/btg/ Battletech General!

>Stormcrow B

Just curious but is your Hazen character's first name also your first name? Not judging.

Nope. Well, sort of nope. The character in the campaign isn't. My canonization theoretically is/was supposed to be since it's supposed to be commemorating what I personally did.

I know, right? Stormcrow B is probably one of my favorite Mechs. It's kind of like running a Blitzkreig on steroids, and Blitzkreigs are fun incarnate.

What IS WarShip (still existing IS designs, so no SL ones that ceased to be after they all went to be new Clan ships) has the greatest DropShip capacity? Obviously the Potemkin is right out due to the above, but most of the ones I've looked at only hold at most 6 Drops.

Is there anything like this for the Ghost Bears? Say if I wanted to make a star for them in the same era.

I've been doing some independent research and what I can find for them as common or favored mechs are the Fire Moth, Viper, Mad Dog, Warhawk, and Executioner. Anything else?

Artist user? Could you please try your hand at whipping up an Excalibur?

At least it wasn't a stern rake...great diorama.

What AoS systems do you play?

>Is there anything like this for the Ghost Bears?
Nah, there was never a ghost bear phonebook like the wolf and falcon ones.
Hey NEA, the warship discussion last thread got me thinking about IS naval doctrine in your more ships AU. I've got some of my own ideas about the periphery, but I'm interested in hearing what you think about the IS navies

Nope. Wolves and Falcons got a full write-up in their SBs. According to fluff the most common Bear machines are the Viper/Dragonfly, Mad Dog/Vulture, and Executioner/Gladiator. They have more Fire Moths than anyone else but apparently mostly use those for Elemental transport.

I'm currently running a 3025 era BT mercenary campaign for my group. The players mechs are as follows: Dragon DRG-1N, Griffin GRF-1N, Hatchetman HCT-3F, Panther PNT-9R, Firestarter FS9-A.

Depending on the players actions in the next few sessions, they may or may not get an addition mech to join their unit. I'm wondering if anyone has any recommendations as to what that mech should be to best round out the team.

Avalons and Feng Huangs have 6, most others have 3 or 4.

A bug, or Archer. Bugs are common and reasonably priced, Archers are common and would let Griffin multi role more as FS is covered.

That unit is pretty light so I assume you don't want the GMNPC to roll in with a heavier machine and steal all the limelight. I'd add a Trebuchet or something to beef up the ranged firepower a bit, medium and short is pretty good though.

Maybe a trenchbucket? TBT-5N - Mobile, good fire support?

If air support is going to be a thing, a Rifleman is an extremely good idea. Otherwise, a Dervish or Treb or Archer for fire support sounds like just exactly what they need

Or a Dervish, since it seems like they're on the DC/FS border.

Ok. I'm considering the Viper for my GB MechWarrior's first Omni. From what I can gather reading fluff Clanners usually start in lighter vehicles.

Thoughts on the Prime through D configurations?

The A Configuration looks like the best general purpose to me but I'd like to hear what others who have used it might think.

Archer would definitely be a good addition but I probably should have mentioned I want to keep it relatively close to the same weight as the rest of the team.
Trebuchet seems solid. I definitely agree that the groups long range firepower is lacking.
I wasn't planning on bringing air support in any time soon. Aside from myself and one of the players (and even then neither of us have played in a few years), this is the groups first experience playing BT so to keep things simple for now I'm keeping it mostly mech-centered.
Funnily enough, they're actually operating in the Periphery around the bottom of the FWL/CC/FS. Not sure if there's a specific name for that region of space. The MechWarrior they may be picking up is from the FWL.

Yeah, then give them a Treb. make him a disaffected Regulan for lulz.

Does anyone have a blank copy of whatever the most recent Dropship record sheet looks like? I have to fill some record sheets out for tomorrow ASAP.

Why not a hunchback 4J?

For a jack of all trades A is the way to go. C is pretty clear an infantry/ba hunter B is a decent sniper but pretty dedicated as such. The prime is just meh and D is like a junkier A

If anyone can tell me where to find info about the Shadow Hawk SHD-11CS2, that would be awesome.

Record Sheets: 3085 Unabridged — Project Phoenix, p. 83

Wait, nevermind, that's just the 11CS
Dunno about the 11CS2

I was questioning the wind conditions that allow the flags to be blowing aft like that, but otherwise, yes.

Heh, the wind conditions which forced the flags to do that was quite real.

