/btg/ BattleTech General

Very carefully.

I agree on cross-training when it comes to the regular squaddie or tankie and for a regular mission I'd choose the appropriate unit, but the Eagle Corps, for instance are the equivalent of the SAS, the best of the best. Combined 'Mech and commando training is definitely not out of the question in BT, considering that the Death Commandos do exactly that and DEST units are trained to operate everything under heaven up to and including jumpships just in case they have to during their missions.

"Agricultural equipment" is the standard explanation, perhaps aided by a sympathiser in the local customs/air traffic control. The Black Dragon sympathiser in one of the Caballeros books did this, IIRC. Or you could chuck the 'Mechs and their drivers out in drop pods and parachutes, and upon landing they stash their 'Mechs and operate on foot as appropriate.

Modular design means they could be disassembled and transported in parts. Inside a covered cargo truck, for example.

youtube.com/watch?v=cfgPt1730Ls

Best infantry to go mech hunting?

Based on the size and expense of mobile suits it seems like options such as in your video would have made more sense than the Federation needing mobile suits.

Sadly they don't allow TC rounds on SRM infantry so we can't recreate mech Syria. LAC/5 field gun infantry or jumpers in an urban environment.

>I mean, any level-headed corporate rival isn't going to send mechs in to steal secrets, right?
Of course not. But it's totally not your fault if a bunch of your security dudes go rouge and take off to raid another company who just fucked you over in a deal. (Norse-Storm v. Shengli Arms.)

That's something that has bothered me. There is constant development for mech and tank based weaponry, where is the creativity for infantry based weaponry to make them more viable? What if there was a single shot reloadable SRM that could handle those rounds?

no jumpers in an urban environment?

The Norse Storm/Shengli contract loophole abuse was one of the greatest incidents of BT corporate dickery I can remember. But nothing beats the ultimate Space 80s hostile takeover.

>where is the creativity for infantry based weaponry to make them more viable?
Well, we saw stuff like the Tsunami and Thunderstroke GRs come in and that Dragon's Breath or whatever it is one-shot super-heavy pulse laser thingy.

Realistically though infantry weapons hit the wall with the Barrett M42B and Mauser IIC. Those are already game-breakingly good (the only thing that keeps the Mauser IIC in check is Clan infantry unit sizes, nothing holds the Barrett back) so there's nowhere else to go.

>Galax beeaflos
Well there's my new fast food restaurant name.

>that Dragon's Breath or whatever it is one-shot super-heavy pulse laser thingy.
Dragonsbane. I'd stick with LAWs, they hit harder though the DB does have better range. Really disposable weapons in general are one of the better infantry things to pop up, and also a quite reasonable one.

Dragonsbane. It's not bad, but since the infantry rules make it encumbering (AToW does not), it reduces the performance.
There isn't a lot more that can be done with infantry weapons that hasn't been done already. And technically you could load alternate munitions into a SRM launcher, just the rules don't explicitly spell it out. We've done that before -- loaded tear gas and other specialty rounds.

Jump infantry have a greater chance of outmaneuvering a mech and getting in Anti-mech attacks in an environment with heavy cover.

So if somebody brings a pure mech army against a pure infantry army with transport in an objective match where all the objectives are in urban areas, it's pretty much GG?

i want whatever formula they used to calculate infantry weapon damage to be completely redone. i think it's bullshit that something like the man-portable gauss rifles does similar to or less damage than a fucking generic autogun.

Depends on the mechs. Something configured to take down other mechs will struggle with infantry but God help you if your opponent brings something like a Scarecrow or Firestarter to the party.

Like I'd wait for them to tell me it's legal - "whatever you choose for your game", and all that stuff.

One of my favorite warcrimes mechs is one no one remembers: the Whitworth-0, Amaris's mech of choice for roasting civvies.

You guys think a Lyran corporate security force would be better equipped relative to corporate forces in other states?

probably not, considering that some Corps had direct backing and security that probably was garrisons from their state militaries, like WoB and Kurita.

Depends most likely on the corporation: the Thumpers merc unit (all assaults, all the time) was a Defiance display team before going full mercenary, and I think Storm's Metal Thunder served as Norse Storm's corporate security force. You could probably expect the big names to have really well "home-built" kit but their skill levels might vary a lot.

