/btg/ BattleTech General

Lyran then.

The grasshopper would be highly sought after, but rare; the kind of thing a pirate captain would drive.
Ostsols would be excellent pirate mechs, fast, all-energy, two-handed.
Archers would be very common, and their ease of modification would probably mean you'd see lots of bootleg laser archer refits in pirate units

>Ostsols would be excellent pirate mechs, fast, all-energy, two-handed.
>Archers would be very common, and their ease of modification would probably mean you'd see lots of bootleg laser archer refits in pirate units
OstArchers?

Does anyone have an all laser Archer from introtech era handy?

For some sick reason it's tingling me in bad ways.

Probably more like Beemer or Grasshopper knock-offs

I definitely feel like your average Pirate group would have some Frankenmechs to it's name.

Anythings possible with the right attitude, enough salvage, some booze and a hammer.

I imagine Warhammer bodies with Archer arms and Crusader/Thud mishmashes in particular would be quite common types of pirate frankenmechs

Seems about right.

Plus if you get lucky with a Crud and a Thud you could have two decent mechs in no time

I mean between them you're looking at 3 LRM-15s, 5 Medium Lasers, 4 Machine Guns, a Large Laser and some SRMs (two 6s and one 2), you can do a lot with that.

>Oh shit there IS a plastic Charger... but the chances of finding someone with two broken-up Alpha Strike lance boxes is pretty slim. Oh well.
Dude. It's not like they're popular. Ask around on one of the local buy/sell/trade boards on Facebook or something, you can probably swap both of them for one half-way decent 'Mech. Hell, buying two lance packs costs about the same as any other two 'Mechs anyway

>So what are some good SW or at least Pre-Clan Invasion Pirate 'Mechs?
In addition to the stuff above -

Phoenix Hawk - Fast, hard-hitting, two hands, slaughters infantry and snipes everything else. Command suite, too, so you can coordinate the bugs.

Chameleon: Just like the Pixie, with better weapons distribution for melee or carrying shit. Fucking mulches infantry but loses the command suite. Even more common than the Pix as well.

Crusader - cheap, good anti-infantry and ranged firepower, good mook unit. Can load smokes, tear gas, or infernoes.

Archer - literally a Crusader but better. Variants still have SRM racks. Like the fifth most-common unit in known space. Bombardier is a shitty Archer, but also reasonably likely to show up in pirate hands if you wanna gimp your forces or can't afford/find a RRT missile support botx

Ostscout (when you can get ahold of one). Fast as >shit

The Victor is fucking >hilarious< as a pirate 'Mech; I run one in mine, because one of the Santander's Killers company commanders had one.

>Does anyone have an all laser Archer from introtech era handy?
>For some sick reason it's tingling me in bad ways.
Uh, you're basically thinking of a Flashman dude. Just play one of them. If you gotta, take a Kurita Archer and replace the missile bays with another LL, a cluster of 3-4 MLs, and a shit-tonne of sinks? Pulling the fifteens gives you eighteen frigging tons to play with, so the Kuritas would probably wedge in a pair of LLs and 2-4 more MLs before they even thought about sinks.

So the best mech for the Captain of this band of Pirates would be a Thud that had its Head transplanted for a Phoenix Hawk?

Nah man, a Phoenix Hawk with a Thud's head.

Either way, Thud Hawk is the best way to go?

Pretty much, but flashman lacks hands and weren't super common if you care about lore.

Man, I love frankenmechs.
I wish I still had the sheet for this bad boy. Took forever to actually build.

>local trade boards having Battletech stuff
I fucking wish. Ah well.

All this talk of Pirates is making me want to do up more Pirate lances. I'll have to dig and see what leftover Intro box stuff I have to hack up.

So I'm a little confused on some of the weapon options that come with the Warhansa 'mechs. Hoping you guys can help explain some stuff to me.

The Centurion has two guns, one I assume is the AC and the other I can't seem to figure out. Also their Archer has two seta of arms with different loadouts I can't identify. The Griffin I also don't know the two guns apart. Their Zues also has two left arms I can't seem to figure out.

