/btg/ BattleTech General

There is more than one M though, I'm partial to the 7M out of the M's and what made you say the M?
For my question age doesn't matter and I think we all know newest doesn't mean best.

*Bleu

The -7M has a good allrange armament, granted. But the -9W is damned near impossible to kill and hits just as hard or harder outside extreme range, although frankly it'd be better with a Snub or losing the Artemis for another ML. Even when the c3i is deadweight, it's still handled better for me than the -7M, and in a Level II it's disgustingly good.

Sadly, most of the other advanced versions are badly-oversinked brawlers, so "generalist" doesn't really apply, and the -7M is a straight upgrade on the -5M in every way.

>What would you consider the ideal tonnage/construction for an IndustrialMech?
That really depends on how much stuff you want on it or how much you want it to lift. The thing with industrials is you fit on a couple tools to do their job and then if you're too heavy you end up with lots of dead weight to fill, because they don't really need to go fast, and unlike combat machines wandering the countryside under their own power isn't in the job description for most. Rare is the IM that goes faster than 4/6. For instance a loadermech is essentially a fancy forklift, great for getting stuff off a ship, but you want to haul it a few miles down the road you're going to load it onto a truck or something, and if you need the loadermech to do something far away you put it onto a truck or something.

By the same token for most just enough armor to get through an accidental fall or something without breaking something internal is fine, and commercial armor is fine for a lot of them too.

Okay guys, this came from /m/.

colorado.edu/engineering/2018/01/04/cu-engineering-researchers-create-soft-robotic-muscles
>also with the news that Portable and Small Nuclear reactors are now considered safe and ready for production
nextbigfuture.com/2018/02/nuscale-factory-built-modular-50-megawatt-nuclear-reactors-have-funding-customers-and-some-nrc-approval.html

>how long until someone creates a full fledged battlemech from it?

Guys? ... Guys? Robotech still matters, not htat battlewhatever stuff! ... Guys?!
So cold... so alone...

>how long until someone creates a full fledged battlemech from it?

They're already working on it.

Does it come with a whiny protagonist as well? Don't they breed those in ol' Nippon?

Hey, user. You seem to have forgotten something on your chair!

With Harmony Gold name in there I bet that was a one of their money laundering shemes or a straight up scam they where trying to pull.

Has harmony gold ever done anything not utterly evil?

There was this one time, where they were sucking the blood out of a person, but at the last second thought to leave them with half their blood so they could generate more blood later to suck.
... So in a sense no.

So, archer. Is there a slightly. Fatter version so you can iron out its weaknesses? Mount 6 ml, have thick sour and more ammo for the lrm20's? Because its so close to being a damn near perfect mech... Like maybe dark age era redesign version or something? Heck, I'd take a radical upgunning that puts it into the 80t assault range if that gave it enough extra heft to fill to iron out the kinks. I mean, there's awesome with some missiles, and of course the zueses... But they're just not as cool as the archer.

Chronologically. I have all the battletech novels from bred for war through to endgame. What should I read?

That's called a Longbow, son

A bunch of the ones right around where you're starting are basically sequels to other stuff you should be familiar with. Like Hearts of Chaos and Black Dragon are pretty good but they're the second two books in the trilogy and don't make much sense without Close Quarters. Same with the Highlander books, Gray Death books, Post-Refusal Wolf and Falcon books, etc.

So it's not a matter of "good" so much as what starts their own honest contained stories. Like Double Blind works and stars you one the Xin Sheng/Wobbie plot, Exodus Road is both good and gets you started on the Twilight of the Clans. Fedcom Civil War is mostly contained stories outside the spines but most of those novels are pretty eh. Second worst Battletech period IMO, right behind Early DA. The Mechwarrior novel Imminent Crisis is gold though.

I did just discover one thing though

>The Germans never stopped getting new German Battletech novels
>Between when regular US Battletech novels stopped printing and now they've gotten 15 novels, at the old school rate of two or three a year
>In total they have 35 exclusive novels, more than all of the DA line
>A bunch of them good plots too, like the Andurien Wars

Jesus Christ. Can't we at least get translations of those if you're too poor to hire new authors for new stories CGL?

