/btg/ Battletech General!

Tactical question. What benefits does an ostscout have on the table? Okay it supposed to have some electronics gear, but it's not like it has a Beagle Active Probe or something, right? Is it just a one ML target?

>Post Jihad, are Highlanders worth their points, or are they outclassed by most of their contemporaries in the category of Assault Mechs?

I think the same goes pre-Jihad, mid-Jihad and post-Jihad. Highlanders are solid and have a fair old punch, overall they're decent but unexceptional. They're not Nightstars or Hellstars or Thunderhawks or Tomahawks, so they're not at the very top-tier. In anything other than a pure munchkin throw-down they'll do fine.

Jump fucking 7.

If you play with Quirks, they've got a bunch of electronic gear that does stuff.

If you don't, the base Ostscout is basically an 8/12 Medium Laser. The upgraded ones and the Star League Ostscouts are pretty solid though, lots of e-war gear like BAPs and TAGs and stuff.

I turned a Panzer III into a Bulldog

Did I do good?

I thought it was 8/12/8J.
>If you play with Quirks, they've got a bunch of electronic gear that does stuff.

>If you don't, the base Ostscout is basically an 8/12 Medium Laser. The upgraded ones and the Star League Ostscouts are pretty solid though, lots of e-war gear like BAPs and TAGs and stuff.

Yeah I figured the 3025 version was just a fast target. Thanks, man. I'd rather have a Spider or Venom.

If it's a pick-up game where you're just fighting to the death then their use is limited. You can try to backstab and distract with them, but they won't last long if there are a lot of big mechs on the table. You might hear some tales like how a guy jumped an Ostscout behind an Awesome on the edge of a cliff and then pushed it off, but that sort of thing is a one-in-a-million event.

In scenarios, Ostscouts can be useful for anything where speed and mobility are assets, e.g if you need to scan targets, escape from the map, chase down trucks, or play cat-and-mouse for X turns, etc.

With EW then they're a highly mobile electronics package.

Is there any electronics during the 3025 time period that would disrupt enemy targeting computers?

Venoms are mid-50's machines.

But basically this Ostscouts are not meant for combat. Even every TRO entry has said this.

What twigged you on to this and started the investigation, anyhow?

That's pretty awesome user.

We were bitching about how Dave is still doing his thing and someone posted the FB screenshot of Dave. Some of us noticed the "mutual friend: randall bills" line and were like ???????????????

I don't think anybody thought it would be anything, but here we are.

That's why I asked the question of: has anyone verified that it's actually a family link? Bills is a fairly common last name.

>I thought it was 8/12/8J.
It is, my bad. I have a bad habit of mentally categorizing things that jump by their TMM bracket instead of their actual jmp.

2/10 focal depth is wrong, unfuck your f-stop and try again.
Likely 10/10 model work though.

Nope.

...

Is the Shogun extinct after the Jihad? And how as it as a mech?

>Ostscouts are not meant for combat. Even every TRO entry has said this.

If they aren't meant for combat, then they shouldn't have been statted out for use in a WAR game. The Ostscout entry is a waste of two perfectly good TRO pages that could have gone to giving the Capellans a less-shit Mech selection, because we damn well need it.

It was revived in the dark age as a diamond shark special, because so many people have the damn minis and no other way to use them

>Randall went into panic FB mode instead of just saying "what, no, fuck that guy"

What did he do, specifically?

>If they aren't meant for combat, then they shouldn't have been statted out for use in a WAR game.

I assume you're not a fan of the weaponless Ostscout IIC then?

I'm a HUGE fan of the Ostscout IIC, mostly because it looks fantastically dopey.

So I've heard fans are able to write short stories for BT that'll be put on the main site. Is this true? Anyone here done it? Are the stories considered canon?

It also paved the way for most of the Dark Age and post Jihad Falcon Totem Mechs like the Onager with it's Partial Wing technology didn't it?

Send this shit to Topps and IWM

Fuck this shady cunt, he's been covering thing sup for at least the past 7 years, if not longer.

