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PoptartsNinja posted:The clans can deploy 'Mechs from orbit without ever landing a dropship via armored drop-pods. Everyone else has to either jump out of a dropship while it's in the atmosphere, or land the dropship (if their 'Mechs lack jump jets).
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Jan 27, 2011 23:19
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Nobody's going to shoot up a dropship... without excessive support, since Dropships shoot back and typically have a massive armament.
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Jan 27, 2011 23:21
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PoptartsNinja posted:The clans can deploy 'Mechs from orbit without ever landing a dropship via armored drop-pods. Everyone else has to either jump out of a dropship while it's in the atmosphere, or land the dropship (if their 'Mechs lack jump jets). Hell, in the books they'll sometimes do hot drops for no real reason. I seem to recall Victor jumping his Dire Wolf out to "provide cover" for the landing. Which was kind of stupid since they had aerospace assets, and lighter mechs might have been better than having the commander in his 100 ton, nigh-irreplaceable Clan Assault mech jumping out. More Star Trek logic, I guess. "Cram as many officers as you can onto the Away Team for the highly dangerous mission." Though as for shooting dropships down, it really depends on where and when the combat is taking place. The Lyrans in particular love blowing up dropships on the way down. Using microwave power stations to try it if they've got nothing else.
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Jan 27, 2011 23:26
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PoptartsNinja posted:Nobody's going to shoot up a dropship... without excessive support, since Dropships shoot back and typically have a massive armament. Dropships are piss easy targets. Immobile for a -4 to hit, so you sit at long range and run in a circle around it, meaning you're at gunnery + movement to hit as you pound away with PPCs etc, while it's shooting back at a -5 *minimum* modifyer. I was hugely supprised when I realised how easy it is to take them down. Artillery makes it a joke.
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Jan 27, 2011 23:30
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Arquinsiel posted:You know what's really, really, *really* funny? Once the dropship is on the ground, sure. But at that point, it's unloading mechs/tanks/etc, and it makes it a somewhat less valuable target given that you're not taking out a ton of mechs with it instantly like you would on the way down.
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Jan 27, 2011 23:32
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Welp, this thread finally prompted me to go pull my plastic storage bin that has all my MechWarrior: Dark Age clicky-mechs out and look 'em over again. I realize a lot of fans of the old school rules hate 'em, but I always thought they were kinda neat. v v... Still trying to remember why the gently caress I have so many Northwind Highlander units, though... out of 60 mechs, 13 of 'em are Northwind Highlanders.   I've also got all my vehicle and infantry units in a box somewhere, but I'm not gonna bother digging those out, 'cause nobody cares about vehicles & infantry. Plus, you know... 
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Jan 27, 2011 23:42
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Zaodai posted:Once the dropship is on the ground, sure. But at that point, it's unloading mechs/tanks/etc, and it makes it a somewhat less valuable target given that you're not taking out a ton of mechs with it instantly like you would on the way down.
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Jan 27, 2011 23:44
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Arquinsiel posted:True, but they're still viable targets. Also fun is the use of Aerospace with TAG and remembering that a homing Arrow IV takes up a bomb slot. Oh, I know. It was just that we were discussing destroying dropships as one of the motivations behind someone doing a hot drop, rather than "you can't blow up dropships, they're unkillable!". [EDIT] And you have Northwind Highlanders mechs because you like to get drunk and feud with Space Englishmen. Or overwhelming your enemies comms with bagpipe music.
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Jan 27, 2011 23:51
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PoptartsNinja posted:The clans can deploy 'Mechs from orbit without ever landing a dropship via armored drop-pods. Everyone else has to either jump out of a dropship while it's in the atmosphere, or land the dropship (if their 'Mechs lack jump jets). Well, depends on who you ask. They've gone back and forth on this a couple of times. In one edition it wasn't even though of, then it was the norm, then they changed their minds again because they realized how impractical it was. Then it became standard doctrine during the FCCW and they talked about it like it was a new thing. As is usual with old school fluff, it is very confusing due to the whole 1st edition/2nd edition shift. Hell, back when it was called BattleDroids, there were no factories, just automated plants that stitched together new mechs from salvage that had storehouses attached to them.
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Jan 27, 2011 23:53
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W.T. Fits posted:Welp, this thread finally prompted me to go pull my plastic storage bin that has all my MechWarrior: Dark Age clicky-mechs out and look 'em over again. I realize a lot of fans of the old school rules hate 'em, but I always thought they were kinda neat. v It's a decent enough game in its own right, but its not Battletech so everyone hates it. Though watching Wizkids react to the hilariously broken strategies was pretty entertaining too.
