/btg/ BattleTech General

Hey, the SLDF could have walked away any time they wanted to

The SLDF should've turned around after suppressing the Periphery and robusted the Great Houses.

They really couldn't. The SLDF of the Reunification War could take on maybe one of the five Houses, and then the rest would gang up on the Terrans.

youtube.com/watch?v=P0TZyjRJAQE

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Poor Steel Viper. Neat concept, used only job to other clans to make those other clans look good.

That's what happens when your whole thing is "we're just like the Jade Falcons, but we're not the Jade Falcons."

Assuming that it didn't disintegrate as soon as it tried. Remember, most of the RW-era SLDF was made of formations and troops freshly reassigned from House armies, and integration took a shitload of time (not to mention the actual RW itself). If that SLDF had been ordered to go after the Great Houses, it would've seen a rate of individual desertions and whole-unit defections that would've made the scandal of Pitcairn's Legion look like a footnote.

True, but I was going to go off the assumption that the SLDF would hold together that the user was making.

I'm kind of surprised that there wasn't a completely spaceborne Clan like the Ousters, if you will, or Spacers.

Steel Vipers and Blood Spirits really needed to have been given a better break to let them develop.

Spirits were introduced on the edge of a death spiral and challenging the new obvious author favourites though.

Sea Foxes come closest in the DA, most live and deploy from ArcShips.

Yup. Star Adders are the worst.

Yep, that one.

I went and looked them up after making that comment to see what they make these days, and found out they have a Clantech factory. You KNOW you're solahma when you're issued hardware built by the worst spheroid company...

>let's make them more crusader than the jaguars
>more just as planned than ulric
>more combined-arms than the horses
>more skilled than anyone else
>bigger than the ghost bears
>and have a larger ws fleet than the ravens, if they could be bothered to activate them all

Theey really were Clan Davion.

The biggest problem with all that is that it just makes all the other clans look retarded. Which they probably were, granted, but if you're a writer you should be trying to cover that up, not draw attention to it.

Are the Era reports the only place to find this art style or is it in other books?

>but if you're a writer you should be trying to cover that up, not draw attention to it.
Maybe, but the Clans were flagrantly displaying their retardedness even before we ever learned a thing about the Adders.

What's your favorite mech that uses a Sub-Nosed PPC? Cannon and/or custom.

Yeah. The Adders just are drawing even more attention to it, because it proves that the clans could choose to be pragmatic if they wanted to.

The clans were never going to be pragmatic or get anything done.

The only acceptable clans therefore are the crazy ones that never tried in the first place.

For canon designs I like the Rifleman 7X and the Wolfhound 5. Both fast enough to keep most mechs at the snuby's 9 hex sweet spot.

Question - a lot of clans have mechs associated with them, but does CGS have any iconic mechs themselves?

Fire Scorpion, pretty much. Anything with a shitton of long range guns and a targeting computer. They're all about targeting specific locations.

Fire Scorpion.

I didn't know the 331st was at the Liberation of Terra.

Which Liberation of Terra, under Kerensky, or Stone? Because ALL the SLDF was at Terra when Kerensky retook it - concentration of force was about his only virtue as a general.

Weren't they at both?

If you believe ISP2 claiming the Wolverines became a subfaction of the Word of Blake, then yes.

the Fire Scorpion, a low end heavy class quad totem mech armed with 2 AC 10's (one LBX and one Ultra) and 4 anti personel pods (one in each leg) and a shit tonne of armor

Thanks - I was aware of their totem mech, more wondering if they were known for using a particular kind of mech (like Jade Falcons and the Summoner, Ghost Bear and the Mad Dog etc)

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Ebony.

the scorpions don't really have a chassis preference when it comes to their machines of war other then weight class. For the scorpions anything heavier then 75 tonnes is to big and slow to suit their strategy of get in, do crippling precision shots, an get out. The scorpions prefer precision weapons (Lasers especially) and anything that comes with a targeting computer.

Have a quickie.

So how feasible is it to play BT (rpg, tabletop mech vs mech battles, etc) using a different system?

>So how feasible is it to play BT (rpg, tabletop mech vs mech battles, etc) using a different system?
the RPG portion, it's not difficult.
the actual tabletop mech battles? nothing else really works even close to as well as battletech itself for that

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>You're getting way too hung up on the size of the battles.
Okay, I wasn't sure where you stood on that. I'm glad we agree that the size of the battles isn't very meaningful.

