/btg/ BattleTech General

No less retarded than thinking giant bipedal robots would be any good at all in warfare when you can get an objectively better result by putting the same amount of armor and weapons onto a perfectly good tank.

Pretty retarded thinking that airplanes are safe in an age of lasers, particle beams, and gauss weapons.

If it's seen, it's shot down, and stealth doesn't work against ladar homie.

To be fair most of the vehicles in the BTech universe are all goofy 80s vintage designs as well.

Dang, I love pictures like those, with tanks, infantry etc, but specially with some mechs.

Pretty retarded thinking that, when taking the realities of space flight to their logical conclusion, humanity wasn't exterminated by fractional-C rocks or concrete-filled Dropships as soon as the first intersteller war or at the most the end of the Reunification War?

The entire Battletech universe should be an empty space devoid of life, where players get together and just stare at each other over a couple of Moonscape hexmaps with no active units because everyone's already dead.

It's the only way to avoid retardation.

>ty nea

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There is a difference between suspension of disbelief and introducing something then just not using it at all.

Fun fact. Myomer bundles are already coated in literal red axle grease. I'm not even sure how it's supposed to react with the air in the original plot. I think when it got hit with weapons fire the myomer exploded because then it was exposed to the gas.

>can get an objectively better result by putting the same amount of armor and weapons onto a perfectly good tank.
Except they take crits like bitches in the game.

This is almost word for word a post that Herb used to make whenever people brought up relativistic weapons.

What I always wondered was how come there wasn't ever an accident or two with all the shitty six hundred year old dropships barely flying around.

>Never a story about some pirates burning in at 3G
>Drive craps out on them right about at the end-over point
>The boys go full Major Kong

The Caps actually use it on mechs stationed on hostile atmosphere planets. And the Davions developed a stable no heat version but it doesn't have the fine control needed for battlemechs so it's only used on industrials for loading shit and whatnot.

>This is almost word for word a post that Herb used to make whenever people brought up relativistic weapons.

That's funny. I copy-pasted the second paragraph about the moonscape maps from a post nea made a while ago that I capped. Is nea Herb in disguise?

>Except they take crits like bitches in the game.
>not using the clearly superior tacops vehicle rules that give them their proper place in the game universe

>I'm not even sure how it's supposed to react with the air in the original plot. I think when it got hit with weapons fire the myomer exploded because then it was exposed to the gas.

Then they could still make 200 ton missile boats jump around like elementals unleashing 200 LRM barrages.

>The Caps actually use it on mechs stationed on hostile atmosphere planets. And the Davions developed a stable no heat version but it doesn't have the fine control needed for battlemechs so it's only used on industrials for loading shit and whatnot.

Now thats even more retarded.

I must say I take the Cobra Hiss Tank Vedette over the abomination unto man and gods that are the Clan vehicles any day.

>Using vehicle effectiveness rules
I know you're probably joking but that's about a nine out of ten on the dick player scale, like right behind people who bring mixtech customs to a pickup game.

Reminds me of the Tsar tank from WW1

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>not using the clearly superior tacops vehicle rules that give them their proper place in the game universe
That rule is pretty brutal from my experience, it makes vee's far more deadly for their point/weight value and almost too good.

>Then they could still make 200 ton missile boats jump around like elementals unleashing 200 LRM barrages.

They still can't because they can't make actuators that can support it. Just read all the superheavy construction rules in the back of Final Reckoning to see why that sort of thing can't be done the way you think

It completely fucks battle value. Nobody in their right mind uses it.

>their proper place in the game universe
Somehow I'm reminded of the scene in Heir to the Dragon where a Griffin and a Panther flip over a command tank and then run off like naughty children.

>making vees too good.

No such thing. Making a wargame realistic should be the first and foremost concern of the designers, and crippling the objectively best type of unit just to make Mech seem better is the worse sort of game design fuckup.

Mechs don't exist for a good reason.

Sweet Omi Kurita, the more I look at the Clan vees the more I think the artist chose to embody the Dick Durkin "we're gonna need big fucking guns" mentality. Oro, I'm looking at you and your cavernous cannon bore.

