/btg/ Battletech General!

>balancing scenarios for anywhere between 5 and 19 players who don't RSVP gets real old, real fast, and I've been doing that for a hair over 11 consecutive years now.

You're a fool

Hey NEA, I was just wondering the other day what things you would change if you were in charge of making BT 2.0

I'll look over it. Might be tomorrow morning before I can comment.

What do the double asterisks mean in the RATs? I didn't see any reference to them in the file.

They're second-line units for the factions. Right there on page one.

On page 1 of Xotl's RAT tables, meant to say.

To be fair, amongst the Scandinavians of the region, Swedes have a much higher representation in the DC. So much so that Swedenese is one of the official languages of the Combine.

Thanks a bunch.

Which TRO 3039 / advanced tech retcons make no sense exactly?

Wew lad.

OK, the answer is *a lot*. Short version:

First, the game is getting rebooted with new rules. The rules should be similar in scope and detail to the existing rules, but they will be looked at with the hindsight of 30 years of "why the hell didn't FASA do math on this stuff?" Of specific note would be a move to a 2d10 base roll instead of 2d6. A larger RNG allows for greater use of small bonuses without completely blowing the curve (somebody with a 4-point total gunnery advantage - say, a 3 rating instead of a 4, a TComp, and a pulse laser - completely blows a 2d6 curve out of the water, while it's strong but not overwhelming on a 2d10 curve).

Second, I'd get a bunch of generally well-regarded science-fiction writers (not just writers of game fiction) and pay them for two weeks to sit down with me and discuss rebuilding the game universe and core factions. I still feel that 5 Great Houses and possibly a TH/ROTS in the middle is a solid basis, but the differentiation and resulting motivations and the possible broad-stroke action plans (for at LEAST 30 in-game years) for those factions will be run through people who develop that sort of thing professionally. The characterization goals will be somewhere between the old "IRL country in SPAAACE!" stereotypes, and the current "everyone everywhere is unable to work together and and pointless edgy" fluff guidelines, since cultures *do* exist, *do* fall into recognizable and quasi-repeating patterns, and *can* be stereotyped...but need to be more differentiated in the details than they were originally written.

Third, copy the Japanese. Hire artists with mechanical engineering experience to design new art, but keeping the original art as the core inspiration for the new designs. Pay them on time.

Fourth, implement my way to make blackwater naval combat relevant without being OP. I've gone into this before.

Finally, make sure I'm done with any and all home renovations before starting all this.

All of them. The presence of Advanced technology in the Inner Sphere is explicitly contradicted by the novels, and novels are still a higher form of canon than sourcebooks or TROs.

It's completely bollocks'd up.

>Pay them on time

This is probably the #1 thing to do, and the #1 thing that hasn't been done enough.

Just continuing the Taurian conversation from the other thread.

I think what ruined the Taurians for me was the ever-present persecution complex/paranoia and the over-reliance on the Periphery handbook (the original one) for perspective of what exactly makes a Taurian a Taurian. That and the insistence they were super-awesome and being only ignored because of that super-awesome sauce. Best faction ever BS!

My take on the Taurians is they're Space Albertans with Space Vietnam's level of being crushed under the weight of Space America colonial power that they've never really come back from.

I love the Brass Bull. It's a logical "upgrade" mech, rather than the mess that is the Marshal and despite having a goddamn cow themed name, it's solid.

Mostly this. The Warrior series especially have viewpoint characters at the level of Hanse Davion and Dr. Banzai having to have FoundTech concepts explained to them as a result of the Clan Invasion. Meanwhile some of the recent sourcebooks (3039 and IIRC one of the starterbooks) put things like pulse lasers, DHS, and XL engines as existing in the late 3030s and mid-3040s. The fact that the heir of the Federated Suns has to have ER lasers explained to him when (according to the retcon) they've already existed since he was like 8 years old completely beggars belief.

