/btg/ General

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They're everywhere!

So a buddy of mine and I are looking to try some space battles. What might be some good scenarios to try things out on in MM?

A Union-class dropship plus its two aerospace fighters trying to bull their way past a squadron (6) light or mediumweight aerospace fighters trying to knock it down.

5,000 Sparrowhawks trying to take down a Leviathan III.

>Savannah master rush in space

Or what would win in a fight, a 200 pound Rottweiler or 200 one pound Chihuahuas?

I was about to say that this post sums up the cancer that has eaten /btg/ from the inside out; a perfect shining microcosm of the stupid trolley-problem tier shitposting that you can find anywhere else on any other board having finally battered down the ramparts of our ~true game~ discussion but

I am really, really trying not to be amused by that post, and I'm failing

Is there a free up-to-date unit designer program out there?

it is literally in the fucking OP post bru

Neither SSW nor MML are up-to-date. SSW was last updated in 2014, for example. New options for construction have been released since then.

For bonus funtime points, add in the Leopard CV the defending fighters rode in on.

I have a question regarding mech artistic designs
I really dig how the original clan mechs look, but for some reason it feels like there aren't any design as clean looking as that group
I noticed that by looking at Chris Lewis rendition of the Clan originals compared to his other works, almost feels like it's a different artist

Aegis v Aegis, Dante v Dante, or Conqueror v Conqueror are good intros to WarShips if you want to try those. I can re-post my articles on them if you like.

SSW/SAW still serve well enough, and I was under the assumption that MML was updated enough in the last build to handle basically every 'Mech type, even tripods and superheavies. Did I hear wrong? I still just use SSW myself.

Sure, I'd definitely like that. I got to rereading the Hunters and my love of all things spaceships got ticking.

Last I checked, tripods and superheavies were glitchy in MML and the latest experimental tech (e.g. RISC hyper laser) was not included.

But it's been a while I admit. May have been updated since.

CL's Timber Wolf, still the best Timber Wolf.

He's also responsible for the first appearance of the spurdogoyle.

Last thread someone mentioned modifying the mech gen tables to have a 50% chance to spawn a bug. Has anyone else tried this?

I'm not sure actually. I don't mess around with the bleeding-edge stuff too much, but last I heard from people that do, MML could handle both those 'Mech types well enough. I dunno about the laser though; I think my version is too old to bother checking for that.

Well, it was the first Mad Cat illustration to not be packing LRM-15s, so there's that.

1/3

2/3

3/3

I have one on the McKenna as well but I'd start with the Aegis, Conqueror, or Dante since they're simple beatstick designs like the WS version of a Wolverine-M, very easy to get to grips with.

The McKenna plays a lot differently if you use the advanced rules for things like Bracketing. Otherwise I guess it's a beatstick too but it's a lot more interesting with advanced rules.

So reading into the lore of the Manei Domini... Damn they're really interesting and fun.

Makes me feel bad they're seemingly gone for now. Their style of 'mechs, battle armour, etc, as well as culture and naming system (even for omni configs) are fun.
Hopefully we'll see them again.

what if some remnants join with the Knight of Randis? They both follow this monastic warrior theme

... what? The Manei Domini view anyone who doesn't make a Borg look like a poser as Frails worthy only of subjugation to the Master's will. They'd never, ever join another faction.

Especially not the setting's literal Mary Sue white knights.

I missed the Jihad because no one in the circles I play with was really into it (all 3025 grogs or MWDAbabbies like me). I mean I read up on some of the story in the sourcebooks but never got to sit down and play Jihad battles.
Of the mechs and stuff the Wobblies made what was good and what sucked? Especially their cyber commando mechs?

MD are hyper dangerous pilots, but the Celestials suffer from New Toy Syndrome, and make dumb decisions. The rest of the Word's catalog is a mishmash of decent designs and stupid shit, however. Plus they actually don't have a large number of c3i designs, despite being the biggest user. The ones they do have don't have ECM, so their networks get shut down pretty easily, and all that BV goes to waste.

To be fair, it's mostly the Prime (Invictus) models of the Celestials that sucked. They were designed more to look dangerous than to be dangerous.

The alternate configurations are much better.

True, but I prefer better armament overall, and that my Omnis share weapons to simplify supply problems.

Speaking of the Celestials. We know that Dr. Cortland was captured alive at the end of the war and provided a ton of WoB secrets to the nascent Republic.

