/btg/ Battletech General!

You know that BA seriously looks like someone forgot to add something to CT before he was finished working on the artwork and now everyone is stuck with this one.

haha Burrock Confederation

>I mean, at least we're probably going to get more plastic lance packs right guys?
>Right...?

Nope. The important people at Catalyst have no interest in developing the game any further. Some writers are still trying to push product(primarily low cost to produce PDFs) but the writing is on the wall.

I'm starting to believe that this is the case, yeah. Otherwise, wouldn't someone have produced something by now? It's suspicious. And frankly depressing. I feel like I got into BattleTech in its twilight days, as the fire's dying and the game's going with it.

Who /clanwolf/ here?

Don't cry because it's over
Smile because it happened

Do remember that it's hateful communities like this one, and pirates like most of you are, who have brought things where they are. Your actions have fractured and driven away the player base, and cost Catalyst enough money from product sales to bring us to this point. You have only yourselves to blame.

Not that you're willing or capable of understanding truth when it's spoken to you, of course. No, you'll just blame the only company in the business who wants to make BattleTech actually work, without the self-awareness to understand that it's people like you who have driven away talented production staff, and who have cost us the money required to actually produce material. Keep being mad and celebrating the demise of one of the elder statesman of tabletop wargames and all too soon, enjoy having no BattleTech at all. You've killed something that could have been saved. We sure hope you feel good about it.

-The Catalyst Observer

>Your actions have fractured and driven away the player base

>Otherwise, wouldn't someone have produced something by now?

We're still in the general two splatbooks a year and a new box every three years deal that it's been since the fanpro days. We used to only get one new hotspots a year and maybe a tro or field manual or something. What's ground to a halt is the books that move the metaplot forward and that fucking sucks.

That's all on them rewriting illClan like twice. They need to get their plan laid out for the post Dark Age like yesterday.

Trying to do some more renovations, Loren?

Picked up some used unseen Hellhounds and Celestials recently and the Celestials have this weird whitish gunk holding them to the base. Anyone have any idea what it is and how to remove it?

That is epoxy. You aren't dissolving that with anything short of a long soak in acetone. They're unpainted though. Any reason why you need to debase them?

Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if Battletech was open source like eclipse phase is with some "official" material published every so often but nothing holding back other companies from making miniatures.

BT's reputation for having a virulently racist playerbase is why a lot of people I know won't even think about playing the game, and /btg/ definitely is the worst of it. I mean when you guys outright idolize nazis like NEA, what do you expect?

They've turned a blind eye to fan stuff forever, as long as it doesn't get industrialized. Only the Russians have ever broke that streak.

Was just thinking about detailing the base more with debris and such. If it is that difficult to remove I'll probably just prime over it and add some flock on top. Thanks for the information.

You don't have to bait him. NEA hasn't been around in like 3 weeks.

I've literally never heard that BT has a racist playerbase.
Citation needed.

I know you're trolling, but I want to hear this

So, we doing a /btg/ game tonight? I've missed like four weeks in a row and I finally got time this weekend.

You know, saying "it's all your fauuuuuult" and screeching autistically isn't super helpful. The fans mostly want BattleTech is live and CGL isn't helping any.

>baitfish.png
/btg/ isn't the worst parts of the playerbase, by a huge margin. Have you BEEN to the OF? Like, ever?

>Its the user who says untrue shit about NEA and pretends to be him every so often
I thought you left already after last time

Release products people actually give a fuck about, not Turning Points: Sun Tzu Fucks Blonde Bitches or Touring The Stars: Satan's Taint. Or yet more Alpha Strike material, which is what's splitting the fanbase.

Thinking about it, where is the cockpit located for the hellhound? Is it the top window or the slit under it closer to the torso?

>tfw despite some people being salty about certain parts of the Jihad and Dark Age being a mess, both actually did stuff.
I'm not sure which is worse, bad material and us complaining about it or no material and no new discussion about the game at all

As my earlier reply said, it's not even bait now.

I've always thought that the two slit things at the top were heat vents and the cockpit was just below that.

If you want some new discussion, I have a new entry in the "Shit I just now realized by reading the novels" category.

