/btg/ Battletech General!

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Battlemasters in the Snow edition

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BattleTech video-game pre-alpha gameplay
youtube.com/watch?v=FjEeDz51pHE

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>BattleTech Introductory Info and PDFs
bg.battletech.com/?page_id=400

>Overview of the major factions?
bg.battletech.com/universe/great-houses/
bg.battletech.com/universe/the-clans/
bg.battletech.com/universe/other-powers/

>How do I find out which BattleMechs a faction has?
masterunitlist.info/

Unit Designing Softwares
>SSW Mech Designer
solarisskunkwerks.com/
>MegaMek Lab
megameklab.sourceforge.net/

>/btg/ does a TRO:
builtforwar.blog(not spam)spot.com/

>How do I do this Against the Bot thing?
pastebin.com/pE2f7TR5
NEW! - Against the Bot pastebin updated link:
bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,40948.0.html
NEW! - Mediafire link for the most current AtB rule set: mediafire.com/file/dyjdl62htdpbfgy/rules_2.30.xls

>Map of /btg/ players (WIP):
zeemaps.com/map?group=1116217&add=1

>Rookie guides
pastebin.com/HZvGKuGx

>Sarna.net - BattleTech Wiki
sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page

>Megamek - computer version of BattleTech. Play with AI or other players
megamek.info/

>BattleTech IRC
#battletech on irc.rizon.net

>PDF Folders
mediafire.com/folder/sdckg6j645z4j/Battletech
mediafire.com/folder/cj0tjpn9b3n1i/Battletech
mediafire.com/folder/tw2m414o1j9uj/Battletech_Archives

/btg/'s own image board: - (Still getting worked on & now has 10735 pics!)
bgb.booru.org/index.php

More goodies! (Rare manuals, hex packs, TROs, discord server, etc.) Last updated 2017-02-04!
pastebin.com/uFwvhVhE

Other urls found in this thread:

battletechuniverse.org/hpguplink/viewtopic.php?t=2799&view=newest
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

first for CGL are fags

Tell me something I don't know.

I'm not a grog but 90% of my fav mechs are intro tech.
Is this wrong /btg/?

WoB rebuilt the Martinson factory on Caph but what mechs is was producing was never fluffed out.

Same here. I am an old grog, and I do like a lot of the new material, but the old stuff just is great.
>CGL
>competency
Pick one.

This hobby leaves me tired sometimes.

Using the Star League navy from just before the Amaris coup as a basis, how many squadrons/fleets of SL ships would it take to destroy a Leviathan II?

You can do it with 3 McKennas and the right support ships and ASF.

It's also the last time anyone *had* 3 McKennas and the right support ships.

It is possible to do it with less if you are very lucky or are in a high-speed engagement. But 3 McKennas is pretty much the minimum acceptable level of force since that roughly matches the relative amounts of incoming and outgoing damage each way.

One of those big 25-collar carriers loaded with Vengances or Titans could do it, as could a Mckenna ot maybe Farrigut squadron with good fighter carrier coverage

>One of those big 25-collar carriers
Potemkins?

Yes, that's the one. Dunno why I blanked on the name

Well, Introtech is the original.

Nothing ever beats the original.

By the time of the FedCom Civil War, are most machines on Solaris using Introtech level of technology or more modern things?

the serious competitors will be running upgraded models but the lower-level ones will still be in Intro gear.

Machines in Solaris are running cutting-edge stuff usually. During the FCCW there are even Clan machines in use there. Stable owners can afford one-off specials or paying for the bleeding/scabby edge, especially if it means they get returns from bets and recognition.

Virtually all machines are going to feature at least some SL tech, with rare and prototype tech showing up in some of the big-name outfits

Basic SL tech refits (DHS,CASE, maybe pulses and LBXs) are going to be absolutely ubiquitous, and higher-tech stuff common. Even Clantech and prototype gear is going to make regular appearances

>prototype gear is going to make regular appearances

Is that how some Inner Sphere militaries test new equipment?

