/btg/ BattleTech General

...

Coyote, because of reasons I'm not sure of. Faded glory, I guess. Or that they're nerds screaming they're total badasses.

Woof, and I also like the jobber clans of Fire Mandrill and Blood Spirit.

Tie between Ice Hellions and Snow Ravens. The former because gofast and loving Light 'Mechs and the latter because they are chill.

Muninn, show yourself.

Clan Blood Jabroni

Wolf.

Feel free to hate me but started from the cartoon then MW2, so anyone who hates Jade Falcon is ok with me.

>favorite clan
Savages, the lot of ya. Can't even call a Madcat by the right name.

Those angry angry Side torsoes

Is that a crusader ?

>Is that a crusader ?
Yeap.

They are angry.
ANGRY ABOUT LRMS

Smoke Jaguars.

Wolves and Nova Cats are tied for second place.

Hell's Horses. I enjoy the fact that they treat Vees equal to mechs in terms of Zell.

I haven't seen the user who does these around for a while, it's too bad

Gaiz, I gotta admit, I love your game, but the truth is I'm not very good at it.

Are there more of these?

If not can someone make one for Free Worlds League mechs?

how bout a contest?

We build a mech battalion in MekHQ, (no techs or support, just pilots and meks only.) assign them TRO's, and see who would run it?

I appreciate you and all that you stand for. Glory be upon you honored citizen.

So did Blakist ever become televangilists for the war effort? Cause that would complete the feudal cycle.

Return of the Warden Wolves?
Return of the Warden Bears?
Return of the Warden Falcons?

Play more. Half of it is just learning to read the map.

Ask around to see if anyone's willing to play via Megamek.

ack, i'll never forgive myself. I bought a linebacker pack on MWO for 20 bucks, then tried running it with an AC/20 and 2 ATG 3's.

I never got my ass kicked so hard in my life.

I think there are too many old farts on MWO, its getting to be stiflingly competitive.

Depends. Do you know what tier you were playing at? If you're playing at tier 2 or 3 and you got rekt after being out for a while, that's understandable. If you got rekt in tier 5 you might need to git gud. I'm on a bit of an MWO kick this weekend, so if you want I can play wingman while you get back in the saddle. Hit me up in IRC.

The IRC is a decent place to ask. I'm usually down for a game, and I have a friend that runs a dedicated server with multiple instances so people can play without worrying about connection issues.

Part of the problem was that the meta changed faster than I could grind out C-bills to get the 'mechs and weapons.

That hasn't changed and it's getting old fast.

It's okay. I'm pretty shit at it too.
As long as you're having fun exploding robots, that's all that really matters.

>Ice Hellions
Hell yeah, Clan James Dean
They were too fast to live and, too young to die.

But you're good at catching rules exceptions. You just need to practice more. Get a group, then show them who's boss.

The only FWL nicknames are really Discoback, Fire Vulcan, The Good Wolverine, the Rambo and the Mad Ronin. And those are for specific variants like Pixie or Hothammer.

Liao gets nicknames for whole chassis because of all the nonsense names they've given their mechs since Xin Sheng.

Well, I guess for the FWL, the Trebuchet has always been affectionately known as the Trenchbucket.

I've almost finished my Battallion. It just needs air support and heavy cavalry (fast heavies)

Tied between Jade Falcons and Diamond Sharks.

Battalion of what? What forces? What era?

Its civil war era.

I call them the Iron Guard, they are Seigebreakers sent against the clan homeworlds. I want them to fight a nearly full reserve Trinary.

Mercenaries, House forces, Comstar...?

You basically answered one of the questions and still gave no real detail of what kind of forces.

The Line (Company)
-Full Frontal Assault (lance)
--6 Assaults (including 2 Fafnirs)
-Line Aboad/Line Astern (2 lances)
--1 Assault, 2 Heavies

Auxillaries (Company)
-FMJ Heavy Recon (Lance)
--4 Mediums
-Heavy Cavalry (Lance)
--6 Fast Heavies

Air Support(Company)
-Light Air Support (Lance)
--5 Medium Aero
-Heavy Air Support (Lance)
--3 Heavy Aero
--2 Heavy VTOL

Artillary (Company)
-Light Fire Support (Lance)
--4 Medium LRM mechs
--1 Heavy LRM mech
-Heavy Fire Support (Lance)
--3 Gauss Tanks
--2 LRM Tanks

Davion Aligned Mercs mixed with Honor Guard

I might change The Line Abroad Line Astern and bring them up to a full lance to make them less irregular, you should see my dragoons rating.

Forgot Rear Guard in there somewhere.

its 4 Riflemen and 2 Jenners.

oops.

