/btg/ Battletech General!

Guys, the Dylan repository that AtB pastebin in the OP references as where to find the newest MekHQ is not up to date, it has 0.41.17 MekHQ while there's 0.42 out: github.com/MegaMek/mekhq/releases/tag/v0.42.0

Cappie civil war era 75 tonner with an LBX AC20, ER L. Laser, LRM 15 and plenty of armor.

Ugly design though.

Well congrats user, you just gave me something to doodle.

Just a quick clarification, does the Lao Hu have a lower arm actuator for the right arm?

The computer says "nooooo".

No

People with shit taste should be forbidden to post

I own 2 Banshees, 2 Commandos, 1 Atlas, 1 Zeus, 1 Battlemaster, 1 Dervish, 1 Hunchback and 1 Grasshopper when it comes to Mechs I know the Lyrans use.

Other Mechs I own are:
1 Vindicator, 1 Clint, 1 Whitworth, 1 Vulcan, 1 Flea, 1 Awesome, 1 Trebuchet, 1 Cyclops, 1 Dragon, 1 Jenner, 1 Panther, 1 Assassin, 1 Hermes II, 1 JagerMech, 1 Enforcer and 1 Cicada.

I can use TROs 3039, 3050, 3058 and 3060.

What are the books I need to run a newbie Battletech RPG campaign with mechfighting involved? Just A Time of War/Classic Battletech RPG + Total War, or are some other rulebooks/sourcebooks mandatory?

Also, what era/premise would be the best for a first time GM and first time players, assuming I want the players to be mechwarriors (or at least engaged in fighing in some other way)?

I would use The BattleTech Master Rules and MechWarrior 2nd Edition, much easier to get into and better integrated. If you read either the Warrior Trilogy for 3025 or the Blood of Kerensky trilogy for 3050 those will get you up and running for the lore.

What makes it easier to get into? Never read it.

As an aside, I discovered the 3E/CBT master lifepath list is very much incomplete and I was looking for a better compilation or a character generation program. Anybody?

The BMR and MW2E are both much, much more clearly written and sensibly laid out than MW3E/CBTRPG and Total Warfare.

Of the common mechs contained in the introductory box set, which ones are most likely to be found in the Magistracy?

Like I can imagine the Dragon, Jenner, Panther and Zeus wouldn't be.

Taurian Import/Salvage: Commando.
FWL Import/Salvage: Spider, Cicada, Hermes II, Hunchback, Enforcer, Trebuchet, Awesome
Capellan Import/Salvage: Vindicator, Catapult
Really old and generic shit everyone uses even if they don't like it: Assassin, Whitworth, Dervish, Quickdraw, JagerMech, Cyclops, Banshee, Atlas

Even the Panther, Jenner, Dragon and Zeus could show up out there in theory, it would just be weird to see more than one per Battalion.

Did you forget that BattleMech Manual exists? I would suggest to pick BMM instead of BMR

To continue discussion from last thread:

Dave the Toymaker appears to be related to Randall Bills.

BMR is still more concise and includes more unit types. Has construction rules too.

Old things are always better. New things are always bad.

The recasting is technically IWM's problem, not Randall's problem, since the license is permanently transferred to IWM. Still the optics on this are TERRIBLE. If it were any other company, I'd expect Randall to resign, but this being CGL...

>includes more unit types.
One issue though is those other unit types are where the main rule changes happened when TW came along.

He apparently makes catered hot lunches.
Which, in the volunteer service world, means he provides hot bowls of soup to the homeless.
It's kind of sad, really. I can see why he would try to scam people out of money with bad recasts if he spends his day as a food 'artist' .

I'm with this guy: we tend to say that TW didn't change much, but that's for mechs. There were a lot of changes for non-mech units.

And for mechs only, the BMM is a lot better than the BMR.

Isn't BattleMech Manual 10$ for a beta product though, or is it another thing?

It's not like TW includes a section where they go through what changed from the BMR or anything either.

As a one-stop-shot for learning the game the BMR is still the way to go.

It is now. You could get it for a fiver, but that's over with. I'd wait until the final to actually pick it up, whenever that is. If you need something right now, then yeah, TW or the BMR (depending on how much you're using non-mech units).

>The recasting is technically IWM's problem, not Randall's problem, since the license is permanently transferred to IWM. Still the optics on this are TERRIBLE. If it were any other company, I'd expect Randall to resign, but this being CGL...

From a legal standpoint, I see where you're coming from. But I think the Line Developer, and CGL as a whole, have an obligation to protect Battletech as a whole IP.

New players have been getting fucked over by this guy for years. That's bad for Battletech as a whole.

Now we find out that the person that has been actively fucking over new people interested in BT is related to the LD? Is there any way that, after the better part of a decade of the very public anger directed at Toymaker, Randall didn't know that Toymaker was in his family? I am having trouble seeing how.

At this point, it's almost like Topps needs to get involved.

OTOH, Topps gave a grand total of zero fucks about the Coleman situation, and that had a tangible impact on their licenses.