Mission question for the new thread.
Do you ever do any one-shot stand alone missions with existing characters that have nothing to do with any running campaigns?
For example: - I had a nut manage to get his hands on an old Wolverine, upgrade the HS to DHS, strip the SRM and ammo along with the two other HSs for three MPLs and was part of a terrorist group that wanted to ruin a holiday parade. The PCs were just basically running security along with some militia and had to stop this nut with a pair of 35 ton augmented Panthers.
The mission was basically a race against time to stop this nut and his supporters before he could do tremendous civilian damage to fulfill the sick goals of the terrorist mob.
This was long before I knew SPLs could be more devastating against infantry or civilians so it was under old rules.
Do you have any one-shot missions that went well?

No because people only play my Battletech campaigns out of pity so they die quickly. Yours sounds fun though.

Dude we like your campaigns. Speaking of, when's the next session? if you aren't drew, uh, nvm i guess

Manufacturers, yes. Militaries not quite so much

Never because I plan on necking myself. Not Drew though so your campaign is safe.

>This is what grogs actually believe
How's your Motorola StarTac, Macintosh, and Ford Model T doing, user?

The original is always made to be improved by newer versions. BT, like or not, is better now than it was before

Well, better is subjective to some.

Also, hasn't balance gone out of the window since 3025?

Ate we going to argue that opinions are objective again? Because that's always fun.

FFS, let's not get into era discussions. There's room for everyone.

>Yours sounds fun though.
I do like a good campaign, but I also dabble in making television episode style scenarios like this just for a fresh change of pace. Characters and their equipment can insert as needed. I would balance things as needed. It's kind of like a random episode of Patlabor or something along that line.
What kind of campaigns are you dealing with?

Well said.
But my favorite era is better than your favorite era.

Necking yourself is bad. We need good people to BattleTech with. Keep your chin up, you run good campaigns.

None now. Last one died. Was a basic bitch affair anyway. Players prefer simple vee and Mech stuff.

Gotta keep your chin up to get the rope on. Not looking for a pity party. Was just quipping.

>Not looking for a pity party.
Not offering one, waste of time, just providing another viewpoint. I've been there too. Keep trucking, life's pretty cool at the end of the day.

A few years ago I ran a one-shot where the players were a small merc outfit, tasked with recovering a small, out-of-the-way island base during the war of '39. Glassing the island wasn't an option because Reasons. So, after naval support targeted the strongpoints the players hot-dropped onto the island. It was close-quarters the entire way through with artillery support coming in from both sides and infantry clearing out the warehouses one-by-one. The players missed a lance of Pikes on the drop and half their infantry got wasted when it tried to land.

Both sides were using '39-tier weaponry. CASE was readily available along with DHS; they had two MPL and an LB10-X. Game was comfy, and easy to run.

Wet navy, I should mention. The planet was over 90% water and there were destroyers and PT boats everywhere. Storms made it difficult to control spheroid dropships, so they jumped out of two not-C5 Galaxy transports from ten thousand feet.

Reposting my previous critique of thanatos guy's latest picture.

>Its still not as highly contrasted as the background. It stands out cause it doesn't look like its in the same lighting as the room its in.
>Its missing the deeper shadows and stark florescent lighting. Feet especially, and there's no shadow of it on the floor which is also jarring.
>Same goes for the texture. The room has these dark wary marks all over but the mech only has a slightly cloudy texture too it.
>As for the design, it think for a combat vehicle it's retarded to have a window on it either way, so i guess the smaller looks best if you want to stick to the glass cockpit design.

But I don't have a favourite era user.

Then your opinion is at the bottom of the totem pole. The only thing worse than having an opinion which is different than mine is not having an opinion at all.

So you're topping then? Okay with me.

So I recently saw the Battletech Universe Guide PDF from the official site and is it just me or are the Mech pictures in the part where they provide mech profiles simply UGLY? I mean if that was my first contact with BT I'd probably never get into stuff with such ugly mechs

>Its still not as highly contrasted as the background. It stands out cause it doesn't look like its in the same lighting as the room its in.
>Its missing the deeper shadows and stark florescent lighting. Feet especially, and there's no shadow of it on the floor which is also jarring.

