/btg/ BattleTech General

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A little bit of something old; a little bit of something new edition

The /btg/ is dead - long live the /btg/!

Old thread: ==================================

BattleTech video-game Beta gameplay
youtube.com/watch?v=rt6FatHHnzI

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>BattleTech Introductory Info and PDFs
bg.battletech.com/?page_id=400

>Overview of the major factions?
bg.battletech.com/universe/great-houses/
bg.battletech.com/universe/the-clans/
bg.battletech.com/universe/other-powers/

>How do I find out which BattleMechs a faction has?
masterunitlist.info/

Unit Designing Softwares
>SSW Mech Designer
solarisskunkwerks.com/
>MegaMek Lab
megamek.info/
github.com/MegaMek

>/btg/ does a TRO:
builtforwar.blog(not spam)spot.com/

>How do I do this Against the Bot thing? (old)
pastebin.com/pE2f7TR5

2017-03-03 – (Against the Bot)
mediafire.com/file/kffatbm11ffus7l/Against_the_Bot_Instructions_v2-5.pdf

bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=56065.0
Current 3.21 rule set is included in the mekhq package

>Map of /btg/ players (WIP):
zeemaps.com/map?group=1116217&add=1

>Rookie guides
pastebin.com/HZvGKuGx

>Sarna.net - BattleTech Wiki
sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page

>Megamek - computer version of BattleTech. Play with AI or other players
megamek.info/

>BattleTech IRC
#battletech on irc.rizon.net

>PDF Folders
mediafire.com/folder/sdckg6j645z4j/Battletech
mediafire.com/folder/cj0tjpn9b3n1i/Battletech
mediafire.com/folder/tw2m414o1j9uj/Battletech_Archives

/btg/'s own image board: - (2017-10-17 - Still getting worked on & now has 20027 pics! Any help with tagging appreciated!)
bgb.booru.org/index.php

More goodies! (Rare manuals, hex packs, TROs, discord servers, etc.) Last updated 2017-09-16!
pastebin.com/uFwvhVhE

Other urls found in this thread:

1d4chan.org/wiki/Velatine_Federal_Republic
youtu.be/hufQ2mzZpEw
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Snow Cobras

>snow globras

Only you can prevent the wheeled Quadvee menace.

Much as I love the boys from New Syrtis, I always think of these guys when 8th Fusiliers get mentioned.

Does the original Davion sourcebook even mention Kathil as building mechs? I can't seem to find any mention of mechs made there.

When is the earliest that Kathil is cited as a mech factory world?

The disconnect is that's where the first Davion General Motors plant is located. Davion has always had that General Motors plant and we knew what it made, but it was the OG TRO3058 that gave us Kathil as the specific world.

Getting in first for El Presidente!

1d4chan.org/wiki/Velatine_Federal_Republic

It looks like some of our discussions from previous threads bore some fruit which is good, including a massive and inconclusive bitter argument about FASAgraphics.

What piece of fluff do you think we start a shitstorm over today by working on?

>trying to make a Clan Invasion Rifleman that doesn't suck
>seems impossible

Anyone have 3049 Rifleman variants they'd be interested in sharing?

...

I made us an MBT (Mook Battle Tank). It's basically a diet Patton.

>Implying the regular Rifleman sucks
Drive a Rifleman C and then get back to us.

Also,
>Shit talking the standard 5D and 5M 3050 upgrades

300XL, 10,DHS, PPCs over LLs, hold the MLs, endo, extra armor

...

Earliest IRL cite I can find is original TRO:3050, the Blackjack and Marauder. Haven't seen any mention of Shad production there though. Sure you aren't thinking of Talon?

Periphery user was the one talking about Shads.

>240XL
>Endo
>Gauss arms
>3 tons gauss ammo
>5 tons arnor

Yes, my bad. I wanted to say Nanking for those SHawks and Wolvies. Also you get the Talon Wolvies.

Looks neat - feel free to add things to the 1d4chan

Done and done. The name means "tortoise" in Portuguese, by the way. I figure it's made on one of the Banana Republic planets. We can decide which one later once we smooth out the industrial situation.

By the way, speaking of that, did we reach a consensus on if we're doing the decentralized industry thing or if we're doing something else?

Unfortunately I didn't come up with that concept and I can't recall it well enough. But it would seem to make sense and is sort of hinted at in the fluff done so far.

