/btg/ Battletech General!

Do note you can get most of the 30-ish damage and DD2 from a pure IS-tech FedCom unit AS THE DEFAULT WITH JUST THEIR ISSUED RIFLES.

FedCom got all the good infantry kit.

From the previous thread:
You're considering *just* C-Bill cost (which doesn't apply to Clans). Money means nothing to them. The availability of resources (which Endo Steel takes rarer ones) and manufacturing time (which Endo Steel does due to the need for zero-g manufacturing) are the biggest factors.

So as someone new to BT lore, what made the Blakists so successful? Was it access to SLDF tech and willingness to be complete shitheels (in the sense of ignoring the Ares conventions) in wartime?

It was due to the writers wanting to pull a massive deus ex machina to fit their own vision of events. They shoehorned in whatever they could to make that happen.

>Money means nothing to them

I believe Clan Diamond Shark disagrees.

To whit, pic related.

It's not even fully bullshit. Clan ER H SLs aren't Encumbering, so you could put them in an oversized Motorised or Mechanised platoon and zoom them around at 3-5 ground MP. I just can't be fucked doing all this by hand.

But note that platoon BV. 211. Savannah Master swarms get fucked, for my next 2.5K BV custom game I'm showing up with 11 Federated Bullshit platoons. Spam 330 damage in 30-point lots from 21 hexes and unless someone is rolling a ton of Flamers or HMGs they're not gonna die.

>FedCom got all the good infantry kit.

Shocked, gambling, the establishment, etc.

I figured that might also have been the case. The Blakists did unnaturally well.

>if you look at any description of combined arms like with the davion RCTs, they use lots of infantry to support their mechs/vees
I've looked through the Field Manuals and the Davion housebooks, and (except maybe battle armor) I don't see anything to suggest RCTs commonly deploy their infantry in open field combat alongside their 'Mechs and tanks - is there a particular passage you could point me to? If not, my guess is that the infantry digs into heavy terrain somewhere and lets the 'Mechs and tanks bring the enemy to them.

On the other hand, it is pretty useful to have infantry nearby to take control of enemy units who've powered down.

It's a bit of a tough argument.

It happened, so obviously it happened that way.

OTOH, FASA had a very different Jihad planned. It was going to be shorter, sharper, lead by Victor who would falter at the last and then be won by rampaging Ghost Bears*. So the WoB foreshadowing for buildup indicates they were going to have a force a mere fraction of what they pulled out of their asses during the Jihad. But the original plan wasn't carried out and WizKids went with a much longer and destructive Jihad in their backstory so things don't line up too well.

It does get explained, albeit poorly. "Oh, we had four hyper-tech worlds doing this stuff for centuries! Oh, everyone is a WoB ROM plant! Oh, nukes and bioweapons!"

Like most things in BT it's easier not to think about it, just accept it and move on.

*No really. It's in the picture, link: bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=11852.5;wap2

I suppose it might help if I posted the screen grab.

>FedCom got all the good infantry kit.
Blakists get even better, and then you bring in the Manei Domini and load up the prosthetics and you reach the pinnacle of infantry cheese.

As a Feds played I like this very much.
>Cost: over 16 million
Whelp

All infantry costs are like that due to the multipliers.

Anti-'Mech platoons can cost more than a late-era XL-engined assault. I really wouldn't worry about the C-Bills, I just calculated it for the sake of completeness.

That makes WAY more sense than "we managed to find a fleet of WarShips bigger than the LA+DC's fleets combined, plus the personnel and supplies to man them" and "we also managed to nuke the capital planets of every major state + Outreach, successfully avoiding all intelligence assets like MIIO, O5P, Heimdall, Maskirovka, Clan Watch, etc."

For fuck's sake, they called it a "Jihad" to get on board with the post 9/11 environment. How much more blatant do you need it to be?

What you described is totally possible with a series of sleeper cells and an infiltration of the HPG network, weakening it through subversion. It's not outside the reach of the Wobbies pre-Jihad even.

Not really, nothing they got was unbelievable. The secret to their success was their ability to exploit all the dumb things in the BT universe we know about and the writers know about.