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Jan 28, 2011 00:37
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Sair posted:It's a decent enough game in its own right, but its not Battletech so everyone hates it. Though watching Wizkids react to the hilariously broken strategies was pretty entertaining too. Yeah, it really showed a strong lack of playtesting and too much eagerness to stick to the MageKnight mechanics IMO. I mean, if I move my tank two turns in a row it takes damage? Like, real damage?
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Jan 28, 2011 00:40
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Sair posted:It's a decent enough game in its own right, but its not Battletech so everyone hates it. Though watching Wizkids react to the hilariously broken strategies was pretty entertaining too. I missed the whole Dark Ages thing, but I love stories of WizKids incompetence. Could you elaborate?
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Jan 28, 2011 00:42
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Defiance Industries posted:Yeah, it really showed a strong lack of playtesting and too much eagerness to stick to the MageKnight mechanics IMO. I mean, if I move my tank two turns in a row it takes damage? Like, real damage? I don't remember vehicles taking pushing damage, but then again, I don't remember much about the game itself period. I think I have a rulebook around here somewhere... might dig around and see if I can unearth it. ... I'm also trying to figure out what the hell one of these Mechs is. It's a House Liao unique character that doesn't have its unit type listed on the base. The pilot's name on the base is "The Vede" Vederman. All I can find on the BT wiki is that apparently Greg "The Vede" Vederman was born in 3099 and that's about it. Did a GIS and found it listed on a online gaming store as a Mad Cat II, but it appears to lack the LRMs pictured on the Wiki. Edit: Yeah, it's apparently a Mad Cat II. Looks like it was a limited edition figure; I had another one that was unopened (until just a minute ago, anyway) and according to the dossier it comes with, that's what it's supposed to be.  Edit 2: Also found a rulebook from the first set and it turns out that, yes, vehicles take pushing damage. 
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Jan 28, 2011 00:48
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The Casualty posted:Ok the picture is funny but what's the context behind it? My knowledge of Battletech is casual at best. I can field this. There are two great houses that traditionally fought a lot until Hanse Davion secured an alliance between them. One is the Lyran Commonwealth, ruled by the family Steiner. They have fantastic industry, but questionable military commanders. Their solution to any military problem is to gather a big stack of the heaviest assault mechs they can and throw it at any problem they have. The other is the Federated Suns, ruled by the family Davion. They have a strong military tradition, and the Davion family has a history of having fantastic military commanders, but they typically operate on a shoestring budget that leaves very little in the way of heavy forces. Whenever the two would fight, the Steiner assault mechs would typically wander around, shaking their fists impudently at the Davion mediums off on the horizon, while the Davion mechs would out-maneuver them, blow past without ever engaging, and accomplish their objectives.
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Jan 28, 2011 00:56
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W.T. Fits posted:Edit: Yeah, it's apparently a Mad Cat II. Looks like it was a limited edition figure; I had another one that was unopened (until just a minute ago, anyway) and according to the dossier it comes with, that's what it's supposed to be. Yeah it was a limited edition figure done for the at-the-time Tech Reviewer (and later EIC) of PC Gamer, Greg Vederman. I still have mine as well.
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Jan 28, 2011 00:56
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Angry_Ed posted:Yeah it was a limited edition figure done for the at-the-time Tech Reviewer (and later EIC) of PC Gamer, Greg Vederman. I still have mine as well. Oh yeah, now I remember. ... Now I need to try and remember why I have two of them.
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Jan 28, 2011 00:59
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I also had two but for the life of me I can't remember why either. Sort of wish I held onto the second one given how the first one ended up snapping off at the hip. It's repairable but still.
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Jan 28, 2011 01:00
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If I recall right, I think it was a mail-in offer and they were limited to a max of two per mail-in.
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Jan 28, 2011 01:07
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PoptartsNinja: I finally decided to upgrade to platinum, partly because of this thread, so please add me to the back of the *really* long pilot list.
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Jan 28, 2011 01:26
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Gothsheep posted:I can field this. Guh? Steiner and Davion hadn't fought since the First Succession War.
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Jan 28, 2011 01:28
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Hey Poptarts, I too have platinum, entirely because of this thread, I don't think I mentioned that when I asked to be added.
