/btg/ Battletech General!

>backwater hedonistic femocracy can build 22 warships
>3145, nobody can build ships besides the Bears

Shit IS get it together

20 of them are Pintos, sold to the Magistracy. I think by the RWR.

They were going at a rate of two ships PER YEAR, too. I mean, everything went to shit post-haste after that, but the Star League era was pretty damned impressive.

Oh, wait, you were talking about 2765. Not the Reunification War-era fleet.

Yeah, OK. They built 21 WarShips. 20 Pintos and an Athena.

*points to RWR*

Point remains valid.

Wait, hol' up, I am not that knowledgeable about aerospace assets. (Haven't played aerotech since the 90s.) There is a warship called the Pinto? Does it explode if you barely touch it?

I was going to yell at you, but you copped to it.

It doesn't change the fact that no periphery power should be able to build any warships, ever, under any circumstances. Period. The Taurians and the Rim Worlds building lots of warships doesn't change the stone-cold fact that it's bullshit and the periphery shouldn't have them in the first place. The periphery being able to build warships ignores everything that made the periphery good in the first place. namely, not have technology worth speaking of.

I don't have an issue with them building that many ships, I have an issue with the IS circa 3145 having a grand total of fuck and all for navies.

Pretty much. But then again, almost everything under 750 k-tons explodes if you barely touch it. The unfortunate nature of WarShip combat is "eggshells with hammers", after all.

As it happens, the Pinto is actually a pretty decent ship for its mass. It has an anti-ship armament capable of taking on a Vincent Mk 39 corvette or any of sub 400 k-ton WarShips older than the Vincent (Bonaventure, Vigilant, etc), it's actually capable of chasing down DropShips who have a head start (commerce raiding and blockade is a traditional duty of a corvette), and while no WarShip of its period can routinely see off a determined ASF attack, the Pinto has a moderately credible small weapon battery which is also capable of not completely sucking at knocking down a stray capital missile (a rarity for the time period).

Pintos have short logistical legs (only a 10 k-ton cargo bay), and they don't have a lot of armor and the SI isn't that hot. But then again, in a ship that size, those are things that you simply can't have in the first place and still have the capabilities the Pinto *does* have.

We shall agree to disagree, then.

FWL has several yards capable of producing warships. They're just blueballed on a couple components and aren't doing anything about it since they just got an instant fleet from the Space Jews.

>tfw I just realized now that SelaSys was from Selaj, and that's why the Regulans are always yammering about a facility on far flung place like Loyalty as one of their companies
>also probably why they threw a commando tantrum at the place when the league split up

>I have an issue with the IS circa 3145 having a grand total of fuck and all for navies.

As do I. Blame the writers who hate WarShips.

Fact remains that they aren't making ships.

>Blame the writers who hate WarShips.

Well Herb and Ben are apparently gone now...

>Day space hex field
Reminds me of the old Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator. How's that for dating me?

I love how it fluctuates back and forth between states having hundreds or zero warships with barely anything in-between. And when a faction actually DOES have an advantage they dont actually use them for bombardment, interdiction or anything.

Warships are useless white elephants that don't make tactical, strategic or logical sense in BT.

I'm pretty sure that's the old hex sheet that came with the STCS.

They are actually the opposite and only don't break the game over their collective knees because fiat. That's literally it. The system has plot armor from one of its own combat units.

Warships cost much more then a jumpship, dropships and ASF able to destroy the warship with ease.

On the tabletop sure.

Fluff-wise, they can and will annihilate entire invading armadas and/or ground forces.

...so which is it.

Are they tabletop monsters that are only limited by the writers of the plot and their "fiat"
or are they a massive exercise in fleet-in-being, only worth to float around capitol worlds and look pretty mechanically, but fluffy juggernauts?

You don't get it both ways, faggot.

Except it was not our choice.
As it currently stands, Warships will beat any non-warship on the table and are almost completely sidelined in the fluff. Does this make sense? No. Should it be changed? Yes.
But it won't, not until there is a change within the company.

Except they get chewed up by fighters and sub-caps

Fluff wise they are useful as command ships and as a display of power. They can also serve as the heart of a deep space formation, but only if escorted by dropships and fighters. Though far less cost effective then other options they have a role and are very impressive.

And if the Aries Conventions drop, they are worthless slag that will likely end up abandoned in long-term storage rather then risk using them to fight. A single ASF can deliver a fusion warhead that can slag a Leviathan. If one missile or fighter gets past the defenses on these things they are wreckage along with the huge amount of crew and resources they soaked up that could have gone to far, far more dropships and jumpships.

In tabletop, it's a white elephant. Cool, but resource intensive, surprisingly fragile and ultimately pointless.