MD implants turn infantry from "dangerous, but potentially avoidable" to "oh fuck they're everywhere and won't die".

>a force a fraction of the handful of divisions we actually saw in the first few years

>more warships that are almost all destroyers or corvettes, i.e. armorless in the Jihad setting
>it's somehow a stretch that they could find a few thousand people to crew these ships when they employ millions, if not billions of people

Christ, winter break is here

Yuck, that plan was utter shit. What we got was 10x better.

Here's the problem, though.

WoB's actual force at the start of the Jihad was almost double its FM listing, compared to TR 3067 saying they had formed at least one more division, maybe more (as in two or three, not twice as many).

Secondly, they and they alone magically got to turn their population and income into a large WS fleet. Also as shit as a lot of their ships might have been, any WS beats no WS, and it's not like many of the canon ships are well-designed any way so if it's shit v shit they're still doing well enough.

The frustration with it is that the WoB were able to ignore several conceits of the setting. Which, yes, gets explained away as SL caches, mothballed shipyards, centuries-old impenetrable conspiracies, Terra being riddled with factories rather than a low-output world it was stated to be (which is why Focht let it go, as far as anyone knew it was just a symbol and not worth fighting over), etc etc etc.

CGL, as much shit as I will hang on them for their manifold fuck-ups and general asshattery, did a remarkably good job of polishing the turd they were handed by the DA backstory.

But it's far from a seamless transition, and there are a lot of genuine reasons to call bullshit, especially in aggregate since so much has to go in WoB's favour to get to the Dark Age.

>opponent rolls boxcars on an MG attack on MD infantry in the open
>burst fire damage halved
>no double damage in the open
>effective damage divisor of 3 due to implants and armor kit
>kills maybe two dudes
[BLAKE ELEISON INTENSIFIES]

haha butte hold

Well yeah, but you expect them to have god-tier kit because they've been hoarding all the tech and actually value the lives of their grunts, unlike the Successor States.

>reduces effects of Flamers
>reduces damage
>increases support weapon carrying capacity
>increases speed
say, you could make a MD unit with the two support weapons necessary to get the range brackets that would count as a single SW for movement

If Xotl hadn't betrayed the will of the Master, you could build assault BA with four Mauser 1200s and two anti-'Mech weapons on troopers with Pain Shunts and dermal armour.

And had them equipped with Stealth or Mimetic armour, for additional meme-worthiness.

>If Xotl hadn't betrayed the will of the Master
wat

Anti-personnel (read: Primary Weapons) were originally in a bit of a grey area with the TW/TM rules because they specified you could make *one attack* with your AP weapons rather than *attack with one of* your AP weapons each round.

I asked for clarification because I was going to build a better Elemental suit using four Mauser IICs in place of a single anti-'Mech main gun to do more damage at the same ranges.

I didn't get the answer I was hoping for.

I don't really disagree with it very much to be honest. But the rules for custom infantry platoons let them do some real bullshit and I think it would at least help swing the pendulum back towards BA.

The TR doesn't say they *only* formed that many, it says they're playing obvious shell games and some folks estimate the two quad mech designs are built in quantities sufficient to equip one or two more divisions. You really need to stop trying to hoist that as an argument.

It doesn't say that for just the Quads, that's for all their new production, including the Gurkha, Vanquisher, and Shootist plus the lines they already had from ComStar.

Again, the initial plan was for the WoBM to be much smaller than the WK backstory needed it to be for the level of destruction described. But FASA's foreshadowing was for a smaller WoBM, in line with their smaller and less destructive Jihad.

Ok m8, whatever helps you after all these years.

gotta say though, while the inital smaller plan might have made more sense, i'm still a fan of the total chaos and "nuke 'em till they glow" of the WK storyline. might not follow proper logical progression given the setup, but damn is it fun.

I actually posted a screen grab of Herb saying what was initially planned. FASA's foreshadowing was for that, not Weisman's nearly 20-year sphere-wide WMD-athon that gutted all the Houses and led to the rise of the Republic of the Sphere.

