/btg/ BattleTech General

But the jet engine kills it, I was picturing the most ghetto turboprop attack plane possible, for use in full Mad Max Periphery mode.

sarna.net/wiki/MechBuster

2nd for Lightning. I love the heavy cannon on an aero style without being obliged to play Caps. Everybody else has their own version of super fast lightweight interceptor, all the lasers, and all the LRMS but the fat gun was pretty much Yellow Menace only til the Lightning.

The trick is the rules really make no distinction between the nature of the propulsion, just the engine. So an ICE could be a jet or prop, though the only canon examples of the latter are support aircraft, like the Boomerang spotter and the King Karnov.

I know it's been posted before, but STAT ME!
SHIN SING! Shins be singing!

The Mechbuster is more of an A-10 Warthog, though, I was talking about something a little more low-tech.

The Boomerang spotter plane is the closest thing to it.

Oops, beat me.

Functionally the closest canon unit to what you want is probably the Katya, a reasonably fast 30 ton CF with a couple MGs, not a lot of armor but a lot of rockets, with the variants just changing the exact mix, from 4 RL-15s or 2 RL-10s and 2 RL-20s or 8 RL-10s. Plus whatever you load on the pylons.
But visually it's still a jet.

The Free Worlds Guards, the main Marik Federal force of the League are literally white with purple accents. The only full purple in the FWL are the Marik Militia. Regulans roll in Orange/Camo. Oriente rolls in classic SLDF Olive. So on.

Plus purple for a parade scheme isn't bad. Not like mechs aren't repainted in camo before missions.

My point was more
>"Why isn't white with purple accents the default?"
>"It already is.

Right.

Sparrowhawk

My dudes, your boy has returned

So the money I was going to spend on Battletech stuff is going to pay for my GED instead. Sorry senpai but I am jobless now that my boss pulled a Sam's Club and gotta get that hustle

I am not gonna let that stop me from getting my robot fix though. Saw on google some dudes making printable mech standup things that go in the stands from boardgames. Looked in the troves but could not find any to print. Can someone hook an user up?

Speaking as a literal and figurative old fag, don't stress focus on the real world. smashy robots will always be here for you.

>The Free Worlds Guards, the main Marik Federal force of the League are literally white with purple accents. The only full purple in the FWL are the Marik Militia.

That's more than a little misleading given that there are 3 Free Worlds Guards regiments and *40* Marik Militia ones. "Purple is the default" is still an accurate statement.

Mechs may my dick hard. Tabletop RPGs make my dick hard. So needless to say ive always wanted to give battle tech a shot but i never knew where to start. Where should i start? I hears there is an RPG like game and then a more strategy game

>Saw on google some dudes making printable mech standup things that go in the stands from boardgames. Looked in the troves but could not find any to print. Can someone hook an user up?

Go to our booru and lookup the keyword "counters", like this: bgb.booru.org/index.php?page=post&s=list&tags=counters&pid=0

There are counters going all the way back to Battledroids, including the Japanese versions and even some of the ones I made back when I was a poorfag.

I think the tag "standee" or "standees" also works. There are some Jap ones as well.

So, one of my players has a stock 3025 Rifleman and wants to replace both autocannon and large lasers with 4x LAC/5. Now, ignoring years and thus assuming the LACs are available, can you see any positive or negatives to this?

The extra tonnage will be armour and ammo, not weapons. So I think you'll lose a little range with the loss of the AC/5s, you'll lose the overheating alphastrike, but you'll gain 2 points of damage per turn in a much more heat efficient machine.

So I can't see this as being a killer machine in the slightest, but I wanted to run it past people here to see if I'm missing anything?

Thanks!

Hey, /btg/, does anyone know how to add custom equipment to SSW perchance? I want to experiment with something but don't know how to add gear to the program. Any help?

The Mariks definitely got the best spread of 3025 fighters.

Part of the utility is a matter of how much ammo he's bringing. For instance the reseen RFL-6D also swaps for 4 LAC/5s but brings six tons of ammo, so it can make use of AP and precision that halve the count.

Ah, of course; we haven't been playing with additional ammo types yet, but something to bear in mind then.
Thank-you!

Battletech "A Time Of War" is the RPG set in the universe - read that if you want adventures

If you want to play the tabletop wargame, you have 2 choices for main books - "Alpha Strike", for fast paced games on a terrain filled board, or "Total Warfare" for hex mapsheets, and crunch taken to the ultimate levels.

