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Try the Classic BattleTech forums to see if there are other local gatherings in your area?
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Aug 31, 2021 18:56
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Massive tech imbalances are never really enjoyable unless you're doing it on purpose, like, how many locusts can a clan buster king crab kill, etc. That said I can't blame the dude for wanting to play more technical stuff because I find plain 3025 play interminably boring as hell.
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Aug 31, 2021 19:02
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Gwaihir posted:Massive tech imbalances are never really enjoyable unless you're doing it on purpose, like, how many locusts can a clan buster king crab kill, etc. That is fair, I find the newer stuff boring cause the player doesn't have to pay anywhere near as much attention to the heat strategy. Especially when running customs. quote:"I'm not sure you are going to get the game of btech you want with me. My list build is literally picking 4 mechs I like that look cool and if it doesn't hit 6k add another. The amount of effort you are putting into the list building aspect is cool and all, but just really not the effort of game I'm looking for. You might consider trying to get a game with the crew that hits Edmond Unplugged. They play all the crazy rules from what I could see of the game when I was there a couple months ago. Is that pretty ok of a response? I don't want to ruin the friendship, but I really just feel he's not going to get what he wants out of the games. And I'm just about tot he point that I don't have the capacity to deal with it. Kilazar fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Aug 31, 2021 |
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Aug 31, 2021 19:04
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Kilazar posted:That is fair, I find the newer stuff boring cause the player doesn't have to pay anywhere near as much attention to the heat strategy. Especially when running customs. Definitely not true if you play with my favorite item in the game ever, TSM! It can be a little fiddly but juggling your heat on the edge of penalties and shutdowns in order to get a massive move speed and melee boost is incredibly engaging to me. Yeah obviously poo poo like "I bring a 4x clan LPL boat with 20dhs and alpha strike every turn" is very braindead, but there's a vast selection of units that aren't that. Custom or otherwise. Personally for custom mech building I think if you're going for heat neutrality you're wasting huge potential anyhow. I'd rather build with more weapons than sinks to have the option of going harder.
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Aug 31, 2021 19:12
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Gwaihir posted:Definitely not true if you play with my favorite item in the game ever, TSM! It can be a little fiddly but juggling your heat on the edge of penalties and shutdowns in order to get a massive move speed and melee boost is incredibly engaging to me. Oh yeah I can totally see that! Just in my past experience all the groups I played with go for heat neutrality with big hits. No one ever really played around with the shenanigan's you could with stuff like TSM. Or riding high heat with low TN's cause of clan TC's.
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Aug 31, 2021 19:18
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Kilazar posted:Is that pretty ok of a response? I don't want to ruin the friendship, but I really just feel he's not going to get what he wants out of the games. And I'm just about tot he point that I don't have the capacity to deal with it. Having a heart to heart with him is definitely in order. Your friend could be an rear end in a top hat, but most likely they're just excited to play BattleTech again and trying to show off to impress you. There're enough imbalanced units in 3025 he really shouldn't need to be fishing for advanced tech to clown on you when tiny nightmares like the Spider exist (and all it takes is a single SPA to turn the Panther from a joke into a monster (not that those rules will be in play  )).My suggestion is: let him know exactly what you're wanting in no uncertain terms, and be willing to make a concession of some sort to let him know you'd also be willing to play the game he's interested in at some point in the future. "Look, I understand you're excited to play and show off your knowledge of the setting; but I just want a simple 'introductory' level game, which means no gauss rifles or custom-built anything. It's starting to feel like you're fishing for loopholes that will let you 'clown on me' and I don't feel a one-sided beatdown is going to be enjoyable for either of us. I haven't played in a long time, and I'd like to keep things slow and simple in my first game back, and I prefer the slower, longer 3025-era games to the shorter games you get at high tech-levels. If this goes well, we can play at a more advanced tech level next match." I'd also suggest limiting his choices further, like "Let's do a classic [Davion vs. Kurita or Davion vs. Liao or Steiner vs. Marik] match. Do you want to be House 1, or House 2?"
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Aug 31, 2021 19:37
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^^ your response and PTN's is good. Most of the random games I tended to play vs Goons on Megamek were just done via letting the program pick random unit lists at whatever BV of IS or Clan stuff we were playing. Doing random units with one reroll in case you got some real bloopers tends to always even out over time and curbs the tendency towards super optimizing that we can have a lot of time as competitive players.
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Aug 31, 2021 19:42
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Thanks! I'm going to steal your response word for word as that is pretty much exactly what I was trying to convey.
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Aug 31, 2021 19:57
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Vaporwave Timberwolf Enhanced imaging engaged! PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Aug 31, 2021 |
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Aug 31, 2021 20:08
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PoptartsNinja posted:Vaporwave Timberwolf Getting a Purifiers star?  Looks sick. raverrn fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Aug 31, 2021 |
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Aug 31, 2021 20:18
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PoptartsNinja posted:Vaporwave Timberwolf Timber Wolf (Rad Cat)
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Aug 31, 2021 20:22
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PoptartsNinja posted:Vaporwave Timberwolf this is insanely fuckin sick
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Aug 31, 2021 20:54
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Kilazar posted:I need a sanity check here. There is no way you could be a dick for not wanting to play out a game where you fight a full Level III. That's a goddamn battalion, it will take literal days to resolve.
