/btg/ Battletech General!

A very peculiar scenario. Personally, I don't think a veteran would back down until his 'mech was a certified junk pile or at least immobile and outmaneuvered, hence in no position to do further damage. We're talking about the Clans after all, there is no easy mode for the youngsters.

Hegira is a honorable retreat, but these warriors serving on ToPs are volunteers - their honor is not at stake, only their age complexes.

Thank you both. This does clear it up and it is what I was looking for.

How does everyone feel about HBS changing the setting of the BT game to be their own made up periphery state instead of the slave owning misandrists?

I for one like it because it might get everyone to shut up about it and because I'm a sucker for the periphery in general.

I think it was a smart move on the corporate end.

However it disappoints me that I won't be able to saltmine the conflict that would have come from bringing BT's gynocracy into the mainstream.

>Princess Internet
Yes Captcha, exactly.

>be their own made up periphery state instead of the slave owning misandrists?

They're the only good faction anyway, so no.

FS: Genocidal Mass Murderers
DC: Weaboo Genocidal Mass Murderers who also practice slavery by a different name
LC: Genocidal Mass Murderers
CC: Insane Genocidal Mass Murderers who also practice slavery by a different name
FWL: Several flavors of Genocidal Mass Murderers, but nobody cares about the distinctions
Clans(all): Furry Genocidal Mass Murderers who not only practice slavery but go full Eugenics on top
TC: Genocidal Mass Murderers with cowboy hats
Marians: Genocidal Mass Murderers who practice slavery, actually have the balls to CALL it slavery, and also mass murder the slaves for funsies.
Comstar: OK, none of that. But being an IT worker basically counts the same, morally speaking, as being a mass murderer.
WOB: Genocidal Mass Murderers who at least cop to the fact they're genocidal mass murderers.
MOC: ...oh, they just own slaves. No mass state-sactioned murder at all. And they pay their slaves a living wage, don't actually force people to be slaves except by the choice of the slaves themselves, go out of their way to let people buy themselves out of slavery when their debt is paid, and have strict worker protections for them so they don't get abusedlike everyone else's slaves.

Yeah, "clearly" the MOC is the worst faction in the game. All that genocidal mass murder doesn't mean anything compared to people with vaginas running a state in the exact way that men ran everything for 98% of the rest of human civilization.

This is sanctimoneously put, but it's a valid point. It's not like the MOC is good or a morally pure state, but there's no rational arguement where anybody else in the game universe is actually . In an age where tumbrinas scrutinize every bit of the media for something to be outraged about, every other faction in the game is guaranteed to give them plenty of ammo to get triggered by.

From a purely corporate-speak perspective, the MOC actually is the "least bad" choice to make into protagonists, because at least there's the chance of avoiding tumblrina-driven bad press.

While I'd prefer a more popular faction be made into the protagonists, I can't deny that this is a safer business decision, and since I want more games in the future, I'm not going to be mad about them making safe business decisions about the franchise.

>I reserve the right to get mad if the entire game turns into a "white men R bad with Giant Robots in the background" simulator, though.

This half-assed bait was exactly what I was talking about here.

>Buh muh pure wimmens

Putting aside that the LC is no stranger to female Archons or that the CC has had female Coordinators, everything is clearly Men's Fault.

Beautiful.

Exactly my stance on the matter. I'll miss the above salt, but it appears I'll get to have my cake and eat it too.

Fuck off and die. You're both sellouts to your gender.

the made up state was honestly a good call, and I've always believed we need more minor periphery states anyhow
I'm just mad about the lack of modding

'We' is 'I' and I think you misunderstand. I'm looking forward to baiting the tumblrtards with the fact that the only gynocracy in BT is a half-rate periphery state.

is an example of the kind of butt-hurt triggered salt I'm looking forward to

>the MOC is the only faction run by women
>you all hate women

and the aforementioned salt mine is still real.

>54174119 is an example of the kind of butt-hurt triggered salt I'm looking forward to

Not that I disagree necessarily, but what part of that list is actually inaccurate? Not the end paragraph that's copy-pasted from Tumblr and could be put in a salt-shaker with nobody noticing the difference, but the list itself. I'm pretty sure the only states that haven't nuked the living shit out of people are the canopians and the outworlds and maybe comstar.

