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PoptartsNinja posted:I'm intentionally using a sub-optimal Marauder (and sub-optimal Marauder variant) to keep from crushing the OpForce too badly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8oTh1n6HAw&t=691s
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May 7, 2021 05:19
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210 damage is nearly enough to core the Nightstar through the CT on its own (that shot would've left it with... 40 armor). In tabletop terms, that shot was equivalent to an Autocannon/42. That Dragon is a silly gimmick and I love it. 
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May 7, 2021 05:26
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Why are they called Brian anyway?
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May 7, 2021 05:30
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They're named after (the first) Brian Cameron. They were his idea, after he spent a fair bit of time with House Kurita and came to a sudden realization that: holy poo poo, House Kurita.
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May 7, 2021 05:34
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PoptartsNinja posted:They're named after (the first) Brian Cameron. They were his idea, after he spent a fair bit of time with House Kurita and came to a sudden realization that: holy poo poo, House Kurita. I mean, maybe he also learned the wrong lesson from Kurita given he made sure only his family would ever rule the Star League. The story of him dying to a bull is pretty funny though.
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May 7, 2021 10:49
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A uac/20 (+20 damage so really a uac/24) is a fun toy.
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May 7, 2021 11:47
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I really, really like the ending of that last mission. Also, if you keep on capturing lost tech like this you might have to rebrand the thread as a Homeworld LP.
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May 7, 2021 11:47
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PoptartsNinja posted:The Enterprise-class Carrier was a boondoggle that couldn't generate enough thrust to move itself. In space. It wasn't even a "can't move fast enough to be anything more than a defensive tool," they couldn't get it to move at all so the SLDF somehow designed and built a WarShip with engines that produced thrust and counter-thrust simultaneously and in equal amounts and they couldn't figure out how to fix it.
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May 7, 2021 12:05
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The enterprise was designed well When it was a 1,000,000 ton warship, then they kept layering extra fighters and guns and armor on it, and WHOOPSADOODLE we can't engine no more
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May 7, 2021 13:42
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It's in space though. How do you make a thing not move in space? You have to try really hard to have that happen.
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May 7, 2021 13:49
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Yeah, adding more armor and poo poo would have just made it move slower. You have to actually gently caress up thrust to make it not move at all.
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May 7, 2021 14:13
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Zurai posted:Yeah, adding more armor and poo poo would have just made it move slower. You have to actually gently caress up thrust to make it not move at all. Well you see they kept adding hangers to it, so they moved some of the thrust vents, and then they had to rebuild the engine, but one guy wanted rear mounted naval autocannons so they changed the direction of the engine flow and WELL
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May 7, 2021 14:28
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The Star League is low-key terrifying and was set up intentionally to prevent any of the Successor States from ever actually replacing it. Sumire is absolutely right to be terrified of anything Star League related because even the most harmless-seeming Star League technology is usually not benevolent; and anything SLDF could easily be described as "actively malicious." The Star League gets compared to Rome a lot, but as far as governments go nothing historical really compares. From the top down, the Star League was a bureaucratic autocracy based in the Terran Hegemony, which made up the very core of the Inner Sphere of human colonization. The Hegemony was pretty much every planet that the Terran government felt they could exert direct control over. Everything beyond that was a no-man's land of unchecked colonization, space piracy, and worse. When the families that would later become the Great Houses started taking over their neighbors, the Terran Hegemony started scrambling to find a way to keep them in check and prevent any of them from getting it into their heads that Terra needed to be conquered. The solution the Hegemony found--other than pointing the rising Successor States at one another--was Neofeudalism. They went all-in on traditional nobility, fancy parties, and inherited status with limited upward mobility. The Successor States (except for the Free Worlds League) were pretty primed for this since they were autocracies already and hereditary government was a way for the families in power to remain in power indefinitely. The Star League essentially set up a limited number of kings (just enough to make them easy to pit against one another), helped those kings conquer their neighboring states, and establish huge power blocks that probably couldn't have attained the same size without the help of the Star League "Defense Force." Then they created the First Lord as a theoretical Princeps / "first among equals" situation; but in practice the First Lord was just a King of Kings who could dictate terms to the Successor States because the Terran Hegemony was both more populous and more industrialized but understood that that wasn't going to last forever. The First Lord was theoretically answerable to the Terran Hegemony's elected government but that lasted about as long as you'd probably expect. The Star League wanted to create a series of power external blocks that were accustomed to autocratic dictatorship, beholden to the Star League, and also accustomed to hereditary subservience to the Star League and they succeeded* for a pretty remarkable stretch of time. *With the exception of House Kurita, the only successor state that probably didn't need the Star League's help to conquer all of its neighbors and would have expanded until it burned itself out without the League acting as a break to keep them in check and let the other Successor States catch up. The Star League's success was also their undoing. In order to keep power they had to limit human expansion, the Star League's "explorer corps" (which was responsible for charting new habitable planets) essentially started loving up possible colony worlds in a huge swath to make sure they'd be beholden to the Star League's proprietary terraforming technologies. Needless to say, this pissed off a lot of burgeoning minor powers that had been developing around the edges of the Great Houses. When Stefan Amaris took over the Star League *Except for the one who escaped. Stefan Amaris's descendants were alive and well until Stefan Amaris VII committed an elaborate suicide (via a Clan Steel Viper mercenary who had been hired by Thomas Marik's Knights of the Inner Sphere) somewhere in the 3055-3058 stretch where everything was only a bit weirder than normal.