Damn, now I can't unsee it. The Ishtar must have similar cross-country capability.

Also here's a happy pulp scifi robot controlling a shitload of missiles.

>They still can't because they can't make actuators that can support it.

Thats the point, with the gorrilion strength mymer NOW THEY CAAAAAAAAAAAAN

By this logic the FWL should be the strongest of the successful states with their combined arms, the Taurians should be able to defeat any enemy with their extra large tank squads, and the Hells Horses and Blood Spirits would have made bitches of the other clans.

Actually, maybe you're right.

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So, prefered tanks/vehicles in BT?

Depends what are we doing?

depends on what you're looking for.

I've always found the ____ Carriers and Yellow jacket to be particularly good fun for fire support options.

Vedette, Pegasus, Manticore, Salad Shooter, LRM carrier. Common and useful in every era.

Special mention to the Pike as a Grade A annoyance and fire magnet. Toss in Hunter, Striker, Goblin and Bulldog for that old militia feel and if you're in it for fun.

Biggus Dickus to Alacorn, Schrek and Gulltopr A. Probably a few more but those generally float to the top of the list.

Skulker C3 is hands down the best C3 Master I've had the pleasure of Dracing with.

Fuck artillery v's though. Better off exporting that job to squishies offboard for the battle value.

Is there a way to do offboard with mega mek?

>Never a story about some pirates burning in at 3G
>Drive craps out on them right about at the end-over point
Their trajectory will indeed intercept the targeted point in the planet's orbit - but without decelerating for the right amount of time, the ship will arrive well before the planet does. There's no collision. They just coast through the outer reaches of the star system for as long as it takes to get the drive fired back up.

I can never say no to the Schrek, the Rommel, the Demolisher and the Saladin.

>Their trajectory will indeed intercept the targeted point in the planet's orbit - but without decelerating for the right amount of time, the ship will arrive well before the planet does. There's no collision. They just coast through the outer reaches of the star system for as long as it takes to get the drive fired back up.

Yup. Intrasystem flight math is a bitch.

It's a pretty good reminder that when you're talking about anything to do with space, if there are two or more parties involved in "something cool", you should probably assume that nice/fun things will never happen. Realistic space is hugely un-fun.

>Is nea Herb in disguise?

...no.

Which is exactly what a disguised Herb would say albeit with slightly less nukes and hatred, which is the best evidence I can give for not being Herb.

>people arguing that vehicles aren't strong enough

You know, just this last Saturday I was playing in our campaign. As it happened, the OPFOR moved in to flank our attack through a city with a light lance and a lance of Hetzers. The only unit we could detail to go stop them was my Javelin.

I proceeded to *completely empty* the SRM ammo bays into only the Hetzers. The Javelin lived, and the Hetzers and half the Mechs got tied down trying to move in such a way that I couldn't backstab them with the Javelin, so the move was a strategic success. But the point of the story is that, with 30 volleys of SRMs from a 2 gunner with Jumping Jack and Sandblaster (ensuring that I hit with probably 20-22 of those volleys), I confirmed exactly one motive critical on one Hetzer, reducing it to a 2/3 movement profile. Not a Hetzer died. Only that one Hetzer was even significantly *inconvenienced* by being showered in SRMs for 15 turns. It was all scattered armor damage.

While anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, IMO, vees are quite durable enough as it is, thank you.

>While anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, IMO, vees are quite durable enough as it is, thank you.
To counter this, I recently played a scenario with tanks vs mechs in which a Javelin *in a blizzard* put a MBT (I forget which, it wasn't a really good one though) into forced withdrawal thanks to motive and other crits. To be fair, the Manticore in the fight survived getting a building dropped on it before getting focused to death by three mechs and taking multiple engine crits, weapon crits, crew hits, turret locks, and being completely immobilized from motives.

I think tonks are at a decent place currently, but it *is* fairly easy to neutralize them in a single pass if you're trying hard enough. Infernos say hello.

