/btg/ BattleTech General

You seem to be selectively ignoring my point, so I'll restate a different point to get you off this broken record:

If that level of detail doesn't matter, why not just give aerotech the alpha strike treatment? Everybody hitting each other for single digit points of damage and no criticals? I mean, the fidelity doesn't matter and dead is dead, right? It's not like there's anything fun about descriptive combat. The goal is to fill those SI boxes!

Shouldn't need models, since facing is just a pointless thing that complicates the road to stuff dying. Just use some scraps of paper to denote units.

We could just use the same unit stats for all the ships. Sure, there are fluffy differences like the power distance between a Fox and a Leviathan II, but who cares? In the grand scheme of things, we're just trying to see who wins!

Fuck it, why do we even need a game? Let's just roll dice, high roller wins.

.

Someone's having a meltdown

Different guy here.

Remember folks, if you ever get mildly upset or frustrated by someone's failure to understand your point of view, you're having a meltdown! :DDD

You don't seem to understand how any of it actually plays out, but are super mad that it doesn't work whatever way you think it should.

I'll try explaining it again. Thresholds *do* matter and you can get some extremely decisive crits thanks to them. However, due to the shitty design of most WarShips and CGL/FASA's stubborn refusal to retcon them, what happens in practice unless you're using the biggest, baddest WarShips is that they're eggshells with sledgehammers attacking each other.

Someone's gonna get squished. And fast.

There is a sweet zone where threshold crits would matter, but most ships just don't have the armour for that to be practical.

And in a narrative sense, since you seem to be all up in that, once you're through the armour and into the SI of a ship you've flayed all the armour and other protection from that part of the sip and are venting it into space. Get good enough shots on that and thanks to the massive destructive firepower of BT ships you break their keel, expose all the innards to vacuum, and generally completely wreck the thing to the point that repairing it is slightly faster and easier than building a new one from scratch, if it is salvageable at all. Most of the time, it won't be.

I've played with ASF a few times and it always felt like winning and losing was about 80% based on the initiative roll. Don't really enjoy it much.

With small numbers of units and the importance of getting into their aft arcs, yeah, that's what generally happens. Win init, light their ass up, repeat.

With larger numbers of units or individual unit initiative it becomes a lot more tactical.

Same thing happens on blank BT maps really. Terrain is the factor that offsets initiative if you're clever, but space tends not to offer too many places to hide.

>And in a narrative sense, since you seem to be all up in that, once you're through the armour and into the SI of a ship you've flayed all the armour and other protection from that part of the sip and are venting it into space. Get good enough shots on that and thanks to the massive destructive firepower of BT ships you break their keel, expose all the innards to vacuum, and generally completely wreck the thing to the point that repairing it is slightly faster and easier than building a new one from scratch, if it is salvageable at all. Most of the time, it won't be.

That's a great narrative! There's a problem with it. It happens the vast majority of the time, even with the heavier units you say lead to longer battles. So we've invested lots of rolls and crunch into a game that that delivers the same narrative over and over and over and over...

Now I haven't played as much Aerotech as you, I'll grant you that. But I know shit game design when I see it.

It's like they wanted to take the gameplay aesthetic of ground combat into space, but decided to take ground vehicle rules instead of 'Mech rules, and Warships inherited the same boring-ass gameplay as tanks.

Different person than who you've been talking with, but I think I get what you're saying. So would I be correct in saying that you'd prefer it if the system were different and perhaps had different core ship sections each with their own SI numbers, like B5: Wars and how 'mechs do in ground combat? With varying effects based on what sections are lost and how those loses influence how you use the ship as the game goes on, and how those changed decisions may lead to that ship ending up ultimately destroyed (or saved)? Possibly with crits being reworked so more of them are relevant in one-off games?

For what it's worth I think you've been pretty reasonable so far and this (these?) user has been pretty aggressive over this, without reason.

Is this one of the better things that the Combine has made?

No it's fucking spider, kill it right the fuck now. That's why it got difficult to maintain.

>For what it's worth I think you've been pretty reasonable so far and this (these?) user has been pretty aggressive over this, without reason.

Thanks for the thought, friend. I do think I opened up the can of snark, though. Kind of feel bad about being the first one to do it this early in a /btg/.

>Different person than who you've been talking with, but I think I get what you're saying. So would I be correct in saying that you'd prefer it if the system were different and perhaps had different core ship sections each with their own SI numbers, like B5: Wars and how 'mechs do in ground combat? With varying effects based on what sections are lost and how those loses influence how you use the ship as the game goes on, and how those changed decisions may lead to that ship ending up ultimately destroyed (or saved)? Possibly with crits being reworked so more of them are relevant in one-off games?

