/btg/ - BattleTech General

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If a mech has the room to mount more than 10 heat sinks in the engine, and it has more than 10 heatsinks, must it mount every sink in the engine that it can, or are they allowed to be placed elsewhere? (as padding, or putting extra heatsinks in the legs)

Must be mounted, no option.

What you can do to get around this is build it as an Omni with fewer fixed Heat Sinks than it can accommodate, since any HS added to the base chassis must be allocated crits.

3025 era IS mech. omni isn't an option.

Whoever did the pic dump, thx. I didn't have most of those.

Hello, I've been thinking about getting into BattleTech. I'm a fan of the video games, as I'm sure many more recent additions were/are. I've looked over the games available, and I had a question; I'm not a fan of hexes (personal preference) and Alpha Strike seems to not use them, however I'm not against more complex rules in a game, which Alpha Strike seems to lack. Is that what "Advanced Rules" and similar supplements are for? When do hexes start and when do they end, I guess is the overarching question.
Thanks in advance to anyone that takes the time to respond.

Eh, the Thunder doesn't look THAT bad in the background of this Alex's artwork.
Even the goofy drum-arm isn't that awful looking here.

Wasn't there a big Grog butthurt about the Argo not being legally allowed to jump with a dropship attached to it?

The Argo is fuckin' retarded on the lore front even before you get to how it breaks the rules.

High points:
-Yet another supar special experimental prototype design that despite being the most complicated DropShip ever built according to what it can do has magically survived the Succession Wars in the fucking Periphery and is of course in the hands of a small mercenary unit.
-Even though the much less complex Behemoth is ultra-rare and such a ridiculous pain in the ass to keep in operation that only the Houses and biggest business can afford to use them.
-Has grav decks, which are illegal to mount on a DropShip.
-Is somehow capable of extending the jump field of a JS, enabling DropShips daisy chained to it to make transits through K-F space.
-Has a large ASF complement.
-100,000 tons, because if you're gonna rape the lore this badly you may as well go big or go home.

Wait, when did the Argo get an ASF complement?

Standard BT has rules for playing without hexes, just as AS has rules for playing with hexes.

As for the supplemental rules, AS does adapt many of the advanced/optional rules of BT, but the base difference in complexity is the units themselves. Where AS units have just a single armor/structure and attack value, BT has you tracking damage across parts of a mech, firing weapons individually each with their own specific range bands and so on. Pic Related, BT stats vs AS stats.

In its introduction?

The most retarded part of it all is that it's completely unfit for the job of transporting a merc unit and supporting them in the field, because it has no way to recover 'Mechs. So either the PC unit is going to be rocking additional DropShips to cover that deficiency, or it's going to be flying special custom Small Craft.

All because Randall "Fuck your lore!" Bills has to put his stamp on things by creating a new DropShip rather than just giving the command a customised Overlord.

Well yeah, the whole gimmick of the Argo is that it has docking points for a Leopard class dropship which is used for all of the actual Merc duties.

Though that Thunder appears to be the C4 from TRO Prototypes with a TB-20 instead of the AC which did reduce that issue a slight bit, though he improves it further. But as we've seen before, MWO's art direction is doing its thing so FD's MWO designs won't necessarily align with his BT work.

"Why would I just give this unit a Scout JumpShip and a Leopard when I can take a giant, steaming dump all over the rules and lore? Also, must remember to work some fluff about the evils of the cis male patriarchy into this fluff. Maybe have it designed by a team of trans POC Mormons from the Magistracy of Canopus and shut down because the male-dominated board of Boeing Interstellar were mad non-straight, non-white people made a ship that completely outclasses everything else that had come before it? GENIUS!"

you seem upset
I wonder why they went with a Leopard. Iconic? Figure they'd just make their own atmospheric mech transport dropship. Call it the Invictus or something. 10000 tons, armed to the teeth, has it's own Kearny-Fuschida drive, whatever the fuck you can think of.