>because we damn well need it

Have you even looked at the plethora of everything post-Xen Sheng?

Honestly, I feel directly involving Topps in anything is a bad idea. If they get were they start acting on all unlicensed and fan minis than that's going to fucking suck. Corporate lawyers don't make any distinctions between those kinds o things. Besides, IWM holds all mini production rights so it should be totally in their court.

Not everyone plays simple fights to the death, user. BT can be played with scenarios that have objectives other than killing everything on the other side.

Far as I can tell he's been fucking with his privacy settings to make it more difficult to see if a particular person is friends with him.

Instead of, you know, just unfriending Dave

>The FWL originally had zero intention of doing anything but wiping out the Spirit Cats. When the Cats took Marik with the help of unexpected Space Jew assistance, Jessica decided to let them camp there as a deterrent to others. Now the FWL basically leverages their clan troops as a strike force and gave them nominal representation as payment for that. With going to war first against Andurien and then Regulus directly afterward, they really didn't have a choice if they wanted to hold what was left of Marik Stewart against the Wolves.
>So in short, the clanners are tolerated more than encouraged.
>The Cats are also working with the Space Jews to keep their technical trumpcard and make themselves even more indispensable to the NuFWL.

I'm just saying that if I were the C-G, I'd be doing everything I could to get so much as a Clantech LRM factory on Atreus. If need be, invest in stuff in the Protectorate. Wouldn't like it, but there's too much other shit to do and frankly I'm pretty sure the FWL can culturally engulf a bunch of Clanners that don't even have iron wombs.

The Space Jews are more worrisome than the Spirit Cats by a long shot, but Delta Aimag iirc has gotten into tension with the rest of the Clan by being too involved with the Protectorate. So that might just solve itself.

And, from an OOC point of view, I think it perfectly fits the FWL to make the best of it and grow in power by making friends in a hard time instead of going REEEEE FUCK CLANNERS and killing them all and capturing a factory or something, at the cost of a bunch of FWL forces.

Isn't a lot of their Dark Age stuff bad?

If you want to get into BattleTech, you have to...pay the Bills

Not him, but most of them are meh light mechs, a batch of so-so new omnis, and a parade of Plasma Cannon gimmick versions of old mechs.

Of their good mechs: the best variants of the Thunder, Ti Tsang and Lao Hu are all mean close-in brawlers, but still not as good as a Penetrator. The Tian Zong is nice as a sniper, but in its era we're flooded with Clantech so it's not as badass as if it were back in 3067. The Pillager is a brute but every House has big Gauss Assaults of their own, and the Pillager isn't the best of them.

I'd put the Cappies just above the Dracs for mech selection, and beneath the Stronks.

No. Dual Gauss stealth monsters and high end lights with cool running clan ERPPC's are not bad.

It ranges from pretty good (Tian Zong) to fairly mediocre (the Vandal) to outright mechanically broken(Stalker II)
A lot of them are extremely role specific, like the Agrotera, Gun and Raven II.

If IWM gets involved, though, and goes after them -- then Topps will get involved, by having a summons or request for discovery appear on their door. That's a worse way to start.

But if CGL/Randall is going to sit on their heels and do nothing, well, it might be the only way.

but does mike noe?

>What technical trump card do the Cats really have? Did they have any mobile spacestations or factories? Or really any lower castes at all? I thought most of the Cats stuff was destroyed or taken, and their dudes killed or taken captive by the Combine. How much advanced gear could they even possess?

>The Cats are basically working in lockstep with the Sea Foxes. It's the Foxes that have the technical stuff.

They don't have too many lower classes, but they do have some plus Nova Cat refugees. That might be enough to start moving towards Clantech production if they put project leaders in charge of FWL construction, or work as experts for Irian or something.

Also, the FWL does have some native clantech production even without the Clan Protectorate (Kong Interstellar, I think, among others) so it's not that far-fetched for a modest boost in available expertise to have serious results.

