/btg/ Battletech General!

Nah man. It's all pretty balanced in the grogtech era. When you go to higher tech, 1/12 headcap is just the price of doing business.

There's a reason why Hanse Davion jokingly suggested that he'd give Melissa Steiner the Confederation, which sparked the Fourth Succession War.

Mekwar Legends used to give 1 edge point for tick of piloting below 5 any mech jock had. I thought it was a decent system. Half the time it would just get wasted on LBX pellets plinking the glass or something else, so it wasn't too broken.

extremely poor., periphery-tier Read 20 year update, it gives a description of the CC's economy as being on well track to totally collapse within a decade. Their mechbuilding industry was nearly nil, I would go so far as to say periphery-tier
their military was almost entirely propped up by green, shitty mercs and the Big MAC.
As of 3054, they actually fielded slightly less mechs in actual house units than the taurian concordat did (14 regiments in the CCAF VS 11 regiments at 33% overstrength mechs each in the TDF, for a total of 14.63 regiments there) Everything else was mercenary or the MAC, AND outside of the MAC, most of their units were green or regular, with very few veterans and virtually no elites. I would call their pilot quality on par with the Magistracy of canopus in that era, certainly significantly worse than every other neighbor of theirs
one house rule I sometimes use to keep pilots alive more is that any damage after the 12 is transferred as pilot hits and they then can eject. I suppose you could make something based on that where say any damage over 11 is passed on as pilot hits at half-value and the mech is left with one head IS

Do you usually tell jokes with large scale conquest and cake?

>1/12 headcap is just the price of doing business.

1 in 36. But otherwise, yeah. Give lance leaders 1 points of Edge, Company COs 2, and named characters should have Edge regardless.

Aside from the above, suck it up. Losing Mechs to headcaps is part of the game. Don't like it? Don't put Mechs in positions where they can be hit with headcapping weapons.

>I've played against people using TacOps "aim high" rules, 0/5 pilots, Weapon Specialist (SRM-6), and tandem-charge SRMs who were driving Arctic Wolves in the Solaris VII games at gencon. You know nothing of rage, user.

>Aside from the above, suck it up. Losing Mechs to headcaps is part of the game. Don't like it? Don't put Mechs in positions where they can be hit with headcapping weapons.

You might as well say "Play a different game" given the number of Gauss rifles, cERPPCs, HPPCs, AC20s, blazers, etc wandering around.

I have a strange, unexplained interest in the Rakshasa currently. Any more pics and such of this odd mech?

Fine. Then go play a different game.

It's a 1 in 36 chance. Deal.

You're a salty cunt aintcha

I don't have any myself, but I recall wishing it had better art when I first saw it in the original TRO 3055, thinking it could look so much better.

Jesus, I knew it was bad, but not THAT bad.
Wow. Makes xin sheng seem even more ridiculous

Only the stuff on Sarna really. I think it pops up on some cards from the TCG and that's about it.

It's a 'Mech I kinda like but they made a mistake of giving it to the same factions getting the Penetrator and Falconer in the same TR. At least if it was an FWL design or something the faction getting it might have actually used it. As it was it gets terribly over-shadowed, and that's on top of people not liking it because it's not as good as the Timber Wolf.

Any way, have a Dark Age variant. If you want to be more boring you can take the -1A, remove all the weapons, and give it a pair each of HPPCs and SRM-4s with a single MPL.

Not at all. The fact is that if you want to play Battletech post-3040, you have to deal with headcapping weapons. The fact is that if you get hit by one, you have a 1 in 36 chance to die. The fact is that you can't count on Edge or weird homebrew shit to protect you, because you can't count on your opponent actually being OK with you using anything but TW-level rules.

Those are the facts, and they aren't going to change no matter how much you bitch. Those are the parameters of the game, and if you can't deal with the parameters of a game, then you shouldn't be playing that game in the first place.

That's not salt. That's a simple relaying of the facts of the matter. Take it or leave it, it doesn't matter, because they aren't going to change.

Their infrastructure recovery makes a hell of a lot more sense than two or three dozen AFFS regiments just giving up and letting planets secede to the Chaos March and/or fail to oppose the rampaging CapCon of the era.

Or their FM giving them extremely high skill levels, arguably better than what the Suns and Dracs would see in FM: U despite the Civil War and Bulldog sharpening them respectively.