My favourite is full crunch on hex sheets - the best place to start with that is the Introductory Boxset, which gives you all you need to learn and play the basic rules

Quick question, can the LACs share ammo with normal ACs?

No.

Thanks!

Mechanically they're different weapons, so by the rules, they cannot share ammo. They'd also likely be different calibers.

Yeah, I realized I misunderstood the question after I posted, hence my deletion. For some reason I was thinking he meant in terms of ammo types. I probably need to go to sleep.

THANKS!

Wtf is a purple accent? Like a weird cross of French, Spanish and Austrian since I imagine the FWL is mostly based on European nations.

>My favourite is full crunch on hex sheets

Mine, too. , he also forgot to mention that if you haven't seen Robot Jox, you probably should.

youtube.com/watch?v=vUxDmKFCD2o

Paint, brah.

I will never get used to those backward feet, no matter how scientific they are.

Also, whilst learning you can play against an AI on your PC with MegaMek:-

>>MegaMek Lab
>megamek.info/
>github.com/MegaMek

Locust-chans love to hear you are turgid too.

Dammit, forgot pic.

Is there a program you can use to paint the mwo models like this? I'm interested in making some standees from them and having them be in the color of my chosen regiment.

Does this include our own mary sue designs?

>Cargo (6 tons)
>NO WEAPONS
Is this a suicide fighter?

No that's just how Battletech handles internal bomb bays.
You assign it as cargo, and give it the internal bomb bay *quirk*. As in you *need* to be playing with quirks. to use it.
It is absolutely one of the worst parts of the entire game.

>small cockpit on an ASF

It's like you WANT your pilots to deconstructively lithobrake.

So... 6 tons of MG ammo on a timer like a depth charge and BOOOOOOOOOOM?!

No, just dropping 12 points of bomb rather than 6.
Or anything that can fill up the hardpoints; two AAA or AS missiles, six LAA, some internal fuel, a TAG, rocket pods, whatever.

I mean obviously it's not optimal but tonnage is at a premium.

Unf. I love it.

Is it possible to mount Infantry Bays/Compartments on Battlemechs? I really like the idea of using a fast quad mech like the Tarantula as a sort of helicopter with legs for medevac or sneaking infantry around on the ground.

>Is it possible to mount Infantry Bays/Compartments on Battlemechs?

Explicitly no, it's not.

However, nothing stops you from designing a handheld "weapon" that is basically a giant cargo bay which contains a bunch of infantry.

You can mount regular cargo bays on Mechs though, right? Does anything prevent infantry from riding in cargo space?

> Does anything prevent infantry from riding in cargo space?
Yes, a lack of temperature control and life support. It's common sense that you don't want to ride in cargo when the 'mech can roast the pilot in the cockpit.

Surely the cargo area has *some* form of insulation, or else you'd melt whatever you put in it, alive or not.

What's better, the Vedette tank or the Bulldog?

Well it's been explicitly laid out you can't use cargo as infantry carriers, or else stuff like pic related would be far more common. And hilarious.

My group is preparing for a campaign pretty soon, is there a supplement out there that describes the equipment that can be fitted into vehicles? I'm pretty well grounded in the lore, but it's my first time with the rpg, and some of the item descriptions are pretty damn vague.

Vedette. A million of them and the perfect mook/militia vehicle. Tear them apart, customize them. You'll always have spare parts.

The LGR is amazing as a harasser too.

On the table? Bulldog, no question. Logistically? Vedette. There are tons of them and parts are easy to get. It's just crazy anemic until the LGR and ARC/5 versions comes out.

>ARC/5
RAC/5, derp.

The Automatic Railcannon/5 is one hell of a gun. more than that little tank deserves.

I like all these words.

TechManual has all the construction rules.

Can't he also fiddle with Megamek, or is this a transportation thing?

I mean he specifically asked for a supplement which had all of the descriptions of equipment that can go on vehicles. Otherwise yeah, he could go play around in megamek lab.

Aight thanks.
I considered it, but it's more rpg equipment than essential mech equipment. For instance, one of our party members drives a tank, and being a GLORIOUS STEINER HEAVY, I figured I could find a way to store fuel reserves so we don't have to worry about logistics everywhere we go. That, and the book wasn't exactly clear on where communication systems are stored and installed, since I doubt anyone wants to carry a Holovision Monitor while footslogging.