I wouldn't be surprised if Topps privately gave quite a few fucks. Actually, it may not have been private - just that Topps doesn't exactly post on the official Battletech forums. Remember that they did briefly offer the BT and SR IPs for sale, and that CGL was short on their fees due to the porch.

It may well be that CGL is on thin ice with Topps as it is. Now the possibility that the line developer is okay with his family selling unauthorized reproductions in art that got the entire BT franchise in trouble before? If I was Topps, I'd be pissed.

Topps' interest in the game is limited to what they can get out of the license deals. They know the game is dying and probably beyond saving.

It's nice to imagine that they would descend from on high and nuke the shit out of CGL like they so richly deserve but that is a bigger fantasy than giant robots shooting the shit out of each other.

I reject the notion that BT is dying. Changing, sure. But not dying. CGL might be dying, but that's entirely for internal reasons.

If CGL ceased to exist tomorrow, BT would still live on. It may even grow, withwhat the new digital presence of the IP.

Holy shit, they are related.

I was holding out hope that maybe Toymaker was just, you know, being his usual liar self.

I missed the part where we saw that David Bills was Dave the Toymaker. What brought up the connection there?

ebay.com/usr/dave_the_toymaker

Plus, people who have contacted him after getting ripped off confirm his name and the fact that he claims he's randalls brother.

also

That'll do it.

So why are his knockoffs so shitty then? I mean, I doubt Randall's giving him new molds or whatever, but at the same time you'd figure if he's been doing this for so long he'd be better at it, instead of enjoying a reputation for total shit. Does he just make a mold and then run it into the ground for years after it should have been retired?

>Quickdraw, JagerMech, Cyclops, Banshee, Atlas

Why wouldn't someone like any of those, save for the Cyclops which is a crappy assault machine?

That's a very good question.

One possibility is that they're not recasts. They could theoretically be the old Ral Partha molds that were supposedly destroyed. Without the spin-casting equipment, the result would be shit and would only get worse after hundreds of casts on the same mold(molds are generally good for a few dozen runs)

>One possibility is that they're not recasts. They could theoretically be the old Ral Partha molds that were supposedly destroyed. Without the spin-casting equipment, the result would be shit and would only get worse after hundreds of casts on the same mold(molds are generally good for a few dozen runs)

Not a chance in hell. The mold lines are different.

well then Randall sucks at managing risk factors to his business then

Like we didn't know that already.

>Giving CGL money, ever.

I think they're cute.

>Spider, Enforcer, Awesome
I wouldn't think they'd be too common, since the Spider is exported to the Dracs, the Enforcer is a Davion machine, and the Awesome is an assault which the FWLM is always in dire need of and so unlikely to export (or lose in a fight).

The whole list is doofy. He listed Dervish and Jagermech as generic even though those fall as squarely into Fedsuns as Catapult does into CC/Dracs. Whitworth is also FWL/Dracs like the Spider. Assassin is FWL. He also said nobody likes the Atlas which is downright insane.

You're right. The ones I mentioned just caught my eye.

Which one of you did this? bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=56351.msg1286503 . I don't want to crosspost from the OF, but what the fuck man, this is top tier autism. I pray to God it's a larp.
>It takes me 30-60 hours to create a lance

None of us posted that, no one here has such a concentrated form of pure autism.

It was I.

With the Awesome, at least, there's going to be decent numbers everywhere, just because it was common in the SL era and virtually impossible to completely destroy, so the survival/salvage rate is going to be high

Not really when it's a preferred target on the field like the Marauder. They didn't make up the survival meme until 3039 with the Black Knight and even then only as a Monty Python reference.

Hahahahahaha thirty to sixty hours wtf

I mean, awesomes will go down, it's just that they will very, very rarely be unsalvagable when they do. I've been playing for almost ten years and I don't think I've ever actually seen an awesome go down from being cored out, it's always legs or heads or gyros going

Not when it's only built in one place and apocalyptic war has been waged for two and half centuries.

Is there a single capellan made mech that doesn't look like ass? Because I really want to like some of them, but the art and models just completely turns me off.

I've killed a number myself over the years, and usually it's about 1/4 get cored in a real assault fight with big guns involved. Point being though, that they're getting shot first and hardest, so they're dropping down more than the boys sitting in the backfield.

This kind of preferred targeting is why so many designs went extinct in the early Succession Wars. It's a credit to the Awesome's toughness that it's still around in every state. But that doesn't mean any kind of commonality.

>Hating the Phract, Lao Hu, Vindy, or Ching Chong

Wow, I just mean... wow.

What? Cappies have some of the most aesthetic mechs.

>Ching Chong
That a Dark Age design? Never heard of it and it seems borderline racist.

The Yinghuochong, I think

>Not giving the stupid CGL Chinese names better nicknames

I bet you've never even driven the Dong.

Hey, hey, HEY! You lay off. That's the Confederation's first ICE engine mech that runs off of rice and good intentions. It's a Catalyst special. It defeats all the roast beef eaters in one on one combat by instantly making all new pilots elite just by then sitting in the cockpit.
>It's like some people don't know about the new birth or something. Sheesh.

