/btg/ BattleTech General

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These nuts are who I'm paying my interstellar cell phone bill to? 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: - (2017-11-26 - Still getting worked on & now has 20738 pics! Any help with tagging appreciated!)
bgb.booru.org/index.php

More goodies! (Rare manuals, hex packs, TROs, discord servers, etc.) Last updated 2017-11-30!
pastebin.com/uFwvhVhE

So the AC/10 Urbanmech is actually a good mech, right?

First for Vindicators are amazing.

also butte hold haha

Kind of. This is the best one though.

Too late, slowpoke. Urbie wins again.

Used right, yea it's a lot of boom in a humble package.

Why would you put an HPG on a Battlemech? Why not a command vehicle, or a stationary emplacement?

That's the joke. Would you prefer this?

Urbanmechs are pretty much the ultimate "put dumb shit on it just because you can" mech.

The slow speed kills it for me, otherwise not too bad. AC/10 is a nice gun and you can't hide from flippy arms.

The urbie shall inherit the earth

>Stealth Gauss rifle
Is this supposed to be bad? I'm not seeing it.

No, but it is proof CA is a power gaming faggot. Here's one from the old BattleTechnology issues.

Reposting in the new thread.

And a quick comm.

nice trips and great pic inker!

>DD
>not focused on her tits
2/10 apply yourself

Normally I agree with a lot of what you say NEA, but here you're off base. You have some good starting assertions, like a pistol is used to fight back to your rifle, but a MechWarrior isn't a capable combatant on their own.

A MechWarrior, once ejected, is similar to a fighter pilot once ejected. Any equipment they have is meant to protect them and get them back to friendly lines, or to assist them in securing pickup from friendly forces. If they, as a single 'warrior, come across more than one or two hostile troops, they're already fucked no matter what they're carrying. In a versus of 20 herders wielding bolt-actions against 5 highly-trained well-equipped specops-type folks, my money is on the Tuskens.

Any tools that they carry should be limited to one of four things: defense, evasion, survival, and rescue. Instead of heavier guns, flares or smoke grenades to mark a position for extract. Instead of more ammunition, go for more food and water. If you're ejecting into a cold-ass planet like Misery, that gun you brought will bring you a lot less warmth than some heavier clothes.

Unlike a fighter pilot, they can't carry this on their person -- has to go into the command couch. So it needs to be compact and easily carried. Not to mention easily pulled if you find yourself landing in a hostile zone. If you're landing in a zone that you just leveled with your war machine, the hostiles aren't going to be exactly welcoming to you. If they're running a mob, chances are someone's touting something heavier than what you brought to the fight. And if they're out for blood, you only need one bullet. At that point the delivery mechanism doesn't matter.

Sounds like quitter talk. Load up on a needler gun and/or a gauss SMG. The latter is a street sweeper, the former is highly iconic for leaving fucked up chunky hamburger faces and bodies that makes most mobs leery of fucking around with you.

>A MechWarrior, once ejected, is similar to a fighter pilot once ejected.
Actually they're more like a tank crew that had to bail, because in ground combat the chances of finding oneself isolated and deep in hostile territory is less likely, so the whole evasion/survival scenario usually is minimized.

The comparison to a dismounted tank crew was almost exactly where my thought process ran. Modern tank crews generally carry PDWs and/or carbines; ergot, so should MechWarriors.

>gauss SMG

I won't lie, were it not that the Gauss SMG is a ClanTech weapon, I'd have used that. It's basically a straight-up copy of the P90 anyway, and the ergonomics on those things (the real ones, not the PS90s) in tight spaces are phenomenal.

Nice!

All urbies are great. Pic related.

Can I play?

Is that Darjeeling?

Plus what other introtech light mech carries 6 tons of armor?

Valkyries, Panthers, Wolfhounds a couple Firestarter variants, the Fire Javelin and the Ravens that lack the EW gear.

But Urbie is still tough and can fuck a bug up. My biggest gripe is the eleventh heatsink instead of a second ton of AC ammo, which would let you cut loose a bit more when the bugs try to get all jumpy.

Wolfhound

Swap that for five rounds of Precision ammo to prove why the AC10 is greater than the PPC, and bueno.

Also, repostin' the Super Urbie with hopes Inker thinks it's cool and will make a drawing and pilot of it. Loli pilot who can't get past being a little kid yet still demands big-people respect.

Looks like her, just grown up really nicely

11th SHS would have also been a decent swap for an MG like on the Cappie "variant". The Small Laser is silly now because it lost its anti-infantry capability, so it really should be an MG.

So, what faction would use the Meximechs?

This is correct. If a fighter takes enough damage from enemy fire that it must eject, you can almost be assured that it'll be many kilometers from where the hostile fire originated from. Such is the nature of running around at high subsonic to transonic.