To that add the way that Wendigos and Avalanches and stuff are widely available, so the FWL could have both the producers and the physical copies to work from for Nova Cat original stuff.

I gave CGL/Randall two days to respond and the only thing I got was a block.

An e-mail has already been sent to IWM.

>to outright mechanically broken(Stalker II)

Which is in the FWL TRO...

>I'd be doing everything I could to get so much as a Clantech LRM factory on Atreus.

I wouldn't build on Atreus. It's less than one jump from the Wolves and has changed hands no less than three times in the last decade. Somewhere a little closer to the Capellan border or the periphery would seem smarter to me.

If you really want to wreck this guy's shit, wouldn't the thing to do be to contact Harmony Gold and Palldium? It's not really BT's IP that he's infringing on, it's theirs.

And we all know how hard-core HG is about this stuff.

Not really. The stuff that comes out in 3145 for everyone is of broadly the same standard, which for the Suns and Capellans means a giant step backwards and for the FWL and Dracs a massive leap forwards in quality. But they've still also got pretty much everything from previous eras which still means the Suns and Caps have an extensive selection of gear and can use the older, better shit they have over the relative handful of actual lemons the 3145 stuff lumbers them with\.

Nice. While I doubt anything will actually happen, I can hope.

Well, sure, ideally I'd put it on Curaumilla or somewhere, just said Atreus to make it clearly distinct from the Clan Protectorate.

So it is.
Huh.
No idea why I was convinced it was in the CCAF one.

>If you really want to wreck this guy's shit, wouldn't the thing to do be to contact Harmony Gold and Palldium?

I don't care about him, I just hope this can somehow be used to pry the IP away from Loren and Randall.

Which ain't gonna happen, but hey, anything that makes their life more difficult.

>I don't care about him, I just hope this can somehow be used to pry the IP away from Loren and Randall.
Who would it hypothetically go to?

How do we fix the stalker II?

Well the guy who discovered it said it was going to IWM.

Given that Topps apparently let them roll with embezzling almost a million dollars, I don't think this will push them over the edge, and I don't really want them to crack down on all BT fan community stuff. But it might be worth it.

>If you really want to wreck this guy's shit, wouldn't the thing to do be to contact Harmony Gold and Palldium? It's not really BT's IP that he's infringing on, it's theirs.
>And we all know how hard-core HG is about this stuff.

I'm trying to keep it in-house for now. In-house to the degree of BT-related license holders.

The end goal for me is for Randall to unfuck himself.

Given that Dave also copies IWM sculpts? Mike may very well give a very large fuck once he is in the noe

Give it arms, and don't put 4/5s in it.
I meant who would the IP go to if it was stripped from CGL?

Also give it normal fucking LRMs/fix ELRMs so they're ammo and not a different launcher.
Personally I like the MLs+TC.

>I meant who would the IP go to if it was stripped from CGL?

Depends on how much they're asking. Maybe we could crowdfund our collection of namefags to pick it up in a firesale.

Isn't it sold to the Confederation?:

masterunitlist.info/Unit/Details/6515/stalker-ii-stk-9a

For whomever asked for the Taurian art last thread.

Don't make me so erect.

What about the 3145 Lyran one?

I heard a lot of their stuff like their King Crab is atrocious.

>The end goal for me is for Randall to unfuck himself.

If Randal is willing to forgive Coleman for stealing the better part of a million dollars from the company they co-owned, what are the odds he'll do anything about a family member who's not taking money out of his pocket?

HG is the one to go to with this since he's recasting the Unseen. They own those and have a vested interest in Palladium's RobotTech Tactics stuff being the only ones on the market.

Well, a lot of the good stuff they got earlier was to give to the Suns, so they benefitted heavily by association. Their old stuff is still there.

People bitch about stuff like the Tenshi or Carronade being better than other things in the 3145 TRs, but even then they still aren't TR: 3058/PP/RS: U levels of optimised for the factions that got the really good shit back then.