I don't mind the idea itself, it's just that the execution is messy and inconsistent. The plot hooks were leading to one thing and WizKids gave us another. Just difficult to get the two to line up is all. CGL did about as good a job as possible under the circumstances.

Yeah, I'll never forget my first exposure to the storyline. "They used nukes?" I'd been so ingrained in the way BT warfare was *supposed* to be that I never considered the very logical possiblity that not everyone would always play by those rules. It surprised me in a way yet another shuffling of power/Succession War X storyline never could have.

I'm almost in agreement with you, except instead of "difficult" I'd say "impossible". It'd make more sense if CGL just discarded DA or made it another universe, rather than try and join the two.

More chaos is just natural. Let's face it, at the end of 3067 we have an end to the FedCom Civil War and there's no Clan attacks. It's a moment of peace. Unless something big happens, you'd be a period of stagnation punctuated by border incidents and small skirmishes, nothing major. It's why the Clans were thrown in at the end of the Fourth Succession War.

>I actually posted a screen grab of Herb saying what was initially planned.
... and? It was shit, it didn't happen, it's not an argument.

What the TROs say is this:

>Blue Flames have been sent in small numbers to all divisions of the Word of Blake Militia. The numbers produced, however, appear to be greater than what has been distributed— possibly by a large margin. This discrepancy has been noticed to some degree with all ’Mechs and vehicles produced by the Word of Blake since 3062. Some military experts believe this indicates that the Militia has formed at least one secret division and possibly more. With complete control of the Sol system and high recruiting numbers in the Chaos March, this is certainly within the realm of possibility.

>at least one secret division and possibly more
Literally all it says is at least one and possibly more. Not "only one or two". Christ I can't believe anyone still tries to use that TRO blurb as an argument.

The Jihad we got made much more sense given what we were working with. We're lucky it wasn't the rehashed "Victor does it again + more Bear shit in the woods" thing. As it was Victor got a prominent role and the Bears still did a majority of the ending smash, but it flowed better.

Nothing about the plot hooks fails to add up. The scale of war we were given doesn't fail to sync up with what had been written until that point, and in fact works a lot better.

On the other hand I do think everyone saying "Holy shit the last few years have been mental, what say we all agree to build up for a little while before belting each other senseless again?"

Another period of entente, like 3040-3050.

WoB's kind of in a now or never position in '67 though too. It doesn't want the Houses to have time to build up to full strength again, and a period of entente might lead to co-operation like the early Clan War so playing enmities off against each other might get harder.

Was it pretty much Cameron St. Jamais who caused the Jihad? I mean the Master wasn't there, right? So StJ had to make the call himself since he spaced William Blane (RIP in peace Blaney).

>at least one secret division and possibly more
>Literally all it says is at least one and possibly more.
>therefore there could only have been one more division beyond the FM listings

I don't think you understand what "at least" means.

I think you're confused or ESL.

>I can't believe anyone still tries to use that TRO blurb as an argument.
The first clue should be that FanPro published TR3067 in 2002, which all by itself almost guarantees that the book was trying to match up with WizKids version of the Jihad.

>We're lucky it wasn't the rehashed "Victor does it again + more Bear shit in the woods" thing.
But... that *is* what it was, they just dressed it up with Hidden Worlds and other nonsense.

>But... that *is* what it was
It's almost like I went on to write more...
> As it was Victor got a prominent role and the Bears still did a majority of the ending smash, but it flowed better.
So why did you even respond to that? Confusing!

>tfw we never even found out what happened to Blane for the first three years of the plot IRL
>When we learned what happened in a single line, it was both funny and disappointing.

As for the whole thing going on, it's much more of a generic clusterfuck.
>Was it pretty much Cameron St. Jamais who caused the Jihad? I mean the Master wasn't there, right?
What happened at Tharkad was a St. Jamais temper tantrum.
What happened at Atreus was punishment from the Master for Fake Tommy going off script.
What happened at Luthien was a misunderstanding. It was the old Tukayyid veterans faction of WoB trying to legitimately aid the people who knew the Clans were the greatest enemy in the middle of a rebellion
What happened at New Avalon was on St Jamais's orders as a follow-up to Tharkad as punishment for breaking the League

But the first couple Jihad books are so over the place that we still don't know how much of them are accurate. Like, they indicated LAW got nuked as a giant fuck you to the dracs for no reason, but that wasn't what happened at all.

