/btg/ Battletech General!

Still looking at the first gen IS omnis, would the Sunder be better off with a SFE and 3/5 movement?

It would give the thing like 44 tons of pod space.

I love your art.
There needs someday to be a pic of a company of Urbies dressed as the 1985 Chicago Bears with an Atlas off to the side with Mike Ditka's mustache photoshopped, not drawn, but photoshopped onto it.
... And maybe one Valkyrie made up to look like Walter Payton.
Just sayin'.

Correction: Maybe a Phoenix Hawk or an Assassin, something swifter, as Walter Payton.

39 tons actually. 46 if it went 3/5 with an XL.

It might be, the biggest issue would be the smaller engine means more DHS need to be allocated, 5 instead of the 1 at 4/6, which offsets the space you gain from yanking the XL, or else those extra sinks need to be removed which would then potentially offset the gain in free weight. Ultimately it depends on the particulars of a config. Most of the canon ones could work, except maybe the B, but the B is kind lousy.

Oh I dropped the "fixed" sinks past 10 when I lowered the speed to get 44 tons. Better off, I think.

I did a series of production "Mark 2s" for them (treating the originals as simply prototypes), including what you suggested for the Sunder.

>Black Hawk-KU, dropped the fixed equipment to yield 24 tons of pod space
>Firestarter, dropped fixed equipment and added half a ton of armor to yield 20 tons pod space
>Avatar, dropped fixed equipment for 37 tons pod space total
>Owens, no fixed equipment, DHS, 10.5 tons pod space
>Strider, no fixed equipment, DHS, 13 tons pod space

The Blackjack and Raptor were the only ones I kept as they were.

Urbies playing poker like the old painting of dogs playing poker.

Dammit, I wasn't paying attention.

>Game-breaking? Almost certainly. Something I never, ever want to see? Definitely.

This. There should be a maximum movement cap on Battletech units. Something like "no more than 10-12 hexes per turn" for Mechs and 12-15 hexes for vees. That keeps people from being able to freely reposition and attack rear armor every time, at will, like LAMs do.

As others mentioned for commission work.

-Matt Plog if you want cheap lineart. I don't know why he does this, he's worth a lot more.

-David White if you really like his style and will pay up for the lineart.

-Myself if you want to drop significant money on color art. Color paintings are my specialty so that's the only place I can edge Plog out, but the price jump is still big. I win simply because no one else does it :D

>>Clearly, what's needed is a novel-length battletech fanfiction entirely about the life and career of Atleast Itsnot and his mercenaries

SOMEONE MAKE THIS HAPPEN.

wut

i never knew i wanted this before

That would be me. If I were to ask for a quote, would I message you on DA?

I have a question I reckon you folks could probably answer.

I dled megamek the other day and set up a campaign for myself, gave myself a mech lance to start with, was having fun fleshing everything out, and then on my first contract all the scenarios I got were the chase scenario, which seems to be completely unwinnable, even with the double enemy vehicles option turned off. When I try starting from scratch and making a new campaign it's the same story, every time. Chase, chase, chase and the occasional Hold the Line scenario.

My question is, is there a way to stop it from generating that particular scenario? I looked in the options but cant find any way to. Granted I'm terrible with computers and its a small miracle I even got that shit to run at all, I still spent a good hour or so fucking with the options and I'm stumped. Help would be appreciated.

Yep, DA is where I prefer to do business.

I also forgot to mention two other DA guys that do BT commissions:

-spooky777 does scenes using MWO models as a basis. He's doing official work now.

-Colourbrand does a lot of combined arms pieces. I don't think anyone else has done so many vehicle paintings.

I tend to say "sod this" to the chase scenarios and just reload the previous save. Having an enemy as homicidal as Princess deploy right behind your 'Mechs in a chase is bullshit.

You probably could adjust the bot tactics to the cowardly and "run away" direction to amplify their need to bugger off to the north even quicker, or kick Princess out of the game and take control of the enemy yourself to send them running north.

Oh, and wait til you get to a "civilian help" mission. Unless you take control of the civilian side yourself, you'll end up with a group of bloodthirsty civilians in lumberjack 'Mechs and technicals charging hostile assault units.

Oh and I forgot, you probably should do a couple of further adjustments before firing up your campaign. Whilst doing the initial campaign options setup, in the Against the Bot tab set skill level to Green or Ultra Green. This cuts back on the lances the bot will throw at you, so it's not always a company or a reinforced company against your lance. The other is to set enemy lance distribution to 1 Mech, 0 Mixed, 1 Vehicle.

