/btg/ Battletech General!

No, unless it would replace Alpha Strike, then yes.

Light Barrel. It makes sense for the -10, since it IS lighter, but not the others so much

Lord British?

...

It's Lubalin Ballistics, user. Always has been.

This is from 3050U but the Champion's text has always featured that clarification.

Thanks guys. Although I think Lord British Heavy Industries might have been really fun.

>It's Lubalin Ballistics, user. Always has been.
>This is from 3050U but the Champion's text has always featured that clarification.

I'll be darned. You learn something new every day! I always assumed it was "Light Barrel" too, like , but here it is in TRO2750, published in 1989 - nearly 30 years ago!

What an ugly design!

Huh. Don't know how I missed that

Oh, neat. I never knew that. Does that basically make Lubalin Ballistics the "Kleenex" of autocannons?

Here, have an SPG I made. Who else besides me enjoys futzing about with "updates" to venerable tank designs? We have a canon Merkava already, etc, etc, so why not some WWII love?

I thought LB was only speculated to be luxor ballistic or whatever and there was no official confirmation?

I'm pretty sure that the MUL is wrong there. I remember them having access to more than that when I was doing research for a Jihad AU

What's the average CBill price of an IS Assault mech that uses Jihad-era IS tech?

OC, inb4
>laptop resolution
All contents subject to change.

XL or SFE? This is very important. If the former, 18-25, if the latter 8-12

New player; nobody I know IRL plays it, but I discovered megamek. How do you fight Clan mechs? Even when I try to close under the cover of smoke, I find my guys getting shredded anyway by their 3/4 pilots and heavy armament.

Overwhelm them with numbers and fight at knife-fighting range. You'll never win a ranged engagement, their weapons are better than yours at that, so close to point-blank where your armor weight can carry the day.

SFE. 8-12 seems low, though - I'm trying to make a relatively budget-conscious machine and I'm hitting 15 mil easy.

What are you throwing on it to get to 15?
At any rate it's still cheaper than XLs, which are extremely common on assaults by them, so it works for a budget machine

Numbers
Armor
Dirty tricks (using smoke is a good one)

Think of it this way - if you lose two Awesome 10-KMs taking out a Turkina Prime, you're winning by 141 BV.

Am I a faggot for playing only with mechs I like the design of and not really caring about their load outs or stats?

Nnnnnnno? I think a lot of people have that design (or designs) they love despite them being crap or suboptimal. You always get points for style, user.

You are precisely the opposite.

Only if it's because you want to pilot a Balius that you've named Twilight Sparkle.

It doesn't make much sense to me either. Use your newly-acquired CGL powers?

We're only allowed to use our powers for low level trolling and adding chapters to books. It's like an entire team of Mati from Captain Planet.

Would a Mechbuster or two fall under the dirty tricks? Also, if I were to play someone in a fluffy manner, at what point would Clan mechs break Zelbrigen?

>Would a Mechbuster or two fall under the dirty tricks?
Maybe, but it depends on what guns they have, and the MB is a flying glass cannon in any event, and Clan LPLs are nasty.

>Also, if I were to play someone in a fluffy manner, at what point would Clan mechs break Zelbrigen?
That's kind of tricky. Going full fluff it depends on what Clan you are on and when, and also by how much. It ranges from never breaking Zell no matter what the enemy does, to only ganging up on a specific unit that interferes in a duel, to one infraction and it's a free for all, or to "These Stravags aren't worthy of honorable combat in the first place." and not bothering with Zell at all.

>Would a Mechbuster or two fall under the dirty tricks?

Clanners would just love you to send a conventional fighter like that their way, user. It'd be shot down long before it got into range.

Conventional fighters are given a lot more credit in fluff than they can earn on the field.

>Also, if I were to play someone in a fluffy manner, at what point would Clan mechs break Zelbrigen?

After the IS side dicked around too much.

How much "too much" is depends on the Clan and the era.

Shit picture edition

Nice meme my friend!

