/btg/ BattleTech General

Scorpion or Stalking Spider or some other quad shit.

Also applies to the Capellans

Don't like space flights and battles, user?
Do you even like science fiction in general?

Also applies to the Lyrans

Nah. Leg looks funny. Tarantula.

Without ASFs, what would have crashed into a certain well known warship and helped stop the advance of da clans?

>Not crashing a mech into a warship

If you don't put verneiers on your robots to fight it out in space, you can hardly call yourself a man.
You're also unrealistic about it, which is also a pretty funny counter-intuitive bonus to doing shit porperly.

Also applies to the Taurians

Honestly it applies to most factions.

Actually, if you were given the oppurtunity to redo the IS map from scratch, how would you guys do it? How many IS states and Periphery states would you have? What cultures or styles would you like to see - either for new states, or to fix the existing states?

>Actually, if you were given the oppurtunity to redo the IS map from scratch, how would you guys do it?
I actually mostly like the way it is as of 3025 (nation-state wise). I would keep a large Periphery state out where the RWR was, I would also somehow keep a Hegemony-style state because I like the idea of one power being surrounded by enemies everywhere and dealing with the politics that'd create, and I'd expand the Periphery, both Near and Deep, extensively, but that's about it. My main issues with the set up we are given is the writing of the factions, not the factions themselves.

Enjoy your pathetically-low Thrust and your super-short range, space robot user.

>Actually, if you were given the oppurtunity to redo the IS map from scratch, how would you guys do it

Outright do ethnostates, since that what they're inevitably going to turn into anyway. Move the White British faction over to where the Lyrans are now, and move the Space Germans over to where the Davions are. Change the Mariks to a Latino-based nation.

Periphery states can be black dominated with a high crime rate (MOC), Mediterranian-dominated with lots of art and a bad economy (Marians), Arab-dominated religious nutjobs (the Outworlds, but their religion changes to Islam), and make the Taurians more Indian sub-continent so their main exports are good food and they can stay extremely paranoid and poor-smelling.

>How many IS states and Periphery states would you have?
we really just need more bandit kingdoms and small states in the periphery, and a less pie chart inner sphere

Clans are space Russia then. Their offician language should be russian instead of english.

Given their rampant incestuousness and complete inability to form a functional civilization, I'd be completely OK with that.

>From scratch
I wouldn't change the basic factions at all. I'd change what was focused on or their history, but Battletech isn't Battletech without the factions. Might as well play a tank game with Alpha Strike rules and call it Battletech at that point. You need the trifecta of IS, mechs and crunch for proper Battletech.

Also applies to the Dracs

Whose incest and inability to form a functional society? The Clans or the Russians?

yes

You need more Periphery nations to spice it up.

Yeah the pie chart is the real killer in that it seriously reducing story telling potential.

No, the mechs make the game. They are the iconic and good part. The fluff is mostly terrible and forgettable barring the most bonkers parts.

Oh, hey. You're that guy that constantly complains that everything isn't a democracy, aren't you?

Stupid question, if a character has a lost limb and prosthetic replacement as part of character creation, does the character have to pay the cbill cost of the prosthetic, or is it considered paid for with the trait cost?

I've had a bad freaking day.

I'd keep the map. The map is good. Hell, the pie-chart justifies how everyone stays locked in the suckers game of fighting near-peers over the corpse of the Terran Hegemony instead of building out towards the periphery; those are the best worlds and it's the proverbial 100 square km of western europe is worth a millions acres of sub-saharan africa and everybody fucking knows it and swaps land accordingly.

I even liked the essentially polyethnic nature of any successor state but diferentiated by how that state is *organized". The Combine are the only ones that have a "state nationality" like the Austrians tried with German for a little bit; Irish Samurai. The FWL with local sovreignties in a zero-sum political game at state level, like the Austrians got stuck with. The German Bimbo that slept/backstabbed her way to the top of the Lyran Commonwealth and her cronies, get, and get of her cronies are richer than rich so it doesn't *matter* what the local culture is, self-absorbed teutons are fucking around/fucking up running everything and that's Steiner down into the latest of the Dark Age. Capellans are the police state run by Korean Soap opera caricature of a Chinese family clan.