To make the posting deadline, I had to take the diorama outside to get well-lit pics while the PVA glue on Java's flags was still drying, and I suppose they promptly blew back like that and dried before I noticed them in the photos later. The wind was outside was quite strong. You will note that the Connie's flags and pennants are correct for the wind direction indicated by the sails, and both sets of sails are correct as per the course track from the records of the battle.

Yeah, I'm trying to find the 11CS2 specifically for /btg/RO purposes.

Chalk it up to masts swaying from the broadside, which they do.

I have a 4J as one of my mechs in our 3040 campaign, and can confirm; it gets work done.

Would the Sea Fox and Nova cat warriors of the Clan Protectorate lead units of IS troops? I kinda want to make a unit with a shit-hot Clan pilot in a Clan mech supported by 4 IS guys in Hunchbacks and Anvils and stuff.

So a lady from my church just came by to give me this.

I need to start going to church.

But for real, that's awesome. Does she know you do BT? Or was it "hey, here's a box of little figurines, and I know that guy does little toy soldier games"?

She has heard me talk about BT specifically

>The Protectorate thus formed two new Clusters of native, freeborn troops with deep loyalties to the region and placed Spirit Cat and Sea Fox warriors in senior leadership positions.

I need to start going to church.

But for real, that's awesome. Does she know you do BT? Or was it "hey, here's a box of little figurines, and I know that guy does little toy soldier games"?

Thank you Veeky Forums captcha system, for making me think I never made the first post

Funny you ask, talking about this right now for /btg/RO related stuff.

How many escape pods/lifeboats is "too many" for a DropShip?

>escaping a doomed vessel
Do you even Drac, son?

1. Technicians go down with the ship, warriors are already planetside.

I'd say enough for all the crew, bay personel and potential passengers +25% is about right

Heh. Refitting a DS to be a combined armor/infantry carrier and my calcs are saying I need over 120 to jettison everyone. On 'mech and cargo carriers, obviously, smaller numbers due to smaller numbers of bay personnel. But friggin' infantry, man. Considering stripping many out and just put a few small craft bays in there and use something like an Ares to bail the infantry out.

I recently used the -1A5 version of the Charger in a game... And was impressed. I mean I knew the staple Charger was shit so this thing really did a number.
Anyone else here use Chargers?

1.

t. clanner

>tfw you will never fight an unaugmented trial of possession for an escape shuttle while the ship blows up around you

I've always wondered why clan society havent broken down in pointless trials over the pettiest things. Their entire society is so amazingly retarded on every level you just cant help but stare in disbelief. Especially the ones trying to mix religion into it.

>You will never roleplay as the clanner who killed the trial challenger (and only witness) with a weapon and Had to cope with his lack of honor

Yeah, dracs.

Seriously though I used one to punk my players. They still don't trust me.

I have one, but since I'm a 3067+ player at heart, I don't use the 1A5 so much as the 3K and the SA5, but the 1A5 is definitely a Liao beast. The 1A9 for House Kurita is still a bit anaemic, but is far better than the original.

>Not sure if there's a specific name for that region of space

The Froncs

That's more of the triangle between the taurians, capellans and canopians. He's just talking about the general spinward periphery

Okay, so I decided that I'd try out MegaMek for the first time. I randomly generated a lance of mechs for each side, then realized I'd probably prefer to start small and deleted all but one from each side. I know literally neither of these mechs. So, because it was just a 1 on 1 match, I tossed it into a tiny Solaris map, just so I could get a taste of how the game played quickly. And boy, was my wish granted. First turn, I moved up, and my AI opponent moved up right next to me. I proceeded to fire everything but a pair of large lasers, to keep me at zero heat, and the pic related happened.

1/3

With him just down on the ground like that, I of course delivered a swift stomp to the arm.

So to get this straight. In my first ever game of BT, on my very first shot I got a through armor crit that smashed my opponent's gyro. He ejected because of this. My first shot ever randomly killed the guy outright in a single shot.

Way I figure it, this is an excellent way to be introduced to BT.

I usually put on enough Life Boats to evacuate everyone, including bay personnel, and then also enough Escape Pods to evacuate everyone, including bay personnel. 200% coverage, with the reasoning that some may be unreachable in the case of emergency due to damage, and that escape craft that aren't filled to capacity allow longer margins for rescue.

OTOH I do remember looking at some canon ships with far less than 100% evacuation as well.