Are there any 3050+ refits of the warhammer/marauder that basically do the same thing as the 3025 model, but better, without changing too much?

Warhammer: -7M, -8D.

Marauder: -5R, -7D, -9S though these all rely on XLs. So YMMV on how much of a change that really is.

Depends on exactly what you define as better, but the for the Whammy, the 7M, 7S, 7K and 8D are all worth looking at. Also the old Royal Whammy 6Rb ends up being available again around the Jihad according to MUL, popping up first among the Taurians and later becoming Periphery general/merc. Sadly, the later and better Royal Whammy, the 7A, does not. Even the Clans don't have it.

As for MADs, what said, most upgrades tend towards lighter engines to replace the AC/5 with something bigger like a Gauss rifle (5A), RAC/5 (5R), or LBX 10 (9S). Though the old SL era MAD-2R gets brought back just like the WHM-6Rb seeing Taurian and then further periphery/merc distribution.

What Davion regiments that exist in 3145 OTHER than the Assault Guards, really go in for assault mechs?

What is the average production rate for a 'mech? High rate or low? If 25 of an assault mech is produced a year, is that a lot? What about 25 light mechs?

There aren't any hard numbers for most designs, though the Valkyrie was being produced in what was considered a rather large number of 130 units a year in 3025. In fact, the Archer is probably the single most common design in the entire Inner Sphere with 100 thousand produced before the First Succession War. The best answer you're going receive on production is "however much it needs to be." Hard numbers are difficult because of the three pillars of "FASAnomics/Why don't the Houses just tax their planets to make more mechs?", "Army sizes," and "Small number of Factories."

Interestingly, this has come up for the /btg/RO frequently. How do you fluff designs that fall through the cracks, yet are really good, fill a niche that is needed in a faction's TO&E, or feel like they should have always been there? And will I have to go back to add quirks to old designs we made if the Battlemech Manual adds any more?

Any of the bugs are more common.

Yeah but bugs die easier, despite the probable 200k each of the Wasp and Stinger, and likely 100k of the Locust. There would be less of them overall. Then again, if we assume half of them are left, that leaves maybe 50k Archers, to 100k each Wasps and Stingers, plus those 50k Locusts.

Pretty sure it's stated somewhere that over half a million wasps have been produced since the introduction of the chassis in the 2400's. It holds the title of most produced battlemech of all time.

Depends, but generally Star League era was up to several hundred per factory line per year. Succession Wars average is more in the upper single digits or the lower double digits outside old SLDF complexes that survived.

Then by the mid 3050's, it's into the middle double digits, tripling or quadrupling the old output but still only a couple battalions worth of machines for upgraded factories per line per year.

>If 25 of an assault mech is produced a year, is that a lot?
It's big boy factory tier. You're talking Kathil size plant minimum, or Quentin post-upgrade

>What about 25 light mechs?
Pretty standard small factory numbers in the late succession wars.

But user, the Balius doesn't have a partial wing.

The Wasp's TR 3039 entry specifies that it is the most common 'Mech, followed by the Stinger and Locust.

The Archer is 4th or so.

Stalker is supposed to be the most common assault.

Or a ERLL mounted in the head.

That's one thing that always bothered me about FASA production numbers. In the real world (here we go...) first world nations like the US and Russia could manufacture thousands of a MBT in a few short years. I always wondered why there wasn't some way to mass produce cheap units in BT that would be a real problem for competing armies. Is there a MBT thing that can be mass produced by the thousands on one world that would put mechs on edge? I would figure primitives might be able to pull that off, but whatever. The production numbers always blew my tiny little mind.
Does the Po even come kind of close as a mass produced MBT? I don't know.