>Freedom to compose mech forces without some autist coming out of the woodwork to object that the mech your company has three of, were only built for a week in late 3065 before a space whale died on the plant ending production
Well, if we're going to have thousands of distinct 'Mech sheets and make *any* effort to say one is more common than the others, then that's going to happen. I think the best we can hope to do is make the robots you like as available as possible, and have explicit mechanisms for fielding rare types in larger numbers than are recorded. That's what Star League caches used to be for. Pax Republica caches should work the same.

Anyway though, if a given 'Mech has a rarity of 1-in-100, and there's a hundred 'Mechs with that level of rarity, it can't be too unusual to trip over one, and there's bound to be some clumping.

>you don't have to haul every spare part you'll need from planet to planet, but that there's something worth taking on that many more planets.
I agree that having more shit to fight over is good. I disagree, though, that the shit needs to be full-on 'Mech plants. One advantage of the grog timeline is the wide range and variety of stuff worth fighting over, and that meaningful sources for scrounging or supply could be found on just about any inhabited world.

>If warship production is robust rather than barely extant if at all, then lone warships are no longer barriers to the ground game at all, but another excuse to play, because you have access to warships to smash their warships.
I have mixed feelings. I agree that having more opportunities to smash warships together is good, but I don't think their numbers are what determines if they're a barrier to the ground game or not.

Saracens are pretty useful as a generalist vee, right? Fast enough to scout/flank, enough armor to take a few bumps without instantly disintegrating, LRM's for long range combat (or laying mines), SRMs for short range (infernos for days) As long as you don't expect them to brawl, they seem like a pretty solid choice. Am I missing something?

Gotta love a Saracen.

Are there any good bomb trucks that can take off vertically? I want something to deliver payloads that doesn't need a runway.

salad shooter when

A fuckton of Ferrets. 1 bomb each, weigh 5 tons each, even have 2 tons for other shit (can you do bomb bays on VTOLs?) if you strip out the MG and infantry room.

Literally the whole point of the Boeing Jump Bomber.

Ah neat, so like Nova Cats?

Hopefully with less getting wrecked but I don't know how long that'll last.

Anybody else like the Starslayer? I don't recall anybody else mentioning it, either in a good or bad way.

It's a good mech, though I kind of wish the torso LL was on the opposite torso so that if you lose your RT you aren't basically spitting on someone with your 50 ton mech.

Really?
They are great I love them

Would it be sacrilege to swap out the SRM4 for an LRM 5?

Iunno if you combine the laser thing with their RATs you can get some clues.

They seem to like old SLDF stuff with lasers - the Black Knight in particular was used by their old leaders and they seem to keep some Crabs and Flashmans around.

The Battle Cobra, Conjurer and Horned Owl are all laser focused mechs that are maneuverable that show up a decent amount on their rosters. The Horned Owl in particular I'd consider somewhat iconic since it fits their combat style and they contributed more than one variant to it.

Also for some reason Night Gyrs show up on their RATs a lot and is listed on Sarna as a Goliath Scorpion mech but I have no clue why.

Not really I guess, but I dislike ammo weapons on my flashbulbs, and I prefer to use companies of so modified Starslayers as deep raiders and to pick up Hussars. A shame the 3C is a 3050s version.

I like it.

>gm
>still making garbage 1k years into the future
fucking government bailouts

I suspect Inkers just taking his time drawing those improbably large titties to go with the improbably large cannon

GM makes the Nightstar too though.

Not him but I'm making my own setting for my robot love.There is a lot to love about BT and I was thinking to dig here for ideas, but it would be off topic so I dunno if post question there or what. Was thinking in what system to use, like BCG or a d6 derived system, but the think I want more is a fun setting to base it, and BT has plenty of that with lots of retarded shit, and I want to avoid the later.
Tl;DR Want to make own setting, what do to not make it retarded.

Probably the Eyleuka 45B. IJJ gives it a jump of 7, and the stealth can be kept on while jumping around and firing the SNPPC or both MLs. It's a big step up from the MML9.

I'm also fond of the Ostroc 4K and the Wight 2SC.

The Ebony is definitely impressive, but I gravitate towards jump capable units, especially for AtB where I have weather and daylight turned on.

Worth pointing out: Hyper RPG's Death From Above campaign.
They didn't use any of the Battletech rpg systems, instead using some other system that they appear to have modded for their needs. They also modded Battletech with extra rules to suit their tastes (and also to sync up with the way HBS is making their Battletech title.)

