/btg/ BattleTech General

It doesn't matter what we talk about, mister deadborder will sperg out when he wants to, even if there's absolutely no prompt for him to do so

You forgot Dougram edition

>factions that don't actually exist

Look if you guys want to talk about a Periphery nation why don't we discuss the FWL?

I suggest to hand Mr. Deadborder a couple of beer cans, and charge new people to see him rambling and shitposting, like in a carnival. "See the incredible autistic Aussie shitposter!!!"

They may be dirty, no good, corrupt, aristocrats, but at least they aren't Cappellans.

it is one sexy Shad / Dougram sketch.

Lyran Commonwealth might be better one to talk about. I mean they are close to be a Periphery state after the beating they got from Clan Wolf and Jade Falcons, I mean how badly can you fuck up when you have both Wolf and JF wating you dead and those are two factions that don't see eye to eye on anything .

Hey at least they got that much screen time. The FWL is just left sitting in the bin.

Really, if they'd just given the periphery states reasonably sized armies from the start we would never have had this problem

The MOC would still be run by women, and that is simply unacceptable.

What are you proposing, then?

That's now how they are, though. They were low-investment zones even before the League made a point to smash them flat. In the never-ending WWI of the succession wars, they're the Transvaal.

I'm going to give ratios because I think armies should be a lot bigger across the board.
But for 3025?
TC should be ~1/2 the CC, maybe a little bit more, the MoC should be about 2/3 the TC, but a lot of that is mercs, the OA should have ASF units around 2/3 of what the DC or FS has, and 1/4 the TC's forces on the ground.
The minor states and bandit kingdoms should each be roughly 1/10 the CC, and independent pirates and world's combined should be about the TC's level

The Taurians weren't. Even after being smashed by the SLDF by 3025 they have like seven mech factories and dropship manufacturing and they're building heavy aerospace fighters. They were always the outlier for the Periphery.

You talk about stuff most people don't know. Like how Thomas Marik could have actually survived this scene on Circinus then lived out the rest of his life in a monastery on an Andurien world. Somehow Stone knew about it and didn't kill the guy. But he never tried to drive the WoB out of anything but the Protectorate in the first place and the Shadow Divisions even helped out with that. It was the Regulans who went on the exterminating spree after Earth fell.

And how Stone had access to all sorts of Blakist secret projects that nobody else in the Republic at any level even knew about.

That's some juicy conspiracy theory material, even if Stone himself says he didn't start the Blackout. There's some extra weird shit going on.

That's true, hell, p1e says that they were the only periphery state NOT on the verge of collapse, and that the MoC and OA were probably on their way out in the next few decades.
Funny how things turn around, huh

>The minor states and bandit kingdoms should each be roughly 1/10 the CC, and independent pirates and world's combined should be about the TC's level
That's a lot of fucking pirates

>well they had that Toro factory even before then, on the principle of *seeing* the Firebee and coming up with something natively after just getting the concept by experience

The Taurians are more like an astrographicly removed (low end) prospective FWL duchy.

Good. Pirates are like Blitzkreigs: the more of them you have at once, the objectively better the game is.

Nah, before the RW they were pretty much the seventh successor state, arguably more powerful than the CapCon

Plus the Warship yards. The Taurians still had a functional Warship and yard all the way through the Succession wars.

I do always find it amusing, though, that the RWR built something ridiculous like 300 Warships in about 20 years, and nobody reee's about that Periphery nation having better tech than the Houses.

I agree with this.

It's what happens when you have a succession of really bad leaders while the MoC gets sustained by one good leader until Xin Sheng can kick in. I'm still 50/50 on the Outworlds being absorbed by a Clan is good.

>There will never be a timeline where the MoC devolve into full pirates and the Outworlds becomes a ghosttown of dead colonies that even the Dracs won't touch outside the factories.

Sometimes I think Mad Max needed to go on until like 3050 or so. No Halstead, no Hoff, no Helm. I mean to the point that they would legitimately be replacing large chunks of their armies with ICE tanks and Dieselmechs. And then you get the renaissance of Helm for twenty years or so before the Clans come marching back in 3070'ish. Or even better, the ultra-wargame autistic SLDF instead.