Xin Sheng is flat-out retarded from start to finish. There's no IC way to justify it. I'd buy it if the OOC rationale was "We fucked up by reaming them so hard during the 4th SW, so we're buffing them now rather than having them simply collapse" but Coleman went far beyond that point any way.

>Wow. Makes xin sheng seem even more ridiculous

Yeah. Xin Sheng was completely insane and is utter indefensible. By any rational standard, the CapCon would be a rump state at best from the 4th War onward, and by all rights ought to be ripped apart by the combined assault of the FWL and FedSuns.

Having the owner of the game in your pocket sure helps, doesn't it?

>I'd buy it if the OOC rationale was "We fucked up by reaming them so hard during the 4th SW, so we're buffing them now rather than having them simply collapse" but Coleman went far beyond that point any way.
Yeah.
It wouldn't even have been that hard to bring the CC back up to a reasonable powerlevel. Hell, I bet /btg/ could come up with a much better one

Just have Sun-Tzu actually marry Isis Marik. By about 3065 you could justify the CCAF expanding to ~35-40 regiments on that plus mercs going state forces. Could possibly even negotiate the return of the Tikonov Republic.

But the St. Ives Compact should never have gone back. Candace fucking *hated* the CapCon and the CCAF shouldn't have been able to force the issue given the SIMC strength and backing of the Suns.

>But the St. Ives Compact should never have gone back. Candace fucking *hated* the CapCon and the CCAF shouldn't have been able to force the issue given the SIMC strength and backing of the Suns.
This. So much this. This brought about lots of rage in me for that happening.

...

My own two-cent idea would actually have the st.ives compact coming back to the CC but in a somewhat different way. Say in 52-53 things have gone so far to hell in the CC that units of the CCAF stage a coup, driving sun-tzu into exile in the FWL, while Candice Liao takes the throne, bringing the compact back with her. Under her rule, relations with the FedCom become infinitely better, and the combination of de-oppressing the population and trade between the two realms, as well as with it's periphery neighbors vastly improves the capellan economy, and allows them to finally began rebuilding their military. In 3054, Kai Allard-Liao and Isis Marik marry. For the first time in about 300 years, none of the CapCon's neighbors are trying to kill them.
Meanwhile, in the FWL, Sun-tzu forms the Xin Sheng organization, basically the bastard child of Free Capella and the Black Dragon Society, mostly from old-guard exiles and sympathizers remaining in the CC, including a large portion of the old intelligence service, which has the secret backing of Katherine S-D, who plans to use them against Victor, and the WoB, who like the idea of having two successor states run by their stooges. This covert support, along with a great deal of money from the capellan treasury that sun-tzu took into exile with him, allows the Xin Sheng organization to build a private army, under the guise of several "mercenary regiments".
When the jihad kicks off, the WoB sends Sun-tzu and his boys home, after orchestrating the death of Candice Liao, and he, with the connivance of many of the old guard, retakes the throne.
That's all I've come up with so far. Thoughts?

Honestly I just focus my efforts on unfucking designs or expanding on things that are described but never detailed.

Like this.

Rationale: L-NGRs replacing the NAC/40s in the bow for greater range, bracketing, and damgae. NAC arrays in the fore-quarters for the same. Can be used for high-speed passes as well, which is also why the NAC/40s of the Aft arc were replaced with N-PPC banks. AMS because duh, LPLs to fill out the fire control multipliers.

Yes, it's a deathblob. OTOH it's the kind of deathblob the McKenna should really be, and it's still going to be fucked raw and bloody by a Lev II any way.

I mean, I like the start of it but Sun-Tzu getting back on the throne strikes me as being even more JUST AS PLANNED than the actual Xin Sheng.

If he got abandoned by the WoB and crushed by Kai Allard-Liao I'd be down though.

I would love love LOVE this if it had two LRM5s in place of a pair of the SRM4s.

Original question asker here.

While I can see where you are coming from, you could at least phrase things in a less dickish way.
I simply asked the question because I mostly just play the tabletop game with friends and no one has a good time when a fresh factory new assault mech gets destroyed on the first turn. The dude who lost the mech now has to play with a random handicap while the other just feels like they cheated whole time. I'm alright with random things happening in games, having moments where a punch crits the engine 3 times or a mech running on pavement slips off a cliff and onto another mech are badass, hilarious, and what makes the game special. However things like the picture I posted where a single mech head caps 2 Dire Wolves almost back to back becomes less badass and more Mary Sue hour where everyone stops having fun.