I'm not too good at designing things but I had an idea that maybe the nation could use a really compact conventional fighter plane for defense - the benefit of the compact nature being that if one planet is really fucked, they can transport a crap ton of them by jumpship to bolster the area.

well, besides an MBT, what else does the Velantine military need? Attack/scout chopper of some kind, load up on the RLs and infantry slots. Modern HIND? Couple MGs, bunch of RLs, 1 ton infantry squad?

APC, eh, use the 10 ton standards, they're good enough. What about LRM or autocannon support? And should the "MBT" carry a monster AC/10 instead of a mere AC/5? It'd give an AC/2 carrier something to do, having that much more range over the /10, and actually make the tank moderately formidable. Artillery? Tube's been around forever, shouldn't be hard to make some armored cars to do it with.

What 'mechs did you guys decide on anyway, for the majority of the army?

We're not really sure, there's some notes on that page of some refits and favoured designs.

The thing is the main army will have to rely on very primitive and limited mech assets. The Stradioti are a bit more interesting and varied since they have the chance to access the kinds of mechs that mercenaries use in the IS.

I do like the idea, which fits with the statement of them using close working combined arms a lot, of being really good at mechanized/air mobile infantry - the infantry, armour and mechs all move and work in unison.

Massed conventional fighters are somewhere between Leviathan II and Monitor on the aerospace dick scale.

I do like the idea that they suck at building Aerotech and are stuck with relatively crappy conventional fighters.

Well, I got that cheap tank upthread; do we need a heavier one? I thought we were going for the 'mook' mentality on most of our custom stuff. Sadly the Po is Cappie else we could have basically that as our MBT. Also I don't want us to have too many custom designs, so I'd rather we used a canon tank as our MBT. Maybe something like the Tiger, if we want an AC/10 tank?

How about a "Mech Destroyer" variant of the MBT with a -10 instead of the -5, tossing all the secondaries, and a fast light hovertank carrying the LRMs?

Po is widely exported though. By the time the Clans show up they're all over the place, even if not in Vedette/Scorpion numbers.

I've never actually seen it tried.

Yeah it's like T-72 nowdays, the russians sold them to everyone who was interested. I assume Cappies did the same with Po. The difference is Po is actually a threat to other tanks and mechs.

Also I've left a lot of the planets blank - I did my best to do names and fill stuff in but I want to leave it open to other people to take their shots at fluff.

It's as old as "Well what if we had a hundred regiments of infantry?" or "Nukes are low tech, why don't we have all our planes equipped with Alamo's on their hard points? That will make invaders think twice!"

Conventional fighters are mostly a dick move because of two reasons.

1.Aeros are rarer than mechs, and you usually aren't transporting a ton of them so they get mobbed real easy
2.Conventional fighters don't have any deficiencies in atmosphere. All they lose is space flight which is not a tradeoff at all in a defensive battle.

So it's kinda like any of the typical dick strategems like Gausswalling and so on. There's ways around it, but you know when somebody pulls it out or brings it up that they're munching. Initiative sink games are a fucking chore to play too.

I also notice the Velatines seem like the Cappies pre-Xin Sheng tactics-wise. Which is nice.

Yeah I know they were widely exported. What I meant was that we can't just do that same design, which is what we'd really want in an MBT given what the theme of the faction is. That's all. We'd have to wait till the 3040s to import some. Which is fine; I love the Po and would love for the VFR to have a company or so of them.

Yeah, or the FWL pre-Davion stealing their shtick, only with less 'Mechs. I for one always thought they Cappies should have used Augmented Lances from the 3rd SW onward.

What minor tweaks would you guys make to 3025 designs to improve them?
I'll go first. Yank a heat sink out of a vindicator and replace it with a second medium laser.

Another patch, another gigantic failure.
Tune in next time to see this circus show off its many dying whales.

Comparison with a 17 year old game included in the next post, ladies and gentlemen.

No, seriously. How can these people even show up to work? Anyone with a shred of human decency would rather work for some shitty start-up/indie than this asylum of a company.

Fucking signed. The only shortcoming it has is brawling, and it's an easy fix.

I like swapping the AC/5s out for AC/2s in the Rifleman, removing the MLs, and adding 4 SHS and two tons of armor. It gives you a rotation where you alpha one turn, then fire both ACs and one LL, then repeat. You stay pretty cool that way, and it doesn't really adversely affect its ability to do AA work.

