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There's a lot of nostalgia about Battletech's original "scavenger knights with giant robots" theme that, eventually, got supplanted by "future militaries centered around giant robots." The thing is the former is a pretty niche idea that comes from a very specific zeitgeist (I can't really love the Eighties, I just happened to be born then) while the latter sounds more generic on paper but there's no other prominent Western IP that actually fills that niche. Heavy Gear doesn't count because those things aren't honest-to-goodness gigantobots. Hearing about OG Battletech feels a bit like being an anthropologist getting a peek at the lore of a once-prominent tribal power.
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Jan 30, 2013 03:37
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So much of the game's bias to energy weapons could be helped if DHS post-time skip were like the prototype DHS from 3039. They only worked for sinks outside your 10 freebies.
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Jan 30, 2013 03:38
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jng2058 posted:I suspect it won't go that way, especially if DI is correct and they are going to 3200, but ah, what if they did? A second chance at Battletech without a lot of the insanity that's plagued it over the last couple of decades. GenericServices posted:Battletech's fanbase prides itself on the game's system, in many ways, being fairly the same as it has been since the eighties, an era absolutely renowned for good, solid game design. That oughta tell you how most of those guys feel about dangerous ideas like "change." The worst thing Catalyst can do for Battletech is listen to their forum-goers.  for the playerbase, so I can kind of see where they're coming from. Ruleswise I see no need for the core game to change. The reason I like Battletech is the very clunky 80's terribleness of the machine sheet sub-genre, if I want something streamlined and flowing with the same feel I can always just play Tomorrow's War.Also relevant is that the current people in Catalyst are the same people that turned out the lights in FASA, jumped ship with the IP to Wizkids and almost killed the thing dead with Mechwarrior: Dark Age. There's gotta be at least some executive medelling to blame, but the same people managed to run this poo poo into the ground aready. Twice. The jargon was the same with MW:DA too, all about "mechs are rare and precious" and "poo poo is crappier than 1940's tech because" and all kinds of lowtech funzies which failed to pan out. T.G. Xarbala posted:I wanna see the Scorpion LAM in action.  Mukaikubo posted:Absolutely; though amusingly, they revealed that they chose "3250" as a date for the reboot intentionally as an anagram of 3025, because they repeatedly stated they wanted to get back to that rough feel. I thought that was promising. A lot of others did not. So it goes.
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Jan 30, 2013 03:39
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Defiance Industries posted:So much of the game's bias to energy weapons could be helped if DHS post-time skip were like the prototype DHS from 3039. They only worked for sinks outside your 10 freebies. It doesn't help matters that, outside of Gauss Rifles and the heavier LB-X ACs (the 10 and 20 models), most ballistic weapons suck.
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Jan 30, 2013 03:41
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The AC/5 of any flavor makes for good AA but that's about it. I guess you can use the AC/2 to try and shoot down light aircraft too, but that's even more specific than the 5.
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Jan 30, 2013 03:45
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It's telling that the MWO AC2 does 2000% more dps than the TT one, and is still utter garbage.
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Jan 30, 2013 03:51
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At least in TT these things sort of have their place. The UAC2 is silly, until you see a Kraken 1 with a decent pilot (like a certain evil SOB sprung on a certain GoonLevelII...) at which point it becomes a murdercannon. The LB-X 2 is definitively an AA murdergun, although an arguement can be made for the LB-X 5 and the RAC2 or 5 being better at it. The humble machine gun is either under- or over-rated depending on what player you talk to and the RACs are an interesting option as an all-rounder gun. HAG are kind of just CLRMs but different. Silver Bullet Gauss are essentially HAGs but less good, and the Light Gauss is an interesting way to not use an ER Large Laser. The best ballistic gun is the Light Recoilless Rifle on a BA though, because those things are pretty sweet.
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Jan 30, 2013 04:00
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So, what I'm getting from this is that sensible game design is lostech?
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Jan 30, 2013 04:03
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The HGR is a fun weapon to punish people for their bad positioning, though. Takes some precise planning, of course. The iHGR on the other hand is a devastating weapon, forged in the heart of a dying star and feared throughout known space.
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Jan 30, 2013 04:04
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AC/5s wouldn't have been so bad if they started out with the tonnage of the LAC/5. LAC/5s are actually pretty nice - although in fairness it does still take other advanced tech like precision AC rounds and tcomps to make them really dangerous. In general the smaller-caliber ballistics need to be much smaller than the original AC/2 and AC/5 to really be very viable.