Additionally, there's a whole mess of downrated SLDF designs which used to be explicitly extinct and which suddenly reappear in the IS without any meaningful manufacturing support. The IRL reason is that huge gaping holes were left in the Mech selection when FASA/FanPro phased the Unseen out of the Mech distribution tables and RATs...so they backfilled them with the SLDF designs. In-universe, again, it's a tremendous retcon that makes huge chunks of fluff completely meaningless (in that they make no sense).

3035-Clan Invasion is just...really messy, if you care about it making sense whatsoever. There's no way around it except to go to either extreme: full GrogTech, or full Embrace the Retcon.

Okay, idea for the gathered. If you could make any unit constructed with any home brew mechs that guys have displayed on /btg/, which models would they be?
I *need* a recon unit made by all of these Hunchback Jumpies. Also someone posted months ago some min/maxing Clan versions of old Macross / Macross II classics that were number crunchy all to hell.
Mind you, this is a request for an entire unit filled with home brew machines, be it a lance, a company or whatever.

I can't find one where Hanse has one explained to him, but this one is good:

>Phelan dropped both crosshairs onto the ragged ferrocrete dolmen the computer marked at 305 meters. When the computer had a target lock, a gold dot pulsed in the center of the crosshairs. Flicking a glance at his control panel, Phelan saw the medium lasers were controlled by the joystick's trigger. He tightened his fingers down on them.

>Used as he was to lasers that produced one sustained beam of coherent light, the Omni's weapons surprised him. Each medium laser spat out a series of micropulsed bolts that peppered the target with laser fire. Whereas normal lasers often slashed a trench through a target's armor as the target moved, this weapon chewed away at one spot, with the computer making small corrections in targeting to keep the bolts following one after the other.

>"Sonovabitch! What the hell is this?"

>Natasha laughed heartily. "Your medium lasers are Kolibri Pulse lasers. The problem with straight-beam lasers is that the material they vaporize helps diffuse the beam, lessening their damage. The pulses allow for vaporized material to disperse, increasing the ability to hit. The rapid cycling makes the weapon run hotter, but the higher damage potential is worth it."

I guess the Nagelring forgot to cover Pulse Lasers :^)

Shit, do they even read what they write?

Tech retcon bullshit is solely a result of some select OF whiners lobbying for it right about the time CGL first took over from Fanpro. Between the Fanpro Edition of Total Warfare and the CGL Edition

OF stuff used to literally bitch about "Clan invasion tech is too sudden. It should be gradual. Also don't take away my Crabs if you fix TRO:3025R"

Those kind of fuckers are responsible for the current mess. Better to just go full grog on the subject. At least you only have to burn about four books that way instead of twenty.

No problem with going full Grog. Never listened to the shoving 2750 downgrades on us in the first place.

Probably not.
Even OG TRO 3050 talks about the advancement of tech and says they had figured a lot of it out by the 3040s and were retooling factories and such, but that nothing had reached the field before the Clans hit. So it was still contradictory with all these important people not knowing about it back then, even if not to the degree of the current fluff.

I don't mind *some* of the SLDF downgrades because they're genuinely fun mechs (the King Crab being the most notable example), but making it an all-around thing was retarded.
I'd be all for a few king crabs and Mackies and the very occasional Hermes I or Lancelot wandering around in 3025, but the retcon was just way too much

Goddamn. THOSE are right proper Marik waifus.

You got good taste.

That sort of thing always existed in the form of Lostech caches. Selling advanced gear for more rugged gear is also ancient. What was retarded was the standardization of it.

It's not "The King Crab Cletus" a record sheet of the modifications a prospector-turned-mechwarrior did to the find of a lifetime he dug up on Lopez but actual variants common enough to get designated. It wouldn't even be so bad if it was TRO:Rosebud, The Downgrades of 3039 or something.

yeah

Only having 10 shots for the AC always bothered me about the Hunchback. Upgrades with even less ammo or the same amount bother me even more.

