I think I heard somewhere they often use AA ACEs like blackjacks and riflemen but that might be fanon

They do have mechs, it's just that 2/3 of them are stingers, locusts and wasps.
As with the other periphery states info on how exactly they operate is pretty scarce. IIRC they mostly use vehicles and fixed enplacements for AA, and even not much of that, because in practice their fighters kill everything in space before they ever need AAA to shoot it down

The 1/3 are Merlins.

>Imaginary Answer: After the 2016 Us Presidential election people were so disgusted that they gave up democracy forever

But that's not imaginary at all

Trump probably wins in the BT universe and starts WW3

The Soviets are responsible for the troubles of the 21st Century in BT. We were supposed to have a Second Soviet Civil War in 2014.

>WW3
Did BattleTech even have a WW3?

Well, merlins, a few legacy machines and a few DC, FS and TC imports here and there

So 33% Merlins, 65% bugs, 1% random legacy mechs. Sounds like a solid force to me.

There's a reason they rely on their airforce m8

Let's not have another round of production VS tabletop arguing, for God's sakes

I still can't believe people are actually going to vote for him. I can't even. He's going to start a war and that fact is making me literally shake. If he wins I'm moving to Europe.

Does Trump have a House Liao to cut in half like the fourth succession war? Because if there is one, I'm all for that.

You must be Chinese.

Trump reminds me of Hanse Davion.

Thoughts on Ral Partha minis?

Some good and some terrible, just like the rest of Ironwind's line. Ironwind are old Ral Partha.

So just look at each sculpt individually before you decide to buy.

I was being serious, it honestly sounds like Merlins and Bugs ahoy, which sucks, but is canon, and they have crazy airpower to back it up so it is basically fine.

Join me in welcoming the incoming apocalypse. When the crazies vote him into office, we can stand arm in arm and ride the atomic horizon together.

I have little hope for the future.

So what's the most recent news on that Battlemech Manual thing?

>So what's the most recent news on that Battlemech Manual thing?
I believe is that BattleMech Manual is a thing.
They just announced it, really. No other news other than Xotl coming here and talking about what he can talk

And that Muninn and I stooges of CGL, I guess.

Stand arm in arm literally shaking?

>He's going to start a war

Highly unlikely. He's an isolationist at heart. Big-mouthed obnoxiousness may hurt international relations but it doesn't start wars. Russia plainly hold him in contempt (which is why they support him) and a 3000+ year old country like China are patient enough to wait for his term to end.

Don't see much contempt there tbqh

Basically, yeah. Humans had a good run, had to end sometime, just wish it were a little more dignified, you know?

>Trump reminds me of Hanse Davion.
Right on brother

Ha Ha, you do sound like Capellans.

Although if I really think about it Hillary has more of a Katherine Steiner-Davion vibe to her; a soulless, power-mad, corrupt bimbo with amazing PR.

But really if it's BT you have to comsider 1980's politicians as the inspiration for Inner Sphere leaders, Reagan is Hanse Davion,