>desu I never really got the Davions other than military-mad aristocrats slapped onto a semi-democracy- Hannoveran Brits?

>Davions
>military-mad aristocrats slapped onto a semi-democracy

They're Americans mate. Clearly Americans.

That's why everybody with an ounce of sense fucking hates them. They spoil their entire setting for everyone else and everything would be objectively improved with them wiped out to the last man woman and child.

>Do you mean Davions or Americans?

Yes.

You're late for your helicopter ride, fucko

Implant and Lost Limb are opposed traits, so technically you can't have both; they cancel each other out. But they're also multiple traits, so you could have a prosthetic leg and a missing finger, for example.

And while the description suggests you can have both at the same time ("a Lost Limb Trait is not truly cancelled out by a Prosthetic Trait of equivalent type), it doesn't actually say what the fuck that means mechanically, because CGL is fucking awful at designing games.

Personally I'd throw that shit out. If you have a Prosthetic, then you can lose it through play and (re-)gain Lost Limb without getting any points for it. If you don't take Prosthetic, you get the Lost Limb points at creation and can buy a prosthetic with cash if you want to.

>davions are american
makes sense to me

>Pie-chart
>Good
>Means without FedCom (which was a terrible dead end plot wise) anyone can only engage with one of two enemies.
>Means will inevitably always return to the exact same stories unless you toss clans at people.

More enemies in the center. And FedCom was *the shit*. Completely upended the table and everything after that was people trying to deal with it and put it in its grave.

Davion is space British empire. Space america is Marik. Pretend democracy actually run by tiny oligarchal power groups against the needs if the people.

None of the successor states are nice places or good guys. They're all just different flavours of turd sandwhich.

Fedcom was a chance to actually advance the setting and make the setting get a little less overly grimdark and shitty.

>but then some author faggots decided LOLNOPE CANNOT HAVE NICE THINGS HAHAHA

>You are not allowed to have anyone sensible or practical ever. Only incompetent maniacs forever!

FedCom terrified everybody with a thinking brain that wasn't FedCom. Hell, it spooked the Clans into invading when they did. This made Katherine's job a lot easier.

based fedcom

I LOVED the idea of the FedCom, and then... DAT BITCH! Ruined- EVERYTHING. I hate krazy kraut bitches. Nothin' but trouble, man.
Weird german pron though.

just started playing mekhq recently to ease into tabletop after playing the vidogams for ages. just finished my second contract against clanners after having a decade to build up, thought i was ready. fucks sake dudes, clanners do not mess around. had two assault lances two heavies and a medium, down to a banged up assault and whats left of the heavy and medium lance. this shit is rad but goddamn, pulled off that contract by the skin of the teeth on my fucking balls. at least i got paid a fortune

Well, it's especially bad on MekHQ because Clanners don't follow Zell rules, so they focus-fire all the time, and they're very aggressive about running right at you up to a range of ~19 hexes, and then moonwalking backwards all the way to the board corner for the rest of the scenario. Once they get there they just run in circles to keep their TMMs up and focus-fire the biggest thing they can see every turn.

It's not just annoying. It gets really boring, really quick. I ended up quitting my campaign mid-mission for a good six months because after the 8th game in a row where the bot did that, the game simply wasn't being fun - just a slog.

Leaving out "a better bot" as a solution, your best choices are a) don't take Clan contracts, and b) buy a ton of artillery and bring it on every mission, putting it into every lance if you have to. That way when the fuckers run in circles on the board corner you almost can't miss hitting *something*, even with scatter.

I mean, it could be worse, if you're playing with the old skill rules. Then you just load up Nagas with Davy Crocketts.

As I said

>everyone must go full retard, all the time. No logic allowed.

Would the setting MOSTLY Peacefully building towards a new, better star league over time based on actual agreement and concord instead if threat of force have been REALLY SO TERRIBLE that we had to have fedcom civil war autism spergoffs and clamtardation? Why could we NOT have had a slow rebuilding of tense, suspicious thriller drama as successor house finally learn the lessons of the succession wars, namely, that they're fucking retarded and only serve to kill themselves off harder.

Sorry to hear that, user. Hope it improves. Keep your chin up and if you want to vent in spoilers as an aside, I'll at least give you the time of day.