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Jan 30, 2013 04:19
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That's the thing about nostalgia. Everyone wants to be Knights of the Inner Sphere, but once the cat's out of the bag, nobody wants to swap back to a half repaired Warhammer from a Timber Wolf. They want to be able to charge into battle with a pristine mech against the enemy, and not have things that are put together with twine, spit and prayers. I will say that I think that one of the reasons that Dark Age failed so hard (at least with me) was that it just didn't have any buildup. One minute it's 3160 or whatever, the next all mechs were melted down except for those who supported the And then they tell you it all happened within the span of a single lifetime (to the point fighters in the Clan Invasion were still alive in places). It's basically entirely unbelievable that that much tech would be lost that fast without a serious level of depopulation occuring. And people didn't want to write up a mech sheet for their Agro-mech that has a couple machine guns pasted on it's ballz. Nother question: In Dark age, how can they have Agro-mechs, and be building agromechs... but can't build actual Battlemechs? I mean I realize that the weapons would be harder to find, but you'd think that the Chassis and basic structure would be buildable.
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Jan 30, 2013 04:24
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^^^ The Dark Age was an attempt to streamline BattleTech. It had a couple of big flaws though: using clicky bases and Mage Knight rules (when Mage Knight itself was on the way out), CCG-esque random boosters with bizarre sculpts, and the lack of lead-up was really painful. It wasn't a bad game; but because it came hot on the heels of the end of the novel line it took people off guard; and the first MW:DA novel was so godawful I didn't pick up any of the others. The protagonist of that one is worse than Jeremiah Rose (whom I secretly suspect is a parody of Stackpole's Sues). Also, AgroMechs use a steel frame / industrial myomer / industrial armor. Yes, a person who builds tractors for a living could probably build a tank but I don't think Caterpillar's making any M1A1s. I could be wrong. Anyway. One of the LP Cougar's configurations mounts  I really should do the AUTRO entry for it one of these days. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Jan 30, 2013 |
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Jan 30, 2013 04:24
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PoptartsNinja posted:The protagonist of that one is worse than Jeremiah Rose (whom I secretly suspect is a parody of Stackpole's Sues). Was that the one where the professional mercenary beat up the harmless hippie chick, but hey, it's okay because he's the protagonist and is therefore clearly always in the right?
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Jan 30, 2013 04:47
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Calax posted:That's the thing about nostalgia. Everyone wants to be Knights of the Inner Sphere, but once the cat's out of the bag, nobody wants to swap back to a half repaired Warhammer from a Timber Wolf. They want to be able to charge into battle with a pristine mech against the enemy, and not have things that are put together with twine, spit and prayers. We also lost a Hunchback that game to pre-existing damage rolls before the game even started. TAC, torso, ammo, BOOOOOOOOM! Had just enough loaded to kill it too. Glorious. PoptartsNinja posted:Yes, a person who builds tractors for a living could probably build a tank  (best I can do, sorry Kiwi mekbros).
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Jan 30, 2013 04:49
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Honestly if there's anything a 3250 timeskip could do its rejigger the weapon balance.
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Jan 30, 2013 05:37
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W.T. Fits posted:Was that the one where the professional mercenary beat up the harmless hippie chick, but hey, it's okay because he's the protagonist and is therefore clearly always in the right? Later on in the series the democratically elected Republic Senate tries to take power from the Exarch, who is appointed by an oligarchy, because the Republic is going down the tubes at a hilarious rate. They are the bad guy because they are not military leaders.
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Jan 30, 2013 05:41
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T.G. Xarbala posted:There's a lot of nostalgia about Battletech's original "scavenger knights with giant robots" theme that, eventually, got supplanted by "future militaries centered around giant robots." The thing is the former is a pretty niche idea that comes from a very specific zeitgeist (I can't really love the Eighties, I just happened to be born then) Get off my lawn. Durn kids... Calax posted:That's the thing about nostalgia. Everyone wants to be Knights of the Inner Sphere, but once the cat's out of the bag, nobody wants to swap back to a half repaired Warhammer from a Timber Wolf. They want to be able to charge into battle with a pristine mech against the enemy, and not have things that are put together with twine, spit and prayers. I disagree. When Car Wars was approaching maximum stupidity, the Chassis and Crossbow supplement (think Mad Max) was a breath of fresh air. Beat-up jalopies with racks of automatic rifles bolted to the roof was a boatload of fun.