Yeah, those ideas might help it out a lot. I'm no game designer. I've also toyed with the idea of relatively little armor but a lot of SI in multiple locations, and an easier time scoring criticals.

No, not really. It's a pretty bad mech, and while there's definitely some DC fans who will say that they never get anything good (and to be fair historically they've gotten the short end of the stick a lot), they do have much better mechs than the Bishamon.

The third link isn't working for me. Is it working for anybody else?

hackslashmaster.blogspot.com.au/2016/08/on-shadow-catalyst-part-iii.html

Looks like it was case-sensitive.

Fantastic. Thank you.

He's talking out of his ass. The problem is not with the game design itself, but the units. If MLs had the same range and damage profiles as Gauss Rifles, how fascinating would Stinger v Stiner match-ups be? Would that be an issue with BT's rules, or with the unit design?

And yeah, I'm getting shitty. The entire ass end of last thread was Munnin pissing all over AT when he hasn't played it enough to understand it, and this thread has started the same way.

The arguments being made are as wrong as they are ill-informed. But the people who haven't played aero games and don't understand how it shakes out in practice deserve to be heard over those who do have expertise in that area, because reasons.

>Everyone looks like Walking Pleb characters
>Not enough 80's 'fashion'

Dropped.

Aight cunty mcgee, I'm tired of you restructuring arguments to meet your internally preferable dialogue, so fuck you.

Let's start with the ass end of your post.

>The arguments being made are as wrong as they are ill-informed. But the people who haven't played aero games and don't understand how it shakes out in practice deserve to be heard over those who do have expertise in that area, because reasons.

Now I didn't follow what muninn was saying, but I made it pretty fucking clear that I've played AT. I also made it clear that I've played it several times and found it to be a shit boardgame in comparison to BT. I'd rehash why I feel that way for a fourth fucking time, but I can only write it out for you, I can't help you understand it.

Stop trying to refactor my experience to nil to fit your narrative. I've made it clear multiple times that you probably have more experience than me. If you had a shred of integrity, you'd argue from that standpoint and be okay.

>He's talking out of his ass. The problem is not with the game design itself, but the units. If MLs had the same range and damage profiles as Gauss Rifles, how fascinating would Stinger v Stiner match-ups be? Would that be an issue with BT's rules, or with the unit design?

While this has little to do with what I note as problematic with AT, it does inform me as to your level of analytical thought. If a ML had the same damage/range profile as a Gauss, *the problem would lie with BT rules you insufferable cunt*. In what world would that NOT be broken as fuck? Oh but sure, let's go ahead and make sure those Stingers swap their MGs and ammo for modular armor, that'll fix the problem.

All this talk about faggots and cocksucking has gotten me horny. Who's up for a furpile?

>And yeah, I'm getting shitty. The entire ass end of last thread was Munnin pissing all over AT when he hasn't played it enough to understand it, and this thread has started the same way.
This has been going on since last thread, so it's less that it's started this way and more that it's continued.

>He's talking out of his ass. The problem is not with the game design itself, but the units. If MLs had the same range and damage profiles as Gauss Rifles, how fascinating would Stinger v Stiner match-ups be? Would that be an issue with BT's rules, or with the unit design?
That would absolutely be an issue with BT's rules, the stats of weapons are part of the game's rules. If you changed medium lasers that drastically it would change a lot of things and cause a lot of issues, regardless of whether the units using them were designed well or not.

>The arguments being made are as wrong as they are ill-informed.
But they're not. So far, this other guy's only been stating his preference and what aspects of AT disappoint him and how he believes they should be different. You can't say that his personal thoughts on the matter are wrong. You can disagree with him, fine. But you (if it is you who's been arguing with him so far) cannot tell him he is wrong and ill-informed for his preference in this kind of thing. Especially when you still seem unable to grasp the core of his argument about why he feels that warship destruction isn't as interesting or varied as battlemechs.

Now before you go on about how you've said already how in reality, when not playing with the vast majority of canon ships and limiting yourself to the few that have armor worth a damn, you get plenty of critical effects, let's actually look at the critical effects and see which ones end up mattering and which can actually cause real, crippling issues.

(Cont)

Muninn wasn't saying AT is a bad game or anything, just saying he thought vector was required for it to be truly a "space game"

QQ more you fucking bitch
Go play with your Lev III waifu

>Now I didn't follow what muninn was saying, but I made it pretty fucking clear that I've played AT. I also made it clear that I've played it several times and found it to be a shit boardgame in comparison to BT. I'd rehash why I feel that way for a fourth fucking time, but I can only write it out for you, I can't help you understand it.

