/btg/ Battletech General!

These two are too squat for my taste.

It looks like it's carrying a pair of weird duffel bags of death.

That's the cobra for ya.

Would the AC/2 and /5 be viable weapons if they were at their LAC weights but retained the standard range brackets?

the 5 would be cool at 5 tons, but I'd drop the 2 to 3 tons.

Are these saved anywhere? Or is the only way to see them one of these threads?

Think someone has been uploading my doodles to the battletech tg booru.

Check there.

There's no nametag for them, because I'm a drawfag with no name.

Not bad at all. Perfectly acceptable versions of the originals. I still prefer the original Merlin but your Cobra is nicer.

His merlin looks a lot like what I'd imagine a hypothetical MWO merlin to look like

That's where it all started, really.

An art contest on MWO forums, and I just started doodling classic mechs in an MWO style reminiscent of what Alex would do.

Sure. Also, that article is way too long to comment on. It's mostly right insofar as historical roles, but doesn't mention that the classification of a ship is also heavily influenced by politics. I think it's Japan who isn't allowed to have naval vessels larger than a DD, so they build cruisers and CALL them DDs.

>Corvette (CVT)
Corvettes are lightweight, generally lightly-armed vessels that are generally used for short-range commerce raiding or a close blockade of merchant shipping. As such, they need to be relatively fast in normal space (so as to run down merchant DropShips), and have sufficient firepower to overwhelm a single DropShip. Armor is definitely secondary because they're not intended to face meaningful capital-scale weapons, but fuel and supplies are not, as they may need to remain on-station for significant amounts of time. DropShip collars are not necessary; at most they'd carry 1.

>Destroyer (DD)
Fleet escorts. Destroyers should have sufficient speed to remain evasive much of the time and still keep up with larger craft. Their roles are to use WarShip ECM to screen larger vessels, use layered anti-fighter armaments to *destroy* attacking aerospace fighters (hence, "destroyer"), and to project anti-capital ship fire. As such, their weapons should generally consist of bracket-capable naval lasers (for AAA use) and capital missiles for antiship use, although some might use a few very large-calibre guns for antiship purposes instead. Armor and SI are high priority; they can't screen larger ships if they're dead. Cargo space, DropCollars, and fuel are low priority - fleet tenders should be providing most of these.

>cont

>Frigate (FF)
Whereas a DD is made to escort capital ships, frigates are made in the same displacement range and made to operate alone as commerce raiders and reconnaissance ships. Armor and SI are reduced in favor of cargo and fuel, and weapons are intended to be enough to overwhelm both merchants and a WarShip escort of roughly CVT class. Anti-fighter duties are more defensive than a DD; whereas a DD seeks out fights with ASF squadrons and smashes them at range, an FF uses fighter-scale guns to defend itself against 1-2 squadrons of ASFs carried by the targets (if it kills the target, the ASFs will generally surrender since otherwise they're guaranteed to die once they run out of gas). 0-2 Drop Collars are carried; some factions like having parasite craft, others don't want to devote parts and gas storage to supporting them, in favor of increased direct-combat abilities. L-F batteries are ESSENTIAL.

>Light Cruiser (CL), Heavy Cruiser (CA)
Light Cruisers and Heavy Cruisers all generally share the same duties and mission profile, and are mostly separated by mass and survivability. The line between them is blurry and is relative to the operating faction; one faction's "light" cruiser may be a heavy cruiser in another faction. All cruisers are made to travel long distances (ie, "cruise), and generally act as a "jack-of-all-trades." A cruiser should be able to contribute meaningfully to escorting a BB or larger ship, fast enough to hunt down merchants, and project a meaningful amount of anti-ship firepower. Cruiser-classified ships have by far the widest range of potential builds, depending on what the constructing power wants out of them.

>cont

>Battlecruiser (BC)
The explicit jobs of a Battlecruiser are to hunt down and kill enemy cruisers, and to use their superior normal space speed to position themselves against enemy capital ships (BBs and DNs) in such a way as to significantly disadvantage the enemy. Battlecruisers tend to have relatively large fuel fractions (they may not be faster than a CA, but they can burn their fuel for longer), large levels of armor for their SI, fewer but heavier-hitting gun mounts, low magazine space, and relatively low SI for their mass. BCs will almost always have at least 2 DropShip collars, usually capping out at 5. BCs have little in the way of conventional fighter defenses, instead depending on parasite fighter carriers to screen them, so they can use internal tonnage for more engines/guns.