That is just absurd results on the crit table then. Like that many missiles should have made those tanks into pillboxes, even if you never even breach the armour, there shouldn't be any motive points LEFT.

If your dice aren't hitting the motive crit chance slots on the Hit location chart, then you aren't going to get motive crits. And there's a whole lot less critical chances, motive or normal, on the Hit Location chart than there used to be.

Plus confirming crits is still a thing that has to be done. 2-5 on the motive table still has no effect. It's been 3 or 4 full games for me since I've confirmed a critical hit against a Mech, for example. I just keep rolling 5, 6, 7 when I need the 8+

Then as I already said, you have statistically abnormal dice results.

To interject briefly, the raw odds of getting any motive crit (after rolling on the hit location table and the motive system table) is 26% from the front, 30% from the rear, and 33% from the side. Additionally the front and rear have a 4% chance of suffering a normal crit, while the side has a 14% chance of suffering a normal crit.

Emptying two SRM ammo bins into tanks and getting one crit is extraordinarily unlikely with TW rules, even from the least crit-prone direction.

Must dice always behave in a statistically normal fashion?

The TacOps rules make them too good? Wat? I found that it just made them more useful, and actually worth taking. They still get pillboxed really easily, and they still pop to SRMs and LB-Xes. I always use them otherwise tanks are a joke, and my players never complain because they still get wrecked by 'Mechs.

>The TacOps rules make them too good? Wat? I found that it just made them more useful, and actually worth taking.

Define "worth taking".

Because the entire point of the game is that Tanks should not be able to fight Mechs at an even tonnage 1 on 1. If that's how you define "worth taking", then you aren't playing the game as intended, and your opinion is worthless.

Oh, you're serious. Let me laugh harder.

Like, I'd formulate a response, but you're not interested in debate. You're interested in being a joke. So I'll treat you like one.

On a BV scale, tanks are shit. They have very important changes to what their MP costs for terrain are, and they get really easily pillboxed or critted out (see ). Their only cost reduction compared to a mech is that their DBV is multipled by 0.9-0.7 depending on the motive type. Since DBV is generally about the same as OBV (and both together make the final unit BV), that means a tank is about 5% less BV than a mech that otherwise has the same stats. You need the TacOps rules for them to approach being worth their value.

Also, who the bloody fuck uses tonnage as a balancing metric in 2017? It's nearly two decades out of date!

Tacops rules give them all the armor advantages of suddenly being mechs while still getting all the tank advantages of not needing heatsinks for ballistics. Their previous balance is they carry a lot more gun for the BV but make up for that in weakness to being shot. Like a halfway between field guns and mechs. Vehicle effectiveness rules fuck the balance.

Not him, but 'Mechs are the whole point of BT. If you don't like 'Mechs, go play some other game, like Flames of War or whatever.

>waaah bv

Alacorn is 1,850 BV. Thunder Hawk is 2.5K+. Both bring the same effective firepower and speed to the game.

Yeah, nah. The retard is you.

>Alacorn is 1,850 BV. Thunder Hawk is 2.5K+. Both bring the same effective firepower and speed to the game.
And the Thunder Hawk has 88 points more armor, 102 points more internal structure, two medium lasers. Remove stuff so that it's the same armament and armor (the 102 points more structure can't be so nicely changed), and it's 2084 BV. More than 's 5% figure, but still only 10% off and the Thunder hawk has things like physical attacks, being able to use partial cover, being able to enter heavy woods/water, paying only 1 MP per level change, and not dealing with the critfest that is being a vehicle. TacOps only removes one of those, and this is a nicely cherry picked comparison situation where vehicles are at their best compared to mechs. Try again.

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What you said here is somewhat true but about 98% irrelevant.

If you're bringing a Thunder Hawk, your plan is to sit at 18+ hexes hammering 3 GRs downrange each turn.

Only you can do that 29% cheaper by bringing an Alacorn instead.

If you're relying on the extra armour instead of the range to-hits to prevent damage, need to use physical attacks, or need to follow the enemy into woods, /shit has gone wrong/.