Have you played it under the most recent revision with bracketing, ECHO, Bearings-Only Launches and Capital ECM? Because yes, AT2 was as boring as fuck. Two ships with NAC batteries would sit at medium range and see who could roll the highest.

That shit doesn't fly any more though.

>If a ML had the same damage/range profile as a Gauss, *the problem would lie with BT rules you insufferable cunt*.

It's what we call an analogy, user. Light 'Mechs simply can;t take that kind of pounding. And yes, there is a construction system that feeds into that, but for the purposes of the example the point was that the units involved simply aren't tough enough to do what the fluff states they can because nobody has ever given enough of a fuck to go back and make the system cohesive.

The base rule set is actually quite robust. It's just that the majority of the designs are shit, and there's three successive waves of designs competing against each other- SLN designs and retconned vessels that are by and large crap, 3050s era ships that fit more or less into the same paradigm, and then the Avalon, Conqueror, Mjolnir and especially Leviathan II and III that just shit all over the established balance by going balls to the wall with guns and armour.

The solution isn't to throw the rules out and declare them shit. The solution is instead to redesign the ships so they make some god damn sense, but CGL will never do that because TR 3057 has always sold for shit and only a small section of the audience even cares about it.

For stuff that doesn't matter in game, you have: Grav Deck destroyed, K-F drive integrity damage, Cargo, Docking Collar, Door (technically matters if you're starting the game with fighters inside and launching them, but still seems not like a huge thing),

Stuff that matters: Avionics, CiC, Control, Crew, Engine, FCS, Fuel, Life Support, Sensors, Trusters and Weapons. (Dunno if crew works the same for large craft as ASFs, seems weird that it would since dropships and warships have dozens or hundreds of crewmembers so having them all make consciousness checks just seems weird)

That's 5 things that don't matter to 11 that do. Now granted, that's a sizable difference. On the other hand, it looks like the most common result is Weapons, and generally losing a single bay isn't a huge deal. It's not like Battlemechs where you might have a unit like a Hunchback where losing its main weapon makes it almost entirely de-fanged, or even units with several primary weapons where losing one still is a sizable detraction of firepower- Warships have dozens of weapons and many different weapon bays.

Then there's the fact that most of these crit effects don't dirrectly cause the unit to be crippled or destroyed- sure, taking a bunch of FCS or Sensors crits means you can't shoot back as effectively, or at all. Taking too much CiC or Avionics damage can make it difficult or impossible to pass control rolls. But neither of those are going to outright kill the ship. The onyl crit that seems like it can do that is Fuel, which can only happen on a 2 result in the Aft arc. Meanwhile, your mech can be destroyed by: Sustaining 3 total engine hits through any locations, and pilot death.

On top of those 3 ways of being destroyed, each way has at least 2 ways they can occur. You can lose your cockpit to a lucky TAC to the head, or through the destruction of the location. Ammunition explosions or repeated head hits can outright kill the pilot. You could lose an IS XL engine'd mech because a side torso is destroyed, or is the CT is cored out, or through various crits over the course of the game spread throughout torsos, or from an ammunition explosion.

Meanwhile with warships, you either lose the ship from SI loss or a fuel crit. The crits that you sustain up to that point do impact the warship, but they don't directly lead to those things. Degrading return fire from destroyed weapon bays or worsening fire control may make the ship less effective, but don't outright destroy it. Likewise getting mobility crits may make it easy to get into and remain in a damaged arc, but in the end it'll be destruction of SI that makes the ship count as killed, or a lucky crit to the rear that hits the fuel.

So yeah, it seems like the vast majority of the time ships will die to SI destruction. I'm sure you can continue to hem and haw about muh Mjolnirs and ships with more than a hundred or so armor per facing, but I really can't see even having 500 would let you end up with ships not end up destroyed from SI loss rather than fuel crits more often than not. You can keep saying "It don't be like that tho!" but at this point I think I'd rather have some evidence rather than you just blindly claiming things.

>Have you played it under the most recent revision with bracketing, ECHO, Bearings-Only Launches and Capital ECM? Because yes, AT2 was as boring as fuck. Two ships with NAC batteries would sit at medium range and see who could roll the highest.
Not that guy, but literally none of those things have anything to do with what he finds displeasing about Aerotech. You still display an inability to grasp the core of his argument. Keep it up, user.

Cargo hits can cause the destruction of carried units, which is quite significant if you generate hits on bays that haven't launched their fighters yet.

Crew hits represent the vessel losing large chunks of its complement to compartment damage and the like. Get the result enough times and you've vented enough into space to render the vessel inoperable.

Both are like totally uncinematic and narratively uninteresting, very much the sort of thing you'd never see in a movie. Oh wait.

