/btg/ - BattleTech General

Which Heavy/Assault lance do you guys generally deploy when you have the choice?

Four Atlases.

What kind of question is that?

Kingfisher + Blood Kite with a couple of at least 5/8 or 6/9 heavies and a Crimson Hawk 2 for shits and giggles.

What, no one had the balls to say a lance of Hellstars somehow obtained by a heroic Mary Sue mercenary company?

Well, my merc use a lance of Hellstars (a gift from WiE for saving Arc-Royal during campaign play) as their primary "hammer" assault unit.

Dammit, didn't realize the thread was in auto-sage.

>Those trilogies are so old they're non-canon now, though. There's no modern valid sources that imply Clanners fuck around.

No novels have been de-canonised.

And the reason there aren't modern sources talking about it isn't that it doesn't happen or never did but because the novels and SBs went PG-rated for language and sexuality a long time ago.

War crimes and shit is still fine though because logic.

That's a scout lance, user.

>No novels have been de-canonised.

Everything that matters about them has been retconned by newer material. They don't need to be officially de-canonized; they're already non-canon by dint of the newer material making the event which happen within them impossible (such as Phelan's battle on the Rock).

They're reasonably fun reads, but they're simply not valid as source material any more. Think of them as fan fiction+.

More to the point, it isn't really necessary to go over in modern sources as the old ones already do so. And outside novels, the Warriors of Kerensky sourcebook mentions it as well on pages 51-52., and for modern sources, Era Digest: Golden Century also makes mention of it.

The pure waifu jailbait Steiner was still better than the used up slags Victor got.

This is good sarcastic b8. Now do the one about how all the factions are sues and the writers need to be put to death.

>used up slags

No dissing Omi Kurita.

He was sort of Donald Trumps Mini-Me.

He couldn't rule worth a shit but he grabbed them by the pussy left and right.

>they're already non-canon by dint of the newer material making the event which happen within them impossible (such as Phelan's battle on the Rock).

The only thing that doesn't work is the Dragoons providing tech.

Everything else, regardless of how stupid it seems on the face of it (eg Phelan not recognising advanced tech or Victor not having an upgraded machine) can stillbe explained away pretty easily.

Not that I don't wish they hadn't fucked with the Unseen and War of 3039 so much, but everything else still checks out.

>He couldn't rule worth a shit

Eh, he had crippling self-esteem issues, which he could paste over by riding a huge metal robot into battle. He probably would've been fine if they'd allowed him to hold court in a mech.

That's pretty damn era-dependant, but the one constant in my heavy/assault lances is that there's almost always at least one Thunderbolt

Well to be fair we don't know what kind of leader he'll be. Victor we know was an idiot.

He'll be great,
and if Victor is Trump then Hillary was Katrina.
She probably would've renamed us to the "American Alliance"

My go-to heavy lance for mercenaries anywhere from 3055-3150 is pretty much like so:

>Thunderbolt-7M
>Bandersnatch-01A
>Archer-4M
>Thunderbolt-7M (sometimes replaced by a Hound or some sort of warhammer, depending on era and what I feel like)

Lyran Alliance was such a cuck name

>no hound

Like I said, in DA stuff the hound often replaces the second thud. If it was available in more eras, I'd use it more, simple as that

Funny, when I go mercenary I'm more focused on light and medium mechs. Rarely do heavies or assaults because cost to fix. When I do the Clan thing, replacement cost isn't usually an issue.

On the other hand, lights die far too easy, and heavies and assaults almost always kill 10-100x their average post-battle repair cost in salvage. I know I'd rather spend a hundred grand fixing up a thud than a million and a half buying a new light

A Freeborn Clan Warrior MAYBE.

Trueborns rarely couple with Clan freeborns, much less some spheroid who thinks they're hot shit.

Don't forget, the clans are all about getting hung up on silly points of honor.

I don't use lights much at all, because hovercraft and medium mechs do their jobs either significantly cheaper or significantly more survivably

If a Light is dying, it's either too obsolete to do it's job correctly or being misused for it's intended role.

I have terrible luck with hovers so I tend to go with heavier wheeled or treaded vees when I go with them as an option.

She spermjacked him, so you just made the term just a little bit more deviod of meaning there.

>she even cucked him out of his own baby batter
Smh desu senpai

Ain't that like an Asian rub and tug worker for you?

What is the best Mechwarrior video game experience?

