/btg/ BattleTech General

Oops. I meant here...
Still good work though.

What about the ones that followed the Republic of the Sphere?
I don't see how ALL the Cats could be wiped out. The DCMS sucks and they've handled the Bears before.

>Spirit Cats
Ok things have changed.

Why were the Cats even killed again? Wasn't it because they started some utterly retarded rebellion for basically no reason?

The cats were killed because they first protected the person being hunted by the inbred space slanty-mozlem hierarchy of the Draconis Cockpine and then siding with that person in hopes of stopping the inbred retardation that the Durrconis Combine is known for.

So basically the Nova Cats were genocided (even the civilians were fucking chemically castrated by the subhuman combine) because the Dracs felt like committing genocide once again.

They should have known better than to try and enlighten space jap-arabs.

They stayed loyal to the Dragon when the rebels overthrew the Kurita line. The rebels backed by Warlord Sakamoto won and put a puppet on the throne. The Nova Cats having tied their chariot to Katana and the other losers were annihilated by the new regime.

So basically they did the opposite of rebel.

But of you want to blame someone, blame that literal faggot Katana for thinking she could win with only the support of half a clan and a military district that was more ruin and paper than industry.

>Of the military forces of the Nova Cats, there is little to say. None of them survived. The regiments of the DCMS were ruthless in tracking down every last Star and Point and showing no mercy to the defeated warriors. The sole cluster that managed to escape the Combine’s retribution made the mistake of crossing the border into the Rasalhague Dominion. Hailing the garrison at Rubigen, Star Colonel Yusuf Rosse requested asylum for his demoralized and exhausted warriors. Rather than answer them, the Bears mercilessly destroyed the incoming DropShips, and followed that up by seizing the Cats’ JumpShip and spacing the crew.

yes, standing by the dragon will ensure the survival of the cat

>The Nova Cat civilians fared a little better than the warriors. At least they got to keep their lives. With no one to protect them, the civilian castes were rounded up and subjected to forced sterilization before being scattered across the Combine as members of the Unproductive class. Many committed suicide rather than face such a fate. Men, women, and children alike suffered at the hands of the DCMS and the people of the Combine—to their eternal shame—permitted and even encouraged it. The Coordinator never once spoke out against such treatment. In a few short decades, there will likely be no one left who can claim to have once been a proud Nova Cat.

Nice visions, Severen.

Because CGL decided that they needed to make the Dark Age more grimdark and edgy, God only knows why

This is the truly correct answer. BattleTech's always had a hard dark edge to it, but too much Game of Thrones and Grimdark dollar envy led to the bland, sadistic side of the force.

Are they ever gonna reprint the intro set? I'd buy it but I ain't being jewed out of it for $300 on ebay

...

>always

haha what

Possibly but the Alpha Strike box is up the pipe first so expect that before another Intro Box run.

Actually fielded a Mars for the first time last week.
Here's a brief summary of how it went.

>What is Amaris
>what are the Succession Wars
>what is Smoke Jaguar

Do you even Battletech, nigga?

All those where opposed by the pure and noble good guys though.

Are nova cats alien creatures or genetically engineered from Terran stock?

If the latter, from what breed of big cat did they probably spring?

All shades of grey.

From Sarna:
>The Nova Cat[1], namesake of Clan Nova Cat, is described as a sleek, black-furred, ruthless predator. Its native world is Dagda.

Native to Dagda, so alien.

Is that a real bear or some nut in a costume, because if it's real that's dangerous as hell. Reminds me of that nut and his girlfriend who wanted to study bears and prove they were safe and got eaten and they made a documentary with his old footage.

Real, but it's trained. So a lot safer than a wild one, but anything that big with those claws and teeth will never be too safe. A trained bear is safer than a trained big cat at any rate.

I'd bet either a prop or a stuffed bear. Most likely the former

>Looking at the megamek github
>someone has been working on adding augmentations to infantry
>tau wraiths and zombies by next release
>vtol and scuba infantry too
>bueno.jpeg

Branths when?

So, it performed roughly on par with the average LRM Carrier?

The Ultimate Warrior will show you who will blow out!