Further, losing a Weapons bay can be a very significant result. Many ships will only have 2-3 per arc, which gives you an opening you can exploit by staying in the right arcs. It can very much be the kind of result that gimps a Hunchback, and you can get it from a single Barracuda.

For the rest of what you're saying, what you fail to grasp is that 'Mechs are singularly effective at tanking through location damage. Always have been. The amount of damage ships can take to their SI and keep slugging is actually quite impressive.

If what you're arguing amounts to whether DnD hitpoints represent actual damage taken and fighters go at it until one lands a sudden fatal blow out of nowhere or that they represent using up luck, stamina, parrying etc then yeah, there's no way we're ever going to have a useful conversation because things don't work the way you want them to.

And yet most crits to a 'Mech will either fail or not prove fatal, allowing it to fight on without much hindrance until it either withdraws or is killed by headcap or coring, which is great. But this is bad game design space-side, because reasons.

>It's what we call an analogy, user. Light 'Mechs simply can;t take that kind of pounding.

Alright homie. You're still not getting what my argument is.

Let's take that analogy of Stingers whacking each other with Gauss slugs. In BT, there's a lot of variance as to what that looks like. A Stinger could have a leg sheared off by a slug. It could take a slug straight to the center torso. It could take one to a side torso and send an arm flying. It could take one to the head.
And all of that is on top of the more pedestrian ways it could die. It could get kicked in the torso and pop an ammo rack. The pilot could be punched out via physicals. It could be charged off a cliff, or DFA'd into lava. There's a thousand death stories that could be told without spending too many words on strategies, and that shit is why a lot of people like Battletech. Maybe not you, but certainly a lot of people, and absolutely the people I play with.

The death stories of Aerotech are substantially more limited, no matter the relative power of weapons or armor. A Leviathan still dies from a rather rare critical or a far more common loss of SI in a single unified location. You're saying that it's not the fault of poor rules but rather poor canon designs. Leaving aside the customs argument because that breaks BT too(although not to the same degree), I think it's rather a fault of both.

In terms of complexity behind what happens to a unit that's interesting, AT is simpler than BT in the same way tanks are simpler than 'Mechs. The goal at the end of the day is to get the other guy to fill in a unified location with boxes. But this goal is achieved through a system that has at least as much crunch as BT. All to achieve a goal I could attain by playing Star Wars Armada in a fraction of the time.

>The solution isn't to throw the rules out and declare them shit.

At what point did that user ever, even once, say anything approaching this? I've been following this since last thread, and all I've seen is that user saying he didn't like how it seemed like ships only die from the destruction of all structural integrity. I don't think he's ever said the rules were shit and should be thrown out.

You're really good at putting words into other people's mouths though, have you considered politics? Why not go over to /pol/, I'm sure they can help! :D

I did infer that a reimagining of aerotech would be interesting.

>The death stories of Aerotech are substantially more limited, no matter the relative power of weapons or armor.

Which is also going to happen to vees, or Battle Armour. "Got shot by HPPC, melted. Got hit by Infernos, burned to death." There's no granularity there either.

'Mechs are unique in that regard, because the setting is literally designed around them from the ground up.

Seriously, how many vehicles do you kill through crits before getting a kill by taking out the armour and IS of a given location?

Yet this still has narrative weight, and you can hear the dice clattering a lot of the time in BT fiction when vees get involved.

If WSes weren't so poorly designed due to getting stats before there was a construction system or even real combat system it would be much less of an issue. The current rules set with all advanced rules in play has a lot of moving parts and interesting aspects, but can't be taken advantage of with existing designs thanks to CGL's policy on retcons.

And yet there's still far more cases where a mech will die directly from crits than cases where a warship will be destroyed as the direct result of a crit.

And yet none of those things will singularly kill a warship in and of themselves. A crit to the cockpit will kill a mech. A triple engine TAC will kill a mech. Repeated TACs will kill a mech. A single, powerful head hit will kill a mech. An ammunition crit will kill a mech. And because of how internal space works for mechs, depending on how you build a mech it might be more or less susceptible to one or more of these things. Warships are all going to have the exact same chance of a Fuel crit, from the same location, and losing SI is basically the same as getting their CT cored out. That's 2 ways. Oh, right, crew damage, 3 ways. Did you know that a crew hit only occurs on a shot impacting the Nose arc on an 11? Just barely more common than a fuel crit, and of course it takes 6 crew crits to destroy the ship.

Yeah but that's definitely not the same as you saying that you should just throw out the rules. I don't know what this one guy's problem is.

Almost done with the line work.

Then comes the "fun" part.