Single player or MP? I've been having fun with MWO, tho the devs might be questionable to some. I have been enjoying it so far. If you don't want to deal with that, Living Legends just got a nice update, but it's dead as hell.

SP the best is probably 4. MechAssault is kind of arcade-y, might be your thing. I thought 2 was okay.

I LOVED Mechwarrior 3 and played the hell out it.

DESU, my favourite was MW1 due to the lite roleplaying elements involved. Traveling the entire innersphere was great!

The gameplay doesnt hold up though, and the light mech exploit takes the fun out of it once you learn it

Mechwarrior 2 NetMech is my second place - not played MWO though as my PC is shite

a cat can be isorla'd to

MW3 is the best.

4 is fun, but feels dumbed down, doesn't look as good, and is more arcadey to me.

2 is great for nostalgia feels, plus that soundtrack.

2 Mercs is the best. Best soundtrack, giant maps, best missions, voices. The audio is amazing, all those characters. If only the graphics had aged a little better.
youtube.com/watch?v=at9hxU864Fg

3 is close runner up, better weapon effects and graphics aged better. Everything else is solid second.

So I'm getting into designing mechs, and one thing is giving me a heap of issues - running TSM smoothly, without wasting a lot of BV on weapons that are only used a fraction of the time to run the TSM.

Only bother using TSM with a short range or bracket fire machine. Don't forget you can toggle heatsinks off and on every round as well if you feel your machine is oversinked.

>Don't forget you can toggle heatsinks off and on every round as well if you feel your machine is oversinked.

What's the actual timing on this? Or, where are the rules for it?

HS can be shut off during the End Phase of a turn.

We live in a world where games barely a decade old are getting remasters, and yet MW2 never has been. Remastering that game and its expansions would be an instant buy for me.

2 Mercs was okay, but even with nostalgia it doesn't have that much on 3

>Killing some Jags on generic forest planet 2999
>Comparing to fighting all over the Sphere including the Battle of Luthien and on the outer hull of a Jumpship

I liked 3 a lot but don't pretend the missions even compare.

>fight all over the hexagon blob planets that all look the same
Yeah it was impressive compared to EarthSiege

>preferring 3 to 2
Don't talk to me or my wife's son ever again.

>wife's son

I don't get this meme

An androgynous young white man with a silly haircut was speaking over black young men at a protest, allegedly yelling and harassing those who were trying to speak to the black young men. When he was called out on his actions as hypocritical and his arguments countered, he said 'don't talk you me or my wife's son ever again' and walked away, dragging a small child.

But as great as 2 was, 3 just was cooler. Microprose, son, Microprose.

Like most dumb shit, it's a /pol/ meme

MC was better than 3 by a country mile. Hell, even MC2 was, just for all the ham.

MC is a different thing though. Of course strategy games are better.

>tfw fighting off a company of bondsmen militia led by indoctrinated Drac officers
I'm glad that shit was canonized, it was awesome.

Anyone else run into unique players of the game?

>be a CapCon player mostly
>just enjoy the fluff and their tech
>move to a new town and get involved at the LGS
>a group of guys there are all CapCon players too
>get to talking during a game one day
>they all believe in the Confederation's type of government and society
>talk about how a strong central state where everyone earning citizenship would be best
>talk about how the state should play a major role in raising children
>talk about how personal liberties are overrated compared to societal common good and cultural cohesion

I thought they were fucking with me at first but after a few weeks I've realized they're not. They were all big Bernie Sanders supporters too, which I kinda found funny.

So /btg/, have you met weird players?

For those that love some of the audio of Mech Commander (and Gold): -
mediafire.com/file/pehas5xyoaocfaz/2016-11-12_MechCommanderGold-Pilots-with-Instructions.rar

I've had the good fortune so far not to run into players more weird than what's average for tabletop wargaming, so far.
If you actually mean unique and not just weird, last month I had a good game against a fellow who only had one arm.

Should have embraced his Lyran heritage more then. I'm sure they would have built an assault mech sized throne for him.

This is pretty common in my experience, and largely why I loathe the CapCon.

He pretty much did, which is why the civil war didn't make much sense to me. If Katherine had played up her Davion heritage and stolen the Suns half from Victor it would have made more sense. I can only assume they didn't want Davion forces to be the "bad guys" in a civil war.

>Eh, he had crippling self-esteem issues, which he could paste over by riding a huge metal robot into battle.