Also depends on how "creative" you get. A mech may lack proper AP guns, but if its got jump jets and the dudes giving you shit happen to be in a building too light to support your weight and you can always jump up there and bring the house down on their heads. You'll take some damage but all the infantry are squashed flat.

>Combined 'Mech and commando training is definitely not out of the question in BT, considering that the Death Commandos do exactly that and DEST units are trained to operate everything under heaven up to and including jumpships just in case they have to during their missions.
In what scenario does the same person need to do both things?

It's not as though one person is going to reassemble the mech on his own though

Presumably 'Take a facility, then raid the facility' if you don't want the contents damaged/you can't just wait people out.

Surely there would at least be civil liability for that?

> i think it's bullshit that something like the man-portable gauss rifles does similar to or less damage than a fucking generic autogun.

Gauss weapons can be scaled down pretty far. If the gauss rifle isn't autofiring this could make sense.

Could you go into more detail here? As in everyone hops in a mech after taking out all of the guards?

>Could you go into more detail here? As in everyone hops in a mech after taking out all of the guards?

Arrive in mechs, take out the static defences/other mechs then do a smash and grab for data or personnel, then back in the mechs to get out.

Isn't that why power armor can ride 'mechs? Or just call in a VTOL after you drop any AA defenses.

>As in everyone hops in a mech after taking out all of the guards?
I could see that happening, especially in the Succession Wars or Clan Invasion where stealing an enemy mech would be a huge asset.

Any number of black ops come to mind. You can take a Death Commando, DEST trooper, Eagle Corps soldier, etc. and drop them into a guerrilla situation with their 'Mechs and the same driver is equally efficient on foot and in his giant robot. If the 'Mech is out of service for some reason (destruction, damage) he can still serve as a commando on foot. That's why I called them the SAS of MechWarriors: there are people who drive Land Rovers and then there's the hairy arsed SAS Mobility Troop member.

Not every faction has access to power armour, especially not in earlier time periods.

Wouldn't it make more sense to send in the commando team in helicopters or an APC or something so the mech jockeys can stay in the mechs and provide security during the operation?

That probably makes the most sense of any scenario, but it seems like either you could half-ass it on the mech training for your special forces or send in the mech operators alongside real ground troops and have the valuable mech operators stay in the back with their heads down.

On the other hand, where are they supposed to go with the mech afterward?

But why wouldn't I just send a mech, diver the operator some survival training, and then also send some commandos? I have a much better chance of recovering my mech operator that wa

>Wouldn't it make more sense to send in the commando team in helicopters or an APC or something so the mech jockeys can stay in the mechs and provide security during the operation?

That's a good bit of extra weight on the dropship.

You lose 1 mech (maybe, odds are you're already dropping some vehicles and aren't sending a dropship down just for this one operation) and get a whole platoon of commandos. Seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Different missions call for different needs and different asset availability. Cross trained personnel are a valuable asset in such situations.

Then why don't actual militaries do this?

They do.

>TFW you get hired for corporate security at Hesperus and they lock the doors on you
I wouldn't say so.

The only reason they're not compatible with hand launchers is the missiles are double weight. What you need to do is build a whole new launcher along the lines of the Heavy SRM launcher but with a single shot instead of two.

>Wouldn't it make more sense to take something not called a mech or an ASF on a dropship for a covert op, especially something that requires more crew, weight, space, fuel and maintenance than a mech

No.

And you need to forget the specialization wank. People are much more rounded in Battletech because of the rareness of machines. In fact, most special forces are drawn from the Dispossessed in the old days. So you're not teaching your commandos to drive mechs. You're taking your horseless knights and teaching them to be commandos and assassins.

Because they got all the transport and warm bodies they want. You can't take the whole kitchen sink in Battletech. You can barely take one faucet.

Huh? They certainly do. The cross-trained BT units (DEST, Death Commandos, Eagle Corps, etc.) are special forces, not your average Johnny Tankie or Jimmy Rifleman. Look at the SAS Mobility Troops, Aussie SASR long-range patrol vehicle units and the like, not the usual armoured regiment or infantry patrol. Sometimes the situation calls for four blokes on foot, sometimes it calls for Land Rovers or Unimogs with Milans and .50 calibre machine guns.

Make her hair longer and i think I could let go my ban on fat chicks and bone chubby Tay-Tay.

Really? There are operations where tanks roll in, the crews jump out and do commando shit, then everyone gets back in the tanks and leaves?