I guess you can put in a bay if you like, but consider the loading rates for that as opposed to escape craft. Infantry will have to start getting into the SC and the DS will have to survive long enough to get out. If you've crammed over 7K personnel into one DS... well, there's your problem. That sounds like a regimental-level carrier, which is a lot of eggs in one basket.

The Clans that feud to that level get slapped down with Absorptions.

7K? No, try 700. 12 platoons of infantry and a battalion of armor. That's not really unheard of; an Excalibur carries the same or more.

My bad, I literally just woke up and added an extra zero.

In the end it's up to you. With escape craft you can just press the nope button and bail out. With a small craft you need to either load everyone in before entering combat if you have enough warning or hope you get enough time while combat is going on.

I'd still go the escape craft, it's less than 1kT.

Umm hunnie that's actually the Aurigan Coalition

I have a battle report for you guys on the warship fight I asked about yesterday.

So this was a 1st Succession War fight, 600kBV, all warships, canon selections. 100x100 map, newtonian vectors and extreme range. We wound up using ECM rules, which were less complicated than I thought. When you have nothing but warships without stuff like fighters; however, it just turns into a random stat boost/penalty each round. You can't even use it strategically other than by clustering since it's rolled during weapon phase and not for the next round.

I was FWL and brought 2 Atreuses, 2 Essex I's, 2 Block I League Destroyers, 1 Block II, and a Baron

He was Lyran and brought 1 Tharkad, 2 Block II Commonwealth Light Cruisers, 2 Makos, and a Dart

He deployed his forces with the Battle Cruiser at its core, limited overlap and the Makos as flankers to the side.
I kept my forces in an overlapping knot and smashed through the center of his line before he could cluster up properly at about ten velocity full broadside.

The Baron being way too slow for a destroyer was the only one of my force slightly separated from the rest. He singled it out on turn three when I zipped through the middle of his force and he wiped it off the map. The Tharkad meant business.

My ships, however, had a target in basically every arc. The Essex's used all their sinking and everything else struck out with everything but point defense and short range bays. I took out one of his Mako's that got a sorry ECM role, and chewed into everything else.

1/3

We passed each other, flipping end over end and rolling to present fresh sides as we positioned to burn back toward each other. He let his remaining Mako drift far out of range, I think worried that I would focus on it. I was just hitting with everything I could and trying to get in the best position I could to do so. My stuff had the guns but not the armor. I needed to bring everything on target I could. His fleet had essentially broken in two, with the Tharkad and the Dart pairing up for ECM cover and the Commonwealths clustering to go after my own destroyers.

I did something similar, and paired up my Atreuses to keep both his groups in the Nose FRL, BSL arcs while bleeding velocity off my destroyers to keep them on the map, giving them access to only the nose and front side weapons.

I stripped more armor off his everything until I began to break things and he blew an Essex out of the sky that had taken a nasty nose hit the last round. His ships continued to drift further off as he tried to disentagle himself from my force. I brought my Battleships in to focus on the Tharkad, and he welcomed them with a broadside. A lucky hit and he wrecked the sensors on one Atreus, rendering it essentially useless.

Now as his fleet drifted and scattered into extreme range, he finally began to try to maneuver them back together. I had a two round head start on him with my own destroyers and brought them in a looping counterclockwise curve to join my undamaged Atreus in attacking the Tharkad.

I got excellent ECM rolls on both my Battleship and my Block II, while he flubbed several of his and my whole fleet clobbered both the Tharkad and the Dart. Those Darts can really take a beating. I'd never fought a ship with reinforced internal structure before.

His Mako tried to reinforce them but all it did was draw my guns for a round before exploding.

2/3

Only during the span of that game. I'm sure it will collapse as quickly as it stood for sake of continuity, and the Argo will be consumed by the supernova that eliminates all the worlds that were inserted into the lore to make the story work, making it as though none if it ever happened.

>hunnie

About this time, his Commonwealths were arriving to contribute, all in the yellow from the previous exchange, several missing whole sections of armor. The Dart was missing four at this point. I really hadn't hurt the Tharkad all that much, a combination of targeting and bad rolls, but I figured if I could just keep pounding at it, it would succumb eventually.