Vehicles are valued the way they are because they are somewhat easier to score kills on. If the Vehicle Effectiveness rules had a recalculation of BV attached I would have no issue with them, but they don't. All you want is more effectiveness for less BV. This is commonly known as being cheesy or, if you were to try and pull that shit at my table, blatant cheating.

>if you were to try and pull that shit at my table, blatant cheating.

Then your table is shit and you're a shit GM. Vehicles are supposed to be better than they are right now, and your refusal to correct that mistake marks you as just another shitlord unworthy of heading up a table.

Die alone.

Not really related to the current clusterfuck but is there a way in megamek to apply the improved vehicle rules to a single side but not the others? I'm running a campaign where one guy wants to be a tanker but just how easy tanks are to immobilize/kill with heat would make campaign stuff a bit tricky with it long-term so I was thinking of throwing him a bone.

>What you said here is somewhat true but about 98% irrelevant.
Just like half the words coming out of your mouth. Being able to TAKE better cover is irrelevant in a game of to-hit mods? Having 50% more armor and 200% more structure (a total 190 points extra to take hits on) doesn't matter? Being able to not suck when things inevitably go wrong because the enemy is not the braindead bot is irrelevant?

Just fucking kys you moron.

Without TacOps:

>Front: 30% chance per hit
26% motive crit
4% normal crit

>Rear: 34% chance per hit
30% motive crit
4% normal crit

>Side: 47% chance per hit
33% motive crit
14% normal crit

With Vehicle Effectiveness:
>All: 22% chance per hit
18% motive crit
4% normal crit

About 1/3rd the crits from the front and rear, and the crits from the side are halved. Still well above the 1.2% crit chance a mech faces.

Just give him a tank that's +100 BV from what everyone else is running and nix the rules; unless your players are cool people they're just going to chafe at the enemy vees not being victims and it'll cause grumbling if you can't do it. It'd be nice if you could. I know you can change how reinforcements arrive and all that, so maybe? Kudos to that dude wanting to be a tanker; Mechs are awesome but variety is nice too. Plus you just feel so boss making it through a battle as a tank commander and actually getting shit done. Getting fucked by crits can feel REALLY bad though, so I understand why you want to make the rules one-sided.

>slip behing level 1 cover at will to break los
>use hull-down rules
>not knowing that vees can have 67 points more armour than even a quad 'Mech
>still fucking bitching that a game that's all about 'MECHS makes every other unit type a second-class citizen deliberately

Just give his units Edge so they can force enemies to re-roll hits or locations.

that''s what you get for fielding lances of LAMs

Most of us aren't arguing to make tanks = 'Mechs. We're arguing to make there be a point in using them at all, as a player. As they are, sans TacOps rules, they are only really pertinent to OpFor use. Most players aren't going to want to willingly screw themselves unless they ALSO have some 'Mechs to use. Why the fuck is everything so goddamn binary and polarizing for some people? It's really telling.

I will say this though; your Edge idea is good but it's likely all the PCs will have it anyway so either the tanker will need extra, or something else will need to happen to level things out a bit more. So he's going to have to come up with something else, most likely.

>slip behind level 1 cover at will to break los
There's this action called "going prone" mechs can do if you need to break LoS that badly.

>>use hull-down rules
The rules that are much better for mechs (same +3 mod to hit, but hits to legs are blocked while tanks automatically take all hits to the turret) and require 1/2 levels or emplacements for vehicles to use them?

>not knowing that vees can have 67 points more armour than even a quad 'Mech
While having less internal structure. Also since you're allergic to alterations to canon units for similar performance (per ), please site a vehicle that does this.

>still fucking bitching that a game that's all about 'MECHS makes every other unit type a second-class citizen deliberately
I'm bitching that their BV values are too high for what they do. An individual tank should be and is worse than a mech of the same weight. But BV is for balance not the BattleTech Cinematic Universe (tm), so it should mean that two units of the same BV are balanced. That's not the case with vehicles.

