/btg/ Battletech General!

Started battletech recentally and got he starter box thing
Where should I expand after that? More mechs or something else?
Or how do I convince irl gf to play BT without over autisming her

Just my opinion, but maybe some of the old scenario books like Black Widow or Gray Death Legion just to get some fun experience in the world.
Also it's not bad playing around with MegaMek a little in your spare time to learn basic tactics against the computer and maybe a friend or two online.
About the gf... now THAT'S a toughie. Of all my gfs only one liked mechs, and it was that bishie later-Gundam era pretty boy stuff so that relationship was doomed to fail.

There was a Goliath Scorpion star on Tukkayid.

That disappeared ever since.

Clan Watch is for individual clans, though. You don't have a "The Clans" Watch, you have a Diamond Shark Watch

Just found out about this new-ish game Horizon Wars. Anyone heard of it? Wondering if the minis might be good for BT, they have a bunch of Mechs.

>Did the Clans have any cross-clan keshiks during the invasion?

Kinda but probably not the way you're imagining.

The Katyusha Keshik is a multi-Clan force that keeps the peace in Katyusha City, the Clan capital. Appointment to it is a bit of a poisoned chalice, with posts going to respected warriors but it cuts off their advancement and prevents them from earning an honourable death in combat. They get a bit more fleshed out in the MechWarrior's Guide to the Clans.

The Ebon Keshik is a multi-Clan force of Elementals who are responsible for security around the Hall of Khans on Strana Mechtyand IIRC are the honour guard for Nicholas Kerensky's remains on board McKenna's Pride and/or the prison ship Prinz Eugen. They've never really been developed beyond that though.

...

Oh, and because I didn't make this clear, although the personnel for the Ebon and Katyusha Keshiks come from a variety of Clans, once you get sent to them you're effectively exiled. Appointment appears to be until death, or at least until testing out of the Warrior caste thing.

The Clans otherwise just don't co-operate very well. Closest thing we have to a multi-Clan force is the Mongol Horde crazies in Dark Age, where the Hell's Horses signed up to be meat shields for the Falcons because reasons.*

*The reasons are that the DA stuff rarely makes sense, Robert Thurston wasn't going to let the Falcons get dicked over if he could help it, and also did I mention that the DA stuff just doesn't make sense?

DA stuff makes sense if you read the books. DA stuff does not make sense if you expect factions to behave exactly like they did during 3025-3050. Early BT stuff never made sense, so I don't get why people even care about DA stuff not making sense

>DA stuff makes sense if you read the books.

Yup. 'Cos most of the faction leaders having whatever psychoses Isa Bick thought were neat that day, many being rape-torture-murder fetishists, the Horses signing up to do the Falcons' dirty work with no reward in sight, everything connected with Caleb, and and and and and totally make sense.

With the DA it's not that this particular plotline or that particular decision don't make sense in isolation, it's that the whole thing is such an unremitting and unapologetic grimdark clusterfuck where motivations and personalities change at random from book to book.

It's what we're stuck with but we can call a shit sandwich a shit sandwich.

Has anyone made battle values for nuclear weapons? I got inspired by the nuclear Urbanmech story and want to take one during a game but they don't have any BV yet.

Nukes by definition can't have BV.

There's no way to adequately model their performance on the tabletop when a single Peacemaker can conceivably destroy entire regiments in a single shot.

They're really only something to use if all players agree.

Of the Kapteyn allies, who had the best aerospace fighters?

Draconis Combine:
>Sholager, Shilone, Slayer

Capellan Confederation:
>Thrush, Transit, Transgressor

Free Worlds League:
>Cheetah, Stingray, Riever

Transgressor is a pretty compelling argument but overall the FWL. The Stingray is one of the best medium fighters and thanks to rules changes over the years the Reiver shits all over the Slayer.

Ok, I asked on the official forum and they said the Dracs had the best.

failed pilot skill roll

brain damage

Then I would look at them in askance.

The Slayer has a seriously overblown reputation in this case. It was built when you needed to spend 1 fuel point per Thrust point expended and so devotes twice as much tonnage to fuel as most fighters. Back then you also generated 1 heat per point of Thrust spent so it got 10 extra Heat Sinks but on the average turn it can generate only 12 heat. Factor in the short range on the A/C-10 and MLs that are its sole armament and it's got a problem.

