/btg/ - BattleTech General

In one of the fgcs the bears used amputees and tiny asians..much kek was had.

Still nope. Either you're the canopians and get unlimited nice shit, or you get fucked and are allowed no fun. That's how the periphery works in canon.

>some nice, cheap thing
Protomechs aren't cheap. They're fusion. They're cheap compared to Clan Omnis for Clanners. And the Periphery does make some power armor but not in quantity. In fact, they most the most adorable Battle Armor of all.

They have the Gladius.

Why the canopians tough. There you have the Marian Hegemony with they hard-on with Rome or the Taurians (than seem to have split and only get anally raped in territory) plus lots of little factions here and there.

Is this what they were trying for with the new 40k Dreadnought?

Let's rundown the main Periphery states for you.

Taurians. A bunch of paranoid nuts actually working to rebuilt their ancient state into an Inner Sphere tier state. They fucked it up and broke it in three, but hey, they tried and got further on their own than anyone else.
Canopians. A once great state that slid down into almost periphery pirate tier with amazons and tits before selling its soul to Sian.
Marians. A bunch of pirates with fat wallets and a Rome fetish.
Outworlds. Bunch of Mennonites with a boner for flight that let half their worlds die off from technologic degredation and got taken over by a bunch of furries.

Obviously Circinus was the superior choice before they got Regulated.

Not like the Clanners aren't drugged up either though. Or all the other Wobbies and whoever else running with some sort of DNI implants for that matter.

Cute!

Has it been mentioned anywhere if Andurien has (or more likely had before the Secession) an intelligence service of its own, like the Regulan Security Service?

All the Marik splinterstates have their own version of SAFE.

>Giving a bunch of former Capellans their own intelligence service
What could possibly go wrong?

But seriously, all the main substates in the DA had their own independent apparatus and they were all still called SAFE.

Cheers. There probably isn't anything about pre-Dark Age status? The only mention I have is a 3067-dated bit of news about the Regulan Security Service in ISP1.

Not really. The original Housebook says that SAFE is basically independent of everybody and reports directly to the Captain-General. And it's all still top down in 3067. The intelligence groups are about the only sect that's not factionally divided in the FWL. It's even stated to be their main strength.

True. SAFE's reputation for incompetence stemmed from a writer's fact-checking error in one of the books, and Stackpole ran with it as an in-universe goof by SAFE in his next book and painted the group as grossly incompetent. Ever since then it's been seen by players as factional and incompetent.

To be fair, they fixed a bit of that in the DA

>That time the planetary governor of Wyatt turned out to be a deep cover SAFE source and when they asked him why he told them because he was a loyal son of Oriente like his parents and their parents before him
>And that Stone who forced them to relocate like so many others could suck a royal purple cock

The taurians got a bunch of genuinely interesting and fun stuff in 3085, for the first and only time.
The problem is just that the eras where they get neat stuff and the ones where they aren't total retards getting fistfucked to death have exactly no overlap

What is the Vendetta campaign, Alex

Pointless, retarded and leading directly to their entire industrial base getting raped to death by a single regiment because lolnukes?

Vendetta wasn't responsible for Bromhead, Brockway and shit. That was the standard fleet.

The Vendetta was the ship that ran unchecked through the Capellan March, killed one Fox, crippled another. Wrecked up the biggest shipyard in Feddie space and damaged another. And let's not forget bombed the shit out of the New Syrtis, to the point the glacier the capital was built on is just dirt in the DA. Did all that and returned home at the end of it in victory. Oh, and were the only guys to actually drive off the Roughriders from some worlds.

It's pretty much every crazy Taurian's power fantasy.

So, when started BT lore to be shit?
Or at least, what are the less shit timelines?
Also, has B/TG/ done his own separated timeline?

Am I alone in thinking that a lot of the jihad taurian stuff would have been much better/more interesting as part of the early DA blackout scramble?