Yes, battlemechs are the only BT unit with that kind of staying power and endurance. Because they are what the game is designed around. You're right. And in space, where warships take center stage, why would they not be given similar treatment, similar levels of granularity? They're certainly large enough for it to make sense, and it's great thematically.

Also no, vehicles don't have nearly as much narrative weight when they die because they almost always die to loss of IS to one location. And yet, vees have more granularity than warships, there's more kinds of crits that can kill them than warships do!

Keep on going man, I'm sure if you keep arguing eventually one of us will get too tired and go to bed and you'll get to be the victor by default.

BT's whole system is that 'Mechs are different. They are the stars of the show. Everything else is just there to make them look good.

Which has been BT's stated design goal right from the very beginning.

Because the space unit given that kind of face time is ASFs, not WarShips.

And always have been.

That's nice. We're talking about warships in space right now though, not battlemechs on the ground.

Also, that really doesn't matter given that the argument is whether or not the current rules work for making warships have a decent amount of granularity to their destruction. Whether or not battlemechs are the focus hardly matters, especially since battlemechs don't feature in space combat.

You know, aside from an incredibly tiny number of purpose-built space mech variants that I'm willing to bet actual money have never seen play in an actual game.

You cannot in good faith talk about how mechs are the big different things who are the stars of the show... in a show they don't fucking appear in.

Come on, you can do better than that. ASFs have never been given that kind of fame and focus. When you think giant space battles, do you really think first of the tiny fightercraft? Like, in any setting, much less battletech/aerotech. If there's Warships in a scenario, they take center stage.

>ASFs have never been given that kind of fame and focus.

Yes they have. In terms of the space game, the initial and most important unit type comparable to 'Mechs *is* ASF. Have a look at the old boxed sets or, to demonstrate this more clearly, AeroTech 2. Which includes stats for all then-extant fighters and their variants.

And all of zero WarShips.

In the fluff? I think not. And given that ASF still lack the granularity of mechs, it circles back to the other user's point: If you're not going to have that granularity, why maintain the very complex rule systems that enable that level of granularity? You cannot win here, Antagonist user. Either warships are the focus and should probably have a better level of granularity, or they're not in which case whatever is should have that granularity or the rules should be simplified to something that better accommodates that lack of granularity, and I swear to god if you claim Battlemechs are the stars of space battles I will be very upset with you.

A relative newfag here (only played PC games and a bit of mektek). I wanted to start a MekHQ campaign with a lance of mercenaries who are just scraping up a full lance and starting their operations in 3067. Any suggestions for a medium or hhml lance of dated yet still useful mechs at that time?

>Almost done with the line work.
>
>Then comes the "fun" part.
I'm no artist, but I know I like your work. What do you have left to do?

When you say dated, what do you mean? Like, introtech stuff that's still serviceable or some post-Helm Core upgrades? Or something else?

Not him but until the Clan Invasion, all space fluff stuff was Aerojocks. It's even the opening scene of the very first Battletech novel. Even during the Clan Invasion, was Aerojocks buzzing around Clan fleets.

You don't get warship-focused battle stuff until Serpent. Then there's a smattering of it in the Fedcom Civil War, a boatload of it in the Jihad as they all get destroyed, then back to Aero for the Dark Age minus like two scenes in Falcon books.

You know what doesn't get attention? Dropships. They're operationally the sluggers in most invasions but I can't remember the last time there was a story written about a good dropship fight.

ASF did have the granularity of 'Mechs, once. This is what the Sabre looked like in the first AeroTech rule set.

Three of those hit locations have since been eliminated because they made the game as slow as fuck to play.

And if you look at the book, you'll see it focuses almost exclusively on ASFs.

TL;DR: What you're looking for has either never been the focus of the space side of things, or has already happened.

I don't really know what Helm Core is (newfag, remember?). I mean mechs that guys who started a lance by saving up from mercenary/military life, salvaging and possibly taking something from their old careers could possibly have (if that's even realistic in BT-verse)

The colouring. Weather effects, camo, personalization decals and such.

How are you doing this? 3D model?

Lol no, just hand drawing, rough perspective and the photoshop line and shape tool.

Much more realistic in the old days where even a state soldier could lay claim to salvage.

By the days of 3067, you're in full blown state army mode with most personally-owned machines sorely outdated and numerically reduced through attrition. State soldiers don't get salvage, no more killing a mech as an infantryman and becoming a mechwarrior knight.

No more serving twenty years on the front lines and being gifted your state machine if it was expendable and common but you managed to keep it alive.

The one thing that still carries over from the old days is a particularly valorous action on the battlefield may still result in the mechwarrior being awarded his state machine.