Of those three, only the canopians own slaves, but they're also pretty clearly nicer to their slaves than everybody else, and there's all that word of Herb stuff outright saying that canopian slavery isn't even what we'd define as actual slavery, but is really indentured servitude. So, between the indentured servants and the whole lack of nuking other people, as far as I can tell, the canopians would be the third best (or thrid least bad, if you like) faction, after comstar and the outworlds, then.

As a long time BT player I can throw this one out there. The MoC's biggest sin is being kind of boring up until recently. The faction has been there for longer than it has not, I can't remember exactly when Canopis turned up but it was a long time ago.

Nobody gave a shit about the faction until now and it is only because of our ear-fucked socio-political climate. Their blatant matriarchy was seen as interesting and fresh by almost everyone I met IRL and talked about them with.

They aren't war crime ridden and saturday-morning-cartoon-villain evil like the rest of the IS, so that list is *technically* correct. But it leaves out the fact that...

1) they are also a faction that has done fuck all for the bulk of the lore besides be everyone's second favorite periphery state.

and 2) this salt dispenser is fueled by keyboard warriors who want it to mean more than it really does.

I was looking forward to playing in the Magistracy, but no more or less than I am looking forward to this OC donut steel faction.

None of it, but ignoring the CC and LC have a history of strong/crazy female leaders too.

...

...

a discussion about a relevant topic that is by Veeky Forums standards very calm and reasonable = terrible posts.

you know? ypu're right. we should have been autistically screeching like faggots, my bad.

no u

i'm just here to plummet the level of discourse down to the proper levels of retardation

haha
butte hold

the bg forums have been down for 3 days. are they getting ddos'd?

I would really like to know too. I want to actually buy TtS old kentucky

Does anyone know where I can get stuff like this 3d printer file of a Catapult without paying for it? gambody.com/3d-models/mechwarrior-bobcat

I'm new to the 3d printing thing so I'll probably just mess it up so I'd like to be able to try without having to shell out the money for it.

go to yeggi and search battletech/mech. i found one there and much more. yeggi searches other 3d print sites, including payed ones. but i found several dozen free mech print files and have build my entire 40k army from yeggi as well.

Yeggi only goes so far. I've been looking for a printable MWO Atlas for a bit and have found half a dozen utterly unsalvageable piles of barely cohesive polygons.

The Shadowrun site was hacked on Saturday, though

the fact that they're lying and calling this maintenance worries me.

I even had a my anti-virus software throw a fit, trying to connect to their page.

Battlebumping,

Besides Kai Allard-Liao and Nasty K, who are the best mechwarriors in universe?

Grayson Death Carlyle (born 21 May 3004[1] – died 22 May 3065; aged 61 years) was the commander of the famous mercenary unit Gray Death Legion. Known for his innovative battlefield tactics, especially the use of anti-BattleMech infantry, Carlyle is widely acknowledged as the father of 31st century warfare.

Gray Noton was up there back in his day, the kell brothers too.

>The faction has been there for longer than it has not, I can't remember exactly when Canopus turned up but it was a long time ago.
Formed in 2540 by dissidents from the FWL, and it's been in the game's universe/fluff right from the start AFAIK.

It's CGL, user.

Lying about shit is the normal state of play. Telling the truth and delivering on promises in a timely fashion would be noteworthy.

Karianna Schmitt, Vlad Ward, Phelan Ward/Kell, Morgan and Patrick Kell, Morgan Hasek-Davion, Justin Xiang Allard, Aris Sung, Hohiro Kurita (allegedly, has good stats but accomplished fuck all with them), Devlin Stone, etc.

Pretty much any named character from a novel is going to be 3/4 or better. Most are 2/3 or better.

I know the fan-made TRO:3063 is an old topic, and not everyone here likes it. But I thought I would step in and mention that the German translation has begun (again). They seem to like it enough to spend six months working at it, so... great.

The first attempt petered out when the translator went bugfuck (and kept my money without producing a damn thing in a year).

Wish us luck! Oh, and I am looking forward to Veeky Forums's own Technical Readout, too.

People cared about the Canopians, but as space amazon queens of the Shadowhawks and traveling slut circuses. They were interesting in that unlike the real bandit kingdoms like Circinus or the pirate kingdoms that were trying to go legit like the Marians, they were a proper old state that had kind of slid back into being a near-bandit kingdom despite not being bombed to hell like everyone else. Read the Canopians in Periphery first edition and you'll see they're a lot of fun.