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May 7, 2021 14:52
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PoptartsNinja posted:The Star League's success was also their undoing. In order to keep power they had to limit human expansion, the Star League's "explorer corps" (which was responsible for charting new habitable planets) essentially started loving up possible colony worlds in a huge swath to make sure they'd be beholden to the Star League's proprietary terraforming technologies. Needless to say, this pissed off a lot of burgeoning minor powers that had been developing around the edges of the Great Houses. You know, this is one point that I think could use a bit of emphasis if Btech ever gets a modernization/rewrite/update. I think its totally apt that the star league absolutely screwed over a few prime planets in the name of keeping everyone else from going there and getting ahead. I think what I'd like to see changed is that the pentagon worlds/clan homeworlds change from 'resourced strapped/barren wastelands' to 'nicholas kerensky, being at the top of the food chain, had top-top-top shelf secret info about a cluster of worlds that HADN'T been hosed up beyond recognition yet ' and the exodus there - instead of putting them into 'resource shortfall drives us to efficient duelist nation' stuff; its a reversion: By becoming a space-age industrial power with spare production disproportionate to its size (like say, sweden or france with their aerospace programs and naval exports), and instead of being an underdog vs the collossus-isity of the inner sphere are actually a bit less hamstrung. Then, warrior-culture is more of a sports-team analogy taken to a way extreme (in the same way rioting hockey/football/teams have reputations for getting carried away) and everything bein bout supporting the victors or planning a next match. Redfor v blueforce wargame exercises being the national equivalent of the world cup and highly sought over and speculated upon, that sort a things. An overconfident sport take on warrior culture would, I think, resonate fairly well with an millenial audience. The comparison I'd make would be clan mechs are the carbon-fiber and aluminium sportscars of battlemechs (complete with crumple zones and other overengineered jazz) in an age where everything is still a full steel tank of a frame. It wasn't really done en masse before because of more pressing economic needs and it being a hastle to jump-start new technologies in a dark age. Old mechs are built like TANKS, but man, the things you can do with power to weight ratios when all your structure is half the weight and you have two decades of compacting and refining tech that goes on it. (this is how it already is with endo and stuff, but I appreciate the leap-of-tech analogy) TheParadigm fucked around with this message at 15:58 on May 7, 2021 |
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May 7, 2021 15:49
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TheParadigm posted:You know, this is one point that I think could use a bit of emphasis if Btech ever gets a modernization/rewrite/update. So what you're saying with this is that your version of Clan 'Mechs are basically Gundams
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May 7, 2021 16:36
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Protagonist gundams. No mass production models, supercharged and customised prototypes only.
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May 7, 2021 16:44
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That's pretty much the case. OmniMechs are notorious hangar queens.