>Their fire support is a mixed lance of a Catapult, an Archer, a Missile Jager and a Hunchback? How the fuck is a Hunchback fire support?
>Also the Catapult has PPC's
>SPHEROID SAVAGES!

That's about 2x Canon for the big boys, but they're gonna need that with 10x the pirates

>MoC gets sustained by one good leader

Which is author fiat and therefore bad.

There are a ton more than usually acknowledged. Mostly inflated by people raiding with regular units secretly or people running off with their equipment or even mercs wanting an easy score.

Even the Tortuga Pirates were originally just some Davions who went "Fuck this. I'm starting my own country, with where I'm King Davion with blackjacks and sex slaves!"

Everybody had warship yards, and nobody had warship yards. Those things are just assembly infrastructure. Component construction was *gone* and the economies of scale that allowed them were *goner than gone*.

It took Hanse getting the Inner Sphere economy going again. Based Davion, you're welcome.

>really, the Comstar austists going on about the dark age following the collapse of Rome were right
>it isn't knowledge though, it's the high rate of resource transfer and communication
>the Inner Sphere abruptly became a figurative corpse after a while. The body was there, but the blood wasn't pumping.

I sometimes wonder what the inner sphere would look like circa 3100 if the clans never came and the helm core was never found

There would be a lot less green on the star field.

It's all relative. Fans in the community poison the well for certain factions.

There's no RWR version of MadCap, Kit, Medron, or Roy Calbeck I know of.

Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

lol the Lyrans didn't thanks to the Mariks

it'd be a pretty bleak wasteland of a place

Enjoy your Battledroids, Tanktech and/or The ComStar League. I know I would

Its because there aren't really RWR fans because its a long, long dead faction, of an era not many people play in.

Reposting because I decided to slightly change a couple parts of it.

There should probaby be more minor periphery powers I feel. I get that nations collapse but its also clear in Battletech that any bandit with enough mechs can start nation building.

More Periphery nations also means more fun battlegrounds for the IS and mercs to fuck with.

I agree with you 100%
your ability to salvage even the shittiest looking mechs is always inspiring.
Have you thought about giving the Cadaver a go?

Great redraw.

I wish the mech didn't suck though.

>MoC
>2/3 TC

Nigga, PLEASE

more like a quarter on their own but also hiring every merc they can find

The Capellans are barely surviving in canon as it is. How do an extra THIRTY regiments hitting them from the periphery not kill them dead before Hanse ever comes to power?

If anything people reeeeee about how ridiculous the TH was compared to everyone.

Is... is Stone actually Thomas Marik???

lol as if anyone would work for the frigging MoC, especially during Mad Max days.

Tell me more, please

unlimited whores and beating up on low end pirates, what's not to like?

They are pretty much same size and for most part each others throats more than anyone else. that 2/3s is probably for the fact that MoC population sees the military the necessary evil than how Taurians see it as their only defense vs any shit Davions will try.

I mean, if I was a merc, the idea of getting money to go to the kind of place where I normally blow my money after the contract would sound pretty appealing.
plus it's not like there's gonna be any big fights out there

It would be DA but 10x times worse. I mean DA was worse than 3025 by longshot. It would be Tanktech 32nd Century Combat. With a mech maybe rusting away in musem.

The problem with most of those Bandit Kingdoms is that they miss the means to keep a nation going longer than when the Pirate who decided to built himself a kingdom dies off. The ones we read in the Periphery books are the few lucky ones that had something that made the nation survive. Like Marians it was the Germanium deposit that meant they had the money to build infrastructure.

Nigga they get paid in pussy!

that's something else that we need more of, turnover in the bandit kingdoms. like new ones popping up and dying all the time

>they're all stuck there because they're in a company store situation, but with liquor and whores instead of spare parts

He was supposedly from a Blakist family. So odds are super deep cover agent of some sort. Though he has a genuine super irrational hatred of the Blakists. Maybe one of those brainwashed sleepers like described in the Hotspots books. With all the schizos in DA, might even be some Fight Club shit with multiple personalities.