What has fucking ruined them the last number of years is people trying to treat them like a big faction instead of the Periphery (what is up with people demanding every Tom, Dick and Butte make a ton of shit anyway?) and twisting old puns about pillow talk into elite cyborg commandos.

And where's my secret Blakist sect out there formed from the millions of people brainwashed when the robes occupied the whole place with nothing but TWO Divisions for the better part of a decade?

The periphery states outside the OA didn't even exist until 1987. The old Pirate Kings were more famous. Now nobody even knows where Pirate's Haven is.

I really like the custom quickdraw with the laser eyes

Yeah, a Lassiter piloted that one. My answer to Louis L'Amour's Sackett family. Custom made for a guy who was a big game hunter. Died in a mis-jump, and Lassiter pilots it to glory of a sort.

Morgan Kell, Yorinaga Kurita, Jamie Wolf, Phelan, Aidan, Yodama, besides those already mentioned

Well looking at the cast of the BT game, even the opposing side are a black man and his crazy daughter, so I doubt the "white men R bad with Giant Robots in the background" thing will happen.

There is the Twitch program Death From Above that is basically HBS guys testing out their stuff in tabletop form and on it the MoC and Taurians have been in the support role for of the main crew and the antagonists, which I am guessing will be how it's going to play out in the BT Game,

>Marians
Their "legitness" is pretty recent though; they were a Pirate state for a LONG time, and they are still hyper-aggressive to this day.

As for the Periphery and production, I think people just have trouble understanding how when 'Mechs were so scarce, the Successor States didn't just flatten the Periphery for their limited production, or forcibly absorb them. I mean okay, when you're threatened on two fronts by enemies, sure, that's a risk, but when said state only makes Stingers and Shadow Hawks? And their military is largely green in actual combat and only really knows about fighting Pirates? Eh... sounds one-sided. So I think some people just wanted them to have enough production to be able to stand alone, and make sense as states. I mean sure you can hand-wave it as "well they exist because it's cool" and that's fine, but not everyone likes the game or the fluff the same way you do. I'm a PaF fag, but I don't have problems with people wanting the OA to make Strikers and the TC to make Stalkers or Banshees or Chargers or something.

>the Successor States didn't just flatten the Periphery for their limited production, or forcibly absorb them

They did. The OA is like half the size it was at the beginning of the Succession Wars. Kurita gobbled them up. I love having Amish Samurai pirate hunters from there.

Lyrans did the same to the good parts of what was left of the Rim Worlds.

Believe it or not, the MoC was nominally allied with the Davions prior to Xen Sheng, and so the FWL just terrorized their border instead of conquering. Why bother with the MoC when you can eat into that juicy Andurien flank of the Confederation?

The Fedsuns already owned a bunch of Taurian worlds and most of them were a drag on the state financially and difficult to control. The Outback is a fun place, but very poor and very independent. More Taurian worlds means more trouble. But honestly, the Haseks feuding with the Caps and their own Prince all the time is what put the biggest damper on that.

Marians are honestly still pirates. I was just saying they're making an attempt at a veneer of legitness rather than reveling in piracy. And they've been that way since the beginning.

Morgan Kell, no contest. Based on raw talent it was probably some nameless clanner somewhere who got killed before even getting close to a bloodname.

Forgot my pic

>They did
Well, they took chunks to be sure, especially all the ex-RWR worlds for the LA, but the fact that the Periphery never recovered from the Reunification War (except the Taurians) was a bit silly, I think. I dunno, it's just so hard to find a firm footing for this shit given how wishy-washy the lore is, and how not even the company handling it fact-checks enough. I mean how many people really liked the 3039 retcon? Show of hands.

>twisting old puns about pillow talk into elite cyborg commandos.

If only, user. Thanks to Kit's bullshit, the Ebon Magistrate shits on Light of Mankind operators, because reasons.

The two big problems with the 3039 retcons were the tech intro dates making the Clan Invasion utterly nonsensical and changing it from an evenly-fought battle where Hanse blinked to one where the FedCom bent the Dracs over, owned them like utter little bitches, and then just stopped because they had ADHD or some fucking thing.

I don't mind the tech retcons in a vacuum but it fucks too hard with other things. If they'd re-done the Clan Invasion to match the revised dates and up-sized the Clans to match then sure, but like everything else it got half-assed.