Still heavily work in progress. I'm still working on fully filling out the colour layers and fleshing out the shapes.

Wear and tear generally comes last in my work process. However, here's a version with lighting and shading layers added for contrast.

Warning, full size image, but from there one can see that it's still in a really rough state. I have perspectives to fix, layers to clean up, shading and highlights to correct, paneling to implement.

>As for the design, it think for a combat vehicle it's retarded to have a window on it either way, so i guess the smaller looks best if you want to stick to the glass cockpit design.

It's battletech, man. Cockpit windows are a thing.

Otherwise every mech would look like one of the mechs in Titanfall.

My opinion is that the hobby is better served by fostering a view that all eras have something great about them, and being nuanced in BT enough to prefer different eras on different days based on different moods.

>It's battletech, man. Cockpit windows are a thing.
This.
Of course, people tend to think of the transparent armor which is only slightly weaker than battlemech armor as a plate glass window from an A-Team episode..

I agree.

The only era I don't like is 3039, and that's mostly because I'm too mixed up by all the retcons.

One shots have been the only things that have went well. Pretty much as soon as someone says "I'd like to play this as an RPG", the gaming group starts living on borrowed time.

I set up my second intro box to be themed after Sword and Dragon - not with the Foxes' Teeth and Sorensons' Sabres, but the regiments they were from - the 7th Crusis Lancers and 5th Sword of Light...

I made a scenario for running at cons. Two sets of eight mechs, and player teams had to divide their set between two missions without knowing what the other guy brought. Mission scores between the two missions were totalled to tally a winner, so if they intentionally went ape and put all their mechs on one board, that pretty much guarantees a perfect victory for the opposite team on the other board.

In Mission:
A) Davion is defending a weapons cache in an urban area. Kurita is Attacking.
B) Kurita is defending their mobile HQ (Under GM control). Davion is attacking. Area is a River Valley.

In both cases, players can earn points for killing a mech, but not for mechs that flee the board.
Also, in both cases, the Attacker can get more points by keeping the objective alive and running the enemy off the board than they could by just blowing the target up.
As a result, it's also possible to spoil-sport the objective as the defender, trying to blow it up instead of letting it get captured, and reducing the number of points the other side could win.

Have the Lyrans ever had a better military than the Suns?

No.

They have also never had a better military than the FWL.

Or the Dracs.

How do you mean better? Better machines or better troops? Because they always had the first and not the second.

Alternatively, you could count Melissa running the Fedcom for a few years as better since that's a Lyran in charge of both those militaries.

How bad was the defeat of Barbara's Marauder II's?

The Project Pheonix TRO suggested word of their defeat damaged the reputation of the Marauder II mech and that the survivors of the Mercenary Command were thrown into the Jade Falcon's Labor Caste due to the abysmal fight they put up.

How is it that a Veteran Mercenary Command was destroyed so easily and gave what amounted to "shit showing" exactly?

Was Wizkid's trying to get rid of them or something?

IIRC they just air dropped a galaxy of elementals on them. I suppose the implication is that the unit was so absurdly overspecialized that they could be swarmed in that way, and the Falcons had no respect for anyone who would fight in such an obvious one-trick pony style, on top of being mercs and having a connection to Wolf's Dragoons.

battletechuniverse.org/hpguplink/viewtopic.php?t=2799&view=newest

>dat Oystein shitposting
>dat bitchslapping

>IIRC they just air dropped a galaxy of elementals on them.

I thought it was only a Cluster?

Maybe, I can't quite remember. A shitton of elementals, and nothing else.

Well hell, now that link says it was mechs too. So much for my shit memory, although I could have sworn I came across such a elementals-only ref just a few days ago.

Guys, are there any premade mercenary forces for MekHQ for those among us too lazy/unexperienced to make their own?