Thing is that while it's shit *now* it was an absolute terror back in the old rules. It could burn at full thrust and fire the nose and a wing for all of one heat, and could afford to maneuver a lot harder than other fighters to get to the rear of opponents because there was far less of a problem with its fuel stores.

The Reiver's got better armour, hits harder, and has better range with the LRM.

The Shilone is nice but the Stingray has a more concentrated punch and uses energy weapons.

The light fighters are just sad jokes. The Shologar is better than the Cheetah, but it's still a light fighter and no matter how good it is won't make up the disparity on the Stingray and Reiver.

The OF crowd isn't the best with the Aero side of the game really. They like doing physics calculations but don't seem to understand the rule set and interactions too well.

Different user but what were the Com Guard standard light, medium and heavy aerospace fighters when they were first unveiled/fought on Tukayyid?

How do the Kapteyn planes compare to the FedCom allies own?

Whoever set the deadline for the first wave of stuff in the HBS BTGear shop is a dumbass. They started it up during the holiday season (when people won't necessarily have expendable funds) and ended it just after. We have a week to go and not even the t-shirt is going to make it unless there's about a hundred new sales a day for it.

Seriously, they should've extended it out further. To February or March. Tax returns start coming in, people have more liquid funds, etc.

I hope they don't just shitcan the whole idea after this first failed round. I really wanted one of those Atlas statues. Finding large-scale pieces of 'mechs is hard, not many of those exist.

It's been established HBS is full of idiots.

At this point we're crossing our fingers and hoping they won't screw things up anymore than they have.

They can at least make games well. All of the Shadowrun games were good, and judging by the gameplay trailers we've seen for the BT game, it's going to be at least decent if not good.

PGI's the one you really have to watch out for screwing up further.

Probably the Swift, Tomahawk or Hellcat II and Hammerhead or Rapier.

The Swift is extremely fast (13/20) but has tissue paper armour and only a Medium and Small Laser for guns. Light on fuel too with only three tons. It's a worse Cheetah, really.

The Tomahawk is extremely fast for its size but that hampers its armament a bit. One LL in each wing is usable with its speed but it's oversinked from the old rules.

The Hellcat II is a slightly slower, fatter version of the Tomahawk but does have an integral Active Probe for advanced rules shenanigans.

The Hammerhead is an A/C-20 with attached engines and so-so armour. The 7/11 speed profile is nice but the Transit shows what you can do by dropping the speed a bit.

The Rapier is all gun, all engine, and fuck all for armour. 2 PPCs, an A/C-20 and an LRM are nice but thanks to the shit armour other heavies can probably damage them at long range enough to ward them off.

The FedCom mix gives them a lot more flexibility than the others. The Stuka is the best Heavy and it's a Suns bird, the Lucifer has its fluff problems but stat-wise is solid enough to challenge the Stingray and the Corsair's not bad either. Lights are again lights but the Sparrowhawk is probably the pick of the bunch there too.

Megamek and setting books in my opinion. Megamek can test out all sorts of rules and get you used to how they affect the match. Setting is the real prize of Btech in my opinion, therefore I endorse getting them so you can enjoy a very rich environment for building your own stories and scenarios in.

As far as gf, just accept that if she sees you playing and is uninterested, she will never be interested. The only hook I know of that might get here attention is the Mechwarrior video games, and they are so dated that likely that won't get her interested if she wasn't in the first place. And Mechwarrior online is such trash for so long, don't bother. It has no story, no setting, no tie in to battletech other then the mechs themselves.

Shit is also just too expensive in general. I understand small production runs hike up costs as your fixed costs are spread across less units, but those prices still seem way too high.

>As far as gf, just accept that if she sees you playing and is uninterested, she will never be interested.

This x 1000. There's a certain mindset that games like Battletech and Car Wars require. If it's not interesting to her, there's not gonna be a whole lot one can do. OTOH, if she's already interested, needs to capture that unicorn and hold on to her forever!

>The only hook I know of that might get here attention is the Mechwarrior video games

If you live in the right part of the country, there are also Battletech simulator pods, but those are so far removed from how the tabletop game works that going from pods to hexes and miniatures is actually a pretty big let-down.

Bullshit. BT game is looking like crap. Shiny crap, but crap all the same. Honestly the turn structure is complete shit and the battles involved look positively childish. Good for intro stuff only. Pray that it sells to the young crowd, that is it's only hope.

Actually Battletech players will stick with Megamek and have many more hours of fun.

And the only reason the Shadowrun games were "good" was because it wasn't the horseshit fps that Microsoft tried to swindle people with. Easy to be good when your closest comparison piece was feces.