>Can't we at least get translations of those if you're too poor to hire new authors for new stories CGL?
No, because the German novel rights don't actually belong to them, and the people with the German book rights don't have the rights to publish anything in english

As long as we're talking novel stuff, anybody got a physical paper source for Battlecorps Anthology 6 Front Lines or Legacy : A Battletech Anthology (anthology 7).

I'm shit outta luck trawling the usual places. They didn't just do some stupid shit like Bonfire and have print be a Gencon exclusive right?

Longbow looks freaking silly. Like it was designed by committee, a boondoggle
A giant fat flat wall. How is that anything like a cool looking archer?

Ffffffffg
35 fucking battletech / mechwarrior books I'll never read. I fucking hate licensing legalese dick measuring competition bullshit.

Also, how am I supposed to punch stupid mechs that get too close to death with muh battlefists in an armless mech, let alone a fistless one.

Honestly, you don't really need to iron out its weaknesses with a heavier version. 70 tons works just fine with some minor alterations. If I'm using purely IntroTech, this is what I try to do with my Archers pretty much all the time.

>you what nigga you reduced the armor

OK, hear me out. Yes, I basically pulled 1 ton of armor and one (R)MLs off (and put the forward-facing triple ML battery along the centerline to mimic the Destroid's center gun pod) in order to add heat sinks. I know that *reducing* armor is heresy. But in this case, it's not.

The Archer is a fire-support Mech to begin with. By design, it should be taking significantly less enemy fire than other Mechs, so it doesn't need as much armor in the first place. Additionally, even with the reduced payload, it STILL equals or exceeds practically every Heavy Mech in IntroTech; IIRC, only the T-bolt and Orion will carry more armor than it does, and it still has as much armor as a Catapult (which tends to take more fire anyway). But what it gains is the ability to stand still somewhere and tape the LRM triggers down without taking a break every 3rd turn to cool off. I find that whenever I'm running Archers, the best shots always begin to reveal themselves right about the time I start running into heat issues.

And FWIW, moving the lasers back to the centerline mount that the Destroid had means you can shoot them AND use those battlefists, without having to choose. In total, your long-range firepower is improved due to less heat limitations, your short-range firepower is improved by 50% due to swapping the rear ML, and your melee-range firepower is improved because you can shoot and punch. All for the cost of some CT(R), CT, and arm armor (side torso ammo protection and legs - since everyone else kicks in melee - are unchanged). Since your best protection is terrain and giving the enemy other Mechs to shoot at to begin with, that should be an easy choice to make.

Literally just take a -4M and replace the Artemis IV with two more medium lasers

And with this, it already has 20% more armor than something like a Whammy, so this makes sense. Would pilot hard and put away wet.

Is the Orion the best standard introtech mech?

Lolno. The Awesome is, and I'd argue that the thud is a better heavy than the Orion
Though I'm not saying the Orion is a bad mech, just not literally the best

Not at all. It's main advantage is that it has more armor than any other Heavy Mech in TRO 3025. However, its armament is badly lacking in focus and usability. The range spread on its weapons is all over the place, and it doesn't have a really clear bracketing-fire scheme that takes advantage of its heat-limited payload (in fairness, neither do the Warhammer or the Marauder).

The Thunderbolt does pretty much everything the Orion does, gives up only a half-ton of armor, and adds in anti-infantry capability (MGs and Infernos) to boot. The Awesome is a better anti-Mech Mech, though its a bad comparison as it's not trying to fill the same niche as the Orion. The Orion is best compared to Mechs like the Merlin or Thud, a "kitchen-sink" Mech that wants a gun for every occasion.

It needs to have jumpjets and not give up armor or firepower though.

Actually, to build on this point, this is something that I had designed several years ago as a more effective Orion using IntroTech. It takes the idea of the ON1-H, which is a 3/5 primitive design, and keeps that speed, turning the Orion into a "pocket assault" Mech and giving it some distinct design space in the Heavy Mech bracket (I'm sure there's an obscure variant somewhere I'm forgetting, but mostly, nothing carries an AC/20 in the 3025-era Heavy Mech range). Yes, it's essentially a pocket-sized Atlas with better long-range firepower.

Why it's relevant to this conversation is that it better illustrates how a Mech can be improved via clear firing brackets. While the Mech generates 27 heat on an Alpha and has only 12 SHS, the weapon packages aren't meant to be used together. Fire the x3 LRM-10? 12 heat on 12 SHS. Fire the MLs and AC/20? 13 heat on 12 SHS. It's very much more clear on what weapons should be used, when, as well.

