/btg/ - BattleTech General

Anybody here make dioramas?

One of the things on my to-do list is to find a 3D printer, whip up a big 'Mech and do a large diorama.

What mechs and what kind of scene?

Battlebump
Anyone have any good/interesting stalker variants, any era?

I've got two just laying around. First is a Introtech version that makes it a bit better at 'sieging' which was the original intent of the design by giving it a bit more indirect fire capability. It can handle its heat a bit better overall to.

This one takes that concept to the extreme and straps an AIV on it.

And because the Dracs deserve something nice. Just don't let anything get close to it.

I can't find it separate, so have a Warhammer as a bonus.

It is implied they are arthur davion because of how arthur davion died leaving no body and trails of evidence slightly pointing it to the WoB.

For some reason I want to see that backwards, normal PPCs and LGRs.

How about the entire final chapter of Patriots and Tyrants, where Arthur is being watched over by a mysterious figure and implied to be super important? And the devs getting pissy that we guessed the super obvious connection between Arthur Davion and the suddenly appearing Devlin Stone?

Are you Purple Burd? That might explain it. ERPPCs fit the range bracket better and give it some CQC ability on flippy arms, so I went with that. There really isn't a reason not to, though I guess you do save some tonnage on DHS you could use for other things, like a brace of short range weaponry, but it's only 5 tons so unless you're talking 5x ERMLs it's kinda meh anyway, and not really netting you anything.

This got me thinking; LGRs should have dealt 9 or 10 damage instead of 8. I think they would have had to be 13 tons if they did 10 damage, but 9 would have been interesting since it lets you strip the armor of the head of a 'Mech but not really threaten the pilot.

Direct and glancing blows always and forever.

MegaMek makes it easy but the TT is complex enough without adding more shit to it. I mean, just my opinion of course but the average BT player isn't going to want to track much more than the base game, most likely. Sadly Cinci and Toronto aren't 'average' and chances are you aren't either. We plebs gotta keep it simple.

If you play with quirks now, glancing blow is always on the table.

So was there any reason outside of author fiat/favoritism that the wrasslehogs went from "no foreign oppressors! Independence or death!" to "We welcome our new bear overlords"?

You try telling the Ghost Bears "no".

So what if there were a faction (probably Periphery) that couldn't make energy weapons? Just don't have the industry to make the optics and capacitors necessary, or what little they have has to be used to maintain civilian interests. Obviously no Gauss Rifles either. So basically Autocannons, Missiles, Rockets, and Mortars. And no Artemis or Streaks, since those are optics-based. It seems unlikely that such a faction would use BattleMechs at all, but maybe FCEs?

Yes, author laziness. Why bother with something that isn't going to matter anyway?

Sound like you'd have New St. Andrews but with slightly better Arbiters.

This is basically what the MOC is supposed to be, except it got hijacked by munchkins and power gamers.

Arbiters were made to be bad on purpose though. If there ever were an 'OpFor 'Mech for Babby's First Campaign' it's that.

New St. Andrews is an interesting notion, but the fact that they can make myomers but not any Introtech weapons at all is silly to the extreme. An autocannon would be way easier to develop than synthetic muscles. Of course, that begs the question: why not make it so said 'ballistics-only' faction is limited to RetroTech/Primitive stuff? Simple enough to make, outclassed by everything else, but still combat-worthy and would at least give most pirate groups pause.

This is my favorite meme.

Works about as well at stanford

>Arbiters

I've always loved the fluff about Arbiters being intentionally designed to look hard as nails to intimidate people whilst being glorifiied police 'Mechs in reality.

>"Hey, we put in the really big gun as the design team suggested, do you think we could do something more?"
>"Spikes? We could add spikes. And pauldrons."

You'd think that since they are widely marketed AND word of mouth would ruin these pretty quickly. The first time a pirate Locust face-tanked a shot from that Heavy Rifle it'd be all over the place that they ain't shit. Not to mention the people that buy them know what they are getting, and so if they do so can the people they're meant to intimidate.

>Space Marine Terminator with assault cannon

Does the penalty for having a Small Cockpit apply to physical attacks? I would assume so but I want to be sure.