The new Comstar mechs are so close in design, does that seem to indicate that Comstar got ahold of him later?

New Toy Syndrome?

Why is one Invidia and the others Invidious?

VSPL's, sniktbubs, snubbies, etc.

Of the non-cyber Word mechs which ones are the best?
Do they have their own good versions of more common mechs too?

Oh and did regular Word warriors get cybernetic augmentations too? I feel like I read that it occurred with them before the Jihad timeline kicked off.

>They're everywhere!

Jim Holloway is my favourite "Classic" Battletech artist, and not just because of his illustrations for the Paranoia game.

The Toyama is the one vanilla Word mech I find myself going back to every single time I have a Word force. Cheapish BV and extremely effective. Plus ECCM for any C3i I have in my force.

I feel I should use the Grim Reaper more than I do though.

>Do they have their own good versions of more common mechs too?
Pretty much anything with a W designation. It's not often realized but the IS Project Phoenix mechs are all nominally Blakist as well. A full 1/3 of all Phoenix designs produced between the early 3060's and 3083 went to the WoB.

And the Word cybernetics were talked about in the 6th of June movement in the original Interstellar Players. That group later turned out to be the Master and his handy dandies.

Oh, and the Legacy is fun.

Pretty much what said. Every prime configuration had a Retractable Blade, and at least one of the new weapons from TW. They also had LFF or some other dubious weight saving gear on them.

Female pilot, don'tcha know. My intent at one point was to be a Roman historian, but IT paid better.

The Toyama is a solid choice, as are the Lightray, Legacy, Vanquisher and the Red Shift. Others are more to taste. I like the Grim Reaper as well. Additionally there are very few C3i designs amongst the Word's ranks, and those that are there are rarely very good. The White and Blue Flame quads are basically pointless, and look silly to boot.

>Do they have their own good versions of more common mechs too?
-WB variants are... well they exist. The Guillotine is flat out asinine, but the Zeus WB is basically a Warlord. While I don't hate them all, the Word latched on to "If we can't shove a VSPL on it, it's shit," so their designs are bonkers.

>Oh and did regular Word warriors get cybernetic augmentations too?
Nothing like the MD, though what they would get are basic arm and leg replacements for injuries. The former more than the latter, since bizarrely losing your leg means you can't pilot a mech as well with regards to JJ.

I'd find it hard to believe the RotS wasn't riddled with ROM agents. I mean it literally had nothing to prevent such an occurrence, and it was a multinational state from the beginning. ROM probably is still active in the Republic and got Cortland out, or liquidated him as a risk. They're probably also behind new ComStar and those neo-WoB groups.

>Female pilot
I guess I was thinking of the seven deadly sins

Fun fact, all the WoB personnel who ran the non-military stuff were folded back into regular Comstar. That means all the Protectorate worlds became the guys running the Republic HPG's. All the remaining Comgaurds which we know were riddled with ROM agents were also folded into the Republic military.

The real question is, how did they get their asses kicked so hard on Epsilon Eridani? It's like this competence streak that somehow survived Stone gets smashed by Jonah chucklefuck.

>inb4 the Ghost Paladin is really a Blakist and Blakestar is alive and well; they just sacrificed one operating site to make it seem they were destroyed

>Additionally there are very few C3i designs amongst the Word's ranks, and those that are there are rarely very good.

I was incredibly annoyed when I submitted a WoB -12C Longbow variant (that basically pulled the Artemis units, swapped over to a small cockpit and stuffed in a C3i unit in the CT and a mVSPL in the head) that got shut down pretty hard.

That was right after GenCon C3i LRM fiaso #3, though, so I imagine they weren't super-pleased with the idea of giving the WoB yet MORE units that would support such actions. The C3i LRM carrier was bad enough.

Well to fit the Envy theme I made a bunch of Clantech variants afterwards.

Yeah but there's that (which is actually really nice), and the fucking Buccaneer variants with C3i. Or the King Crab 008, which has HPPCs and LAC2s.

>They also had LFF or some other dubious weight saving gear on them.
Even so, the base chassis I think are generally good, it's mainly the confgis that make them suffer, the Archangel being the main one exception, since its emphasis on being built WOB TOUGH means low pod weight for guns.

LFF is light ferrous fibrous armor right? Kinda new. Is it not good?

Holy shit that's a terrifying mech. 70 LRMs hitting on base gunnery plus terrain modifiers at 21 hexes is just mean.