>the fact that the Periphery never recovered from the Reunification War (except the Taurians) was a bit silly
The Outworlds Alliance was a state of peacenik quasi-Mennonites anyway, so they didn't even try to rebuild most of their heavy industry. The Star League let them keep their aerospace fighter production, because ASFs can defend OA worlds but can't take or hold ground, and other than that they were just happy to stay a bunch of technophobic dirt-farmers.
The Rim Worlds Republic recovered from Reunification perfectly well - just ask the ghost of Dumb Dick Cameron.
The Magistracy and the Concordat had Star League boots put firmly on their necks after the War, because they made the biggest fights of the whole thing. Canopus might have been treated more lightly, but both nations' economic and industrial workings - hell, even entire planets! - were deliberately engineered to be completely reliant on Terran money, Terran supplies, and Terran goodwill. The loss of all three when the Amaris Coup kicked off basically killed off half the population-base of each nation, and it takes a long-ass time for any state to recover from that kind of manpower implosion.

Yeah I wasn't really referring to the RWR but other than that, fair points. I forgot that the Star League basically satellite-stated the TC and MoC.

>the Ebon Magistrate shits on Light of Mankind operators
Only at the one thing intelligence operatives are *never actually supposed to do*, user. Yes, Ebon Magistrate spies can murder the shit out of people in firefights or hand-to-hand... but spies are supposed to *gather or steal information*, ideally without anyone ever *knowing* it's been gathered/stolen. Gunfights are loud and messy and leave umpteen different kinds of evidence and fallout, and any spy who *gets* into a gunfight in the first place has utterly failed at secrecy and stealth and should be thrown out of the job at first opportunity.

Basically, the Ebon Magistrate are all James (or Janie) Bond, and 007 is almost certainly the *worst* actual spy in media history. He's a semi-decent assassin, but he's *utter shite* at anything involving actual intelligence. Of any sort.

All of this. Being the deadlist operatives (not including the wobbie zombies) isn't all that great of a thing.

Last time this conversation came up, Nea had a similar point that I saved for a reference for my Periphery campaign. IMO people are getting bent out of shape about it just because it's the MOC and Periphery states aren't supposed to have anything nice, even the ones who have medical and implant tech as one of their factions main strengths going all the way back to the 1980s

>007 is almost certainly the *worst* actual spy in media history.
Say, dear user, have you by any chance missed aquaintance with Sterling Archer?

>Thanks to Kit's bullshit, the Ebon Magistrate shits on Light of Mankind operators, because reasons.

So fucking weird that there's this complete disconnect between the Handbook MPS and TRO writeups of the Ebon bullshit and what actually happens to the MoC in the Jihad which was more in line with what you would expect.

>Magistrix hiding out on Sian while the whole damn state is under Blake occupation
>Capital burned to the ground literally
>Government in exile with just a handful of forces
>No communications since Blakists run all the HPG's
>Capellans factfinding mission to a lesser world getting BTFO by MD's to the point they turn Aris Sung into an unwitting double agent

The only reason there was even anything left was because when the Blakist took shit, they wanted it for themselves, not to destroy things. Kinda funny that the "bad guys" were the ones who fixed up and upgraded all the old factories they captured while the "good guys" blew them all up.

AFAIK, that show's never aired where I live.

The internet is your friend, user. 7 seasons so far, with more in the making.

>The only reason there was even anything left was because when the Blakist took shit, they wanted it for themselves, not to destroy things. Kinda funny that the "bad guys" were the ones who fixed up and upgraded all the old factories they captured while the "good guys" blew them all up.

Well if you read any of the Operation SCOUR stuff, it usually goes like "the Allied people took the planet and as last fuck you Blakist nuked all the factories." And that's why the RoS troops are kinda hotpodge of mechs in the start as the WoBs destroyed most of the advanced stuff inside RoS.

I don't think they're lying. The site was hacked just before the outage, but I was able to connect again after the hack for a brief while. They've mentioned in the past when they've been attacked, and there's not much point in lying about something that's not your fault and is publicly verifiable (as this round of hacking was) anyways.

Not at all. The Blakists would nuke enemy units as a final fuck you. The factories were usually "the fighting got to be inside the factory and it got wrecked in the battle" or "people trying to dislodge the Blakists broke shit because fuck the Robes" Everything wrecked at Terra was the Stoner Coalition. Bears broke both Titan and Oneil because they were fucking assholes. Ground troops broke all sorts of shit at Mitchel. So on and so forth.