Did I just accidentally a new, awesome-sounding weapon with a typo?

>I figured I could find a way to store fuel reserves so we don't have to worry about logistics everywhere we go.

You've got fusion reactors, the only logistical concerns for mechs are ammo, repairs and the pilot not starving to death in the cockpit.

As is tradition.

>one of our party members drives a tank
I'm afraid he doesn't have the luxury of a fusion reactor, though if he had the C-Bills, I could try my hand and remedying that.

In that case, kill some enemy ICE-powered vehicles and hope they don't go up in flames.

Why does this look so familiar?

the real question is how to keep it from being a LGR-Lite. Which is what I keep running into, in my attempts to ponder stats.

RAC mechanics, up to 3x. Instead of rotating barrels, you just cycle the charging mechanism extremely quickly, because fuck physics. Overload chance on 2, firing on rates higher than 1 drains the charge for Rate - 1 turns, halving the weapon's damage, rounded up.

Automatic Railcannon

Maybe make it hit in clusters like a HAG?

IRL Railguns could be made to fire very quickly, as no action needs to be engineered for the removal of spent equipment, and unlike a Coilgun it doesn't need to run its coils in a timed sequence, it can put a charge into the rails then feed bullets as fast as you can push them in

Downside, just single shot IRL railguns have major heat issues, and may experience warping if they need to operate for several consecutive barrages

So maybe like a RAC with major heat issues, maybe also firing in clusters like the HAG

Capacitors.

Just make it blow up on a 2.

Checked, and the overload would be exploding..

A slightly smaller LGR that fires 5 damage slugs like a RAC?

Namefags are asleep, post dinosaurs.

...

>rejected platoons

...

I like capacitors, so it deals 15 damage when it blows up on a 2 or on a crit. I like it dealing 5 damage at LGR ranges per shot, with it only capable of 1/2/3 shots per round. The numbers mesh very nicely in my head:

>ARC/5
>12 tons
>6 crits
>1/2/4 heat per shot (additive)
>5 damage per shot
>2/6/13/20 range
>15 shots per ton of ammo
>capacitors explode on a 2 dealing 15 damage to the weapon location
>capacitors explode on a crit dealing 15 damage to the weapon location
>ammo same as gauss rifle so not damage on a critical hit

whattaya think?

>I figured I could find a way to store fuel reserves so we don't have to worry about logistics everywhere we go.
Combat vehicles don't really get too specific with fuel. Even the StratOps rules just give you an arbitrary "you consume 2% engine mass fuel per mission" and states 10% engine mass is the size of the tank.

But extended fuel tanks are a thing in Techmanual you can install and each ton of fuel adds 600km to the range. So if we go by that a heavy tank has still got some damn good range, a 60 ton Bulldog would be carrying 2.3 tons of fuel, giving it a range of 1,380km, for reference most IRL AFVs nowadays sit around the 400-500km range without external tanks, with some lighter tracked and wheeled vehicles maybe getting between 500-1000km.

In the end the simplest bet if you're that worried and don't want to go losing vehicle tonnage to adding fuel tanks would be to just get a fuel truck to follow along, or at least a trailer of liquid cargo the tank can tow around and leave behind when moving into a hot zone. Bearing in mind that towing rules are garbage and best ignored.

Hm, maybe more ammo/ton. Maybe 20 shots makes more sense as a RAC/5 callback and because it having less ammo/ton than an LGR is a bit retarded.

Honestly I wish they had added a GR Capacitor years ago. Make it an optional add-on for the weapon that drops damage to 10 points, weighs 2 tons and occupies 2 crits, and allows you to use the weapon like an Ultra. Away you go.Maybe tune the damage down to 10 per shot

MY HEAD IS NOW A GIANT URBIE!
>AHHHHHHHH
URBIE!
>AHHHHHHH
flower!
>awwww
URBIE!
>AHHHHHHHH

You know realize that the Imp is really just an Urbie MODOK.

These dont look like modok to me...

What about the Goblin? Does it get any love?

Do you use infantry? Because that's really why you choose the Goblin.

I am curious, how's Imp performance-wise?

Better than an Atlas, not as good as a Marauder II.

Shits the bed with upgrades due to the usual "hurr XL engine, SHS durr" upgrade pattern of too many 'Mechs from 3050. The series 1 and series 4 we got later are much better.

Why does /btg/ hate XL engines so much? :(