>Battleship (BB)
The Battleship is made specifically to engage and kill other WarShips of almost any size. They give up some level of speed (this is the first class that should almost universally be "3/5"), in order to mount heavy armor and a variety of capital weapon systems. The phrase "a gun for every occasion" should apply here. A BB and a DN should rate roughly the same displacement, but a BB is made to fight largely on its own or as the flagship of a lighter squadron, and thus its weapons and armor are more balanced between all arcs. BBs universally mount many Drop Collars (4-6), so further extend their capacity to handle any situation on their own.

>cont

>Dreadnought (DN - non-historical designation, but I like it)
The Dreadnought is not noticeably heavier than a BB, but whereas a BB is a slower ship with a very wide variety of armament and capabilities, a DN is explicitly and totally a space-superiority platform, dedicated solely to fighting in line against other capital ships. Whereas a BB fights ostly alone or as the biggest thing in a task force, DNs fight in groups of other DNs. As such, its armor and weapons are canted to the *sides* so that it may fight on the broadside. Weapons are very streamlined, with lots of idential naval weapons of the heaviest caliber. Anti-fighter defenses are incidental (a DN armed with large batteries of NLs, for example), and may even be entirely omitted. DNs usually mount the same number of Drop Collars as a BB, but will usually use them for assault ships to screen the battle line, or for the spare parts and tertiary fuel colliers that its internal stores don't cover.

>Light Carrier (CVL)
A light carrier is designed as an inexpensive craft to carry ASFs from place to place, often operating as an escort unit for merchants or a supplementary unit for planetary invasions (ASFs can escort a craft down into the atmosphere, while a pure "gun" escort has to stop at the atmosphere/space interface). It will rely much more on internal stowage for cargo and ASF supplies instead of DropShips to keep the cost of the unit down. CVLs are largely differentiated from CVs by mass, number of ASFs carried, and an ability to resupply the fighters - carrying more than 1 Wing of fighters almost universally classifies a craft as a CV, instead of a CVL. Note that some WarShips of other classifications can carry more than one wing of fighters - the difference is that a CV or CVL is PURPOSE-BUILT to carry the ASFs and/or small craft, and doesn't mount significant capital weaponry.

>cont

>Carrier (CV)
Just like a CVL, but it should generally carry at least 3 Wings of fighters (generally broken down into 1 wing each of Interceptors, Dogfighters, and Attack Craft). These are more significant assets than CVLs and so will include a few Drop Collars. CVs will prioritize speed, armor, and cargo space (ASFs) over capital ships; the faster and further a CV can travel, the more fuel and loiter time its fighters will have on-target. Many CVs mount at least a token quad-mount NL battery in some arcs to provide some last-ditch anti-fighter defense. Again, these are purpose-built to carry ASFs and small craft, not just a normal WarShip with a wing of ASFs on-board.

>Assault Carrier (CVA)
About the same size as a CV, but it gives up speed and occasinally some fuel/cargo for a LOT more armor/SI and a credible antiship armament that can also be used for ground bombardment. The purpose of a CVA is to shove itself into a defensive position, launch a ton of fighters, and support them (and/or ground landings) with capital weapon fire. The number of capital weapon batteries may be low, but they should be hard-hitting. If any ship is the equivalent to the Galactica, it's this one. Several DropCollars to actually land the ground forces are, of course, mandatory.

>Fuck You (FU)
1 class per faction, high-mass, min-maxed ships that make your opponent look at your TO&E and say "fuck you, man." These craft are fleets in being themselves, and should generally take a line squadron (4-6 BBs or DNs) to kill. Any of the combat Leviathan classes (not the Lev I, obviously) fall into this category in standard AeroTech. Everybody gets a few of these Death Star units, and they generally sit around because nobody wants to lose one, but they're there for the munchkins and to have really shitkicking apocalyptic scenarios with.

