/btg/ Battletech General!

That is undeniably the sexiest battletech mech that I have ever seen.

DELET THIS
[/spoiler]but give me a company of them first[/spoiler]

>Wolfhound

lol

No wolfhound has a weapon accurate enough to adequately hunt clan lights. It'll get ripped to shreds by a friggin' Dasher D

Wraith

Same guy here. :Lol, it's kind of a moot point now. The snow that's been falling has accumulated into deep snow and now none of my force can get away from all these jump equipped heavies the enemy has.

I don't suppose I'll be able to pay ransom and get my pilots back?

Wolverine-M, Wolverine-K, Osiris, Lightray, Buccaneer, Blitzkreig, PPC Uziel.

Fight the good fight and die with the enemy's heart in your hand
the bot is honestly pretty dumb, you should probably be able to pull this off, if you play it right

Remember that when they hit half of their starting BV remaining, you win and can end the game and claim all the salvage

Why is everyone suggesting IS mechs? The best thing to hunt a Clan light is another Clan light.

I'm doing a lot more damage to them than I thought I would at this point, but I'm fairly certain this is a wash at this point. The dice seem to be conspiring against me, and I'm a touch frustrated at this point and not playing my best. If I do pull it out, it's going to be a phyrric victory at best, several of my better pilots have been killed at this point.

If nothing else I'll take what I've learned about the campaign system and rock the next one.

Also, winning at half their starting BV remaining... this, I did not know. How does that work?

You either set it up in victory conditions in MM or you just wait until you see half the enemy BV gone and type /victory and the bot'll auto-declare defeat.

I always noticed the victory conditions listed in the mission types, but never bothered to set them. It always seemed to me like I'd lose out on too much potential salvage by just cutting the game there.

It'd be useful in this situation, though, if I took the enemy down that far.

The final result, total defeat for my merc company, and not enough assets left to be a viable combat force. Oprita Reyes, the pilot of my Stalker, gets MVP points though for taking down 7 'Mechs in that battle (and three of them solo when she was the last woman standing on my side) before finally being forced to eject, followed by a PPC execution.

They took her in the end, but she made them pay for it in blood. Just the way it should be.

You realize you're not limited to the forces it gives you right? You also realize that you don't have to just feed the bot kills, also, yes? Type /defeat and walk away. Or /victory and cheese it.

>I always noticed the victory conditions listed in the mission types, but never bothered to set them.
You're supposed to do that. That's why it gives you the damn conditions.

Not that guy but I don't use them either. It seems silly to have a battle just suddenly cut out when this magical number is reached, rather than the enemy having to actually withdraw under fire.

Unless it's a Clan-Clan battle, and honor rules (if they're being followed) says you have to let your opponent go when they admit defeat.

MegaMek doesn't support force withdrawal very well. That condition is just so you're not trapped in a game where you're losing your whole company because your or the bot are too stubborn and stupid to pull back after losing half your force.

Keep in mind that you only get salvage if your side "controls the field after the battle" according to the scenario rules - some scenarios don't give you control even if you are the "winner" (ex. Chase battles as the runner).

Also, opinions vary but according to the rules creator, the original intention of "Destroy X%" is by number of units, not BV. It's quite possible to run your campaign using BV percentages, but this can result in some games where nothing actually dies (BV being reduced by bad damage).

One option is to use "/kick" to kick the enemy bot player, then replace the kicked player with a bot set to "Escape" objectives. This helps to simulate a rout, if you'd rather not just /victory or feel it's unrealistic.

Again, not all scenario types give you salvage even if you are the winner - most of the specific scenario conditions are actually not automated but rely on self-reporting/monitoring.

You're free to just play a kill 'em all campaign of course but the rules system assumes you aren't always getting salvage; that's just part of the ups and downs of mercenary life.

Do the FWL, LC, DC, etc get access to precision AC ammo, AP ammo, all that? Or is it limited to the FS?

Yes, they're available to literally everyone

Not until late in the Jihad, if that.

Stealth Armour and alternate A/C ammo were, surprise surprise, both held close to the inventing factions.

Meanwhile stuff invented by the Lyrans, Dracs, and FWL gets shared pretty much immediately.