So usually it was more like "Killing Blakists without wrecking shit is HAAAAAAAARD. Just kill them all instead." This especially makes sense when you see what a rabid murderboner Stone had for Robes in person. The RotS had a hodgepodge because stuff was destroyed, but not because the Blakists destroyed it.

JHS Terra even makes note the Blakists weren't launching guided nukes outside dragonfire auto defense space stations. While this is the sort of stuff the people rooting out the Blakists were saying.

>We will resist these Blakists with every means at our disposal. If they bring a gun, then we shall bring a ’Mech! If they bring a ’Mech, then we shall bring a regiment! And if they use a nuke then we shall nuke them into the Stone Age and beyond because that is all they understand. Let us shove their “Peace of Blake” down their throats!

Praise be.

If there hadn't been multiple decades of stuff saying Blake's Wrath and Light of Mankind were THE SHIT and everyone else quaked in their boots at the idea of ComStar/WoB special forces coming for them then sure. But there was, and then all of a sudden the Ebon Magistrate was better thanks to the power of the patron author.

I don't mind Periphery nations being good at whatever. I do mind when they're suddenly catapulted to the top of a tree ComStar and WoB have been so casually dominating for centuries.

the quality of maps found in the pastebin link is shit, resolution and photo angles make printing or using them not possible

who would ever post it, there is no use for them other than showing somebody how a battletech map looks like

only map set compilation, mappack hill terrain & flatlands set qualifiy as something one could use for gaming purposes.

remove the shitty links unless they are replaced with something having usability value

>But there was, and then all of a sudden the Ebon Magistrate was better thanks to the power of the patron author.

You are aware that the Ebon Magistrate is
a) not the best special forces unit, just the one most likely to win an infantry firefight, which is the thing they want to actually get into, and
b) didn't achieve that status until the very tail end of the Jihad after Blakes Wrath and Light of Mankind (and pretty much everyone else's formations, for that matter) had been shattered by a decade of high tempo operations?

Nobody's saying that the Magistrate is better than those formations in 3067, or 55, or whatever date you feel like cherry picking to prove your argument. They're saying that the Magistrate is better than anybody else at the very end of the Jihad once everyone else's spec-ops formations were pretty much wrecked AND that the Magistrate is particularly good at the one thing spec-ops formations don't particularly want to be good at.

Your mad about something that isn't important and isn't in any way unreasonable when you view it in context. That's not patron author magic, unless you feel like claiming that every time a faction gets something nice you don't like, it's patron author magic.

CONTEXT
O
N
T
E
X
T

>Light of Mankind shattered
>When ROM is 90% still intact at the end of the war
>When even with Gibson and Terra gone, they are still able to mount sphere wide coordinated ops on a scale no other agency can muster
>Hitting over fifty different worlds at the same time across four million square light years

Not even him but AHAHAHAHAHA!

user.

Prior to TR 3085, Blake's Wrath, Light of Mankind, and perhaps the reborn Star League Fury squads (mostly drawn from BW and DEST) were the creme de la creme, followed by DEST and Rabid Foxes. After that was LOKI and the Death Commandos.

And that was for special operations at the infantry scale. The Magistracy wasn't even in spitting distance, cybered up troopers or otherwise- the Death Commandos were the most heavily auged.

Then all of a sudden, lolnope, Ebon Magistrate are the best.

So yeah.

CONTEXT
O
N
T
E
X
T

This.

The Word of Blake didn't lose the war. They just decided to give up Terra because they didn't need it any more and to stop fighting. ROM took less than 1% casualties throughout the entire Jihad campaign and even in the Dark Age is far better at every aspect of military operations than any other faction. Anyone seriously contesting the fact that ROM is the best intelligence service in the Inner Sphere in an unbroken streak all the way from the Terran Hegemony days through the Dark Age isn't a person worth conversing with.

I haven't played MWO in literally 2 or 3 years.

Is it worth giving it another try?

>Blake's Wrath
Endured 10 years of casualties in the Jihad.
>LOM
Endured 10 years of casualties in the Jihad.
>DEST
Endured 10 years of casualties in the Jihad. Troops don't have bionics as default equipment in TRO3085.
>Rabid Foxes
Endured 10 years of casualties in the Jihad. Troops don't have bionics as default equipment in TRO3085.
>Loki
Endured 10 years of casualties in the Jihad. Troops don't have bionics as default equipment in TRO3085.
>Fiat Commandos
Endured 10 years of casualties in the Jihad. Troops don't have bionics as default equipment in TRO3085.