The next round I cracked it with a double hit from my Block II Naval Gauss and double-critted the sensors, rendering the monster as toothless as my own second Atreus. That was when the match was pretty much decided. He had four chewed up functional ships and I had five mostly undamaged ones. We still fought it out because you never know how the dice can go but four rounds later and the last of his Commonwealths got cored by a bank of NL45's without a single of my other ships going down. He did tag the KF drive on one Block I, the cargo hold on the remaining Essex twice, and some dropship collars on the Atreus, which would all suck in a campaign but don't make much difference in a pickup.

Also, the megamek ramming rules don't seem to work with newtonian aero stuff engaged. Both me and my opponent tried some tactics from the Davion School of Warship Command with our useless but couldn't get it to work.

All in all, a lot of fun. Next match is SLDF Amaris Coup, 2 million BV, 12 units, final destination. Dropships allowed this time, but no fighters. All I know is the stars are gonna be full of Mckennas.

3/3

Something must happen since they've stated the game and the Aurigan Coalition are canon.

After the evident collapse of the Coalition, a couple of those worlds ended up in the Fronc Reaches

Randal's canon is shit. I don't think he knows that much about BT really and a bunch of MWO stuff he's declared canon fits into continuity poorly if it all.

The Argo by itself breaks construction rules and canon, so l stopped paying attention right there.

Whelp, it looks like I'm scrapping my current BT campaign.

The problem is that to reduce the logistic burden, I had essentially split the game into a lot of 1v1s instead of having a single 9v9 table, and people are unhappy with the lack of socializing.

So I brewed this up in the last hour as a replacement. Not for tomorrow's game, thank god, but maybe as something I can show them as a "here's where I'm thinking of going". Again, because I'm all about reducing logistic burdens (since if I don't do stuff it oft-doesn't get done), I'm looking to essentially leave the actual GMing up to AtB. That is, we use AtB to generate contracts and missions and OPFORs while playing a 3044-start-date merc campaign.

I'm planning on using a combination of bullshit kludged-together group generation and FM:Mercs(r) for the overall formation. I am, however, making sure to use Xotl's 3039 tables for people's lances, and we're going to give the Quirk system out of the BT Manual a real workout; all Mechs have listed quirks.

Any thoughts before I shove this in their face during lunch break tomorrow (technically today)? Anything I've missed horribly in the last hour of typing? I'd *really* appreciate a second or third look - typing rules while medicated, pissed-off, and at 1am leads to less good times than one might like.

Being triggered by the Argo is real fuckin' autistic, man.

The Argo is the best thing about the new battletech game.

> I know literally neither of these mechs.
>dont know the flashman

You are an excellent individual. Flasmen are for bad people that should feel bad.

And yeah, that's a pretty wicked first game. Welcome!

The Argo would be awesome if it signaled an initiative to redo all of the aerotech bs, but no. It's just a two-off illegal-as-fuck ship that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.

Redoing aerotech would require a significant demand from the fans to do so. If that demand didn't exist, and wasn't vocal, they'd just be terrified it would alienate the playerbase.

>gravdecks don't make sense

No, it's just symptomatic of how little people like Randall know or even care about BT canon proper.

If they're going to declare it a pseudo-canon game where the broad strokes happened but not necessarily exactly like that, then fine, whatever, I'd give no fucks. MW3 is nuts, how does one Lance go through about a Jag Galaxy by itself? MW4 likewise, or the BT cartoon getting relegated to being IC media. none of that bothers me.

"There was a relatively large, unusually well-equipped Periphery nation in this region of space that nobody noticed, and also the mercs they were using had a one-of-a-kind technological marvel ship" is a bit different.

And then on top of that there's Randal declaring it's now canon that Noton had a Rifleman II, may have used it on Solaris, that female pilots are oppressed and looked down on with the Razorback, and more.

The "better pilots for lighter rides" thing is a neat concept but I get the feeling it might fall apart if an enterprising player thinks about it for more than a few minutes. 45 tons is very forgiving to create a lance out of and there are several options than when paired with 2/3 pilots could cause some serious hell. The random rolls help smooth that out but it's something worth noting. I dunno how "powergamey" you are in your campaigns NEA, but I'd be a bit worried about that notion. Especially if OpFor follows similar composition rules; a bunch of 2/3s in energy Lights might really screw with a lance of 4/5s in heavies, and conversely your players might find a lance of 2/3s in fast energy Lights to make OpFors in heavy lances with regular pilots trivial.

Also, letting AtB generate contracts might lead to some strange OpFors that when controlled by Princess are fine, under the control of a human player they are way out of line BV-wise. At least in my experience AtB will stack double BV against you, at the very least. Mind you much of it is vees, but still.