Also what are the weapon differences between the two Locust sculpts? I assume one is the laser loadouts?

And what is the difference between the Sledge and Warlock? Aren't they both Warhammers?

Care to supply pictures of the funny-looking options?

Hokay. I can field most of these.

>Centurion
AC/10, AC/20, Large Laser variants.
>Archer
Standard and SRM4 (Goon) variants.
>Griffin
I think it's a PPC and Laser variant here.
>Zeus
AC/5 and UAC/5 variants.
>Locust
One is the Laser variant (2x ML 2x SL) and the other is supposed to be able to be modified into the 1V or the quad MG Locust that is popular with shitters like me.
>Sledge and Warlock
One is supposed to be the MWO Warhammer (Sledge) and the other is meant to be a mod that looks like it has more "classically" shaped Warhammer arms (Warlock). He has a few minis that look like he's lampooning some of Shimmy's stuff.

Dude, you fucking rock. Thanks so much.

Now next question: for stuff like the Archer and Zeus do you suggest trying to magnetized the arms or pin them? The Centurion I'm almost just relegating myaelf to buying 2 to have both weapon options because the arm assembly looks like a birch to magnetized of pin, but if I can sace myaelf needing to buy 2 of a lot of these models that'd be great.

If it has a shoulder that looks conducive to it, yeah, I'd suggest it. You can get the little 5mm rare earth magnets off Amazon for $5 and those should do the trick. They may even go as small as 3mm. Mind you, the extra work is only worth it if you care about variants being WYSIWYG because RAW sure don't. It does make your force look fancier though.

Looking at the Cent's elbow joint (where I would suggest magnetizing it) it seems there's a diagonal slope where the upper arm and lower arm meet to form the elbow, and you could probably hollow that out instead of futzing with the shoulder, which wouldn't help you anyway since the different weapons all end at the elbow. I think it should work out, but it's hard to say. Maybe one of the anons here that bought some can say for sure; I recall at least one dude buying a Centurion.

I've got one of their Centurions. The gun arm could easily be made to have the end swap-out, it's got a nice amount of surface area on the join, and the material is easy to put holes in with a typical hobby work hand drill.

As an alternate to buying magnets from Amazon, I will suggest Indigo Instruments. They sell magnets as small as 2.5mm diameter x 1mm thick, price individual magnets in cents with price breaks for quantity, and the service and shipping has always been great. They also have some other reasonably priced stuff, like dental tools for sculpting and non-magnetic titanium tweezers for handling tiny powerful magnets.

Wherever you get your magnets, I would suggest mounting them deep enough in the part so that you can put a thin layer of Green Stuff or other modelling putty over the magnet without creating a bulge. This is to protect the magnet and simplify painting a bit. Rare earth magnets are very brittle, so are usually protected with a thin chrome coat. The coat doesn't take paint well (not that it matters much since it will be covered by the other part) but if the chrome is scratched the magnet beneath will begin to chip, growing a layer of fine magnetic fuzz as tiny pieces are shattered in between the two connecting parts.

As far Warhansa minis go, they do lend themselves to easy magnetizing, pic related.

And the same Urbies with an upgrade.

Thanks for the advice! This would be my first time magnetizing models.

Also those Urbies look sweet!

What's a Clan mech common enough in the invasion era to be believable to turn up in some pirate band or mercs on that side of space?

None of them. At the very limit a IIC garrison machine

None, honestly.
If you want to really sneak one in, I'd say try a light of sorts.

None, because the pirates and mercs on that side of the coreward periphery all got rolled up like an old carpet. The ones who survived were the ones that ran like hell. You might find some clan weapons torn off in traditional 3rd War salvage tradition in retreat but not whole machines.

There isn't one. Best case would be a IIC frankensteined with an IS design, or the pirate CO's Mech having 1-3 Clan weapons stuck to it.