CJF hit the Barber's Marauder IIs with the 125th Striker Cluster. That was it. The rough composition in play was ~2 Trinaries of Mechs and 2 Trinaries of Elementals. The Mechs engaged the MADs and damaged them, and essentially baited the damaged MADs into point-blank-range Elemental ambush. Oh, and the total CJF casualties were something like 1 Star of mechs and *less than* one star of Elementals.

Think of that what you will.

With all that said, yes, there was some dev-level confirmation several years back that they were wiped out specifically because they were an entire unit explicitly running Unseen variant MAD IIs (they'd have to get all new machines to change to the Reseen versions, which would have strained belief).

ALSO: Oystein also claims that CJF Strike Clusters are composed exclusively of heavies like T-wolves. Someone should probably point him to the CJF phone book, pg 70, where the 1st Falcon Striker Cluster is composed of 55 Mechs:
1 Mad Cat
8 Thors
9 Lokis
2 Ryokens
1 Black Hawk
2 Dragonflys
3 Fenris
4 Pumas
19 Ullers
3 Koshis
2 Dashers

Yeah. About that fact-checking. Strike Clusters are *totally* dominated by heavy Mechs, right?

>CJF hit the Barber's Marauder IIs with the 125th Striker Cluster

124th Striker. Sorry.

>19 Ullers
19 Ullers
>19 Ullers
19 Ullers

>laughingspheroids.webm

>19 Ullers

I knew they liked them but holy crap

Say that to Configuration A, and not online, fucker.

Everyone's had a better military than the Dracs.

Ok, you bring 1 Config A Uller and I'll bring 1 Marauder II, whatever config Barber's Marauders was running, and we can have it out like gentlemen.

I thought Lyran troops got the best training money could buy.

Hey /btg/ battletech newbie here with some questions and I figured you guys were in the know. I really want to like MWO but their game is ruined by its shit freemuim design. What are some good mech games? I really like building my mechs and fiddling with builds.

MW4 with the mek pack

The new Battletech game from HBS.

>I thought Lyran troops got the best training money could buy.

Not at the command level.

As efficient as their logistics train may be and as well trained as their personal are, their officers and commanders are the reason they tend to do poorly.

Since a commission can essentially be bought (and often times is), the quality of the people directing the military can be poor.

This is one of the reasons the better leadership in the Alliance and Commonwealth tend to be found in Mercenary Commands.

if you like mech customizing then MW2 and MW3 are good for a closer to tabletop rule-set (with a few oddities) and MW4 is good if you dont care about how close it stays to the tabletop rules.

Except the Elsies

>19 Ullers

I am at a loss for words.

Things you can say about your mech, but not about your girlfriend.

She's a frigid bitch. Wait...

She's tons of fun

I have one.

She's constantly on all fours.

High maintenance
People bet on the outcome of our fights
Only gets hotter the more punishment she takes
She gets more attractive with age
You can buy her at auction
Doesn't mind if I go to work in my underwear

Goes down on me all the time.

Falcons are just badass.

Operation Götterdämmerung?

Compared to the usual level of Oystein fact-checking, that is near perfection.

At least he knew what faction and units were involved.

Put a new XL engine in her. Massive weight loss.

>she's 55 tons and a seven years old, but I still love her

I take it the 124th wasn't in the phonebook for specific analysis?
>yes, there was some dev-level confirmation several years back that they were wiped out specifically because they were an entire unit explicitly running Unseen variant MAD IIs (they'd have to get all new machines to change to the Reseen versions, which would have strained belief).
I've also heard that the Fighting Urkhai got done in for copyright reasons as well, since they got done in a really arbitrary and nonsensical way in FM:U(but I repeat myself), which was around the time of the LoTR movies, wasn't it? Was there ever any confirmation of this?

>Fighting Urkhai

Weren't they the jokers that (very stupidly) tried to use a Pirate Point to arrive at the Taurian capitol, getting 2/3 regiments blown away before the third one decided to take revenge and rampage across Taurus?

I could never understand that myself or what would have possessed them to make such a grievous error as showing up over a Taurian world with Davion marked ships.


