/btg/ - BattleTech General

Butler, is that you?

If you loved the Gunapult, you're gonna want to marry this one.

>SRMs kinda work like short range rotary ac2 cannons already (up to 6 shots, causing 2 dmg each hit)
>What would you do to make things different?
I'm not the guy who first coined it on /btg/, but what I was thinking of was a reduced-weight SRM system that fired SRMs with the same ranges and damages, and even allowed specialty ammo like standard SRMs, but simply used a rapid-fed ammunition system to fire up to six missiles out of one tube, rather than one missile out of six. This would result in weight savings. Maybe the launcher weighs 1.5 or 2 tons, allowing it to compete with clantech weights.

The risk would be the same as with an RAC, potential to jam when firing more than one SRM at a time.

I also had an idea for a "Rotary Gauss" made by the FWL I posted about earlier, but didn't really get met with huge enthusiasm.

pollitoconpapas01.deviantart.com/art/WAK-1-Waikeri-602462184

>fusion engine

fuck off with your optimized mech, you fucking power gamer

>Rotary Gauss

Tell me more

...

>, but simply used a rapid-fed ammunition system to fire up to six missiles out of one tube, rather than one missile out of six. This would result in weight savings.
Though there's already precedent of the Atlas' 5 tube LRM 20 doing the same thing but not weighing less.

The gimmick is as follows:

The FWL is always getting shat on. They need a "Big Gun". The Ultra 10 is meh. People always talk shit about the LGR. Combine LGR with RAC mechanics just like they took the vanilla AC5 and made it beefy in rotary form.

Instead of needing multiple barrels, the "Capacitor Bank Gauss" relies on a large store of capacitors linked to a single weapons system to allow more rapid-firing of the LGR. The effective range is slightly reduced, but the firepower is greatly increased.

Though the firing rate is not high enough to risk a jam, the power draw of the capacitors is massive, enough to risk a hiccup in the power supply to the cockpit, potentially shutting the mech down in the heat of battle. Also, the huge store of capacitors means a far greater potential damage from critical hits.

Purely mechanically speaking: LGR with reduced range. Same heat, same damage per shot. Fires up to six shots. Instead of a Jam chance, it has a chance to force a shutdown with the same probabilities as RAC jams. Still haven't decided if it should simply have one bigger explosion when a crit is hit, or if every subsequent crit should count as an ammo explosion.

There is also the "Experimental" Verson which is even more do-or-die, using the standard gauss rifle profile, it was deemed too unstable for use in mechs. Similar to above, but instead of shutdown chances on +2, +3, and +4, the same values require checks on +3, +6, and +9

Yes, that's true.
It's more of a mechanics-first-lore-later thought process going on.
I was thinking of something more than the expected "My gun is bigger" powercreep, and instead thought "What would happen if you did more of a metalstorm everything-is-in-one-barrel" technique.

Also, 3025 is one hell of a drug. A very strange, uncertain, experimental drug.

my biggest BT pet peeve, rule-wise, is the lack of rules to create custom weapons. Considering how many variables can affect BV I would expect such rule available only in a builder software, but I still miss it

Well you could make custom weapons in HMP, but uh... yeah.

Did it calculate BV? Iirc it is was simply an option you input weapons stats, nothing more complex than that

Personally, I'm glad that they're left in the realm of homebrewing.

Customization is already a masturbatory fantasy for power-gamers that TPTB won't come out and clearly say isn't appropriate for pick-up games unless agreed upon.

You slap the ability to customize the weapons on top of that? Tape a "Just fuck my shit up" sign on my back when I show up with canon designs. Better yet, just let me save the "Fun" of losing before I start playing and let me throw in the towel and go home.

I'd be down for making a bunch of custom tech with /btg/ for use in stuff like RPG campaigns and other places where homebrew isn't an issue, but adding another level of unmitigated powergamer fantasy to discuss before a pick-up game?

Nuh-uh.

It did, based on BV1.
Of course, since customization rules for equipment were never published, it was sort of taking educated guesses, and only really allowed weapons built off of established concepts. "Equipment" was mostly a no-go.