+1 to ALL PSRs.

So yes, basically. GG Small Cockpits, you're totally useless.

Yeah that's what I figured. I just wanted clarification if the check being made was a PSR or an attack roll just using Piloting Skill, since they don't call shooting a "Gunnery Skill Check". At least not that I know of.

>totally useless

I can think of plenty of ways to use an extra head crit slot and another ton of payload, user.

It probably would have made more sense as something introduced by the CLans since they're already about minimalising cockpit amenities and favour shooting over melee, but here we are.

I always wonder how small Small Cockpits really are if they hinder you from manoeuvring your giant robot as well as a full-sized one. "Damn it, banged my knuckles against the cockpit wall again!" small?

They basically *have* to be that kinda small. I always envisioned a slightly upscaled Protomech cockpit: not quite skintight, but you better not be claustrophobic (or even close).

Quads though.

Is it nature, or nuture that make almost all Liaos turned crazy? I mean, the Mariks are always on each other throats for the Captain-General seat, but with the Liaos, it seems to me that it is a genetic thing to be crazy.

Sun-Tzu is rather normal due to upbringing by spymaster and "dad" Tsen Shang instead mad mom.
Kali follow mad mom more plus joining Thuggee sect (plus her very name itself) that allied to WOB, so go figure.
Romano confirmed nuts, and daddy's girl.
Candace was vain and spoiled in earlier writing but become very competent ruler later on.
Kai was introvert, until Clanners came.
Daoshen god complex and incest prone.
Ilsa controlled god complex Daoshen.
Danai is Kai wannabe and a Davion rape victim, despite knowing her shocking parentage, strive to be a honorable person.
So I would say they more likely shaped by the writers!

>Buying shitmechs because they look nice

I regret nothing

METAL GEAR!!!

Colonel, what's a giant walking, nuclear death-mobile doing in a Battletech thread?

Yeah, we already got one.

Being a really shitty locust?

I feel the same way about the Blood Kite. Damn near impossible to set up and pose properly but DAMN does it look good when you get it.

Uhh... That's the Gun.
Basically a 3150s Locust

The new battletech manual clarifies this.
Under 'common misconceptions', item 10. "Physical attacks are not Piloting Skill Rolls: modifiers that only affect Piloting Skill Rolls do not affect physical attacks, and vice versa."

here
postan screenshot

I can see why people might think that doing physical attack would be the same as PSR atleast how lore explains how pilot makes his mech to punch or kick something.

My time has come.

What do you think music of society in 3130 is like?

no, thats metal gear rex

Probably worse than in 3056.

>Old dragon Takashi was turning over in his grave
Move over Takashi I'm coming in too

So my players are asking that I run a Btech game. I know the lore and played a lot of the PC games but I'm completly foreign to the acutal tabletop and rpg. I'm going to be using A time of war, but are there any books that I should look into as well? If it helps the players want to run their own merc outfit.

That depends on what they want.
If they're doing human-scale battles, AToW is what handles that. Mech-scale is the normal tabletop game, but you throw SPAs and shit in.

They want to do mechs mostly but it'll probably be prudent to spice it up with some out of mech stuff for variety.

You're going to play the battles on regular tabletop? AToW is just a normal RPG, but you can put your player pilots into the 'Mechs and use their piloting/gunnery skills, special pilot abilities and other stuff with Total Warfare (the latest tabletop game rules). Check out Battlemech Manual for the basics, then look at Total Warfare if you're a total newcomer to the wargame side. Other than that, you don't need anything else than A Time of War for the RPG side. For mercenary unit running and other AccountantTech, you have Field Manual Mercenaries (revised), and I've found Mercenary's Handbook 3055 somewhat useful as well.

And forgot to add: if you want, there's also the other option of playing the actual 'Mech battles, which is what I did when I GM'd my previous-to-last MWRPG campaign, and used Megamek for the battles since none of the players had ever played the actual game. Everything else was paper, beer and crisps, but when it was time to break out the giant robots, we pulled out laptops and played the battles out on that. With beer and crisps.