In his defence, it's not exactly obvious from the documentation which parts of the ruleset are automated and which are not; there's not really much of an introduction, and even the threads or the very helpful settings PDF doesn't actually explain what an Against-the-Bot Campaign gameflow actually is supposed to look like. It definitely took me a few missions before the ruleset started to click.

If I wanted to intensely spite Harmony Gold and Palladium and use modified Battletech to run Robotech fights on the table, how would you guys suggest statting the various Zentraedi battle pods?

Glaug would obviously be a marauder

Large engines, twin LPPCs and virtually no armor for the standard TBP.
Fuck, a fast XL Locust -1M with a small cockpit and the LRMs and ML traded for LPPCs would actually be perfectly representative.
As for the officer's pod, I'm thinkin a very fast XXL light-medium with two LPPCs and an ERPPC
Alternately, replace the LPPCs with CERMLs and use EVEN BIGGER engines
Armor is the last priority

Zents are all about fast as balls but extremely easy to kill if you can hit em

>how would you guys suggest statting the various Zentraedi battle pods?
This is the sheet for the Regult artillery pod. Basically the Ostroc and Ostsol are based off of really, really shitty copies of the original Regult art from only one angle.

That was me. It does look much better. It's not your fault, but I think the real core issue is that the girl is sitting in a deep shadow while wearing a black garment. Generally the focus of a pin-up style image is the pin-up, and it's hard to actually see her in the picture due to the composition.

I LIKE the image. She's just hard to see.

Somebody last thread requested I lighten this up a little. Hope this will suffice. I didn't want to take it too far.

EDIT: Also blurred the 'Mech Bay area a little to help set the focus of the image a bit better.

Glad it looks better. Sorry for the repost/post deletion, but I forgot I also did a version with the blur and wanted to post that.

>let's put red and black on top of red and black

Give her a red suit and black hair or something at least, she's basically got mimetic armor on at the moment.

I didn't draw her I just shooped the thing together. Recoloring her outfit is kinda beyond me at the moment. It's weird; I don't personally find her hard to see but maybe my monitor settings are different or something. I can see how it could be a problem.

I'll see what I can do about it but I'm not sure it'll be much.

She's not hard to see if you don't have shoddy nerd vision.

How bad of an idea would it be to go up against the Clans on my first contract? Only 20% salvage rights, but circa 3052, even that sounds like it just might be worth the risk.

What's your overall unit size, skill and upgrade rating, and enemy skills/quality? If you're not veterans with decent mechs fighting Green Clanners, you may be in for a rough time.

Depends on how you're playing. Old school, the refit kits are just going out that spring to upgrade from grogtech. That means you're boys likely are very low upgrade level.

Then you need to take your force size, composition, and the enemy force into account.

12 mechs (1 assault, 2 heavy, 7 medium, 2 light)
4 vet pilots, 3 green, rest regular
Upgrade rating is... uh... I don't actually know.
Enemy is Green/D, according to the contract screen.

So I'm assuming probably not worth the risk, now that I think about it...

You'll see some Clan mechs, but not a lot. If it's a short contract, you may be able to handle it, but if you're only a company, it's not worth it. Unless you're sure you can take on a shitload of Clanners anyway.

Your whole company together is going to struggle to take on a medium star (Mad Cat, Stormcrow Stormcrow, Dragonfly, Adder). So you probably want to think twice.

It's a solid point. The Veteran lance with 2 heavies, an assault and a medium can likely take out Green clanners however, because Green clanners don't get modern omnimechs.

Green clanners are 40 year olds with parksons disease in the worst SLDF 'mechs and Garbage IIC made for suicide.

The D rating they have means that the Clan units will have one or two Omnimechs per binary/trinary, usually. The rest are good, though not outstanding, Royal rides. Also, AtB treats the Rifleman IIC as garbage, so yeah.

CampaignAnon said:
Those rules are currently not implemented in MHQ, no. They're also pretty stifling, since you can have an Urbanmech lance assigned to scout reinforce you, while a fight lance with 4 Falconers can't.

--

I rationalise it this way.

No matter the composition of the lance, I suppose they are deployed on a specific 'sector'. They have the same chance to 'spot' a nearby conflict (ie a 6 if a fight lance, or 5-6 for a scout lance).

