/btg/ BattleTech General

Something like half a dozen left for writing, with art being the bottleneck before Muninn started his move. Plog had picked up a number of commissions, but I guess once my bills settle down I'll fill in what's missing.

Writing, for us at least, was the bottleneck. Of course, we made all the usual mistakes as we went along. But a couple of skilled editors took the material Geoffrey and I came up with, and hammered it into shape.

Glad to hear you are so close to the end. We chose to do all the designs, then all the writing, then all the art. Looking back, I think we probably should have done it the way you are doing it - one unit completed at a time, then move on to the next one.

So Muninn is in France! Ha! My son John finally graduated from university and is going to the NW of France to teach English in a couple of weeks.

...

speaking of piracy, does anyone have the new TRO Succession Wars pdf yet

I really like the look of this 'Mech but in all honestly it looks like it'd be pretty cheesy. A UAC/(5?) and a large brace of 5x MLs? Still, sexy as fuck. Well done Alex. Sumbitch can make the Wyvern look good, so I guess it's no surprise.

would it be too late to submit a thing to the TRO? what things are not allowed?

This is a super cool art work.

I've got it but the only updated art is for the Unseens and the flea
mega.nz/#!0YsBVQQa!VodfDXaqBA4ca9oUtjtj903bfUq1_EE6LDXaRFtkyIs

I think it's meant to be a UAC10, at least that's how I remember it from either the thread it first popped up in, or the Deviantart. Easy enough to stick that onto a medium of 50 tons or so.

Make it an LB-10X and you couldn't grab the C-bills from my hand fast enough.

The only thing I'm sure bout is the 10. Might as well be the LB.

Now open your wallet and let my employee Mister Vacuum work his magic.

Speaking of LB-xs, if someone were to do a pic or an animation of something like the Annihilator firing off all four LB-10xs, would it look like a cloud of pellets, or kind of an out of control stream of them to generate the weapon's effects.

The way they've been described in fluff make them sound like modern canister shot, but only with bigger pellets than, say L35A1.

Sort of like this:
youtube.com/watch?v=Cgn1nhUEgo8

Wow, you're have instant pizza face like you're a teenager in one shot.

Generally speaking, how much damage does a 5-ton bomb dropped from either an ASF or conventional aircraft normally cause in tabletop rules?

Supposedly, they work either like giant shotguns/canister shot, or like airburst/flak rounds.

They're probably proximity fused at time of firing to the range of the target. If they just fired a giant stream of pellets from the get-go they'd have shit range rather than a bonus to hit.

That's what I think as well, despite the fluff going for the canister shot look. The 3P shots work the way you describe: each fuze is set for target distance as it's fed into the chamber, then it goes off at that distance. Leads to a pretty spectacular show:

youtube.com/watch?v=rldn9Hvzih4

Why not both? Proximity fused canister shot. It'd be like a shotgun shell with a timed cup with explosive release. Sort of like a more advanced form of Federal's Flite Control wad.

1,000 at ground zero, because the only 5 ton bomb in BT AFAIK is the Alamo, which is a 5 kiloton nuke.

There are no 5-ton bombs unless I missed something. Regular ASF bombs are 1 ton, as are IIRC LGBs, clusters, and infernos.

I have a proposal.
There is a lot of weird and irritating things in BT over the years. What I want to ask is, at what times did people do something for the franchise that was actually good, or even awesome?

For instance, when the update to tro 3050 came out, I thought the new art for the clan mechs and even a lot of the IS stuff was damn decent to damn good.

Also I love some of the artists we have nowadays like Shimmy, Plog, Spooky777 and such. To me, that level of art is like the game maturing at least in the artistry's sense to the point of starting off clumsy and with some old great animu mechs, and getting to the point of looking a bit like Sean Connery in his old age. Maybe I'm just over-appreciative of the modern art efforts... some of them, but I do think we have some great talent here and there.

Is there anything through the history of BT you think was a good to great decision? Just a question for a low caffeine Monday.

>Is there anything through the history of BT you think was a good to great decision? Just a question for a low caffeine Monday.

Video games.

Mechwarrior is the reason this franchise still exists and it spawned a few other great franchises to boot, like Armored Core (which is just Mechwarrior, but done as a proper video game instead of a bit shoddy tie-in).