>Wouldn't it make more sense to take something not called a mech or an ASF on a dropship for a covert op, especially something that requires more crew, weight, space, fuel and maintenance than a mech

If some more guys are going to get you caught then so is a mech. And APCs do not require more space, weight, or maintenance than mechs. Fuel is a maybe.

>Look at the SAS Mobility Troops, Aussie SASR long-range patrol vehicle units and the like, not the usual armoured regiment or infantry patrol. Sometimes the situation calls for four blokes on foot, sometimes it calls for Land Rovers or Unimogs with Milans and .50 calibre machine guns.
A throwaway light truck carrying several people and a mech carrying just one aren't the same thing at all.

Then specify era. And standard infantry works just fine.

No, but they do drive hundreds of kilometres in their vehicles, then park it and perform close recce/sabotage/other shit on foot, and return to their vehicles. Plus with their vehicles, they have access to stuff like antitank missiles and heavy machine guns they would otherwise have to carry on their backs.

It is when you have to carry all the big guns and other heavy shit on your back versus stowing it on your vehicle. There's a reason why Bravo 20 failed and the vehicle-mounted patrols didn't get shot to shit. In the Inner Sphere, the 'Mech is your tooled-up Land Rover. You get the mobility and big guns you wouldn't have otherwise.

Never served, have you?

Fucking hell m8, cross training is old as organised armies. Look at dragoons, who trained as horsemen but dismounted to fight.

Stop being an obtuse moron. You've been told it's done, why it's done, how it's done, and that it's a real life practice. Move on. If you want to keep being an arse make a post about how the periphery shouldn't have mechs or something.

Ferro-Lam or Ferro-Fiber and armored components for a tanky mech?

>No, but they do drive hundreds of kilometres in their vehicles, then park it and perform close recce/sabotage/other shit on foot, and return to their vehicles.

Light trucks can be stealthy. Light trucks don't require much training. Light trucks don't provide considerably more firepower then the soldiers themselves have, beyond the ability to carry more equipment over long distances. If they need to ditch the light truck they don't mind. And they still typically leave people with the vehicle so they know it's still there when they get back. You can't leave half the crew of a mech in the mech.

>It is when you have to carry all the big guns and other heavy shit on your back versus stowing it on your vehicle. There's a reason why Bravo 20 failed and the vehicle-mounted patrols didn't get shot to shit. In the Inner Sphere, the 'Mech is your tooled-up Land Rover. You get the mobility and big guns you wouldn't have otherwise.

First off you would absolutely have that mobility with a light offroad truck or helicopter, and you get to bring all the stuff your commandos could want. And yes, it may make sense for mechs to accompany APCs or secure a landing zone against vehicles, but when you can deliver a whole platoon of dudes with less effort than it takes to bring a mech it doesn't make much sense for the mech operator to hop out and pick up a rifle.

First off a horse is nowhere near as hard to train someone to operate nor anywhere near as expensive as a mech. Second, no one is complaining about the existence of motorized infantry in BT. But Mechs are quite a bit different. No one wants their tank crews or combat aircraft pilots to hop out and do commando shit, because it risks both the vehicle and the hard-to-train crew.

--------

Now if you want troops or power armor to ride in hanging onto the mech that's another story.

Regular engine and compact gyro are more important first.

Not necessarily for a light mech, though depending on what you mean by tanky that might not qualify.

I'm fooling around with a 75 clantech heavy, making a Black Knight II-C.

>you can deliver a whole platoon of dudes with less effort than it takes to bring a mech

This is completely wrong. Transporting troops is much more complex on the dropship side than machines. Quit thinking it's like loading up some dudes on a boat or cargo plane on Earth. You can also hotdrop the mechs from low orbit which you can't do with V's which is the ultimate stealthy insertion compared to physically landing your DS.

The point about trained crew is bogus too. There's literally five times the trained people waiting for a slot to open up. People care about losing a mech, not the people in it. It's even the OG tagline of Battletech. "In the 31st Century, Life is Cheap. Battlemechs aren't."

Tanks and aircraft are too different from mechs to make a comparison. If you think horses, which are difficult to train good riders with, don't apply then your examples clearly don't apply either.

And people do want their mechwarriors to be able to act as commandos, as numerous factions have successfully demonstrated in the BT universe. I'm sorry you don't seem able to understand simple explanations.

trips makes it so

Why was the Magistracy of Canopus even capable of building mechs in 3025? With a slave society rooted in gender discrimination against half their population and an economy based on prostitution, they should have been too poor and backwards to manufacture battlemechs.