Some of it is. If they had done a sliding scale for cost, starting high and ending low (such as for item Y at 1-100 units it's $300, at 101-300 it's $260, etc.) they might have gotten more hits. Means those who want it, and are willing to shell out the cash will get it, and if interest keeps on peaking it means you'll only pay less if you're an early adopter.

The pods are kind amusing.
I played a few rounds at GenCon and did quite well considering I was the only light in endless seas of assaults and heavies.
And considering there was no real cover. Guess people just saw the Adder hopping around and decided I wasn't much of a threat despite the fact they were getting PPC'd in the ass.
I kind of want to see their accounting. Could be their suppliers won't touch orders less than a certain amount of units.

That's probably it. Or the price would be prohibitively expensive. For example, for that Atlas statue, you'd have to build a mold, cast, finish, and paint X number of units. The building the mold is the most expensive part, and unless you get at least a certain number of orders, it's just too damn expensive. Otherwise, it gets amortized over the cost of the rest of the productions, and the more that get produced the cheaper it is, eventually paying for itself.

I've always heard the molds are the most expensive part, like in the tens of thousands (and more), but I've never figured out why they're so expensive.
My only thought is due to the fact one mold will last a very long time, at least for plastic/resin, they have some crazy margins built-in to ensure profitability for the mold maker.

When will IWM stop using ancient pewter casting?

Mold price depends on the material type.

Resin molds are the cheapest but need to be replaced the soonest, followed by molds for metals and higher-quality resins.

Injection plastic molds need to be machined out of metal at incredibly high precision, which is what makes them so horribly expensive.
Once you have them, your per-sprue production cost is really nice, though.

>Actually Battletech players will stick with Megamek and have many more hours of fun.
I freaking love MegaMek and agree with this user's sentiment. I actually wish there was a pseudo 3D version of MM where the playing pieces were basic pictures with a front and back side like you were playing with computer standees.

Partially what said, but you don't just make one mold and call it done. Many times multiple molds have to be made before a production-ready one is made. They'll make a test mold, run a cast, see how it looks. Some areas may not be right, might be too thick, might not form properly due to the shape or material used, etc. A skilled designer and artist will cut down on the number of prototypes, but it's invariably part of the process and part of the cost.

I don't know what I was trying to prove, but here's a Mech with Tracks and a turret

It required Dark age tech before I could fit it all together, and it's horribly expensive and does not appear terribly effective

I threw some jump jets on it too, it was a pile of junk at concept, so they can't hurt

Forgot file

>PPC'd in the ass.

And for comparison, IS Succession Wars Tech, a Tank that's 1mp slower, and a 20th of the price, and isn't even a good design

2.6 million... not surprising for a fusion tank. The Schrek with it's pathetic armor is just over 3.8 million I believe. I have a variant of the Schrek that replaces two of the PPCs and HSs with two LB-10X cannons with ammo, and a boat load of FF armor and it's just under 5 million.

Lotta spicy opinions you have there, friend.

As a twentysomething who never actually played the FPS Shadowrun and only really got into through Dragonfall and Hong Kong after playing the XCOM reboot, I loved both games on their own merits as opposed to any kind of comparison with the older property.

Also;
>looks like shiny crap
>turn order is shit
>battles look childish
[citations needed]

youtube.com/watch?v=FjEeDz51pHE

Citation shown. Now go back to sucking cock scrub.

>looks like shiny crap
>turn order is shit
>battles look childish

Wait. Which one of these did you disprove exactly? Or are you one of those wastes of humanity who can't accept any changes whatsoever from your perfect precious boardgame?

Is literally too fucking retarded to tell the difference in a game when you have a singular action turn order versus a simultaneous phased action turn order.

Go back to checkers. It's probably about your speed.

OK, what successful turn-based video game has a simultaneous-action movement or fire phase?

It's not just that I can't think of any in the last few years. It's that I can't think of any in the last years. Some shit simply isn't going to translate acceptably from the table to the monitor.

>No, Megamek is not a successful video game

The turn order being different from Battletech's does not automatically make it "shit", user. It makes it different. I understand you are probably too autistic to tell the difference, but try to understand. A direct copy of MegaMekNET with shinier graphics and animated units is simply never, ever going to happen. You need to accept that and move on with your life.

And now that I have time, the long answer.