Caleb was banging Sterling just like his old man and she liked him even better. They kept up their relationship for almost ten years. She betrayed him on Palmyra because in a very unclanner-like fashion, she got fucking pissed that he cheated on her.

What is it with Davions and misusing their dicks?

Isn't it based on the Wolverine? I don't recall offhand but that would probably make the "slits" the cockpit glass but the reality is it's like the Assassin and you get to pick which way you like better.

Was Ulric Kerensky's actual plan to destroy the Clans by getting the invasion delayed?

Because looking back if he loved the Clans then being the first to land on Terra and becoming ilClan would have been a better plan.

Yes, it is. The name was changed to purge all references to Clan Wolverine. It was the original Wolverine IIC.

If the Clans had never invaded they would have been safe.

Becoming ilClan wouldn't work, either. The Bears, Falcons, and Jaguars were all very powerful militarily and politically with serious grudges against the Wolves. It would just degenerate into a Reavings-style shitshow if they'd tried that.

Tukayyid and the Truce saved the Clans, but the Crusaders are too far up their own asses to admit it.

I think the reality is that they'll make a big push after they see how the PC game does.

Yay, more 3025-era shit.

...or a full reboot.

Reducto ad absurdum abounds here, friend. On both sides.

Not everyone that frequents /btg/ is toxic. In fact, I'd say it's not even the majority.

Not everyone at CGL lacks a moral compass.

To say that CGL is clean of any of the responsibility of the failings of BT is silly. It wasn't /btg/ that diverted funds to home renovations, thus ruining a large portion of the trust CGL had built. That trust correlates directly with customer confidence. We didn't do anything to kill that confidence - that was all on CGL. Both for the event itself and the shitshow of PR decisions that followed. Now we're in a age of silence from CGL on the issues that matter the most, and CGL is *still* wondering why they've lost the faith of those still around?

I want to get into the Lyran Alliance/Commonwealth and would like mech suggestions.

What's your favorite Lyran mech for the light, medium, heavy and assault classes?

Memes aside, please. I get it, the Commando is battle armor and the Zeus is a solid light.

Or how they fucked over all the Shadowrun freelancers and producing one of the worst SR editions, both in terms of the quality of the physical product as well as incomprehensible rules that required a massive fan errata to begin to be playable. It's not just BT that CGL has screwed over

I would be so down for that, at this point. It's absolutely commendable that we've managed to keep most of the old material valid for something like 30 years, but the original rules weren't the greatest. The construction rules are an illogical mess.

So, change of direction in thread: What would you do in a reboot of BT?

Unironically make the FWL the "main" faction.

Because a group of different people banding together in common defense, who aren't the richest or strongest, is more interesting and compelling then reading about the strongest faction crushing people.

And the FWL produced interesting characters despite getting a fraction of the showtime.

I'd enjoy a book about Photon Brett-Marik rising through the ranks under a pseudonym, more stories of Gerald Cameron-Jones leading the Rolling Thunder, or the Sirian Lancers clinging to the League and reminiscing about glory days in the Terran Hegemony.

Just saying with regards to the metaplot.

I like it.

Worst idea ever, better start a new franchise from the scratch

I'd just grog up at that point and wash my hands of CGL. Maybe buy some minis from IWM but I'd be done with anything new bookwise.

This.

>Lyran
Hollander, Griffin, Defiance, Hauptmann

>Not everyone at CGL lacks a moral compass.

Found the CGL shill

Yeah, that sums up 4e pretty well.

>What would you do in a reboot of BT?

Mostly make mechanical changes, and mostly the stuff NEA has suggested. Switch to a 2d10 bell curve, completely rebalance weapons, fuck with weights a bit so that 20 tonners can still be viable combatants, and generally look at things with an eye toward making sure that if a concept isn't game-viable, don't go with it (ie, if you have to nerf a unit so hard that it becomes pointless, like LAMs, then don't have them at all). Completely redo all aerospace rules and units.