You're thinking of Kai.

Victor actually did very well, it's just that the sudden swerve of his most hard-core supporters and most pro-Davion advisors towards Katherine comes literally out of nowhere because it has to happen for the FCCW to go ahead.

That was a group hand-picked for loyalty and intelligence, and all of them knew Katherine had killed Melissa. But then they go from being smart and hating her to being incredibly stupid and loving her overnight.

It is what happened but it's still dumb.

Pretty much this. It would make so much more sense. The Lyrans weren't huge fans of the Dracs but the Suns hated them a lot more. She could have used Victor's relationship with Omi to whip up the Draconis March and point out to the Capellan March that Victor's focus on the Clans meant they weren't getting enough troops assigned to them, along with telling everyone that he speaks German as his first language, grew up on Tharkad, went to Lyran academies with a lip-service stint at the NACMS, and has since served exclusively in Lyran units and primarily ruled from the Lyran half of the realm.

But then the Lyran forces of the time were mostly derp personified and they got straight fucked by the AFFS, so logically Victor would have lost the Civil War in that case. And if you think the state of the Suns and Lyrans in the Dark Age or Jihad was bad, imagine that shit going down with Katherine on the throne or her legacy in place.

That's another good point. Katherine tried to trash talk Victor by saying he had a myopic focus on the Clans. Lyran citizens should have been clamoring for leader like that.

Something something Peace Princess something something opinion polls something something true inheritor of the Steiner values.

But seriously it's mostly Tormano Liao. The exact moment her reign turns to shit is when he goes back to running Free Capella. Without him to give her good ideas and make her think they're her own or take care of actually running the place instead of strutting around saying she's running the place, the Lyrans only had Katherine and Nondi.

And both of them thought that if Katherine came up with an idea it had to be the best one in human history and probably the best one anyone would ever have, because it was an idea that Katherine had come up with.

Do you think it would have been possible to bring an end to the FedCom as a setting-beating superpower WITHOUT the crazy nonsense parade that was the FCCW?

Remember Victor actually ruled from Tharkad in the few years he could actually keep his ass in a chair. The way it was framed, the Lyrans saw him as a Suns prince ruling them from outside, and the Suns saw him as a traitor who cared more about the Lyrans than the Clans. He went to a Lyran military school, commanded a Lyran unit and snuggled up to the Dracs. No wonder the Draconis March was chaffing under that.

Interestingly, during the Civil War, the Draconis March basically told everyone to sod off while they invaded the Combine and the Capellan March decided to just sit the whole thing out until they got attacked by people who wanted New Syrtis and Kathil.

Then right after the Civil War when that peacenik Tancred takes over from his warmongering father, he goes into hiding with the First Princess for the first few years of the Jihad. So Robinson is all like "Our boss is playing hide the salami with the homely Steiner-Davion sister and isn't looking this way. LET'S GO FUCK UP THE DRACS AGAIN!"

So I mean, the Draconis March really did what they wanted to during the whole business anyway. Why kill Davions when you can kill THOSE OTHER FAKE JAPANESE GUYS WITH RED MECHS! HOW DARE THEY BE SO SIMILAR TO US IN CULTURE AND UNIT COLORS!

Easy. Kill all the Steiner Davion kids. Without the shared blood, the whole system based on bloodright collapses. The nobles of either state wouldn't follow somebody solely from the other.

Not really, no.

The set-up for its creation and the power of it were both so over the top that it required everyone to carry the idiot ball in order to break it.

The smartest thing to do would have been to never make it in the first place. But this is BT.

I dunno how many people watched Heroes back in the day but the FedCom reminds me a lot of Peter Petrelli. His power let him copy the abilities of anyone else he was around so by the end of the first season he had the ability to control and travel through time, fly, regenerate better than Wolverine, read and control minds, predict the future, and some other shit I can't remember.

So in order to make plots that were more involved than "Peter solves every problem before it even comes up" they had to make him a complete retard and then strip him of his abilities so he could only mimic one power at a time and had to give up whatever power he did have to pick up a new one.

So if FedCom is Peter, then who is the cheerleader?

Michael Stackpole?

Maybe. You don't need Katherine S-D getting butte hurt because victor won't hold her butte and going power-mad, but the trick would be to find a way to break the absurd power of the AFFC in some other way before the WoB goes off, after which the alliane breaking in half under the strain of the jihad is plausible and logical.