Also, was the Jihad their way of getting rid of excess Mercenary Commands? They all but destroyed many of the ones left over from the classic era of Battletech.

What mechs does the FWL have with a gauss rifle? Not LGR, full gauss.

What era?

Also, War Dog.

3145, but I'll take anything produced after 3050

Tempest and Cerberus are the ones that spring to mind.

>Weren't they the jokers that (very stupidly) tried to use a Pirate Point to arrive at the Taurian capitol, getting 2/3 regiments blown away before the third one decided to take revenge and rampage across Taurus?
>I could never understand that myself or what would have possessed them to make such a grievous error as showing up over a Taurian world with Davion marked ships.
Yes, hence the "arbitrary and nonsensical" comment about their deaths.

>I could never understand that myself or what would have possessed them to make such a grievous error as showing up over a Taurian world with Davion marked ships.

'Cos they didn't? The Urukhai came in telling the Taurians they wanted a new job and only sent a small delegation to negotiate. The Protector was looking for a causus belli to kick off an invasion of the Suns as a pre-emptive strike to stop the all-out assault that the Suns were so clearly planning what with being balls deep in the FCCW and fighting Cappies.

Carronade's a 3145 one
There are two Orions with one
Tempest
Albatross 3ur has a full one in place of the LGR
Goliath
Perseus
Trebaruna

I'm sure there are a few others, but not too many

That's what happens when you're written by loren coleman and he doesn't like your

I wonder who didn't like Waco's Rangers then.

Totally in character for the Taurians if you mean that.

But the mood at FASA/FanPro at the time was such that all the wink-and-nod units from other IPs had to go, they were scared about the Unseen situation repeating itself. And not unreasonably, really. The other option was them just vanishing but you can imagine the bitch fit that would be thrown over that. At least this way they got an end to their story.

Is the IS LPL the worst "big" weapon in regular use?

>I take it the 124th wasn't in the phonebook for specific analysis?

*looks through the phonebook again*

Oh, well fuck me. It is. Dammit.

OK, so the 124th is much heavier (I may do a Mechs-by-type breakdown after dinner), but crucially, it's still got a fuckton of lights and mediums in it, and the 1st Striker Cluster definitely runs light-heavy. So regardless, those are all that's needed to disprove Oystein's rather specious claim that Striker Clusters are built around almost entirely fast heavies and fast assaults.

> the Fighting Urkhai got done in for copyright reasons

Sort of. If wasn't that New Line Cinema sued or anything. There was a concentrated push late in FASA, and early in FanPro, to systematically remove any trace of anything which the game licensors didn't have complete copyright control over. Basically, if by some legal bullshittery they MIGHT get sued over something someday, they wanted that something gone. Incidentally, this is why the TRO3055 Unseen by Victor Musical Industries got kicked; even though FASA had paid legally for that artwork, the very fact that another company had done it at all was sufficient grounds for its removal. The Fighting Uruk-hai (much like Team Banzai), were simply additional casualties of that effort.

Which is goddamn dumb, because homages are a thing.

>was the Jihad their way of getting rid of excess Mercenary Commands?

That was one of the stated side benefits, yes.

There was a general drive to wipe out most of the old B-lister merc regiments in the late 90s and early 2000s. But as for why they were turned into complete retards from nowhere in the Coventry book? Dunno, probably goon-related

>get incredibly paranoid about other people suing you
>have one of the if not the biggest corruption cases in gaming history anyways

>wasn't that New Line Cinema sued or anything. There was a concentrated push late in FASA, and early in FanPro, to systematically remove any trace of anything which the game licensors didn't have complete copyright control over. Basically, if by some legal bullshittery they MIGHT get sued over something someday, they wanted that something gone
that's pretty much exactly what I'd heard before. Makes sense

To be fair about Team Banzai, they were almost explicitly the film's cast somehow pulled into the 31st century. I can see how that one might get people antsy, though the fact that the rights for Buckaroo Banzai are fucked all on their own probably doesn't help.

That didn't happen.