Thanks. The BT stats look very RPG-esque. To me, at least. I can understand why they say on the website that some RPG players use the tabletop to resolve mech combat.

I've been reading through the Alpha Strike Quick-Start rules, and it's a little hard to follow, not because of complexity but because it feels counter-intuitive. They seem to leave out explanations for what things are in the relevant descriptions, causing you to go looking through the rest of the rules book just to find an explanation to something brought up on page 10.

Randall, fucking shit up!? NEVEREEEE!
Tho to be fair, you could st..embezzle, i mean borrow. A porch from him and he'll just get three *announcer voice* Teen Titans! Of the industry to say its okay..just as long as its for a porch.

Yeah, the modern rulebooks in general have layout problems, something long complained about. For BT proper they recently released the BattleMech Manual, a book focused solely on mech rules including optional/advanced stuff from different books, with a much better layout and filled with clarifications and highlighting key points and such.

At least I'm not the only one, I guess. I sometimes question if it's because I'm just bad at reading and dense, or if what I'm reading is actually incomprehensible for one reason or another.

A heads up, nobody plays alpha strike as a regular game. It's mostly for things like when people to run a couple hundred mechs in a super battle.

As the saying goes "If you're gonna play Battletech, play Battletech."

Understood. However, while I'm not strictly opposed to that, there is no local scene. I'm paying attention to Alpha Strike because it is evidently the simpler of the two, and the only people I could get to play either only know board games, or they're 40k players (or worse yet, Hero Clix players). Not to knock on them, but if I showed one of them the Mech Record Sheet their eyes would gloss over and they'd respond with something along the lines of "Yeah fuck that noise."

Because Randall insists on inserting fucktarded lore and pushing the idea that BT is a cis-het male-dominated setting and player base that deliberately marginalised women and other groups. Not gonna say the game or player base is perfect, but it's nowhere near as bad as he makes out and the way he keeps fucking the lore because he doesn't understand it is really annoying.

He did understand it once, not that long ago. His FWL Reunification novels are genuinely good despite the Danai pity party stuff. It's like he went full SJW tard sometime in the last five or six years. He had those leanings before but he never forgot what Battletech was.

>he's unaware of early portrayals of women in Battletech
wew

>male-dominated setting and player base that deliberately marginalised women

Wait, is that still being banged on about? Has he forgotten about women like Paula Trevaline, Marthe Pryde, Diana Pryde, Lori Kalmar, Annika Janssen, Tyra Miraborg, Tomoe Sakade, Lainie Shimazu, and last but very definitely not the least, the First Lady of Death, Natasha M.F. Kerensky, at whose name hairy arsed men ran from the battlefield?

And of course, my girl Rhonda Snord.

That looks pretty sexist to me, she's too attractive and scantily clad.

That reminds me

Does anyone remember Dragon's Fury?

He himself wrote at one point or another almost all the DA ones. Annie K, Bitch Kell, Yori Kurita, Captain GMILF, Dykelord Dieron, Triple Agent Holt, Countess Crewcut, etc.

It's one thing to ignore other peoples, stuff, but your own stuff is a whole new level of delusion.

Yeah. What about them? They're dead and their leader is a sextoy in the personal dungeons of the ISF Spider

I remember having one of the little booklet things that came with some of the WizKidz boxes focusing on them. I'm pretty sure it said only women could be in the upper echelons of leadership.

>I'm pretty sure it said only women could be in the upper echelons of leadership.
Nope. Top dog was a girl as was her lover before she got kamikaze'd by a drac asf. It was about half and half men and women in the upper ring. It's all in that novel with the super edgy NuBounty Hunter.

Huh. Guess I'd have to find it again, assuming I've still got it somewhere. They did have the Amaterasu in there, so there's that I guess.

Fucking Viridian Bog.

IIRC he hasn't been on his ridiculous high horse about women since his moronic Roughneck fluff, but the last major thing I heard about his plans for BT were comments abbout never writing white characters again and putting the spotlight on other racial minorities. Because, y'know, Xin Sheng, afro samurai before they were cool, and starring Polynesians before the Rock made it cool also never happened.