Under absolutely no circumstances should a pirate band EVER have access to a frontline Clan Omni. Mercs might have one or two...if they lost a battalion or more and salvaged those one or two in return. Some company sized merc unit? Shouldn't have access to Clan tech until 3060, absolute best case. There's no arguing here. Mercs and pirates do not get clan gear.

Timberwolf? Susie 'One-Eye' Ryan managed to nab a few Clan Omnis including a Kit Fox and Adder.

As far as 'Mercs go, practically anything they fought and managed to salvage or claim as isorla if they were lucky and smart.

>what are the Dark Castes

Something stolen from a garrison unit, so a IIC or old SLDF machine with a few clan weapons

The New Belt Pirates were literally all that was left of three of the big old pirate kingdoms banded together. And they got those omnis in raids on backwaters after the invasion.

He said common enough in the invasion era to justify a merc getting one.

Not that the merc or pirate was getting them during the invasion, just that the 'mechs be common and present in the 3050s.

>He said common enough in the invasion era to justify a merc getting one

NOTHING justifies a merc getting one.

>clan tech in a pirate band
>bt 2017

Invasion Era is a nonsense term, really. CGL should never have pushed it. He should just say the time he means. Because actual invasion is full stop different availability than say Refusal War or Bulldog.

Not even the Dragoons? Interesting.

I'll agree with you here, come bulldog, yea maybe some shit was snuck on, rarely like one cougar in all of the bt universe snuck to some pirates.
But the idea of invasion a few back water scrubs rolling in Timber wolfs is laughable.

Here we go again. While it's true the Houses snapped up every bit of salvage they could, demanding it from their Mercs, there is not a snowball's chance in hell that some didn't sneak through, and you know it. Even discounting folks like the Goons or GDL it still is possible for a smaller Merc group to have it, even if you insist that your word is law. Now, if someone gives their lance-sized Merc group a Timberwolf you have grounds to question the fuck out of that, but a company getting a Horned Owl? Or an Incubus? That's not really a huge deal; the Houses were focusing more on the Omnis than anything else, per the fluff even.

You may now resume your screeching.

It kinda bugs me that there's still a huge distinction in tech bases well after the two bases have been intermingling and fighting back and forth and capturing tech back and forth for decades. The IS makes progress all the time, and clan tech isn't *that* far ahead that they couldn't work out a way to reverse engineer it when they have an arbitrarily large sample size from salvage and literally conquering clan controlled worlds in some cases.

Hell the pirate band from By Blood Betrayed having a Mad Cat was basically the "oh fuck" condition for the Able's Aces, and that was the mid 60s on the same side of the Inner Sphere. Though I have to admit, I like making Periphery boss fights that consist of some middling second line Clanner mech while the rest of his buddies are in introtech gear held together with spit and bailing wire.

Not him but to support your point, the Caballeros had a Timberwolf they picked up in the invasion. Not much compensation for two companies of their heaviest machines though.

We just ran a game like that were we got screwed out of promised salvage, causing a few uhh... suffering civies.

The fluff reason has always been the Houses can't afford shifting the required tertiary and secondary factories to support even paltry Clan tech production. The problem I've had with this is that the Jihad's aftermath is absolutely the perfect time to roll over to Clan tech components with R&D working on using the same materials to make MMLs and VSPLs and shit with Clan tonnages and ranges. Most of the factories are fucked up in some way, and the smaller armies meant that the Houses would benefit from the swap. But hey, that'd mean CLANTECH MACKIES and that's apparently not okay.

The explanation I keep getting regarding this is "it's too expensive to re-tool existing factories to produce Clan tech, but the IS can, and does, to a limited degree". Which is fine till you realize that that's pants-on-head backwardsly fucktarded and if they CAN already make Clan tech then they would stop dumping money into existing factories and start making new ones that are pure Clan tech. The only real reason that holds water is the DA fiat, and that shit is so bogus anyway that it just takes an equal load of bullshittium to explain the load of bullshittium that you're already dealing with. And now, with disarmament, there's even MORE impetus for every Inner Sphere power that is able to convert to Clan tech, since they have to have minuscule militaries anyway.

