/btg/ BattleTech General

I forgot, is the Starslayer a retconned Lyran design or was it always one of theirs?

It was one of those 3058SL designs reintroduced by the lyrans, with a SW downgrade retconned in later

Phoenix Hawk.

Originally from the McCarron's Armored Cavalry scenario pack, where it didn't have any factionality and was only available from random star league caches. Original TR:3058 put Blue Shot Weaponry on Solaris VII. Don't know which way Blue Shot leaned during the Star League.

We own the IP. As far as reality is concerned, we're incapable of being wrong. We haven't mistreated anyone who hasn't deserved it, and while there was a minor financial hiccup, Catalyst Game Labs has completely recovered and will be sure to continue running the BattleTech franchise for decades to come.

Sorry to disappoint you. You're just going to have to get used to BattleTech being the the best hands it's ever been in.

-The Catalyst Observer

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store.steampowered.com/app/637090/BattleTech/

Does anyone know when the public beta is?

I wanna buy the Mechwarrior bundle from backerkit before it's too late.

Nevermind, read the Polygon article, am retarded.

Have cool robot picture as apology.

>Then we'll send the Locusts in to finish them off!

>WoB mechs and divisions are also allowed.
heretic

how

I remember a long time ago there was fan site of a battalion's worth of BT fans that each had a Locust.

Well, you might not be able to afford an Awesome. But who needs an awesome when you and 4 of your buddies can locusts instead??

It might not be glamorous. You're easily cored by the bigger guns. But you can work your way up through reputation via boring guard jobs until you can afford a bigger mech! And you can be proud that it isn't an urbie.

Only girls ride locusts

This is my favorite /btg/ meme. I swear, I smile every time this name pops up with a post.

>You're easily cored by the bigger guns.

Yeah, I hear that happens all the time.

I haven't seen that pic before and it elicited many a hearty chuckle from me just now. Well played, user. You're alright.

Almost got me, but you forgot the CGL party line is that Demo Agents should be grateful they're "allowed" to demo the game at all.

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Locustposting?

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>Locustposting?

It's one of the easier Unseen to draw.

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I'd like this way better if the Medium Laser looked more like a 2x4; it'd mirror the cockpit shape and make the 'Mech look more relative to itself shape-wise. I always thought something looked off to me about it and now I know what it is. Maybe I'll shoop what I mean to clarify.

>draw
Ha. If you can even draw. I try, but I can't make it work. I used to be able to... long ago.

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The trick is to learn how to jump and dance.

But then why by a Mechwarrior when you can instead go on shows of death defying feats! Watch the locust walk across this beam! Oh no, the pilot does a jump, will they stick the landing??

This looks good except it has no shading in the low spots which makes it look flat.

The original!

Gotta love buggy shitposting.

Any news on the boxed set?

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Just finished a combined arms Dark Age game with a buddy. The scenario was a mixed company plus a lance of offboard artillery. One lance of mechs, one of v's, and one of infantry. Main purpose was to try some new shit under fire and see how it worked.

We tossed BV out the window just to encourage trying new toys, and instead did a rough guideline of max units, tech level, amount of clan stuff allowed and tonnage. The BV still wound up being pretty similar between both sides.

I grabbed a nominally fedsuns force and he had a republic one.

Things I learned.

ReLasers are garbage. Everyone already knows that but the main factor that makes them that way is the heat. If you dialed it down about 20-30%, then they'd be a pretty fun choice. Ironically, the Templar I took with a giant brace of them was the only surviving fully functional mech at the end. I ran that thing hotter than a RFL-4D.

Shields are actually not total garbage. I took the plasma rifle black knight and being able to switch the shield mode around during weapon phase actually made it tactically viable vs all the equipment that doesn't take changes into effect until the beginning of a round. It was especially nice when I came up against my opponent's LBX's sandblasters since it nullified shots to the actively covered area completely. You can even switch the mode around when you're using the shield arm to prop up after a fall.

Bearhunters are trash. They seem good on paper but the range is just terrible. You're better off with a conventional rifle platoon or proper support weapons.

The Artillery really was the star of the show though. We both took 4 Longtoms. I had half my lance at 1/5 and the other half at 7/5. It let me basically have one pair that could hit wherever pretty regularly and the other relegated to predesignated targets set along all the major choke points. By the time we finished the match, the entire city was rubble, smoke and fire, while the frozen countryside melted to ruined craters.