You know, I've always wondered what engenders this kind of rabid hatred of a group of people. Did an American rape you as a child or something? Do you have a reason to hate an entire population so virulently? Or is this Veeky Forums memes taking on a life of their own?

it hasnt been so bad so far. ive been GM adding random mediums to allied forces to meatshield and the bots will usually brawl eachother long enough for me to slog over there and start getting good shots. ive been really enjoying myself, i got lucky early and got some big pay, easy work contracts and good salvage and was just walking through IS opponents without much effort. clan opponents really fucked my ass in the first battle i fought, equiv of 3 stars of stormcrows, novas and a few vipers versus two fedcom lances. i got arrogant and only committed my assault lance, big mistake. saved my KGC and marauder by the absolute thinnest of margins, lost an axman, archer and assassin. won the battle because most of the clanners ejected when they took weapon crits and then the elementals sat in a city content to let me snipe them. didnt make the same mistake after and was deploying two lances min, but theres only so much you can do i guess. summoners and twolfs are vicious and hellbringers would consistently obliterate all the armor off a torso before dying in a blaze of glory. scary stuff, tabletop is brutal

we will see though, i took a contract off in concordat space to lick my wounds and flex some of my new shit. got a bunch of clan warriors from the contracts, a lot of them are vets and two or three are elites, just need the mechs for them to pilot. sitting on an absolutely insane fortune from all the salvage comp, 300mil+ even after buying a dropship and tiny little jumpship. ran out of units to buy on market

Would it really have been so fucking godawful wrong bad fun for the lostech reclaiming to have been a unifying scientific and engineering pan-house mega project that taught the houses slowly to Truly trust each other?

Where characters could earn their competence and diplomatic ties naturally.

Then when you finally let the howling barbarian yards of the clams off their leash they invade to find a peaceful IS already from the get go, they don't need no fucking star league, they got a working space Hague.

>this of course makes the clamtards froth and raegout harder. Let the clams BE irredeemable evil cunts that pushes the IS to extrapolate their naturally developed organisations into s truer, better star league in the face if such unbridled clamfaggotry and atrocity.

Then we get a massive clam grudge match vs the is, with the unified is prosecuting a vengeance fueled total war against the fucking clams.

>glass dem DNA repositories sin, glass them hard. Nuke baby nuke.

This let's the IS be unified in the truth of a unified mankind being indomitable.

No need for ComStar yo magically asspull thousands of fucking mechs out their assholes.

>because every single intelligence service in the is is going to simultaneously forget entire legions of fucking mechs existence.

Makes as much sense as The Great Moderation, user (which is a weird as balls way to say "kill Frenchmen until you feel safe again")

I just find it weird that the 3025 setting starts out with 'hey maybe autistically sperging out at each other for hundreds of years until we're in danger of fucking going full caveman again is a BAD IDE!!! Let's try NOT being totally pants on head retarded! "

and then every development from then on is 'x does something not fucking retarded, so y and z have to REEE and start shitglinging and murderhobo sprees!'

>Yeah the pie chart is the real killer in that it seriously reducing story telling potential.
First, how? How does the faction affect story telling potential? When we file all the names off, what story works on one border but not another?

Second, the "pie chart" doesn't mean as much as you think. The Federated Suns fights the Capellans more than the Free Worlds, sure, but the Suns still attack the League sometimes. People fight kitty-corner, especially near the middle.

I had a big thing typed out, but instead I'll just quote Herb's famous line "It's called BATTLEtech not PEACEtech."

We need more Word of Blake

> None of the successor states are nice places or good guys.
It depends on the author, especially with davions. The reason why everyone hates them is because they are stereotypical morally flawless good guys most of the time, and usually strongest in the setting. That reeks americanism and makes a bad name for Battletech that is the answer to

Battletech can have lots of battling. It doesn't need continual, retarded all out apocalyptic edgy faggot grimdark wars of retardation.

With the Ares conventions the tense and suspicious 'peace' would let aerotech and combined arms have a bugger role for a more comprehensive BATTLEtech-ing, meaning mechs are special and you know shit has well and truly hit the fucking fan when someone hits the SEND IN THE MECHS! button. Let's them hold their special place in the setting without being murderhobo tier everywhere and responsible for the is going to fucking shit.