Honestly, something that set this game apart from others? Letting the players run things.

Many past events that were sponsored by the owners (usually FASA) and played as a real scenario, with the fans deciding the outcome based upon the outcome of the battles.

A lot of other game companies will ask for fan input, but very few will actually let them decide the fate of the in-game universe.

It's fun when it works but you can just ask L5R, and even a couple of instances of BattleTech, about it not working. That's not to say it shouldn't be done, but it should be done carefully.

I'm planning a new campaign set in 3059ish Chaos March and was going through the various merc books for background, and this bit in FM:M got me thinking.

The text explicitly mentions "anything that can be considered a viable military objective", and defending forces are one. How common would these raids that specifically target defending units, instead of say Supply Depot 302 in the Way-Back Hills, be? And would a smallish mercenary command be inclined to take a contract that would actively send them to take on the defenders instead of some out of the way depot?

It depends on the target, really. A well armed training cadre would be too big to chew on, and a militia company isn't going to be worth the effort. Additionally, what's the unit's stance on hitting a barracks or whatever rather than actually fighting the enemy? You could have an op similar to the Jade Falcon one in MW4: Mercenaries, where you could fight the trial against Aisa Thastus's binary orrrr hit their barracks the night before and kill damn near everybody.

My plan was to have my players' unit (mercs, two 'Mech lances, two infantry platoons) stationed on either planet of the Styk Commonality, since both of them have defending forces made piecemeal out of several small mercenary commands.

The reason for attacking the defenders is to force the government of Styk to bleed money (and resources) - either they hire more units to replace what they have lost, or they pay BLC to the ones that are wounded, or maybe even go hat in hand to one of the neighbours for support. Since the Commonality's right in the strategic zone near the FWL, the CC and the FS, any one faction could be financing these raids to fuck with the Styk government, and the CM book mentions that any side could also give clandestine support to Styk as well.

As an aside: goddamn do I love the Chaos March. I can't remember many places in the IS where you have four or five different factions, each with their own agendas, secret backers and hired guns glaring at each other across planetary borders.

So /btg/, I had this odd idea float into my head the other day. I'm something of a casual Battletech fan, so I thought I'd ask if you had any ideas for improving or adding to it, as well as suggesting where/when it should be set and fun, flawed mechs you could include in the lineup.

>Some exec asshole decides to make a terrible cash in mech movie, presumably aping the success of a better film. They get some investment, then immediately buy up as many mechs as possible, focusing on ones that are dirt cheap and are as photogenic as possible, as well as getting an interesting array of designs. Only *then* do they hire a poor historical consultant who has to figure out why the hell this bizarre mishmash of machines would ever be on a battlefield together.
>Add to that a retired mech engineer forced to make a dozen walking scrap piles move and fake-fight enough to be worth filming. And then the poor bastard stuntmen running the mechs, learning how to make the various rustbuckets perform decently enough that they won't have to speed up the footage in post, all the while dealing with the crummy border world they were filming on, not receiving the same pampering as the 'talent'
>And then they get word of an incoming pirate raid, far more than the couple of lights and mediums the defenders can muster.
>As the bitchy D-list actors and executives all scramble to leave, abandoning the world... The stuntmen decide to stay behind. They spent time with the people here, they like them... And they're not just going to run. They might have crappy mechs with bad weapons and amateur training, but they aren't cowards.

Not 100% sure what I want to do with it. Maybe an RPG campaign, maybe a short story, maybe a statted up scenario battle. Maybe all three. Figured it'd be fun to play around and get suggestions for things to improve it.

List the 'mechs, pirate forces, and what year it happens in if you want serious feedback.

There's actually a unit like that - Greenburg's Godzillas. The unit commander and his crew were the stars of a holovid series about the unit itself, and IIRC they actually used their Space Hollywood knowledge to win a battle later.

But those are all things I want suggestions for. Did you read the post?

Yeah, and I stand by my words. You should at least put in a minimum of effort into researching your pitch if you want others to help you any.

But if I had all those things, I wouldn't need any help so there would be no point in me posting.