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Jan 28, 2011 01:34
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ShadowDragon8685 posted:I missed the whole Dark Ages thing, but I love stories of WizKids incompetence. Could you elaborate? The thing that sticks out most was the "warpog" army. They introduced artillery in an expansion, and it was actually pretty good. Not too powerful, but enough of a threat to be useful. Then the next expansion had insane artillery. AP to negate defense skills, super accurate, tiny min rage, huge firing arcs, and could cover nearly the entire board. This lead to a godawful army that consisted of 4 of those, the LE version, and infantry screens for them. They were so accurate it that even if you got up on the line, they could easily bomb right next to their own units with no fear. There was also a mech that could charge 24" (2/3 of a standard board), deal 5 damage, and next turn run back to get repaired up. A turn to blow off heat, and its yo-yoing back at you. Transport units that could go half their movement, poo poo out a tank, and it could instantly fire. High damage, good accuracy tanks that could start the game in range of the opponent's deployment area. Win starting initiative was just about a certain win of the game. Hoverbike swarms right at the start that would just run up to any mech/tank and capture it. Thats all I can remember off the top of my head. Like Defiance said, it showed a real lack of properly devious playtesters. Some of these were really obvious as soon as I saw the stats. Though nobody around where I played was overly munchkin, so I didn't see a lot of that in the wild. Mainly the transport drops, but that wasn't too bad to deal with, just silly.
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Jan 28, 2011 01:41
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Defiance Industries posted:Guh? Steiner and Davion hadn't fought since the First Succession War. I thought they fought off and on right up until the third succession war, when they joined up to form the Federated Commonwealth?
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Jan 28, 2011 02:29
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C here. Any safe position I could return fire from? Or should I hide for a turn and dump my ammo?
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Jan 28, 2011 02:35
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Gothsheep posted:I thought they fought off and on right up until the third succession war, when they joined up to form the Federated Commonwealth? The 1SW started off as a free for all in the old Terran Hegemony, where everyone fought everyone. By the early-mid Second War, borders had solidified and combat settled in to mostly along borders with your two neighbors. There's a few exceptions, but the fact the Steiner and Davion hadn't thrown down for a couple hundred years was a big reason Hanse Davion accepted Katrina Steiner's proposal for alliance.
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Jan 28, 2011 02:39
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Pladdicus posted:C here. Any safe position I could return fire from? Or should I hide for a turn and dump my ammo? the closest you can get is 8 hexes from K2, I don't think you can get to k1 simply cause you stood this round and can't jump. I'd take a few medium-long range shots at k2 and remember he is on level 3 so going in a heavy tree hex is going to give you best rolls on his shots to you.
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Jan 28, 2011 02:46
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Defiance Industries posted:The 1SW started off as a free for all in the old Terran Hegemony, where everyone fought everyone. By the early-mid Second War, borders had solidified and combat settled in to mostly along borders with your two neighbors. There's a few exceptions, but the fact the Steiner and Davion hadn't thrown down for a couple hundred years was a big reason Hanse Davion accepted Katrina Steiner's proposal for alliance. Yeah, the fact that the Federated Suns and Lyran Commonwealth basically didn't share much (if any) border space probably helped with the whole thing.
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Jan 28, 2011 02:56
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Also, it was the Lyran Commonwealth who provided Davion with the ability to manufacture BattleMechs in the first place, so there's that too.
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Jan 28, 2011 03:05
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Defiance Industries posted:Also, it was the Lyran Commonwealth who provided Davion with the ability to manufacture BattleMechs in the first place, so there's that too. Courtesy of your namesake I believe, wasn't it? I know they're kind of the backbone of the Lyran mech-production facilities, particularly Hesperus II. Speaking of which: the Nightsky. Probably my favorite of the hatchet-mech variations. 
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Jan 28, 2011 03:08
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Zaodai posted:Oh, I know. It was just that we were discussing destroying dropships as one of the motivations behind someone doing a hot drop, rather than "you can't blow up dropships, they're unkillable!".
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Jan 28, 2011 03:17
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W.T. Fits posted:Welp, this thread finally prompted me to go pull my plastic storage bin that has all my MechWarrior: Dark Age clicky-mechs out and look 'em over again. I realize a lot of fans of the old school rules hate 'em, but I always thought they were kinda neat. v Yeah, I just got mine out of the basement last night (Dragon's Fury/Spirit Cats 4 lyfe), now there's a Cygnus and a Zeus fighing on my bookshelf. I have to be honest, their mold for the Spider was better than any version that came before.
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Jan 28, 2011 03:21
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Agent Interrobang posted:Courtesy of your namesake I believe, wasn't it? I know they're kind of the backbone of the Lyran mech-production facilities, particularly Hesperus II. Well, the LIC stole them from Hesperus II, but Defiance Industries itself wasnt founded until the Reunification War. I personally would pick a target that isn't inside a hollowed out mountain, so that makes sense. And yeah, Nightskies are nice, but I dig the new TSM Banshee with the hatchet.
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Jan 28, 2011 03:25
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Notgothic posted:Yeah, I just got mine out of the basement last night (Dragon's Fury/Spirit Cats 4 lyfe), now there's a Cygnus and a Zeus fighing on my bookshelf. I have to be honest, their mold for the Spider was better than any version that came before.