So does AToW have the rules for basic mech combat? Cause like I said before. I'm going into this with little to no knowledge about the tabletop and rpg side of btech.

It has a system for that called Tactical Combat, but I've never used it, so I can't tell if it's any good. If you want to do proper 'Mech battles, I recommend the Battlemech Manual and Total Warfare for that.

...

Use the new Battlemech Manual for mech on mech tabletop combat first. Then use Total Warfare for other units on the tabletop, such as vehicles, aircraft, infantry, etc.

Use A Time of War for RPG stuff and Special Pilot Abilities to take into tabletop combat.

Are you wanting rules for repairs or maintenance, and if so, how detailed? Current high-detail rules are in Strategic Ops and current low-detail rules are in Campaign Ops. Field Manual: Mercs has maintenance too, and a bunch of the older rulebooks have repair rules too.

I like the event tables from the first two editions of the RPG, and I don't think the current editions have anything like them.

>55624453
>55624915
>55625368
>55625686
I knew there was another one so I dug into my stack of old scenario books.

The first mission in Rolling Thunder has the 1st Regulan Hussars launch a reprisal raid on a bandit port on Tianjin. The port is a pair of Citytech mapsheets with 7 buildings: 1 uplink tower, 2 control centers, 2 vee repair bays, and 2 warehouses scattered about. The whole set-up is Periphery-as-hell (the garages are the hardest nuts w/ CF 60) but depending on the socio-economic level of your planet/port it might fit.

Personally, I'd design it whatever way gives your players the biggest fits, but then I'm hungry for schadenfreude.

I was digging through a pile of really old BT stuff and found something dumb that might be mildly amusing for the thread; a set of PPC drinks for the periphery from what has to be the late 90s
>Taurian PPC: bourbon and bitters
>Canopian PPC: brandy
>NCR PPC: Brandy and bitters
>Outworlder PPC: Either drink club soda like a good Baptist, or take it straight
>Circinian PPC: Order a Shirley Temple, dump the PPC into it, then insist to everyone that you're a teetotaler
>Marian PPC; Steal someone else's drink, or add the PPC to a glass of the cheapest sparkling wine. Alternatively, just order a Caesar
>Pirate PPC: Order shots instead

Where does one get bourbon in the distant future of the 80's? It seems unlikely that they'd import it all the way from Terra and how many planets allow for both the cultivation of Quercus alba and retrograde attitudes about minorities?

Hydroponics boss.

Well, here's as good a bet as any.

sarna.net/wiki/Old_Kentucky

>He doesn't know that oaks and pines are some of the most exported organisms in settled space behind rats and bacteria.

It's so bad, there's a dark age scene of some guy staring out at a Terran garden during VSD's funeral and going "Wow, an Augustine Oak. That's a rather plain and esoteric plant from home to import to Terra. Wait, are oaks, Terran?"

>and retrograde attitudes about minorities
Border planets who have minority populations from changing hands. And also the entire RotS.

>night of screams intensifies.hpg

New versions of Megamek, Megameklab, and MekHQ up!
LAMs and WiGE Protomechs, in MY megamek?

>LAMs

Time to make the Crescent Hawks, then. Or Mary's Little LAMs.

>Mary's Little LAMs.
Huh. Wonder if that's a popular lullaby among WoB families, or other technophiles.

The ballad of a Second Succession War era merc battalion.

This being the Refusal War Edition: how high you have to be in the Clan touman to decide you own 'Mech config? I think it would make no sense to allow each pilot to config his or her ride, since that would throw any tactical planning right in the bin, but would a Star Commander or a Star Captain be high enough, provided he stays within the boundaries of the overall plan?

>how high you have to be in the Clan touman to decide you own 'Mech config?

Not very, going by the novels. Very low-level characters have custom rides at times, though we don't always get record sheets for them.

In early novels with the Clans a lot of Omnis were customs, and customs that break the construction rules at that.

Yep, I remember the early novels and I do think letting your pilot choose his config would work in a more stylised Clan-on-Clan scenario where it's mano a mano combat anyway. However, I do feel that once the Clans meet the spheroids they would have to start think tactically.