My group has been running an AU along those lines for several years now. The League remains together, Alys Rousset-Marik is seen a rouge member of the house out to aggrandize herself and so has little support, and Golden Dawn is met by a united FWLM that stems the tide. The League reaches a second alliance out of necessity with the Capellans, and the resulting Republic border is closer to the Terran Hegemony border on the League side than the blob of worlds it has in canon. The RotS reaches worlds near and around Irian, Savannah and Kalidassa, but the League retains them. Notably Zion Province is taken by the Republic, but Augustine is not. Exiled from the League, Alys Rousset-Marik rails against it but not much comes of that. The FWL meanwhile, works in conjunction with the CapCon to hide military assets.

Ironically what would emerge into this concept stemmed from the map in the first Dark Age book that showed the League still united. Not knowing too much about the overall status of the Inner Sphere, our early games were as Republic mercs fighting raiders *from* the FWL. Somehow this transitioned to fighting *as* FWL mercs.

As the Jihad unfolded we kind of backfilled or corrected plot points for it. The backwards way the story was done kind of ended up beneficial. We probably wouldn't have gotten the AU we did otherwise.

The Vedette is by far the most common vehicle. It doesn't fare too well against 'Mechs even in groups though. You'd need to go to something like a Manticore, Von Luckner, Shreck, Alacorn or Behemoth to get something that's actually frightening for 'Mechs to fight.

Low production numbers are a conceit of the setting for 'Mechs and ASFs. The bottleneck isn't price or materials, it's that until the Helm core hits nobody knows how factories work. In the 3020s they were perilously close to treating factories as mysterious gods to be propitiated with offerings of raw materials which would reward them with completed 'Mechs if sufficiently appeased. The Valkyrie factory was a complete black box and their understanding of 'Mechs wasn't much better than that.

Yeah I use Vedettes and Scorpions a lot as filler machines. If my guys need to get through a border crossing it's not uncommon for them to deal with a platoon of either with maybe a couple squads of infantry. I use those as quickie battles to help up experience and make the game a little fluffier.
Manticores... expensive, but damn I love those tanks. They are just mean when used right. Von Luckners as well. I kind of gave up on Shrecks because of their low armor and made my own version replacing a couple of PPCs with two LB-10Xs with ammo, and about double the armor the original had. It works extremely well in groups in taking down heavy mechs.
The Alacorn... over 16.6 million a piece (like cost is much of an issue in a BV game) where you could probably buy more than 20 Vedettes for that price. I made my own Alacorn dropping one gauss and making the tank cheaper through a cheaper engine. (Why do I count the C-Bill cost, I don't know. OCD strikes me again.) With that vastly reduced cost I was able to budget-play two two-gauss Alacorns with a few smaller tanks for the price of one regular Alacorn.
And Behemoth... base defense, yeah.

I remember reading somewhere about that Valkyrie plant. I forgot just how badly their reduction in technology had gotten.

Odd question about the fluff, about a mass produced tank like the Vedette and Scorpion, is the AC/5 autocannon similar in firepower to a real world 100 or 120mm cannon on a modern tank?

Did someone say fixed ERLL?

>is the AC/5 autocannon similar in firepower to a real world 100 or 120mm cannon on a modern tank?

Vastly more powerful.

A small laser hits with enough energy to literally turn a modern M1A1 Abrams into a bubbling pool of molten metal.

Light Rifles from TacOps were, according to the author who made them, designed to weigh about as much as those weapons and showcase what they can do against BT-scale armour.It's no coincidence that the Light Rifle does 3 damage and that rifles all lose 3 damage against anything with BAR 8+ armour.

Eh, no. They were talking about a quad mech, with a partial wing and a head mounted ERLL. Something sorta like this: img14.deviantart.net/391e/i/2014/105/b/c/twilight_attack_by_zacatron94-d7en469.png

Building a mech is more akin to building modern advanced fighters. It's less an assembly line and more a hundred chassis scattered over a huge floor in various stages of completion.

The reasons for force sizes are related to a few different things.

Back in the Star League era, ground forces didn't matter nearly as much because of the vast amount of warships. Cluster up big forces of tanks and they'll just get bombarded into oblivion. Plus the Star League purposefully capped the size of the House militarizes to make things more manageable.