Best way to get decent equipment to start in the 3060's sort of era is to be a small state unit that goes rogue and becomes pirates or mercenaries. You could easily do that with a Fedcom unit that ran away from the war in that timeframe. There's precedent for it too.

There's also still a few societies of traditional mechwarrior knight families that have banded together to martial their influence. The Davions in particular have one of those that reisists the new sort of army.

Looks VERY sharp. keep up the good work.

Ah, sorry. Didn't grasp quite how newfag.

Good news though, that is absolutely realistic in BT! Some people who are former military who retired or got drummed out of their unit are very common as mercenaries, and there's plenty other ways folks get into it. Aside from owning a mech as part of a family inheritance, there's all sorts of ways your guys might get them, be it buying, salvaging or stealing, among others.

For a HHML lance, I would suggest:
-Archer, as Archers are fairly common heavy 'mechs are are good for long-range support fire roles.
-Grasshopper as those are sturdy as hell, match the movement profile of the Archer and is a good brawler.
-Crab, for some good durability and decent firepower.
-Firestarter for good mobility and the ability to deal with any infantry that might show up, and maybe messing with enemy's heat values.

For each of these, I would recommend either the base version, or depending on taste, the following variants. The Archer and Crab use "Tournament legal" level tech, rather than the introductory tech level.

Archer, the -4M
Grasshopper, the -5N
Crab, the -27b
Firestarter, the -K

>DropShips

Eh. They were mainly there for target practice from ASFs. That's where the focus was, after all. The only real significance they had was in campaign play where you might be able to kill off invading forces before they even managed to land.

Hand drawing? Do you have a drawing tablet or something?

Thanks! Decided for an old Javelin instead of Firestarter but apart from that I took all you proposed, thank you once again!

You're very welcome! If you don't mind me asking, did you go with any of the variants or did you just take the base versions? Also, good choice on the Javelin- I didn't realize until you mentioned it, but the lance I gave didn't have much in the way of crit-seeking, which those SRMs the Javelin packs will give you.

If you don't know, crit-seeking is a term for using weapons with low damage but a large number of hits (stuff like SRMs, or a bunch of machine guns) in the hopes that you score a hit on the enemy's exposed Internal Structure. Since any hit to a mech's SI prompts a critical roll, you just need more shots to increase the odds of striking the location rather than those shots to deal high damage.

There's also hole-punching, which goes along with critseeking, and is used to describe using fewer weapons with high damage, which will make it easier to remove the armor from a location. After all, if you hit an enemy with 4 medium lasers or an AC/20, it will take 20 damage total. But the AC/20 deals it all in one chunk, whereas with location rolls, the 4 Mlas shots are likely to be spread around and not breach the enemy's armor.

You generally want your force to have both holepunching and critseeking capabilities.

Yeah, a tablet. Intuos 3.

>Eh. They were mainly there for target practice from ASFs.

Try a squadron of individual 3025 fighters against something meant to fight like an Intruder with a single light aero lance escort. Capital armor is hard to bust through without serious effort.

They're easy as pie to dispatch in low atmosphere though due to control rolls, especially the spheroid ships.

The Bishamon had its time in the spotlight back when you could both hide behind lvl1 terrain and spot for C3.

>Royal Crab
>Realistic
u wot? The specs for it aren't even recovered until 3074.

Actually, all those but the Archer are pretty rare, even in the 3060's.

Combat craft didn't come for a long time after the original Leopard, Union, and Overlord. Those were tough but even the Overlord only has the per-arc firepower of a heavy bird.

All of them are easy enough to get if you zero in on their aft, which isn't that hard given their limited speed compared to ASFs and the way they have to move before ASFs. Time consuming I guess.

The armour values on ships in the TRs is at conventional scale, BTW. The Leopard doesn't have better armour than a Sovetskii Soyuz.

You could always do that, user. They even bought back being able to spot without LoS to the target in the Manual.

I swear trying to write reasonable fiction about tanks feels even sillier than trying to write it about 'Mechs. The people who made these damn tanks have never seen the inside of a tank.

I want to see in diagram form how they pack 200 missiles plus 4 crew into a 60t Bulldog, or 4 tons of autocannon ammo, 120 missiles and 5 crew into the Rommel. Or 7 infantrymen in "reasonable comfort" in the Goblin's troop compartment.

The description for the Roya Crab is
>A simple upgrade utilized by the SLDF Royals concurrently with the original Crab, the 27b replaces the heat sinks with double-strength models and the large lasers with ER Large Lasers.[9] BV (1.0) = 1,167, BV (2.0) = 1,308[10][11]

Simple upgrade. I figure it's not unreasonable that people would begin refitting them to that. If you wanna tell me people legit didn't figure out how to swap to double heat sinks and switch Large Lasers for ERLLs until 3074, go right ahead.