There's about the same time between the Clan Invasion and the Dark Ages as there was between Operation Klondike and the Invasion.

And the IS has far more research capability, not to mention the benefits that come with reverse-engineering tech instead of coming up with it themselves.

They should be pulling ahead of the Clans in pure tech, even if they can't mass produce all of it.

Exactly, for example.

My PCs(at the head of an, admittedly understrength at the time combined arms battalion) ambushed a Jade Falcon star. They had a few weeks previously 'lost' in combat a Black Knight they had had for many years. They then did it up in Falcon colors and markings matching the Falcon star and squirreled away a Mad Dog after dumping the sufficiently wrecked Black Knight next to the rest of the star.

It passed Steiner salvage officials inspection(in part thanks to some well placed bribes) and they repaired it by sneaking bits and pieces over the contract.

It all matters how you do it.

The difference is tolerances and stuff for improved manufacturing. It wasn't so bad getting SL tech back online because a lot of that was already in place, just needed the right knowledge to restore it or make use of it. While Clan tech requires a ground up improvements from all your component manufacturers. That's purity of alloys, machining tolerances, etc. etc.

Meta-wise, it's because the Clans would have become a non-threat within ten years otherwise. And Clan Wolf players especially had a lot of sway in the 90's.

However, the people willing to invest in clantech were able to manufacture it, like the Blakists. And by the DA you get companies like Exostar that have.

The problem with that is that the IS units that do get clan tech don't have problems maintaining and repairing it.

Nah, there's way more time between Klondike and the Invasion.
>DA
3132. Invasion is in 3049. That's 83 years.
>Klondike
2822. Invasion is in 3049. That's 227 years.

I kind of agree with you otherwise though.

Funnily enough the first Clan tech machines I got from a campaign where not salvaged from Clans, it was from contract vs FedCom and they had Hachiman tank and Marauder-C.

Doing it right.

Now this, this too is a thing, and is the BEST way to go about shitting on Clan tech existing in IS units, especially Merc and Pirate units, pre-Jihad. You just can't get the parts to maintain that Mad Dog or that Viper. It's too expensive or you'll get caught with it and it'll be taken from you because of breach of contract, since we know the Houses were requisitioning all that shit.

>don't have problems maintaining and repairing it.

Yeah, they do. That's why the Dracs concentrated all their captured omnis and stuff into single units. When that changes is when the Space Jews arrive. Then everyone can buy the parts they need.

Are their any industrial mechs with chem lasers?

Not because I'm drunk and watching laser videos on youtube or anything.

Make one. I'm sure some MOD in the DA had one or something, but making one is most of the fun.

No, because that's filthy horsefucker technology.

I will if I see this in the morning, I'm on my phone drinking my face off on my deck... trust me I need this after this week. You are right it's fun to make them. Also I suck at industrial mechs

I'll never get why it's a horse thing, like RLs it's shit we have right now in real life.

The absolute most you'd be looking at would be taping a clan energy weapon pod to an IS omni or MAYBE stealing one of those mixtech milita mechs from a garrison star

Yeah, if you're terrible at being a merc or pirate. If you're good, it's far from impossible to snag an omni or five.

Wip on my marik Stalker

...

FOCUS! FOOOOOCUUUUS. Other than that, you should have splayed the legs further, as now it looks like it's either scared shitless or needs to take a piss.

Not trying to be a jerk but your cam is a bit lacking.

On the second pic are the missile doors closed? Because if you can adjust them that would be sick af.

I like them popped open.

What else needs to be done to the WIP?

Multiple layers on the purple parts, you can still see brush strokes in a couple places and the color isn't uniform yet, bay doors are down, the black paint is supposed to be missile exhaust stains. Probably also gonna do a little dab of green or black for the laser mounts, and yellow for the cockpit a-la MWO.