>sane, responsible, leadership

And the reason you didn't lead an armed coup to become line developer is?

He'd rather make Strike Witches?

But seriously, it's a lot of fucking work to take over a company and revitalize a product line. It requires time, a ton of money, and a lot of hard ass work. Maybe the man doesn't want to do all that. Who can blame him?

Coleman lined the porch with AP mines, and his gazebo has a quad .50 in it.

And what positive thing have you done for Battletech recently? At least he's got a group.

Can you buy Edge for wingmen? That's the only thing that seems to be missing on the first readthrough. I agreed with the guy who rated the first draft a few threads ago as a 7/10. I'd maybe rate this as an 8.5/10 now, only because the lance leader creation process takes too long. If it takes more than 10 minutes to generate a character your system is too complex.

otherwise looks breddy gud. Wish I lived in your half of the country to play.

I'm not entirely sure what you describe as "sane leadership" would be entirely compatible with "armed coup" over how to properly administer a wargaming/roleplaying IP.

>He'd rather make Strike Witches?

Just the one supplement which hasn't been touched since October now. Though I occasionally get sent updates from a Columbis RPG group who plays with it, and I got a nice thank-you note from a credited artist who got some more work from her stuff being shoved into the supplement.

I'm continually amazed at the level of "stop liking what I don't like" that gets. Sometimes it's nice to just turn your brain off an enjoy watching/playing some completely stupid mashup. Strike Witches is a completely nonsensical show that tickles my mild /k/ autism in an amusing way; it's a fun break from "all grimdark all the time everything sucks" shows which seemingly compromise literally everything else right now. And this whole thing is doubly funny because I didn't post it into /btg/ at all: somebody had to go LOOKING for something to get pissy about.

Also, in terms of being a dev for BattleTech, given how this fanbase behaves, I - like practically EVERYONE ELSE qualified to actually be a dev for the game - want nothing to do with that particular shitpile.

>Can you buy Edge for wingmen?

Noted for 1-1 revision. And yes. I also have to add Attribute score increase costs, and I'm pretty sure I was too harsh on the skill points; it'll likely be every 3rd point going into the "free pool", not every 4th point.

MWO f2p shitters

Was making a joke, NEA. Settle down, buddy. I don't care about that thing at all, and in fact find it amusing.

I'd personally love to see you, along with the other namefags, at the head of BT. Can't do any worse than CGL and probably can do a lot better.

You really can't get much worse than the current administration of CGL. About the only ones worse would be Games Workshop. And we all know why.

>Was making a joke, NEA. Settle down, buddy.

Not upset, though I see how it could be read that way. Fault was mine. No worries.

>About the only ones worse would be Games Workshop.

Well, I don't know about that. Have you poked into the Palladium thing that just came down the pipe? Siembieda is evidently driving his writers to attempt suicide now or something. Like not joking; one of their guys evidently tried to kill himself last night over the game.

Or it could be Mongoose, who would publish a core rulebook and one expansion before abandoning it for 15 years.

Or it could be WOTC and we get card supplements, so that if you want to modify your Mech you'll need a Rare Tech, several Uncommon Double Heat Sink cards, and a Legendary Clan ERPPC. Hopefully you're lucky on booster draws.

Or Paizo could get it and we'd have a d20 version of the tabletop game, but where Techs are better at winning fights than MechWarriors because the writing staff for Pathfinder were beaten up jocks as kids and are having the "smart kid's revenge" now.

Or it could go to John Fucking Wick - he of the, "why would we put rules for 1-on-1 sword duels or naval ships in my game about being piratical swashbucklers?"

I'm NOT saying we should be thrilled that CGL has the license. I'm just saying that, given the "professionalism" portrayed by large swathes of the gaming industry, a "be careful what you wish for" attitude is likely wise.