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Jan 30, 2013 06:03
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Arquinsiel posted:You'd think that, but some of the most fun games I have ever played were Operation Klondike scenarios where we charged into battle with a Harvester Ant that had replaced the Combine Harvester with a pair of Machine Guns and an SRM2 and then another with just an SRM2 with three rounds of ammo as well as the Combine. Bizzarely the one with the Combine was more dangerous. You haven't LIVED until you've got a Star Captain in a Royal Phoenix Hawk fleeing the mighty Harvester Ant just in case the dirt farmer driving the drat thing lands a lucky hit on that open torso. Like the other guy pointed out, the "Giant robots fighting each other as war-machines" has a much bigger appeal than "Armored war-bots are only for Knights, while the rest of you get tractors!" In pop culture Battletech is mostly known for Mechwarrior and MechCommander. Both of which were more wargames than anything. And even in the larger sphere of table top gaming and video games, you rarely see anything akin to the "Armored Knights of the Inner Sphere!" mentality that was in the original game. Now, you could still scale back the proportions of the game and have it so that instead of Heavies and Assaults being the kings of the battlefield, they're the rare mechs, while the Mediums and below are the bulk of forces on the field. In the Btech books, at least after the invasion, most pilots were zipping around in heavies or Assaults (barring "not fighting in this picture" Dan Allard and Phelan "gently caress you I'm a Kahn" Kell)
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Jan 30, 2013 06:34
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Judging unit comp based on what named characters drive is going to skew your perception a lot. They drive the rarer, fancier, heavier designs because they're important.
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Jan 30, 2013 06:40
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Yeah, it's a post-Mechwarrior generational gap more than anything but it's an intuitive one that makes a lot of sense when trying to grab new players. Though "zipping around" isn't how I'd describe riding an assault `Mech. 
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Jan 30, 2013 06:41
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T.G. Xarbala posted:Yeah, it's a post-Mechwarrior generational gap more than anything but it's an intuitive one that makes a lot of sense when trying to grab new players. Though "zipping around" isn't how I'd describe riding an assault `Mech. It depends on the Assault mech, doesn't it? Some examples of speedy Assault mechs are the Charger, the Executioner (with MASC anyway) and the Gargoyle.
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Jan 30, 2013 06:53
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PoptartsNinja posted:It wasn't a bad game; but because it came hot on the heels of the end of the novel line it took people off guard; and the first MW:DA novel was so godawful I didn't pick up any of the others. The protagonist of that one is worse than Jeremiah Rose (whom I secretly suspect is a parody of Stackpole's Sues). Oh good god I almost forgot about that one. It was written like a lovely potboiler novel which may just seem to be par for the course with Stackpole, but the rabbit hole goes even deeper when it's revealed that our Mary Sue just loves to write all his intelligence reports in such a fashion for Victor Steiner-Davion to read and chuckle over. So yes, our novel is really just us reading the intelligence report of the worst loving intelligence agent in the Inner Sphere. I did like some of the later Dark Age novels, though, especially the ones dealing with the reformation of the Free Worlds League like To Ride the Chimera.
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Jan 30, 2013 06:54
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Defiance Industries posted:Judging unit comp based on what named characters drive is going to skew your perception a lot. They drive the rarer, fancier, heavier designs because they're important. True, but it still felt like, in the books, there were Executioners, Dashi's, Mad Cats, Murauders, Atlases, Warhammers and Victors that weren't of the "named" characters all over.
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Jan 30, 2013 06:57
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"And then Victor slaughtered a million Trebuchets" doesn't read as well as "And then Victor had an amazing and heroic duel with a `Mech only SLIGHTLY worse than the one he's driving."
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Jan 30, 2013 07:25
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landcollector posted:It depends on the Assault mech, doesn't it? Some examples of speedy Assault mechs are the Charger, the Executioner (with MASC anyway) and the Gargoyle. On a modern battlefield 5/8 isn't that fast really.
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Jan 30, 2013 07:26
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PoptartsNinja posted:"And then Victor slaughtered a million Trebuchets" doesn't read as well as "And then Victor had an amazing and heroic duel with a `Mech only SLIGHTLY worse than the one he's driving." That's a fault of the writer(s) more than the scenario, I think. The lone Hero holding back the horde can be a compelling tale.
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Jan 30, 2013 07:28
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There are no hordes in BattleTech (unless you PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Jan 30, 2013 |
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Jan 30, 2013 07:31
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Q_res posted:That's a fault of the writer(s) more than the scenario, I think. The lone Hero holding back the horde can be a compelling tale. And then you get Aidan Pryde and his magic ERSLAS of Thug-Slaying.
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Jan 30, 2013 07:38
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I really just want BattleTech fiction in the style of Glen Cook. Or Glen Cook writing something with giant fuckoff space robots.