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May 7, 2021 16:44
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On the one hand, it's fun and endearing that basically everything from the 80s onward is still in canon and valid in their own way including the extremely dumb bullshit like the terrible cartoon, with most modern stuff just ignoring the racism as much as possible. On the other hand, the racism's still there and most of what that "in canon" stuff amounts to is "yeah it's around" and a lot of the backstory that exists just to justify why people are in tanks with legs and not just tanks is very bad, convoluted, or pure nonsense like the Clans (which can still be fun, but let's be honest lol). HBG Battletech made a really good call just placing the plot in the Periphery in a new state and sidestepping basically everything except when it'd be fun not to Also since I've been playing Gundam Maxiboost I learned that Gundams are generally 40-70 tons so the whole thing about how weird it is that mechs are so light is even worse there lol RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 17:20 on May 7, 2021 |
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May 7, 2021 17:18
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PoptartsNinja posted:The Star League's success was also their undoing. In order to keep power they had to limit human expansion, the Star League's "explorer corps" (which was responsible for charting new habitable planets) essentially started loving up possible colony worlds in a huge swath to make sure they'd be beholden to the Star League's proprietary terraforming technologies. Needless to say, this pissed off a lot of burgeoning minor powers that had been developing around the edges of the Great Houses. The League's central planning office also set up most of these distant worlds with ultra-specialized economies so they were just like... Planet Boot. That way everyone is too dependent on exports and imports to rock the boat. When the ships stop coming, though, everyone starves. I think you're overstating the impact of the Terran Hegemony on the foundation of the Great Houses, though (and not just because the FWL predates the Hegemony). The Hegemony WAS an agent to uphold that power structure, but that's not until the later parts of the Age of War, where they start playing mediator and trying to uphold the status quo, such as when they showed up to stall for time until Robert Steiner's reinforcements could show up and save him. Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 17:39 on May 7, 2021 |
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May 7, 2021 17:32
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goatface posted:Protagonist gundams. No mass production models, supercharged and customised prototypes only. PoptartsNinja posted:That's pretty much the case. OmniMechs are notorious hangar queens. Yeah basically. The comparisons are already there; making it more highlighted is just for comprehension's sake. I mean when you look at like, say, a Timber Wolf and any IS mech from 2750-3030(spitball example: Dragon, catapult) and what it can do, you can start drawing comparisons between a 1970 VW stationwagon and a bugati veyron or modern lamborghini. (my fave offhand comparison is the drifting lambo from Hyperdrive on netflix - anyway, its hilarious, the racer/engineer put an RWD cutout into an automatic lamborghini and turned it into a drift car. Thats a fairly good analogy for 'dang neat tricks you can do with a customizable computer than you can't with a dumber old gen logic board') Omnimechs having 'USB plug and play' standardization for weapons and equipment alone is a pretty big thing. (strategically speaking) That's something modern militaries struggle with: A planegoon would have to double check me on this, but I think really only the F-35 can load and fire any nato ordnance out of the box. Maybe late generation revision fighters, like the f-22 of f-18e; and even some of the fighters that can carry missiles developed/manufactured later on need external pods to use it, (particularly in the air-t-ground role with regards to litening pods and bombs, or laser designated munitions) Practically I'm pretty sure for the average jerkwarrior, it means "well, mechtechs, stop sitting on your hands and swap the lasers again!" Things I did not know before today: The timber wolf was apparently manufactured in 2945 first (according to sarna), and the summoner in 2863. This means like, they were in production for a good hundred years before the clan invasion, and more like 150-160 for the previous generation of mechs before it. Did the IS have anything even CLOSE (even in secret projects) within that timeframe in the whole like 2700-3025 range? Maybe like, the last factory on terra putting out royal or churning out lancelots (right into comstar's hands?) Edit: The other comparison I wanted to point out/raise up was like, Sweden. Modeling the clans after a relatively small nation with good resources and a tech base would get you to the same end result with a more understandable backstory. That country makes has some fairly impressive high tech stuff in the manufacturing department for its size, both in naval and aviation. Gripens and the visby corvette come to mind as examples of punching above its size. TheParadigm fucked around with this message at 18:00 on May 7, 2021 |
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May 7, 2021 17:47
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TheParadigm posted:Did the IS have anything even CLOSE (even in secret projects) within that timeframe in the whole like 2700-3025 range? Almost all "Clan" technology is actually cutting-edge SLDF weapon projects that the Clans put into mass production in the mid-2800s, so kind of. 1-ton large lasers, half-weight LRM racks, two-crit DHS, all things the SLDF was just about to start prototyping when Amaris attacked. They closest they come to a real development of their own is BA
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May 7, 2021 17:55
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Defiance Industries posted:Almost all "Clan" technology is actually cutting-edge SLDF weapon projects that the Clans put into mass production in the mid-2800s, so kind of. 1-ton large lasers, half-weight LRM racks, two-crit DHS, all things the SLDF was just about to start prototyping when Amaris attacked. They closest they come to a real development of their own is BA Yeah. With the exception of BA and the Omnimech, the Clans were mostly just about refining tech to its peak performance rather than trying to make new tech. It wasn't until they invaded the Inner Sphere and got roflstomped by Comstar that they realized they should start developing /new/ technology instead of just refining better versions of old.