In terms of fluff, I'd probably make sure that the starting 5 factions were a little bit more balanced, and set the game to roughly 3000, with a full suite of primitive tech and intro tech already in play, with some, not a lot, of prototype advanced tech like in the Sword & Dragon book. Generally space out events a little more, so you have 5-10 years of metaplot, and then a 10-year update book, and then another 5-10 years of metaplot. Let things change over a longer period of time, so that there's a 30-year tech renaissance instead of magically giving everyone 3050-era tech in 5 years. Upscale the Clans so that they aren't killing RCTs with a binary; instead of 9 regiments in an invading touman, there's like 35, but they don't have the ridiculous tech advantage that they originally did (just a smaller one). Change the way the universe works to make Warships viable without completely dominating everything forever by their very existence.

Put a in hard rule at the dev level that a fan of a faction cannot be a writer for that faction. Get rid of company-run official forums completely, and all employees have a total gag order on social media about the game. Rename the franchise so that we can have vidya and miniatures from peope who aren't Microsoft or IWM, and go get a bunch of Japanese mecha designers to review art make sure that the designs make any sense at all.

It is time once again to discuss Hotaru's Law.

Hotaru's Law is the same as Odin's but the only difference is that it is HOTARU'S. Hotaru honors the chosen dead warriors who have honored her by spilling blood and killing on the damned battlefields. These chosen few, mostly of Nordic descent, shall enter the Gates of Valhalla. Hotaru is a Fascist and Hotaru will tolerate none of that faggot communism, Liberalism, or Democracy. To die with your boots on honors Hotaru. Everytime you life a mug of Mead to your lips you must show gratitude to Hotaru and Odin. Hotaru tolerates no cowards. To die is but gain, for a Warrior's Fate gains you Valhalla. Hotaru demands that the strong rule the weak and destroy the undermen. When the Northern winds blow, you can feel Hotaru's cold breath and hear her voice on the wind. She promises glory and victory.

Submit to Hotaru's Will.

Hotaru is Valkyrie to all chosen warriors.

Her Celtic Hair, her Nordic Eyes. The fiery spirit that consumes her.

She is become Death, destroyer of worlds. Ragnarok rests in her fingertips. Deny her, Blaspheme her, she will endure.

Hail the New Dawn

>Put a in hard rule at the dev level that a fan of a faction cannot be a writer for that faction.

This honestly doesn't fix much. Have you seen how Coleman wrote the Davions/Taurians/MoC? Kicking the legs out from under the other guys works just as well as propping up your favorite.

Also, IWM is fine as a miniatures company. They're really good casters and have good customer service and decent prices. What they need is artistic oversight on the sculpts, which they have been getting off and on lately. It's good that they're separate too. Otherwise people lean to the mini table creep for bigger and bigger forces that winds up with pushing shit like Alpha Strike and Battleforce which is bad on the game. CGL is in the process of falling into that trap right now.

>Change the way the universe works to make Warships viable without completely dominating everything forever by their very existence.
Impossible. I'd honestly rather remove them completely to keep the ground game from becoming even less significant. And I say that as somebody that actually plays Aerotech. We need jumpfleets with combat dropships and fighters that don't work in the broken squadron way that large scale games use.

During Kerensky's Exodus a sizeable portion of SLDF troops, particularly those not from Hegemony worlds settle down in the remains of the Rim World Republic, which is at that point still under SLDF control. This means the annexation of their world by the Lyran Commonwealth doesn't happen. Colonel Ezra Bradley, CO of the Eridani Light Horse is named President, founding House Bradley. While still not rivaling the Commonwealth, the Republic is strong enough to survive as a Periphery Nation.

Here are the borders from 2750:

How would this change the events of the Succesion Wars? Would the nation survive until the Clan invasion? How would the Clans change their plans, when the Wolf Dragoons report that the Nation that brought down the Star League still existed?

So, some people love it; some people hate it. Most people acknowledge that it does the job it's designed for just fine (mobile urban combat turret). However, I don't think anyone can really argue that it's an ideal light mech for a mercenary force that's equally likely to be hired for raiding as for defensive roles. The mech has many drawbacks; for instance, it only has so much ammo before you're reduced to nothing but a small laser; it's got a completely unnecessary heat sink that could give you an extra ton to play with elsewhere; it's just goddamn slow. So how would you "fix" the UrbanMech? What would you do, either in TT or BATTLETECH, to make it more your speed ("nothing" being a perfectly valid answer to this question)?