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Jan 28, 2011 03:28
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Gothsheep posted:The other is the Federated Suns, ruled by the family Davion. They have a strong military tradition, and the Davion family has a history of having fantastic military commanders, but they typically operate on a shoestring budget that leaves very little in the way of heavy forces. Humorous note; while often referred to as "Space America" since they kinda get designated good guy status a bit too often, House Davion is actually officially of French descent. Hence the name, from d'Avion. So, in the Battletech universe the acknowledged greatest tacticians and skilled warriors are in fact the French, which rather shatters THAT stereotype  . Though I imagine the real reason for making them French was to play up the chivalry angle, given how all the societies in-universe are feudal in one form or another.Agent Interrobang posted:Speaking of which: the Nightsky. Probably my favorite of the hatchet-mech variations. Fast and lots of pulse lasers that don't interfere with using the hatchet; always fun. Though the triple-strength myomer Berserker has its own axe fun (basically designed for it; think 100 ton "fire breathing" (head mounted flamer) high speed thing that hits REALLY hard with an axe and you can see why it's regarded as an "oh crap!" mech when it closes). Re: Mechs falling down, I still remember my first BT game with me and my opponent both driving a Hunchback and Commando. Like paired up with like so the Hunchbacks were blazing away at each other with AC/20s. Now, since every 20 pts of damage requires a pilot check to stay up, both Hunchbacks were making them like crazy every time one scored a hit. Well, eventually he fails one and goes down. Funny part is he manages to fail every single further attempt to stand up, resulting in his Hunchback "flopping like a fish" as we put it. This finally ended when I manuevered into his back area and set his ammo off with an final autocannon blast. I always seem to have funny results like that in the few times I've played BT (well, apart for the rematch with the person mentioned above with me in a 5/6 Crusader and him running a 0/0 Atlas in a cavern complex; he was something of a munchkin to put it mildly). I screwed around with Megamek playing some matches against myself to test out tactics for the miniatures I bought. Had a city match where A. an appropriately named Assassin walked up and shot an unconcious Marauder pilot in the head and B. an Archer wound up prone with a Hatchetman wacking it with its hatchet and two other mechs kicking like mad. Was thinking I'd name the actual Assassin mini "Boothe" and see if I can manage to write "Police Brutality" on the Hatchetman's axe  .
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Jan 28, 2011 03:30
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My favorite subpar machine? The Firestarter OmniMech, Config G. Two Flamers, three MLs and an LB-5X. Somehow it always comes through for me in a jam.
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Jan 28, 2011 04:43
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Defiance Industries posted:My favorite subpar machine? The Firestarter OmniMech, Config G. Another good thing about Megamek? It'll do all the hard work of tracking forest fires for you. You don't know hilarious until you take a firestarter with four flamers onto a heavy forest map and just let loose running around too fast to be caught.
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Jan 28, 2011 04:53
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Mukaikubo posted:Another good thing about Megamek? It'll do all the hard work of tracking forest fires for you. You don't know hilarious until you take a firestarter with four flamers onto a heavy forest map and just let loose running around too fast to be caught. You want to talk hilarious? I once played a game where a Griffin hit a BattleMaster in the head from extreme range after jumping with its PPC, scored a critical, destroyed the cockpit, we rolled to see how it fell and it ended up pitching backwards off of the level 2 cliff it was on and landed on top of the Locust in that hex, crushing that cockpit (and most of the rest of the mech). The only way that could have been more ridiculous was if we had known about the Stackpole rule and were using it.
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Jan 28, 2011 05:05
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WarLocke posted:You want to talk hilarious? I once played a game where a Griffin hit a BattleMaster in the head from extreme range after jumping with its PPC, scored a critical, destroyed the cockpit, we rolled to see how it fell and it ended up pitching backwards off of the level 2 cliff it was on and landed on top of the Locust in that hex, crushing that cockpit (and most of the rest of the mech). ...THIS! IS! BATTLETECH!!!! (I'm sorry)
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Jan 28, 2011 05:12
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Mukaikubo posted:...THIS! IS! BATTLETECH!!!! It sounds ridiculous but it's 100% true. We basically stopped playing for the night after that string of rolls.
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Jan 28, 2011 05:16
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Arquinsiel posted:The spider was a beaut alright. But: http://fi.somethingawful.com/is/img338/1203/highlanderregulars.jpg cleary shows that while the Koshi didn't really change *too* much and the Wasp is just the Reseen Wasp, the Centurion... did not fare well (I also have no idea why the Wasp is so drat huge). To be honest, I even liked the Centurion mold, the silliness of the shield+mace version notwithstanding. I do wish they'd had a little better handle on comparative scale for some of the 'mechs (Wolfhound, Summoner and Jupiter are the ones that immediately come to mind; the first two are huge while the Jupiter seems a little small for an assault-class).
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Jan 28, 2011 05:16
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