The derpy legs are from when I dropped it and broke it and it didn't set back right.

My end goal is a paint job something akin to the lance in this, but I am nowhere near skilled enough.

Blurry, but certainly looks like a Marik machine. It's hard to tell what else needs to be done; did you drybrush that white on?

Dove-grey acrylic ink (I use Daler-Rowney) will do a hell of a job cleaning up the white. Dilute it about 3:1 or 4:1 with water to pick up the details on the white, and clean off the highlights with a damp paper towel
hobbylobby.com/Art-Supplies/Drawing-Illustration/Calligraphy/Cool-Gray-Daler-Rowney-FW-Acrylic-Artists'-Ink/p/66759

The white is my primer

Hopefully this one is better in focus, I am painting while watching the GSL

so uh

open-public-records.com/court/california-23006746.htm

Court Name: U.S. Civil Court Records for the Central District of California
Case Number: 2:17-cv-06034
Party Name: Harmony Gold, USA, Inc. v. Tatsunoko Production Co., Ltd.
Filing Type: Civil [Order]
Date Published: August 16, 2017

Court Name: U.S. Civil Court Records for the Central District of California
Case Number: 2:17-cv-06034
Party Name: Harmony Gold, USA, Inc. v. Tatsunoko Production Co., Ltd.
Filing Type: Civil [Notice to Parties of Court-Directed ADR Program (ADR-8) - optional html form]
Date Published: August 15, 2017

Court Name: U.S. Civil Court Records for the Central District of California
Case Number: 2:17-cv-06034
Party Name: Harmony Gold, USA, Inc. v. Tatsunoko Production Co., Ltd.
Filing Type: Civil [Leave to File Document Under Seal]
Date Published: August 14, 2017

Court Name: U.S. Civil Court Records for the Central District of California
Case Number: 2:17-cv-06034
Party Name: Harmony Gold, USA, Inc. v. Tatsunoko Production Co., Ltd.
Filing Type: Civil [Corporate Disclosure Statement]
Date Published: August 14, 2017

Court Name: U.S. Civil Court Records for the Central District of California
Case Number: 2:17-cv-06034
Party Name: Harmony Gold, USA, Inc. v. Tatsunoko Production Co., Ltd.
Filing Type: Civil [Civil Cover Sheet (CV-71)]
Date Published: August 14, 2017

...this just got interesting

Goddamn, my kindle just refuses to take images in focus

What model kindle?

Because some give shit previews others just check.

Holy christ, HG is going after the Japanese for realsies? Oh man why are Topps and MS not dropping the fucking hammer?

>Macross boys actually involved

Awwww shit. This is gonna be good.

Am I reading this wrong, or are they suing the people who liscense Macross to them? Like they're shooting themselves in the foot with an Arrow IV here, Tatsunoko isn't poorfags like Catalyst, they're going to fucking eviscerate Harmony Gold in court, right?

5th generation Fire HD

Oh thats fancier than mine, I can't give advice on camera sorry user.

except the Japanese courts apparently ruled (much later) Tatsunoko didn't have the legal right to license to HG, except everyone in the US consented to a legal agreement not to contest HG...

...except for Sony Pictures...

>primer = basecoat
Yeah I do the same thing. It's lazy and I've never found a good way to make it work with certain paint jobs (not 100% happy with the Cappie machines here) but it cuts down on total paint time alot if you can swing it. On the left are the Drac minis I'm doing a quick and dirty job on (medium red primer, dark wash, red drybrush) and on the right are said Cappie minis (forest green basecoat, detail the low spots with dark wash, paint detail colors) and I wish I could do it better. I'm almost tempted to strip them and switch to just basecoating, washing, drybrushing a similar color green, then doing some gold detail and that's it. Thoughts? The scheme looks sorta busy to me at the moment. Also considering nixing the lighter green for a dark blue, and doing green base, blue secondary, gold highlights.