The more I think about it, the more I think I'd prefer a TMP-type SMG. Maybe something like the new B&T USW. Something small enough to strap to cooling vest and not impede an emergency(non ejection) exit of the unit. Big enough to convince someone to put their head down, accurate enough to do gamegetting in true survival scenarios.

I'll just point out, that these days, to my recolection, most fighter pilots have a PDW, usually mounted in the ejection seat.
Cos, smaller than an SMG, better than a pistol.

>This is correct. If a fighter takes enough damage from enemy fire that it must eject, you can almost be assured that it'll be many kilometers from where the hostile fire originated from. Such is the nature of running around at high subsonic to transonic.
I'm not sure if you're arguing *for* mechwarriors being similar to fighter pilots or *against* it.

In any way, when a 'mech gets downed, it's pretty close to the enemy - courtesy of BT's short weapon ranges. Even an ERPPC top out at under a kilometer. The ejection seat and parachute can buy you some extra distance, and if you're not horribly out of position it's enough to get to friendly lines, but chances are still good you'll come down in the dangerzone. That goes double and triple for scouts.

Better have the equipment to handle anything. An armored overall, PDW/SBR, water and food and a medkit, and maybe even a small tent.

As far as I can tell, Dutch pilots have the option to use B&Ts but some still use Glock 17s. Every modern reference for the USAF that I can find cites the M9. There was a forum post that indicated that the old CAR-15 could fit in the survival pocket of an F-16 seat, but there wouldn't be room for anything else.

>I'm not sure if you're arguing *for* mechwarriors being similar to fighter pilots or *against* it.
I am against it. Ground vehicle crew do not have the option to be plopped down many kilometers from the hostiles that popped them in the first place.

Gotcha, and agreed.

The poorest one.

OA Pre ravens?

Taurians. I mean...Texas is all basically made of Mexicans now anyway, right? And Taco Bell is (in theory) Tex-Mex.

The spicy one

What's the best 3025 light mech? The Commando?

>Ergot
Ergot is a kind of fungus that contaminates wheat.

You're a monster, you want mechwarriors to carry around biological warfare in order to contaminate the already limited food stoks of the Inner Sphere.

Best at what?

What said.

For a generalist and fighting unit though it's hard to go past the Wolfhound, so long as you don't mean by 3025 the year and just mean that era.

With retcons I'd probably go for the Mongoose otherwise, or the Fire Locust/Fire Javelin without them. Mobility and an ML battery solves most problems.

>stoks
Hue.

Best light Mech that exists in 3025? Probably this.

Somebody somewhere is certain to be driving one in 3025.

Why has that Adder never been make canon?

>also, you cheeky cunt

Does it bother anyone else that they are using 2 digits for the year on that memorial despite thier multi-century long history.

Kind of redundant with the Uller W?

I've been searching all day for a way to find the way to make these images without going and copy-pasting ll the pips manually. How do you guys do it?

Select print in SSW or MML, and select "print to pdf" as the printer. Then just open the new pdf and copy paste to an image editor to make an image of it for /btg/ posting.

Thank you, sir.

Why would anyone ever produce anything other than the Crab as a medium mech? It's kind of the perfect medium/cavalry mech. It reminds me a lot of the Panther or late model shermans, in that it has the armor, firepower and mobility to do basically any likely job.

>Why would anyone ever produce anything other than the Crab as a medium mech?
Griffin, Wolverine-M, later on Blitzkrieg, Wraith, Starslayer, RACturion...

I don't actually have the option to print to .pdf files. What devilry has overtaken my computer?

Not really seeing a "why" there.

Because you can go faster, be more mobile, and have more firepower?

Or a Scorpion, if you want to look cooler.

And looking cooler is the best reason.

>What sidearm would you guys carry as a mechwarrior, and why?

Needler rifles or laser pistols, depending on availability. No firearms stored in Mech cockpits, because thermal cycling ammunition will breakdown chemical propellants in ways that are bound to thrilling if you actually need them. The needler is a pistol weight long-arm with low/no report or recoil, ideal for sneaking back to friendly lines and people who don't get a lot of trigger-time. Drawbacks are short range and bad armor penetration but you're not any worse off than basically any other non-rifle so try a little less knee-deep in Hell and a little more Virtuous mission.

Ideally, you never need the needler zip-tied to the back of your command couch and your sidearm is more of an ostentatious display of wealth by a member of the space aristocracy. Rapid heating-cooling cycles don't matter if you routinely change cartridges such as if your preferred piece is a 36 caliber cap and ball revolver ala Wild Bill Hickok or you only carry a sabre like a true hussar.

No jets on a Crab, and large lasers have neither sufficient range nor hitting power.