>fin

>drawfag with no name
And that's what they should be tagged as.

>drawfag with no name

>approves

Yo NEA
What would be a good basic WarShip fight to introduce a new player to that aspect of aerospace?

Pinto

Can I get a rundown of all the mechs here? My mech-fu is weak.
Top row, left to right, is Dervish, Blood Kite, ??, Crusader?, Hatamoto-Chi, Thug?
Second row is Avatar, ??, Madcat II, ??, Trebuchet? (the one slightly between both rows), ??, Phoenix Hawk or Valkyrie?
3rd row is Templar?, Akuma, Thanatos, ??, Linebacker?, Stiletto? (feels way to big), Hauptmann
Bottom row is Solitaire, Night Gyr?, Turkina? (reminds me of the Mektek version), some sort of LAM?

Aegis v Aegis, at 2/3 thrust nobody's going to be ramping up to ludicrous speed, they have a mix of weapons, they're reasonably tough, and if you want to try bracketing and bearings-only launches they've got the guns for those too.

>By WWII destroyers began filling in a niche as (what I’ll very simply call) anti-everything vessels, extremely powerful high-value targets due to the number of guns they would field.

>DDs
>high-value targets

>6 5-inchers is a lot
This guy's never heard of the Atlantas, has he.

I had a big post explaining why, but my phone rang and the window closed. Fuck Mobile. Use a Lola III.

Thanks m8. Did you have any other things, like PDFs or something, relating to space warfare? I feel like you did.

As in like a straight dual between two of the things?

AAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Every FUCKING day with these STUPID fucking MEMES! I've had it up to HERE with stupid fucking memes! You guys make me want to KILL MYSELF! Is that what you fucking want? For me to fucking KILL MYSELF and write on my suicide note "Cause of suicide: Couldn't handle all of the stupid fucking memes, killed myself"? Because that's what it might as well fucking say!

You guys are literally, L I T E R A L L Y incapable of having even the SIMPLEST of fucking discussion without "MEME THIS, MEME THAT, HAHA BUTTE HOLD, HERE'S A PIC OF PURPLE BIRD WAIFU, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA EBIN AMIRITE?" Fucking STOP IT you pathetic fucking FAGGOTS, you are such fucking cancer that I cannot even fathom how you fucking scumbags live your dumb gay lives. Don't you have a job to get to, schoolwork to finish or a family to attend to? Do you literally do ANYTHING productive with your lives other than post stupid fucking memes on the board game section of a god damn anime imageboard? You fucking people make me sick and you're damn lucky I don't have any of your fucking addresses you fucking pieces of shits. I'd spit in your faces.

>52098077
This is some spicy new copypasta right here

>new
The template has been around since January of last year.

Really? Well it's not really my thing but sure.

yeah the memes are bad but
at least its not clan erppcs

Epic xD
I bet you are a grog too

Huh. I haven't seen it before

somebody get this hothead outta here

Calling it now.
We'll start acronyming it to "DWNN", eventually becoming "Dawn"

That's a big post.

for you

Your other option is the official forums
The choice is yours.
;-)

Just shut the fuck up user. You aren't funny. You aren't clever. You aren't original. You're trying to force a meme, and succeeding only in being a worthless cunt. If you had the courage of your convictions, you'd put on and keep on a trip rather than hiding behind user like a worthless cunt.

Find new material, because the only reason anybody cares about what you post is that you're wasting perfectly good thread space being a worthless cunt.

...

While I agree completely with you, that's just what this place is.It's like walking into a gas station restroom and complaining "this place smells like shit!" Yeah, so?

fuck off medron

who?

...

>fuck off medron
That's Medron PRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYDDDEEEEEE! To you mothafuka

Likewise, but these days I come to Veeky Forums for /btg/ and maybe a few general Veeky Forums threads, not much else. I've not even been watching the cup since Veeky Forums got babbied.

I don't keep up with the dankest of me-me's.

Did someone say....
Memes?

...

Perhaps he's wondering why you'd bitch about wasted thread space, while wasting thread space yourself. Or do you mean to just crash this thread, with no survivors?

come back to #swq crix-sama we miss you and your autism

Don't bring him back here.