I was purely talking fluff-wise
Obviously if we're talking tabletop a decent battalion can maul a trinary and walk away with salvage enough to go reenforced with clantech for everyone

I can't paint for shit, what will a few minis done cost ?

I am way too used to giant ass spaceship models for Firestorm armada to do anything other than primer = basecoat. It is just habit at this point, and I was already going to do Marik colours, so white as basecoat with purple on top is pretty much what I was aiming for.

Painted ones by camospecs boys on ebay are about $20-35. You're just at the mercy of whatever they happened to want to pant at a particular time chassis and unit wise.

I'd probably just practice and learn to paint anyhow. It will take you a year or three to get good but it's a nice skill to have and you can carry it over to anything small. All the tools will set you back a few hundred bucks though if you include an airbrush and stuff, but that's cheaper in the long run than a million rattle cans or triple coating fine stuff for a good basecoat.

So they don't do requests?
I just wanted one or two for my work desk. Sadly I'm reduced to MM for BT.
I'm pretty handy I guess I could learn. Thanks for the info.

They already did. There's an existing court decision that went against the Jap companies that only HG has distro and IP rights outside of Japan.

This is one of the reasons why the Jap companies have never been keen to go to court elsewhere. Due to creeping American BS in a variety of treaties and trade deals, most countries have said that deals with American companies take precedence globally and that American IP laws bind any global trade activities they want to take.

This has literally, no-foolin', resulted in non-American companies being legally BTFO'd and told they have to cease their business activities.

The whole system is set up to favour American companies and concerns, giving "home court advantage" a whole new meaning.

Define "single units," because the books and FM: U percentages show a low but widespread amount of Clan tech, mostly refitted to existing IS machines and then scattered across entire Regiments.

IS Omnis tended to get concentrated where possible but only a select few extremely well-supplied units were able to put together things like one Omni-only Company per Battalion.

Sorry, personal pet peeve. Claims that the Dracs were swimming in Clan tech, especially in their elite units, are pervasive from certain sectors but are wholly unsupported by the source material.

>This has literally, no-foolin', resulted in non-American companies being legally BTFO'd and told they have to cease their business activities.

For the products or services they created and started selling to other people, I mean.

The ones captured in in the actual invasion, as in up to 3053, were concentrated in a couple clan mech exclusive units. Bulldog was the one that spread clantech around like a big butterknife, especially with all the R stuff from captured supplies.

As a stone-cold unrepentant AUfag, my longstanding clantech explanation has been that it requires retarded bullshit degrees of hopeless economical inefficiency, hyperspecialization and handbuilding at every production level, and would be completely inefficient for anyone not operating on the clan's slave labour/warrior economy model, and so more or less, the IS CAN build clantech, it's just that Clantech X costs 10-15 times as much as IS X, so it remains an elite-only thing, overall.

>The ones captured in in the actual invasion, as in up to 3053, were concentrated in a couple clan mech exclusive units.

Not what the books say, user. Favoured units like the Sword of Light and shit got their pick of total salvage but there wasn't a huge amount to go around. You can see this in places like FM:DC, Dragon Roars or Twilight of the Clans where even units like the Genyosha have their few Clan items scattered all over the whole unit.

Concentrated Clan stuff is AFAICT wholly fanon.

The canon explanation is that partly due to the lack of resources in the Homeworlds, everything is refined to levels of efficiency considered absurd by the IS and every step requires material purity and manufacturing tolerances well above what it considers the norm.

Upgrading to Clan technolgy is theoretically possible but in practice would require a complete overhaul of everything from extraction procedures to material smelting to manufacturing processes and is unfeasible from an economic perspective in the short to medium term. The exception to this is the FedSuns, which magically ignored the economic damage that crippled the Lyrans to upgrade their shit as they rebuilt following the FCCW.

As for why nobody upgraded in the 80 years following the Jihad, aside from the usual "FASAnomics, motherfuckers!" the only answer I can come up with is that either Stoner-aid was drunk or everyone quietly agreed not to spend the money and honoured that agreement.