Remember that even in the later eras, a proper invasion meant sweeping the entire satellite net off a planet as well, making communication for large forces spread out over a whole world a massive pain as well.

Usually, any given planet only has a couple points of contention. The dropport, the HPG and any manufacturing onworld. Rarely more than four locations total. These things also need to be near a lot of commerce and infrastructure, making massive basses near them pretty difficult.

Now, by the mid-2850's, warships were out of the equation, but Holy Shroud and Holy Shroud II was in full effect, crippling the remaining knowledge base after the infrastructure for just about everything was crippled.

This is the point where massed tanks might have taken hold if it wasn't for the houses previously showing just how willing they were to use every weapon of mass destruction they had in their arsenal.

Instead, war at that time began to become more ritualized. Jumpships became nontargets. Manufacturing became too valuable to destroy. Rules of salvage and ransom took priority. And combatants fought away from civilians whenever they could.

That said, there was a move in the early 3000's to possibly mass produce tanks, but only because they expected to lose the technology to make battlemechs by 3050.

So basically, all that is what conspired to make the setting what it was.

>Back in the Star League era, ground forces didn't matter nearly as much because of the vast amount of warships.

Eh. It would have made a lot more sense if that was how it worked but even back in those days it was all about the ground forces, which were huge for everyone because they needed to compete with the neighbour's ground forces.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it would make a ton more sense if the SL just deposited a Squadron over every rebellious world and blockaded/bombarded it into submission but cannonically the SLN was little more than a glorified taxi service most of the time.

>It's less an assembly line

There are exceptions, though. That fully automatic Valkyrie factory in the Federated Suns was supposed to work on the principle of:

>shovel 'Mech bits in at one end
>receive shiny new Valk at the other

Well, of course. For the same reason we deploy ground forces today, when we could just blow the crap out of people from the other side of the planet. Unless you want to totally annihilate a target, you're going to need forces deployed to hold it.

Ground forces were used for less collateral damage. They weren't afraid to break out the ortillery though if the ground game was too lopsided.

>A small laser hits with enough energy to literally turn a modern M1A1 Abrams into a bubbling pool of molten metal.
I know BT uses metric and not imperial weights, but using imperial weights (as that's all I know off the top of my head,) a small laser burns away about 375+ pounds of armor. Are you saying that modern M1A1 armor is that weak against a laser like that? If so... wow. Just wow. I know it's fiction, but wow.

>So basically, all that is what conspired to make the setting what it was.
Very concise. I appreciate that. It explains the Mad Max feel to things by 3025 with an occasional story of that pilot who had a 250 year old Wolverine and whatnot.

Thanks a bunch guys. It helps clarify this a bit.

Most factories are automated though.

What he's describing is more like Gilmour's Cronus "factory" or Solaris boutique lines. THey do exist but they're pretty rare.

Honestly, it's weird how many parallels exist between 3025 and WH40K. Lostech and STCs, anyone?

Not even mech parts, just raw materials. That's insane.

That's peak Star League tech though from the same people who could hollow massive warship drydocks out of moons and hide super bases so well you couldn't find them even if you were walking on top of the front door.

And even then, it could only make an introtech machine.

>Are you saying that modern M1A1 armor is that weak against a laser like that? If so... wow. Just wow. I know it's fiction, but wow.

You're looking at it the wrong way around. It's not that armor 500 years older than the small laser is that bad...it's that standard Battletech armor is so GOOD that a weapon capable of outputting that much energy only deals THREE points of damage.

>I know it's fiction, but wow.

The second most magical thing about Battletech is their armor, right behind hyperspace travel.

Modern steel composite is garbage against it. One guy could solo a whole platoon of Abrams in a Wasp-1A.

>I know BT uses metric and not imperial weights, but using imperial weights (as that's all I know off the top of my head,) a small laser burns away about 375+ pounds of armor.

It burns away that much *BT* armour. But BT armour is is steel with aligned, woven diamond fibres over another layer of extremely effective material.