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>The original!

Some day I'll put mine back together.

Race me, /btg/

Pre conversion version.

the XXL Supercharged model goes 50/75[100]

Fast!
I don't know romanized moon runes but isn't it Kamikaze?

I'm pretty sure it is, but I was really drunk when I entered it into HMV and haven't yet fixed it

Someone posted a +700km/h frankenmech on discord using MASC+Supercharger. Certain death.

Now I kinda want to make a race course and race these fucking things.

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Ah I figured it was like that. Heineken (or alcohol of your choice) strikes once again.
One wrong piloting skill roll and it's like a dozen NASCAR crashes with the chance of an engine possibly going critical.

So fast I forgot the damn image

>Heineken
Four Roses, thanks.
Personally I can't stand heineken but to each his own

Were you using errata'd RE lasers?

My understanding is that Bearhunters are better in the RPG than the tabletop.

What is the secret to importing custom mechs into megamek?

Gotta go faster.

Placing the files into the correct folder.

And to discord, I ask why. This is not survivable.

Did this, keeps tossing me an error.

No clue, just posting what someone else posted on the discord.
, , and are my mechs.

youtu.be/zyjibMw7VNQ

I'm tired and it's almost time for bed, but I gotta make a racing map for megamek...

...or, I could be an irresponsible adult...!

Every time I see this image I think Bill Watterson drew it.

Susie grew up. The Mechwarrior life isn't what she was dreamed it would be.

She smokes to deal with the loss of friends and the constant boredom.

>My understanding is that Bearhunters are better in the RPG than the tabletop.

The BA version can be fine in BT if using the TacOps BA vs BA rules and with the right platform, namely the Buraq in hunter killer config, which has the speed to actually close to range and fuck other BA squads up bad.

LBX's fucking shred shields though

Anyone have experience with A Time of War?

Im itching for a Battletech RPG experience, and would like to have a way to introduce my friends to the world with something other than the wargame.

Mechwarrior 2/3E are vastly superior options for this sort of thing over ATOW

In what ways?

I'll look at it them tommorrow.

MW3e for the goofiness, comprehensive stats/fluff, and cleaner character generation (see attached PDF). MW2 for the lowered crunch and more direct translation to TT gameplay.

Either one is better-arranged than the massive culsterfuck that is AToW.

>namely the Buraq

>listen, what if what if
>we stuff giant burly men
>into robotic ponies?
>that go FAST?

bump

Someone redpill me on Blakist mechs. I'm kind of new.

Is the rumor true that the new game's campaign will have the Taurian Concordat as the bad guys?

I remember someone complaining about how also the "good guys," you worked for were slave-owners? Who's that?

They are talking about Magistracy of Canopus backing up the side you are playing in the Single Player campaign and yes they have slavery branded with different name and this has caused some players being butthurt about "working for Feminazis slavers."

Is there a quick-and-dirty /btg/-style description someone can give on this faction, or should I just google it?

But yeah, so it seems like the second question I asked was answered, but what of the first? Any confirmation on who are the "bad," guys?

So I was checking out the GenCon website and noticed they've put up an event list for the con, with descriptions and details on exactly what each event is, and I stumbled upon this;
>gencon.com/events/105056
>Join Harebrained Schemes’ Jordan Weisman & Mitch Gitelman for a conversation about HBS’ recently released BATTLETECH videogame.

I'll admit that it's vague, and there also stands the possibility that they could be referring to the beta, but it could mean HBS intends to release the new vidya just before GC, an auspicious time considering the history BT shares with that particular con.

What do you think, gents?
Could we be getting the new game sooner than expected?

>considering the history BT shares with that particular con.

I don't know this. What happened?

>considering the history BT shares with that particular con
Besides Catalyst releasing pretty well nothing until said con, isn't Gencon the one convention that every games company focuses on?

It burns up their uses quick, but the shield totally nullifies them. He had nailed my right torso with a couple gauss hits that punched through, but when I stumbled on his LBX Von Luckner the next round, it saved my ass. He rolled almost entirely right side.