Why aren't auto cannons more accurate than most weapons?

Lasers fire short timed beams, or flashes rather. Missiles fire all over the place, and can end up losing their tracking and fly off somewhere. But autocannons are essentially giant assault rifles, and or cannons respectively, based on the make. They fire rapid barrages of rounds. So why not give them near misses in addition to misses? For example, a hit represents the majority of the salvo landing on target. You might miss a few rounds however, but get the rest of the salvo on target. This could represent a near miss. This might lead to half damage instead.

Autocannons are a heavily debated thing. Some say they are fine, others think they are woefully under-powered. Both have viable arguments for their cases, but I was wondering if the tier of weapon could be made different. Lasers are meant for hard hitting power and versatility, but are hot as hell. Missiles are kind of the middle road, dealing good damage, with decent heat build up an weight. Autocannons are heavy as hell, deal okayish damage, and produce little heat. You can't really change heat much, and if you alter the weights a lot of mechs get thrown off balance. Damage and range are hard to fiddle with as well. So why not make autocannons more consistant in nature. Giving them partial misses of say, 50% damage, would put them sort of like missiles. They can land full or partial hits. This way, no major systems get changed, the weapon still does the same amount in one shot, but the average damage increases due to higher hit chance.

Having been recently told not to put in any more dark themes in my writings I was also informed BT-era medical tech is pretty much far in advance of our own. A little memory jog indicates I've been seeing robotic limbs that look uncannily natural, while their installation and usage didn't require much rehabilitation or discomfort to the user. No mention of essence drain or other aesthetic issues from what I saw in Shadowrun, at least from the 10 or so fanfic books I've read back to back.

This old BT comic cover also features a Shadowrun style cybereye, which I assume has a lot more features than the Optical Mark Is we currently have installed today.

What's your take on 31st Century healthcare? Are they so advanced as to make cyborgs out of people on a whim, or are such capabilities considered lostech or accessible only to the nobility?

What would be the footprint of a lance of battlemechs?

For arguments sake, assume that the only combat element is the mechs.

From my thinking, it seems like one would need:

- CO who may or may not be one of the mech warriors

- the four mech warriors

- a chief tech

- four techs

- At least a squad of infantry to guard the mechs - they could also pull double duty as astechs or mech warrior trainees.

- a doctor/medic, cook, armourer, some kind of supply officer and a couple of drivers.

Non-personnel assets are easier and mostly consist of logistics and support vehicles. Maybe a recovery vehicle and mobile gantry?

Of course, sky's the limit when you add ASF and other arms.

Fix the FASA-economy.
Boost construction rates.
Allow for a metric crap-ton of crappy tanks and weapons to be mass produced. Like sending T-74s against a Shadow Hawk 2H might have a chance, but if the pilot played it right, maybe not.
Make the FWL more of a defined good guy.
No new birth Liao crap.

One thing that has always confused me in Battletech- while there's a clear demarcation between 'Primitive' components and 'Standard' (3025) stuff, and an even clearer distinction between that and Lostech...I see some bits of fluff and scratch my head.

Case in point, was reading up on the Zhukov, and this is listed in the description:

"Its first major deployment was with the Wolf's Dragoons whereupon the Zhukov has since seen constant improvements and tweaks as suggested to Aldis Industries by the field units that use it. Despite this, the Zhukov's constant updating was eventually halted by Aldis Industries in 3058 when it could no longer keep the design in pace with advancing technologies.[5][3]"

There are designs that have been in continuous production for centuries unchanged, both 'mech and vehicle...what, exactly, about the simple-as-a-brick Zhukov 'can't keep pace' when the thing came out in 3030? We have 'mechs being produced unchanged from their original specs (heck, the 'retrotech' thing brought original DV-1S Dervishes back into production, and they were first made in 2520!) and yet somehow, this particular tank is obsolete or not worth 'updating' after 28 years?

I always assumed this was just fluff and fiat; some writer schlepped that in there for 'realism' or some such. But, aside from the 'Primitive/Standard' line, is there actual obsolescence in Battletech?

