/btg/ Battletech General!

Did the Dracs capture any Dragonfly Omnis during their battles?

Woah, rape? Excellent, truly the perfect ingredient for any edgy novelist to make their work appear mature and edgy.

Who wrote this crap? My first instinct is to guess Stackpole, but I know there's other shitty BT writers from the novel era.

>be me
>criticize authors for shitty writing
>use "edgy" twice in one sentence

I've become that which I hate.

Seppuku, now

>>She'd been only nine the first time one of her mother's many lovers raped her. Afterward he laughed at her and said that if she told anyone he'd make her Mummy disappear. He could do it, too; she'd seen this same green patch on his sleeve as he pulled on his jacket and buttoned it over his huge, hairy gut. Then he'd placed his visored helmet over his head and stepped from the shack into the monsoon rain that drummed against the tin and tarpaper roof and walls like demonic monkey fists.
It's like I'm really on /co/!

Does it have to jump? If it doesn't, there's the 300D Hussar and the Mercury-98 for those who gotta go fast, the Mongeese (-67 for the regular units, -66 for the lucky ones who got Comstar assistance) plus the Hermes-1S if you're one of those C* beneficiaries. This is in the 3034-3039ish era.

Of course, Chancellor.

>4444
Yep, death confirmed

This book needs to be expunged from BT history!

>The squad outnumbered the secret policemen two to one, and at least half of them had rifles in hand. Yet not one of the troopies made a move to resist.

>It was not just that three of the Guardsman were covering the room with their machine pistols, but that the people of the Capellan Confederation were used to obeying harsh demands. Larsha was a poor little garrison world, hard against the hostile Davion frontier and too close for its own good to the bandit worlds of the Periphery. Its government was repressive and corrupt even by Liao standards. Here, as throughout the Confederation, the most visible symbol of that repression was the faceless Maskirovka Guardsmen. To resist would be to overcome a lifetime of conditioning. That was a lot to ask, even of former street criminals.

I'm looking at FCCW era actually, but those can all go on the list.

If it doesn't need to jump, there's also the Cicada. sure it's technically a medium but functionally it's a light mech.

>Who wrote this crap?
Victor Milan. He's cheesy in a good way sometimes, but pointlessly edgy all too often

Ooh, the 3F or 3G cicadas look like what I'm looking for, thanks.

Sweet Omi Kurita, Milán's writing, even at its edgiest, is fluffy clouds and kittens compared to the oeuvre of Ilsa Bick.

Milan may have his moments of edge, but with her you wonder how she's able to pick up a piece of paper without accidentally slicing it in half from all the edge

Sounds like none of you read his space sci fi novel, CLD.

Go try it. You'll want to bleach your brain after.

Xotl is waaaaaay too nice of a person to hang out with us. I asked if he could get me FM:SLDF from MechCon, and get Randall to sign it "Mackie Stronk" and I got pic related.

Why are you people being butthurt about this? This is entirely consistent to the way the Confederation has always been written and portrayed in BT media. It's as close to being objectively correct as literally anything in any of the BT novels can be.

The CapCon is, in general, a pretty shit place to be, the same as any authoritarian state in the history of humankind. There's nothing wrong with being consistent with that in your writing.

it's all sarcastic you goof. They're making fun of coleman and madcap and those boys, not agreeing with them

>madcap

Disagreeing with the leading authority on the Capellan Confederation amoung the current stable of CGL writers is synonymous with shitposting, though. He certainly knows the true, canon state of the CapCon and its citizens far better than uppity anons on /tg.

Definitely. We're salty enough to cause fish kills if we go swimming in large bodies of water.

Anyone seen the new IWM models? The Hound and Triskelion are out and, frankly, look off...thought this won't stop me from buying a Trisk for me RotS unit.

On top of that the new OstScout model has been released. Its legs look a tad too big for the rest of the model but hopefully its not too bad from other angles.

Does anyone even care about the minis though? Seems like most of you only play online these days.

>amoung

Don't be salty that some of us can use the Queen's English correctly.

I care, but I've got serious storage problems these days. I've got about 2 battalions more than I have safe storage for, so I'm not getting any more units until I can rectify that.