I made a mistake, /btg/. I went to the OF. Didn't post, just read a little. And I wish I hadn't. Like staring into the abyss.

Why did I do that? To what end? For what purpose? What drove me to such folly? And how can they be so ignorant?

I'm going to google mech waifus to cleanse my mind, hopefully that'll help.

Blog Updates [1]+

...

That's my new favorite Orion. Thank you.

How hard would it be to open up a brand new aerospace fighter factory?

Given that aerospace fighters shouldn't exist because they're better than and pull focus from Mechs, impossible. Game balance is more important than imaginary fluff.

As hard as the plot requires. Like mech production figures and building regiments.

When Xin Sheng or the Jihad says Liao, Centrella and WoB need 6-20 new formations, they get them. The hows aren't important.

>(I'm sure there's an obscure variant somewhere I'm forgetting, but mostly, nothing carries an AC/20 in the 3025-era Heavy Mech range)
surprisingly there actually isn't one anywhere, it's about the only introtech niche that doesn't have a canon design or even variant in it

I thought there was a Grand Dragon with an AC/20.

Also, the Bombard carries 2

>they get them.

What about all the other factions, though? Can the Taurians get a bonus half-dozen regiments when the fucking Suns invade again?

The Bombard is also a medium mech, not a heavy.

The Bombard isn't introtech, it has the weird liquid coolant double heat sinks which are experimental tech.

Also, I cannot find a Grand Dragon with an AC/20. If one exists, Sarna doesn't list it.

lolno

neither can the Dracs, nuFWL, and maybe Steiner. Steiner gets nice mechs, but their formations are sacrificial and the mechs are for being sold to the Suns.

The Suns might get some. Jury is still out on the RotS.

>Can the Taurians get a bonus half-dozen regiments when the fucking Suns invade again?
depends on who writes the book
there actually isn't any dragon OR grand dragon variant with an AC/20 (though there's a MWO dragon with an AC/10 and one with an AC/20), and the bombard is neither heavy nor introtech

That moves very, very slowly.
Sure, I'll carry short range weapons and move slow!

>though there's a MWO dragon with an AC/10 and one with an AC/20

That's what I was thinking of.

And honestly, I forgot the Bombard wasn't Introtech. I've never used one of the things outside of Solaris reaches maps, where being 2/3 isn't the end of the world when you only have a 14x15 map to begin with.

To be fair, the Bombard is meant for a small arena where the opponent can't really get away from it and is in fact incentivized to fight it at close range.

and by AC/20, I meant AC/2, durr

>When Xin Sheng or the Jihad says Liao, Centrella and WoB need 6-20 new formations, they get them.

Good. Those factions were unfairly put behind the 8-ball by plot events early in Battletech's lifespan, or didn't even exist then, and they deserve additional help getting back to plot relevance. There's nothing wrong with spreading the wealth of production around more to make up for clear mistakes early in a game's timeline. Consider it the Battletech equivalent of a social safety net and move on.

speaking of AC/20 heavies, here's one I created for a one-off scenario years back, meant to be a custom belonging to a mechwarrrior who's family used to own a King Crab once, but lost it years before he came of age modified a marauder to try and make something similar

>spreading the wealth of production around

>x2 AC/20 + 2ML
>10 SHS

What the fuck man.

They're laughing at his solid 3". Which is orange.

And your mouth knows every inch intimately

>talking about another guy's dick
kinda gay...

At least we know where you're focused on, user.

>found the fascists

>kinda gay...

In fairness, I am. So what?

>being so triggered you bring up orange penises

/btg/ hits a new low

If you're turned on by Trump and want to discuss his dick, keep it in /pol/. That ok?

Say that to my CERPPCs in real life and not online, Canopus-fag.

>/btg/ hits a new low

It was proved /btg/ could not find a deeper low to hit when it was proved that a solid half of it supported Trump. If you define America purely by capitalism, then he's the perfect American. If you define America by that whole "freedom and tolerance" thing that's in the founding documents and on the Statue of Liberty, then he has proven to be nothing but a dictator-in-waiting at best and treasonous at worst. If you believe that both capitalism and freedom/tolerance are what make up American, the benefit he gives capitalism doesn't outweigh what he takes away from freedom/tolerance.