Thanks to everyone, I never really looked into edge points and that seems like something that could be good. I wanted to ask this as I'm sure some people around here had a solution better than whatever I can think of.

Knock yourself out. I really wanted MMLs but couldn't fit them in.

So... I know that dude said "homebrew is teh fagget" but honestly, you could just table the idea that headshots are re-rolled for everyone for the first three turns of firing. That might help make things feel a bit more even/smoothed out. I wouldn't do it myself, but it might be something you and your group enjoyed.

>I mean, I like the start of it but Sun-Tzu getting back on the throne strikes me as being even more JUST AS PLANNED than the actual Xin Sheng.
I was kinda thinking that it wouldn't really *work*, but would kick off a capellan civil war during the jihad.
Mostly, I just want some way to put the CC back into the position of not being buddies with the suns anymore by the end of the jihad
Maybe he returned with his son Daoshen born of an unknown mother it's Kali Liao , who eventually turns on him, ends the l."leave the WoB alone" stance and throws in with stone's coalition, expecting old capellan worlds in the Protectorate as a reward, and getting angry and going full isolationist afterwards

>someone sums up what you think accurately
>you go REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

You seem like a swell guy

Just my input broseph, no sweat. MMLs are great, but yeah, crit-hungry fuckers.

I remember somebody around here had a recent story about losing 5 mechs in 6 turns without being shot at by the enemy. He didn't complain that it stopped being fun.

I understand you don't like losing your big scary units to random chance. But that's just as much as a part of the game as anything else, and it can happen to your opponent as well. You're both taking the same chance, and like any game with dice, dumb luck absolutely plays a part in the game.

>So... I know that dude said "homebrew is teh fagget"

Be fair. He said that you can't count on homebrew being allowed in any given game, so it's not a good solution. What happens when you play at a con, or with another group, or on a public MM server and you don't get to use the crutch of your homebrew?

there's nothing wrong with homebrew, but it's correct to say you shouldn't depend on it.

Fucked up too many things in the stat block because I was changing things in the spreadsheet as I typed it.

Proper one here.

third party here; the big problem with headshots IMO is that they are anti-fun. When someone randomly lands one on you, you don't think "Man, they made a good play there" and when you take someone's cockpit off, you think "That was luck,y easy game now"

They're not actually satisfying for either side.

>I remember somebody around here had a recent story about losing 5 mechs in 6 turns without being shot at by the enemy
That was NEA, and it was a few years ago.
>He didn't complain that it stopped being fun.
Actually he kinda did. IIRC he said it was the only time he straight walked out of a game so he wouldn't make it less fun for everyone else there by getting mad

You could try playing a big enough game that losing one Mech to a lucky headshot doesn't make it an auto-win game for your opponent, then.

>They're not actually satisfying for either side.

Honestly, then, headshots probably shouldn't be a thing at all. If we just remove the head location and assume mechs are piloted by impegnatrable cocoons in the torso, aside from the fuckup in armor allocation, what meaningful thing would be lost in the game?

Even in, say, an 8v8, it's a big swing, especially if it happens early. And playing a game bigger than 4v4 is about when you should pull out Alpha Strike.

I guarantee the AS bit triggered you, even if you don't respond

Sensor and Life Support crits I guess.

Nothing, really.

I might leave it there and have ONE sensor slot in there or something like that, but that's about it.

From a game balance perspective, they do help forces with more units counter those with fewer, since you're less hurt by random headshots...buuut you're may be more likely to take them, and the other guy is likely to have more headcappers since the big expensive toys tend to have them more than, say, FWL mediums.

You do if youre a Davion

>I remember somebody around here had a recent story about losing 5 mechs in 6 turns without being shot at by the enemy. He didn't complain that it stopped being fun.

That was me. It was 6 Mechs in 5 turns (the GM had set up a cityfight where we had to cross a city in too short a time, so it forced a lot of MASC rolls, and a lot of failed MASC checks and skidding and TACs killed the Mechs). I can give a turn by turn if desired.

And it was absolutely not fun. I walked out because if I'd stayed I would have been furious and destroyed the game for everyone else. It's the only game I can recall walking out on as an adult.

With that said, failing checks and losing Mechs like that *is* part of the game. IMO, so are headcaps. Frankly, I do think that has the right idea, though it's profoundly dickishly-put. Losing your best Mechs through sheer dumb luck is absolutely not fun...but games in general and historical wargames in particular are not always supposed to *be* guaranteed fun. You get the *potential* to have fun, and whether you do or not is up to many factors, with the vagaries of the dice among them.