(the answer is everything is the Ultimate Warrior)

So which one of the BT factions is the Ultimate Warrior? I propose the Lyran Commonwealth: big, strong, knows only a few moves, runs out of steam really quickly, but still wins.

Other proposals:

>DC: The Great Muta, possibly managed by Mr Fuji for even more heel power
>FS: Hulk Hogan, natch
>FWL: someone who never gets a push
>CC: Reno Riggins or Dale Wolfe or another of those jobbers who got crushed without getting any offence in on WWF Superstars of Wrestling

But which one would call their forces to "step into a slim jim?" That is a need-to-know information!

Ultimate Warrior is the Clans. Runs in, squashes, runs out. Screams out incoherent nonsense that normal people barely understand. Has fans despite that just based on him being a steroid bloated freak.

...

...

...

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Pretty sure in Battletech, Ultimate Warrior is the name of the long-running TV show about The Bounty Hunter. Or maybe that was the Immortal Warrior.

sarna.net/wiki/Immortal_Warrior

That's the Immortal Warrior. We're making fun of wrestlers and Battletech. The future of the 80s indeed!

Right now I think there's three Nova Cats? Combine Nova Cats, who are almost entirely gone with a few dropships worth of survivors missing presumed FWL-bound, Republic Nova Cats, presumably integrated into the Republic, and Spirit Cats, who left the Republic, teamed up with some of the Sharks, and formed a nuFWL member state.

Running a 3025 campaign

Going to have my players take a contract from the DC to take back Csesztreg III from Oberon Confederation Pirates. Since they're pirates, contract calls for exterminating them with extreme prejudice.

In actuallity, the Op For is political prisoners who revolted and managed to take over. (Csesztreg III is a Kuritan gulag planet with heavy metal contaminated drinking water where political prinsoners are sent to die from mining/heavy metal poisoning)

What are some ways I could have my players find out who the op-for really is, since communication with the "pirates" would be forbidden.

The Cats in the Combine were completely wiped out.
The Cats in the Republic went Spirit mode or died.

The only "unaccounted for" Cats anymore are those two clusters of Zeta Galaxy that took off before the Jihad and were never heard from again.

Speaking of bandit kingdoms, anyone have any good ones to share? I am acutely feeling the shortage after the clan invasion and could use some new ones

>or died
Not necessarily. All we know is that not every NC descendant became a SC

How skilled are these political prisoners?

Will your players be encrypting their comms?

The easiest way would be having the prisoners find their freq and break into the comm net, although that might lead to them discounting the information as a psyop.

There's also the old standby of surrendering to mercs in the hopes of getting off planet in exchange for work or a life.

Or interrogating a prisoner for information.

Or a non-drac intelligence agency leaks them the info so that they'll be motivated to fuck over the Combine.

They aren't organized, they aren't Nova Cats. The turned their backs on the ways of the Clans.

>take any human outlaw or renegade group
>now in SPACE

in my little campagin I used your standard eighty-style punk cutthroat space pirates who somehow managed to brick the K-F drives over some planet

then it turned out the planet was extremely lush and ruch

that was 80 years ago, they have built out a neat little wretched hive since

Responded from my personal email, so the sender address will be different fyi.

Thanatos lookin' sharp.

The only real organized group of Nova Cat survivors is the Spirit Cat enclave in the FWL. There are some MIA, led by Mystic Kisho iirc, and some in the Republic whose status is unknown behind the wall, again iirc.

>WoBM infantry

I need more WoB images than my old sigs on this comp

>The original pirate havens of Grim's Oberon, Redjack's boys, Circinus, Antallos, Astrokazy and Tortuga
>In order, destroyed by Clan Wolf in Invasion, scattered but reformed at Star's End (I don't know their final fate), Regulated with extreme prejudice at the end of Jihad, Destroyed by Snow Ravens at beginning of Jihad, became a civilized world in the new FWL, and destroyed by Randis

The good pirate havens are dead and gone. Just small bands plus whoever is out in the barrens are left.