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Jan 30, 2013 07:51
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PoptartsNinja posted:"And then Victor slaughtered a million Trebuchets" doesn't read as well as "And then Victor had an amazing and heroic duel with a `Mech only SLIGHTLY worse than the one he's driving." "And then Victor barely won against a single Elemental!" Also, Cook has done some sci-fi stuff... although some of it is rather confusing
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Jan 30, 2013 08:03
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I think we need to clarify that the whole agro-mech with MGs thing was new for Dark Age. 3025 was still about straight up Battlemechs fighting other Battlemechs. Battlemechs were rare and precious, sure, but you rarely saw battles that weren't about Battlemechs vs Battlemechs. The difference between Succession Wars era and the later ones was that even through 3025 if your 'mech got destroyed, you were hosed. You've just lost a nigh irreplaceable heirloom from a bygone age. You may have, in fact, just had the only thing keeping your family in the nice house back home blown to hell because you weren't smart enough to dump your MG ammo. It also meant that if you were playing in-era style, especially in any kind of campaign format with permanence, you played to preserve the 'mech. Not only was it worth it to lose a battle to keep from losing your 'mech, but it was the correct decision. That town, that city, hell in many cases, that whole loving planet is not as important to you as keeping that walking robot on its two (or occasionally four) feet. There was even a term for a Mechwarrior who lost his or her 'mech. Dispossessed. It was a Mechwarrior's worst fear, because even dying in battle wasn't as bad. If you die they can hose your remains out of the cockpit and get your little sister into the cockpit. If the 'mech is lost, then your family is finished. Why were the Death Commandos so feared back in the day? Yes, they were badasses, as the current battle shows, but even more so it was because in an era where keeping your 'mech intact was the difference between life and death for your whole loving family, the Death Commandos would sacrifice everything, including their Battlemechs, to get the job done! The Commandos were terrifying because they didn't play by the same rules as everybody else. Later on, though, if your 'mech got blown up, you requisitioned a new one from the depot and got back to the fighting. It didn't mean anything anymore. Maybe you had some emotional attachment to your first ride, but if you lose yours, oh well, no big deal. I wanted a bigger ride anyhow. Hell, in the Clans, no one owns their own 'mech. You pick your machine based on the mission, configure it the way you want, and get to it. More efficient? Certainly. But it loses the value of the machine. A Battlemech...a true Battlemech...is important. It's a god on the battlefield, challenged only by other gods. Losing one is a tragedy, and killing one a major achievement. An Omnimech, as used by the Clans, is just another vehicle with guns. It's modular and replaceable, and if if gets destroyed it matters only vis a vis how it affects the ongoing battle, not as something important in of itself. That's why I prefer to play in the older eras. I want my giant robot to be a precious artifact of war, not just a disposable ride. There are lots of games out there that I can play to get science fiction warfare. Battletech, at its best, was one of the very few games where I'd go out of my way to keep my units alive even if it meant sacrificing tactically to do so. And that was because the game managed to impart value into the giant robot...even if only for a little while.
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Jan 30, 2013 08:17
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the JJ posted:I really just want BattleTech fiction in the style of Glen Cook. Or Glen Cook writing something with giant fuckoff space robots. Always hounded by that Atlas with the crippled leg. Even when they eventually ambush and headcap it, the head comes back attached to a crappy body to keep shooting deathlasers at them.
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Jan 30, 2013 08:25
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Calax posted:
But none of it with, you know, giant gently caress off robots.
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Jan 30, 2013 08:46
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jng2058 posted:I think we need to clarify that the whole agro-mech with MGs thing was new for Dark Age. 3025 was still about straight up Battlemechs fighting other Battlemechs. Battlemechs were rare and precious, sure, but you rarely saw battles that weren't about Battlemechs vs Battlemechs. That feeling of losing something valuable, something that can't be measured in C-Bills, is one of the best parts of the entire thing. That, and if you had someone competent running your games/writing the books, those risk-averting battles actually could keep you on the edge of your seat: people just don't seem to understand anymore that the threshold for failure and utter ruination was much lower than in, well, almost any other setting. And of course the computer games didn't help: it just led to a proliferation of twinks and min-maxers. Min-maxing BT makes me sad, really.
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Jan 30, 2013 11:07
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Arquinsiel posted:Also relevant is that the current people in Catalyst are the same people that turned out the lights in FASA, jumped ship with the IP to Wizkids and almost killed the thing dead with Mechwarrior: Dark Age. There's gotta be at least some executive medelling to blame, but the same people managed to run this poo poo into the ground aready. Twice. The jargon was the same with MW:DA too, all about "mechs are rare and precious" and "poo poo is crappier than 1940's tech because" and all kinds of lowtech funzies which failed to pan out. The accounting fuckup a few years back that almost tanked Catalyst and led to the glut of PDF-only content lies solely on their heads, though.