>And playing a game bigger than 4v4 is about when you should pull out Alpha Strike.

I try not to say stuff like this, but maybe you should try. "gitting gud."

If you have the to-hit charts memorized - as you should - then 12v12 games are perfectly playable to the point of clear decision within reach in a 2-hour block. The loss of a single Mech should never cost you the game in a 12v12, and it honestly shouldn't cost you the game in an 8v8 (though I concede it's more likely).

In general, if you've constructed a force that so heavily depends on a single Mech that the incapacitation of that Mech destroys your ability to stay competitive in the game.... I cannot emphasize that enough. NO force should be built in such a way that losing a single element essentially kills the game for you.

Headshots happen.

There is no reason to lose your head over it.

>guy says it's bait
>still bite

NEA will you ever learn

Exactly what I was trying to say but you put it better. When you get charged off a cliff or get a DFA that fucks up your mech, it's an awesome story and exciting for everyone. When the dice randomly decides that someone taking potshots at long range vaporizes a mech for doing nothing different and taking no risk, that's when everyone looks at eachother awkwardly.

I do like what you are saying here but of course as casual scum who don't have much time and not many windows of opportunity to get together we prefer to keep our games short and sweet. A 12v12 or even 8v8 is pretty well out of the realm of possibility. It is something we do when playing through megamek though and games generally work well there.

Cheeky

There are other people reading who are not participating. Statements like "you have to use AS to go more than 4v4" cannot be let go, because it's a possibility that somebody will take it seriously. That's how misinformation gets to be considered factual, and that sort of thing kills people's interest in games. It doesn't *matter* if it's bait: it still needs to be disproved for the benefit of the people who don't know it's just bait.

And frankly, BattleTech isn't really in the position to afford to lose prospective interested players who get turned off from baitposting.

Probably more out there getting turned off by you telling them to git gud so they can play REAL BATTLETECH with 12v12 like Lord Cameron intended.

...

I have no idea what you are implying user.

I'm just trying to help them wrap their head around the issue.

What, the truth hurt too much? I can get people to play AS easily at the LGS, OG BT is a no-go

What's the difference between the Grand Titan and the Titan II?

Grand Titan got built off old Titan II plans, iirc.

Reminds me, been meaning to ask what Blakist signature mechs are still produced/used in the DA. Celestials are out, obviously, but what about the rest?

If there's that many AS players, please, by all means, create an Alpha Strike General and let us know how that goes.

user has a problem with headcaps. The larger the force, the less vulnerable you should be against a lucky headcap. Therefore, the simplest solution (ie, one that uses the least houserules or TacOps rules) to avoid lucky headcaps is to play games larger than 4v4, which involves the work of memorizing the necessary tables (and I don't even know how people can't get through an 8v8 game in a more than an hour on MegaMek, of all things); hard work summarized as "getting good."

Now, having provided a solution for both user and a suggestion for you (one far politer than you warrant), I'm done with the conversation, such as it was. Enjoy masturbating over the last word, if you choose to have one.

>Therefore, the simplest solution (ie, one that uses the least houserules or TacOps rules) to avoid lucky headcaps is to play games larger than 4v4

I know what you mean, but...

>I don't even know how people can't get through an 8v8 game in a more than an hour on MegaMek, of all things

Why don't you play a game with someone and time it to show us? I always *see* big talk about your speed, but playing time claims never seem to live up to the experience in MM leagues, where even 8v8 on relatively open terrain takes at least 2 hours.

>been meaning to ask what Blakist signature mechs are still produced/used in the DA

It sort of depends on how you define "signature" Mechs.

IIRC, the list of primarily WoB-fielded Mechs - which aren't Celestials - is as follows:

Beowulf
Blue Flame
Gestalt
Grand Crusader
Gurkha
Initiate
Lightray
Omega
Raptor II
Titan II
Toyama
Vanquisher
White Flame
...and the WoB LAMs, of course.

Of those, I think only the Raptor II, Beowulf, and Titan II show up on the MUL in the Late Republic and Dark Ages. (I may have missed one, but I don't *think* so.) All are fielded by the RotS,

Buccaneer should be on there.