Guy who commented on it the first time here; sorry I didn't respond to your response, but I gotta say this looks pretty good. I had to double check to make sure there wasn't an exploit with switching 'Mech specializations and the XP table for G/P, but it seems okay. My only complaint is that the -2/-2 seems too harsh; I'd make it -1G/-2P to reflect that you can still shoot okay, but different classes of 'Mech have very different dimensions and handling characteristics, so a greater penalty to piloting makes more sense than being a way worse shot to me.

Otherwise, looks good. Would play in.

So.
The Seabuster is listed as having a 19-ton, 250-rated fusion engine.

19 ton.
250 fusion engine.

>I *love* Assassins!

They look so robust... next to a 20-ton Locust!

Anyone have Marian Hegemony pics?

Official or fan-made. Like that battle armor suit I heard /btg/ was making with their own TRO.

I've been a Clan player for most of my time in BT and I'm looking into the far side of the periphery now. Romans in Space looks fun.

>mfw that art is almost a month younger than me

I would like to see what Iron Crown Enterprises would have done to BT or MWRPG. I mean, we already have a shitload of tables, but ICE really loved tables.

Imagine BT with a page for every weapon in existence, from the smallest small laser to the gauss rifle, and page upon page of critical hit effects ranging from "you scrape a bit more armour off the left arm, +1 damage" to "you put your gauss slug through the enemy's upper chest into the cockpit, and the pilot explodes like a blood sausage". And also pages and pages of fumbles.

>Palladium
There seems to be some concern about that suicide attempt, in that the guy making it may not be stable to begin with. Still, pretty terrible situation (and company).

>Mongoose
>WotC
>Paizo
>Wick
That's a pretty bad list. It's kinda why we keep saying that BT-friendly anons need to take the license away from CGL and do it ourselves. Couldn't be much worse than the current gaming industry, which is pretty awful these days. We just don't have the money to make a real effort at it.

All told I think the best prospective new battletech owners would be SJGames

Vehicles add 50% additional mass for shielding on fusion engines, and a 250 weighs 12.5 base. Add another 6.5 tons to that and you get 19.

MML is fucking up for me, are there any heavy gauss rifle quads and does that combination work as well as it sounds on paper?

I kind of want to see FFG take a crack at it (they're swimming in Star Wars license money so they could probably afford buying it outright, they already have infrastructure set up for model production and so wouldn't have to rely on IWM, and based on the games of theirs I've played it seems like they have non-terrible to actually pretty solid writers/game designers)

Goliath-4S has a heavy gauss, twin ER meds, and an LRM-10. Unfortunately it falls into the common Goliath trap of being under gunned for its tonnage.

I wouldn't want FFG anywhere near battletech. They've proven themselves objectively unable to write vehicle rules that aren't trash and are just not even a tenth as crunchy as people writing battletech need to be
I would have liked to see what the old GDW crew would have done with battletech, but they're all dead or retired by now

I always wanted to read some Battletech stories or novels about exploration and adventure beyond the usual inner sphere area.

The clans are to the "north" of the IS. But what lies to the east, west and south? Now THAT could be a very interesting story. Old abandoned outposts, stranded lostech starships, entire colonies that reverted to low-tech lifestyles.

Maybe even starbases inside giant hollowed-out asteroids. Or maybe a 300 year old exploration spaceship returns from the brink of known space, emitting strange radiation and sending unintelligible and horrifying transmissions.

Massive tectonic activity on far away planets send huge signal waves through space. But those waves can't be explained by planetary tectonics alone. Something intelligent must have sent them...

Maybe some ancient ship crewed by automated artificial intelligence returns and a huge shadow war for its posession breaks out.

Maybe an exploring spaceship finds ancient structures on a remote moon, surrounded by an ancient nebula that blocks all signals from getting in or out. The structures are clearly not manmade...

Wouldn't even need to break the "no living sentient alines in battletech" taboo. Maybe have them find ancient temples and cities, full of humanoid but not human skeletons. And a single, large underground chamber on a blasted world holds an energy signature and a very large cryonic chamber...