I mean...going legit enough to join the FWL is basically living the dream.

benhrome.wordpress.com/2017/02/06/dominus-rising/

>WoB was supposed to be the 3250 evil guys

Seems interesting, too bad to see this completely scraped

Some of the prisoners could be Rasalhauge seperatists with combat experience

I like the idea of the Lyrans passing them info, it used to be their planet after all. Maybe I'll do this if the players don't figure it out.

Just really trying to avoid the op-for simplying radioing them before/during a battle to spill the beans. Looking for something more subtle.

I used this extremely nasty polygamist cult that raids for slaves (women for the higher ranks and men to sell to the Marians or occasionally their own use), that sends out it's vast numbers of unwanted sons in massive infantry attacks, since they're short on tanks and mechs.
The PCs ended up taking a very black and very dirty contract to glass their entire civilization with employer-provided nukes, but they'd make a great addition to other campaigns

>Canon end to Sword and Blake
>Finally know how Uncle Chandy died
>The new bounty hunter and his team of misfits was really MD's

Easily the best info out of there that's likely true.

But fuck, this just makes me miss Herb and Ben. What was Ben's reason for leaving again? That everyone was dragging their feet on the DA?

>Benny shits the bed once again

So basically that periphery orgy cult from 1E the comstar boys visit except even crazier.

>shortly before Herb was pushed out of the LD position
>pushed

Guess Randall and Loren couldn't stand the focus being one someone other than the CC, eh?

Or maybe Herb didn't get checks cause Loren needed a new bathroom?

Intel from unarmed civilians on-site.
Administrative records at the starport.
Gulag security that the ISF doesn't realize is still alive.

Think of basically any real-life polygamist cult, but with slave raiding and sending their 'lost boys' out for human wave attacks rather than just forcing them into exile

IIRC they preferred light aerospace fighters.

The "pirates" can be radioing to each other in the open, before they know the players have arrived. The players can listen in to figure out where the "pirate" forces are, and maybe recognize some of them as political enemies of the Combine who disappeared from public life.

I'm glad, honestly. The blakists were good in the jihad, but YET ANOTHER "lol sekret shadow army and muh hidden worlds" plot would be fucking lame and boring

Grog pandering, basically. TPTB keeps delaying his work, giving preference to old shit (1st and 2nd Succession Wars) or simply nothing

It would really be the same plot. We knew from way back to Fall of Terra that the Blakists had Deep Periphery bases that the Jihad never accounted for. So it would be lame and boring in the same way WWII was the lame and boring sequel to WWI, I suppose...

Blakists don't really need any secret armies at this point though, the Republic of the Sphere seems more than enough.

gib more blakists pls senpai

How smart are your players?

Do they understand SIGINT? ELINT? HUMINT?

Do they know what those are?

How do they do intelligence or surveillance, or do they just murderhobo facefuck with mechs?

Their tactics will allow you to figure out how to proceed with leaving clues for them if you don't want to go the foreign spook or open comms route.

IMO the WoB should be lurking in the shadows, a known threat that makes some pinpoint strikes and a much larger number of random terror actions, occasionally getting into big battle for mysterious reasons, and people are working to track them down but in turn are getting killed off as they get close.

What I would really like to see is an "Age of Expansion" (perhaps partly motivated by the shadow of said Blakists) where the Houses and Periphery are settled a little bit and can start exploring into all the space around the IS. The problem with the Dark Age giving everyone some breathing room is that that breathing room wasn't really fleshed out adequately. It would be neat to see some actual timeline focus on border skirmishes, house units racing against periphery ones to claim worlds, mercs sabotaging settlement operations on the down-low, the Periphery getting a chance to shine a little more due to proximity, and various other things that are focused on the small-scale that grogs seem to love so much without going full retard "INDUSTRIALMECHS AND 3025 SHADS ONLY BIG ARMIES ARE BAD REEEE"

That'd be neat. Too bad Arthur SD never became the sword in the stone.

So, due to Ral Partha fucking up an order, I've given 15 Harpy protomechs by my FLGS.

Any ideas on what Clan I should paint these buggers up as? I don't have a Clan force, so I'm open to any suggestions.