In fairness, drawing a comparison between a Crab and an M4 is actually not a bad comparison, given that they're both pretty solid "generalist" units. But if the existence of the M4 was all that was needed, surely there wouldn't have been M4 Fireflies, or M4A3E2 Jumbos, or the M4(105) HVSS, or the M4A3E8 Easy Eight.

Just because something is an excellent generalist doesn't mean it's all you need.

>file unrelated insofar as it contains Shermans

>Drawbacks are short range and bad armor penetration

If you have to eject on a battlefield, aren't literally any enemies you run into going to be equipped with protective armor?

>you only carry a sabre like a true hussar.

That is a strong argument, sir.

General purpose

Can any of those other mechs do all three of those better than the Crab? Thought so, scrub.

Haha I play World of Tanks and the Shermans are surprisingly good except the Firefly which is kind of a meme tank.

>better than stock 3025 Crab
>what is Starslayer
>what is Stormcrow
>what is like 15 other mechs that all have better mobility, equivalent or better durability, and more firepower.

OK, I am making a 3043/44 combined arms merc company based primarily in Federated Commonwealth space, but with ties to nations on the borders via a trading network.

Internally provided Company mechs, vehicles, VTOLs and aircraft have a general max budget of 10,000,000 C-Bills. Lostech is available, within reason.
I need names and rides for Aces hired by the company (coming with their own mech / combat vehicle / vtol / asf), or that have 'proven themselves' and been given some carte blanche to adjust a mech / combat vehicle / vtol / asf (max 15mil C-Bills).
Any suggestions?

Looks like a Rasalhague design

>RACturion is almost three times as fast with heavier firepower
>blitzkrieg is faster with about double the firepower
>staslayer has more firepower and jumps
>wolverine sacrifices a small amount of range to gain better maneuverability while retaining about as much damage

Meme on, crab man.

That's campus graffiti, user.

Suicide Steve pilots a modified Charger salvaged from the Dracs. It has removed the Small Lasers and replaced them with one MG and two tons of MG ammo.

If your mech isn't equiped with both flamers and inferno SRMs then you deserve to have filthy ground-pounders peel off your skin like you were a banana and dunk you in battery acid.

BT infantry armor penalizes movement hard, so your nearly-naked warriors should outrun/avoid them because, without a support weapon, you won't win a heads-up exchange of fire as his rifle on bare ass will nearly kill a lucky you while your rifle on armor will at best wound him. The needler is fine for offing poorly equiped troops, like Drac line infantry or anybodies militiamen, and can still do face/neck/groin shots on unwary soldiers while being 1/5th the weight of an autorifle. The Ceres Crowdbuster would be the ideal tool (wide spread and rapid incap) except that riot suppression is such a common mission that virtual every helmet beyond crude fabbed steel pots has noise cancelling built in.

Yeah, then you throw up your hands and get captured. I imagine in a real scenario most Warriors would just run like hell in the opposite direction of where their mech was and never look back. Maybe they get back to their lines/safety, maybe they get captured, but they survived their melting steel coffin being thrown down a mountain so whatever.

Also going by some sci-fi rules, they'd possibly have a brain condition from being separated from their mech so abruptly. They might just be lying on the ground in an unconscious heap for minutes.

Yeah, but that's why you have light, heavy and assault mechs as well as the crab.
For the M4(105) you have the king crab. For the firefly see marauder.

Basically every line battle regiment in 3025 in an ideal inner sphere would be 60-70% crabs, with a seasoning of marauders, with a couple of dedicated assault lances of king crab.
The preponderance of energy weapons also cuts down on the amount of ammunition you need to haul with you.
With fast moderately hard hitting units you can use them as proper cavalry should be used.

But those are not 3025 designs, scrubs.

>Basically every line battle regiment in 3025 in an ideal inner sphere would be 60-70% crabs

You're a fucking idiot.

Nothing in this post , which brings up the entire subject, mentions a limitation to 3025-era designs.
>Why would anyone ever produce anything other than the Crab as a medium mech?
That compared the Crab to ALL medium mechs, and as such, tons of stuff is objectively better.

Wolverine and Griffin are.

>For the firefly see marauder.
I think the CRB-30 with its dual ER PPCs would be more apt.

Wilhelm "Heavy Bill" Bauberger
A grossly fat Lyran mechwarrior, kicked out of the LCAF because even for them failing 10 physicals in a row was too much. He pilots a factory standard Zeus 6T.

Jesus m8, stop reeeeing, it was an honest omission. My bad.

>You're a fucking idiot.
And yet you can't explain why that's wrong.

Drac girls have quinceañeras.

New reforms! Instead of a feast, they get a feast AND a 'Mech.

I'd rather have the two large lasers than the PPC, also the crab has better heat characteristics. Also, you have two weapons that have minimum ranges. If someone crowds you, you're going to get fucked.
The crab is on average a million C-bills cheaper than both those designs and 5 tons lighter than both. It doesn't rely on ammunition.