Because even a trained monkey can operate glorious mega-rugged Star League lostech. And all Periphery factories are SL-built. Not like they invested in the infrastructure and built it themselves.

Even the Taurians, as advanced as they were, couldn't even make their own nuerohelmets on their own.

Is it just me or does the War of 3039 sourcebook not make sense?

At least bait the hook, sempai.

It doesn't. Read the original 3039 material in Heir to the Dragon and 20 Year Update and ignore the slipshod mid-2000's retcons.

Technically nothing in his description is wrong.

But the assumption that slave holding societies can't maintain technology is wrong. Even the Confederate States developed cannon factories, built steam engines and ironclads, etc.

>Even the Taurians, as advanced as they were, couldn't even make their own nuerohelmets on their own.
That was only ever true for ASF neurohelms

Not just maintained but developed. Ironclads, submarines, trench warfare, etc.

Nope. It's mentioned for the mech stuff. They just imported Davion and Capellan models.

>You can also hotdrop the mechs from low orbit which you can't do with V's which is the ultimate stealthy insertion compared to physically landing your DS.
Let's pretend for a moment that aerodynamic reentry can possibly be stealthy. Why can't a tank do that?

>The point about trained crew is bogus too. There's literally five times the trained people waiting for a slot to open up. People care about losing a mech, not the people in it. It's even the OG tagline of Battletech. "In the 31st Century, Life is Cheap. Battlemechs aren't."

Oh. Well I'm sure if the pilot dies on the mission the enemy will just mail the mech back.

And of course losing your best and most experienced mech operators mean your most valuable military assets are less effective.

Being a mech pilot is depicted as being equivalent in training to being a fighter pilot. I believe the exact analogy is drawn at one point.

>And people do want their mechwarriors to be able to act as commandos, as numerous factions have successfully demonstrated in the BT universe. I'm sorry you don't seem able to understand simple explanations.
Yes, those explanations from the same writers who brought you machine gun ammo as powerful as nuclear warheads are just the best.

I mean they literally build ten whole non-bug mechs a year and maybe 50 bugs. That's on the level of a single bottom-tier IS factory, and on their only rich world, and given the rough size ratio of the MoC compared to the successor states, which all have large areas that are possibly even poorer than the MoC, with generally comparable ratios of shit to rich, that's about right

>But the assumption that slave holding societies can't maintain technology is wrong

This. The Capellans and Dracs both maintain technology, and they're blatantly slave-holders. They just don't spell "slave" S-L-A-V-E. It's more like, "servitor", or "eta". Same difference.

Fuck off and die round eye. At no point during the past, present, or future has the Chinese culture ever had anything which could be called slaves. That's shit that only white people do.

>Let's pretend for a moment that aerodynamic reentry can possibly be stealthy.

On a world without full satt coverage and whole continents uninhabited, it's real fucking simple with smaller stuff. And that's every world that's not a capital world.

>Why can't a tank do that?
No drop cocoons. You've never been able to hotdrop v's with anything but parachutes at low altitude and that doesn't even exist in the current rules.

>And of course losing your best and most experienced mech operators mean your most valuable military assets are less effective.
You have literally trillions of people to sort through. If the USA had mech pilots, they'd only have 7 in machines by Inner Sphere average. They got plenty of spares.

And the special forces mechs are all cheap and fast so as to be disposable. The SL Special Forces mech was the Spider.

>On a world without full satt coverage and whole continents uninhabited, it's real fucking simple with smaller stuff.

So the plan is to walk halfway around the world to the mission target?

>No drop cocoons.
Why not?

>You have literally trillions of people to sort through.

So here's the problem: There are very few mechs to go around. Training people to be mech operators requires mechs. Being a veteran means actually having used mechs in combat a bunch. Those trillions of people who have never touched a mech aren't good mech operators, and your training pipeline is quite limited, especially if you want experienced people. The issue isn't that you're short on people. This is why militaries are so careful with their fighter pilots.

>And the special forces mechs are all cheap and fast so as to be disposable. The SL Special Forces mech was the Spider.
Some mechs are more disposable than others, but you don't want to lose any of them, and having the operator get out in enemy territory dramatically increases the chances of it being stolen, sabotaged, or just stuck with an operator.