He's not a clone because we know what Stone looks like and he doesn't look like Tommy. Also he's too old by the Jihad to not have been born back in like 3030-3040 before the split. Though, I'd lay good odds that McKinnon is a double like the Sword and Daggar plot because that fucker knows most of Stone's Blake secrets and enacts them in his absence in ways Stone wouldn't.

One of the black missions Stone recorded for his boys before he went on ice was to go blow up Kwamashu and steal back Tommy's body if Fortress was ever enacted. They poisoned the whole world, started a war with Oriente and brought back the Master's body in a cardboard box like that one thing you still have in the back of a closet you haven't opened since you moved.

The ghost knight was so fucked up over it, he was hallucinating Tommy telling him just what a good Blakist he'd make if he had the guts to kill millions of people just for a small political objective because it benefited his weak little Terran nation.

Don't repair your mech or pay for jumps

I mean, it makes a certain amount of sense. The Terran Hegemony is the worlds that were first colonized, so they have hundreds of years to build population and infrastructure that planets out in the Sphere or god forbid the Periphery simply don't have.

And even then when those periphery and spheroid worlds start to catch up in basic infastructure and population numbers that the worlds that become the hegemony have already had for decades if not centuries, the Hegemony worlds have spent that time improving their technology and upgrading their infastructure to produce more with even less. It's like how US still has a stronger manufacturing base than China does because even though we're sitting on a fraction of the popualation and an even smaller percentage of it is actually working in those factories, our factories make heavy use of robotics and automation where the Chinese just throw 20x or 200x as many dudes at the problem.

The TH does like the US does, except the Sphere doesn't outnumber it in population the same way that China outnumbers America. It's also why Star League era LosTech is such a big deal in the post succession war era. Because it does things like the Hesperas II battlemech factory, where even relatively unskilled workers can just push the buttons and the automated mining facilities and production lines pop a battlemech out the other side.

>and he doesn't look like Tommy.

Proves nothing in a universe where you can clone people or do cosmetic surgery.

Nope, Stone was some poor sap who happened to have different opinions than WoBs and into the re-education he went. From his opinions about nobility and everyone not worshipping him as God Emperor of Mankind I would say he was oldschool Comstar, he just didnd't have the same opinions how to do things like Masters folk and ended up camping trip that turned into Stone IS Tour Live: Fuck WoBs.

>Clone the master right around when he takes power
>Give the clone cosmetic surgery and drop him in the middle of the one prison that contains all the VIP POW's despite having dozens of worlds you could spread them around
>Have him become their leader and break them out so he can become an important political figure

It's bullshit, but I'd believe it.

You know I bet Ben Rome probably had something like that planned with that WoB 2.0 thing he was planning to end Dark Age with, but then CGL stopped paying him and he stopped writing stuff for them and we where spared from Jihad the Electric Boogaloo. Which we can be thankfull atleast.

WoB was old ComStar. I think you mean he wasn't Toyama or 6th of June.

>Have you thought about giving the Cadaver a go?

The Cadaver doesn't look half bad though. Well, aside from the spikes and the blatantly obvious skull on top of the cockpit, it looks alright.

It doesn't look terrible, sure, I just want to see his take on it

What I mean is that not all people that disagreed with Focht on what direction Comstar should take left Comstar and/or joined WoB.

The notes he published indicated his plan was just more bear wank ad infinitum

>Even the Tortuga Pirates were originally just some Davions who went "Fuck this. I'm starting my own country, with where I'm King Davion with blackjacks and sex slaves!"
So were Santander's Killers. Then they absorbed a chunk of Wilson's Hussars when the latter went down the shitter, and sent the command company off to die in the fucking TC.

Quite enjoying your remodel's callbacks to the Archer and Prim-Thud. She looks good.

How do you organise your trinaries? Do you try to make your stars well-rounded or do you give them each a mission profile?

Alpha
>Mad Dog Prime, Stormcrow D, Grendel B, Dire Wolf Prime, Summoner B
Bravo
>Adder B, Mist Lynx D, Fire Moth Prime, Viper A, Ice Ferret B
Charlie
>Grendel C, Shadow Cat A, Stormcrow Prime, Adder D, Stormcrow C

How might you reorganise this provisionally assembled trinary?

first time interest in battletech (mechwarrior) here, Whats the best thing i can buy for me and a friend to have a starter game on equal footing that comes with the rules and those tile board things?