With both those mechs you have to train a pilot on multiple weapon types, whereas with the crab you only have to teach them lasers so it's arguably easier to train pilots with.

The wolverine doesn't remotely have as much damage potential as the crab and again is highly dependant on ammunition.

Sorry, scrub, the Crab is the superior mech.

Griffin can stay out of the Crab's engagement bubble and pick it apart 1v1, and offers mid-speed forces a solid fire support machine.

The Wolverine-M delivers 30 damage to the Crab's 24, and more of it is usable due to the way its heat profile breaks down. It also has heavier armour. I wouldn't categorise a single SRM-6 as being "heavily" dependent on ammunition either.

Sorry scrub, but you don't know your medium designs or how to play them. But if you keep meming you might reach the same level of fame as Hyper-Entropy Warfare. Good luck, in your quest, Crabautist! I believe in you!

Gerhard Weiss is a graduate of Skye's prestigious Sanglamore Academy. He comes well recommended by the Steiner armor officers he fought beside on the Combine front. His personal mech is a FS9-A that has swapped the aft flamer for an additional small laser in each side torso.

>Griffin can stay out of the Crab's engagement bubble and pick it apart 1v1
Only by continually giving ground. And that's entirely dependant on terrain. What happens when you actually need to stay and protect something or screen something? You know screening, one of the primary jobs of cavalry. The griffin also isn't fast enough to force a confrontation with a crab that doesn't want to fight.

Sorry griffinscrub, but you are a clueless novice when it comes to tactics and strategy.

>y-you can't beat the crab if i constantly move the goal posts!

YES! Just like Hyper-Entropy Warfare! Now you're really cooking with autism!

>Moving the goalposts
You misspelled "Responding to your arguments".

Are you german? I don't generally associate this level of smug ignorance and autistic screechrage with anyone but germans.

Clearly to counter the Crab the Griffin must replace its extant weaponry and jump jets and some armor for large lasers, along with a medium and small laser. In turn the Crab's only hope at this point will be to drop its guns for a PPC and LRM 10, adding jump jets and armor.

THE ARMS RACE GOES ON

You make a number of good arguments that your opponent can't refute while he instead focuses on on individual gimmicks of lesser mechs.

Truly the Crab is the Sherman of mechs.

What are the "Crazy Shilone Bitches" and "Dracula Uniforms" things about?

Google isn't helping much.

pic unrelated

Tyra Miraborg piloted a Shilone and an hero'd herself on the Dire Wolf, killing Leo Showers and halting the Clan Invasion for a year.

The FRR dress uniform has a cape with a high pointed collar that looks like something a vampire would wear.

>Dracula Uniform
pic related

A new deep periphery nation rules by a single corporation: Taco Bellica.

>shitflinging intensifies

On an unrelated note, who here likes /tape/?

Link to whole pic please

why would you use painters tape?
Otherwise, the shape looks good. What's under the tape?

>why would you use painters tape?

>why painters TAPE?

'Cause I'm masking it off to spray the secondary color (well, some of it, anyway; I'll have to mask it a second time to get some other panels in the engine area).

>why PAINTERS tape?

'Cause it's what I have available, I don't like using actual masking tape for minis (the adhesive doesn't hold up as well, IMO), and actually using Liquid Mask on a model this size is completely impractical.

>What's under the tape?
Black paint. Or, more generally, a 1/285th Leopard DropShip. I've been cleaning the house the last few days since my kid is (finally) old enough to stop drawing on walls when he runs out of paper, and so we can finally start making the house look nice for the first time in 6 years. While I was cleaning, I found the Leopard DropShip that I'd picked up from a booth at GenCon several years back (~2008) for $25 and never got around to painting. So, since I've been watching Adam Savage doing a lot of modeling projects, and I don't have time to get was I *really* wanted to do today done before I have to pick the kid up from school, I figured I'd get some work done on this. 10-minute cure Black Spray Primer, 10-minute cure Black spray paint, matte varnish to protect it, and then this layer of tape, and next will be the teal paneling.

I'm really looking forward to weathering. I've picked up a lot of larger-scale techniques from Adam's YouTube channel, and haven't had anything to try them on. Closest would be the museum-scale Zeus I did a few years ago.

The Crab is a good mech for killing other mechs at range. In close combat, it's going to have a tough time without jump jets, flippy arms, or even (R)weapons versus mechs that are faster &/or can jump. While your meta might not include infantry or vehicles, the setting does so having the bulk of your mech forces (i.e. medium chassis) carrying zero anti-infantry or cluster table weapons is negligence on the part of the planners/quartermasters. Motive crits are what keeps vees from swamping mechs. A whole Crab and a single SRM-4 deal approximately the same # of hits & potential crits.

>Taco Bellica.