It shouldn't be surprising, then, that people who unironically support totalitarian shithole states like the Dracs or Capellans would identify with that shitstain.

>blah blah blah trump

yes, that's nice. keep it in /pol/ please.

Go to /pol/ and get schooled how stupid you are.
ALL of my black mechwarriors, ALL OF THEM now have jobs in Trump's reign. And that's great!
Why do you hate black mehcwarriors, user? Wrrry?

What Smoke Jaguar cluster do you main?

>In fairness, I am. So what?

It means that once Trump purges the government of disloyal elements and institutes his awaited permanent reign as First Monarch of the American Empire, you're going to be one of the first people we hang. Good riddance.

This is a country for straight, white men as God intended, and homos and women and immigrants can learn their place or die. Why are you even in a Battletech thread anyway? Battletech is a game entirely about dictatorial monarchies who purge disloyal elements all the time. It's literally about a Trump supporters (read: real American) paradise. What possible attraction does it have for a deficient human like you?

Bait or not you actually make a lot of good point about BT. It isn't very inviting to women or PoC.

...
Goddammit.

See everyone next thread. Christ, I can't wait till this /pol/ shit dies off and we can just talk about giant robots again. I miss circa 2012-/btg/.

wait, I wanted to talk about aerospace fighters! fuck the /pol/ discussion!

Why the fuck are we entering /pol/ this early in the thread people? Get back to talking about mechs and shit and ignore troll posts.

It's one snowflake that got triggered by a Trump reaction pic and everyone else mocking them. Just ignore the blatant shitposting and move on.

>I can't wait till this /pol/ shit dies off

It won't. This is the new normal. It's not going to change until one side or the other is severly depopulated and driven underground. Not even a joke; a war is the only way this is going to get resolved. Neither side is capable of sharing a country with the other, so either we end up with two countries or only one voice, and since the only way to shut up a voice is to silence it permanently...

I hope it's all over before my kid is old enough to have to fight.

>It isn't very inviting to women or PoC.
In terms of playerbase, you're god damned right.
In terms of story, you're god damned wrong.

It's the FedCom Civil War all over again. It was a her turn but he won't let her have it.

Long live Katrina!

it's pretty terrible.

but anyways, let's get back to battletech.
If Xin SHeng never happened, what do y'all think would have happened to St.Ives in the Jihad and where would things go for it during the republic era and DA lead-up?

If there was still an Operation Sovereign Justice, then St Ives probably would have been reconquered in some sort of counterattack since the Suns has to be gimped.

Honestly, reunification with he CC would likely still have happened, but it might instead have been in the context of space taiwan actually taking the mainland back over, which could have been neat

>In terms of playerbase, you're god damned right.

Not really. Battletech is weeb central and nobody is more weeb than american minorities. It's mostly that the playerbase is older, and older wargamers are almost all white boys who were children of middle class households. If Battletech had the reach today it did in the 80's, you would have much bigger mix.

And there's really nothing to be done about women. They naturally gravitate toward magic and fantasy far more than scifi and bots. It's not a matter of the setting being unfriendly. There's a few who have some good scifi taste but they are statistically far fewer than say the giant slice of interest pie devoted to horses.

The Taurian Concordat discussion last thread made me wonder about AUs that don't involve Medron-tier nonsense.

It's 3025, and Thomas Calderon dies in an accident. You, user Billy Bob Calderon, are chosen to replace him. You're a brother or cousin or whatever, and both the civil government and TDF support you.

Starting from 3025, how would you guide the Concordat differently?

Say you're still ruling into the late 3050s. How would you handle relations with the Capellan Confederation and Federated Suns?

>Starting from 3025, how would you guide the Concordat differently?
honestly, the main thing I'd do different is just to let the TDF actually hunt down and kill pirates rather than keeping them sitting on their asses waiting for an invasion that isn't coming
Other than that, keep my head down and do everything I can to get military industries into better shape, like not letting the entire lostech budget get embezzled by somebody named loren
>Say you're still ruling into the late 3050s. How would you handle relations with the Capellan Confederation and Federated Suns?
"fuck you, fuck off" and roughly the same cautious friendliness that was tried in canon in the 50s, respectively. Maybe try and conspire with St.Ives and George Hasek to ensure that the capellans don't try anything funny with any of us and maybe get some tech improvements

Is it bad that I mostly just want Tommy's kickass robot eye and all my political concerns are secondary to me quoting Skeksis lines while wearing it?