>Tenshi

Now I've read that one repeatedly has some of the worst configurations of any Omnimech in the Combine and perhaps any Assault Omnimech.

It's okay, just way over-BV'ed for what you get.

Just noticed the autism over this David Bills guy.
Seriously? You live in a dream world if you think any of that plays towards legal trouble for CGL.
Even if he is related, you don't get sucked into court just because you're a relative of someone breaking the law.
The desperation and grasping at straws is real.

CGL isn't losing their battletech license, IWM isn't losing their miniatures license, PGI isn't losing their mechwarrior license.

Yeah, but it's not "their" mech.

Step 1 is to ditch the torso cockpit, but even then...

>Roll #1, (5 (Base piloting skill) + 1 (Hardened Armor) + 1 (20+ damage)); needs 7, rolls 6 : falls.

How come you've only shown up again when people are anti-CGL? Disappear to be a lazy fuck for months, now you're here at the exact same time... Did your masters tell you to quell dissent?

>implying that describes all their mechs in that TRO
>implying it even describes a majority
>implying you're not just that butthurt FedFag who comes here crying about the Atlas III being shit

>The desperation and grasping at straws is real.

Well yeah. Bear in mind that the people you're talking to represent the barrel-scrapings of the fanbase, the most disgruntled haters, grogs and shitposters you could find in anything BT related.

They aren't going to be convinced by reason. They'll just say you're a cuck, a shill and probably involved in whatever criminal conspiracy they've conjured up in their imaginations. They'll say I'm Loren Coleman. They'll say whatever they need to say to feel like they're in the right. Save your bandwidth.

That was about the point I gave up trying to talk to Feddie and Cappie fans.

>WHAT IS THIS SHIT, THE DRACS GOT A NEW ASSAULT OMNI
"Yes, it's their first second-generation design and it only took them 50 years longer than everyone else to get."
>BUT IT'S AN ASSAULT OMNI
"With a severe case of new toy syndrome and MRM-itis, and over-valued as fuck for what you get."
>THIS ONE CONFIG HAS CLANTECH ON IT!
"Even the best Tenshi config is gonna get bitch-slapped by the Dual Gauss monsters you got in 3058."
>FUCKING DRAC AUTHORIAL FIAT REEEEEEE

I mean, sure, it got a pretty sweet base chassis and all. But the Prime immediately shits the bed by mounting five fucking Light PPCs, the A has large VSPs with MRMs and lacks the speed to use them, the B has its BV bloated by a pair of TSEMPs, and the C brings all the firepower of a light-end Clan Medium with none of the usability. Yay.

If it had gotten some non-retarded configs and played to the possibilities of the base chassis, it could have been a beast. But it didn't, it's not, and even when you go with the best config it can't handle shit like the Thunderhawk, Devastator, Nightstar or Pillager despite being newer and higher tech.

I agree that this is all a bit silly, but it's probably good to bring to someone's attention since it is bad behavior that should be stopped (assuming they are indeed related, something that's yet to be proven).

I actually kinda like the Prime, although I'm not crazy about the supercharger or the RL10s.

The A is a monster in a city fight, and it's not even too expensive.

The B, well, TSEMP is hard to quantify. overall I think the BV cost for TSEMP is actually about right.

C is a Stalker II+ that doesn't fall over as much.

I'm going to do a relatively short stream talking about how to set up MHQ for the pastebin/people who want to play AtB in a few minutes. I know it won't save forever, but at least it'll be around for someone to save it. Feel free to ask questions in it.

twitch tv/campaignanonbtg as always.

Please realize that the original intent of bringing this to light is so it'll stop. Not so anyone loses their job or anything like that. We just want Randall to stop slapping us in the face for just this once.

They get a bunch of blakist mechs, a bunch of decent jihad era upgrades, and some decent new DA mechs.

If you think TRO:3145 is "all their DA designs" then you never even glanced at their actual DA forces in the original clicktech game.