...

>trying to easy thing
>it's impossible bro

???

Just use the -6X, except with standard lasers since ERs won't exist for a while.

4/6, SFE, CASE, 10.5 tons of armour, 2 LB-10Xs, 4 tons of ammo and a pair of MLs works just fine too.

The key is to focus on the AA role rather than going a straight conversion.

See left.

They can't even get Inverse Kinematics to work... Seriously, you have people on the forums that make better movement-cycles as "fan art" than the official garbage...

Mook mechs (the heaviest thing we could have apart of the Banshees should be archers, and only because they are so plentiful and not so hard to maintain), the idea was for a combined arms army than seems to be too dangerous for what you will pay to take them off, that's why vees are important, so having some heavy firepower in them seems a good idea, but we could use some canon desings.
About the industry, I would do primitive and descentralized, with only two focus of good tech (not-venice and not-singapore) having industry alike the SW era.
So things gran and pops industrial mechs industry than are armed in times of war or crappy vehicles desings for the militias of the different planets, rugged 4x4 than are converted into tacticals etc.

What do we think about giving the VFR a Merkava-style MBT? Maybe they decided to have their MBT also be their main IFV as well? Could add some flavor to the design; it'll seem more like it was built by committee and that all the constituent worlds had some demand or another that had to be filled. Maybe AC/10, 2x SRM4 with a ton or two of ammo, a few MGs, and a 3 or 6 ton infantry bay? probably 3/5 speed and a good chunk of armor.

Oh I like that one, the idea of a comitee mbt sounds fun as fuck. What kind of name could it have? Sforza, Machiavelli for an italian flavour?

Yeah it needs a Slav name to offset the other two customs the VFR has being named in the South American languages.

Or a Southeast Asian one.

What about Kriss? Heck, there are a fuckton of Filipino swords than could be made into vees.

How about the Parang? Malay machete that looks a bit like a giant cleaver. It has an AC/10 as a main gun; probably the same one the Vicuña has. It was insisted that it have multiple machine guns to provide close-support for the unloading infantry (one in the rear of course to cover the disembarking troops), and a trio of SRM2s with two tons of ammo allows for a variety of ammo loadouts, and system redundancy. Better that one SRM2 gets blown up and you have two left than your single SRM6 getting toasted, right? Sounds like a heavy mook tank designed by committee to me. If I recall right 3 tons of space is enough for a platoon of regular infantry.

I like that, sounds like a fun and cheap vee to have around.

Aren't the numbers for the planets too low?
157 millions for 12 planets seems very scarce, and the majority of those live in venice. The Slavs and lats could have the population scaled being the oldest, unless there it was a massive disaster like with what happened to the OA , but OA failed because they depended to the SL.

>Implying this place won't get Reunificationed too
For as big as they are, they wouldn't escape the great asskicking everyone else got. Makes all the super special unique designs even more outlandish really. Because we all know what happened to those for everyone else when the SL came calling.

Hot!

Dawnrazor is cute. A little bigger on the infantry bay than I'd thought of, but I like using individual squads myself. That said, a gunship version that had, say, 8 RL10s onboard (or 4 RL15s if there's not enough room) replacing the infantry compartment would be bolshoi bueno desu.

Autocannon-based Goblin maybe? Although
is downright delicious. My only suggestion would be to pare the side armor down and buff up the turret. 37/25/25/20/37(T) so it can stay in the fight longer with its main gun. Also, hull-down is totally a fighting style with this big pig.

Honestly, massed anything is a dick move in Battletech, as you noted.

The rules generally don't cover it, but the inability to defend satellite reconnaissance elements should be a huge blow to all-conventional forces. They also lawn dart or just outright explode even more easily than aeros, and logistically tank crews or field gunners are probably going to be cheaper and faster to train than pilots.

As much as I hate to segue this into a "FASA was right all along" post, the relative ruggedness of a mech and survivability of their pilots is probably a big part of the shift to semi-ritualized combat and small conventional force numbers. Massed _________ may be a viable tabletop strategy but I imagine in-universe it leads to a lot of war-weariness, something that probably sets in even quicker if you assume a hardy individualist streak in the culture of diaspora colonists.

youtu.be/hufQ2mzZpEw

I don't think that banshees are the solution.
How do you address this challenge, /btg/?