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May 8, 2021 12:23
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Zurai posted:Yeah, adding more armor and poo poo would have just made it move slower. You have to actually gently caress up thrust to make it not move at all. So it's something like the Vasa but in space?
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May 8, 2021 12:31
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girl dick energy posted:I love these kinds of stories, because if you don't look too deep into it, the SLDF fill the same narrative role as the Precursor Species(TM) in softer sci-fi, or the ancient elves in fantasy. Except if you dig even a little deeper, you start to realize that no, actually, there are some very good reasons why they aren't around any more. Nicholas Kerensky Did Everything Wrong.
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May 8, 2021 12:31
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In Regards to IS innovation and secret projects Comstar turned into a whack job cult, actively went and hunted down anyone with good tech to murder, blew up science projects etc, and stockpiled the good poo poo while making new stuff for themselves with the goal of reducing the inner sphere into a technological dark age that they would then gloriously save from itself. Unfortunately the Helm Memory core got spread to the sphere and the great houses started doing crash projects to tech up, mostly to beat on each other better but still Also the whole FED-COM jazz
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May 8, 2021 14:32
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PoptartsNinja posted:
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May 8, 2021 14:59
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I will have a device sent to your ship. An electronic codebreaker of advanced design. Given enough time, it'll chew through any encryption—even yours. 
[Ancestry: Deep Periphery] With respect, I'm surprised that a Periphery lord even has access to such a device.
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AtomikKrab posted:In Regards to IS innovation and secret projects There's also the fact that everyone realized that blowing up industrial capacity was a good way to kneecap opponents, and by the time anybody looked up from their orgy of conquest and destruction and said "but wait, does anybody remember how to put this poo poo back together when we're done," it was too late and the answer was no. Plus when Kerensky left, he took a lot of the rad tech and the people who knew how to make it with him, so it's not like it'd take a lot of bombing to sweep the crumbs left behind into the trash. How much of it is because of that and how much of it is because of the spoilered thing, however, I couldn't say, and I wouldn't be surprised if whoever's running the setting now is deliberately vague about it to give themselves future wiggle room.
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May 8, 2021 15:29
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MechaCrash posted:There's also the fact that everyone realized that blowing up industrial capacity was a good way to kneecap opponents, and by the time anybody looked up from their orgy of conquest and destruction and said "but wait, does anybody remember how to put this poo poo back together when we're done," it was too late and the answer was no. Plus when Kerensky left, he took a lot of the rad tech and the people who knew how to make it with him, so it's not like it'd take a lot of bombing to sweep the crumbs left behind into the trash. We have a timeline now that shows most advanced technology dragged along until midway through the 2nd Succession War (ERLLs were in production as late as 2950) so I think recovery WAS possible. It's no coincidence that the end of most advanced technology ties in with HOLY SHROUD. Rorahusky posted:Yeah. With the exception of BA and the Omnimech, the Clans were mostly just about refining tech to its peak performance rather than trying to make new tech. It wasn't until they invaded the Inner Sphere and got roflstomped by Comstar that they realized they should start developing /new/ technology instead of just refining better versions of old. The OmniMech itself is an improvement to the Mercury, far more than BA is an improvement to exoskeletons. I give them half-credit for that one. Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 19:36 on May 8, 2021 |
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May 8, 2021 18:40
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Yeah, turns out sometime between the death of Stefan Amaris and when the Great Houses decided throwing nukes at each other just wasn't as fun as it used to be, they forgot everyone from Earth is a bastard and ComStar recruited anyone who knew anything about SLDF Royal technology. And by recruited I mean: ComStar made them two simultaneous offers: Be recruited to a plush Acolyte position where they can continue their research without a successor state breathing down their necks (but have to travel once a year or so), or recruitment to a 6 foot hole in the ground with a one-bullet sign-on bonus. Defiance Industries posted:The OmniMech itself is an improvement to the Mercury, far more than BA is an improvement to exoskeletons. I give them half-credit for that one. The Clan ER PPC is a fully Wolverine invention (that the other Clans stole and then refined), the ATM and HAG are both brand new, and the Jade Falcons invented the partial wing because they really wanted to fly but didn't want their Mechwarriors to have to share credit with their Pilots. Then they designed talons because Edit: Great job leading your Clan, Marthe! Was there a single member of the Mattlov-Pryde sibko that wasn't batshit crazy? PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 19:50 on May 8, 2021 |
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May 8, 2021 19:40
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PoptartsNinja posted:Edit: Great job leading your Clan, Marthe! Was there a single member of the Mattlov-Pryde sibko that wasn't batshit crazy? Was Horse from the same sibko?