"BOW DOWN TO ME FOR I AM PROTECTORER!"

nah, you just have your priorities straight

I started a new mercenary unit the other day (seriously.)
My main is a black guy named Blackson Lifer Hooptielyle. He captures a Locust IIC from a busty clan mehcwarrior who was overheating by promising he can help find a baby daddy.
His first mission was to take on a pair of 3059 upgraded Strikers. Was a close fight, but he won.

Me too NEA. Me too. So how about we talk about what /btg/ loves even more than politics and faction shittalking and whether or not things were better in the 80s or now: MONITORS!

Wait! Wait! P-put the gun down! Put the gun down, hear me out! I'm not talking about ditching K-F drives! Just, just put the gun down and we can talk about this.

So, so, I got to thinking about Monitors as not necessarily needing to be strategically immobile to get tonnage, they could instead be tactically slow. I mean, consider a 1/2 Warship. It can still jump, it can still move on the strategic scale, and if it's meant to be a defensive vessel than it really just needs to be able to get to the jump point from wherever it's defending, and to wherever it's defending from the jump point. Whether you're pulling 2.5 Gs or 1 doesn't really matter too much. And as long as it spends thrust at all it's not considered immobile, and with the lack of TMMs in Aerotech, being 1/2 is fine. Sure you're gimped by motive damage more easily, but that's part of the give and take along with being limited to 60 SI max and a commensurately lesser amount of armor. And even then, you'll still probably be on par with most canon ships, especially the SL era ones.

The upside is that you have a lot more tonnage to play with for weaponry. What you end up with are glass cannons, having lower potential for armor and survivability to gain higher damage output. It's an actual niche! And because they cannot be the ubertanks that a non-KF drive ship can be, with 4/6 move and 180 SI and all the armor they can handle, they actually have a weakness beyond not being able to leave the system they're built in. They break the setting at least slightly less mechanically and don't break it by its own rules regarding needing a K-F drive (or something of equal mass).

so like RL coastal defense ships
sounds good to me

I would like to see a 2.5 million ton, 0-dropper Warship with about 10,000 tons of cargo, that goes 1/2 and mounts nothing but NAC/20 bays and ammo. It would be cheap as fuck with no dropship collars, and even with the fire control penalties, I bet you'd have enough guns that you could wipe out a LevII in one broadside.

Yeah, that was the idea. I mean it still breaks things if you build them really well... but you can break things by building standard, non-gimmick warships well, just look at the Leviathan II and III.

You would die like a little bitch as the Ghost Bears laugh at your maximum range band of Long while they kite you forever with their Naval PPCs and Naval Lasers at Extreme range. Sure, they need like 12s to hit but they have infinite ammo and you cannot hurt them, so they can spend hours firing at you until they get enough hits for you to die.

>You would die like a little bitch as the Ghost Bears laugh at your maximum range band of Long

Fine, then do it with NL55s. It's not like you don't have tonnage to burn on the fire control. Or HNPPCs. Here's a sample 1/2 monitor with 30 quad HNPPC turrents in a broadside and the heat sinks to fire them. Sure, it spends 144,000 tons on fire control. Big deal.

This totally doesn't break the game.

Jesus christ you can buy three of these for the cost of 1 Mckenna.

All I gotta say.

That's the bare minimum optimization level warships should be at.

No, wait, come baaaack!

>And there's really nothing to be done about women.

Daily reminder original MSG (and thus, by extension BT) only survived thanks to girls. Why else do you think did they make stuff like the eternal bromance between Char and Amuro, the boyband in Wing, the husbando suqad in IBO, et cetera.
On that same note, Sunrise kept that angle on their mind going forward and it was the reason why stuff like Escaflowne exists or why Code Geass had the noodle people designs of the most famous group of female manga artists in Japan. Macross, similarly, enjoys a pretty big female audience as it was THE show about the idol dream for the longest time.

You can definitely make a robot setting enjoyed by women. West simply doesn't have a clue on how.