>Ground forces

Orbital fire support is cool, but you really don't want to find out the hard way that they've got Castle Brians on the surface with Peacekeeper silos that way, and it's on the bleeding edge between valid tactic and weapon of mass destruction. Smoked Jaguars can tell you all about that, if you've got a Ouji board or a necromancer or something.

It also means committing a warship to low planetary orbit, putting it days away from a jump point if things go wrong, pinning you between any other forces in the area and surface launched ASF or droppers.

It's the sort of thing you can really only do if you own the area anyway, putting it again on the 'cool, but useless' end of the spectrum.

>A single ASF can deliver a fusion warhead that can slag a Leviathan.

Haha no.

The Lev will slaughter whole squadrons at a time because it is the only canon ship that has a decent AA array. It is also the only canon ship that is fully nuke-proof.

The only reliable ways to take one down is to crash something with SDS self-destruct into it, play a high-speed pass and sacrifice at least one ship of your own, or try a Jump so close to one that you rip it in half from K-F interactions.

The Lev is literally the only ship that comes close to being as good as WSes like the Sov Soy are in the fluff.

The game is about 'Mechs. If you start focusing on ASFs or WSes, or acknowledge how powerful they are, you very rapidly dethrone 'Mechs.

Like many things in BT, they didn't think things through, realised they'd made a mistake, and then ham-fistedly fixed it as well as they could think of within 5 seconds then called it a day.

The Star League had the right idea, glorified supply ships with guns.

Also, I think it's important to note that ASF's are rarer than mechs and combat dropships and military jumpships are pretty rare as well. So while they can kill a Warship, a Warship with its attendant fleet usually contains enough resources in one spot to make a scale-tilting contribution in every space theater invasion outside a provincial capital world.

>you very rapidly dethrone 'Mechs.

Battleships and aircraft carries haven't made tanks obsolete. I never understand why people always spout this.

>I never understand why people always spout this.

Because, and I know this may come as a surprise, real life and BT are very different.

In BT as written rules-wise, WarShips and ASF are massively under-utilised in the fluff and should be a hell of a lot more decisive.

But it's a game about what happens on the ground, and really what happens on the ground with 'Mechs, so that won't ever be allowed to happen.

That's true, though space warfare in BT is inherently defensive. Someone on defense can concentrate everything they have within 30-60 light years to meet an offensive, something that can be Very Bad for a warship caught burning for a planet and too far from a jump point to escape. They can also just ignore warship attacks on many remote areas. Orbital fire support is meh-tier and other then being a kickass command ship they don't really do that much to change the fight on the ground. A Leviathan sitting in orbit above a mudball waiting for people to call in artillery is wasting a million c-bills a day.

Hitting a major system with orbital infrastructure, shipyards, mines and smelters with a warship could be good, but it would be far more efficient to hit that kind of target with droppers then a Levithan. Major targets like this also tend to be closer to the core of a an opponent's space, where you might find out the hard way that they've jumped in literally several hundred combat drop-ships, ASF and carriers.

>Combat dropships and ASF are rare

Yeah, but building one takes a tiny fraction of the resources of a warship. For every warship a faction has, their enemy could build enough force to overwhelm it twice over.

Yet if one warhead hits it, it's crippled at best or ruined at worst and you've killed 1/4th of the Leviathans that will ever exist.

With high energy lasers nothing that breaks the horizon should survive. ASF should be death machines.

As to warships? It's a thing made out of metal. Fifty missiles launched from a light second away and allowed to hit relative velocities of hundreds of kilometers per second should punch though them like a shotgun slug though a tomato. Their only weapons should be defensive lasers and missile launchers along with prayer that they will get a lucky hit in and the other guy won't.

Uh, only one Leviathan survived the Jihad.

I think we can pretty safely say if a ASF is willing to ram one with a nuke, it's gone.

Not him but the first one died to concentrated fire from the whole WoB fleet at Dieron and the second to nuclear missile spam from hidden asteroid bases around the Titan yards.

Not exactly a one ASF thing.

Wish the Blakists would have gone three for three though and kept that last motherfucker from wrecking the O'Neil Yards around Terra.

Agreed.
Blakists should have come out on top and in the open, not hidden behind a wall.

>alamo meming

First problem: You need the ASF to somehow survive the massive AA batteries a Leviathan has, which includes stupid huge Naval Lasers along with heavy conventional firepower. Oh, and the whole 300 ASFs of its own thing, but hey.

Then you need to hit with the missile.

Then you need to get past the nuke-proof AMS arrays the Leviathan has, which can't realistically be critted out like those of other vessels because it has 100-point thresholds and capital bays are limited to 70.