Derp, didn't give a time. Starting at 8:10 Central.

please respond

If nothing else, bringing it to the attention of the fanbase so that people are warned about Dave the Toymaker and more pissed at Randall is good.

Money is fluid. It can be lost by a business and made up elsewhere.

If Topps lets this go, they're letting their copyright get weakened. It makes it easier for someone else to rip them off in the future and future legal arguments harder. Part of copyright is defending it. Letting infringements go unanswered in a court of law weakens your IP.

You could previously submit stories to BattleCorps, but that's likely not what you want. The stories are considered canon stories, but aren't just some fanfiction writer's fevered dream.

It's the best assault the Dracs have been given since the Naginata, but still not great.

To hear the Cappie and Feddie players bang on about it though, it's the ultimate assault Omni and breaks the game harder than the Hellstar.

I get where they're coming from in terms of their TRs not being as good as they hoped/were used to them being, but what they got is still better than the tripe served up to FWL and Drac players time after time, and doesn't invalidate their back catalogue either.

Could you elaborate?
My interest was really writing a short story about Lyran aerospace pilots working together as a wing.

>"Even the best Tenshi config is gonna get bitch-slapped by the Dual Gauss monsters you got in 3058."

Aren't the Stalker, Battlemaster and Gunslinger technically more of a threat than most Tenshi variants are?

And what are the Fed Suns complaining about? They got an Assault Omni that wasn't Clan origin before the Combine did.

I think the Templar can even out do the Tenshi.

It's got one good config (Prime).

The Tenshi basically suffers from the same new toy crap as the original Celestial configs. They'll give it better ones later I'm sure.

This talk about Drac omnis makes me wonder whatever happened to their old full clantech companies where they concentrated all their captured gear the same way the Mariks used to do with LAM's.

>Aren't the Stalker, Battlemaster and Gunslinger technically more of a threat than most Tenshi variants are?

A lot of the time yes.

>And what are the Fed Suns complaining about?

Considering how good a lot of their designs already are, I think a lot of players were thinking Clan-tech upgrades were the next logical step. Devastators with Clan LPLs and TCs, Warlords with Clan energy weapons and TCs, etc. Instead they got a bunch of new middling designs, some good machines, and no outright piles of shit in the Stalker II vein, which rustled their jimmies a lot since other factions got some reasonably solid offerings that were long overdue.

>They got an Assault Omni that wasn't Clan origin before the Combine did.

Well, the Sunder is a First-Gen Omni but it was immediately exported to and licensed to the FedCom. The Lyrans and Suns both developed home-grown assault Omnis ~50 years before the Dracs.

>I think the Templar can even out do the Tenshi.

Depends on the confiigs involved but yeah. Even has a variant with better Clan tech than the Tenshi got.

Could we just stop pissing and moaning about who got what on both sides? It doesn't really matter, and as someone on neither side it's incredibly tiresome.

>clan-tech
>upgrade
Maybe you you WANT to be massively over-BV'd.

>This talk about Drac omnis makes me wonder whatever happened to their old full clantech companies where they concentrated all their captured gear the same way the Mariks used to do with LAM's.

If they ever had any most of it got blown up in the Jihad.

A lot of the "Clan" machines the Dracs had were actually IS machines with a couple of Clan-tech bits bolted on, and by the rules in Combat Ops most of them wind up being things like Panthers that have Clan SRMs and an extra heat sink, Hatamoto-Chis with Clan Endo, and so on.

>We just want Randall to stop slapping us in the face for just this once.

Every one of you who post here deserve to be.

No. Not until my faction's design selection is made equal to the FedCom's in 3058. I had to live with and play against that shit, the least CGL could do is make up for it.

So... never, then? CGL is on the record as saying they never want to give anyone stuff as good as the 3058 stuff and associated upgrades, because it was too good and fucked the curve for designs up really hard.

What books have the earliest RATs for each Successor state? Anything predating the FM series?

Specifically looking for ones including aerospace RATs too.

Well then asking me to stop complaining about a clear imbalance is pretty fucking stupid then, isn't it?