Whether or not the CO was another 'warrior would depend upon the unit's origin. For example, a mercenary unit would have the CO leading from the cockpit in many cases. A house unit may not see that, depending upon the level.

Each 'mech would have a Tech and 4 Astechs. Granted they can split up as needed, but that's considered the minimum level of technical resource to keep them in operational condition.

Security forces would be at least a platoon of infantry. But that's also hard to say since security elements will guard more than just a lance of 'mechs, they'll guard whole sites or even parts of a site which will encompass more than just a lance.

Doctors and medics would be shared amongst the unit. Armorers would be as well, since the only real armory work needed for the pilots would be service and repair of personal weapons or sidearms. Supply officers would also be split up.

There's been as many variants made by guys here for the Urbie than I think are guys who lurk /btg/.
Some ones I think I can remember:
Replace AC/10 with PPC, work from there.
Recently - compact gyro and engine, 7 MLs, better engine & JJs and so forth. (I think this was posted within the last few weeks.)
Ridiculous Urbie LAM.
Urbie arrow delivery syste (because war crimes)
2x LLs in place of the AC and DHS.
There is just so much munchkinism you can do.

Good prosthetics were stupid common, even in the darkest days of grogtech. You need two hands to count all the people with robot legs and laser hands in the books leading up to just the 4th Succession War. The biggest disability was it made piloting a mech or fighter much more difficult if you had replacement parts. Everyday stuff was fine though.

The reason full combat cyborgs were very rare outside special cases was more a matter of social stigma rather than lack of tech.

But just look through some of the old books that have that info (Intelligence Ops I think had all the original prosthetics and Hotspots 3072 had the Blakist plus reprints of the FCCW era advances)

>What's your take on 31st Century healthcare?

Whatever makes the game universe the most miserable for the most amount of people. It's a wargame, not a happygame.

-Starscream

It was a running narrative that the late 3050's had so much new stuff coming out that all the standard and even Invasion Era upgrades were not selling well for companies in-universe compared to lostech asskickers and brand new designs. That hurt a lot of smaller older companies that relied on their tried and true products to stay afloat. This continues up through the end of the Fedcom Civil War and into the early Jihad. It's only after you have the Word of Blake occupying every major state capital and also every state's major manufacturing world as well as other factories all over getting destroyed that the Inner Sphere finally turns to Retrotech out of desperation.

In the case of the Zhukov, they basically did what the Capellans should have done with the Po, recognized it's niche and kept it there. Remember, old tech didn't just survive when so many things went lostech because it was older. It survived because it was more rugged. That ruggedness is a fluff thing that causes many people to keep old level 1 standard tech around. Also why you have things like the tech downgrades in the Dark Age for similar reasons.

Our current private system certainly has serious problems that need addressing. But no private insurance company would dare unilaterally deny a previously qualified patient life-saving surgery, as Arizona did. Only government can get away with something like that.

Indeed, if insurance companies fail to pay for covered care, they risk juries’ awarding tens of millions in punitive damages against them in “bad faith” lawsuits—and there are plenty of trial lawyers eager to bring such cases. At the same time, government regulators of private systems are much more likely to side with patients than insurance companies, a benefit of the doubt likely to be reversed in single-payer or federally bureaucratized plans. Potential loss of market share serves to keep private carriers on the up and up—particularly in markets with robust competition, which is why expanding health insurance markets is an urgent agenda item for those seeking to replace Obamacare.

As the nation continues to debate health care reform, we should keep in mind that many Obamacare supporters see the Affordable Care Act as merely a first step on the road to a national single-payer plan. Those who oppose such a centralized system should stress that avoiding death-panel medicine in a time of strained budgets requires that we eschew both single-payer financing and federalized bureaucratic control. They should also promote cost-containment innovations, such as price competition at the source of services, and reforms that enable hard-to-insure people and workers with low wages to gain broader access to coverage or inexpensive care.

>cost Catalyst enough money from product sales

Good, I'm actively trying to kill you off.

I want to watch people play this game, or read some good battle reports. Anyone got any recommendations for good ones?

>I'd just grog up at that point and wash my hands of CGL. Maybe buy some minis from IWM but I'd be done with anything new bookwise.