Also, the vast majority of mechs are pretty rare. But if you only use the "common" mechs you end up with nothing but bugs, Griffins, Archers, Stalkers, Banshees and Chargers.

I assumed that user wanted to have fun, not play super realistic XOTL 3025 charts. And given how much of a rep Hoppers have for being sturdy as fuck, it seems reasonable that someone having one that survived since ye olde early succession wars is pretty reasonable.

How about you put your money where your post is and suggest a lance for that user? Or I guess you could just continue to criticize without adding anything of value to the discussion. That seems to be /btg/'s specialty.

>You could always do that, user. They even bought back being able to spot without LoS to the target in the Manual.
Preeeetty sure recent errata says you must have LoS to target for both the spotter and firer for C3 to work.

You're imagining tank size based on modern tank size/weight. Battletech armor doesn't work that way. It's thinner and lighter. So increase the tank volume respectively. Just look at dropships. Their armor to volums is insane.

Missiles though, ho boy. You'll never get that one sorted. Mostly because they should be small but they make them big for art and mini purposes.

>Waaaa waaa, back in original aerotech box set things were different! Time hasn't passed at all, it's still the early 90s! I don't wanna have to deal with the timeline and product line advancing! Why can't things stay the way they were when I started playing!

QQ more, faggot.

Granted, it flip-flopped between the latest print run of TW and this one, but I know C3 was able to spot through LOS during the 3rd print run and prior.

Personally, I don't think the issue is so much requiring that C3 can spot through cover, so much as needing to dial back the 5% per unit in a network to about 3%. It'll be nice to not have it require my units getting slagged on the first turn by the dozen extra gauss rifles you can afford when compared to the price of a C3 lance network,

I mean, considering that the battlefields were being saturated with ECM and EW systems before there was anything worth countering. Artemis? Narc? Really?

>I figure it's not unreasonable that people would begin refitting them to that.
And they do, once they know it exists after Kurita the Hutt releases the specs in 3075 from the Dallas Core. That's already a retcon from the 3070 material that shows all manufacturers moving away from that kind of refit to brand new variants.

What's unreasonable anyway is the combination of what you suggested. Nobody bats an eye at one uncommon machine in a group. Three out of four is pushing it and you know it. I'm sick of Crabs and Grasshoppers anyway. Want two large lasers on a machine? Try driving an Ostsol for once.

And I would say give the man a Commando, a Warhammer, a Treb, and an Archer. That's all decently easy to get ahold of and fairly common. Plenty of merc market machines too by the 3060's. Vicore in particular sold to everyone.

I'm taking the magic armour into consideration, but even if you shave off a few centimetres from the inside, it doesn't increase the volume available that much.

This is a 50-ton Centurion that has been sawn in half. It shows nicely how cramped the bastards are.

>You could always do that
No. 2008-2013 was the no-LOS spotter era. C3 for fifteen years before that was LOS needed.

What the literal fuck is wrong with you? At no stage did I ever say that, just that ASF were always the star of the space game despite the other user's expectations it be WarShips.

Hell, I even pointed out that things have _already_ changed to be the way he wanted them to be.

>No. 2008-2013 was the no-LOS spotter era. C3 for fifteen years before that was LOS needed.

Well, I meant that you could always spot while hiding behind partial cover. Poorly phrased though.

>Missiles though, ho boy. You'll never get that one sorted. Mostly because they should be small but they make them big for art and mini purposes.
Mathematically isn't an SRM about 20 pounds if they used imperial weights and not metric?

Yep.

All others except the SRM6 missiles are exactly 10kg (or a bit above 20lbs) per shot; the 6 is a bit heavier. The problem, however, is that even a 10-kg missile is fairly big. The M47 Dragon missile, for example, weighs 10.7kg (23.5lbs) and it's 85cm long and ~14cm in diameter (that's nearly 3 feet and 5.5 inches respectively). There are supposedly 200 of these in the Bulldog, which masses as much, and is about the same size, as a modern battle tank.

SRM6 missiles aren't heavier, it is simply because you can't load 12.5 salvos per ton and for gameplay we just ignored

Thank you.
Yeah this always baffled me. It started out with trying to figure out how those big SRMs on the back shoulder of a Warhammer could fit through that tiny connector to the torso. (This was before I knew anything about Macross & Robotech.) Then I was curious about where the hell 100 missiles was hiding on a Wasp in the old blueprints. When they had blueprints of the Marauder and Battlemaster, I could never figure out just where all that SRM and AC ammo was really stored. I'm starting to think it's old Transformer SCIENCE! where a cassette player can turn into a giant blue robot with a cool voice.

