/btg/ - Battletech General

>their only source of new writers is the OFs for SR and BT, but getting into that club is a popularity contest rather than about writing skill or game knowledge.
Well and our namefags, it seems. Maybe they're angling for a trial of position?

Which is dumb.

Of course, the Caps used to have a katana as their emblem, not a jian, so they've never been quite clear on which yellow devils were which.

NEA, Muninn, CA, 3A, and Xotl (I'm claiming him as ours, damnit) will fucking obliterate the MadCap, Alex Knight, Ben Rome, and whoever the hell else team.

Please, please let them do this.

>NEA, Muninn, CA, 3A, and Xotl (I'm claiming him as ours, damnit) will fucking obliterate the MadCap, Alex Knight, Ben Rome, and whoever the hell else team.

Well yeah, our namefags actually play the game.

now I understand why he does not play anymore. It seems his work was being ignored since before ER 3145 being released. I would be salty too

>CGL inherits and continues a history of not paying people they hire.

Just to back this up, a number of artists have stopped working with them over the past few years due to delayed or missing pay.

>trial of position
>playing the game

Fuck that. I choose unagumented; hand-to-hand with no additional weapons and only the protection you're dressed in.

(Also, I don't think Ben is having any more to do with the line; as a dev *or* a writer.)

The question is would you really want to touch MadCap? He's a creepy overweight lolicon, NEA.

That's an old-ass screen shot but does illustrate one of the bigger problems with the BT side of things. Almost nobody other than Xotl understands the rules, and the playtesting is even worse.

That's what the armor is for.

>would you really want to touch MadCap?

Gauntlets.

There's actually some interesting parallels between CGL now (designs for games they don't play) and the imposed status of old TSR employees under Lorraine Williams. LW banned playtesting and the play of TSR products on company time and property, but the designers still had to design things.**

Over time, a lot of product started to go pretty bad (among other things, the famously bad "Player's Option: Skills & Powers" book suffered DIRECTLY from this) as a result of the policy, and TSR collapsed from a feedback loop of poor product leading to poor sales leading to poor product. Granted, losing a big market share to MtG didn't help, but the fact remains that TSR was mismanaged into the ground, and inability to playtest product was certainly a part of that.

**Source: Jon Pickens, editor, TSR (multiple family gatherings)

>I choose unagumented; hand-to-hand with no additional weapons and only the protection you're dressed in.

I'm down.

>a significative number of merc units unite and create their own Periphery realm that is also a heaven for any soldier tired of fighting wars that aren't theirs

You know nobody actually plays the game, right? Everyone wastes time building their own customs, playing AtB in MegaMek, and complaining about a lack of real-world gaming even though the TT is pretty terrible experience as far as traditional games go. The rules are clunky, the lore is nigh-impenetrable to new players, the models are ugly, the terrain is typically non-existent or relegated to some HeroQuest bullshit, and the playerbase is increasingly bitter and provincial about their faction/their hated faction, their preferred time period, etc.

Someone save us.

That would be great as a thing in the republic era

Stareted Battletech with the introduction box thing, should I advance into 3050 or 3070?

>Someone save us.

We tried. We gave you Alpha Strike: a fast-playing modern ruleset using full miniatures terrain. We gave you Dark Age, which was full of new factions for people to embrace and maybe not be utter cunts about this time around. We're giving you modern, top-quality artwork and Battlemech designs with the MWO and HBS Battletech video games.

What do you people do about all of those? The same things you did with the things that came before: you sit and bitch that it's not good enough. It'll never be good enough. Nothing can please you people, so we're not bothering to take your opinions into account any longer. This company doesn't need fans like any of you.

-The Catalyst Observer

3050. Don't skip over the Clan era. It'll make a ton of stuff later on way more confusing if you do.

Pic related will be Battletech's DoW, for good or evil.

do you learn new rules easily? if so, 3070

Which mechs would they all pilot in the trial?