>the battlemech was expressly invented to gimp human warfare into a non apocalyptic direction.

>every author just has legions of mechs in a giant shitfire pile of stupid BECAUSE REASONS.

Battletech has those periods. And every single one of them is history or skipped over because nothing fucking happens in them.

Hell, go read the Stoner Peace era and it's exactly what you want. I think it's terrible, but you should get a hard on over all your ideas being put into practice.

>>the battlemech was expressly invented to gimp human warfare into a non apocalyptic direction.

The Battlemech was invented because Jacob Cameron thought it could kick tank's asses on the ground and dominate the battlefield. And he was right. Not because of any high handed morals, but because his own armor forces got bloodied by the Davions and he went. "You think your tanks are better than mine? Well I'll make something better than tanks!" Like a schoolkid in a playground pretend fight except he had the industrial might of the most advanced interstellar nation behind him. Even then he ran that into the ground making his giant killer robots.

Not following zellbrigen can be turned into handwavium based upon the Clan and if you're playing a merc force or not. Plenty of Clanners ignore the rules when they're facing what they see as a dishonorable force.

The upside is that you're going to see major XP advances and salvage. In my merc unit, the entire 1st 'mech company is all hardened veterans of the Clan invasion, with no-one below Elite, all piloting mixtech customized machines. When they are put on the battlefield (out of a battalion and a half of 'mechs, roughly a regiment of vehicles, full ASF wing, and significant infantry and BA support), the reaction is thus.

Battletech is not continual retarded apocalyptic wars.
Successor states continue fighting because they never have the power to completely break one another like the Allies did with Germany and Imperial Japan in WW2.
And crusader clans have their ideological reasons.
The only faction I find stupid in this regard is blakists with their jihad. Frankly even the use of word jihad is a major immersion breaker for me because it is too strongly associated with islam in modern culture.

>stereotypical morally flawless good guys most of the time, and usually strongest in the setting
Well, one could say that the strongest can best afford to be the most moral. Is that an Americanism? Not sure it's exactly what they were going for with the Suns or with Suns characters, but they might've been aiming for something along those lines.

>the tense and suspicious 'peace' would let aerotech and combined arms have a bugger role
How does peace give aerotech or tanks bigger roles?

>20 years of relative peace and growing diplomatic overtures, like in canon
>cooperation during the Invasion not overly different from the Outreach summits
>the Clans launch the Jihad instead of the Blakies
Ah, so that last idea is the important one. It does seem delicious.

>that pic
But Devlin Stone, I sell ClanTech to the community!

Jihad was chosen for the name back when people still associated it with historical stuff, before the turn of the century.

This takes place before the RotS. And with them not existing.

The word 'jihad' only exists in Islamic texts. It's a purely Arabic word. It does not exist outside of that. It was done deliberately and part of the reason why I find the entire concept to be borne from severe mental retardation.

Well it might be hard but you'll need to get over it eventually.

They get a minor varnish of being Anglo-French at times in SBs, but in the novels they're Space Fuckin' America and comparatively little of the SBs counter this.

It's more the "MUH FREEDOMS!" and the BT equivalent of the 2A, really.They have a deeply American ethos and presentation.

>The word 'jihad' only exists in Islamic texts. It's a purely Arabic word. It does not exist outside of that. It was done deliberately and part of the reason why I find the entire concept to be borne from severe mental retardation.

It's been associated as the islamic counterpart to crusade in English language for oh, the last three or four hundred years at least. When you used to say that, people thought of the Moors or Saladin and such.

My personal thought is Crusade already was used up by having the Crusader clanners, so they wanted something similar and grabbed the nearest thing. Wanting to wipe out the clans even made it a bit poetic.

'Crusade' and 'jihad' do not equate to the same thing. They may have similar goals but they are not the same thing, not by a long shot. The use of the word 'jihad' after Islamic terrorism took a front-row seat in the world's eyes was deliberate and another blatant move by the idiots in power to try and hamfistedly connect the ending of the FASA storyline to the Dark Ages.

Ignore him, he sounds historically illiterate.

>after Islamic terrorism took a front-row seat
Knigga, FASA laid out the thing in 1998. Did you not see "before the turn of the century" And it was codified in DA materiel in late 2000, almost a year before all that.