What's your favorite quads?
Me, Goliath and Scorpion.

That's a very much contested question, although the point of decline that gets the most general agreement around here is 3060-ish and the associated capellan confederation's magical 'Xin Sheng' rise to superpower status, the start of the FedCom Civil War, and the enormous amount of contrived situations, sudden and extreme characterization shifts and grabbing the idiot ball with both hands that both involved so heavily.
As for the second one, lots of anons have messed around working on one, but nobody has put out a really complete one due to the absurd amounts of writing it would take

goliath and scorpion are both good, I also like the Barghest, it packs some heavy firepower.

>Goliath

Me too. It seems like it should be more heavily armed for its weight, but it looks so damn cool!

I think they fucked up by creating the FedCom, really. Before that you at least had the illusion of balance. As soon as the FedCom comes into existence there's literally no way to explain how the other three factions don't get curb-stomped due to the overwhelming advantages heaped on the Feddies and Lyrans.

Quite a lot of the later fluff issues stem from trying to find excuses that the Dracs and Caps don't get reamed out of existence and the FWL has to be perpetually sidelined to explain why it doesn't get fucked as well.

I really wish Taurian fans would read the books some time. Hansen's Roughriders got the focus of the news articles but were far from the only Suns unit involved.

Plus it was the TDF against the AFFS, what did you really expect to happen?

In b4 "the Taurians would win, durr!" I refer you to reading the books, where the Suns could have shit-stomped the Taurians quite easily and elected not to.

Yes, even during the Jihad.

Perhaps I should have said there was no way to satisfactorily explain why the other factions survive, since there is fluff that says how but it's absolutely pants on head retarded, essentially amounting to "Well Hanse rolled a natural 1 for his Strategy check that day and decided to let them live instead of killing them."

It's annoying as fuck for the other factions because they survive only by fiat, and Feddie fans bitch and whine about how the authors randomly decided to spare the other factions when they were on the brink of death.

>material but only the technical ability to churn out so many fusion power plants and you aren't going to gut your proper mech forces or conventionals for child soldiers.

The Periphery cant make BA batteries by DA? The Periphery is doing at least 5 diferent BA models by the DA IIRC (Ravager, Marauder, Amazon, Theseus, Asterion).

Nasty little fucker, specially if you use hidden rules.

Scorpion's my favorite mech of all time.

Read the post again. They make them. They don't mass produce them. Just read stuff like the infamous MoC Ebon commando entry where they say they can't make enough battle armor to put together full battle armor platoons and are still of the greatest majority reliant on conventional infantry.

The thing is, even without the fedcom, the 'why are they still around' question is still a problem, just after the clan invasion instead of before, as it then becomes "why don't the suns and FWL take advantage of the clan war to fuck the dracs and lyrans, respectively, to death?"

You mean the TRO:3085, page 216 entry? That is just after the Jihad. You have like 60 years to 3145. Also, check the Ravager, IIRC the tinbucket was produced so much that was the favourite of mercs all around.

It comes and goes as it always has. Periods of good. Periods of shit. And periods of nothing.

1984-1991, maximum classic grog. Everyone remembers this stuff iconically. 3rd War all the way through the Invasion.
1992-1995, forgotten years. Dragoon Civil War, introduction of Homeworlders, Refusal War etc. Most people just remember the Caballeros here.
1995-1997 the seeds of hate, Xin Sheng, Operation Guerrero, Lyran Secession
1997-1999, return to form, 2nd SL Twilight of the Clans
2000-2002, the bitch ruins everything for everybody, Fedcom Civil War
2002-2007, the dark times, Forever 67 and Early Dark Age
2007-2012, everybody gets a turn, the Jihad
2012-2014, slap some lipstick on this Stoner pig, Dark Ages continue
2014-2017, historicals historicals historicals

I actually enjoyed the 97-07 era.

>Don't talk to me or my son or my grandson etc....
Anybody have their own takes on quads they love?