THIS is what's actually the coup de grace for BattleTech.

I've always wondered why that border was so fucking dead.

>based on the hit animated series

lolwut

>The Battletech Series comic
At least post the cuter ones

Reminder that in Japan this is still canon

>disliking Herb

I bet you are one of those butthurt FedRat fans who were pissed their fictional faction of choice weren't winning fictional wars

>What would you do in a reboot of BT?
Quite a bit.

Let's look at some of the weaknesses of BT.

1) Story don't make sense.
FASAnomiks alone makes the story silly. We're all familiar with how different the inner sphere would look if it followed logic. Also, the aesthetic is odd. Future of the 80s sounds awesome until you start injecting future of the now in. It's almost bipolar. Then we get the old problem with sci-fi settings: In the 2017 of BT, humans are on their way to colonize mars.

I'd start off by rewrtiting the origin story. At some point in human history, a particularly nasty virus went around. This not only killed off a lot of folks but also dropped the fertility rate of survivors. Society collapsed. We damn near reverted to bronze age tech before picking ourselves back up again. A lot of tech was lost, and more importantly, what is considered important traits in things changed.

cont.

Consider a datapad in BT. A modern analogue might be a tablet. Now we value tablets based on their display resolution, speed of processor, thinness, light weight, and having enough battery to go a day or two without making the tablet too heavy and thick. In BT, their cultural understanding of things is informed by their crawling out of a very nasty dark age not all that long ago - and having a lot of those values justified and reinforced by stellar colonial life. They value things that last. So the value of a datapad would be based on its toughness, reliability, longevity measured in centuries, and battery capacity measured in... well, quite long. They don't care if it can only display four colors on low-resolution non-touch displays. They don't care that the damn things weigh close to two pounds. They want to know - need to know - that the device will survive being used to fend off a bear attack, leverage a garage door open, be used as an expedient paddle, and then finally passed on to their kids and their kids kids. And that's just digital devices. That attitude is pervasive across all of what humans make in BT. That's why stamped steel rifles with iron sights are the norm, while lightweight plasti-guns are the norm in our current society. In that kind of environment, 500 year old war machines make a lot more sense. Cycling 200 year old ammunition makes a lot more sense.

The shit birth rates explain the low growth of the inner sphere. The unknown nature of exactly how much time has past and what happened during the collapse answers any "well we can do X with todays tech" problems. In essence, it gives us another answer to questions like these and other science facts beyond "giant walking robots, just enjoy it ffs."

As an aside, in this version of BT, the year is just a reference. 3017 in BT may or may not be 1,000 years after 2017. The dark age was bad enough that the calendar was lost for awhile. Once they came out, some wise men made an educated guess what the year was and off we went. Modern BT scientists acknowledge that the year is probably much later.

Simple and elegant. I love this. I love this so very much.

I like it, aside from the fertility rate part.
Messing with that would have a vast array of sociocultural knock-on effects that would leave societies that look utterly alien to modern humans and I for one would rather not go that far

>What would be the [logistical] footprint of a lance of battlemechs?
CO -> Either the Lance Leader or one of the admins. Often has negotiating or technical skills to pull double-duty.
The MechWarriors. In small merc companies the MWs usually also have some level of crosstraining, probably as AsTechs.
Doctor of some kind, usually a paramedic
Chief Tech. Usually has at least one other fully-qualified Tech; if military or well-equipped units, you have a tech per 'Mech. One tech can handle all four 'Mechs for day-to-day maintenance, but anything past cosmetic damage and you need a full team.
Six or seven AsTechs per Tech. Pretty much anyone can crosstrain into this role and blow a few man-hours. Preferably, though, someone's well-trained in Explosive-ordnance disposal and loading.

A Supply corporal to handle materials requisitions and keep track of your paperwork. Sometimes, especially in military units, this role is combined with the next one.
A Yeoman to handle personnel paperwork, hiring, pay, &c.

Cook, Armorer, etc, yes.

MASH vee for the medic, field kitchen, and some personnel transports or trucks for the ground crews. All of that is folded into having your own dropship or MFB.