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May 9, 2021 03:27
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Horse was freeborn.
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May 9, 2021 03:34
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PoptartsNinja posted:
No. No there was not.
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May 10, 2021 01:20
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The only thing I don't understand about the BattleTech universe (that I can't easily google) is why aren't airborne units or orbital strikes way, way more common? I get why all of the rapid travel stuff is largely left alone, but I don't understand what is to stop any IS power from just producing massive artillery batteries and throwing them onto an orbital platform, enmasse. Or, far easier and cheaper, simply producing drones to just suicide into 'mechs whenever their enemies field them.
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May 13, 2021 20:21
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fennesz posted:The only thing I don't understand about the BattleTech universe (that I can't easily google) is why aren't airborne units or orbital strikes way, way more common? IIRC, one does not "just" put guns into orbital platforms. And drones are expansive, pilot are cheap... you mean modern, real-life drones, not AI-piloted mech? If so, why suicide when you can put either put a guns onna drone, or make a (big) missile instead?
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May 13, 2021 20:30
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fennesz posted:The only thing I don't understand about the BattleTech universe (that I can't easily google) is why aren't airborne units or orbital strikes way, way more common? Long story short, that's not what BattleTech is about. In a game about giant fighting robots, there's going to be some story fig-leaf over any technology or approach that obliviates the giant fighting robots.
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May 13, 2021 20:45
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fennesz posted:The only thing I don't understand about the BattleTech universe (that I can't easily google) is why aren't airborne units or orbital strikes way, way more common? The in-universe reason is kind of complicated, but boils down to a lot of hobbled industry, gentlemen's agreements between noble houses (because unrestricted orbital bombardments made up the majority of the Amaris Civil War and the first couple of Succession Wars and it wasn't pretty), and Space AT&T (ComStar) disappearing folks who come up with ideas like "what if we designed a warship with the tech we do have."
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May 13, 2021 20:54
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The lack of fighters is because regular fighters aren't as good as BattleMechs, and aerospace fighters are really expensive. So BattleMechs hit a real good spot on the "power per dollar" curve defensively and "power per pound" curve offensively, which is why you see them everywhere. The lack of orbital bombardment is because the Ares Conventions, which serve the same sort of purpose as the Geneva Conventions, have "orbital bombardment" specifically on the list of things you can't do. The real answer, of course, was already given: IMJack posted:Long story short, that's not what BattleTech is about. In a game about giant fighting robots, there's going to be some story fig-leaf over any technology or approach that obliviates the giant fighting robots. But since that's answering the question you asked and not the question you meant, here we are. 
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May 13, 2021 21:10
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MechaCrash posted:The lack of orbital bombardment is because the Ares Conventions, which serve the same sort of purpose as the Geneva Conventions, have "orbital bombardment" specifically on the list of things you can't do. The Ares Conventions (and the Geneva Conventions, while you're at it) haven't been a thing since the Star League was founded. It's just good old fashioned MAD and people wanting to own the things they're fighting over, not burn them to ash. The Ares Conventions also don't prohibit orbital bombardment. They prohibit orbital bombardment of civilian targets. Under the Ares Conventions, you can bombard anything you want as long as it's "an important military target." Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 21:16 on May 13, 2021 |
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May 13, 2021 21:12
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What's the scatter on a Naval PPC firing from orbit onto a mapsheet again? 3-5 hexes, IIRC?
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May 13, 2021 21:16
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PoptartsNinja posted:Yeah, turns out sometime between the death of Stefan Amaris and when the Great Houses decided throwing nukes at each other just wasn't as fun as it used to be, they forgot everyone from Earth is a bastard and ComStar recruited anyone who knew anything about SLDF Royal technology. What's that bit about traveling once a year?
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May 13, 2021 21:25
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