Orbtillery was used but naval conflicts with the SL were pretty rare once they got their advantage rolling. Not surprising really, the best House sips were the Tharkad and Atreus but those would get spanked by a McKenna and the SLN had more McKennas than everyone else had ships of any kind combined.

Ultimately what it comes down to is BT being all about ground forces and, especially, 'Mechs. Most planets rely on some other place for food or other things like parts for terraforming facilities or whatever and cutting them off would starve them out or effectively do the same by making the environment too hostile to survive inside of a few months. Self-sufficient planets are actually very rare.

But "lol, blockade!" is a very boring narrative even if it is the most effective and sensible thing to do.

>You're looking at it the wrong way around. It's not that armor 500 years older than the small laser is that bad...it's that standard Battletech armor is so GOOD that a weapon capable of outputting that much energy only deals THREE points of damage.

I understand. I remember old fluff saying they used to use diamond filaments or some such in the armor?

Oh wow, I posted this before-
-this showed up. I knew I remembered something about diamond-something being in the armor plating.

Or even worse, that a battle armor suit can take a direct hit from an Abrams main gun and not even get knocked down or scuff the finish.

>Most factories are automated though.

No they're not. It's a major reason why the production numbers change so much post-Helm core when they begin to automate more again.

The big complexes are all automated since forever, but they put out high volumes too.

BA suits don't get the damage reduction.

But yeah, basic BA will tank the hit, laugh madly, and then blow up the Abrams because they have a Small Laser a lot of the time.

Yes they are, man. Not to the extent of the Valk facility maybe but we have art and descriptions all over the place saying so.

Production numbers change after the Helm core because the *setting* changes so much, not because they suddenly go back to automation.

>most planets rely on some other place for food or other things like parts for terraforming facilities or whatever and cutting them off would starve them out or effectively do the same by making the environment too hostile to survive inside of a few months. Self-sufficient planets are actually very rare.

Nah, they're pretty common. It's just most planets never bothered making their own infrastructure for many things when they could just import cheaper. Don't forget, most unimportant planets only have like one continent settled and a handful of supercities. The Inner Sphere is still a really wild and unsettled place most of the time.

Hm, did you miss those mech models in TRO 3025 that had to have their repair parts hand crafted, because all the machinery that could make more had been destroyed?

>we have art and descriptions all over the place saying so.

Yeah, for places like Hesperus, Luthien and Kalidasa. The rest are basically gantries and cranes putting stuff together by hand.

Check the alphanumeric ratings for planets in the House books some time.

Most aren't self-sufficient. Those that are are core worlds or rich ones, House or regional capitals mostly.

Most are not going to die from terraforming machines getting fucked (most terraforming was completed ages ago though there are exceptions, not to mention the places that are domed or underground that were never terraformed). Most have some kind of agriculture or wild animals for food.

It's stuff like high tech consumer goods and military parts they don't have.

Or the magical time-travelling Zeus that existed before and inspired the first 'Mech?

A lot of things have been retconned or de-canonised.

Also, are you really arguing that cutom-made spare parts proves factories operate on the same principle? The two aren't even remotely the same.

The key factories are automated. I'm not saying they all are, but the majority of them are and smaller, low-output ones like Gilmour or Solaris are less common overall, largely because people barely understand what makes 'Mechs work. Before the Helm core hit there was some, not entirely unfounded, fear that they would lose the knowledge required to build or maintain fusion engines.

After the Helm recovery things are starkly different but as points out the late SW period shares a lot with the Mechanicum.

Clearly you didn't bother to read the Touring the Dead Worlds PDFs, about half of those dead worlds folded when their terraforming collapsed due to parts shortages caused by the 1st SW.

>Most have some kind of agriculture or wild animals for food.

I'm not saying they don't,

I'm saying they can't support their population without imports.

I'm not going to argue about it being stupid or against it being yet another manifestation of FASAnomics but a lot of planets just aren't self-sufficient for the necessities. Planets that don't need anything from anywhere else are rare indeed.