If they do spot the conflict and reinforce, a Falconer lance will arrive a lot faster than the Urbamech lance, hence their advantage.

I am also partial to diverting from 'official' atb rules.

I would have used the 10% of merc company as starting capital atb rule and just stated that you can use a different amount, instead of what's written in the pdf.

Which leads me to my next point, loans. You mentioned loads very briefly though, but never elaborated)

Also, from personal experience, it's a little ambiguous what you should do in order to get the second contract. Stay in the current planet you already are? Or travel to a hiring hall? Although it's sensible to travel to a hiring hall, the costs for doing this would be enormous tho.

>Which leads me to my next point, loans. You mentioned loads very briefly though, but never elaborated.
That's because information on Loans are in both Campaign Operations and FM: Mercenaries revised and take up a shitload of space. I guess I could put a page reference for the relevant sections, but at some point people are going to have to refer to the books.

>Also, from personal experience, it's a little ambiguous what you should do in order to get the second contract. Stay in the current planet you already are? Or travel to a hiring hall? Although it's sensible to travel to a hiring hall, the costs for doing this would be enormous tho.
Technically, you're supposed to do the latter by fluff. But this is a waste, and barring being insane enough to transit across Clan OZ space, you should "communicate" with your hiring agent on Outreach or Galatea, then transit straight to your new contract objective. If you are swapping sides of the IS to fight the Clans, transit to a point that you can cut across.

Just to clarify, unless there's been a change very recently, it's more useful to say that omnimechs will be rare, but when do show up, have fun fighting a nova.

>mediafire.com/file/vua1w68mo7rf7n4/Against_the_Bot_Instructions_v2-1.pdf

Furthermore, i think a section regarding how you declare victory defeat and generally how to resolve the end of battle sequence, would be great.

Well to me BV being used as seems realistic as when your force starts taking too much damage, even if you don't lose anything on the field , that will still mean long time getting those mechs/tanks repaired and/or scrapped if they are damaged beyond repair.

>That's because information on Loans are in both Campaign Operations and FM: Mercenaries revised and take up a shitload of space. I guess I could put a page reference for the relevant sections, but at some point people are going to have to refer to the books.

I was talking about MekHQ loan mechanics, not actual rules.
How about this? I stole it from BT forum
" Next, take out a loan. You likely won't make it to your first planet without taking out a loan for transport and/or maintenance costs. Ensure your Collateral slider is at 100% and that you are repaying on a Quarterly basis when you do this (standard AtB ruleset here). You will be limited as to just how much you can take out."

Also a tip

Assing ranks to your officers. Captain or higher. This triggers the atb/mkehq to consider them officers mechanicaly. This way, when an officer that has veteran skill is leading a lance with green pilots in a training they will get 1 xp per week AUTOMATICALLY through MekHQ as was intended on atb.

Since I suggested first timers start with 20 million c-shekels, going over loans just to get to their first contract when they get their first mechs and pilots FOR FREE, seems redundant.

Okay so that's already in. I suggested giving Lance leaders ranks This is a general "how to" not "I'm a jellybrain, please give me advice on everything." I come from an old school learn by doing style of teaching. At some point, you have to let people sink or swim.

Cheap tank with long fluff. I don't know why I find this so entertaining to do, but here I am doing it. And for some reason, I enjoy the challenge of designing light tanks that could steal market share from the Scorpion and Vedette, and be better machines overall.

>Cheap tank with long fluff. I don't know why I find this so entertaining to do, but here I am doing it. And for some reason, I enjoy the challenge of designing light tanks that could steal market share from the Scorpion and Vedette, and be better machines overall.

I know this feel. I also have a weird fetish to make something that resembles real world Russian BMP light tanks, kind of infantry fighting vehicles that can be mass produced and handle a little rough and tumble in battle. I don't have access to any of my files, but they are pretty much in the ball park of what you've done.

Weird question for anybody: What in Blake's glorious name is the reason for the Magi? I mean really. Is it a joke tank?

Eh, hello. Might I ask: Whats this?

Are anons running a merc campaign, or even worse/better, are anons running solo merc campaigns!?