And you can always reinforce your own units. When you have a battle pending, advance to the day of the battle, select the TO&E tab, right-click on any unassigned lance (the one that has to be in the fight will have a grey background) and select "deploy unit", then the impending battle. On the pre-battle screen you'll see how many turns it'll take for the reinforcements to arrive. This is dependent on the general speed of the reinforcing lance, their number of jump-capable 'Mechs, and the Strategy skill of the lance leader (each point will shave off one round). A fast and jumpy medium lance under a Strategy-capable boss will therefore deploy a lot faster than a lumbering assault lance with a non-Strategy boss. This will help when your lance of bugs faces a hostile assault lance in a stand-up fight.

So that's my only option? Just reload until something that isn't chase comes up? Damn, I was hoping maybe there was some way to fuck with the settings and just eliminate that shit entirely. Oh well, thanks anyway.

And yeah, I already messed with the campaign settings a bit. I found a helpful list of things to adjust for a first time player, I just set the skill level to green though, I didn't know it affected how many mechs and vehicles it gave the opponent though, thanks.

>So that's my only option

Yep. On tabletop, chases tend to be more forgiving, but Princess is homicidal. If you end up losing the initiative in deployment, you'll end up having an enemy 'Mech right beside your units, and Princess tends to err on the side of "blood for the blood god" over the "is forced to retreat" side. If you ever punch out of your unit, expect to see Princess expend some fire on your hapless Mechwarrior.

Pic related. This is from a Star League cache mission, where the tech (with really poor P/G) didn't hit a single enemy 'Mech in the firefight. However, the moment I shot one enemy driver out of his giant robot, the motherfucker does this.

>I don't know why he does this, he's worth a lot more.

He outcompetes by doing quality work for a lower price, and he can work fast. For example, Muninn has paid him for...8-10 pieces? And iirc he just sent off more a few days ago. So he's gotten $400+ that the rest of you didn't. I dunno about anyone other than you or white, but I assume there's a reason Muninn's not using anyone else right now. Or if he is, hasn't mentioned it.

Thanks to the wonders of CGL's bone-heade decisions you can't even swap them over to ERs without breaking it as an Omni, even though it's a Class A refit.

I'm actually mostly fine with the Sunder's base set-up, and that's from someone who often gripes about the shit designs Dracs get lumbered with. The changes I'd be tempted to make are actually giving it Endo (a surprising number of configs can tolerate this) or bumping it to 95 tons, also with a possible Endo swtich since the arm-mounted DHS can move to the engine there.

My bigger issue is why, in Tech Readout: Gausswalls, Gausswalls Everywhere, the Prime config which is supposed to be by far the most common version, uses exclusively 3025-era weaponry when it could have 1 GR, 2 ER PPCs, 3 MLs and then either C3 or an additional DHS depending on how you feel about that.

Side note is that a 4/6 XL 90+ tonner is at least its own thing, if you make it a 3/5 mover with that much pod space you're introducing the Hauptman early. Which is not necessarily a bad thing but I find it helps to try and keep Omnis a bit further apart in that regard.

That's the thing though, he's gone way past competing, in fact I don't think he's intentionally doing that. The idea of competition isn't quite what most think in the art world.
He could charge double and he'd still be undercutting me, even triple and the value gain would be worth it over my work.
You mention $400, and that amount of money is peanuts, you have to pull that much in within a week or less to live. Now imagine he gets paid $1200 for the same work, that's better, though still cheap.

Plog "can" afford to be cheap, because yes he is very fast, but that doesn't mean he has to.
He did pull the btgro art gigs from me, no big deal for me as I will just do other work I have available. He hasn't really earned more, btg has just paid less, and I lost nothing.

>This. There should be a maximum movement cap on Battletech units. Something like "no more than 10-12 hexes per turn" for Mechs and 12-15 hexes for vees. That keeps people from being able to freely reposition and attack rear armor every time, at will, like LAMs do.
>I want to kill light mechs; the post
learn to play

Light mechs are already pointless, so what's the problem?

Also, the RNG stops working when stuff is getting +4 and +5 TMMs. Things should never be outright unhittable at medium range from a stationary shooter. That's bad game design.

>hard to hit
>pointless

>light mechs
>pointless
What are you, Lyran?

He's obviously meming, but two quick things.