BNC-3S are indeed the solution. Always the solution.

Griffin-1S
Grasshopper-5H

In both cases, Replace LRM5 with SRM4.

Dragon-1N
Upgrade AC5 to AC10
Move Rear ML to front.
Swap LRM10 and two tons ammo for SRM4 and one ton of ammo, or to an SRM6 by losing the formerly rear-facing ML.

Dervish-6M
Replace each SRM2 with a ML, and SRM ammo bins with heat sinks.

The VTOL looks good, too good in fact. Four tons is the right size for a Successor state infantry bay because that's the size of a Jump platoon or Battle Armor squad. Jump packs might be old, but are they cheap enough for dirt farmers?

In my opinion, a Periphery state would have 1,3,or 6 ton infantry bays on its vees.
1 ton - deadliest infantry formation in known space, a squad of artillery forward observers
3 ton - platoon of leg infantry for that personal touch
6 ton - Motorized platoon like above, but faster or 2 leg platoons in a pinch.

Conventionals are also much lighter than ASFs. You only get medium-grades out of them, no heavy-grades. That means a lot less armor and weapons. One of the most powerful is the MechBuster, which is a one-trick pony with the AC20.

here. had a great time yesterday - the store owner (a huge grognard) still had the stats on most of the mechs memorized from the 80s, and set up a decent few intro games. Typically an Atlas or similarly weighted mech vs a pair of mediums. The assault mechs typically won - after each game we'd trade off the solo mech so everyone got a chance to fight.

Fuckin' AC20s, man.

Has there been another character as alpha as Victor?

>There had been positive points to the day. He and Omi had managed to share part of a run down the mountain on one of the easier slopes. Though she and her family were staying at one of the chalet's guest houses, Victor had seen very little of her, so the run was welcome time spent together. Strictly a beginner, Omi took to skiing with enthusiasm and a lot of good humor.

>Victor recalled her going down in thick powder snow, then coming up with her face covered in white. She brushed the snow away with a laugh, and Victor couldn't think when he'd ever seen her look more beautiful.

>At another point, when he waited on line for the chair lift, a reporter asked a barbed question about Omi and his relationship with her. Even before Victor had a chance to consider an answer, a man stabbed his skis and poles into the snow, and stalked out toward the reporter.

>"Have you no shame?" he asked angrily. "Have you no decency? This man has the toughest job in all of the Inner Sphere and you're asking after his love life? Don't you realize that what he does on his own time is of absolutely no interest to anyone with enough neurons to form a synapse? The measure of a man is not in who he dates or what he says, but what he does. He kicked the Falcons off Coventry and rescued Lady Omi's brother from the Clans at Teniente. The latter's enough to make them friends, and the former means you should have more respect for him."

>The man's spirited defense prompted applause and catcalls from the others in line, bringing a smile to Victor's face. He tried to thank the man, offering to pay for his skiing, offering him dinner, but the man refused. "Look, Highness, if not for you and your father and your mother, we'd all be Clanners now. I appreciate the offer of a free dinner, but the fact is you've made certain I can be free to have dinner. Defending you here was the least I could do for you."

The population is very much up for debate - feel free to adjust as long as you keep the various pops from the planets/total population the same.

The sub-nations of the the area only really appeared during the succession war and the Republic itself only during the clan invasion period.

Yeah, whoever that random guy was.

To be fair, he came closer to conquering the Combine than his father did.

Just using his dick.

His father technically nearly conquered the Capellan Confederation based on his dick

Giants versus midgets tends to be very lopsided depending on a couple factors. Very open terrain will favor the longer reach and heavier guns of the giants. Close terrain, speedy mechs, and numbers will go to the midgets. If giants can cull the herd on the way in they've got a shot at winning, but if the midgets get inside 3 hexes the back-shots and kicks will put the giants down.

I play a lot of Kuritan Op-For and THE casualty producing attack, by a country mile, is kicks from sub 1k BV2 scrub mechs. Somebody leaves his wing or jumping mechs go after a heavy and then BAM! a Clint and a Javelin are kicking apart a 30M Cbill omni.

whatever terrain came in the box set was sufficient - the Atlas couldn't just kapow medium mechs, and the Awesome couldn't reach out and touch people with its PPCs. Scored an ammo hit on a hunchback's AC20 ammo, after which the game was called.