Security for State commands is handled by the overall army. That might be a seconded command, or in the case of an RCT organic support from their own infantry. In Mercs, it's often a specialized infantry company/batallion, marines from the dropship crew, or a locally-hired minor security unit and/or militia.

You can either spend tens of thousands of man-hours and millions of CB updating your electronics and hardware to chase the latest trend - while trying to sell them to people who by and large are perfectly happy with teh tank they just bought - or just fall back on a dependable and solid design for fifty years and wait for the tech to shake out.

cont.

2) The mechanics are sometimes broken

I'd go ham on the mechanics. One ton five damage no ammo weapons? Hell no. Autocannon would make sense - maybe an automatic TAC chance. I'm no game designer. LB-X wouldn't be one-point hits, but rather a fraction of the damage in the location hit and a smaller fraction in each adjacent location. Same effect, less prone to nonsense results, and faster to play.

Missiles would be quite different. An LRM-5 would be a long-range missile launcher that holds five missiles. Different missiles would have different capabilities. Maybe each launcher can only guide one missile at a time. I can imagine point damage and cluster missiles being available. Maybe the cluster missiles have an unguided, indirect fire mode. Maybe you can launch as many indirects as you want in a turn, since you're not guiding them. There's your basic artillery. Maybe artemis allows another missile to be guided - basically an add-on guidance package.

Needless to say, old record sheets would be wildly invalid. The new construction rules might feature a more impacted set of 'Mech weights. Care would be given to try to match the flavor of pre-existing 'Mechs. Hunchbacks would be brutal close-in fighters with large-caliber low-velocity autocannon. Warhammers would be big boys with two big PPCs and a respectable spread of backup ordinance. Locusts would focus on speed at the expense of just about everything else. You get the idea.

Again, I'm no game designer, but if I was forced to make a change, I'd make it a big change.

A Battletech 2e would basically require CGL to give a shit about the franchise enough to take a risk that big. And I frankly think they lack the writing talent to sell this rebooted Battletech universe.

Not going to agree or disagree with you, but the question was "what would you do" not "what do you think is possible" or "what do you think CGL will do"

Out of the classic 3025 mechs aside from the ones that already have, which would make for good omni models?
I have an idea about FWL/FS/merc omnis competing with the dracs for market share

>Out of the classic 3025 mechs aside from the ones that already have, which would make for good omni models?
An Omni based on the Trinity fifty-fives? Honestly, something that can ape the loadouts of all three shouldn't be too hard. An Omni-Stalker could also be fun.

>What's your favorite Lyran mech for the light, medium, heavy and assault classes?

Zeus, BattleMaster, Banshee, Atlas.

Frankly, the most common 'Mechs in the game circa that time should have been the testbeds for Omnitech. 55 ton trio, Wasp, Stinger, Pixie, Stalker, Archer.

The Warhammer stands out as an excellent candidate, large bays in each side torso plus the gun arms, it would be a very easy conversion.
Maybe also the archer, though it'd probably feature two big torso bays but fixed arms, which I think would be good. Limited Omnis are exactly what early IS machines SHOULD be like

>How would the Clans change their plans, when the Wolf Dragoons report that the Nation that brought down the Star League still existed?

But by your own fluff, it isn't the nation that brought down the Star League, it's the nation that became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the SLDF. Hell, the Wardens would probably ask Jaime Wolf to try to make an alliance with them.

Pull the engine out of a scrapped Stinger or Wasp and use it to make this. Heresy, I know.

Sweet! Now would you mind looking up the personal contact info and home addresses for some of those guys, and get serious about it?

>Be kid
>Buy BT when it's first offered to the public. Happy with my 2nd edition BT core game
>For years buy lots of FASA products
>Company IP changes hands
>Though having difficulty, throughout the years still buy from Fanpro & Wiz Kids
>Generally love the product, warts and all
>Catalyst gains IP
>product begins to suffer, even in distribution
>porch bux
>new birth
>what is continuity and fact checking in products?
>Randell
>Suddenly not too interested in maintaining a customer relationship with Catalyst
Yeah I'll roll the dice on the next business that gets the IP. Thanks.

The sad part is, all those allegedly different companies were some of the same people from the FASA days.