We just ignore that half salvo***

>it's old Transformer SCIENCE

I've called it a portal into the Missile Dimension, where the missiles wait until they're needed for reloading.

>I've called it a portal into the Missile Dimension, where the missiles wait until they're needed for reloading.
I think the guys on /co/ when they used to have Transformer generals, or maybe the guys on /toy/ would say the TFs missiles, guns and stuff that you don't know what to do with when they are in vehicle mode is "kibble", I think. In those vehicle modes like our missiles they disappear into pocket dimensions and OH WOW WHAT THE HELL HAS SCIENCE WROUGHT?

>I'm starting to think it's old Transformer SCIENCE!

Transformers tend to have pretty botched transformations.
Comparing them to Macross is a bit of a disservice to the effort put into the original to make sure the transformations looked good and actually worked in real life (and it does, the toys could all perform the very same transformation they would in the show).
What became the SRM pod was a single-shot launcher in Macross.

Battletech, of course, gave about as much of a hoot about realism as a newborn does about manners.
Though a serious animated show done by veterans in the industry had incomparably higher budget to sort out the science behind it than a garage studio like FASA did.

>I'm starting to think it's old Transformer SCIENCE!

You mean like naturally-occurring pulleys, levers, and gears?

Actually, the SRM 6 ignores an entire viable salvo.

A ton of SRMs is 100 missiles, and 16 salvos of SRM 6 is 96 missiles which would still fit, but all you get is 90 missiles for 15 shots.

lol atheists btfo

>lol atheists btfo

David Willis is a huge Transformers fan, and he had a lot of fun over the years lampooning the series' lore and mechanics... kinda like we do with Battletech here at /btg/

>You mean like naturally-occurring pulleys, levers, and gears?
I freakin' grew up with those toys, and when I visited /co/ a number of year ago and learned SCIENCE! and all the shipping, I just couldn't bear to see it anymore.

>Actually, the SRM 6 ignores an entire viable salvo.
>
>A ton of SRMs is 100 missiles, and 16 salvos of SRM 6 is 96 missiles which would still fit, but all you get is 90 missiles for 15 shots.
And this drove my OCD up a wall since 1985. Why, FASA, why?

>kinda like we do with Battletech here

Precisely. I take the piss out of it, like with the Missile Dimension, the water raids, the political insanity in the fluff, etc. but in the end I still love this fucking game and have loved it for 23 years.

Also, bugger the tanks for a game of soldiers. I can't write about them in a way I like. I suppose the combined arms tactics Battlecorps user in the earlier thread mentioned include 'Mech and infantry combined arms. So it's back to the giant robots I go.

>combined arms

Well, it has a tank in it. That counts, right?

I want you to compile all your battletech pencil sketches from the last 30 years into a printable mini-zine.

And lines done. Now I've got 6 days to get it coloured and looking like Alex' concepts for MWO.

After that I think I'll clean up my Hauptmann and Nova Cat concepts as those two seem to have a spark of potential in them.

I mentioned it a couple threads ago, but we got an insignia made for our unit.
The lance we've been playing for the last few months has surprisingly survived:
>Cpt Ivanov (my PC) - Banshee -3S
>A veteran (3/3) formerly of the Free Worlds Legions. Transferred to the Rangers upon hearing of its forming. Loyal to the Duke of Andurien and so backs his support of the Federal authorities.

>MechWarrior Sergeant Maldini - Huron Warrior -R4M
>Was part of the 3rd Sirian Lancers (Vet, 3/4). Picked up his current mech after the fight that left that brigade destroyed. Native of Shiro III happy to see his province allowed a mech force again.

>MechWarrior Corporal Sosabowski - Quickdraw -4G
>An older man for a corporal (4/4). Fought as a kid in last days of the Andurien Secession. Mech is one of a handful of Andurien heirlooms to survive. Tries to be pragmatic.

>MechWarrior Corporal Hytner - Cicada -3F
>Fresh from training but shows skill for his age (4/4). Raised under a generation of pro-League government, he romanticizes the Secession while supporting the League. Sosabowski thinks he's too idealistic.

All our games have been on the Lyran front for a while. Border issues that are a continuation of Brett's intervention on Arcadia during the FCCW.

How are everyone else's campaigns going?

>I want you to compile all your battletech pencil sketches from the last 30 years into a printable mini-zine.

Sounds like fun! I could probably make a PDF without too much work. Should it include the tech readouts and full-size drawings as well, or are you just interested in the "Marginal Thinking"? What about ink drawings?

Probably everything, huh?

>Probably everything, huh?
You're damn right.