Then if you somehow do survive, and somehow do hit, and somehow do get past the AMS bays?

You get to do 100 damage. To a ship that has 1,000 armour.

Whoop de fuckin' do.

One Leviathan II can take on three McKennas at once with at least an even chance of winning. Or three McKennas packed with carriers, if you want to deal with supporting assets.

Your only options on the tabletop are to swamp one with WarShips, and I literally mean swamp it. A Lev II can take on all the WSes of all the IS powers plus the Vendetta combined and will likely win. The Leviathan III, meanwhile, can credibly threaten the entire Snow Raven fleet, combined.

So yeah. Have fun with that. Let me know how it goes.

You only need to get past AMS if the fighter launches the missiles. When blakest hang nukes on an ASF it's not because they expect to see that guy ever again.

>The Leviathan III, meanwhile, can credibly threaten the entire Snow Raven fleet, combined.

That's a neat trick. I guess they put a time machine on it when they were installing the HPG? Because Clan Snow Raven is no longer around when the Lev III's keel is laid.

So your argument is narrative victory via plot device.

I think this quite handily displays the problems involved with fighting a WarShip.

And now remember that, if the rules reflected the fluff accurately, a shitty vessel like a Sovetskii Soyuz would be more powerful than a Lev II is currently.

>what is the Raven Alliance

>tfw a Blakist infiltrator didn't blow it up from the inside and leave a note to troll the bears

WoB was too sweet for this earth.

>Problems with fighting a warship.

In Aerotech it's easy.
>Don't bring a warship
>Win, because you haven't sunken 99% of your point budget into one thing

>unless the warship is a leviathan ii or leviathan iii
>laughingghostbears.hpg

Die for Blake or die trying.

I mean, a DEST team or the last angry wrasslehogs could entirely plausibly blow up one or both of the remaining levs as a good way to get them out of the way

Sure, if the DA fluff hadn't established that the FRR insurgency was useless, that the Black Dragons control the Combine's intel apparatus and have fucked it up, and that the Bears have hidden their Levs where nobody can find them.

But apart from it being nearly implausible, it's totally possible.

Given the list of implausible occurrences in BT history, not much is really implausible. It's really just a word fanboys throw around for why something shouldn't happen to "their" faction.

HBS delays release of the Battletech video game indefinitely. Good job supporting it, suckers.

kickstarter.com/projects/webeharebrained/battletech/posts/1824640

Ever since they made the switch to colorable .pngs for sprites I've been getting repeatable non-intentional transparent pixel issues in MegaMek. They all work fine in MekHQ and in graphical editors so I have been fruitlessly trying to diagnose what part of my file formatting/pipeline is causing it. Basically looking for a list of mechs that have incorrect transparency issues like pic related

>Battletech product won't be released on time
>News at 11

>Battletech product won't be released

Fixed that for you, user.

Criminals gotta criminal. Stole your money again.

True
Cute, but there is no way the 2.7 million is building many porches. Development time is just too expensive. Made me laugh that they had to contract an outside professional to fix their tools though.

Had a bit of a situation I wondered if anybody thought I handled well.

Had some players, and one led a scout lance oddly led by a T-Bolt 5SE with a standard Griffin and two Stingers filling out the lance. The enemy had a scouting lance made up of a couple of Pixies and a pair of Jenners. Oh boy. Well the other players used a company of mediums and heavies to trap this light lance between the three lances and decimated them. The player with the scouting lance moved toward the enemy scouting lance's base and with ground support took it over. They found a lot of repair parts for Jenners and Pixies.

Problem: - on the way there they got mauled by a medium lance before escaping through a forest. The Stingers escaped with really minor damage, but the T-Bolt had damage to both critical slots for the LRM and lost a lot of armor. The Griffin lost both weapons. They were far away from support, but what they did have was techs and time. So, I let my player decide what they wanted to do.

For the Stingers, they replaces a MG and half the ammo for another ML in the left arm, which I allowed. For the other two, I have this (pic related.) I'm going to let them do this, but with a time penalty because of the type of refit.

I'm convinced I'm doing the right thing but I wanted to know what anybody else thought of the refits. Remember time in-game is not a time, and they do have one elite tech that is overseeing the repairs and refit, so there is no pressure on them that way. They are basically loading up Jenner and Pixie weapons to replace those they don't have anymore.

>beta delayed until summer is the same thing as game being delayed forever

Cmon, don't fag it up. The truth is enough to be mad at them, the beta was promised to 2016.

To be honest, Pocket WarShips will probably suffice given how powerful they proved to be in the Jihad.