Well maybe that's what it was. I mean the new 1st Division had Focht imagery so maybe the rest of this Blakist underground saw them as an expendable chip to be spent since they were compromised.

It's okay, but since it has lower armor points per ton compared to Ferro Fibrous, the bonus you gain in armor is usually around a half ton. It has 7 crits to FF's 14, but I'd prefer Endo Composite structure instead, which gets you slightly more tonnage back for your crits.

Can you tell me about the LRM fiasco?

Not him but when you have an actual team that cooperates as well as a large force, you can really take advantage of improved numbers and roll up the disorganized enemy like an old carpet. They did this with semi-guided LRM's by using TAG, and also with C3i carriers. I don't know what the other time was.

Canon event got rekt with TAG and LRMs because they repeatedly had the good players who all knew each other and who had played large-scale troop actions for years play WoB while the rabble who just walked in with the aim of holding a D6 for the first time in their lifes all wanted to be Space Protagonist Anglo-Saxons.

i personally wouldn't use LFF as a weight saver and instead to shore up designs with the 7 crits to spare and sub-maximum armor. i guess it can work on really fine-tuned designs though where you've planned them out to the half ton.

It wasn't quite as bad as makes out, but the larger point is correct.

Essentially, nobody wanted to play the "bad guys" during canon events, so while Cincy was meeting up as a group at GenCon (usually 7-9 of us, on a table of 10 per side), the GMs asked us if we'd play WoB. We agreed, and since we were willing to work together and put a single person in charge (plus did stuff like "go out to Steak N Shake and talk our plan for the next day") who called the shots and everyone was willing to listen to that person, we tended to do better than the Coalition forces. The scenarios weren't built to deal with one side removing 2-3 assault Mechs per turn from concentrated fire.

This ended up causing a couple of side effects. First, the GMs started fiating things to try and break our lock on the tables (untargetable aerospace units dropping battle armor directly into a Swarm attack on our LRM carriers). Then they started re-writing the scenarios specifically to make us lose (see pic). Then they just said that "the WoB ran the IS out of SG-LRMs" so we couldn't use them in canon events anymore. Eventually they gave up and made half of our group into demo agents so we had to run the tables instead of win them. Without being modest about it, Cincy dominated the canon table from 2006-2010, and then again in 2015-16 after all of us dropped CGL.

And before it's brought up, I'd like to emphasize that at no point did we *insist* on playing together. If the other guys (who came to play in groups of 1-3 people) had wanted to play WoB, then they'd have gotten to play WoB. But we do like playing together, and we weren't going to *volunteer* to split up if there wasn't people who wanted to play in such a way that we HAD to split up. Nobody was ever forced to pay Coalition against us; after the first year, we all made sure to sign up to the force lists LAST. There was always room for all of us to play WoB, so as far as I'm concerned, that's not on us.

>but I'd prefer Endo Composite structure instead, which gets you slightly more tonnage back for your crits.
I usually use LLF like mentions, a means to squeeze a little more armor or a slight bit of extra tonnage on design, and in those conditions I'm probably using endo steel already, or am operating on the principle of not changing structure at all.

That battlefield is a travesty to the mere concept of "fair play".

I'm talking about on an Omni though. The Grigori uses LFF over EC, though that's likely because the former was TL at the time, while EndoComp wasn't. I'll certainly use LFF when I need that extra little bit of armor, but not in place of lightening the structure.

New player here
You said that those events were canon battles
Would this mean that, if it weren't for the GM fiats, the Blakist would've won the war?

MML has the RISC hyper laser.
Set the year to 3145 and the tech level to experimental.
>pic related

No sir. The canon events are events which take place in the canon storyline, not which DETERMINE canon. It's not like L5R's card events where the winner of the tourney gets to decide where the storyline goes next.

Partially this is because most players wouldn't know how to choose a good storyline if it stripped naked, painted itself purple, jumped up on a table, and sang "look what a good storyline I am".

>Not that CGL is much better...but still.

Partially it's because the production lead time to get product out is usually on the order of 3 years (from concept to street date), and that's too long to let the games determine what's happening.

The other events at cons are generally completely separate from the storyline itself. The learn-to-play events (Boot Camp & Grinders) are in a vacuum. The various tournaments (Open, Solaris VII, Bloodright) occasionally have an impact on canon if something particularly interesting or funny happens, but it's usually limited to the inclusion of a fan being canonized, and it never determines the direction of the story in any case. Only the canon event has any deliberate contact with the storyline, and it's only held "within" the storyline, in the manner that a historicals game is held "within" our own timeline. I do hope that makes sense.