Harpy is basically Hell's Horses exclusive unless you want to do them up as a Reaving-era Homeworld Clan.

>it's a my self-insert character is responsible for single-handedly saving a faction episode

Meh.

>3250 plot would be cut and pasted from the Jihad

And thus, the cycle would be complete.

>ben rome's medron blake adventure
No thanks mate

Never knew he had such a hard-on for Berith, dang.

We know that a bunch of Blakists survived and disappeared, so it was inevitable they returned unless we wanted something that made the Wolverines thing look like some minor sideref in 1st ed Periphery.

The real issue is whether or not it was (still is?) intended to be Blakists and nothing but Blakists all over again -- essentially a refight of the Jihad -- OR they were just supposed to be one element stirring the shit in a larger shitshow. I could handle "return of the Blakists" much better than I could "return of the entire bloody Jihad."

He got real upset when everyone compared his original profile picture to Lando. But it's just so right.

The character is literally named for him.

I'm still chuckling over the fact that the big product he would have been working on and was anticipated by the fanbase turned out to be just another cut-and-paste job, like HB: HK and TR: 3150 though.

I know I joked a lot that he sold his soul to write one good book in Wars of Reavings but I didn't expect it to be so true.

I guess we can look forward to more faction-pandering in the writing now. I think Kit is the most senior freelancer they have now.

So ilClan is going to be the Magistracy discovering they secretly harboured Wolverine survivors and then taking over the entire IS in a single decisive campaign now, isn't it? With one of the de Summersville self-insert characters leading the charge...

>The character is literally named for him.

How so?

Fair enough, HH it is.

Freelancers don't call the shots. Adrian Gideon is the new assistant line dev now. I have no idea what he likes, since he doesn't really post in a faction sense on the OF. Makes it hard to say what's going down in the future.

>We know that a bunch of Blakists survived and disappeared
I always hated how they did that. With this new info, we do get to see why CGL did it that way, but I have to say it was a shitty plot decision

>I think Kit is the most senior freelancer they have now.

Just fucking hire the /btg/RO team already Randall. Or make Xotl line dev and them his minions.

>OR they were just supposed to be one element stirring the shit in a larger shitshow.

That sums up a lot of what they did in the early part of the Jihad. So yeah, Jihad 2.0, basically.

Ben H Rome.

BEritH EMORy.

It was stated directly by both Herb and Ben on the OF, FWIW.

They don't have a permanant stable of writers and more and quite a lot of the freelancers they have are faction partisans of one stripe or another.

I just want everything retconned, purged and rewritted from the ground up after the Great Refusal.

And Mech Commander 3

>Ben H Rome.
>BEritH EMORy.
>It was stated directly by both Herb and Ben on the OF, FWIW.

Man, what a fuckboy.

Blakists have been the old robes since forever. You really can't stomp them out. Even when the Republic swallowed up Comstar inside their borders, all the old adepts and such still work for them. It just becomes a new infestation.

The only people who could completely replace them are the Clans who run their own HPG's. I'd take Blakists and Comstar shenanigans forever before I see the network run by the Space Jews. The clans aren't even that good at it. It's not like they've fixed the stuff in their own territories since Gray Monday.

I don't really give a shit about characters who are self-inserts but do nothing of note otherwise, like professor Herb and what-not.

When they are extra-special darlings like Berith and Magistracy Colonel Kit de Summersville they can fuck right off though. BT doesn't need Elmionsters.

Having seeds of blakism and occasional terrorists starting shit? Sure. Like twenty regiments worth of guys, several warships and a magic superweapon all escaping and disappearing? No thanks

That kind of happens when you let the phone company run the biggest deep space exploration operation since the Star League. Not like it's new either. It precipitated the Clan Invasion.

>The clans aren't even that good at it. It's not like they've fixed the stuff in their own territories since Gray Monday.

Not like the magical boy wonder managed a cure either though. It's a bit of an outside context problem at this stage.

Deal with it, heretic.

I rather liked Ben's outline.

>Magistracy Colonel Kit de Summersville
Wait what the fuck, he actually has a straight up self-insert? Let me guess, he's described as amazing and commands one of their best regiments?