>Anybody have their own takes on quads they love?

I thought Vision's quad from episode 7 of Bubblegum Crisis ("Double Vision") would have made a neat mech using 3050's technology. If I ever did make a tech readout for it, I can't find it; I never even finished the drawings.

I envisioned something around 40 tons, fast, with an XL engine, jump jets, a large pulse laser, and some Streak SRM-2's.

>turret on the bottom
Huh, looks cool

When I play hanse league

youtube.com/watch?v=ULeDlxa3gyc

You can see it in action (in Houston, Texas, no less!) at about 6:35 and again at about the 41-minute mark.

youtube.com/watch?v=e6LWi0tfrS0

Either we have a Penetrator joke here, or it's like an attack helicopter's chin turret like the Apache / Longbow.

This is the only thing I could find in the old House book.

>the FWL has to be perpetually sidelined to explain why it doesn't get fucked as well.
The FWL seems like the key member of the Kapteyn alliance. If they'd entered the 4th War, the Lyrans would've had to pull troops away from the Drac border, which either means the Dracs start winning and the Lyrans stop supporting the Suns, or the Dracs smash the 'goons and start taking Federated worlds, both of which take pressure of the Capellans. Then in the FCCW, the FWL again gets sidelined because if the Marik-Liao-Blake alliance had actually acted, the former FedCom states would be much worse off.

The FWL has to stay uninvolved in the plot is to continue.

Though in-universe I always interpreted it as that the League really just wants to be left alone. "Trade with all, alliance with none" kind of stuff.

Great Turtle. How is this a question? Runner up is the Stalking Spider.

The Taurians get fucking WARSHIPS. The Periphery should barely get mechs at at all, and the fucking "American" faction gets a free Warship.

>Only canopians get nice things

Get fucked.

That is now the standard Proto pilot uniform in all my campaigns.

seems like b8

>Those stereotypical texans
I need to get around to watching bubblegum crisis. Also I think that would make a sweet Proto.

Yeah. He's been using this routine for like two years now

>I need to get around to watching bubblegum crisis.

Same. And Dirty Pair while I'm at it.

>I need to get around to watching bubblegum crisis.

Watch all 8 episodes of the original series in Japanese with English subtitles. Enjoying Kinuko Oomori (Priss) blasting out her rockin' vocals made this show. The English version they have on iTunes replaces all her songs with awful English versions; it'd be like trying to enjoy William Shatner's cover of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds without ever have realized there was a Beatles version.

>Watch all 8 episodes of the original series in Japanese with English subtitles.

>People on Veeky Forums.
>Watching dubs.
I refuse to believe this. I guess some series you grew up with, maybe Cowboy Bebop/Big O.
But come on, dubs have improved massively since the 80s and they're still unbearably bad sans one or two exceptions.

Wait, though. The TC does actually get a warship and pretty much goes on an unstoppable rampage with it, doesn't it?

Bait it may be, but I would call that a reasonable counterargument to s point that only the canopians get "unlimited nice shit" and everyone else in the Periphery gets nothing fun. I mean, compared to a warship, having some bullshit commando teams pretty much pales in comparison.

Funny story, when my group was rolling up our unit (we're a Marik House unit), we wound up with a full lance of the Wolverine M. Thing is a beast. Last session, one of them punched a wasp in half. Like straight up cored the CT leaving the rest of the Wasp intact, so after the battle is over, we're going to have a pile of Wasp limbs.

people where bitching about the Canopians are mary sues cause womins and such.

Don't they have to get rid of it, under the treaties stating that the Taurians may have no good things?

I though the Calderon Protectorate ended up with it

Look at the rest of the post. Shit like the Periphery shouldn't get mechs, etc. And the TC's warship is a Blakist plot device that they lose pretty soon. The MoC's military boost both in size and Capellan tech, as well as all the Ebon Magistrate stuff, makes anyone else's stuff pale in comparison.