...

Is that steam around the punched in the face mech meant to show it's over heated?

But the Dark Age was more about wiping out factions and regiments than adding them, and it made everyone war criminals so made fans more paranoid and sensitive about the factions they liked.

...

>maybe not be utter cunts about this time around.
>Battletech
[cynical laughter]

Depends on if we can use /btg/RO mechs or not.

CA gets a Perseus. That's not even a question.

Muninn gets something helplessly Marik. I'd call it a tossup between an Albatross, a Cerberus, and an Awesome.

NEA's tough. I'm torn between giving him a custom Marauder (because he did the dancing MAD), a nuclear Urbie (since he did that too), or a McKenna.

For 3A and Xotl I have no idea.

On the CGL side:
MadCap would get a Stealth Pillager, or use his Death Commando bullshittery to "justify" getting a mixtech Stealth Armor Hellstar.

Alex gets something with a lot of re-lasers.

Kit deSummerWhatever gets a Shadow Hawk of some type (IIRC 7M), since that's what his avatar drives.

Savage Coyote (Ross) gets, well, a Savage Coyote.

It doesn't matter what Oystein gets, because while he knows where the battle is, he forgot to fact-check the date and so misses it.

I'd want to see Welshman and Wierdo gone too, but I don't know that they'd drive. I can actually kind of live with Jellicoe; when there's someone to reign him in, he actually does reasonable work.

I know the Catalyst Observer does lurk here from time to time, so even though you're trolling...

>Alpha Strike
I legit love it and it's my preferred choice for IRL play, I only do TW rules in MM.

>Dark Age
Before my time, and while it was apparently a bit of a turd to begin with, it retroactively gave us BT's greatest era, the Jihad, and has been polished into something ok.

>BT vidya
The HBS one is premature, and while MWO has plenty of issues, the designs look good. DESU though I prefer the work happening for CGL itself - Shimmy and some of the other new guys have been really nailing it.

Yes, Let's.

Muninn is a WoB fan more than a FWL fan, he's said it a number of times. Give him a borged-out MD pilot in a Seraph Luminos or something.

Or, y'know, Atleast Itsnot.

that-smirk.png

>Atleast Itsnot.
That's who's gonna be driving the perseus

Who's driving the nuclear Schiltron?

I need more quirks, and some tricked out configuration. It's a damn shame it can't mount AIV. Since it's apparent that the power of Atleast is beyond most people, it'll be the spoiler mech.

Is the Grand Titan superior to an Atlas in anyway?

I remember reading that a Grand Titan supposedly hammered an Atlas down in a fight as a show of it' superiority.

That's what the Perseus Atleast Itsnot is for.
Variants can have quirks that the base model doesn't, remember

I don't think so, but a pair of LPLs at midling ranges can do some work. Especially against something that has to bone itself to get a real TMM. I should test it in MM sometime. Or I'm sure someone has already and might enlighten us.

That's CA's character.

As noted, I'm Blakist first. As such, I'll be bringing the main antagonist of a short campaign I ran, Virginia Kershaw. She's got a pain shunt, buffered VDNI, dermal armor, and a triple core processor. She has Hopping Jack, Hot Dog, Melee Master, Melee Specialist, and Laser Specialization. She pilots pic related. Not even going to get into the quirks it has.

And Atleast Itsnot makes her look small-time.

But if I bring the Thane tricked out that way, I've got a much tougher mech, and one that's 8196 BV.

What variant you're using can change the options.

Not really. It's more like an Atlas variant in loadout. And the later Atlas's get better than it.

So just for the hell of it I read all the Tucker parts of Bonfire plus the intro story of FM3145 because I wanted to finish the storyline from Target of Opportunity. What a fucking rollercoaster. All that buildup of Stone and when he wakes up he's just like "Don't look at me. I didn't do it. I just created all the protocols identical to old Blakist secret projects. Anybody could have done it!"