My precious boardgame changes all the time. It adds rules, equipment and designs to try to continually enhance the player experience. It gives him tools and options to slow the game down and make it more individual based, for places like Solaris and RPG stories, and it gives me rules for high end play that gets rid of a lot of detail so I can play regiment on regiment scenarios if I want. My precious boardgame can be a simple beer and pretzels game or an attempt and planetary invasion simulator. And it changes rules every 10 years or so on the baseline. And while I like the simpler stuff, like 3025, I like it so that I could run a campaign that could include entire regiments fighting. Also I just like the idea of scarcity of components driving people to fight over the very stompy robots that they just butchered. You don't get as much of that once the IS starts gearing up for the next Star League. But I still love the more advanced rules for when I feel like having an underdog fight of IS versus Clan. Something to be said for overcoming adversity.

And to put the final nail in the coffin of your argument, as childish and pathetic as it was, look at Megamek. Look at how many options there are to play. How many rules you can use and experiment with. Look at all the neat scenarios you can devise with rules going from simple lance fights up to warship duels in orbit.

Shiny, simplistic crap can't compare to what a bunch of fans have pulled off as far as software. That is fucking pathetic. All based off my precious boardgame.

So yeah, fuck you. I'm a Battletech fan.

Direct translations of board games to PC tend to be pretty shit games.

For a good recent example, look at Warmachine Tactics.
If that game made some decent changes to the Warmachine formula, it could have been grand.
Instead, it's a clunky copy that is basically a MegaMek on UE4 of Warmachine and is a shit game.

And Warmachine itself is a much better game system than Battletech.
Just look at fucking Mechwarrior Tactics, that made minimal changes to TT and played horribly before going under.

I'm surprised the Lyrans never acquired that design.

I wanted this to be good

>And Warmachine itself is a much better game system than Battletech.

>I'm a Battletech fan.

Yeah, the worst kind.

>Shiny, simplistic crap can't compare to what a bunch of fans have pulled off as far as software

It looks bad, though. And that's not acceptable for a wide-release game.

That's the thing. We are never, EVER, going to get a tarted-up copy of Megamek. It's not going to happen. Why do you keep tantruming every time something else that somebody might have fun with is mentioned? I'd rather have the HBS Battletech game on the market than Battletech game on the market.

Why do you not want more people to play in the franchise?

Because unless it's absolutely perfect, it's not going to be good enough and thus turned away with fits of autistic screeching.

>that image
>that reply
pic related for both

As for the argument you're trying to sell here, I just don't buy it. I'm still not getting the specifics of how it looks "childish", all things considered, and the turn order makes sense to me even though it's a departure from the TT rules.

Since they've elected to go with a system revolving around moving all of your units followed by the enemy moving all of his, having the lights move first to establish line of contact allows you to more flexibility with regards to the movement and placement of heavier elements on the field.

The scouts are there to scout (and maybe harass), which is more than they generally get done when the Demo Team runs a game around here especially considering they only run introtech and TW sometimes

And thank you for conceding the field. I accept your defeat humbly and graciously. I recognize that you cannot express yourself properly and were a much inferior opponent, but do no let that get you down. Age and experience. So over time I hope you will ripen into a decent adversary as you learn more about life then how to pull on your penis and call it fact. Enjoy the day. Later.

Good riddance.
No hard feelings brother. Having read your longpost, I get where you're coming from, but I also have to acknowledge Warmachine-user's point; not only would it take millions upon millions more dollars and several more years of development than HBS has a its disposal, I think in the end a souped-up MegaMek would only appeal to people who explicitly want that level of simulation in their game. Sadly, we don't live in a world where the majority of people do, so while it may never offer the legions of optional-rules and depth of play the TT has, I'm holding out hope for it to at least be a decently entertaining game on its own. Anyways, cheers.

We're too busy having better things.

>when there's an autistic BT argument going on and you're not in it for once

it's not too late to get involved famalamadingdong

Like what?

The last few threads we've had entirely too much arguing. Post silly.

You're Tormana Liao and successfully evaded the Federated Suns and return to Sian after the Kathil Uhlans raid. Romano and her fuck up Mask boyfriend didn't make and Max is doing his best Angry Hitler impression while wearing tissur boxes on his feet and smearing his shit on the strategy board marking non-existent regiments. The military and Warrior Houses look to you... What do you do next.

with or without access xin sheng social sorcery?

I can do that

My word. That Cicada and Grasshopper look like they should be on Monty Python or something.

A little more silly.