Is that supposed to be whatever monstrosity lives on viridian

It's obviously a thresher maw

All of those were just supporting characters, joke characters. The MAIN Battletech narrative needs to be diversity. White characters should be sparse and few- your time is up.

>thresher maw
>eyes
That's a hard no.

Keep in mind that the quick start rules for just about any of their products are going to be like that.

Their main objective isn't playability so much as keeping the page count to an absolute minimum. Nothing spooks new players more than having to read. Cut the pagecount, increase the likelihood they'll try it without someone to demonstrate.

The actual rulebooks tend to take more time to walk you through things and/or reference you to other pages.

>their eyes would gloss over and they'd respond with something along the lines of "Yeah fuck that noise."

Fucking story of my life during the Mechwarrior 4 years. Even people who were interested in playing were alienated thanks to microsoft's watering shit down to drag-n-drop boxes.

If there's one thing I'll sing MWO's praises for, it's bringing back the criticals system. As soon as that game hit, teaching new players was way fucking easier.

Getting them to buy in however, that's a beast of another nature. They were more than happy leeching my shit rather than buying their own so that they can play when I'm not around.

Honestly though, the best way to teach newbies is using the Grinder scenarios. One mech per player, with upgraded respawns. Not realistic, but it gives samples of multiple designs and how to use them. Plus, managing one mech is easier for newbies than managing a lance.

40k player here. Been playing BT almost as long. 40k for fast play, BT when I want some crunch (and Harpoon 4 (and sister games) when I want to spend a whole day with charts). We're not all bad (though I freely admit we have a ton of fucking idiots).

>40k for fast play.
Wow, that much has changed, the new edition?

When the nova cats complain about ghostbear atrocities

>Harpoon

My sibkin.

I don't think that the Papa Smurf And The Blue Man Group Edition has done much for that. Just Kill-Team games or whatever they're calling those now; you can get through a low-points game reasonably fast, the time bloat with larger forces is still pretty bad.

Is there a significant difference between Alpha Strike and the 2nd printing? I don't want to buy another one if the changes can fit on a note in the back of the book.

>(and Harpoon 4 (and sister games) when I want to spend a whole day with charts)
Nonsense. It's impossible to have a decent game that doesn't nerf missiles. Everything would naturally into a sitzkrieg.

Just download the current errata sheet for it. That's what it's for.

I see, so people still didn't learn than big armies and 28mm don't mix that well, in sci fi or fantasy? Didn't they have a scale creep too?

It isn't hard to keep a game under 90 minutes, including setting up if you prepare army lists well in advance and don't spend 30 chatting while setting up. Most games run in, with set up and cleaning away, 2 hours. Just know the rules, know the armies, and don't fuck around.
Honestly, I prefer Command At Sea and Fear God & Dread Nought. Guns over missiles.
Hey, I'm in it for the charts and the minutia. Missiles bore me, I prefer ASW, the warfare of gamblers and thinkers.

Which reminds me. I heard once about a game where you played ACW ironclads. Had charts up and down, damage to sections and crew, went full sim. Wish I could remember the name, I practically came when I was told how it worked.

>Didn't they have a scale creep too?
28mm is scale creep by definition. Remember all old school stuff from DnD to 40K to Battletroops were 25mm back in the day.

That being said, as a once in a blue moon gimmick, would you play Battletech with figures the size of HG Gundams?

>I prefer ASW, the warfare of gamblers and thinkers.
The warfare of being afraid all the time

Ghost Bears did nothing wrong. The Nova Cats betrayed Kerensky's vision.

>would you play Battletech with figures the size of HG Gundams?

Maybe not that big, but perhaps with Bandai's 1:100 stuff. Other people have done it.

>I'm never going to find that searchlight, am I?

Damn, those messed up seams on the left. What Chinese bootleg quality control let that piece of junk out for sale? Quickscell?