Please discuss!

Adding aliens makes it a more standard sci-fi universe. Part of BT's charm is that it lacks aliens (fuck Far Country).

I'm down for lost colonies and SL-era experiments and whatnot though.

If we're talking about "fixing" battletech, I think one of the easiest and simplest things to do would be to unfuck autocannons so that they actually have a purpose. The standard autocannons should weigh as much as their light versions, but keep their current range breaks. It would actually give them a purpose in game, the lighter ones being long-range and low heat sources of damage without being massively tonnage penalized like they are now, and the big ones still serve as heavy boomsticks without being overly heavy. Do away with minimum ranges on autocannons completely.

Ammo explosions should be less insane, although still damaging. They should cripple the mech, not reduce it to vapor. Pulse lasers should pretty much just be what X-pulse lasers are now, the normal IS pulse lasers just suffer too much from their stupid range breaks and extra tonnage to be very useful.

Specialty ammo should be available for all respective weapons, not just certain variants. Ammo variants for cannons has been a thing since the 1600s, it isn't a difficult idea to come up with.

all these

Agreed on all counts. Having Ultra-ACs, LBXes and normal ACs is completely redundant.

Drawfag, you back?
Would you consider drawing a slightly thicker, heavier-looking Warhammer? (like as art for the Warhammer II from last thread)

To add onto this, if a mech has double heat sinks, the upgrade only applies to heatsinks that aren't in the engine, that way there are certain edge cases where SHS are superior because they can provide the same amount of disipation for slightly more tonnage, but fewer crit slots, so if your mech is crit-starved rather than tonnage starved, SHS might be more useful than DHS for certain heat values. As it is now, there is never a situation where you want SHS over DHS, because going from 10->20 heat dissipation from your engine alone makes the DHS always the superior choice.

Make the hull-down rules for tanks act like the partial cover rules for mechs where a "hit" where it lands on the location chart anywhere below cover means it hits the hill instead. As it is now, putting your tanks hull down actually makes them die faster, because all hits go straight to the turret.

Let hatchets and swords roll on the punch chart without the massive penalty they have now. You're already putting a big chunk of tonnage into an otherwise poor weapon, no reason to gimp them further.

Only other thing I can think of is to possibly make the engine weight curve less insane at the top end so that maybe someday the 400 std engine gets use somewhere other than the Charger.

No, not him, just thought it was a sexy drawing.

>Only other thing I can think of is to possibly make the engine weight curve less insane at the top end
The big problem with doing that is that it would make 4/6 assaults a bit too viable, especially at 90-100 tons, which would just lead to a problem where they flat out obsolete heavies

Making XL and Light engines more widely available earlier on, and without the insane added C-bill expense would do the same thing I think.

Those should be a lot more common. And making it faster to kill some mechs with side torso destruction means fewer zombies that stay forever until you headshot them.

If you look at how it is now though, there is no tonnage where having a 400 std engine makes any sense at all.

I don't get some of the pictures I find in the older sourcebooks.

Miss Ningpo there is the future commander of Marshigama's Legionnaires.

Making CASE II available early on. Or having some kind of CASE for the arms.

Right but some ComStar guy LARPing as a Star League naval officer with a portrait of 8 year old Miss Ningpo photo autographed to the Taurian Velites... ?

Just... what?

*8 year old portrait

CASE, by its very nature, won't work on arms -- they don't have rear armor. So mounting CASE on the torso is a compromise, as it prevents damage transfer from ammo explosions.

Honestly, though, I'm a bit in agreement with the other poster about toning down the severity of ammo explosions. They do severe, if not fatal, damage to your 'mech and inflict some pretty nasty damage on the pilot. 2 points of damage is nothing to laugh at, and can often times result in a blackout, even if you have CASE protect the 'mech.