Let's just move on, shall we?

>And Dirty Pair while I'm at it.

Can't mention Dirty Pair without Crusher Joe - after all, Crusher Joe actually has *real* Battletech tie-ins!

They kind of fucked up by default by how they designed the Inner Sphere geopolitically - five fairly static states that only really interact with two of their neighbours meant that they needed to resort to increasingly crazy stuff to shake it up.

A good setting design to start would have had the five states as superpowers or regional powers existing among many other smaller states, not just the token Periphery nations and briefly-living breakaway states.

>Taurian's Power Fantasy

The average Taurian fan's fantasies revolve around the faction not being depicted in modern fluff as a bunch of homicidal retards, so this doesn't really count.

I know but it's easier to sperg out and blame the fanbase for the delusions of that one faggot on the OF and all the haters of the TC.

I'm not even a real Taurian fan, but it always struck me as odd that the fluff always tried to emphasize their excellent education system and practicality, and then they always act like morons.

Its kind of the same as how Clan Snow Raven is characterized as being cunning, Machiavellian and careful, and then act all spastic during the Jihad re: Galedon

If they want to make the Taurians violent rednecks, go ahead, but the background fluff should reflect the actions.

>I'm not even a real Taurian fan, but it always struck me as odd that the fluff always tried to emphasize their excellent education system and practicality, and then they always act like morons.
>Its kind of the same as how Clan Snow Raven is characterized as being cunning, Machiavellian and careful, and then act all spastic during the Jihad re: Galedon
>If they want to make the Taurians violent rednecks, go ahead, but the background fluff should reflect the actions.

Its not so much of TC hater, but people that just despise the Periphery for some reason...its like "CBT its only the 5 great houses and my pet clan!, the rest stinks".

In this case, it's probably just our local dedicated periphery hateposter, who probably but not certainty also posts as Deadboarder on the OF.
He's been doing this for a while, and it seems likely he was the 'every merc unit who own mechs are Mary sues' guy afore that

>it seems likely he was the 'every merc unit who own mechs are Mary sues' guy afore that
I was pretty sure this was confirmed to be true, didn't he post both together a few times? In any case, I'm assuming he's the same guy and that he's fucking useless and not worth discussing further.

this. I think if groups like the FRR, Anduriens, Tikonov and St. Ives were always independent factions with strong ties to two of their neighbors, there could have been more geopolitical posturing and proxy shadow wars fought with mercenary groups and splinter factions.

Deadborder? Really? That explains a lot. Why is that Australia seems to generate soo much shitposters. I remember another australian like that in the OF.

Supposedly it has something to do with Australian culture, they seem to just be kinda like that from what I've been informed. I don't know that that's true, but it seems to be based on Veeky Forums shitposter breakdowns.

...

>five fairly static states that only really interact with two of their neighbours
That's an illusion. Every house is made of a hundred smaller dukes with their own politics (see Solaris VII or Asuncion negotiating private treaties), significant border changes happen regularly (St Ives lost worlds around the turn of the millenium), and everybody fights everybody in the core near Terra (see Davion attacking Holt, or Hesperus). Things only became static - and then only briefly - in the run-up to the 4th succession war.

You are theoretically right, the problem is that it never actually shows in the metaplot except for when somebody's got to get fucked, and it's done by a noble going full retard off on his own private shitrampage that ruins everything for everyone else

Your factions are all retarded. Join clan ghostbear! Where we only sue once every couple of years when we wake up to slap your faction in retaliating for having to listen to your whining.

Thanks. Glad someone likes it.

Ha, neat. What portrait pack is that or are you using something you made yourself? I don't recall seeing that one. I have a few that I grabbed from the guide.

Leaving aside "lol rebellions" the FedCom still has enough troops to station on that border to hold any invasion off while still fucking the Dracs and Caps to death. Even if the FWL had entered the fray, there's nothing they could have done unless granted Hanse levels of fiat.