...

Hell's Horses does loaning of their clusters. A whole Hell's Horses Cluster from their Alpha Galaxy spent a lot of the latter part of the invasion working for the wolves, until the Horses lost their Crusader wolf-dick sucking robo-Khan. That's just an example off the top of my head.

I don't want silly. I want to be mad. This game makes me mad and the people who play and run it make me mad.

>I want to be mad

What's madder than MAD?

If everything about battletech makes you so mad, why do you play?

Who cares? Even if its a better system, Warmachine is a shit setting that can only defend itself as "not warhammer".

And this is coming from someone who accepts that the Battletech setting is a clowncar of nonsense desperately attempting to seem serious.

I don't know.

I chose Warmachine-Hordes over Warhammer Fantasy as it seemed better to me.

Because it's the only tabletop game where I have fun.

Which also makes me mad.

That's the least motivated Grasshopper I've ever seen

>"It's Monday, guys, do we really have to go and fight this early?"

Also, that 'Mech between the Hopper and Cicada Skinny-Legs looks like he's thrusting his pelvis forward and doing that trick in MW2 where you pressed Home to "skate" forward on your jump jets.

Does anyone still make the Grasshopper aside from the Combine?

>What's madder than MAD?

Speaking of which ...

Any news on the newseen coming? I mean the plastic prototypes of the Warhammer and Locust have only been out, what? a year and a half or some noise?

Don't forget you had full wasd-style movement with jump jets.

All things considered, MW2 was pretty faithful to the boardgame rules. Which is probably why everyone used small pulse laser-only mechs online.

>Those Cicada's legs
>That... thing lurching about in the background

Marauders have pretty shitty cockpits compared to the human stuff.

>full wasd-style movement with jump jets

Oh aye. On a low gravity planet you could push a Jenner way past 140 km/h on that jump jet skating (that ice planet in MW2 Mercs comes to mind - was it New Ivaarsen?) or slide sideways to avoid incoming missiles.

In fact, just about the only thing I would have wanted to add to MW2/Mercs would have been the chance to aim the gun reticle separately, like in Starglider II with free sights (your joystick moved the gunsight, with the fighter following it) or in Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri (still the best Elemental battle armour simulator I can remember).

FedSuns at Panpour.

I remember getting above 400kph with a Firemoth. Or maybe faster. I do recall being able to outrun the PPC orbs.

We can BATTLETECH! that Macross stuff real quick.

>asking what the Lyrans have that's better

youtu.be/UYOy1tuVv3w

That was New Ivaarsen. Also think back to the moon missions with no atmosphere, like MacBeth. Very low gravity + no atmosphere = extremely fast speeds.

If you want something to move the gun reticle separately, that's a feature done in MW3. MW4 for some reason removed it.

Was it Ghost Bear's Legacy that had the underwater mission with torpedoes?

I also remember one or two missions that took place in space - you were on the hull of a jumpship and it was super easy to float away and have to restart.

>Dynamic salvage patch in MW2:Mercs
>Solaris
>Somehow salvage a Stalker from one of the missions, the one where it supposedly had a 'weak' right side
>Whole mech has over 300 armor value on each section save the right torso, which 'only' had 170
It was pretty funny to play that the rest of the campaign.

>that's a feature done in MW3

I remember, and I was pissed off they took it out in MW4.

>Was it Ghost Bear's Legacy that had the underwater mission with torpedoes?

Yep, and it also had that other memorable mission where you had to jump into some hatch to end the mission (the last campaign mission, IIRC)

>one or two missions that took place in space

Three, the mission where you escort the iceship and fight on the giant chunk of ice. Sometimes the AI failed and the enemies fell off the ice and weren't counted as destroyed, and since it was "destroy all enemies"...

Other missions that stick to mind in the MW2 series...

>the one in MW2 where you have to scan a reactor and the buildings in the city contain, among other things, Activision if you scan them
>the one where you sabotage a terraformer and have to run away before it goes off
>in Mercs, all those Dead-Eye training missions with "Your Callsign: Hey You"
>the New Ivaarsen missions with the pretty snow and sunrises and wind turbines and sweet music
>when you fight in the FRR Periphery edge and suddenly see "Unknown 'Mechs", then escape in the hovercraft
>the one with the wreck of a giant ship that would have been awesome if it hadn't been bugged
>the one where you steal a Kodiak from the Ghost Bears and then steal it for yourself

And of course, this. My fucking Nemesis.