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Jan 30, 2013 12:36
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jng2058 posted:I think we need to clarify that the whole agro-mech with MGs thing was new for Dark Age. 3025 was still about straight up Battlemechs fighting other Battlemechs. Battlemechs were rare and precious, sure, but you rarely saw battles that weren't about Battlemechs vs Battlemechs. You my friend are a god drat poet. Couldn't have said it better myself. Another thing I really like about 3025 era Battletech over the rest of the settings is just /how/ much emphasis is placed on salvage. You absolutely need it to function, and for all the tales of grand battles that decide the fate of worlds, sometimes all you need to make a good story is a stirring tale about that day a lone Infantryman became the master of a walking titan of destruction because of a single rocket launcher, a good perch, and the patience to wait until the time is right. In later eras, you just don't get that because of the aforementioned disposable-ness of the Battlemechs. Capturing an enemy ride just doesn't have the same emphasis, nor does it have the same mystic as it did in those early days when getting your own Battlemech was the equivilant of a Rags to Riches tale.
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Jan 30, 2013 12:37
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Calax posted:I can understand that. But the thing is, how much mass appeal is there for that? I mean, this is just me putting on a non-trained business hat BUT, what kid wants to play a game where he's driving a glorified tractor with machine guns? That's what you're asking them to do in Dark Age... and people wondered why it failed. Also: what jng2058 said, again. The Merry Marauder posted:And then you get Aidan Pryde and his magic ERSLAS of Thug-Slaying. DeepThrobble posted:FASA was absurdly lucky to score a runaway hit, as those up top never quite grasped that they should make more products that actually sell and generate ROI like the TROs and discontinue scenarios/sourcebooks for insignificant mary sue mercenary units like the Black Thorns. I'll favor the people who kept the IP alive for over a decade, probably giving up earning more money elsewhere, over the freeper dinosaurs who will continue to bitch that something is insufficiently eighties for their tastes.
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Jan 30, 2013 13:18
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PoptartsNinja posted:There are no hordes in BattleTech (unless you Oh Christ, I wish this were true. PTN? Never read any Dark Ages novel about the Jade Falcons. Just... some things are not worth it. The most crazypants character in a universe noted for its diversity of utter lunatics becomes Khan of the Falcons, restyles them into a rampaging horde- that word is used- styles herself "Genghis Khan" only with some teeth-grating misspelling to be precious, and basically wanders around a chunk of the Inner Sphere blowing things up, raving like a lunatic, and broadcasting holos of cutting herself while naked and drinking the blood to intimidate people into surrendering. Her actual personal motivation, as clearly laid out in the books, is to make humanity extinct because she is mad that her lover and sibko brother got killed in a fight as though he was just another Clan warrior (which he was). Malvina Hazen is one of the worst characters ever made for this franchise.  And that is not even getting into her adopting an IS orphan and raising her to be a sociopath for no raisin. Or crashing an irreplaceable warship into her own capital after having already won a civil war to intimidate anyone else who might betray her.I wish I made any of that up. Really I do. That is one of the things I had to fight past to find some good things about Dark Ages.
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Jan 30, 2013 15:15
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jng2058 posted:Classic Awesomeness. I agree with all of this, especially the interest in playing in the earlier eras. Throw in a few lostech bones and you see people not only considering the loss of a Mech but the loss of that ER Large Laser (Sure they're not great, but they're better than a regular Large Laser in the Succession War). It's why the Axman and a few other 'new' mechs were so significant, they weren't better or anything, they were NEW in a setting where new was extremely rare.
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Jan 30, 2013 15:19
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Mukaikubo posted:Oh Christ, I wish this were true. PTN? Never read any Dark Ages novel about the Jade Falcons. Just... some things are not worth it. The most crazypants character in a universe noted for its diversity of utter lunatics becomes Khan of the Falcons, restyles them into a rampaging horde- that word is used- styles herself "Genghis Khan" only with some teeth-grating misspelling to be precious, and basically wanders around a chunk of the Inner Sphere blowing things up, raving like a lunatic, and broadcasting holos of cutting herself while naked and drinking the blood to intimidate people into surrendering. Her actual personal motivation, as clearly laid out in the books, is to make humanity extinct because she is mad that her lover and sibko brother got killed in a fight as though he was just another Clan warrior (which he was). Malvina Hazen is one of the worst characters ever made for this franchise. I'll admit that when you told me about that character, I was turned off from reading dark age entirely.
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Jan 30, 2013 15:28
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