I felt bad for Blane. I liked the guy, and most of the True Believer faction. Sucks they got so sidelined by the Toyama/6th of June types.

Posted in last thread, but I'm keen to see other peep's counters and stand-up card mechs.

The Toyama's were honestly the most powerful even since Demona Aziz before St Jamais killed her. The True Believers were just the ones who could actually talk to everyone and act as mediators. So Blane made good sense as a councilor, but when shit got real, you knew they wouldn't let him call the shots.

God damn did the 3rd Division have a good track record though.
>tfw they even survived the meatgrinder at Dieron and escaped into the void

Never stop believing.

Somebody should post the picture of somebody using pennies and shotgun shells.

I have plenty of mechs though. If I have to proxy, I just something with similar weight and loadout. Like I might use a centurion mini as a stand in for a snake.

Maybe more powerful due to their machinations, but the True Believers were bigger up until around (or just before) 3067.

I'd have loved to see a WoB story in the Jihad where you get to read events from a True Believer's pov.

The concept of the 'jihad' had been bubbling away during the 90s

go easy on him, some people are joining are community that were born after 9/11 and don't remember the before time.

>people are joining are community that were born after 9/11

So we have a new definition for "trashborn", then.

I hadn't been aggressive or vindictive, just pointing out that they had been planning this prior to September 11.

I'm sure he or she is capable of dealing with opposing opinions.

ok I laughed

...

Now that is cool looking. Got some questions: what are the 'Mech and tank involved?
Are those all Word of Blake cyborg troops (Manei Domini, correct?)?
Are their names for their small arms? For RPG purposes.

It was some custom config for a Drac Sunder, the tank was a Bolla, the MD mech I'm not sure. Yes, those are MD troops being and fire with no fucks given.

Shimmy could give you more details, since he painted it.

Ok, allow me to explain (and for those getting salt in their panties, clean them before responding).

The concept of the Jihad didn't officially come out until after 9/11. FASA may have been working on a similar concept, yes, but it wasn't released until 2002.

They called it a Jihad despite the term appearing in absolutely no lexicons other than the Qu'ran. While there were Muslim extremists prior to 9/11, let's face it -- that event made them globally known and a household name. 'Jihad' had become well known and the world was aware of it. To use that term was just a blatant emotion-grabber. To pretend otherwise is to ignore global events.

For the record, I've been playing since the mid 90s. I remember when FASA ran it like champs. So ease off the cheetos, your salt levels are too high.

Those look like Mauser 1200 LSS'. Could even be Mauser 960s, but those were in short supply, which prompted the building of the 1200.

>someone defends you
>"ease off the cheetos"
classic /btg/

reminds me of this

The Celestial is a Malak Dominus config.

Let's face it, the concept of 'jihad' was pretty well understood in the '90s by those that followed world security with anymore more than a passing interest.

Speaking of WoB, are there any sources for what all the factories on Terra were able to build up until the beginning of the Jihad? In models and variants, not really numbers.

Agreed I remember reading about yahoos in the middle east crowing about a holy jihad in the 90s. It was only 9/11 which made it a household word.

Which is unfortunate because jihad is a super common word in Arabic.

>pretty well understood in the '90s

The 80s, I'd say. That's when all those terrorist groups with "jihad" in their names sprung up. You had the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (usually sans the country designator), the Lebanese Islamic Jihad (a front for the Iranians and their Hez minions), etc. The last ones were probably the most famous, they were the ones who held all those hostages in Lebanon back in the day.

I'll agree to that. But consider that audience. Who does that contain? Military types, regular people with an obsession on those things. You ask the average person in the 90s what 'jihad' meant and you'd probably get a blank stare, or someone trying to decipher it on the spot. Most people don't care about it unless it's mentioned on the news or it's a hot-button item.