>TPTB won't come out and clearly say isn't appropriate for pick-up games unless agreed upon.
No? Ok I'll drop it into the next iteration of construction rules.

A note about what being a munchkin is would be good too. It's trivial to make a Gausszilla or another iteration of a Bane or a ML boat. It's only a little more difficult to make an interesting yet competitive design.

I always forget this detail. Since I rarely play BT with other people, they never ended up being power-gaming cunts

...

Kinda sucks Alex has to pollute the redesigns of all the mechs with those butt-ugly standardized parts.

Nice work!

>Sadbuchet is sad

>Sadbuchet is sad

Mr. Awesome's not having such an Awesome day, either.

Sounds interesting. What were you thinking of in terms of weight/crits?

The sadface Awesome is one of the greatest things in TRO 3025.

Would stick this on a Quad turret and abuse with hull down and hills.

Vehicles with fusion engines are strictly better platforms for this however.

Odd question, anons: if I wanted to run a BattleTech RPG with a Star Trek game system, which edition would you recommend?

>BattleMech Manual edition
- on page 13, the "Piloting Skill Rolls" text isn't an optional rule, yet it's in an optional rules box.
- if you're committing to "GATOR," is it possible to reorganize the Attack Modifiers Table to match.
- on page 42, I'm confused by the lack of a "start" bubble, and by the use of hexagons.

Also, while I appreciate the brevity of the "Note on Realism and Scale," I have to say that it isn't an improvement on the (also inadequate) text from Total Warfare. I mean, it's fine and all to say you'd need a football field to play realistic ranges, but that just stirs up questions about why the hexes don't represent larger areas, and what's wrong with a game where you can't escape enemy fire except by maneuvering to break LOS.

>the Vindi could have Ubiquitous: CapCon, for example. But the quirk is only 1 points as it is, which causes me to hesitate.
Well, if the quirk doesn't apply to your campaign region, don't pay for it, right? It's not like you'd make a character in 2650 pay for an "Obsolete: 2710" either.

>I have no clue what mech pilots were like during the Succession Wars.
See pic related. Note however that there would have been more turnover and upheaval in the 4th Succession War than the MechWarrior Families were accustomed to. If you can find the 132MB version of the TR:3025 .pdf, that will have the most representative selection of individual pilots, but if not then you can look at TR:3039 and try to imagine what they were like before they retired or died.

If it's 3067 and you're going up against a squadron of Eisensturm fighters in a dogfight, what would be the best squadron of Inner Sphere fighters to use?

Besides also using Eisensturms.

Eh don't we already have the Silver Bullet GR on the Carronade? That seems a lot like what this is.

Silver Bullet is an LB-X Gauss, this is more of an rotary gauss.

Why is my game like this?

Try forcing 3d off in your graphics driver,s for Java/megamek

Graphics card error. One of my players was having the same issue. I'll hit him up to see what the fix was.

Reading that bit about how MechWarriors are raised from childhood to pilot mechs makes me question any natural superiority Clanners have. But then, judging from how the Clans were defeated in the Great Refusal, I guess the universe balances it out.

Royal Stuka or Reiver-700a, probably.

Both of them are screwed though. Neither has the speed or armour to really compete.

My bad. not graphics drivers, Java settings.
Copy this into the end of your mekhq.l4j.ini file

"-Dsun.java2d.d3d=false"

If you're meaning fighting a Lyran force I'd use Eisensturms too since they're sold on the open market.

It is okay to be a pleb, user :)

There's a difference in the training, though. That "old Mechwarrior training his offspring on the family Shadow Hawk" is more like learning kungfu at your father's guan. The Clan training is "enroll a young child in the Shaolin Monastery training programme." There's a big difference in the intensity, level and challenge, and the Clans are merciless when it comes to dropouts.

Compare, say Decision at Thunder Rift (GDC talks a lot about training with his father) with the first book in the Jade Falcon trilogy, where Aidan goes through the Clan sibko training.

Superior breeding is that pat answer, though I'm sure better nutrition and medicine also contribute to growing fitter MechWarriors.

The trick is that Clanners only take something like the top 5% of sibko members for mechwarriors, with the rest either dying in training or washing out to lower castes/tossed to vee training. As a result, you'll see similar levels of competence in, say, brand new Sun Zhang graduates to Clan rookies.