Not that weird when you consider 40K came out right after Battletech in the time when Battletech was exploding across the world and being printed in thirty languages. And also that the company making Battletech minis had the D&D mini rights GW had been gunning for and lost, so they needed to make their own settings and went with what was popular at the time.

It's even more obvious when you look at the old first edition GW Assault Droids like the Catapult knockoff.

Yeah, a couple dozen worlds out of hundreds and hundreds. The ones still on the map in 3025 largely don't share that problem because of the reason you said. First war killed off most that were susceptible to that kind of thing unless they were important to a bigwig like Gallery.

Sounds better than what WizKids gave us.

They killed off the ones that were most immediately susceptible.

Not all the ones that were.

Seriously have a look at the planets in the House books some time. Their alphabetic ratings usually indicate a heavy reliance on imports and those are key worlds, a number of which are in the interior and haven't seen significant war in centuries if at all and they aren't self-supporting despite being the special snowflake powerhouse important ones.

There's every reason to expect that the unlisted planets are largely worse off, not better.

That's a generic 80s sci-fi tropes, user.

40k, being the all-scifi-devouring monster that it is, did copy Battletech wholesale when it was popular but what came of that was the titans and the game associated with them which mutated into Epic over time.

So yeah, Battletech is directly responsible for the modern 40k skirmish game.

So, /BTG/, some of my friends have started asking for a Battletech RPG campaign, mostly based on their love of the Mechwarrior vidyas, and the knowledge that I have multiple box sets for the wargame in my closet. I own the old MW 3rd edition RPG book (now called "Classic Battletech RPG"), but I also have a giftcard that could be used to get "A Time of War". Which would /BTG/ recommend?

The following specifics might matter:

They will be bottom-of-the-barrel mercs trapped in an abusive contract. They steal their mechs and go on the lam. (Pic Related)

Neither I nor my players have a problem with the Life Path system. Any results that would gimp a character concept are swapped for an equivalent result or handled with Edge (pg. 25), or bought off at the end of character creation (pg. 57).

My players are RPG veterans, but mostly of White Wolf, DnD 4e & 5e. They HAVE NOT played Battletech before.

I am not sure whether we would switch to the wargame rules for 'Mech combat, or try to play it using whatever systems the RPG offers (I know CBT RPG had rules for that in the Solaris book, not sure if AToW has something similar). I can push the players in either direction, but I would like to know what you think causes fewer headaches.

AToW just sends you to the regular war game, so there's that. If you already have 3E, I'd stick with that for now, since it's a little less difficult to wade through.

>the unlisted planets are largely worse off, not better.

Can't be. It doesn't square with all those bumfuck places with two drop cradles that get a dropship in every couple of weeks.

Also, now that I'm thinking about it, the sufficiency levels are for raw materials. Agriculture has it's own designation. And the old House books don't have that at all. It's the modern Handbooks.

...Just glancing through HB:HD, it lists 31 planets and 5 of them have garbage agriculture. The rest can feed themselves or have enough to export.

If NEA is still alive, he can and has gone into more detail, but he and I would likely agree in that if you're OK with the lifepath system, then MW3 is almost certainly a better choice.

>seriously tho, it's been a week. Did he die?

He's in the hospital. He posted last thread.

>Can't be. It doesn't square with my headcanon.

OK then.

I mean, believe what you want, clearly I'm not gonna convince you.

>headcanon
Go read the novels where people actually tour those parts of their realms. It's shown specifically in both Caleb's tour of the Outback and Jessica's tour of independent worlds on her way to Victor's funeral. Hell, it's shown on Wyatt in Target of Opportunity and there's plenty of others in older novels.

They almost go out of their way to describe dropports as small and underused in most novels of lesser worlds, really.

Other than that, you completely ignored how in my example, 26/31 worlds have moderate or better agriculture and how raw materials sufficiency has no bearing on tech sufficiency.

No you're a faggot for having sex with other men.

It would taken a medium laser to destroy a Challenger 2.