MIKE JONES

It's too late for that.

>not just calling him Blondie

Thank you to the user who gave me the idea for the camo scheme

I'm so sorry

FUNKYTOWN

Yes. A straight duel between Lola IIIs is my preferred method of introducing WarShip combat.

Lola's have the advantage of just enough thrust to screw yourself up if you don't think about it, thus teaching thrust management. They have enough thrust to allow you to see when/why Evasive Movement can help (an Aegis can't use it without Overthrusting, which only shows the negative side of EM). Lola's have weapons representing all of the core usage concepts: NLs for AAA and standard fire, NACs for direct fire, capital missiles for direct-fire and bearings-only launches (plus learning about capital missile critical hit chances), Barracudas for AAA to contrast with the NLs, and a variety of bay sizes to show bracketing in 3- and 4-gun mount sizes.

Plus Lola's have just enough armor and SI combined with a light enough weapons loadout that they won't immediately evaporate one another on a full broadside. An Aegis that lands most of its FR/RBS/AR weapon bays can outright kill another Aegis in a single salvo. The Aegis can deal a total 690 points of damage from those arcs at Medium range vs a maximum of 202 side armor (forward and aft quarter armor combined)+ 150 damage to kill the SI. That's bad for teaching. Lola III's CAN fuck up another Lola III pretty badly, dealing a max of 114 damage with those arcs, against a combined 96 armor and 100 damage to kill the SI, but a single-turn kill is so unlikely as to not be worth bothering about.

The only thing the Lola's are bad about is teaching screening using large vessel ECM, since they don't have DropShips. But that's an issue endemic to basically ALL of the SLN destroyers.

>Also, the Pinto sounds great, but I've run into people being confused due to the mix of standard and capital-scale weapons. Plus its the speed can *really* get you in trouble. With that said, I use Pintos to teach "wolfpack" tactics, because they're actually pretty good at that. 4 Pintos vs 1 Congress is a good tutorial.

That Kite is almost playable, and I want a mini of your 'snatch..

Vincent Mk 39 VS Two Bonaventures

>the courage of your convictions

Oh hey, this guy again.

I think he's trying to force a meme, and succeeding only in being a worthless cunt.

What the hell. Where is this from?

It was a one-off arcade scene from a show called... Date-a-Live, I think?
Somehow, they have Mechwarrior 3 in their arcade.
I think the writers simply put some parodies of their favourite obscure (according to japan) games into the show.

Out of curiosity what's your favorite original warship design and what's your favorite redesign? Art wise.
Semaphore paddles are allowed.

Circa the Clan Invasion era which of the first four invading Clans was Clan Star Adder closest to diplomatically?

And also in that era what might have been "their" mechs of choice?

Might be doing a game about a small Adder force attached to one Clan during the invasion that perishes during Tukayyid, a la the Goliath Scorpions.

A ridealong with the Falcons could work, IIRC they didn't have major beef at the time

Speaking of clans, do we have any info or even good estimates as to what the star adder and blood spirit toumans looked like in 3050, before the Burrock mess?
I'm playing around with the idea of an alternate Clan Invasion where their performance is somewhat more table-accurate, but there's also *more* invading clans

ok

Tuco pls go.

Something's been running through my head for a while.

Even during the Fasa days, every campaign system, scenario pack, and just about everything seems to treat Battletech as being played as a GM-supported campaign, but the core rulebook most often treats it as a head-to-head wargame. As a result, I've always felt a fair bit of disconnect with the products outside of fluffbooks that support the game.

Has any sort of research been done to figure out how most people play Battletech? I've heard of everything from people who play against each other at the LGS to more tight knit gaming groups with GM-run campaigns, but the supporting books seem to universally treat the game like the latter, not the former.

Is this because the players who play Battletech as Player-Group-Versus-GM outnumber the versus gamers, because TPTB generally stick to that style of play, because it's easiest to make product for, or because GM-groups invest more money into the product?

You better let the Hellions get in on that action.

Did the FedCom sell the Garm to the Concordat?