Or at least you would until MW3e's lifepaths made pretty much every military academy in the FedCom produce better pilots than Sun Zhang.

>As a result, you'll see similar levels of competence in, say, brand new Sun Zhang graduates to Clan rookies.

Only if you build using the AToW rules which deliberately gimp Clan players for no reason at all.

Fluff-wise Clan newbies shit all over graduates of the IS' best schools.

>Or at least you would until MW3e's lifepaths made pretty much every military academy in the FedCom produce better pilots than Sun Zhang.

I don't see the problem. Dracs produce probably the worst MechWarriors. Did you see how the Lyrans trounced them in the 4th Succession War, or how badly they bungled the Davion front in the same war, or how FedCom troops beat the hell out of them in the War of 39?

Capellans produce better pilots.

Guys, it's Battletech.

Clans are nothing but a mix of newtype-Klingon-Zentradi piloting Gundams (as in, that thing that is better than anything ever made).

The only reason they ever get beaten is because the creators realized "Power fantasies are all the rage these days, BUT we need to do something new again since new stuff sells." so they made up a bunch of reasons to quickly dial them down a notch.

>Dracs produce probably the worst MechWarriors.

They literally produce the best technical mechwarriors. What they suck at is making them work together. Same gloryhounding the clans suffer from really.

According to the fluff, they should have the best P/G scores.

According to the Field Manuals (and MW3) the FedSuns shit on them from a great height in that regard and also have better officers, tactics, strategy, and 'Mechs.

They weren't interested in consistency, user. Just making the Suns better than everyone else at everything.

Xotl, whoever sets up product descriptions on DriveThruRPG should probably note that the book includes the Mech quirks, and that it includes rules updates for TW. Most of the comments are negative about how unclear that is.

Thanks a bunch, guys. I'll see to these issues.

What's the best way to run a Battletech RPG for some complete newbs. Wanna throw them out into the Periphery with some introtech stuff for some Pirate Hunting.

Download MechWarrior 2nd Edition from the links in the OP. It's the easiest to understand and run.

Use the AToW rules as general guidelines, and don't be afraid to improvise most of your rolls in the name of gameplay. Focus on smooth more than exact; the BT RPG systems can be ridiculously dice-crunchy and poorly explained. Have them go head-hunting a pirate band that's been raiding local planets. It'll give them a singular purpose to focus on, and you can throw stuff at them to gauge their creativity as PCs, and their skills on the tabletop. I had almost the exact same situation, and that's what I did. They just finished up their first contract, so I can explain more if you'd like.

This is was the solution for my player: github.com/MegaMek/mekhq/issues/310

RPG Questioner here, I found AToW basically impossible to use, even just rolling up characters to try it out myself.

Has Clantech unbalanced the game in any appreciable way?

See .

According to the grogs, it marked the point of death for BT and everything has been shit, SHIT ever since. SL tech was barely acceptable.

According to people who aren't having a knee-jerk reaction to events that traumatised them 20+ years ago, it's fine, you just need to learn to play a bit differently. The IS also gets a bunch of neat new stuff to help with that.

>51327609
Consider that it was so good when introduced, that we've never made better stuff since then. There's no Improved Clan Gauss or Improved Clan ERPPC. It's just been new weapon types and sidestepping.

So yeah, unbalanced is a good word.

The whole situation is why originally post-DA, they were looking at bringing mechs to a new standard that made Clantech look like Introtech and level the playing field again.

To add a point here: on a strict one-vs-one basis, yes, it's unbalanced. But that's when looking at raw numbers.

When actually attributing playstyles and how Clan toumans are actually constructed and formed around, it's nowhere near as imbalanced as the raw numbers would suggest. The Clan playstyle encourages 'mech-heavy forces with a focus on singular combat against overwhelming odds for personal honor. When that is discarded, and massed combat is resorted to against combined-arms forces (so armor, infantry, ASF, and artillery), the Clans tend to have most of the technological edge negated.

I think I'd like Derp Age if they did that. Clantech should be everywhere now.