Any chance you're the user that posted the Amoeba tank a few threads back?

Along the lines of what you're talking about, I've also made up a bunch of super-cheap, low MP SPG-type units that usually only go 1/2 or 2/3 to match infantry speeds, have no turrets, and are basically independent crewed Field Guns in the 10-15 ton range. I think there's merit to the idea but again, I have a bias for cheap vees so the fact that they aren't really a thing in canon leads me to believe they'd be of negligible use in anything other than Periphery warfare post 2nd SW or so.

When you get access to your files, maybe toss something up? I'm always willing to give customs a read, no matter the era or niche. I wish we had more of the posted to be honest, though at this point, I feel like much of the custom scene has been "solved" in that most of the feasible combinations of weapons and concepts have been tried, so nothing really thrills anyone anymore enough to bother.

AtB? It's in the OP. It's a way to do one-player campaigns as a Merc unit, or if you want, a House or Pirate unit, though I think it's mostly meant for Merc stuff. There are a few PDF guide links in the thread, as well as instructions about where to get the programs necessary to try it yourself in the OP.

Oh, and on the subject of the Magi... I really can't tell you, honestly. 5/8 on a 70 ton machine eats up a lot of tonnage, even using an SFE, and it has two tons of MG ammo for some reason if I recall. So the 8.5 tons of armor isn't really that impressive. All I know is they spammed the shit out of them in the Reunification War, and so there are several running around in the Periphery, though at this point I think they are Cyclops-grade rare. I couldn't really tell you what they were thinking.

>Any chance you're the user that posted the Amoeba tank a few threads back?

Nope. Not me. I like your idea. Having a tank / field gun in that weight range is a pretty interesting concept, something you would expect out of world with greater difficulties in producing other units.

I'll see what I can dig up later.

Yeah for me, for a while I thought it might have been the expensive Charger-mech version of a tank. Sure it can kind of close the distance with heavier units, but you're paying how much for a huge fusion engine to merely make what, a bloated slower Galleon?! You could manufacture an entire lance that could possibly move quicker, have better armor and could ML and MG spam to your heart's delight. It has boggled my puny little mind for years.

Thanks for the answer, bud.

Grasshopper or Guillotine?

Wasp or Stinger?

Jagermech or Rifleman?

Enforcer or Centurion?

Any other notable clones I'm missing?

Hatamoto-Chi and Thug.

Ostroc & Ostsol
Valkyrie and I think... is it the Hammer or Anvil from the FWL that pretty much is a variant of the Valkyrie?

>Enforcer or Centurion?
I think you mean Wolf Trap or Centurion.

Also, Ostroc and Ostsol basically have the Wasp/Stinger thing going on, making two separate mechs out of what could easily have been variants of one.

Jinggau and Scourge

Jenner and Havoc.

Enforcer and Enfield is the closer one, I think.

There's also Cronus and Wolverine for Introtech, though the upgraded one goes off in its own direction.

>single Medium Laser, single machine gun, single LRM 5
Bleh, it is like everything I hate about "all rounder" mech designs like the Shadowhawk.

>25 tons.

Alright then, nevermind, is fine.

Is ballistic-reinforced armor good for vees?

>LRMs
>cheaper than AC shells

Tim.... we gotta talk.

>I think you mean Wolf Trap or Centurion.
I feel that the Wolf Trap is a pretty damn good Centurion.

How do I correct the MUL?

Tell Xotl what's wrong and hopefully he'll get it past the others

Alright, sent him a message on the OF.

Fuck off medron

Try and stop me.

LWB and Victor.

Fiddling with a /btg/RO design that's not quite clicking, so I figured I'd throw the brief out and see if anyone feels like taking a crack at it.

DESIGN BRIEF
FWLM is struggling to combat Wold Empire raiding stars consisting of Mechs like the Locust IIC, Fire Falcon, and most notably, the Wulfen. Most existing FWLM designs either can't reliably catch them, or can't win fights against them.

The QM turns to the scientists of the Clan Protectorate and asks them to develop a design to bully fast Clan lights. Your design should be able to chase down or keep up with the enemy units, cripple or kill them, and survive to file a report back at HQ.