I thibk what's making the hound look weird is that it's a bit hunched foreward in the TRO, but the mini is standing up straight and thus looks odd

>and, frankly, look off

Welcome to IWM.

I know...no real surprise. Still...one can hope. And with the general quality increase in the last year or two its become less common imo.

There are 8/12 Locusts and Stingers. No 8/12/8s though.

Hound is just badly posed. Proportions look ok.

Triskelion was always gonna be odd looking, the challenges of a tripod mini on small scale are real. It looks good for what it is.

Ostscout's legs are strange. Maybe it's also posing though, you could probably pose it differently and it'd be alright.

Roadrunner is rad as fuck.

>demonic monkey fists

I can't stop snickering.

I'm actually enjoying the Caballeros story so far. It's fun reading about a regiment of Free Worlder mercs.

Can identify shimmy, brent evans and russ. Who's everyone else?

Pictures?

>French Queen's English
kek

Randall (Mackie STRONK), Alex/FlyingDebris, Mitch and a couple of the other guys from HBS, and Jordan Weisman.

Oh, and how could I forget: George Ledoux.

Plus some bloke called Keith Ham or some such. No idea what he does.

Sounds like a sheep shagger to me.

>HELLO SOLARIS FANS

Are there any BattleTech games I can play on an Android smartphone? Will megamek function?

Yes. Get VICE (the Commodore 64 emulator) and Crescent Hawks' Inception.

Where are the rules for the BV costs of pilots, repair crews, etc?

What mechs in the introbox set are best for introducing new players to the game?

Enforcer vs. Hunchback is a great pair. Vindicator is solid, Dragon is solid.

I love the Roadrunner but I have no current unit that would bother using it. My RotS guys are all Heavies and Assaults.

I'd include Roadrunners if I built a raiding/scouting RotS group...but I have no plans to.

High literature

How would you handle an rpg group where one of the players wanted to pilot a battle armor or protomech when the other players are all mechwarriors?

Enforcer vs Vindicator has become my preferred matchup. They're close ENOUGH in capabilities to prove a good pairing, without being as swing-y as the Hunchback vs Enforcer tends to be (if the Hunchback connects with the AC/20, it usually wins; if it doesn't it loses).

It's also a good lesson that Mechs don't always have to be heavier to have a chance at winning.

Tell them it's a bad idea, but you are willing to listen to their reasons.
If their reasons are good and not something along the lines of 'because I want to be different', then consider giving them a squad/point of backup buddies.
Alternatively, if combat will not feature heavily, then it should be fine as-is.
Just make sure you go over that, on the battlefield, they will die easily. Offer them battlemechs that have the capabilities they are looking for.

I have both the 2nd and 4th edition intoboxes. Any suggestions for good matchups? Not only 1 on 1 but pairs and even lances

Two mediums sounds pretty good.

Made FCCW snake company, should I include the costs for the dropship, pilots, repair crews, etc or are they calculated separately?

Current set up is:
-Assault Lance: Naginata, Hatamoto, Flashman, Dragon 7N
-PPC Lance: Catapult K2, Panther 10KA, Ninjato 3, Grand Dragon
-Light Lance: Cicada 3G, Spider 7M, Venom, Venom
BV2 total: 15,459

>should I include the costs for the dropship, pilots, repair crews
No, they are irrelevant to a unit's table BV

Wolverine-M VS Warhammer-6R is an old favorite of mine.
Also, shad VS rifleman is weird but generally fun on the table

Not even a Marik but I love me those -M variants.

Their selection of original mechs may be mediocre, but damned if they don't know how to put together an Unseen upgrade

Is there any way to add custom DropShips to AtB/MHQ?

If you can cope with "only" going 7/11/7, there's the Assassin (shut up, 40 tons is an honorary light). At 7/11/5, you have Jenners (Kurita as fuck and much better than Panthers IMO).

Got it in just in time lol. Will get back to you tonight or tomorrow.

>protomech

But why?

BV costs for pilots are in the TechManual errata.

Repairs and repair crews aren't handled with BV, for that you want something like the Chaos Campaign rules for abstracting it.

You would only include their BV if you were going to field the DropShip in combat or give the pit crews weapons and use them as infantry auxiliaries.