So, there isn't actually a product in production currently on shelves that you can buy. Your best bet is to go to eBay and look for the most recent box set (the 25th Anniversary Box). It'll hurt the wallet though.

CGL *claims* that there is a new box set coming out sometime this fall but that information isn't reliable. You can try waiting, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

>How do you organise your trinaries?

Pretty sure trannies generally organize into Tumblrs.

Messing with the old Clan Mandrill. Can someone explain to me why someone would use an XL when a regular engine can allow you to have a mech 15 tons heavier with only 300,000 C-bill cost more, and you can do more?

Also MegaMek 43.6 is bugged.

That chair when no trannies to organize.

>tfw summoner gets three cockpit kills in one game and two more kills on pesky lights
ace in a day, do dracs count as full kills? theyre like little termites

It completely depends on whether the pilot was a brightly colored hair anime girl or not. Anime girls count as 3/5 of a pilot.

at least one of them was, tried to DFA my executioner and got promptly punched in the face

That shouldn't work. DFA has the DFAing mech 1 level above the mech being attacked. At best you should only be able to punch them in the legs, and physical attacks are all resolved at the same time anyway.

DFAd, didnt do a lot, ran off in movement, caught up to them and punched em

Not a bad looking Shootist, my dude. You still taking requests or have you moved on to commissions?

so what alpha strike packs should i buy for my friend and I to have 2 balanced forces between us?

Grab 4 packs and use them to build lances, mixing from all 4 packs. I'd recommend Pursuit, Striker, Support, and Battle. That will give you a decent range of masses, leaving out only 20 & 25-ton Mechs, and 100-ton Mechs. You get a good range of everything in between this way.

just wondering why youd leave out the assault lance?

Alternatively, if you don't *have* to have miniatures and would get along with chits and/or cardboard markers, there's the 4e boxed set. It has 2 map sheets, a ton of mech cardboard chits, and record sheets. Should come in cheaper than the latest boxed set, if you can find it. Buy the BT Manual or Total Warfare for updated rules, and you're off to the races.

Cheaper alternative: buy the rulebook, find mapsheets online and print them, use chits.

This is my suggestion. That way you and your friend can mix and match until you find something you like. Also adding more mechs to your collection is as easy as going to sarna and printing out more.

No particular reason, save that in my experience, people in the position of "learning to play the game" aren't well-served by either superheavy autocannon*, or by slow units with bad long-range fire abilities**. The Assault Pack contains both of those problems.

And if you're in the position of asking which lance packs would be good for you and your buddy, then you're probably in the position of "learning to play the game".

>*they make the game very swing-y, and can produce runs of luck which drive off new players. The UrbanMech and its AC/10 got pulled from the Boot Camp tables for largely the same reason; one hit from that AC on another light Mech will take off the entire location using Boot Camp rules.

>**they teach bad habits from the get-go, and are quite often boring because they can't keep up with a battle. 3/5 and mostly short-range weapons make for poor teaching. If the Atlas was 4/6, then it would be fine, because it'd be able to bring its guns more reliably to bear.

My suggestion of those 4 boxes will produce several fairly balanced lances:
Orion
Dragon
Vindicator
Panther

Guillotine
Quickdraw
Centurion
Wolfhound

Zeus
Charger -1a9
Clint
Jenner -F

Those all look roughly balanced. They should all fall somewhere between 4500 and 4600 BV2.

Regarding the remaining Mechs....the Hatchetman and Firestarter are too specialized, Banshee is too swingy (it either sucks or makes it in melee and kicks everything to death), and Awesome is too good, so those 4 don't get an initial home.

>Orion
>Dragon
>Vindicator
>Panther

Crap.

That should read GRAND Dragon. Still the Introtech one. But not the baseline Dragon model.

now heres my big question as i am VERY new.

would these work for the board game version with the hex tiles or does everyone ONLY play alpha strike now? I kinda cant buy the board game anymore withit being 200 bucks alone on ebay

Alpha Strike is dead as a fucking doornail, people just buy the packs to get low price plastic minis.