The FedCom was a massive mistake.

>the background fluff should reflect the actions

It does though. Like every faction, the fans ignore everything that paints them in a bad light and focus on the good stuff. The big thing with a lot of Taurian fans is that they also wildly mis-interpret the good stuff, like having secret WarShip yards that the New Vandenburg is covering for, having an "excellent" education system when the books just indicate a high literacy rate (ie, people can read and write, there's nothing about a high-quality education system), expecting the TDF to hold out an AFFS invasion when their average regiments have one experience lower and deploy as many advanced-tech machines as the AFFS does in half a Battalion, etc.

>with a lot of Taurian fans
And by that statement you mean Medron Pryde, possibly MA and really no one else, so kindly fuck yourself out a window with your strawmen

I don't know. There's a point where their fear of the Davion boogeyman becomes cartoonish. Not arguing that the Taurians need to be perfect or even great, but their stupidity seems to be of a particularly recursive kind.

They weren't even that afraid of the Davs till Shraplen drove them nuts. If you want to play the 'Old Taurians' now just play Calderon Protectorate. That's how the used to be.

Dude, we have a resident Taurianposter who spouts a lot of that and last thread was bitching about how Hansen's Roughriders wrecked the entire TDF by themselves.

There *may* be reasonable Taurian fans out there but as far as I can tell from the ones who post, that's not the case.

Shraplen was a symptom, not the cause. The Davion bogeyman has always been a thing and was prevalent in the 4th SW era fluff as well.

>They weren't even that afraid of the Davs till Shraplen drove them nuts
And the retarded thing about that was, five years earlier, literally the exactly fucking same military and political leaders threw the motherfucking leader of the TC, for literally the first time in seven hundred years of national history, straight out the fucking door literally because he was a retard who was too obsessed with muh suns instead of actual threats like sunny t and pirates.

Which is the really weird part - shouldn't the Protectorate have been made up of the crazies who objected to the new less paranoid route and made their own concordat nice and far away from the Suns?

They traded with the Davs pre-Xin Shit. That's why it was so dumb. They HATED the CC with a passion.

So people don't have to have education to have higher literacy rates? Must be a hell of a homeschooling system.

Literacy rates are literally just a percentage of the population who can read and write to a certain level.

They don't tell you much, if anything, about how well-educated a population is or what they can do with being able to read and write. All the indications are from Taurian tech and economic fluff that very little higher education or research of note happens there since their biggest advances all come from foreigners fixing stuff they can't fix themselves.

By contrast over the border you've got the Suns who routinely shaft the Outback for any kind of education which tanks their overall literacy and numeracy rates. OTOH they have shit like NAIS, which results in better education outcomes for the state.

Everyone was doing that, not just the TC.

OTOH, before it was retconned for Xin Sheng reasons, canonically, the TC and the MoC (with explicit TC assistance) were "nearly on par" with the Inner Sphere technologically as of 3058, which was on track with the P1e concept of the TC as basically a pocket successor state, and also the fluff presented in contemporary sourcebooks

They also both hated the Capellans, and so the magic of XIn Sheng is even more retarded.

t. Capellan player

Even in the first TR for 3058 the TC was /barely/ starting to make FFA, S-SRM-2s, and MPLs and nothing more so I really doubt this.

Indeed. As somebody who likes the Fedsuns in general and the Capellan March in particular, I am really disappointed for the abandoned possibility of Best George nonstop conspiring with the periphery guys against the CC in the jihad and into the early DA, because that honestly would have produced a lot more fun and interesting scenerios than XIN SHENG RETARD BALL GO

The reason you don't see the reasonable TC fans here is that we don't post anymore thanks to that retard ruining everything. I don't ask questions about the TC because it just generates butthurt, either from that guy being a moron, our resident "fuck the Periphery" faggot, or people's responses to the above. Being a TC fan is suffering.