> I have spent the last 12 hours working on this issue. A whole day wasted. I think the most logical course of action is to give up playing BT altogether. I can't see any way to be competitive, short of going to part time at work and devoting my entire life outside of work to BT, and I am not willing to do that.

Umm... What?

It's the autism equivalent of refined sugar: pure beyond reasoning and exactly as terrible for you.

>be competitive

Something most people don't give a shit about anyway.

Jesus.

Have we stumbled on the Ulililia of Battletech?

>looking at some other threads
>CA is using my TRO: Perseus and Perseus Accessories image as his avatar
feels good

soon™ is rapidly becoming very soon™

I've got to have the flair somewhere user. Unless I get the Quirks Complaint Dept. title I suggested to Xotl.

So is the 3rd c-ERLL on the Blood Kite in the left hand?

There are so many laser looking glass tubes on that design I can't make heads or tails of it.

...

thanks mang, simplifies tings a lot.

Was that thing even effective?

Actually yeah. If you ignore the horrific art, it's a credible stalker IIC, and is pretty good at it

>There are so many laser looking glass tubes on that design I can't make heads or tails of it.

That is a part of its natural non-Euclidean camouflage to confuse would-be predators. Can't strike a vital area if your mind is broken.

Were the Inner Sphere units involved in the Great Refusal allowed to keep salvage from their Clan opponents on Strana Mechty?

And what would have been some of the more interesting second line machines they would have encountered there?

>Were the Inner Sphere units involved in the Great Refusal allowed to keep salvage from their Clan opponents on Strana Mechty?
Yes. Practically every clantech machine in the IS in the 60s wasn't taken in Bulldog comes from that salvage

Bulldog and Serpent is where they got the salvage.

The Great Refusal itself, with the binaries vs companies, did not include salvage.

What good is that salvage to the Inner Sphere powers anyway?

What they'd salvage, they'd only be able to use in that configuration as they don't have the pods for the others and they have no way of replenishing those pods should they take damage or be destroyed.

Do they just affix the weapons to it permanently or something?

Or are they just studying said salvage to learn from it?

Studying, learning how to improve their own tech. In many cases weapons and equipment were stripped out for customizing the IS machines, like Archer Christifori did. In some cases machines were handed to specific persons as rewards, like how Theodore Gross received a pristine Masakari on Solaris VII.

Pods stay the same. It wouldn't be hard to figure out how to reconfigure them, they'd just need spares of weapons, equipment, and ammunition to resupply said pods once damaged.

>Christifori's Penetrator
Not a huge fan of the man, but that was a dope ride.

Whatever happened to him anyway? I keep hearing he went missing in a campaign against the Jade Falcons.

>What good is that salvage to the Inner Sphere powers anyway?
>What they'd salvage, they'd only be able to use in that configuration as they don't have the pods for the others and they have no way of replenishing those pods should they take damage or be destroyed.

Weapons are not just the pods but fit modularly into the pods as well. That's how you get all the custom omni rides.

Also, since IS omni tech was reverse engineered from clan stuff and uses the same standard (minus those 3060's proprietary FWL faggots), you can slap clan weapons straight onto IS omnis. Look at the original Dragon Roars book for all the crazy stuff they did with captured clan weapons in Bulldog.

He was killed in action.

Kind of a shame. And a shame what happened to his unit.

I think a quick irregular brigade of his Avengers would have served the LAAF/LCAF well, in the vein of the Stealths or Chisholm's Raiders for the AFFS.

>3060's proprietary FWL
[desire to know more intensifies]

>Whitworth is also FWL/Dracs like the Spider. Assassin is FWL.
What?

>what era/premise would be the best for a first time GM and first time players
Planetary revolt with outside support, any era.

Speaking of salvage, is there any way to give a vehicle cargo capacity in Meklab? A lot of support vehicles and dropships have a cargo capacity listed as "88 tons" or "88 tons 1 door". But if I try to make a new vehicle the only way I can add cargo is to put cargo bays in as misc equipment and they only range from .5-10 tons in size. What I need is a selector that allows me to specify capacity in tons like how it handles infantry cargo, but I can't find an option for that. Is this simply not supported yet?

What happened to the rest of the Avengers then?

And was the Jihad nothing more than an attempt on the writer's part to get rid of the excess characters, mercenary commands and military units (like the Comguards)?

I notice outside of the Clan units, a lot of the commands and units that were destroyed among the Houses and in the Mercenary world were not rebuilt.

What was the specs of his?

I've been boycotting them for about five years now. Still love the game, but fuck the company.

Info is in the Jihad Era upgrade TRO's. The Drac factories license their designs to the FWL but FWL manufacturing makes a lockout system so only pods they produce work with their mechs.

The two remaining Avengers regiments were folded into the new Thorin FTM. Then it was kept near Tharkad, and when the Falcons jumped the border (yet again) it was committed into action. It took losses and after Archer was killed I believe the remaining survivors actually quit the LAAF and joined a merc unit that later disappeared.

I also remained convinced that Katya Chaffee was a Blakist ROM agent.