>Ebon Magistrate
Endured like 2 years of Blake occupation, assuming they were on Canopus, otherwise took a back seat to Death Commandos in the Jihad and so wouldn't have taken heavy casualties at all. Troops have bionics as default equipment in TRO3085. The Magistrates are in a position to be called badass because everyone else is shit in 3085. It's like America immediately post-WW2; their economy looked great when it was the only functional one for 20 years.

I did just notice when I went back and looked over TRO3085 just now, the entry is for a specific subgroup of the Magistrate, not the whole organization. The relevant sentence is, in its entirety: "Ebon Magistrate Shock Troops are perhaps the deadiest soldiers being fielded today."

So, three important things:
1) "Shock troops" only. Not all Magistrates. It's an extra-small subgroup of the Magistrates.
2) "Perhaps", not "are". It's not a definite statement.
3) "Being fielded today", which disqualifies Blakist stuff, because they aren't being fielded in 3085. The entire description of the Blake spec-ops troops is written in the past tense as well.
4) Nobody else in the entire book but the Blakists use bionics as default equipment. Individual operators may have bionics, but not as default equipment.
5) They still aren't the best spec-ops in general. They're just good at firefights. Big deal.

>pic related

>They're just good at firefights. Big deal.

Fucking DEST and the Rabid Foxes made a habit of taking out Clan 'Mechs and stormed enemy WarShips as marines. Then the Ebon Magistrate are suddenly at least on their level if not better.

Keep spinning, Baghdad Bob.

You keep citing TRO 3085. Stop it. It literally doesn't matter what the TRO says.

All of the sane and correct people in the thread are telling you that TRO 3085 is not a valid source, BECAUSE of author fiat. You can't cite a source in an argument when the source itself is tainted.

If you want to cite a source that's valid, you'll have to cite a source from the Jihad era that Kit didn't work on or contribute to in any way, so we can be sure that the information on the MOC wasn't influenced by him.

>to save you time, there isn't one, so by definition your position holds no validity and cannot ever hold validity

It also ignores canon to that point because "lol Jihad losses."

If troops like DEST, Rabid Foxes, and Death Commandos are the yardstick- and their casualties weren't as bad as he's making out either- are the yardstick for awesome, what in the everloving fuck makes it realistic for the Magistracy to come out of nowhere with competitors, especially on top of their mystery supplies and general me-too shit with the CapCon of the Xin Sheng plus era?

Especially in an area they had no known expertise in, cybernetic bits or otherwise? Like seriously, read what LOKI, the DC, DEST, and Rabid Foxes do in the novels and Jihad era shit then tell me with a straight face that a Periphery nation should have a special ops force that fearsome.

To add to this, yes. Your observation 1-5 are all completely correct and reasonable. No sarcasm, no lie. According to TRO 3085, only a very small portion of the Ebon Magistrate is included in that statement, it does leave room for interpretation, it explicitly doesn't include the WoB cyberzombies, and they are described only as the 'deadliest', which has nothing to do with the far more common duties of special forces. Additionally, you are right in pointing out that the Magistrate is being compared against a bunch of other forces that have gone through a protracted war with comensurately high casualty rates; at the end of Vietnam, the SAS was blatantly a better organization than the USA's Delta Force as well, because most of the competent Delta guys were dead or were medically retired.

Your reading is 100% correct.

The problem is that what you're reading FROM is wrong. Your source material is irrevocably non-canon, because it's written by a patron author. It cannot be taken seriously nor used as evidence in a discussion by an honest participent.

You are an honest participant in this conversation, aren't you?

Then what the hell should you use as a source for era shit other than the fucking official TROs concerning that era, your personal canon you came in your mind?

>Especially in an area they had no known expertise in, cybernetic bits or otherwise?

Do you have a source on that?

As far as I was aware, there was simply no data. It's not that the Magistrate were good or bad, it's that they simply didn't get written about the way that the main IS powers DEVGRUs did.

>teaching people to be good at a firefight is literally the easiest part of military ops training. It's all the other shit they do at the same time, like learning to deal with Afghan tribesmen or any of the 20 other MOSs you're supposed to be competent in, that's hard. Trigger pulling is cake in comparison to having to be multicultural and do 4 other people's jobs simultaneously. I don't want to claim authority on an anonymous board, but I do have some small experience in this matter.