Part of thing about vehicles and crits is it isn't even a matter of mech vs tank, it fully applies with tank on tank too. LBX Hetzers can punch way above their weight and BV, and the Moltke M3 is nasty as hell, to say nothing of finding yourself on the business end of an SRM carrier or LBX Demolisher. Even conventional infantry can be right nasty little bastards since they hit in 2 point groups instead of 5 now.

See, the thing is there are a few vees that are fine even without the TacOps rules; LRM carriers, for one. Basically any mobile pillbox, really. So the fact that there are a few that are fine means they are all fine, when the ones that are fine are only fine because they need to stay 18 hexes away to not die horribly, which, if you're putting any unit into an idea situation, really makes it shine no matter what. I guess Hovers sort of end up fine too with the massive TMMs they can rack up, but there are so many terrain restrictions there that they can really suck it up. And in some situations a mobility kill also straight-up kills them, like over water, which is ironically one of the best places to move them because it's flat and open and they can get going at a good clip.

I'm just chalking it up to people being stubborn on both sides, and moving on. It's not even worth talking about anymore. The rules are optional, and that's just how it is. Use 'em or don't. Have to discuss it before hand, and if a player doesn't want them used? Take more 'Mechs and find someone that does use them to play Vees with.

The reason it's so polarising is that dickhead upthread came in ranting and raving about how vees should be better than 'Mechs because reasons and then bitched because the rules and setting don't support that. If he wants a gameline like that he can go find it, BT clearly isn't going to be for him.

>more bv bitching

So take an AS7-RS against an Alacorn and let me know which one wins and why. Or is it somehow going to be unfair now that the one with more armour and IS and ability to cross terrain and go physical is gonna get shrekt by 3 GRs per turn?

>going prone

'Mechs then need to stand up again. Vees don't.

>hull-down

It's an option, and if your Front is fucked and your Turret isn't, gets you more life out of the tank. Same reason to dump a 'Mech into partial cover, either the leg armour was shit to begin with (hello, Warhammer) or has been shot up.

>vee with more armour than a 'mech

Mars (HAG), Demolisher II (T-Bolt), Heimdall Ground Monitor, Alacorn Mark VII beats 100-ton bipeds. There are probably more at lower tonnages but I can't be bothered to spend any more time on your weak-ass arguments.

If you want vees to be better there are optional rules for that, but since they're optional nobody else has to use them. Th also don't come with a BV rebalance so using them as-is is flat broken since vees are way cheaper than their new performance warrants. Meanwhile, unit BVs have to be entirely recalculated every time errata tweaks things to a much lesser degree.

>dickhead upthread
Who, exactly? At a glance I don't see anybody straight up saying they want vees to be superior to 'Mechs. I see people projecting that onto what's being said, but maybe I missed it? I mean this is Veeky Forums, whatever, people are going to go at each other, because they know better than everyone else, sure sure. But honestly it's really offputting to be in a place that claims to be a better community than most of the others, and usually is, but then can devolve into such shitflinging trogs so easily and quickly. Can't people disagree and not think the other person is worse than Hitler now and again? Yeesh.

>At a glance I don't see anybody straight up saying they want vees to be superior to 'Mechs.

has been posted, user. The rest of the "vehicles aren't good enough" arguments, ISTM, are coming from the same sector and probably the same poster.

Oh, I didn't even take that post seriously. I don't think you should either. It's obviously a troll, dude.

Can't mechs and tanks get along?

Ideally they should. There's a lot of things a tank can just do better than a mech, but the mech has height on the tank so its good as a spotter and giving another angle of fire.

Really, mechs should be there to support tanks, particularly in rough terrain.

>are coming from the same sector and probably the same poster.
"There's no way more than one person can disagree with me and everyone that disagrees with me wants mechs to be shit"

I'd hope so, but in the mean time everyone look at some tits and calm down a bit.

All this "literally Hitler" shit has come from the pro-vee side.

All I said was that the vehicle effectiveness rules break the BV system, and that vees are approximately correctly costed under the base rules. I would say a bit under- costed, but the BV system in general is wonky so what can you do?