The Line (Company)
-Full Frontal Assault (Reinforced Lance)
--6 Assaults (including 2 Fafnirs)
-Line Aboad/Line Astern (2 Under Strength lances)
--1 Assault, 2 Heavies

Reinforcements (Company)
-Rear Guard (Reinforced Lance)
--2 Jenners
--4 Riflemen
-Heavy Cavalry (Reinforced Lance)
--6 Fast Heavies

Auxillaries (Company)
-FMJ Heavy Recon (Lance)
--4 Mediums
-Light Air Support (Lance)
--5 Medium Aero
-Heavy Air Support (Lance)
--3 Heavy Aero
--2 Heavy VTOL

Artillary (Company)
-Light Fire Support (Lance)
--4 Medium LRM mechs
--1 Heavy LRM mech
-Heavy Fire Support (Lance)
--3 Gauss Tanks
--2 LRM Tanks

I'd recommend getting some Arrow IV tanks and some Long Tom tanks if you want good artillery. LRM boats are great for mobile firepower, but if you're going to use 'mechs for that purpose, mix them up with LRM and direct fire weaponry, like Gauss Rifles, ERPPCs, and AC2s.

I thought Pixie was general nickname for Phoenix Hawks due to PXH shorthand.

It is. I have no idea what that other poster is referring to.

My only complaint is that the SRM-6s aren't on the outside of the lower legs. Otherwise, fantastique.
Get curious.

It's from PXH-1

The one is the i

I dunno, its too irregular, I think.

But I'm thinking in addition to a lance, there should be other org specs

2 attachment
3 detachment
4 lance
5 reinforced lance
6 cavalry lance

Oh hey Clan (9) From Outer Space won the get. Go Ice Hellions!

Better than calling it a Penix Hawk.

detachments can only be assigned in twos, one for each flank, and only to reinforced and cavalry lances. Attachments can only be assigned to reinforce a regular lance or be used as messengers and decoys.

the rule is that if a reinforced or cavalry lance is down 3 mechs, they move in and reinforce.

Is this bonkers?
Cause it feels to me moving an armor column is like moving mounted cavalry. Any horsejaws wanna think of a clever cavalry name for a standard lance?

L O D S
OF
E M O N E

>shares a totem animal with House Amaris
>wealth-focused and undermine Clan cultures

Try Space Jews.

...

What are some standard Amaris mechs for different weight ranges?

Hey guys, hit me up, I'm testocoles on MWO

friend invite sent

i'm doing some CW stuff with some bros atm

okay, imma take a short water break.

Their signature home-grown designs are the Phoenix (50t), Dragoon (75t), and Rampage (80t). However, the former started as a Primitive, and the other two didn't really achieve their full potential until they got smacked with the Beating Stick of SLDF Technology after the Coup.

there's also that Whitworth variant with SRMs and infernos they used to raze entire cities during the civil war.

My suggestion? Keep trying new things.
Some folks like the idea of big huge mobile turret mechs, but are actually better at handling whiplash-speed lights. Maybe some vees, some VTOLs...

Is there a separate guide for hosting megamek games? I am seemingly not finding much fortune in getting through the plethora of port nonsense involved in the process.

I love me some stompy Assaults, but people hate me the most when I use vtols.

---MWO forum suggestions

1.) Make sure you guys are matching based on BV.
2.) If you are a weaker player try taking units that seem under-gunned but have HIGH armor. This will allow you to make a mistake or two on positioning and live to tell the tale.
3.) Mech suggestions:
Assault: Banshee 3S, Awesome 8Q
Heavy: Grasshopper (5H or 5N), Thunderbolt-5S (GREAT all-around unit in TT)
Medium: Wolverine 6R (good at all ranges, durable, great for kicking off legs, SRMs for crit seeking) or Kintaro 18 (tons of armor)
Light: Locust 1E (move fast to stay alive) or Wolfhound (the downgraded 3025 version)
4.) Never, EVER, EVER use sub-optimal movement. Know your movement modifiers. This is a game of dice, but you can tip the odds in your favor by not letting your opponent have easy to-hit numbers. You must create an advantage. Remember- 3 hexes is +1 for him to hit you, 5 is +2, 7 is +3 and 10 is +4. You must, whenever possible, at least make the modifiers match. (ie you run 5 hexes, so his modifier is +2, as is yours for running) To WIN you use your modifiers to your advantage. (example, walking 5 with a wolverine causes you a +1 because you walked, but your opponent a +2 because you moved 5 hexes) If you can't move fast enough to create an advantage use cover. If you're in a light woods hex your opponent gets an additional +1 modifier, and you get no modifier to hit him. These are light examples, but by making his modifiers higher than yours you create the advantage for yourself.
5.) If you are using different skilled pilots, put your better gunners in your most ranged units.
6.) Direct fire support (PPC's, Large Lasers, AC5's) are usually better than LRM's. LRM's only have 1 hex where they are at short range (7 hexes away). This makes it difficult to hit your opponent and often puts you at a disadvantage.
7.) Most importantly- be patient. Don't make a crazy rush on your opponent until you KNOW you can kill something in one turn and then get to cover in the next.