>So the plan is to walk halfway around the world to the mission target?

Have you ever looked at Battletech raids? When space transport can take upwards of a month or even two, an extra week hoofing it on the ground is considered spare change. If you need something NOW, you're not bothering with anything but a C* message to one of the deep cover agents you already have on world. And they don't have helicopters and tanks or whatever. Something that requires heavy equipment is almost always better with a mech.

It tries to deal with like three layers of retcons (first was veryone had a small number of SLDF-era downgrades, second was everyone was manufacturing some number of SLDF-era downgrades, third was prototype technology more diverse than just Freezers and Listen-Kill ammo was in use) and then fails on the logic front by claiming the campaign was hard-fought in the final summary text while the individual battle reports pretty much all read "the Nth Glorious FedCom Awesome Regiment bodied the Nth Incompetent Retard Drac Regiment and teabagged them 360 noscope lol" with Theodore's much-hyped counter-attack not doing shit. It's really bipolar in that regard.

I would ignore it if I could given how much it fucks up. And not just for the War of 3039 either, it completely screws the Clan Invasion.

Not sure if Coleman or MadCap.

>When space transport can take upwards of a month or even two, an extra week hoofing it on the ground is considered spare change.
Only if there's nothing that can hurt you during your trip

>Something that requires heavy equipment is almost always better with a mech.
Yes but we're talking about things that need boots on the ground, hence the constant mention of commandos.

>Not sure if Coleman or MadCap.

Do we actually have proof they're separate people ?

To clarify, most old 3025 mechs are Star League era designs or SW SL-downgrades (like the Mad-3R). 3039 was about having extinct SL era chassis brought back. Them being extinct and then suddenly on the field in the Drac armies was the big deal. When dumbasses all over the Sphere are tooling around in Thugs or Crabs all through the Succession Wars, nobody should give a fuck about seeing them any more than if they saw a Mad or Whammy or Archer or any other SL standard machine on the field.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_India
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Asia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_the_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas

I couldn't find references for Polynesia or Australia in my 5 minutes on google.

Moral of the story: Everyone is assholes. White people just had better technology in the past few hundred years.

Forgot one
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa

Two more for good measure
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_China
>Slavery in China has taken various forms throughout history. Slavery was reportedly abolished as a legally recognized institution, including in a 1909 law[1][2] fully enacted in 1910,[3] although the practice continued until at least 1949.[4]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_slave_scandal

You sure you don't wanna look that up?

>China has communism now which is slavery to the government
>China has thousands of years of history being as rotten as the rest of everybody

You're so cuuuuuute~! I could just eat you all up like a dainty rice ball.

Source?

That's what happened with the retcon waves. After the Unseen happened they changed it so that everyone had pretty large numbers of SLDF machines that had been downgraded (which models they had access to varied by state) , to the point that nobody gave a shit about how many the A*-supply units the Dracs had with them because it was barely noticeable compared to a normal regiment.

What was supposed to make them scary again in the wake of that was the amount of 'Mechs they had which were in their stock 2750 configurations, except the rules and fluff for that place those machines at around a single battalion in total and thus incapable of having any kind of effect on the War of 3039.

>>China has communism now which is slavery to the government
I have plenty of complaints about modern "communism" in china but calling it slavery is quite a stretch.

The second thing happened originally with the same rarity.

It's just. "Nine regiments of extinct and pristine machines alongside some classics equipped with lostech"
became
"Nine regiments of known machines alongside some equipped with lostech."

There was never really an effort to resolve the scary bit. Lostech in general didn't scare people as it was running around. Just look at the old Goon and MAC stuff. You pull nine regiments of new car smell extinct SLDF machines out your ass and that will spook people though.

But like you said, 3039 is a massive retcon clusterfuck. One they failed twice to correct already.

Trying to put together a nice Smoke Jaguar force. What protomechs should I look at for use against combined arms spheroids?

>I'm trying to put together a 1st gen protomech force for an extinct faction that may have invented them but only used them in a couple scenario battles

You might as well ask the utility of flying Tornadoes for a WoB force.

Any first-gen Protos are appropriate basically.

Which are good choices though?

None of them. Protos really aren't that good, man. But I guess the Minotaur, the Roc, and the Gorgon are all ok. Seriously though, don't expect too much from Protos, that way you won't be disappointed.