If those guys had run the Blakist high command, yeah.

You aren't even kidding. This is my very favorite "Cincy Fucks The Canon Event" storytiming.

wtf I love canadian Blake now

Holy shit, that's like, the most Wobbie plan I've ever seen that didn't involve nuking somebody. That's outright diabolical.

Cool, these are great. I actually wouldn't mind seeing the McKenna too.

What do you guys think of Tempest Stryker?

I was more of a fan of Gypsy Danger and Crimson Typhoon, but yours is OK too.

>Oh good. Trump-worshipping uncles have arrived for Dead Burd Day. If I don't make it, tell my wife, "hello."

I really really enjoy these writeups. Considering how little the (very nice) space part of the game gets played, it's nice to have this kind of detailed analysis available, since players are rarely going to pick this up via osmosis like you would with mechs.

Nothing wrong with Trump. At least he's a Washington outsider who recognizes the trade deals corrupt politicians negotiated aren't fair to American workers. And objectively a better choice than Hillary was, and I say that as a guy who voted for Obama twice.

If I'd been playing OPFOR in that game I would've been laughing my god damned ass off

you sound like a beta nu-male.

It could be worse. I have to go into a crowd of family members who think politics is a type of space weasel for all the attention they pay to it. None of them vote, afaik. But I expect RAGE, complaints, and implications as to my extreme bitterness involving Obamacare.

>Partially this is because most players wouldn't know how to choose a good storyline if it stripped naked, painted itself purple, jumped up on a table, and sang "look what a good storyline I am".

Excellent work, Mr. Baldrick! As a reward, take a short holiday...
... did you enjoy it? Good!

Why are you bitter about Obamacare?

>I was more of a fan of Gypsy Danger and Crimson Typhoon

What about Blast Hardcheese?

I worked for an exchange taking calls for a year, including during open enrollment and tax season. That's one of the most stressful jobs I've ever had, and when I quit something like 10 people out of a workforce of 1000+ people had had heart attacks within 4 weeks. Three of them fatal. There's more excitement, like how I never actually felt a sense of accomplishing something despite working there for year, but that's just my job expectations getting skewed.

You fool, you've doomed us all

Getting back to battlemechs, four-of-a-kind lances have been pretty common in the fluff since pretty much the dawn of the game, but do any of you actually use them on the tabletop?

When playing the SLDF, yes. Battalions of Archers!

To whoever wrote these: the entire section exploring consumables, cargo storage and journey duration was a lot of extra work, but it is *very* nice; it's of crucial importance when you're thinking of a game in "campaign" terms like Interstellar Ops now gives us rules for, and especially if you're writing Btech fiction. Kick-ass shit, man, thank you.

Depending on the era, yes. Less so after the SL falls, but I've used regiments of the same mech. It's kind of boring depending on the design. Like a battalion of Sentinels, or Jackalopes.

Fairly often. Four-thud brawler lances and the ubiquitous four-archer fire lance are some of my old standbys, and I sometimes use other designs

CHERNO ALPHA
H
E
R
N
O

A
L
P
H
A

In the campaign I run, I'll often have a lance of lights or medium all of one config(lance of Valks/Commandos/Centurions) as filler. And of course, there's the lance of Panthers that are always fun to toss at players.

Here you go.

Thanks. I did start to write a few other articles but couldn't be fucked to finish them. Honestly between the Aegis, Dante, Conqueror and McKenna almost all the WS roles have been covered since you've got Brawler (also includes Black Lion, Avatar, Cameron etc), DropShip Mangler (also includes Whirlwind, Tatsumaki, Lola III etc), Combat Carrier (also includes York and Thera) and Long-Range Bracketer (also includes Texas and Potemkin) done and anything else is a variation on the same theme with maybe a "you have more/less armour and more/less firepower than the one I wrote about so just do what I already said except remember that bit."

The only role I haven't covered really is Corvettes and those all boil down to the same thing any way. Murder DropShips, fight other Corvettes, and only try to engage ships larger than a Corvette if you're willing to lose, 'cos that's what will probably happen.

There's the Baby Got Back lance. Four Hunchies, one -4G, one -4J, one Discoback and either the SRM-carrying one or the AC/10 one.