>This takes place before the RotS. And with them not existing.
Yeah but no one else gives a fuck if the Space Jews sell weapons to people.

Kids born after 9/11 don't remember how things were before.

yeah, I've seen that for sure so far. most of my dudes are up to veteran or elite, half because of their relative success and half because the green and regulars mostly died. plus i got a ton of bondsman most of whom started off at veteran which is pretty gnarly. the problem right now for me is that i hemorrhaged most of my front line mechs and the market doesn't really have anything good. its a shame you can't just fuck around without a contract because I could have had several companies worth of summoners, stormcrows, Timberwolves, hellbringers and novas purely from salvage. all in good time I guess, like I said I have so much $$$ I can afford to sit around for a while and let equipment trickle back in for a while. using the taurians as a punching bag to train up everyone and crossing my fingers some clan mechs show up

The events that they laid out were very different than executed. I read those events as laid out by Herb. The WoB were players in it, yes, but there was a lot less handwavium in there.

>58198866
I own shoes older than you. No (You)s for you, go sit in the corner and think about what you've done.

>The events that they laid out were very different than executed

The damn name was the same. What they did was scale the conflict up.

Because instead of all out shitpile wars of annihilation you have police actions, interventions, relief efforts, proxy wars. The idea us that you don't NEED succession war bingo. After the almost cave manning of large parts of the IS it makes sense logically to never escalate to full on wars.

>instead of committing entire mech regiments to either capture or destroy HPG'S or factories, we see sneaky scout lances instead deployed to kill supply routes etc.

Instead of mech regiments plural ass fucking each other and whatever poor dumb planet they happen to be standing on, you can have tank and infantry forces seizing shit without totally leveling everything with much support integrated throughout. Let the mechs be the stars, committed to breach the most difficult defences or objectives, one or up to a lance together, let them be the stars of the setting.

How the fuck is the mech so special if every motherfucker has one in the setting and everything else is so shit that everyone just throws hundreds of these fags into meat grinders. You'd think if they're so rare and valuable you'd only use them where absolutely necessary, using ultra modern tactics of manoeuvre warfare etc.

>instead we just get retarded 'every is stuck in the 18th century' mentality.

lol this is some OF level butthurt

> It's been associated as the islamic counterpart to crusade in English language for oh, the last three or four hundred years at least.
Yes, and that is why it is an immersion breaker for me.
I doubt that any non muslim person in real word would use the word jihad to address the holy war he is waging against somebody. The word crusade is little more general.

There is a good explanation on reddit about the use of the term in Battletech.

So? The word jihad isn't even a fucking violent concept. Just like everything extremist fuckbags do, its a vile perversion and abuse of the religion they supposedly espouse. [Islam totally needs a fucking Reformation or three and for its moderate majority to finally grow balks DND murderfuck the extremist cuntbags.]

But jihad itself roughly is analogous with Zen. Its the inner struggle to self mastery, discipline and control. Becoming closer to god with purity of purpose and peace. And all that fancy good stuff.

Only the faggot extremist retards think it has anything to do with Ree kill whitey!!!

How many hidden Word of Blake divisions/Level III's appeared in the first year of the Jihad?

Ironically "jihad" is more fitting because the meanings and interpretations of the word would apply to the points of view of both the WoB and its enemies in that conflict.

t. Muslim

>let them be the stars of the setting.

Sounds more like taking the backseat than the spotlight.

>background fighting is tanks and infantry slogging

>mechs show up to do the most important shit and are treated like they're actually valuable weapons platforms instead of just-another-of-a-berjillionty.

>somehow this is mechs in the backseat.

is everyone usually this bitter here

yes.
There is either bitterness of waifufaggin.
Cause there is nothing else happening with the game.

This is literally Early Dark Age. And it's terrible.

No small part because of this Mechs number one trait is their survivability. Tanks are deathboxes with a shit ton of guns. That means the mechs aren't doing much of the actual fighting and killing when they're 1/10 of the force. They're basically relegated to command roles and the occasional duel.

They magically summoned 32 divisions in the first year of the jihad, multiplying their forces by 5 in one year via Space Magic and Warcrimes.

Why do you sound like you've never picked up a house book? You wanna know old grogtech numbers?