You're not going to have the skills available to really do it before the 3050s, and then you might as well drop it in the Chaos March or similar. I'm just not really sure why the crew would go native. Peasants are peasants dude.

erppc.hpg.

Their thing was their techs were absolute masters at making mechs look like other mechs to ruse the fuck out of their enemies

>Some exec asshole decides to make a terrible cash in mech movie, presumably aping the success of a better film. They get some investment, then immediately buy up as many mechs as possible
Could work on Solaris VII between 3053 and 3067. Any other place and any other time your exec asshole will have to settle for piece of shit workmechs, hire an actual military unit whose normal military obligations aren't keeping them 100% occupied, or find a repair facility that's willing to loan him 'Mechs from the repair queue.

Fatziel is fat. Yeesh.

It's also Canadian as well.

Some folks in my group are making "A Song of Ice and Fire" themed lances based on houses, and I got House Stark.

What are some mechs that would work for them? I'm mostly guessing on going off the wolf motif but I was thinking having more than one Dire Wolf would be silly.

Four Wulfen. You know you want to. Alternatively, you could do four Dire Wolves with a single Elemental on each base painted to look like the kids (with one mounted to the back of a Grand Crusader, of course, on its own base, to be Bran and Hodor). Paint them to look like the respective dire wolves.

Alternatively you could field a headless Executioner.

>Alternatively you could field a headless Executioner.
leave ned alone

>This is some next-level CGL apologism. You're right that the fans control the game though. Even if the company dies, the game survives. I'm a bit disappointed but if this is what you really believe, then so be it.

What I mean is that even if CGL dies, even if Topps gives away the license for the most ideal setup, when you go to form a company to take up the IP you will unavoidably have to hire a lot of people that were previously working for CGL. Unless you're taking the heavy reboot option where very noticeable style, lore, and gameplay changes are acceptable. At which point you then alienate a lot of the existing fanbase and again you're stuck in small time until you can make the game good out of your own very deep pockets.

How about Wulfen variants for the girls and Rikkon and Warwolfs for the ones becoming King In The North? Then Executioner Ned, Elemental-on-a-Mackie Bran, and a Banshee for Kathryn.

A lance of Cadavers.

No, wait, I spoke too soon. A Götterdammerunge, a Cadaver, a Banshee and an Assassin.

...

...

Pack Hunter redesign, or Hollander 2?

I'd say it's a hollander based on the offset head.

So help me understand a few things about the clans...

Why do the clans hate melee so much? Is it because it tends to be more lethal to the pilots involved? I can understand them not considering it useful since clantech has such a range advantage.

Second, about Zellbrigen rules... doesn't this one on one combat method mean that the mech with the heaviest armour always wins? Being forced to always be within the enemy's firing arc and range seems kind of suicidal and combined with the armour thing, it seems like most fights would be over before they even begin. Of course I also understand that you can suspend the rules when appropriate.

>always be within the enemy's firing arc

This isn't correct.

You are required to stay within line of sight of the enemy Mech; that means you're able to draw a line of sight between them. It does *not* mean you must be able to draw a line of FIRE between them. If they can't bring a weapon to bear on you because you've outmaneuvered them, that is THEIR problem, not yours.

Additionally, you absolutely can break line of sight, as long as you do it temporarily. The point is to ensure that somebody driving a Fire Moth can't challenge a Dire Wolf and then just run 300 miles away and still have the challenge be "valid". If the Fire Moth is fighting the Dire Wolf in a city, say, and it keeps ducking behind buildings and popping out in the DW's rear arc to fire at it, that is perfectly in line with zell.

Finally, it's important to remember that we have a 100% canon depiction of somebody jumping in near their duel target, tapping them with a NARC beacon, jumping to the other side of a huge woods so they can't be shot at, and just bombarding the shit out of them with indirect LRM fire. In a Bloodname tournament, no less. In a JADE FALCON Bloodname tournament, no less. So clearly, zell isn't just a matter of two Mechs facing each other at 20 paces and holding the trigger down until somebody falls over.

The point is to actually fight the other guy. If you do it in a way that outmaneuvers or outthinks them, the Clans are 100% fine with that. If you do it in a way where you're clearly not intending to actually fight them, then you can safely assume it's a zell breach. Zell is about the spirit of the rules, only rarely the actual letter of them.