Shields should just be treated as neat disposables, especially since you can jettison them. I wasn't super concerned with it lasting the whole match.

>Were you using errata'd RE lasers?

Yeah

Have the people on BTGame forums ever played Battletech?

They're so extremely uppity about any slight difference in the game compared to the TT as if they actually never had the chance to play and see just how horribly designed the game is (inter-weapon balance is a great example of this).
It's like I'm reading Dawn of War forums again with all the cries of "this isn't like on the TT, therefore it's wrong" when any clinically sane person knows Warhammer 40k is not really even playable as a game ATM.

There are two types of people looking forward to the game, those that want Mechcommander 3 and those who want Megamek 3D. Tabletop issues will obviously crop up in the second.

For me, the more it drifts away from regular battletech, the less excited I get. But I think any kind of new battletech videogame will be worth checking out. I just don't know if it will be something I'll still fire up years later with mods once in awhile like Sins of a Solar Empire or something.

I don't really fall under either of those.

I'm a dirty bastard who saw MWO, thought "wow, that's neat," and then read the Blood of Kerensky. Now I'm getting into the game bit by bit, and haven't played on the tabletop at all.

This game is the closest I'm really going to get any time in the coming years, so I'm pretty hype. I dig the new aesthetic because it's the one that I was introduced with, and my only real experience with the wargame or the RPG is watching HyperRPG's DFA.

I mean, I'd understand if someone got uppity if they allowed lights to fly, made ACs into some sort of artillery, etc.

But they're making the same game, just fixing what's broken along the way. For that matter, TT and Megamek are identical (minus battling spreadsheets and dice) and I'd say they've played neither.

I think it's the kind of people who never played the TT, never started MegaMek because eww... where are the graphics and are fed the cool-aid that the game is somehow super-amazing.

I still played with aToW and don't mind it, though there are some issues that I have with the character sheets themselves chewing up too much space on some categories (Who gives a fuck what lifepaths you took) and not enough on others (Take any additional lifepaths and you're guaranteed to run out of room on the skills/traits tables)

Once you get into the game, it's jesusfuck lethal, but the positive is that it keeps the 2D6 system from tabletop and doesn't get too wacky with it. Some sort of color coding for the inventory list to signify what level of Equipped you need to use it would have been nice, too. Pages and pages of lasers and gauss sub machine guns, and all you can take is a glock or revolver.

But character generation takes a dogs age. It seriously needs automation. Your players won't put up with that shit at all. Make some pregens and let them pick from the list... of course, I've been given the run around for "making characters" ever since I started GMing, so chances are it doesn't matter which edition you use, you'll still be nagging your players to get their shit together and make a character concept.

The best thing about aToW is that they went out of their way to have it support everything that can be done in Battletech, and then some.

MW2e had some wonkiness but was pretty easy to grasp. The one that stuck with me? Explicitly saying that "Throwing weapons" doesn't apply to Grenades, but never explaining what roll to make to throw a grenade.

3rd edition is crunchier than 2nd, but the 2D10 system was always off-putting to me, as well as the lifepaths that could sabotage your character from the get-go. The wounds system is interesting, but for something so important, I still can't figure out why they didn't put it on the cheat-sheet.

Actually, that's a common issue I've had. Playtest yourself through the games first. Every edition has some super important part of the mechanics tucked away on a random page.

>those who want Mechcommander 3 and those who want megamek 3d

Well both parties are about to be sorely disappointed.

It's getting the "Make it the alpha strike of alpha strike" treatment something fierce.

>Any news on the boxed set?
Usually there's no news about anything until it's already on the boat.

I dunno man. Last demo I saw made it look like Front Mission:Battletech in terms of gameplay. And while that's not exactly what I would choose if I had my way, it's not Alpha Strike levels of abstraction.

>Any confirmation on who are the "bad," guys?

Well what I gathered was that the rival house that usurped power will be the main opponent's in the campaign. Taurians are probably backing them, but I think it will be more of Cold War way of supplying weapons and mechs to them and possibly some mercenaries.

Better than the sum of their parts

Also don't use them with BV. Especially don't use them with BV if you want to use Manei Domini.

I thought you could only jettison shields with the quirk?

>disposables

Eh, I feel like BT's melee weapons and handheld rules are a total clusterfuck anyways. I think any mech with hands should just be allowed to carry stuff like a hatchet or shield.