1: Most BT metas I've seen revolve around 'Mechs, with occasional BA and vees with ASF so rare as to be non-existent. Dumping 18/27 (or faster) units into that environment seriously fucks things up. If, like Cincy, you're already in a meta that emphasises AA capability and artillery they have much less of an impact.

2: I've had the dedicated AirMech mode conversation with a friend of mine once and while I started with "I guess they could do that..." she immediately followed it with "Awesome, and because they aren't LAMs they'll be able to use XL Engines, and because they're purpose-built for AirMech mode they won't suffer all the accuracy and piloting penalties of AirMech mode! They won't even need to spend tonnage for being built that way, the reduced ground movement will be enough of a penalty!"

And no. Just no.

Plog did raise his prices lately, but he's still half of shimmy for complete line art vs a sketch.

I don't know why he charges what he does but I'm happy to pay it. Not only is his price very good but he's quite professional. if you want to commission fan art, he won't take half and disappear, won't half-ass it after 6 months of you bugging him, etc.

That's a big reason why I'm not really going with a bunch of the other DA guys.

>You mention $400, and that amount of money is peanuts, you have to pull that much in within a week or less to live. Now imagine he gets paid $1200 for the same work, that's better, though still cheap.

$400 isn't peanuts and $1200 for the work he's done would be excessively expensive. I don't know what his economic situation is but clearly it works for him. If it weren't for Plog, we'd either be getting shitty art or this project would be kinda dead.

>He hasn't really earned more, btg has just paid less, and I lost nothing.

He potentially earned more than he otherwise would have; I don't know what his commission slate looks like to be able to say. The impression that I get is that he slots /btg/RO work into a few free hours here and there.

The only reason you didn't lose is because you weren't willing to work that much anyways - the opportunity cost is too high. But if you were willing to work more, you would have made more (again, unless you have other work filling up even expanded capacity). In other words, if you were a worker on a part time job with an hourly wage of $20, and your boss offered you 20 more hours for $10, you could increase your total earning by $200 - but only if you want to work another 20 hours. You may have a second part time job for $15, so you turn it down. Or you might choose to work 60 hours and make an extra $500 between the two.

This Intro to Micro lecture brought to you by Veeky ForumsU

>Dumping 18/27 (or faster) units into that environment seriously fucks things up.

This.

I'm not dedicated memeposter up there, but I'd be OK with mechs and vees limited in their combat speed a bit. The Dasher goes 15 hexes using normal movement, so if that was as fast as Mechs could go I'd be OK with that as a limit (and MASC being something that can break it because of being MASC).

Vees are trickier. I don't think VTOLs should have a limit at all, but I do think that all the ground vee types should have speed limits. Something like 7/11 for tracks, 8/12 for wheeled (and they then get the +1 pavement bonus), and something like 12/18 for hovers.

Memeing aside, the core point in that high TMMs fuck up the RNG curve is correct. Outright unhittable things should be vanishingly rare as long as line of sight exists at all. If we're OK with shitting on LAM's because they've got so much movement they're unhittable and can always choose where and when to attack, then it stands to reason we should be OK with other types of units which do the exact same thing.

I'm on my phone and can't do it myself, but could I bother you to make a sheet for a Sunder confit with that GR, ER PPC setup you mentioned?

So screwing around in the game a bit more, I'm just reloading until I get better scenarios like you said, it feels a little cheesy but at least I dont have to play chase any more, thank god for that.

I am having an inordinate amount of fun just on the management aspect though. Especially given the randomized portaits for my personell. My captain is Clint Eastwood and one of my techs is Fred from Angel.

I don't know why that amuses me so much, but it does.

...

Not Muninn, obviously, but I've got a config that's essentially the same thing.

C3 Slave and a 3rd ton of Guass ammo are what I do with the extra 2 tons. I can live with a couple points of overheat from firing the ERs and the GR.

>Not Muninn, obviously

Wait what

Ohshit, they're onto me/us.

RUN

BTW, did you ever get that email, or still nothing? I resent it.

No, I'm Muninn!

I did. I just don't have any followup commentary. There wasn't a question asked. Was there supposed to be one?

So is there maybe a non shitty hexgrid wargame for battletech or is that it?

Uh...I'll have to check.

Use more punctuation, is the 'non shitty' supposed to modify 'hexgrid' or 'wargame'?

Be less autistic, or does your 'autism' only come out on 'Veeky Forums'?

Only on the internet, where I don't have the benefit of facial ques and tone to figure out what you mean.