Clantech is over-bv'd and good pilots are over-bv'd. If a IS force of BV X and a Clan force of BV X meet in combat the IS force will effortlessly sweep the Clan force unless there's a giant skill disparity or the terrain is rigged.

What IS cheese is mixtech.

Are Inner Sphere omnimechs superior to their Clan counterparts in any aspect other than cost?

Performance per BV.
Most of the cheesiest bullshit is IS only, too.

No.

They're homegrown on good ol' IS soil. No additives or GMOs in them.

What's the largest weapon that's been mounted on a mech, surely something larger than the rail gun on the Behemoth II, right?

I once mounted your mom on a mech. :^)

Biggest gun is a Long Tom, since you can't squeeze subcaps on mechs.

Also, the mekpacks aren't canon.

Atillery pieces, artillery cannons, or the (Improved) Heavy Gauss depending on whether you mean mass, size, damage or fluff. The HGR is so big and produces so much recoil when firing it can unbalance 'Mechs and make them fall over, the others speak for themselves.

>Most of the cheesiest bullshit is IS only, too.

Such as?

It's a two-way tie between the long tom artillery cannon and the improved heavy gauss rifle. Both clock in at a rather hefty 20 tons, although the LTAC is 15 crits to the HGR's 11, meaning it's a larger volume.

>What's the largest weapon that's been mounted on a mech

One of the full artillery piece mechs like the Helepolis

TC SRMs.

He probably means C3, Stealth Armour, Extended LRMs, Semi-Guided LRMs, Improved Thunder etc.

Clan stuff is good for flat damage. Not so much utility or other tricks, which is where the IS shines.

Mix tech shakes that up I guess.

>Just making the Suns better than everyone else at everything.

Good.

>TC SRMs

What are OPTIONAL rules, user? They can't use them unless you say it's OK. The only person to blame for TCSRMs in a game is yourself.

>C3
>Stealth
>Extended LRMs
>cheesy
SG and T-aug I'll give you, but what other three are not worth the BV most of the time.

A: That cuts both ways. TC SRMs are the reason I can't ever play with experimental tech, despite wanting to have some of the really fun toys to mess around with.
B: That's entirely dependent on playgroup. Two of my FLGSes have a "All tech is OK" policy. Either I play by their rules and get drowned in bullshit or I leave.
C: BT is a game played against people, some of whom are asshats with influence who you can't afford to argue with.

Ditto. I'm tired of shitskins complaining when White factions win.

My dad said, inferno streaks wouldn't be OP.
Who wants to adopt me?

>all these assblasted tubetrash

Sucks people found counters to getting headshotted by Hellstars, picked apart by cLPLs, and drowning in cLRMs at any range, huh? Maybe get some actual skills instead of relying on broken tech to save you.

Your father should know iATMs are a thing

Meant to reply

>implying parents aren't grog af.

Playing by BV forces Clan players to use most of that shit because they get over-charged on their designs and then people bitch to the high heavens if you show up without 3/4 or better pilots.

Design challenge:

Design a mech on the same vein as the Cataphract for the Capellan Confederation.
Preferably an assault, as the Cataphract fills their heavy gap and the Vindicator is their common medium.
Fluff for it is similar to the Cataphract: prototype can be a frankenmech of assaults available to the Confederation. Something to make up for their limited assault lines and bolster frontline battalions.
Timeline: anything between the late 3rd Succession War to pre-Sun-Tzu 3052.

Mech name: Capricorn

Fun mode: make a later era variant of your Capricorn. FCCW, Jihad, Dark Age, what have you.

>then people bitch to the high heavens if you show up without 3/4 or better pilots
I more often find players who refuse to play anything worse than a 3/4 mechwarrior in everything.

Kind of a pain in the ass because they never bother calculating multipliers for the BV and didn't care to tell me in our first match.

Since then I've multiplied by BV allotment by the 3/4 multiplier.

resource deprived statist confederation is best confederation

[PERIPHERY INTENSIFIES]

are there any mechs commonly used by /specific to the diamond sharks or do they just use whatever they end up buying?

on a related note, is there a way to limit MUL results to just a faction rather than faction + general?

Thresger, Mongrel/Grendel, Tiberon, Ha Otoko, Mad Cats II-IV.