Also, I know I just said not to look at 3085, but I'll point out that their default equipment includes a cybernetic IR/targeting system that lets them see through cover out to 60 meters and operates as a targeting computer. Being able to ignore cover, to shoot a lot more accurately, and oh yeah, they've got subsurface implanted armor that doesn't hinder their movenent and basically negates normal small arms, plus whatever external armor they care to use on top of that. Nobody else has these capabilities built into their infantry.

So if we were to allow 3085 as a valid source, the Magistrates actually are arguably the deadlist infantry troops in the book (discounting the WoB troops). The TRO description isn't wrong.

Not our problem.

In the absence of a valid source changing the status quo, the status quo is what is valid. And the established status quo in Battletech pre-TRO 3085 is that the Magistrate was about the 15th-best special ops force among the 3067-era Inner Sphere's 14 major players.

>at doing anything other than getting HUMINT via pillow talk. I'll admit they've got that wrapped up tight.

I'm not and so I can't speak for him.

All I'm saying is that the EM shit comes literally out of fucking nowhere, promotes a Periphery state's special forces to /at least/ DEST and Rabid Fox tier, arguably better since the text explicitly says without WoB special forces around there's probably no-one better, is in a TR where Kit has a writing credit and is probably responsible for the entry, and generally coincides with the massive bigging up of the MoC's capabilities to support the bullshit plotlines of the CapCon in the Dark Age.

It's just a bridge too far for me. Like a PC who always wears mirror shades, a trench coat, and fights with two katanas.

As a 3rd party watching the shitflinging, what would it take for you to accept the EM's improvement as valid?

I am
I agree with every word you said, except these.

>arguably better since the text explicitly says without WoB special forces around there's probably no-one better

It doesn't say that. The MoC defender upthread is correct in that the text says there's probably no one better at one specific part of a mission. Not that the EM is just "better at everything" than everyone else. It's an important distinction.

If we're going to shit on those who deserve to be shat upon, let us do it from a position of truth, and not exaggerate so they can argue back and our exaggerations as ammunition against us.

Nothing. It can't be done. Both because it's such a radical break from the previous lore, and because the only person who writes about the MoC is Kit, and anything Kit writes is fundamentally biased and therefore invalid as a justification.

Same thing I want to see with most BT writing. A bit of foreshadowing and preferably without blatant authorial fiat. I don't mind so much if things are justified with a bit of set-up but a lot of the MoC stuff from Xin Sheng on is just "Oh, bee tee dubs, they're now super good at X :^)" and it's inevitably to support Coleman's writing or in something Kit's fingerprints are all over.

Same reason it's a mistake to get Jellico to write or design for the Bears or let MadCap write for the Caps.

>It doesn't say that. The MoC defender upthread is correct in that the text says there's probably no one better at one specific part of a mission. Not that the EM is just "better at everything" than everyone else. It's an important distinction.

Yeah, but again: we've seen DEST, Rabid Foxes, LOKI, and even Warrior Houses in action as infantry combatants. Shit, we've even seen Nekekami agents doing that job.

But apparently the EM are the best operators at operating operationally. This is what bugs me. Not their intel gathering, or analysis, or counter-intel, that they're better fighters than the DEST or Rabid Foxes who for like 25 IRL years and about double that IC have been held up as combatants who would make Rambo their bitch at will.

>Same reason it's a mistake to get Jellico to write or design for the Bears or let MadCap write for the Caps.

Isn't the reason Ghost Bear Dominion is what it is due to Ben Rome and him being Bears fan. I know Leviathans have been credited for his biggest fuckup. And yes a ship that can take an entire Star League era fleet and still come out top is a fuckup as it kinda makes the space fights vs that particular faction near impossible to the other side to win.

Bears have been riding high since the mid-50s but the retardation really starts with the 60s and the redesign of the Lev into the Lev II.

The original plan for the Jihad was even to have the Bears ride in at the 11th hour when everything was lost and BTFO the Word of Blake. What we got was still pretty dumb but I think it pre-dates Ben's tenure. He didn't help much when he did get in though.

Full disclosure: Dracfag who's still salty over him using CTRL+C, CTRL+V on the old Drac SB for HB: HK and doubling down on the old retardation of the Combine instead of treating it to a Cappie-style unfucking, even though the Dracs are allegedly actually his favourite faction.