Should I send this to the /btgro/ email or post it here? Should I provide fluff or do you already have that?

Also, what mixtech is available?

Can post it here. You can provide as much or as little fluff as you like.

Basically, there are a bunch of ways to approach achieving the design goal, and I can't settle on one of the different designs for this particular unit.

Whatever mixtech you want, I deliberately didn't put too many restrictions into the brief. I guess I would say that production bottlenecks would be Clan structural stuff (internals, engine, armor, DHS, etc) so the less of that the better. But beyond that do what you want. You do get a bonus point for mixing IS and Clan weapons effectively, though.

Alrighty. I've got two ideas in mind, which I'll get typed up when I'm home from work
Unless, do you know of any mech design software works on android?

Two thumbs up. Good fluff work, decent design, and nods to real world history. I enjoy Vees quite a bit, especially the low cost budget options, and this fits in perfectly. I also have a weird fetish for tankettes which this comes damn close to being. Its probably why I love the Pizzaro from TRO 3063 so much.

25 tonners have no buisness carrying an AC around, especially not if they're already handicrippled by an ICE.

better use a thunderbolt then?

That's a nice little tank, I think I'm going to use it for my games, since I'm always looking for alternatives to the Vedette and scorpion

>this is a clan tank

why are their vehicles so ugly?

Centuries of actual inbreeding

Because for centuries they didn't give a shit about them, excepting the Hell's Horses.

And the blood spirits, but everyone always forgets about them

AtB. Is there any point at all in giving non-Mechwarriors ranks?

Ew.

That's a tall order, especially without trying to use Clan internals, due to the critical slot limitations. Here's my "poked at it for 5 minutes" submission.

Basically, the observations I have on the Wulfen are:
-It's extremely fast on open terrain. Matching it and still getting any reasonable payload requires similar tech (XXL, Clan ES, etc) so don't even try to match open terrain speed.
-A high movement mod and stealth armor, plus a long range payload in most configs means that trying to catch and overmatch it using long-range weapons is going to be a losing proposition.

Which means, then, a Mech intended to close the distance rapidly through broken terrain (IJJs) and then once you're at close range, you've removed the advantage of Stealth Armor. Now you have to deal with a movement modifier. Which means pulse lasers and an accuracy-enhancer. AES is both less heavy and less boring than a TComp. ER Pulse lasers have an extended short range, helping to nullify the Stealth. Finally, most configs of the Wulfen are energy-heavy (IIRC the ERLL, HLL, and triple ERML+JJs configs are most common, regardless of the UAC/2 version being the old Clicktech flagship model), so reflective armor is a clear choice.

I'm not happy using Clan ES, but with the critical slot limits, there's no other way to make it work. You HAVE to save mass to mount enough armor and payload after bumping your speed up that far.

The huge problem with this is that I don't actually think that there's a way to counter a Wulfen strategically on "infinite maps". It's functionally impossible to create a Mech that is outright faster AND which can carry enough of a payload to survive catching it; the best is to match up the speed. So as long as the Wulfen isn't in ridiculously-broken terrain, as long as it keeps just straight up running away, you aren't going to catch it.

Frankly, the best FWL unit against the Wulfen is a Stingray loaded with Thermobarics. Outrun THAT, tubebaby.

hate to break it to you but a lot of old BT designs are ugly

here's a thing
it is a fast medium mech that can achieve speed higher than those it is supposed to hunt. If it can't outspeed the enemy the mech still have a high range weapon and a plasma cannon to (try to) overheat enemy mechs and make them slower (works as a "fuck you, Wulfen and your stealth armor" weapon too); at close range it has medium lasers

observations:
- the mech could be better protected using ferro-fibrous armor, but FL armor works great against the low damage weapons most light mechs use.
- since this is a Clan Protectorate mech I made it expensive (ferro-lamellor, courtesy of Sea Fox) and energy-weapons only (and hot, courtesy of former Nova Cats).
- I'e mixed regular and ER medium lasers just because, I don't remember seeing many mechs doing this

not a very well-thought mech

>this is an inner sphere tank

why are their vehicles so ugly?

>7/11/11
>...on a 50 tonner
All of my boners.
ALL of them.