Of course. It's just that estimating their 3050 TRO is extremely simple, so I don't need any info for that
I was thinking a lineup, from left to right of
>wolves
>falcons
>horses
>bears
>adders
>jags
>cats
>helleons
>spirits

What other mechs have headphones/musical looking parts on their chassis?

>inb4 Yeoman

move the hellions over to the left so they can show the Lyrans the true meaning of blitzkrieg. And drop the Spirits.

The spirits were going to get like a tiny sliver route on the very far periphery edge of the DC, like a "we're technically including you but still hate you" type deal

I put the helleons there to show the dracs what a REAL light mech army looks like, instead, but putting them on the other side might also be fun

I'm going to assume the Snow Ravens are doing the Bear's naval stuff for them?

Sorta, yeah. They're also helping the spirits a small amount in exchange for one world in their corridor

I am literally throwing random ideas at a wall right now, though. If anyone else has sone, feel free to throw them around and I'll probably borrow them

So where does an Aussie even go to get /bt/ minis? I'm thinking of starting up a Snow Raven list, but I've no idea where to get decent clan mechs.

Herb ran polls about that very thing on the OF once upon a time (far enough back that the OF actually had an active userbase big enough to matter). I know one of them was run pre-Total Warfare and I think it may have had an influence on the writing of that book, and IIRC it was run a second time sometime around 2009 or 2010 as well.

Essentially, something like 75% of BattleTech games played in person are one-off games, 1 player vs 1 player, played on 2 mapsheets or less, with 2 lances (or equivalent base maneuver unit) or less per side. Vehicle, infantry, aero, and TacOps-level rules are pretty much just not ever used. An independent GM "running" the game was pretty explicitly present in less than 10% of all games, scenario or not.

The reason so many products are aimed at the vast minority of "scenario" or "campaign" gamers is because there isn't really a product you can make for two people who just want to bang giant robots together for an hour or two. The real issue - and the reason we're seeing so many fewer "scenario" products in general - is that when the total BattleTech player population was ~50,000 people, it was feasible to create a product only 10,000 of them would buy. You could still make some money selling it. Now that the player population is, by all accounts, under 10,000 people (and probably closer to 5-6,000), you're looking at selling that product to ~2,000 people at the absolute high end, which isn't nearly such a good financial idea.

>pic unrelated, but there's already enough random images in this thread it'll blend in

Where are you?

Tasmania, mate. I'm absolutely fucked.

It IS from right smack in the only era where such a thing might have happened, but it's not mentioned in any fluff and frankly, I can't really see any reason for the taurians to even *want* to buy the damn thing, because it's pretty terrible
Why do you ask?

Maybe some kind 'Murrican soul would buy you some minis and ship them to you. I have to imagine private post is cheaper than what a business charges to ship to the land that time forgot.

I just ran the numbers. To get a single Adder Prime from Iron Wind Metals shipped to me would be $42 AUD.

Kerensky preserve me.

Jesus, and I thought us in northern canada were hard up

Fuck, it would actually be cheaper to just pay some vacationer to bring like ten minis down with him and mail them domestic to you

Battle Pope did the Garm GRM-01A2. The factory for it is on New Syrtis (the Capellan March is where they get the Plasma Rifles from), so it's not like it's a long export trip.

On the amusing side, I personally think that the FedSuns DOES export Garms to the Taurians...which is why the Taurians made sure to drop by New Syrtis and nuke the shit out of the city and blow up the Garm half of the Johnston Industries factory with bombing runs. Note that the other two important military facilites on New Syrtis weren't touched: the Combat Training Center and the Warrior's Hall got nary a scratch.

So yeah, obviously the Taurians have the Garm. And they nuked New Syrtis over it, because the Garm is Just That Bad Of A Mech.

>Also, the Taurians have the Garm because of pic related. But that's boring.

There's a store in Melbourne that has some metals. They may have a couple of box sets, although I haven't been in there in a while. Hit me up if you ever want a game in Melbourne.

This is what I do whenever my parents come to visit.

I could see them buying a couple in 58 for testing and going
>the fuck is this?
>the fuck is wrong with you people?
>yep, them spheroids is crazy as hell
And later, after jeffery calderon dies and takes 99% of the National Strategic IQ And Logic Reserve with him and they invade the suns them capturing a few more