>"Here we see an adult Warhammer with a recent hatchling..."

But seriously, playing with giant 'Mechs would be awesome.

Hey /BTG/, I've had a recent hankering to replay MechCommander 2 and gimmick the shit out of it, like when we had that one user who did it years ago. I'm thinking of playing on hard with medium mechs being my max weight and showing how to powergame MC2, or trying to go all-urbie for the obvious meme. Anyone else interested?

If you manage to do something awesome (pun intended) record it and put on the ol' YT. I'd watch it.

Also be funny, charming, interesting, and have great dinner conversation over Pharaoh Beer.

How about these badboys from Mech Con? Excuse the blurry stream photo.

Might be a build your own kit

Early Bandai. Snapfits have been getting better over time (although they still have seams, as is inevitable.) There's a practice called seamlining in the hobby which basically involves using plastic cement to melt the seams into one coherent piece and "erase" them.
They're snapfit kits, which means they come in parts on a sprue. Kinda like model tanks/airplanes, the difference being they snap together with pegs instead of being glued together. If you do decide to glue them together, it helps with the seams.

I could try. I don't have any recording or editing software, however.

Not our fault 3dpd because they don't have a soldier's discipline and exercise.

Make her fat and ugly or it'll make me feel bad about myself :(

>Damn, those messed up seams on the left. What Chinese bootleg quality control let that piece of junk out for sale?

user, that model is over 25 years old (see why I say I'll never find the searchlight?) assembled in a time before the Dark Age of Technology when my modeling and painting skills were pretty poor, and there was no Saint Duncan on Youtube to tell me what I was doing wrong.

>Early Bandai.

That's right. It's not a snapfit kit, though. I just didn't do a very good job gluing it together or painting it. My Locust and Archer fared even worse!

In his last moment of defiance the Locust made the Archer for insulting it's chicken legs

>In his last moment of defiance the Locust made the Archer PAY for insulting it's chicken legs

Damn phone.

>25 years ago
That'd explain it, the only thing that might've been snapfit back then would be early Gundam kits and even then I think those were cement.

If you're afraid, you're doing it wrong.

The only other option is to give it Prototype Freezers, then.

>That being said, as a once in a blue moon gimmick, would you play Battletech with figures the size of HG Gundams?
Yep.

I started with MWO and for me the biggest hurdle to get over in wanting to play the actual game was that I am a big fan of how in-depth your tactics could get with torso-twisting and weapon placement. It matters.

So far as I'm aware in the tabletop where your weapons hit is 100% random with no modification based on how your mech is standing or anything. That's honesetly a little upsetting. Am I just reading it wrong? What's the point of having a shield if your opponents weapons aren't likely to roll hitting on that arm? Or stacking armor in your torsos if your opponent may just get lucky and strip your legs? Or how can you aim for legs if you're fighting someone in a mech with stacked torso armor?

If it's smaller than the real thing, doesn't that mean it's still a "miniature"?

>So far as I'm aware in the tabletop where your weapons hit is 100% random with no modification based on how your mech is standing or anything.
This is not true at all. The hit tables are different depending on facing and there are advanced rules for called shots.

Oh shit, for real? Where?

The hit tables are in the main rules. Called shots are in Tactical Operations.

That mobile oppression palace in the back looks ace. How tall is it?

Who is this artist? I absolutely fell in love with his protomech redesigns.

>How tall is it?

A little over twice the height of the backsplash of my bathroom counter, so somewhere around 9-10 inches.

>Who is this artist?

I'm pretty sure it was Alex "FlyingDebris" Iglesias.

Righteous. Thanks.

The errata for AS actually comes in first printing and second printing versions, so you can see for yourself. Overall, you're looking at 38 pages for the first printing, and 16 for the second, so yeah, there's a fair amount fixed in the second printing. I'd get the new one if you could.

1/144 Gundam is roughly 1/100 Battletech due to the size difference in mechs and mobile suits.

1/60 Battletech (Battletroops) is about halfway between MG and PG gundams.