I'll take it.

I used to think it was crazy how much the Draconis March kept invading the Dracs unilaterally until an user here pointed out how sheer incompetent the Dracs are.

I think the only times they did it really was in the Jihad and FCCW, though I guess everyone was raiding shit in the 3rd SW.

Still they enjoyed a great deal of success on those two occasions.

I met someone who refused to play with anyone using a Clan army because they believed The Clans promoted Nazism because the Nazis invented eugenics, and that 's racist.

His mind would fucking explode if he knew how popular eugenics was all over the world back then. *Especially* how popular it was in the US.

Honestly, despite being really black and white in terms of politics (like, below even Stackpole "most politicians who weren't soldiers at one point are stupid and/or evil" black and white), the FCCW made a rather good deal of sense. For the most part.

The big issue was the leaders and the immediate subordinates themselves. Have Katherine actually be a decent ruler who can inspire genuine loyalty from competent officers via smart decisions and not being a one-dimensional sociopath. Have Victor, though inexperienced and naive, act like the charismatic, energetic, and likable dude earlier books had portrayed him as, not the laughably incompetent numpty surrounded by equally stupid people we got in the FCCW books.

Basically, have someone other than Coleman in charge.

I told him that eugenics was considered a lot by many countries, but he said that was KKK propoganda.

He also thinks that the Star League is the perfect analogue for the UN: that when the UN inevitably falls apart, it's going to destroy the whole world as it dies.

>an entire group of MadCaps

Do we have a scan of The Clans: Warriors of Kerensky?

I can't seem to find it in the plethora of pdfs we have.

In eugenics-related headcannon, since it is utterly impossible for the Clan phenotypes to have arisen in the listed time frame I imagine them as being the source of the Scientist Caste Conspiracy.

The deadlines set by a bunch of Clans caused their scientists to go and use direct genetic engineering, including the insertion of non-human DNA, and then they had to hide it from the Warriors.

It gets spread because when one Clan captures, eg, Elemental DNA from another the originating Clan reached out and said "Uh, by the way, you're literally going to find Fire Mandrill DNA in this sample. Please don't tell your Warriors or we'll all get Annihilated" and then the scientists from the Clan that captured it go "Wait, shit, we're not the only ones doing that? In that case we'll give you the heads-up on the ASF pilot genes you guys are trying for, there's Circinian octopus DNA in there for eyesight."

>the Scientist Caste Conspiracy

That is some of the coolest shit I've heard today. Where does this theory come from? Or is it just a fan theory?

It's one of the oldest plots in the books, going right back to the original clan invasion novels where the clans premiered. It didn't come to a head until the Wars of Reaving though.

The hints of the real weird shit we didn't get until the Genecaste rumors in the Interstellar Players series though.

That's the Society. They're the reason the Wars of Reaving went as far as they did. Look in the first Interstellar Players book for some more information.

Wars of Reaving. It's an actual thing, and they basically go ballistic on the Homeworlds.

The conspiracy is a real thing. I just like to imagine that's how it got started; a few more desperate scientists turned to direct meddling rather than the eugenics they're supposed to have used, then had to conceal it, then had to find a way to make sure they and their work stayed safe when other Clans got their hands on it, at which point the unconnected (heh heh) cells start working together to cover shit up and ensure the Warriors stay happy by sharing techniques and genes that work between Clans.

mediafire.com/file/l5sbyrybpk762am/The_Clans_-_Warriors_of_Kerensky.pdf

It's under the "Old Books" folder.

>Oh fack boys, the eggheads spliced us with fucking animimimals and shieeet. Our whole existence as we know it is a fooking lie.
>*proceeds to totally obliterate each other in the greatest REEE-ing of the age

Ah, thanks.

I had Wars of Reaving, but I haven't read it because I didn't know anything 'bout the Clans.

It's probably the best sourcebook in a long time. My favorite overall, followed only narrowly buy Tukayyid, and only because that was literally CS SHENANIGANS ALL OVER THE CLANS, THE SOURCEBOOK

Tukayyid is also literally "The author didn't read the books and is making a lot of this shit up, including units and Khans, THE SOURCEBOOK."

"I totally read the books with famous Cons like Needsa Showers and Ulcer Kerensky"

Think that victor deciding ONE BULLDOG NOT ENOUGH and going after the falcons and burrs in the early-mid 60s would have been enough?