Don't kid yourself into thinking that BattleTech players are more educated or more well read than the rest of the populace. We run the gauntlet just as much as non-players.

The Jihad book came out in 2002, while it was still VERY fresh in everyone's minds. It featured a large explosion, damage, and a grinning madman on the cover. That was blatant pandering on emotion to sell it and capitalization on the hot-button item.

That, to me, is the worst part of the whole ordeal. They shoe-horn in a terrible idea and try to use emotion to capitalize on it and get people to buy into it.

>Hez minions
Not really fair. Shiites are uncommon in most Arab nations and it's only natural for a minority surrounded by groups that hate them to turn to the only (comparably) major nation that is Shiite majority.

Can someone walk me through how to use hidden units in megamek?

I think you're selling the old school BT guys short. Remember that tabletop was something very different to them, and much closer to the wargaming roots.

I agree with the premise of your argument. The term was chosen to illicit a response. But I think that had been cooking since(at least) the first WTC bombing. We knew well jihad and what it was. I don't even think you had to be an expert to be familiar. You just had to pick up a magazine every now and then.

>The Jihad book came out in 2002, while it was still VERY fresh in everyone's minds. It featured a large explosion, damage, and a grinning madman on the cover. That was blatant pandering on emotion to sell it and capitalization on the hot-button item.

Knigga, the first Jihad book didn't come out in game stores until 2006. We call it Forever 67 for a reason. Proper battletech was in a time freeze for years while Dark Age was in progress.

Also, FASA had a long history of modelling their stuff after old military groups and events. The Clans being Mongols is the most obvious and famous. Crusade and Jihad are familiar to anyone with any background in the history of the early first millenium.

>Don't kid yourself into thinking that BattleTech players are more educated or more well read than the rest of the populace. We run the gauntlet just as much as non-players.
They're not more educated but you bet your ass that they have a disproportionate amount of military people. There's a reason brick and mortar stores love to locate near bases.

>3rd Division

Pure thoughts and pure actions, ma nigga.

Do mercenary companies generally have their own jumpships, or do they charter them to carry their dropships?

Charter.
If your mercs have a JS, you will be called a Mary Sue by /btg/ and things will be thrown at you.

Most people here think unless your only stinger is missing an arm, your drop ship is second hand with half a tank of gas and your MG is outta ammo, you are pretty much ruining BT.

What, your mercs have a Mech and a Dropship? Don't worry, you're already ruining BT.

What do you mean you can afford to pay your staff? Battletech is ruined forever.

I'm not even going to lie, that sort of thing is why I haven't done any sort of posting or storytiming or sharing of screencaps from by AtB campaign. I'm playing the unit that I rolled up in a /btg/ thread as an example of FM:M(r) unit creation, so all of the rolls for units and the justification for having the JumpShip is a matter of record, and I'm STILL 100% sure that shit would be flung.

The, "my merc unit is less well-equipped than yours, so it's clearly better" is yet more hipster-style posturing that needs to die off with a quickness. There's a perfectly legitimate middle ground between the 15 year old with a merc unit that would turn the 3065 Dragoons green in envy, and the BattleTech hipster merc unit (from the TC or FWL, every time) with a half-dozen penniless guys armed with kitchen knives and a single Roryx SMG with 2 rounds of ammo to share between them.

HAHAH
you guys are great.

Serious reply to JS are incredibly rare and I can only think of 2 mercs with em (Kell hounds and WD). So anyone in reality would be chartering.

It's hard to read how serious anyone is here, it's kinda a running meme, and some people probably feel that way and honestly myself included know in canon it doesn't have to be that way but there's something rewarding about being so rough around the edges and just squeaking by.

So when I read the spamming of MS, I always take with an extra few grains of salt since sure some people are that die hard grogs, but I think most people like to shit post and run with a meme.

We seem to be a over all friendly mature group so I don't think many get mad it's just to stir the pot for some chuckles with friends.

>JS are incredibly rare and I can only think of 2 mercs with em

There's a ton of merc with JS. The two you're thinking of are the mercs with really large numbers of JS.