A lot of Blakist machines disappear post Jihad. The Titan II and Buccaneer being two survivors, but the casualties include the Gurkha, Nexus/Nexus II, Initiate, Toyama, Legacy, Grand Crusader and Vanquisher.

I think the fact that so many mechs just immediately die out is one of the major reasons lots pf people mourn the loss of the WoB, since most other faction deaths leave their old toys around.

Sorry, yes. I did forget the Buccaneer and yes, it *is* available in the DA.

Per TRO 3150 the Republic is using a variant of the Omega, they finished up and altered incomplete chassis recovered from Skobel, ditching the SH Endo and the GRs are replaced with HPPCs. So Omegas, only worse.

Really? Can you give a pageref, because I totally missed that. I'd like to read about that. I don't disbelieve you - it just doesn't show up on the MUL.

That's actually pretty neat, though I'm not entirely sure if it should really count as an Omega or a new design.

Ntnu section, he's correct

Cool, thank you.

Beowulf is a Comstar/Bear design, not WoB

I want a Wolf Empire Sirocco for the TRO's ONN section. Whoever submits the best one gets a prize. Although i don't know what the prize is yet.

Good, bad, or funny?

Wherever your muse guides you, user.

...

Shit my name was off.

Not especially inspired, but it is almost 6am here.

Shave off 0.5t armor; 19 tons is still plenty. Pull the weapons and 1 heat sink. x4 AP Gauss on the front legs. Shove a supercharger into the CT so it can get a burst of speed to keep up with a sudden Wolf advance. A cERLL in the head allows for always-on, ammo-free fire. The UAC/10s get swapped for HAG-30s with 3t ammo each, because HAG-40s wouldn't fit. Practical heat load is both HAGs and the ERLL to remain heat-neutral, with an overheat of +6 if you fire everything and run. AP Gauss ammo goes in the CT to give it a flaw, though CASE II protects both side torsos and their extensively explosive contents.

Still no defense against snowspeeder-mounted harpoons and tow cables, though.

For when you absolutely, positively, must plink your opponent at 25 hexes.

When the needs of the armed forces intersect with the needs of the diplomats, the results are often colorful.

Intended to simultaneously serve as a symbolic bridge between Steiner and Wolf forces and bolster the weakened Wolf forces, the result served neither purpose and directly lead to a new round of hostilities between the proud states.

>pdf
welp.

Is that bad?

You can't just mouse over the pdf, you've got to open it first.

Fair 'nuff. 'Ere you go, my non-gender specific person.

>Iratecat

>Sirocco
>FWL design
>made to bridge wolf steiner gap

No shit it was unsuccessful...

>"We're gonna bridge the gap between House Steiner and the Wolves and we're gonna make the Mariks design it!"

There's Skin of Teeth ejection from Tacops, p197. Allows for autoeject if the internal structure of the head is destroyed. That sounds pretty well like what you want user.

That's a good point. While it doesn't exactly help the battle (which is the typical scope of things), said roll can help save a campaign. I use a version of it for all crews (mechs, vees, and BA) to determine survival for PC-related things (PCs & NPCs, TN7+EDG). I find it makes for a better story than "gauss fires, everybody dies".

What are the TL;DR differences between AS and BT, anyway?

>the St. Ives war
>the awesome Crazy Second get treated as storm trooper mooks in the Capellan Solution books

fuck that shit, I honestly prefer it when the league is just forgotten

AS plays faster so you can run games with more units. However, the trade-off is that you lose all the granularity of BT proper.

AS is like every other hitpoint-based wargame. If you've played 40k or Warmahordes, you've played the core of AS.

Battletech is more akin to a highly granular historical wargame, and does things basically unique to it and a handful of other games from the 80's.

There's really no point to AS as just another game in a similar sea of games. But it being such a common system does feel comfortable to people who have played those other games. On the flipside, people who like battletech find it loses everything core to battletech except the miniatures.

So there's pretty much no crossover between the two, much like Wizkids Dark Age in its heyday, except that had a rather unique system and mechanics.

anyone have a link for that fanmade TRO 3063 pdf?

battletechreader.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-fan-made-technical-readout-3063.html

I still like their original cover art.

Tried those, they're not working for me

What's the liklihood of a non-major power getting ahold of Capital-grade missiles? Considering getting a DropShip and refitting it with some Kraken-Ts or AR-10s since getting ahold of an Overlord A3 or Nekehono'o would be about impossible.

I like a lot of the internal artworks as well.