Graphic posted by NEA, Demonstrating a method for obtaining an advantage through positioning

30 missiles, no waiting. And if I'm lucky, 2 or 3 might even hit!

other good mechs:

Jenner 7F (the all energy version), Javelin 10F (all energy again), Wolverine 6M, Griffin 1S

Waxon waxoff, grashopah. Play games, then play some more games. It'll start clearing up to you in action.

*Find a playstyle that works for you. There's a lot of ways to play the boardgame, and not just 'all-mech' or 'all-vehicle' -- brawling, long-range sniping, artillery barrages, etc. Find what you're good at and good at setting up.
*Find ways to counter unit types. It doesn't require a lot of thought, either. If someone's using long-ranged indirect fire units, rush up on them with close ranged units to keep them from firing. If they're doing the same to you, use skirmishers to interdict them or lay traps, like minefields.
*Keep playing. A lot of getting good is just learning the basics and how units interact and how to play things against each other. You don't always have to do a slugfest head-to-head -- flanking and shooting someone in the back is much more effective.

What exactly am I seeing here?

Rolling up your enemy's flank. Red left and middle move straight ahead and don't support Red right, while Blue moves to roll up Red right with all of its forces and then flips back to take out the trailing Red left and middle.

I don't understand. What does that work? Why does the red group on the upper left take so long to do around the green parts (I assume those are trees?)?

From a purely wargaming perspective, I've only really played 40K and AoS, which is basically just about running directly forward and smashing the other guy. It's inefficient to try and manuever around when you have a tight turn limit. You win with a combination of matching your good guys against their bad troops and simple dice luck. I have no frame of reference for what you're talking about.

Nova Cat because "Edge."

... but that was retarded.

Certain terrain can slow units down to the point that running around is still faster, and break line of sight. In the example shown by the red forces are already separated by terrain while the blues have more open room to maneuver. In figure 3, one blue even runs into the woods to get a cover bonus.

IK short, Red made an exploitable mistake upon deployment, and Blue took full advantage.

Don't do this if their flank is in heavily covered terrain or city.

best of the best

My man.

Would a MechWarrior (tabletop, obviously) campaign based around the PCs finding the caches of the late Wolverine clan just prior to the Clan Invasion be interesting?

That's an Explorer Corps game, and a relatively generic plotline to boot. The Wolverine "mystery" is retarded and needs to end.

Well, jeez. Excuse me for not being incredibly familiar with what other people run in their games.

>SQUAWKS FURIOUSLY
>in green text

there is no mystery anymore.

The old version was that "some Wolverines possibly avoided the annihilation on Circe, and show up in IS as the Minnesota Tribe".

The version from Betrayal of Ideals says that they had a good run at escaping back towards the Inner Sphere, but their luck ran out. A few ships got delayed and missed the big fight.

That's the gist of it.

a lostech cache is a pretty generic storyline. At least in the price of glory, there was a hidden reason to it.

>there is no mystery anymore.
Mostly it's a problem of me not giving a fuck about the Wolverines anymore, and I'm tired of them getting pointed out all the time.

I'm not familiar with Path of Glory, I'm afraid. Still, good to know it's generic. Hadn't put a lot of thought to it in any case.

Heh, I ran a lostech cache game once. Got my revenge on the players for a double cross in pathfinder by having them fight a running battle against comstar for it only to find out that comstar had already looted it. The only thing they left behind was an upgraded charger.

true, it was a long time before that loose end got tied up.

Then again - people did the same with Smoke Jaguars, after they got offed, and now it seems the Blood Spirits, and Ice Helions at least are the new new Wolverines.

Guess it happens, when a faction is offed completely. 'Cept flaming monkeys, fuck those guys.

If you want to be hipster though, go with RWR

I said Price of Glory.

The path of glory is about combine-cgb war.

Price of glory is the 3rd novel in the Grey Death Legion storyline - Comstar frames GDL for a war crime to have them branded renegades, just to have an excuse for killing them, simply because the fiefdom they got on Helm contained a Star League Field Library, that C* wanted to destroy before it fell into Successor State hands.

Carlyle got it, and that's the deal with Helm Memory Core.

What you're looking at is a tactic called a "refused flank". NEA went into this in detail (which is where I'm taking this from, since I'm not this good). Each red or blue square is assumed to be a lance (4 Mechs) in size.