Also:
>GDL, ELH, 21stCL, Big Mac, Northwind Highlanders

All have JS (just off the top of my head), and all of them have multiple JS. A merc unit with a single JS isn't unknown, it's just uncommon. IIRC FM:Mercs says that something like 10% of merc commands have a Jumpship, whether owned or under their direct employ (chartering is for and then there's no further relationship).

The utter majority of mercenary units barely hit company size. Some of them won't even have a DropShip, or at least not enough storage space to haul all of their assets around, so they'll have to charter that too.

Any unit with a smaller size than a regiment would be highly unlikely to have one, unless they managed to capture an old pirate Scout or Merchant.

...

>It's hard to read how serious anyone is here, it's kinda a running meme, and some people probably feel that way and honestly myself included know in canon it doesn't have to be that way but there's something rewarding about being so rough around the edges and just squeaking by.

Yeah, I get it. It's just that there's levels of nuance to the argument and it annoys me that people are unwilling or unable to cop to it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with playing a "rough around the edges/squeaking by" merc unit. There's a difference between rough around the edges and totally hopeless.

As for the meme-ing, anytime somebody is shitting on a general playstyle that *ought* to be fine, it riles me. It's that whole Demo Agent thing: never shit on a playstyle you know to be legit just for grins or to make yourself feel better, because that's the sort of thing that gets people to walk away from the game. I've had to shut that down in person at cons (having vets playing in front of newbies and shitting on them is a *terrible* thing), and so anytime there's a chance that new players are reading that sort of thing and perhaps being influenced by it...well, it's just toxic as fuck.

>GDL, ELH, 21stCL, Big Mac, Northwind Highlanders

Good point. JumpShips and DropShips owned and/or operated by merc commands are rare, but they exist. It's the guy with a half-dozen Star Lords and a Fredsa they "totally salvaged from the Clans" in their homebrew merc unit that's the problem, not the merc unit with a Union, a Mule, and an Invader or Merchant.

>from the TC or FWL, every time
why? i like both those factions

Step 1: go into the rules and check the hidden units box of version 41.15 HU, and possibly later versions.

Step 2: no fucking idea, searching now. There must be a button somewhere but I can't find it.

...

>Any unit with a smaller size than a regiment would be highly unlikely to have one, unless they managed to capture an old pirate Scout or Merchant.

As a reference, here are the rules for creating a merc unit - which will be approximately company size in the VAST majority of cases.

To put things in perspective, if your CO comes out of character creation without a -4 to the roll to find a JumpShip due to Traits and Skills (Contact/Good Rep/Negotiation Skill/etc), you've screwed up very badly somewhere along the line. Which in turn means that you should be able to get a Merchant-class JumpShip on an 8+ at the absolute worst (TN 12-4 = 8+). Which in turn means that a starting merc company should have a JumpShip in at LEAST 42% of cases, as long as they're willing to drop 4 points of Cash Pool or go into debt a bit.

Getting a JumpShip isn't a given. But by the last set of published and functional rules we have for merc unit creation, it shouldn't be an extreme rarity, either.

Nice. Original query dude here, thanks a bunch.

I ask because I'm running a pnp game where the players are a mercenary company. Not quite set on date, yet, but I'm thinking either just after Tukayyid in 3052, 3057 or just before the Jihad happens in 3067.

Which book is that in? A Time of War?

>faith
but Blakism isn't a religion :^)

...

FM:Mercs Revised.

Like I said, the last functional mercenary unit generation ruleset that was published. It works for ATOW characters too with only a tiny bit of GM tweaking (if the PC has an effect that clearly is intended to duplicate an effect that gives a bonus, but the name of the effect doesn't match, give them the bonus like a sane person).

Of important note: this ruleset was published BEFORE the retcon in the number of JumpShips available to the Inner Sphere. That retcon happened in TechManual, which was published about 5 years after this Field Manual. Which in turn means that the information in the Field Manual represents the pre-retcon, lower JumpShip numbers. If anything, merc units after the retcon would be MORE likely to have a JumpShip, not less.

I have a picture using the same counters, user

They are so good, buy I would like them more if CGL did something MegaMek style

Way to quote a fanon source.