Ahh, I think I get it now. It's more to prevent cowardly behavior and abuse of the rules, not so much to force participants to fight head on.

From the sarna page on Zellbrigen
>Certain actions taken during a duel are considered dezgra and an opponent who engages in them too often can render the fight void. These include intentionally moving out of the line of sight of an opponent, intentionally moving out of weapons range of an opponent, or failing to fire a weapon at the opponent if capable of doing so, although even these may be acceptable if tactically appropriate.
I think with zell, the important thing to remember is that honor is earned in the perceived challenge. It's a duel that is supposed to put both combatants on roughly even ground so the greatest personal skill wins (and thus propagates the clans' might-makes-right society and breeding). Exploiting firing arcs and range bands for an unfair advantage against an inferior machine would be frowned upon, but would not be if you are in an inferior machine against a better machine or multiple opponents. Disdain for melee is for fluff reasons, but I can't remember why.

>all this clanner talk

Are there any other good Clan fiction besides the Jade Phoenix trilogy? I've read a few stand-alones, but none of them capture the alien culture of the clans like Jade Phoenix did.

Exodus Road, Freebirth, Test of Vengeance, One of the Refusal War books but I don't remember which (the boss Vlad one), Hunters of the Deep, the Spirit Cat sections of Target of Opportunity and Pandora's Gambit.

But you know, fuck clanners.I always find it funny the clannerest clanners get fucked over by their own society.

>spirit cats

I really did not enjoy those. They were like clanners on super autism or something. Maybe it was the authors.

>the boss Vlad one
Yeah I enjoyed that one

>One of the Refusal War books but I don't remember which (the boss Vlad one)
Malicious Intent. It's odd that Stackpole's BT novels have pretty damn good titles, now that I think about it.

It was pure distilled Nova Cat. That's just how they are. You said you wanted clanner culture. That weird vision autist stuff is theirs.

The fight between Radick's right hand and secret agent Holt was one of the better IS v. clanner combat trials too IMO.

That seems like such a massive waste. If you're gonna put out a new book you might as well replace some of shitty art.

I kinda felt the same way. I don't hate Loose's art (I know I'm in the minority) but a new book, especially since we got new Unseen art, should mean a new offering in terms of unified art style and all that. Seeing a TRO with all this disparate art makes it feel like a fan-made hackjob.

>Why do the clans hate melee so much?
They think it's crude.

Well remember it would have had several more if they hadn't been sued
also that costs money

Well and even if you don't mind Loose's art, it looks dated and by extension ends up making the book already looked dated. I mean, can CGL really not get some of their artists folks to draw up some modern pictures?

Fair point. Guess Nova Cats just aren't for me. The vision shit was really off putting. I did enjoy Test of Vengence.

I suspect they put their real effort into a different TRO that we won't see until the HG lawsuit shakes out.

>What are some mechs that would work for them?
Three Crusaders and a Dire Wolf, because one protagonist +3 suicide machines = Stark.

That's a ballistic, not an energy weapon. Hollander.

>Why do the clans hate melee so much?
It's "inelegant" and "barbaric". It was a deliberate decision on the part of Weissman and Nystul to push >away< from the trope of the Noble Warrior Race Guys preferring melee combat. I was basically gonna say the same things as NEA on Zell, but then I'm a dirty Blood Spirit Chalcas PoS.

>If you're gonna put out a new book you might as well replace some of shitty art.
Look, they tried that a couple times already. It.. went poorly (pic related). Plus
>implying CGL have the budget to commission new art and actually PAY the people involved. On time. Ever.
Who do you think they are, >fans< making TROs?

>I suspect they put their real effort into a different TRO that we won't see until the HG lawsuit shakes out.
Probably the Combat Manuals and SW series, if I had my guess. On the other hand they usually do "pay-on-publish" terms in contracts, which means if they're too broke to even defend a critical portion of the IP in a literal open-and-shut case, nor pay their ALD and authors for the main plotbook, they probably don't have it for art in a literal shovelware book.

>Who do you think they are, >fans< making TROs?
I appreciate the sarcasm. Got a chuckle out of me. It just goes to show that fan efforts are having more of an impact than the parent company these days. We have our own TRO which, even in the alpha stage, looks more polished than CGL's latest. We have several contributors to the BM and other recent books, none of which would have been as good as they are without our contributions. And now they are down Xotl.