I bet the faggot totally did do it as some kind of brainwashed trigger put into him. If he didn't, it was totally Sorenson.

>guy was with Stone since the 3070's and knew tons of secrets
>was the one that set up Alexi on the Wyatt mission
>sent her on the Comstar mission as well and had access to all the old ROM stuff
>knew all the old secrets like Clarion and Fortress and was having Alexi protect them
>we know Stone removed him after he returned

It would be delicious if the most venerable and traditionalist of the paladins was a deep cover Blakist.

I want to talk Dark Age conspiracies. What do you guys think? Where are the modern SHPG's located? The few we knew about in the 3070's were on inhabited worlds and it's not something you can hide easily. How could the cores be built without the Terran facilities? What's with the bullshit about hyperspace frequency?

So who wants to go set this up in MegaMek, play through, and tell us how it went?

If he buys 3050:Upgrade, he's getting 3070 regardless.

What did Catalyst do.

>Where are the modern SHPG's located?
Huh?

And as she was the main antagonist, her Command Level II was the following:

Legacy LGC-02
Guillotine GLT-6WB
Deva Exanimus
Demolisher (AIV)
Se'irim (Standard)

Designed to have her smash face while calling in fire. Too bad I never got to run the final battle.

We know that there was a undiscovered Blakist plant high in the Republic power structure, iirc.

Clarion Call and Fortress require a functional Super Hyperpulse Generator network. Even the Blakists only had a handful and we don't know of any captured intact. That means new ones, lots of them. But they have a 1000 lightyear range, so a network in RotS space could reach out far enough in every direction for Gray Monday.

>Where are the modern SHPG's located?

Maybe one of the Hidden Five?

Question about TAG - if I want to be really certain of hitting, can I put like 6 TAG on one mech and shoot them all at the target?

Does TAG work with targeting computers?

Yes, but note that only one hit actually counts. If you get 6 hits it still only counts as hit once. The only reason you'd mount multiples is for redundancy or increased odds, no bonuses or benefits otherwise.

TAG is listed as type "E", not "DE", which means it's Electronics and not Direct Energy, so most likely no it's not compatible with Tarcomp.

No probs. We all make mistakes.

Do any FWL mechs have stealth armor?

I don't get it.

>We know that there was a undiscovered Blakist plant high in the Republic power structure, iirc.
Where was that said?

No. The long range faction doesn't get anything that's actually good for long range. That would be silly.

They're lucky they get mechs.

He's the result of CampaignAnon's campaign. There's a long story about him getting a first-wave Clan Invasion contract with 80% salvage, and CA basically murdering an small Clan's worth of forces in a series of contracts, but basically Atleast Itsnot is the result of an AtB campaign spiraling out of control. He's 0/0 with a shitton of various bonuses, driving a pimped out Warhawk with a bunch of positive quirks, and is basically the pinnacle of mech pilots (well, except for a theoretical Manei Domini Atleast Itsnot)

What's the story with the name?

So how good is the Grand Crusader on paper?

Is anyone even still making this thing or did it go the way of the Titan II?

AtB used to generate meme names every once in a while with the regular names.

It's as good as the warrior using it. Always been one of my favorites for the look alone.

I believe it, like many Blakist designs, is gone though.

cute/10

Goes extinct after the Jihad.

Ught, just learned I stand corrected on the Titan II no longer being in production.

> The Titan was reintroduced into production during the Dark Age era. It replaced the SRM-6 with an SRM-4 and the twenty-two heat sinks were replaced by sixteen double heat sinks. It added CASE to the ammunition bays, added three Jump Jets, and upgraded the PPCs to extended range models. BV (2.0) = 2,328

Not sure whose making the thing or why. League maybe?

MUL lists both variants as available to the Republic.