Just wanted to say good work art user.

Any ideas of what you will be doing next? I liked the idea of a paired up King Crab and Crab but I suppose two in one is hard.

Would a light mech like Locust or Raven or Urbie be easier?

I recall seeing a 50 tn tank somewere, it was something like 4/6, 1 AC/10 w/2tn ammo, 2 MG w /0.5 tn ammo, and the rest armor. That would do a nice "not-a-Po" MBT with a nice stick.

Closest I can think is the T-12 Tiger, but it;s 55 tons and also boasts an SRM.

But really as a middle ground to OG designs and canon ones here I think the Vedette should get more consideration.
They're common as dirt and have a shitillion undocumented variants, and simply downgrading the engine and dropping the speed to 4/6 leaves a fair bit of room to do all sorts of stuff, including making a pocket Po.

I'm a little late on this, but I used these two for a campaign where AC/5 ammo was really hard to come by. These were the before the tech increase and after.

His name?

Devlin Stone.

Someone said Purple Tailfeathers Panther last thread, so here.

The Coordinator will roll over in his grave... gooooood.
Nice work.

Interesting. You lose a few points per turn over the vanilla Rifleman before its ac/5 ammo runs out, but gain a few points after that when it's stuck with lasers.

>you will never sit in your cockpit and have all three of them licking your cock while acting Japanese and giggling "sugoi!"

I just want to be Victor.

Well if your Victor you got a hot Japanese chick, a hot hungarian chick, and your hot sister all on your dick.

Can you do a Davion one with an Enforcer, victor, and Centurion?

What are the general thoughts on the Celestial series of mechs?

You have to determine what kind of girls would pilot those mechs user

What are good names for this mech instead of the hellhound, since a lot of people like the canon hellhound where there are some who prefer the mw4 one. How can we make them both happy.

>King Crab sempai notice meeeee

But yeah, King Crab pilot getting molesty on a Crab pilot is how it was meant to be

Victor cool gall with sunglasses. Rule of Cool airforce jock.
Centurion, short mane hair with ponytail to reflect the crest, standing at attention.
Enforcer, wide grinning girl flashing peace signs
thoughts on that?

Hellhound was the inner sphere name for the Conjurer.

The Conjurer being a renamed Wolverine IIC.

There are multiple instances of mechs having the same identification names as other vehicles, dropships or even turrets.

Just use the Hellhound name and design that mech as a 55 ton clan battlemech. Explain it in the lore as one Clan Jade Falcons inner sphere side developments in order to reinforce and re-establish their depleted touman (armed forces) with a flexible second-line battlemech.

They look awesome, but no one after what the blackist did will touch them.

>There are multiple instances of mechs having the same identification names as other vehicles, dropships or even turrets.
More specifically the IS/Clan divide has instances of the same name for two different mechs, like the Dragonfly/Viper and the Viper/Black Python, and even more directly the Gladiator and Gladiator/Executioner since the IS used the same name for two mechs, though in that instance the original Gladiator had been extinct for centuries when they labelled the omni as they did.

>Hungarian
Czech Latina actually

Not really, the design concept was revive in DA, but now with Egyptian naming theme, Kheper (55 tons) and Uraeus (75 tons).

>play AtB
>special mission generated
>start up match
>cannot deploy units
>server notice: bot has disconnected

Anyone know how I fix this?

Is that Star League Cache one? If so check out the mech you are supposed to protect, if it is primitive you don't fight the mission you resolve it straight out from the briefing screen and you get the primitive mech as reward

No, it was the employer traitor one. I ended up just removing it with GM mode.

Wha's your prefered trooper mech?

I would say the Enforcer although it is not really considered as such by many.

But I would have to do the more acceptable answer of the Centurion. Combines numerous things you need out of a trooper and it is honestly the essential trooper mech of the medium weight.

Shadowhawks are really fun though.

Since my fav of enforcer was taken, and centurions are great lets go into one I think a lot of people tend to skip over and it's a shame.

Wolvie (6M variant)

What's a trooper mech exactly?

So if we were to increase the listed populations, by how much of a factor would you consider to be appropriate? 50% more population? If the planet of Ragusa is supposed to be a good one it can probably support the others to a degree.

Zeus X3

Durable generalist machine deployed by a state in great numbers for the main purpose of combat.

So like an Orion or a Griffin?