There's five tanks for every mech in 3025
Mechs are rare heirlooms and total warfare with hundred of machines committed is a thing of the past. The entire tagline of the buildup to the 4th War was "What if full scale war comes to the Inner Sphere again?"
People like the Mariks and Davions are turning to combined arms to supplement their dwindling armies
Infantry fall into two categories, militia and special forces. The Kuritans have literal armies of the second
Assault mechs as the scariest and rarest of all are reserved for major world assaults which happen once in a blue moon and with numbers that would be considered a light raid in times past

Small invasion forces themselves are almost always purely mechs for the simple fact that space transport is a bottleneck. The most durable and flexible machines are what they will take every time. Your exact same company can march out onto the surface of a moon and catch the aerobase with their pants down, then deploy into the capital of the world itself the next day.

In what you propose, 95% of the fights that happen happen without a mech, 95% of the war equipment that exists, is not a mech. 95% of the time spent fighting, is spent fighting in things that are not mechs.

Somehow, the 5% that remains, is the spotlight and makes mechs special instead of irrelevant. But I don't even begin to understand how.

He's saying what you're saying, but he's also saying that those 5% are the only thing players actually are going to engage in and what the fluff should be about. The 95% is background and literally doesn't come up except as "and some tanks shot some guys the end". I don't agree with him, but that seems to be what he's getting at.

Because the 95% is the happening in the background to allow the 5% fun game stuff for IRL humans to play stuff.

I already said that's what it started out as. Over successive posts. My entire point is why did that aesthetic / ethics have to be abandoned in favour if just throwing a fuckload of mechs at everything.

oh darn. that sucks. in that case can I get some advice? this is me.
it's jan 3052. looking for the best approach to clan invasion stuff since the attrition is pretty brutal right now even if I have a near flawless fight. what sort of mechs should I be focusing on getting? I've been rolling mostly marauders and similar because i like the mech and I dig peep + LR ballistic loadouts. i have a couple bounty Hunter esque custom variants that run two ML two peep one gauss rifle and it does a pretty decent job of peeling armor off whatever provided it doesn't get shot at much. backing em up are a kinda eclectic mix of trebuchets/archers for cheap LRMs and some various mediums with peeps or mediums. two king crabs, ones permanently in repair bay because I can't get the parts to unfuck it. made a medium just to try out the mech lab that has 10 ML and runs heat neutral, done pretty well for me even if it costs a lot. besides those it's just been whatever I can get my hands on, funds haven't been an issue moreso a total lack of good mechs to buy. i thought the axman was pretty cool and wouldn't mind some more brawlers. ignored aerospace and infantry and have only been using salvaged demolishers and mantis for cheap bigguns when i need a few extra. mainly though im just concerned with killing clanners and not being killed in return, as obvious as that sounds. whatever is gonna be best at that is good

also how cheaty is it to use GM mode to buy a unit/parts and then GM mode to subtract it's cost from your wallet? I've been thinking about adding a couple clan mechs that are damaged to fuck or something and costed a fortune, like buying scrap from black market salvagers, but I feel like it might be too out there since the houses aren't fielding anything yet. Some way to make up for them shorting me all of the actual salvage for cbills I can't actually use since they're not selling anything

I just figure battlemechs should be the limited supply ultimate weapon they're supposed to be. It seems silly to throw these priceless nigh-irreplaceable war machines into stupid meat grinder slugfests.

It still feels irrelevant to me, even if all the tank and infantry crap is so far in the background that it never even exits fluff text.

If mechs as we know them are so bloody rare that they're only this tiny sliver of the action, then there's literally no point to them, because anything that four of them can do, could be accomplished by throwing forty tanks at it instead.

I MIGHT buy it if Mechs were fluffed as being titanic monsters with their own damage scale, in the way that capital scale damage sits up a factor of ten from conventional damage. If a single mech could soak up damage from more than ten times its weight in armor, and lay waste to multiple tanks in a turn, then maybe It wouldn't feel like an asspull to make them 5% of the setting (even if you never expand out past that 5%)

About 14 division-styled formations, which all had 2-4 Level IIIs. So maybe the equivalent of seven-ish divisions of troops, about the same amount the Magistracy of Canopus gained in FM:P.

muh wob magic