To answer your question, there is the core Battletech, Alphastrike, Battletech: A Time of War, and then there are the different scales of Battletech that people don't play much like Strategic Scale, Aerospace scale, and Space scale. Technically, AToW is called "personal scale" but it has effectively a whole different rule set, so it's considered a different game.

Does that clear things up?

Oh, you wanted non-hexgrid games in BT universe? Inner Sphere in Flames (basically Interstellar scale) is kind of like Risk in the level of abstraction. Also Alpha Strike is miniatures rules, with a hex map being optional.

>is miniatures rules
And that's important to point out, you don't need hexmaps to play standard BT either.

Yep, this. You can get the rules for free from CGL and it's just a conversion for the appropriate rules. Play CBT like 40K, needing rulers and things like that.

Hi guys, I've seen that a native to these threads named CampaignAnon had made a lot of Perseus configurations. Could someone post them?

And to add, are they based on the original Perseus? Because I've also seen a fair bit of talk about how the mech would be better suited if its internals were rearranged a tad (leg lasers and such).

>asking for CA's Perseii

Someone post the 8 Light Rifle Perseus.

>meddling with a canon machine

How dare you change perfection

I'm trying to make some mechs that are low-BV but still decent, what weapons should I look at to do the job?

Vindicator

MMLs, for one.

Not what mechs, what individuals weapons. He's designing them.

I've been lurking the general for a while, and been looking at picking up the game. I'm familiar with the games, and have a quick question is the King Crab any decent on the tabletop?

Mainly asking from the video game experience, as the King Crab clicked with me on the vidya, but I'm fully aware that the Battletech is vastly different from Mechwarrior.

The Vindie is a good example of the combination of weapons for what he wants.

Yeah, King Crabs can be pretty decent. In 3025, they're a rare double AC/20 carrier. Later on you get advanced tech variants that are pretty solid.

KCs love to KB though. Some people really like them, I'm not a huge fan and I know I've had some seriously bad dice rolls cost me way more than they shoulda.

>what weapons should I look at to do the job?
The LBX-10 and basic PPC are old standbys for that sort of mech. The LBX-5 can also work, and the LL is also a good choice, and in later years, the MML and LPPC join the roster

Urbies-in-tophats would work if you had Dire-Urbies and Slender-Urbies, too.
Slender-Urbie: creapy-slender forearm and hand with a thin hatchet.
Dire-Urbie: more close range firepower. "You didn't just come around that corner thinking you outgunned me did you? Lol."
Sniper-Urbie?: 1 ridiculously long range weapon for long range shots from rooftop or the long sight lines down straight streets.

As someone new, can anyone explain to me the appeal of the Perseus?

There really isn't one, it's just a meme.

Pretty much every mech from the FWL (which isn't the Awesome) is unmitigated trash, and so they chose a clear and obvious piece of trash to artificially popularize as a statement.

Thanks mate. I was hoping it wouldn't be utter trash and pretty solid seems good in my book. Mainly because I know MW meta isn't BT meta

>KCs love to KB though
I have no idea what that means. I'm been reading though the rules, but not /that/ familiar with them.

So what's the point of arm mounted weapons? It seems like their only benefit is they can flip. Shouldn't they at least have a wider firing angle like in the game?

King Crabs tend to be fairly explody, be warned. They usually rely on either explosive weapons (like Gauss Rifles) or heavily ammo dependent weapons (AC/20s, LRMs, etc). Their propensity to run XL engines alongside all this makes for a mech that dies surprisingly easily (ammo bomb, side torso destruction, center torso destruction, Gauss detonations, etc). They're not as tanky as they could be is what I'm getting at here.

The Wraith is breddy gud which is why it was given to the Capellans :(

Sorry about that, KB= kaboom, they esp pre case blow up, a big boom.

Eh, nothing that can carry a payload that qualifies as "scary" isn't going to be fragile or explody somehow anyway.

>Shouldn't they at least have a wider firing angle like in the game?
Uh, they do? Page 105 of Total Warfare. Diagram is labeled shit, but the Arms each get about 60 degrees more arc than torso mounted weapons do. Only way to cover your rear, besides the mess that is a rear-mounted gun or the rarity that is a turret.

>Dire-Urbie: more close range firepower. "You didn't just come around that corner thinking you outgunned me did you? Lol."
How about this old thing I made?

Really? Ughh.

I was planning on playing FWL but now I'm not so sure.

What would be a good House to play?

I see now, and you're right about the diagram.