All in all, seems 7/10, would like to play in. Made for a nice little read whilst I sip my "life sucks then you die" scotch and ponder how to waste two or so hours till I finally sleep.

>And then on top of that there's Randal declaring it's now canon that Noton had a Rifleman II

I dont really think he gets the point of canon rumor. Noton MAY had a Rifleman IIC. No one knows.Its funny to guess and adds to the mystery and nebulousness of the character. Less is sometimes more.

>"There was a relatively large, unusually well-equipped Periphery nation in this region of space that nobody noticed

Oh yeah, time to rehash the clan invasions again.

While I do like the idea of some completely random humans out there, this is just lazy as fuck.

>that female pilots are oppressed and looked down on with the Razorbac

opression olypics managed to creep into battletech? I'm impressed

>Female pilot oppression.
You guys can rest easy knowing that if Randal thinks women are still oppressed in the future, as an obvious reflection of current politics, it means in his fantasy world the SJW regressive liberals are as weak shit as we know they are now.
In his fantasy, the cucks stay cucked. Bet he didn't think about that angle :D

I mean, how retarded you have to be to think women are impressed when you always have atleast one woman running a successor state(even outside of Canopus) and some female war heroes running around.

Battletech really is pretty egalitarian and progressive in its own quaint 80s-90s manner. Weird place for inserting identity politics

Yeah, really. There's like two actually sexist places in battletech, one of them is the designated villain faction, and the other is the old cheap sci-fi cliche of "what if 50s sexism but with women running the show". And aside from the random Planet Of 80s South Africa and a bit of "it's WWII anti-jap racism IN SPACE", there isn't any real race issues either, as Best Samurai demonstrated indirectly by nobody commenting on it

>There's like two actually sexist places in battletech,
I'm pretty sure the Marians are pretty sexist as well, though I may well be confusing them with Caesar's Legion from FNV, though

>hating on based flashbulb

Meet me in the Circle of Equals, surat.

I thought you hated LLs paired with MLs.

The thing with Noton using anything other than a RFL-3N is flatly impossible given how Solaris works. 'Mechs are rigged with sensors for the bookmakers and spectators, the arenas are rigged with sensors to show spectators what's going on, 'Mech sensors between seismics and MAD would spot the difference between a normal Rifleman and a II, and so on and so forth. Him having or using a Rifleman II before was a canon rumour that a lot of players latched onto OOC to explain how a Solaris champion could have racked up that many wins in a shitpile, but Randall decided to go ahead and just say Noton had it.

Just as with the Razorback stuff, even in the oldest fluff you've got Natasha, Candace Liao, and a number of the notable pilots in TR 3025 being female, but nope, instead of just being treated as any other professional outside the Dracs and Capellans, they're treated like shit because fuck it I say so.

I can just ignore it for my home games because it's fucking retarded, but that shit is canon now because the Line Dev said so.

>Caring what glorified pirates think.

Are we gonna complain about Grimm being a sexist with a massive slave harem next?

>No one knows.

We know. It's one of those things that the readers know for certain no matter what the in-universe conspiracies say. Like we know for certain that Sun Tzu Liao is alive in a cryo chamber on Liao in the Dark Age while the Confederation claims he ascended to godhood and the Republic claims he died in his mech back in the early 3100's during a raid. Or all the pre-Civil War conjecture in universe about how Victor killed his mother when we knew 100% that it was Katherine and who she hired and everything.

Plus Justin Allard actually drives the damn thing and it IS just a regular-3N
Thankfully all the MWO fluff technically canonizes is that Noton has ordered or otherwise acquired some sort of extra-specal Rifleman but implicitly never actually recived or used it

Grav decks make a lot of sense. A mothership to dropships without the ability to jump is just pants on head retarded.

So instead of redoing aerotech, they just do dumb stuff with it.

No, it's not that they're terrified of alienating the playerbase, they're terrified of doing a lot of work on something that probably won't directly generate income. And that's actually defensible.

Why can they choose 2 or 4 but not 3?

>Caring what glorified pirates think.
>Are we gonna complain about Grimm being a sexist with a massive slave harem next?
That's a valid point. Two *actual states* are sexist. Pirates are obviously a different deal.
But it's true, if it wasn't for capfagging, the taurians would probably have blasted them to bits in the 60s and we'd have escaped Dark Age Rome Sheng bullshit, but oh well