NEA's example assumes that all the Mechs on the board have roughly equivalent combat power, and that the blue Mechs give up a small chunk of that in order to mount jump jets to let them essentially ignore terrain. So that ifall the Mechs on the board are 75 tons, then the Red Mechs will fight as though they were 75 tons, and the Blue Mechs will fight as though they were 70 tons (they have to give up a percentage of their combat power to gain maneuverability).

With that maneuverability advantage in mind, the Blue Mechs deploy in such a way as to bait the Red Commander to match his deployment. Since the Red commander knows his Mechs have better combat power, he has an incentive to do this; in a lance on lance engagement, the better combat power of the Red mechs will let him win via attrition.

Once the deployment is completely, the Blue commander uses his superior maneuverability to isolate one Red Lance, and gangs up on the other two. In Step 1, we can see Blue shifting to their right while Red attempts to move forward and start the attritional spiral as fast as possible.

>cont

In step 2, you can see that the leftmost Blue lance has ignored the terrain, isolating the left Red lance. The leftmost Blue lance engages the center Red lance and loses some combat power. However, on the right side, two Blue lances engage a single Red lance. This grants an effective combat power of 300 (x4 75 ton Red Mechs) vs 560 (x8 "70" ton Blue Mechs). There's a neat thing NEA expounds upon sometimes called Lanchester's Square Law, which is a real military tactical guide that states that the difference in combat power between two units isn't equal to the difference, but is equal to the of the difference. If you're outnumbered 50 vs 100, you shouldn't expect to lose and kill 50 of their guys, but instead you'll lose and kill only about 25. Here, that basically translates to being outnumbered 4 to 1 instead of 2 to 1, so the Red lance gets killed pretty quickly, inflicting a small amount of damage on both Blue lances.

In Step 3, the battle in the center continues as the isolated Red lance on the left has to pick its way through the terrain. The center Blue lance moves into the woods to defend itself while holding the Red lance in place. It's purpose is more to keep the Red lance busy and survive with maximum combat power intact while the other two Blue lances get back into the fight.

In step 4, all three damaged Blue lances engage the damaged center Red lance. If you're tracking the casualty numbers next to the lances, you'll know that the center Blue lance is roughly at 1/2 strength, the other two Blue lances are roughly at 3/4 strength, and the center red lance is at roughly 3/4 strength. Using the tonnages to represent combat power again, that means there's a total of 560 Blue tons (x8 70 tons Mechs) against 225 Red tons (x3 75 ton Red Mechs). Red isn't outnumbered 2.5 to 1, they're outmatched about 5 to 1, and because they spread damage back out over the Blue forces, they go down quickly enough to not cause a casualty.

>cont

Finally in Step 5, we see the final battle positions, where Red has a remaining combat power of roughly 300, against Blue's remaining combat power of roughly 560, which makes the endgame almost a sure thing in favor of Blue.

The goal is to use terrain and maneuver to isolate sections of the battlefield and bring overwhelming combat power against those specific sections in turn, rather than simultaneously (Red's plan). The hard part is knowing when, where and how to make that happen. Sometimes the terrain isn't suitable for it. Sometimes your forces aren't suitable for it. Sometimes the enemy forces are capable of matching your ability to maneuver and can keep up with your lateral shifts. Being able to understand when you can do this and to pull it off against an opponent is what makes one a good general.

On the last part, I don't think there's a way to just learn when and where and how to do this stuff. That's the part that, IMO, comes from experience, while the rest can be learned more academically.

2 Units Attachments*
3 Units Detachments**
4 Units Short Lance
5 Units Reinforced Lance
6 Units Cavalry Lance

* Attachments can only be assigned to short lances temporarily, otherwise are used as decoys or messengers
** Detachments are rare. A full detachment can only be added in pairs to a reinforced or cavalry lance, and assigned to each flank. Air, Artillery, and Fire Support Detachments can be assigned partial detachments, which are not assigned in pairs.

Is this complete nonsense? I picked up this old cavalry book and have been trying to apply its theme's to armored companies. The guy who wrote it was kind of a genius, its weird, he predicted the advent of "armored cavalry" in the 1900's. I just found it sitting in an old hobby store in the bargain bin.

That was under a section titled "unit designations".

This one is called "Armored Cavalry Designations"

"A cavalry company, as you know, is 36 men. But an armored cavalry will each have a complement of 6 men, led by a lieutenant. Therefore, each iron hide will be considered for ranking purposes to be a a company of cavalry, or a full company of infantry.

ARMORED COMPANY DESIGNATIONS

8 Units Irregular Company
12 Units Standard Company
16 Units Reinforced Company
24 Units Light Battalion
36 Units Full Battlation

He goes on to say, "And if there is ever more than a Full Battalion of iron hides engaged, god help us all."