Say a star of 'Mechs is going to hit a target in the middle of a wide open desert, and Star Commander Wally's scratching his head when Mechwarrior Wilma wants her beloved Streak 6s, Tom has to have the pulse lasers and tarcomp combo, Dick needs his LB-20X and Harry has always preferred the Viper D. I can see Wally having a "sibkin pls" moment right then and there.

Does anyone know the status of the progress on the /btg/ TRO? It's been nearly six months since their last update on the blog. They must be seriously busy if they even have the time to keep that updated.

Well, one of them decided to move countries twice.

Muninn moved across the world. Twice. That put a damper on things.

CA got a real job and hasn't had time to work on it really. Fuck, he barely even posts here anymore, that's how much of a real adult he seems to be now.

3A basically doesn't exist to begin with, so yolowhatever.

/btg/RO is pretty much DOA. I think they want to work on it, but just aren't due to time and real life constraints.

So you're saying that even if someone came along and solved their funding issues, the /btg/ TRO would still not be completed because the ones who started it have moved on to other Real Life things?

It seems a shame, considering all the time, work, art, design and money they already put into it.

I think that time is the issue here, not funding. Maybe funding is a secondary thing, but time is definitely the stated bottleneck they've mentioned.

>CA got a real job and hasn't had time to work on it really. Fuck, he barely even posts here anymore, that's how much of a real adult he seems to be now.
Not so much "real adult" as irritated with my current job and not wanting to take it out on /btg/. Going into November, I'll be even more snappish, but we are actually moving on the TRO at the moment.

Yeah. Pretty much. I'll hit Munnin up, but I've been working on the last of my fluff for units.

It's been nearly four years since they started taking design submissions, I think. I have to say, the designs showed more care, in that they were more in tune with the needs of the game and less about getting the most out of each design. I was really hoping to see this completed. The parts I'd seen seemed to indicate that Munnnin, etc, had learned from all the mistakes I'd made.

I guess they learned from the biggest mistake I made, though, and that's why they are not working on it anymore.

I spent so much time and effort on 3063 - five years - that I neglected my son. I have only recently come to terms with the effect that had on him, from ages 12 to 17.

If I had known what that book would cost me back in 2007, I never would have begun it.

So I just sort of looked into it, and actually want to drop in a chunk of change on it, but then again it looks to be no where near complete? So if I dropped in top tier stuff would I be able to get the currently completed mech stuff/sheets that are already done?

Rest assured that any long-term project will have that effect. My dad completed his secondary education when me and my brother were around age 3-10 and it ended up alienating him from me and my brother as well.

If this doesn't get actually completed, I plan on releasing what I have finished. I think the rest of us would do the same. Sorry for the kind of crappy response, I went to the optometrist and they dilated my eyes so I can't see shit/

A few threads back there was an image about what being a hussar/grenadier/etc meant for a battletech unit. Anyone have that and can post it?

I sent over an email then with a question

...

thank you kindly user

I'm looking for a suicide sled for a Grand Theft Dropship mission.
The plan is put 3+ platoons of infantry onto a grounded enemy dropship in under two minutes. The boarders are to prevent the ship from raising orbit with the secondary objective of capturing the ship+crew. My ideal ride is a fast hover or VTOL with a 6-t infantry bay and some RL-15's preferably turreted. Six victors deploy at flank speed, turn 1 move @ flank, turn 2 slow to cruise and stop near the ship, turn 3 debus, shoot? and get blown to hell b/c TMM zilch. Six tons is because I want to use motorized or jump troops to alleviate any "parking issues" at the objective. Rockets because I'll probably only get one shot out of them & need to save weight to go fast cheap. Armed vehicles because I want to take some heat off my valiant stormers who've got a tough enough job as is.

If all goes well, the troops hold the ship on the ground until they can be relieved by slower conventional forces. Otherwise, it's time to mail medals paid for with the prize proceeds.

A modified blizzard or perhaps paired modified Mauliters are probably your best options for that kind of play, or maybe a Karnov with RLs on the wings