>All this "literally Hitler" shit has come from the pro-vee side.
Actually everyone getting upset about this is being a twat. So don't even start. Just calm your tits and let it slide. People play differently than you, and use rules you don't use. It's gonna happen man. The less bent out of shape you get about it, the better for your well-being.

How do I even begin to understand this universe

80s robot action with a heavy dose of pulp scifi

what should be my first book if i were to dive into the lore?

What were the names of the really old sourcebooks for the factions, before the Handbook and Field Manuals?

The battletech site used to have them for free like a decade ago but they're long gone

They're named after their respective Houses. So House Steiner and House Davion and so on.

Yeah, I was hoping to make it one sides so that enemy tanks can still get fucked up by it but we don't have the issue every battle of 'Ok, now how do we drag the immobilized tank off the field/deal with all that repair time?'

Thank you user

If you can't do it, the user earlier had a good idea re: Edge, but what you might have to do is give the tanker a few more points of it to compensate for the fragility. You can also talk with the player ahead of time and see if they are willing to try it out with regular levels of Edge, or if nobody is getting Edge, then none of it, and see how it goes. If it's not too bad, then it might pan out.

iunno, wolves on the border?

Yeah, I might give a few extra points of mech-scale-only edge to the tanker and see if that helps. Thanks for the help.

Good luck with the game dude.

There is really not one big book about the lore. There are several novels about Battletech and then there are books about each faction, those have most of the lore concerning the games backgound

yeah

>No gantry crane to stabilize the thing

T R I GG E R E D

>space french

SHOOT IT

SHOOT IT WAS LASERS

>he doesn't realise that the sb is ez mode for the suns, suck mode for the dracs, and is set against an op that took the suns to within 3 microns of shattering the dracs until they decided not to because reasons

>TGS vidya:

>Gundam: Battle Operation 2
>Basically Battlefield: 0079 for those who haven't heard of the game. You cap points, can and have to get out of the mobile suit to fight on foot, have tanks and other vehicles as well.
>youtube.com/watch?v=rXzqULIvP8w

>new Virtual On.
>Everyone and their mother know this robot fighting game.
>Sadly, no one has uploaded the trailer yet, but it's VO with all the bells and whistles.

>ZoE VR
>A remake of ZOE with full cockpit gameplay and VR support.
>youtube.com/watch?v=w0Vq0OOuMGo

>Left Alive
>Director of Armored Core alongside the legendary Yoji Shinkawa (MGS, ZOE).
>Looks like a cross between Armored Core and Front Mission.
>youtube.com/watch?v=UnKBVxdXBCU

From still has yet to show a trailer for the new Armored Core but we're already seeing the basic competition up against MW5 at the moment.

You say it like 90% of BT lore is not trying to come up with reasons why the FedCom hasnt stomped everyone

OTOH, it was the one conflict where the FedCom were supposed to have been evenly matched with the opposition.

I can only think that the reason was "they couldn't be arsed to stop everyone" since comparing to the others they were so overpowered. Hell, even the Concord of Kapteyn did nothing to address the balance of power, considering that two of the three members hated each others' guts.

>I can only think that the reason was "they couldn't be arsed to stop everyone" since comparing to the others they were so overpowered.

This is pretty much the only explanation after the Historical retconned the whole thing from being a hard-fought war where the Dracs pulled some surprise moves out of their ass and threatened to cut the invading forces off logistically to one where the AFFC was crushing all opposition without effort, all the Drac counter-moves failed, and Theodore's deep strike campaign achieved dick all.

Thereby pissing off the AFFC fans because there was literally an OF mod's dick length between them and perfect victory, while also making the Dracfags angry because the ONE FUCKING TIME they were meant to be competent gets changed to them being complete retards like always.

I started out with playing the Battletech and Mechwarrior games.

Crescent Hawks Inception/Revenge, Mechwarrior 1-4, Mechcommander 1/2, those are great ways to experience the lore.

...shouldn't Zakus be fighting with Magellas instead of Type 61s?