I'm a little disappointed the Periphery didn't build the Pocket WarShip first.

That seems like something the Taurian Concordat or Outworld's Alliance should have developed long before the Blakists ever did.

Probably would have been quite the weapon during the Reunification conflicts.

>How's that for dating me?

How far back are we going?

Oh hell, I remember those. I actually had a copy of FASA's ST2 The Wrath of Khan version of the simulator somewhere.
Chandleys and Andors, Chandleys and Andors everywhere.

The TC didn't even have access to capital missile launchers which were the primary weapons for first-gen PWSes until WoB gave them Vendetta.

And if you want to give them to anyone but the WoB for the first "proper" PWS the answer, as with any new and advanced tech, is going to be the Suns before anyone else.

If you play with quirks, consider a (non-permanent, fixable with proper facilities) poor cooling jacket or two to represent the in the field nature of the retrofit, it's not like the SHS really allow misuse of introtech. Field expedient side-grades are fun though and should be encouraged in campaign play. (As should be long term upgrades.)

>If you play with quirks, consider a (non-permanent, fixable with proper facilities) poor cooling jacket or two to represent the in the field nature of the retrofit...

I like, I like that idea a lot. I don't want my players to skate through on things. I'll look that up and add that to the lasers they added to the machines.

I have to say, I like the old Griffin in how it looks (old Dougram fan here,) but I hated how it performed. My player made, what I think, is a good performing little pain in the ass.

Whe are we getting a Pusheen Urbanmech?

Not far enough apparently. Everything in the stack above the blue map sheets in pic related is FASA ST material. And the map above it is the old play by post Middle Earth map. My dad is/was a hoarder extraordinaire. That's just the stuff he let me keep...

Oh and the gray mini boxes and the purple box below it are entirely ST ships. The purple are my Feddie ships, with the other two being Klinks and Rommies.

I think he meant as something developed during the Reunification War, which I agree would make sense, the issue being that subcapital weapons are just objectively better than regular capital weapons, begging the question of why the SLDF didn't just load everything up with them after the war.
But the reunification war TC being the first to try strapping a bunch of capital missiles to an uparmored DropShip makes total sense to me

Periphery states don't get nice things unless they have patron authors that double their military out of thin air and later join Xin Sheng.

I made a variant of the Juzumaru from the Built For War preview. What do you think /btg/?

>But the reunification war TC being the first to try strapping a bunch of capital missiles to an uparmored DropShip makes total sense to me

It'd also make an excellent weapon for ambushing the SLDF in the Taurus asteroid fields wouldn't it?

The really retarded thing is that they made SC weapons an old set that WoB re-popularises rather than a completely new one.

But then common sense has never been CGL's strong point when screwing with tech advancement.

That would actually make a huge amount of sense, fluff-wise.
Plus even in the PWS era there was literally no reason the TC shouldn't have been able to produce Capital Weapons given how industrialized their core worlds are.

I had it pointed out to me that I was missing an XLG and LFF, so I added those, dropped a ton of Armor and Armored the hPPC. PSRs, ho!

No reason other than it took ComStar helping the Dracs, WoB helping the FWL and CC, and NAIS magic for the major players to get them back.

And a third variant that is closer in line with the actual 100 which kept the MMLs.

And later on as something used by the taurian resistance to ambush poorly-defended SLDF convoys and lone WarShips, and for blockade-busting
Add the RWR getting the plans from them and using similar ships to bulk out their navy still further
The more I think about it, the more sense it makes

>Plus even in the PWS era there was literally no reason the TC shouldn't have been able to produce Capital Weapons given how industrialized their core worlds are.
The thing is that they transferred the entirety of their military industry to the MoC and CC as part of the trinity alliance

Which was also silly.

>The thing is that they transferred the entirety of their military industry to the MoC and CC as part of the trinity alliance
Really they did that like in the mid-3050s. It's the only explanation for the MoC building at least five regiments of mechs out of nothing while the TC is apparently unable to rebuild two damaged regiments and so just merges them with others.
Gotta pad that MAF for its patron writers, after all. Xin Slut!

>100 tons
>moves 1/2
>mounts six LB-5X autocannon, five ER Small Lasers and seventeen tons of armor
>equipped with C3i.

Thoughts?

>Add the RWR getting the plans from them and using similar ships to bulk out their navy still further

And improving on the designs.

Would have probably made the returning SLDF's job a bit harder given they would have likely had little knowledge of them.