>But apparently the EM are the best operators at operating operationally

>Damn you for not getting this and making me defend the damned EMs

They can see through cover.
They have a built-in targeting computer.
They basically ignore small arms fire.

Yes, dammit. They ARE the best at operating operationally because those are all things that make you really good at operating operationally, and the EMs have access to those because they've got the implants, not because they're better trained or more professional.

Take a group of 15 year Green Berets with no equipment but their guns and ammo, and a group of 5 year National Guardsmen who all have access to NVGs, body armor, and individualized access to an overhead IR drone feed and have them fight each other at night, and the Green Berets are going to have 7 kinds of shit kicked out of them. That's the same sort of differential between the EMs and everyone else you're talking about right now.

It's not just the people. It's also the tech edge. And right now, the EMs have a ridiculous tech edge which does have your requested "bit of foreshadowing", since the MoC's signature strength since the 1980s has been their medical science.

>Evidently the built-in Beagle Probe the EM's get also ignores the DEST stealth suits; tech marches on

DEST and Rabid Foxes use Stealth BA, user.

They also have much better training and weapons. Have a look at the M42 some time.

But the EMs are better, because muh cyborgs.

Ask these guys. This thread is primarily MWO.

>DEST and Rabid Foxes use Stealth BA, user.

I was under the impression we were comparing infantry forces, not Battle Armor. The EM blurb is comparing them to the Manei Domini infantry.

As to whether 'muh cyborgs' deserve to be better or not, go look at 3085 and figure out what other non-WoB infantry forces are better, statwise, than the EMs. I don't see any.

What I'm really seeing here is that Catalyst shouldn't use adjectives in their TRO blurbs, because this whole deal (I blame myself as well) is going on because somebody wrote "deadliest" instead of literally anything else. If that adjective wasn't in the blurb, we wouldn't be going on about it.

>I'm out. The MoC defender upthread has clearly left, and I bow to your superior autistm. I'm not going to keep defending a point which is made in a source that shouldn't be canon in the first place.

The real issue here is that they made the Ebon Magistrate image a woman. Nobody with a half-brain would believe that a woman can be any sort of deadly infantryman. It even says why. InfantryMAN.

Coleman probably liked the old "muh honor" Samurai type Dracs over to the Theodores and his ilk modernised Dracs. That would explain why the Black Dragons can roll in peace and undoing any reforms done.

So I would call him the Joe Quesada of Battletech. If you don't know who that is just google Spiderman and One More Day and you will understand.

Sorry meant Rome

We have literally reams of fluff detailing how good the other special forces are as opposed to a couple of TR entries that don't detail the full capabilities of the special forces in question.

We have one TR entry where we're told, with literally nothing to back it up, that the EM troopers are at least equal to the dudes who've been long held up as the hardest of the hard core.

We appear to be going around in circles though. I'm happy to leave it there.

Rome appears to have had a fair bit to do with the Black Dragons everywhere thing.

The Black Dragon shit never made much sense to me until I read Heir to the Dragon and realized the old society he got inducted into by his teachers were basically the Black Dragons and they felt super betrayed when he abandoned all the old samurai ways in the name of things like actually winning.

What's funny is that do anything to win attitude is why they loved him so much in the first place.

And they still respected old man Takashi enough to not fuck with Teddy too much until he became Coordinator. Probably also hoping that Kanrei Teddy would be different than Coordinator Teddy because one is a general and one is the leader of the nation with cultural responsibilities as well as military. Then they got rolling when they realized he wasn't going to shove his thumb back on the honor scale a bit.

What gets me is how Hohiro was such a fuckup and made it through his entire reign. His son may have been called the Peacock but that man was a hundred times more effective and Draclike than his father and he still got overthrown and his family butchered. I think the official explanation was Hohiro was such a pussy he caved in to a lot of the traditionalists, and they were happy to take that over a strong decent leader?

>Clans(all): Furry Genocidal Mass Murderers who not only practice slavery but go full Eugenics on top

...who provide superior and free medical services to all of its people, free unlimited intergalactic internet, free education beyond what's available in the IS, and they destroyed the pussy economy by alotting everybody a sex partner (who will more likely than not be the result of a couple of generations of breeding towards producing the perfect human being) and they also completed feminism by creating means for humans to breed without having to get half of their population pregnant.

They are the "bad guys".