Gentlemen, we are BattleTech now.

Did the follow-up(s) to Heir Apparent get released yet?

Clanners see shooting at a fast-moving target at long range as a better expression of skill as a pilot than walking up to someone and beating them insensible with your 'Mech's fists and feet.

I don't think the Jade Falcon novels are good because Thurston is as into them as Stackpole is Hanse and the Morgans, but Exodus Road is pretty good since Blaine sold his soul for one good novel and Malicious Intent is pretty good since Stackpole isn't writing the FedCom or Phelan.

Otherwise they tend to be pretty shit, lots of fiat and bad writing.

2nd one did, Apparent Catastrophe, check your backer kit. It's not as good as the first one.

>It's "inelegant" and "barbaric"

The Clanners shall never feel the visceral satisfaction of using the ancient technique of "beating up a motherfucker with the leg of another motherfucker". Preferably a leg you yourself tore off someone.

Or simply grabbing a convenient tree and banging someone about the head with it.

How much damage do 5 regular ASF bombs cause, then?

50 points of damage to the target hex

>Or simply grabbing a convenient tree and banging someone about the head with it.

Battlemechs aren't strong enough to hold a tree.

HE do 10 damage in 5 point groupings, cluster bombs do 5 in the target hex and all six adjacent hexes. In both cases this is area effect damage, so it hits everything in the targeted hex.

No, trees aren't strong enough to survive hitting a battlemech more than once. Limbs and girders and such are longer lasting.

Where would I be able to buy the rulebooks in physical form over the net? Bookdepository and abebooks only have german copies.

Is it just me or does that design remind anyone of a Pelican from Halo, with enlarged winglets?

It's more based on the Anhur. But both the Pelican and Anhur were based on the Cheyenne from Aliens.

Man, I miss Halo 1 with all those Aliens references.

>The Clanners shall never feel the visceral satisfaction of using the ancient technique of "beating up a motherfucker with the leg of another motherfucker".

Addendum: Unless you're playing against the bot on MegaMek. Then Clanners will beat the shit out of you if you let it.

>which is a rude surprise if you've only just taken an AtB campaign up to the point where you're facing Clanners for the first time.

Addendum the 2nd: Or if you piss them off sufficiently.

I've said it before, but when I took my first Clan contract (a recon raid IIRC), I assumed the bot respected zell.

Big mistake.

The moment I march my veteran Archer on a small hill to provide long range cover for the others advancing, I get tagged by a Jade Falcon 'Mech. Well, no problem, the Archer's going to duel that one - "why did that second Falcon 'Mech just double-tap me with ERPPCs?" Exit Archer in a ball of fire.

You can't believe how much I swore after that.

>I've said it before, but when I took my first Clan contract (a recon raid IIRC), I assumed the bot respected zell.

I feel you. My first time running into that was actually just a few days ago; I started a merc unit ~3025 and only recently got into the Clan Invasion era, and was in the middle of a Planetary Assault in Taurian Space when the Clans hit, so I didn't actually engage them until almost the end of 3051.

I had a 7/11/7 Phoenix Hawk with a 2/1 Melee Master pilot in it that I jumped onto Level 0 terrain surrounded on 4 sides by Level 1 hills. I did it so I could get a guaranteed left leg double hit (in the left side arc, so it can only kick the left leg) on an overheated and shut down Warhawk with no armor on that leg. The Level 1 hills were all populated by Jade Turkey Mechs...and up until that point, pretty much all weapons fire had been 1-on-1 due to using the terrain. They all fired at various Mechs...and then all 4 of them kicked my Pixie, taking its head clean off (crit; boxcars, head blown off).

Expensive lesson.

Dire Wolf
Timber Wolf
Raven
Assassin

>Raven
>With C3i

Because of course.

Gotta wonder how hard it would be to program Zell.

One could conceivably sneak an Executioner in there somewhere.

It would require a *ton* of conditional logic. If statements out the ass. And of course that's not counting all of the little situational gotchas, like using terrain to your advantage when you're not in an inferior spot, for example.