>I think any mech with hands should just be allowed to carry stuff like a hatchet or shield.

So do I, or at least any versions that fit within the two hand carry weight. But what I'm more pissed off at is the recent trend to turn all handheld chassis guns into sidesaddle hard forearm mounts.

>I thought you could only jettison shields with the quirk?
Maybe I misread the rules. I know that the shield will continue to bog you down if you keep it after it's all used up. It doesn't automatically come off. It would be such a gimp if you can't toss them though.

Boy I can't wait to work for the Taurians! Chances they will be made to look like bumbling idiots not worth the trouble of conquering: 100%

You don't get a campaign path for the space cowboys. It's planet of the space amazons or sandbox nothing.

Someone hasn't watched any of the gameplay demos. Go crawl back into your hole.

>Lacks the depth of megamek 3d, more like alphastrikemek 3d
>Went from free movement to grid movement and turn based, nothing like mechcommander

>Is there a quick-and-dirty /btg/-style description someone can give on this faction, or should I just google it?

NEA would normally handle this, but he's out. Since you're new I'll refrain from memeing.

Most of the MOC's reputation as a slave-owning state is overstated. It's in no way like the Confederacy. There are 2 forms of legal slavery in the Canopian state. The first and most common is that a person may legally sell themselves into "slavery" for a period of time to pay off a debt. They aren't forced to do so, but it is an option, and if they do they have significant legal protections. It's a choice a person is allowed to make, that's all.

The second is that a noblewoman may take a male as a spouse and the male may not refuse. This is the dodgier one, but given the traditional behavior of nobles through human history and pretty much throughout the Inner Sphere, it's not like it's something new. The MOC just took the behavior nobles exhibit anyway and codified it into law.

What the MOC isn't doing is creating an entire demographic of slaves ("all men", "all people of X color", "all people from Y planet"). Capellans do this, they just call them the "servitor caste", and somehow they don't get shit on for having slaves. Would the faction be less hypocritical if they didn't have slavery at all? Definitely. But they're hardly the Confederacy reborn like the memeing makes it out to be.

>Maybe I misread the rules.
You apparently did, because the "Shields cannot be jettisoned." is flat out stated.

>It would be such a gimp if you can't toss them though.
And that is one of the major reasons people don't like shields.

The capcon are total bastards and everyone knows and accepts that, so nobody makes much of a deal over them doing the slave thing, but the MoC gets portrayed as a good guy place, so the hypocrisy is more blatant and therefore mocked

This would be about a million times better if you didn't mention the Confederacy at all. It has no bearing even as a point of comparison. Even in its own war, it was between two slave owning republics. Abolition was a brilliant tactic by Lincoln in the later part of the war to sow chaos, gut the southern workforce, and get a shit ton of free soldiers. He just didn't have the political clout to do it earlier because he would have lost a lot of the midwestern states.

Also the word you're looking for in the first bit is Indentured Servitude, and that shit is as old as feudalism. Very popular in the colonial era for colonists to work off their passage as well.

What I really love is how the capellan use of slavery used to explicitly be one of the major reasons why the MoC and TC hated them, before xin sheng magic hit
Funny how times change, eh

I was mentioning the Confederacy because every time MOC slavery gets mentioned, a couple of people (idiots mostly) get on here and scream that anyone who supports a slave owning faction must agree with the South and therefore are Confederates. Or something like that.

And yeah, I know what indentured servitude it. It's been pointed out a lot, but people still call it slavery when the MOC does it.

>MoC gets portrayed as a good guy place

NEA argues, and I agree, that the MOC is a only good guy place in comparison to some of the other powers in Battletech and isn't necessarily a good guy faction by some objective standpoint. I'd personally rather live in the MOC than in the Combine or in the Marian Hegemony, for example. I personally think that if they didn't have slaves and indentured servants at all, people would get pissy because they

I thought the MOC and TC still hated the Capellans, they just allied with them for strategic reasons. You can positively despise another country and still be allies if the payoff from alliance is sufficient.

Also, we don't have slaves. The Confederation has servitors, so I don't know what the TC and MOC would be mad about anyway.

>we

They, you are a real person not affiliated in any possible way to the 31st fictional space government