However, nixing the wargame wouldn't be recommended. You could use Alpha Strike, but that would be painfully watered down, even in rules light RPG standards.

Are there any particularly religious factions besides the Azami?
Not sure if ComStar/Word of Blake counts anymore.

The Davions had a bunch of Catholic Knights, and there are the Southwestern trio with they priest mechwarrior (catholic, protestant and Jewish).

日本のスタッフに優秀はもういないに等しいんだ覚えとけ

Is it a specifically religious order of knights or is it some of their mechwarriors happen to be New Avalon Catholic Church members?

What?

下手な日本語だなあ。こいつは翻訳ツールで日本人のふりをしてるのかな?

Not so much religious military factions, though the Azami is more about a large proportion of north africans having colonized the planets first, and simply having continued practising Islam.

Then you've got the Word of Blake like you mentioned, but were killed off, with a convenient number that managed to escape for future plot hooks.

Besides that, the first Sword of Light is supposed to represent the pillar of ivory - religion, so that's another possibility.

The rest? I don't know if there's much to add.

The Knights of Randis, a whole order of Mech-driving christian knights.

Knights of St. Cameron.
They are descendants of cults that once existed in SLDF and worship Cameron family.

No, the Azami are defined by their religious identity. Literally.

Hey /btg/,

What's a good way to generate loot for AtB. After 4 months of attacking on "Defender controls the battlefield" missions on an Objective Raid, I feel like I should be giving myself *something* for my trouble.

My only dream is for Coyotes to finish their cultural renaissance and ally with the other clans tired of Snakeshit and St. Patrick the Kerensky Cluster

Are North Africans black?

They're mostly Tuaregs/Berbers, and no.

Kinda makes me want to make an Azami force. What kind of mechs would be their standbys? Besides metric tons of Panthers. They kept some Star League mechs preserved, right? What SL era mechs would fit them best?

I wanted to play around with loosening tech limits a little bit, but... I dunno.

It feels like the idea of unlimited candy as a kid. Once you gorge yourself once, you realize the entire desire has now become an empty and hollow thing.

I'd never looked that hard at the Ebony before but that's a sexy stealth mech.

Oh another stealth mech. It's kind of funny that the MML was replaced in in the 45B because it pairs well with the snuby since you can use it at range with LRMs or if you end up getting closer swap to SRMs for more damage.

They're famous in their prolific use of the Wolverine 6K.

Does anyone have a copy of TRO:3050 (not Upgrade or Revised). I want to see what the fluff on the MAD-5S is.

Am I missing something here? Why is there no weight listing for a gyro?

It has no gyro. It has an interface cockpit.

Holy hell this is new to me. What is it, and can I take it home to mother?

It's in the OP folders.

Blake tech from the end of the war. Look up the Gestalt. Clanners somehow get their hands on it in the DA despite never facing it in combat.

>Blake tech from the end of the war. Look up the Gestalt. Clanners somehow get their hands on it in the DA despite never facing it in combat.

Bless you and thank you. Time for fun!

Thanks. I could only seem to find 3050 Upgrade.

Where is Inker these days - he streams, right?

How do you pronounce the name of that mech,

Eye-leukemia

Looking at making DEST characters in MW3e, I noticed something. In order to take the DEST Training subpath, you need to pick Sun Zhang Academy at step 3 and have picked the mechwarrior or armored infantry fields, but in order to take armored infantry you first need to take the infantry field. The problem is that SZMA doesn't seem to allow you to take the infantry field as an option, which would mean you can't take the armored infantry field in AIT and thus can only qualify to DEST via the mechwarrior route. Am I missing something or is this an error in the book (or is that just an option for characters who got the infantry field form another source)?

Aesthetically it's ugly as fuck.

I'm mixed on the 6K. I love the swapping out of the AC5 for a LL and more HS and armor, but I like my JJ.

It's clearly meant to be Greek.
Ey ["A"] - leuk [from "leukemia"] - a ["o" in mother].

Fun fact, the lore in it is taken from a minor internet hoax. No Queen Eyleuka ever existed. Rabid feminists and Battletech writers are the two kind of people lacking the necessary mental capacity to discern facts from mere jokes.
Can't wait for mechs commemorating the Ancient Finno-Korean Hyperwar.