I play, though not nearly often enough. We have such a wealth of games in the local area, that when we're only 2 enthusiastic BT players we often have to play second fiddle to 40k, KoW, FoW/TY, BA, Deadzone, Dropzone Commander, and anything GW ever made of Specialist Games ever (even fucking Epic).

Here's the general stats as of 3058ish. The name itself comes from the "At least it's not Clan ER PPCs" meme from a few years ago.

RS 3145 NTNU says Kressly is making the Titan 1Aj and 1Ar for the RAF, and apparently sharing since MUL lists the Suns and mercs having it too.

As for the Titan II proper, MUL gives it solely to the Republic so I guess they aren't sharing those. Though it is possible they aren't making the IIs at all anymore, since availability and production are two different things, the RAF may just be using what they have.

Jesus. He must need a 2 to hit even at extreme ranges

More like -1 or 0. Called shots are normally on 2s or 3s, except stuff with 9 or 10 TMMs.

Bit of a TRO update:

For whichever user was asking about donation tracking, I added a little thermometer-type widget to the blog to show how much we've got and how much more we need. Which prompted me to do a minor financial report. I'll probably do a blog post on the subject at some point.

To date we've gotten $1018.67 in donations, and paid out $490.34. We're about to make a couple of more batch payments to Plog, which will bring our remaining funds down to about $300.

The goal is to keep sending out a steady flow of commissions, and to pay for them in full when they're done. I'm planning to try to raise another round of funds in the near future so that we maintain a comfortable buffer ahead of needing to pay, because i don't want to have to wait three months to send out another batch due to not having funds to pay for them when they're done.

>actually paying the artists
>on time

absolute madman

...

Better than fasa already

Gosh I like this it feels like an Atlas and looks really scary.

That's pretty boss, user. I love LPPCs+Caps, and the iHGR is an interesting option. I don't know that I would have gone with 3 MML3s myself, but you do save some weight over the 9.

Have an oddball tank I thought up after watching a short piece about a Mexican arms designer.

There's a big /k/ /btg/ bleed over and I'm one of them, the name makes me happy af, the rest of the tank is great. I'd love to play it. Bracketing of it is so nice for a vee.

I feel like I'm missing something. 2 LAC2 seem like a big waste of space.

>The Catalyst Observer
Obviously you're not, but the actual one approves this message.

In ways it is, but for long range it's not too bad and optimizing is no fun. It can plink esp armor from range, then open up with a big gun. I just think it's just a great tank.

The actual one should go back to the OF and turn it into less of a festering shithole.

Where there's BattleTech, there's shitholes. They go together ass in ass.

Wasn't everyone already a war criminal to begin with?

Thanks man, glad you like it. I figured plinking with AP ammo while can-opening and sandblasting might be cool. It can also strap Flak or Precision for AA or Light hunting as needed.

Yeah they aren't the best, but the're basically there to throw AP ammo in the same brackets as the LB 10-X for maximum crit shenanigans. I considered pairing an LB 10-X and an AC/10 with AP ammo on a heavier tank and seeing how that feels as well.

It got really tight on tonnage at the end, and I liked everything else. So the original plan for LRM-15+MML-5 morphed into... that. As a side benefit, it helped clear up the torso ammo a bit and make vegetable cascades impossible.

Republic of the Sphere was a new faction so they had to pop their warcrime cherry. Which they did by murdering the duly-elected representatives of dozens of Republic worlds. And also leaving nine tenths of their state to be pillaged by everyone else.

This reminds of something funny though.
>First thing Stone does when he wakes up is go "Comstar? No. Blakists? Impossible. I KILLED THEM ALL!"
>Meanwhile based Lester is actually hunting down real Blakists

Stone will BUILD THE WALL
and MAKE TERRA GREAT AGAIN

BAN ALL CLANNER IMMIGRATION

AP ammo is essentially worthless on AC2s, and only slightly better on AC5s.

>Which they did by murdering the duly-elected representatives of dozens of Republic worlds.

This will never not confuse me