Depends on what you want. I play Feds (used to play Steiner before Fed Com civil war) but I will play "bad guy" like a battletech game of cops and robbers and be a big Drac or Cap ass to give my buddies something fun to play against.
I play others, but you only mentioned the houses.
One of the things like like to do with Feds is put characters stuck in mediums trying to work their way out of the machines to better gear.

Do the Feddies have good mechs?

FWL is fine, they're just a faction oriented towards teamwork and being more than the sum of their parts.

They have the best selection by a wide margin.

Some, yes. Absolutely. However don't ever get stuck in their old variation of the Shadow Hawk. I think it's the 2D. It loses five tons of armor for another laser, an SRM2 with ammo and a couple of heat sinks. It's a paper tiger.
Otherwise they have nice things like the Devastator and Gunslinger assaults which are just mean incarnate. I also like their original Centurion more than the Griffin because it can fire it's LRMs and autocannon which does as much damage as the Griffin's PPC but with less heat problems. There's a lot more to work with and I like playing them for their machines as well as my Good Guy Roast Beef Sandwich American Fantasies.

What are the top tier jj mechs pre clan invasion?

Grasshopper. Accept no substitutions. Also Wolverine M (forgot the model number. I think 6M?)

Sorry I fell asleep on the couch after screwing with Christmas decorations for 5 hours. (Note to self, watch the rest of the family and make sure they actually put the lights and other decorations away properly, and don't remove the labels)

To answer your question, I'll certainly post them.
>And to add, are they based on the original Perseus? Because I've also seen a fair bit of talk about how the mech would be better suited if its internals were rearranged a tad (leg lasers and such).
The ones I generally post here are based on the original, yes. I do have every one of these cloned on a modified chassis with ES in the legs, as well as experimental chassis with EndoComp and the like.

Next post. I'm too lazy to add it here.

It's a middling, if poorly laid out and expensive, omni. The XLFE gives it a lot of tonnage to work with, but the bad crit placement means you're stuck with middle weight ballistics and missile launchers, along with a large amount of one crit lasers to fill your tonnage out. I keep fiddling with it because I like to see if it's possible to make a lemon really work.

I also like the Thunderbolt 5SE. I mentioned it before but I had a long campaign going where this was a machine that JUST WOULDN'T DIE. It escaped enormous trials and yeah, dice rolls, but it ate a lot of people's lunches.

Since no one's noted the AtB rules and GM mode, I'll go over those. For chase missions, if you're the Attacker, your units *always* deploy at the start of the game. If you're the Defender, your units deploy according to this formula: (12 turns - walk/cruise MP - an additional 1 if the unit jumps). Accordingly, you need to set this up for the bot too, which you can do in the lobby by right clicking on the lead bot unit and configuring it. This way you don't have a few trinaries deploying right in your face at the start of the game, and the enemy is staggered out behind you. Even one or two turns of lead can be a win in these situations.

The next option is, if you hate the Chase missions, regardless of which role you play, is to turn on GM mode and right click on the mission, and in the GM mode tree, there's an option to remove the scenario. I started doing that after the Atleast Itsnot campaign decided that an assault star needed to be chased by 45 mechs.

Fuck, totally forgot the Light Rifle Perseus.

>chase

They're the main reason most of my lances are jump capable. Between that, seemingly gaussian map generation, and almost constant night fighting, jump jets and IJJ are a must-have.

If I don't think I can outrun them, I just eat the contract breach and don't play it. It's often better to go down by three points and lose nothing, than be guaranteed to go down by two points and lose your entire lance. It's already pretty bullshit that everything comes at you at random and you can't choose when to do certain missions like raids and probes.

Depends. A lot of them are using XL engines with ammo in the torsos. Even with CASE, while the 'mech may not be totally scrapped, it's done for the fight.

FWL is fine, just remember that SG LRMs are your friend (but will not make you any friends)

Steiner actually has the best.

How does one begin to get into the TT version of battletech, finding people who play, etc.

How does one go about finding people who play MegaMek, I have a hard time navigating the client with my limited knowledge,

>roast beef sandwiches
Where did the Arby's/roastie meme come from? Was Melissa a roastie or something? I'm sure she got around the Triad a few times.

Could you post the ones cloned with the ES moved?

Eh... a lot of the stuff they were given was as a means of providing that factory output to the Suns. Once the FedCom breaks down a lot of those lines disappear, either through battle damage or, seemingly, production licences being revoked.

The Suns also winds up with the best vehicle and BA forces.

There is the map in the OP, but probably your best bet is to try a local game shop. I'm having trouble finding IRL games too.