Edit and rename an existing DS file with NotePad then put that in your MegaMek unit folder.

It's a bit of a pain at first but once you understand the syntax it's pretty easy.

It's how I play my custom WarShips and such in on-line games.

>TechManual errata
I can't seem to find it (I'm using the one from CGL's wesbite, v3.1)

Did you download the one that says TechManual BV?

Not trying to be an asshat, I think they should have put it all in one document. But this is CGL.

You misspelled Duncan Fisher really badly.

Ah okay, that explains it
>there are 3 separate techmanual errata pdfs
Battletech: For when you want to cross-reference half a dozen books to figure out how something works

Just get the new pdf and then you don't have to screw with all that stuff.

>pay money for shit that's still broken, years after release

Yeah, nah. If they'd had a decent editor, decent proof-reading, and actually play-tested their rules they'd have been at least to this level of errata before going to hard copy.

Which I bought, BTW. And thanks to the jewry of the BattleShop, that means only errata .pdfs need apply.

Then fucking pirate it from the OP, I'm pretty sure those are more recent and include errata. Geeze, quit whining.

Suppose you were building a 15k BV force, would you rather take 76 8/8 scorpions, or 20 1/1 scorpions?

The 8/8s won't even be able to hit past medium range and depending on rules or terrain might not even be able to box the enemy in.

The 20 1/1s are going to get fucked up by pretty much any other 15K force thanks to their shitty armour.

20 1/1s, easy. They'll actually be able to reliably hit and deal damage. Against normal IS pilots who are hitting on 8s, they'll be hitting on 5s, and that's fucking huge. Even with the shitty armor, they should be able to make up for it by landing way more hits than you'd normally expect.

A single 1/1 Scorpion is ~2.5k BV, so I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that you could manage to take 20 of them in a 15k force.

15K will also get you a Lance of 2/2 Awesome-8Qs.

Regardless of whether this is just a question of "What wins? 20 1/1 Scorpions or 4 2/2 Awesome-9Qs?" or in the more general sense is "Which would you rather have to fight, 20 1/1 Scorpions or 4 2/2 Awesome-9Qs?" I'm gonna go with the Awesomes there.

15K will most probably be used to buy a pair of 3050+ medium-weight lances with Veteran-ish skills, which I would really expect to rip through five 1/1 Scorpion platoons with ease any way.

I meant the light tank, not the quadmech.

Oh. Well in that case the Scorps are utterly fucked, I thought he meant the mech.

>rather have

Rather not have to fight, I mean.

I'd rather face the 20, because I can finish and win that battle sometime before next year.

That's the point I was making.

Not only are the Awesomes effectively a lot tougher, they have greater damage output and no ammo, with TNs that aren't meaningfully worse.

Easier to fight and wreck the all-vee force.

But muh scorpions nest

Has this Lyran weight limit on noble guard 'Mechs ever been elaborated on? From this, it seems it's a straight limit, like "nothing over 55 tons for you".

So /btg/, after surviving the Jihad mostly intact, which periphery nation should my mary sue as fuck ~2.5 regiment strong merc company fuck off to to avoid the various disarmament efforts in the wake of the jihad?

The smoldering carcass of the fwl

Hanseatic League.

What's /btg/'s opinion of the Xiphos?

Nah, an extra 2 and a half regiments during a crucial point might actually help them survive.

Go Filtvelt. Only you can stop further re-absorption into the Federated Suns.

It does what it's meant to do in terms of laughing off AoE attacks.

The weapons aren't great and it's slow so mostly it's an area denial tool.

Frankly I'd rather have a Kopis most of the time. I don't play with a lot of artillery or artillery canons though so in metas heavy with those the Xiphos would be more attractive.

I dunno, they've always had a pretty good spread of mechs to choose from. Better than the Kuritas and Liaos.

It seems to have ended by the early 31st century.

New to battletech but is the Quickdraw a good mech?
Also story time:
>Super excited just got starter box
>No idea how to play so grab 3d gf and figure out rules
>3 hours later and we figured out movement + shooting
>She shoots my clint with her enforcer and denotes me on a lucky crit
I dont understand, isnt the 3d gf supposed to hate neckbeard games?!