>It's the only explanation for the MoC building at least five regiments of mechs out of nothing while the TC is apparently unable to rebuild two damaged regiments and so just merges them with others.
That was in the early 60s, but the MoC *did* pull like foir regiments out of their ass in 54-58, though the TC managed to (reasonably enough for the 50s) grow by two in the same time since they had a leader who had the bright idea of *not* exporting all their mechs and letting the money be embezzeled by someone named Loren.
It's only after the trinity alliance where that capacity completely disappeared from the TC

>That thing
>only 100 tons

Is there any reason *not* to main Federated Suns?

You missed the 1/2 movement profile I think.

That's from TRO 3063, right? Was that any good?

>52075228
If you like stealth gausswall cheese over the regular flavor

Because de dam fedellated sum hab been a tholn in youl side lor too rong!

Speaking as a fan of House Centrella, the only thing I haven't been huge on ever with the growing MoC military has been two brigades: the Magistracy Highlanders and Raventhir Cuirassiers. They were superfluous, they came out of nowhere and they don't fit in. We didn't need our own special snowflake Scottish force (we already had the Canopian Highlanders) or four regiments pulled out of our butts.

We'd just had the 2nd Canopian Cuirassiers built up in the 3020s, the 3rd Canopian Light Horse soon afterwards, spent the 3040s rebuilding three regiments mauled in the Andurien-Capellan War, and in 3050s devoted resources to building up the Magistracy Militia and Canopian Brigade. All that would have been enough. Plus without extra nonsense regiments we could have units like the 2nd Cuirassiers or the Fusiliers brigade get to do stuff.

I'm just saying, I hate the Magistracy Highlanders and Raventhir Cuirassiers. I think they were a bad idea for a number of reasons. Heck, unless I miss my guess it was a big deal in the 3050s for Victor Steiner-Davion to rebuild only TWO traditionally AFFS regiments. So us building FOUR plus building up three more to regimental status was dumb. It marks us as receivers of fiat and wasn't worth it.

Plus I've never met anyone who says their favorite regiment is either MH or RC.

So yeah, not all us MoC fans love the special treatment our faction has gotten. Frankly, I'd have preferred a leaner, harder storyline for us. Some real grit and loss.

I've never understood why people who have beef with WarShips think PWS are fine.
I mean, functionally they're literally just tougher corvettes/destroyers that need a JumpShip to get around. They do everything a small proper WarShip does, on the table, and really in the fluff. I just don't see the logic

You're not alone, son. I have the old Tricorder with the cereal-box style red and blue filtered decoders...

That one's from one of the BattleTech space supplements. They used a different font on the SFTCS, which came out a few years earlier. Yes I have them both in front of me don't judge me you bastard.

>For the Stingers, they replaces a MG and half the ammo for another ML in the left arm, which I allowed.
...so, basically an STG-3G, but with an MG? Yeah, that's cool

>Shorty Sortie
Oooh, that's actually really nice. I want a couple for my pirates - especially since she can load Inferno ammo.
The model would look pretty great too, with a Pixie gunpod and some OstSol-style four-packs over the shoulder. I would have put one ML in each arm, but I like to split fire.

>Christmas Tree
Eh? It's basically just a Flashman on a Thud chassis, but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that. I'd probably give it a chance to pick up a negative targeting/EM/coolant quirk (on the RT LL or RA MLs) from switching out so much of the armament from missiles and projos to lasers though.

>Convinced I'm doing the right thing
Dude, no worries. Customs are pretty much a fact of life when you GM. And at least the players aren't >really< going for ML spam, or ignoring the possibility of dealing with infantry/vees.

Also a Dougram fan. That aside, the Griffin -1N is really very much a "cheerleader" 'Mech - it's meant to sit in the back and poptart to put damage on things while the brawlers get in and mix it up. The GRF-1S is the "hero" machine (and, totally coincidentally I'm sure, is BLATANTLY based on the Korchima Roundfacer Special)

Some people enjoy complaining

It started as a joke. Steve whipped it up one night after a couple beers when he saw a photoshop and needed to deal with that damned aero he made with the three RACs..
I'm the one who playtested it and convinced him to put it in the TRO. And added the C3i to the Militia variant. It's pretty brutal in a mixed defensive lance, although I did fluff it up as having severe drivetrain problems and generally Qwikscell-level workmanship. It's actually startlingly effective at getting knockdowns on 'Mechs if you use slugs and position your spotters well - the best combo overall I found was with a pair of Auroras, two Gurkhas as spotters, and fill out the rest of the Level II with whatever (the c3i Toyama is really quite nice, but from a slightly later era).

Can you guess why I named it the Aurora?

Why?

My two cents on periphery military growth is about this
>MoC should be roughly half the TC, and the OA and all minor powers combined should each be about half the MoC
>The TC should be about 1/4- 1/3 at best of a successor state's growth