>

Hence "some kind of CASE" - like at a minimum ensuring damage doesn't transfer to the torsos even if the arm is a write-off, or half damage to the armor.

>like at a minimum ensuring damage doesn't transfer to the torsos even if the arm is a write-off
You mean like how CASE functions right now?

>CASE, by its very nature, won't work on arms -- they don't have rear armor.
Or you just make it function like CASE II does now?

Can somebody tell me if this is a variant of the Axman or something? What is it?

That, I believe, is the Hodag, a custom Heavy mech designed by the artist. It mounts a RAC/5 and 12 Meds (or Smalls, can't remember).

Right now CASE keeps the side torsos from damaging the CT, not arm explosions from damaging the LT/RT:

>If an ammo explosion transfers into a location protected by CASE, the internal structure in that location takes damage as normal. All excess damage is dissipated, as above. For example, if an Inner Sphere ’Mech suff ered an arm ammo explosion and damage transferred to a side torso equipped with CASE, the internal structure of the side torso would suff er damage as normal, and then the excess damage would harmlessly blow out the CASE panels.

Bundle of Holding has a Classic Battletech RPG sale. 12 bucks for main book, Mercenaries and two clan books (Warden and Crusader), 12 more add Hosebooks for Steiner, Kurita and Marik as well as 1st ed Periphery book and Interstellar Players. Anybody interested? Anybody wants to give their opinion on those books?

Just checked, it was designed by someone other than Shimmy. And it mounts a RAC/5 and 12 ER Smalls, along with TSM apparently.

This is PDFs, aye?
Get them from the OP for free, but they've at least picked a good selection

Thanks so much. Another pic tagged on the booru.

What you got, is a crazy Taurian wearing a SLDF uniform saying he'd be Star League for some Asian underage ass.

Yeah I know I can, but I like to buy stuff I want to run and not just read. And I am considering running BT someday, though I'm not sure those books would be enough.

I like it.

>Also, in terms of being a dev for BattleTech, given how this fanbase behaves, I - like practically EVERYONE ELSE qualified to actually be a dev for the game - want nothing to do with that particular shitpile.

I think the path there is to do what you think is best and ignore the rabble. As someone that rabbles, ignore it.

So does crazy Taurian guy. You see, he's smiling as brilliantly as can be... on the inside.

Ah, pics in the old books hold so much whacky fun.

Last I checked, clan mechs automatically get CASE in their arms if they are carrying ammo or gauss weapons there.

>mfw that art is older than me

I've got almost exactly two years on it. I feel young, given how old the artist probably was when he made it.

Only Clan mechs though. Inner Sphere mechs can't get any kind of case until CASE2

lol, I was just thinking about rules changes. but I for one support your trial of position

I just finished up painting some Pleiades Hussars, and I want to do some House Liao guys next. Been looking at camospecs, but I can't quite make up my mind on who to paint them as.

I've been considering
Prefectorate Guard
House Dai Da Chi
House Ma-Tsu Kai
House White Tigers
Harloc Raiders
One of the Reserve Cav regiments, maybe in desert camo?

>I just finished up painting some Pleiades Hussars
Pics?

Haven't done the bases yet, and my glass effects are painful weak, but sure, here's one of the lances.

Those look great, user. Well done.

If you're gonna do a CC unit next, you could do worse than Dai Da Chi, Fujita, and the Red Lancers in my opinion. Vong's Grenadiers have some nice camo, and some of the Big Mac units are really colorful as well. I used to play 15th Dracon myself, for a long while. I am repainting a lot of my stuff slowly so I may redo a lance or two in their colors.

>shogun
Why, user?

Given that the Assassin is one of the mechs that the players keep requesting and PGI keeps not delivering? Nope.

I'm full periphery up in this, user. I use what I got. And what I got is rather a few of those plastic packs.

Yeah, Red Lancers look neat. I'm gonna be basing all this stuff all arctic - the red and yellow would pop super cool.