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Aug 31, 2021 20:59
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Kickstarter update today has news of reprints in it. TL;DR the Beginner Box and AGOAC box have been reprinted in a double size print run (10,000 copies each) and are done, just waiting to get shipped from the manufacturer. Expectation is currently October for AGOAC, November for Beginner Box. Clan Invasion is getting reprinted, no ETA What looks like every force pack is getting reprinted; Elementals and some odds and ends arriving in October, everything else (including wave 2 stuff; can't tell if anything is missing) late November/December.
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Aug 31, 2021 21:33
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That's pretty good news for people who are interested in getting into the game
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Aug 31, 2021 22:30
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Right as Clan Invasion first hit retail, me and the local group decided to start playing with some more frequency and this meant that we were all very excited to play. I had literally never used Clan stuff though I've been dabbling in the game for a decade and asked a guy one game if I could use the stuff from the new box and he said sure. Well, we got some rules wrong and overlooked some stuff, plus him playing with 3025 IS mechs meant that the game was just never going to be balanced. Actually playing was fine because even when I'm winning (admittedly because of how unbalanced the game was) I try to keep things light and was also pointing out that the game didn't really "count" because we were just getting our heads around some of the new rules and seeing how they played out. For me, gaming is almost always more of a social outing and an excuse to have a couple of afternoon beers on a weekend than it is supposed to be a competitive event. Well, my opponent sat on it for the evening and then decided to basically tattle on me to a bunch of Facebook groups, as opposed to just talking to me and being like, "Hey I know we're just playing for fun and all, but something about that game bothered me, let's not do that again." So he got a bunch of people telling him what a colossal rear end in a top hat I was and came at me in a rage for days and even threatened to throw out his new Battletech collection because I had ruined the game for him. Many apologies later and now it's like it never happened and we still play games together. I'm incredibly careful to vet my list days in advance and to make sure we're on not just the same page, but the same line of the same paragraph. In short, it's always better to talk to your opponent directly about expectations and to make sure everyone is playing the game for the same reasons and wants the same outcomes (winning and losing aside). Here, there are so few players for any given game that pissing someone off might mean you never play that game again, so it's really not something that's encouraged. Misunderstandings are probably more likely than people trying to be dicks. I appreciate the responses Kilazar was given because his friend may or may not be an rear end in a top hat, but he should try talking to the guy first to figure out what's going on and then go from there.
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Sep 1, 2021 02:50
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Atlas Hugged posted:Right as Clan Invasion first hit retail, me and the local group decided to start playing with some more frequency and this meant that we were all very excited to play. I had literally never used Clan stuff though I've been dabbling in the game for a decade and asked a guy one game if I could use the stuff from the new box and he said sure. Well, we got some rules wrong and overlooked some stuff, plus him playing with 3025 IS mechs meant that the game was just never going to be balanced. Actually playing was fine because even when I'm winning (admittedly because of how unbalanced the game was) I try to keep things light and was also pointing out that the game didn't really "count" because we were just getting our heads around some of the new rules and seeing how they played out. For me, gaming is almost always more of a social outing and an excuse to have a couple of afternoon beers on a weekend than it is supposed to be a competitive event. My man your friend is an rear end in a top hat and BattleTech's worst quality for the past 20 years is you had to not tell these people to gently caress all the way off or the game would die. I'm sure he's your friend and a good one but if he's going to threaten to sell off his collection because of one bad game just tell him to do it next time, you don't need that bullshit in your time off/game.
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Sep 1, 2021 03:00
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Oh he wasn't going to sell it, he was going to literally throw it in the garbage. Writing that, the distinction certainly doesn't improve his character at all. I take your point and I would love to be able to tell people to gently caress off, but the community is very, very small here, especially for games that are not Warhammer 40k. Telling someone to gently caress off or playing a game of chicken with them to toss their stuff in a tantrum would almost certainly result in him whining to everyone else about what a monster I am and people who weren't there may or may not go with his version of events. It doesn't help that if you play one game here, you likely play 2-3 others and that might have poisoned and divided the whole community and split it into our two camps, and when we're talking half a dozen guys total, that would basically be the end to miniature gaming. I decided being diplomatic and apologetic was the best approach and now I just walk on eggshells around the dude, which isn't great, but the rest of the group see what I'm doing and have accepted that whatever misunderstanding there was was between us and was just that, a misunderstanding. If I play less frequently with him as a result, well so be it.
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Sep 1, 2021 03:13
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That's fair, some places it's still too small to do that. That said, it's not hard to imagine that the game is small in a lot of places because that kind of person is your only consistently available opponent and people would rather not play than be on the same table. I ran into an issue with a local player a few weeks ago, and after the (mostly) metaphorical shouting match had ended and the other guy stormed off I learned at least three people locally had been avoiding asking for games where he could see it. Three people isn't a small number in BT, and it makes me wonder how many others never dabbled at all because of him.
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Sep 1, 2021 03:20
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That's why I got into GMing games of Alpha Strike IRL. Minimal time commitment, lots of 'mechs to move, and I've been having fun losing BattleTech online for a decade so it's no problem at all for me to lose in person from time to time to help a few people have a fun evening. BattleTech is too unbalanced to be a great competitive experience. Even at 3025 there are 'mechs that break the game in half like the Spider and the Banshee (Steiner Special Edition). I feel BattleTech really shines as a GM-driven excuse to tell a little story about a bunch of plucky mercs getting their first ever Grasshopper.
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Sep 1, 2021 03:21
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Biggest issue here is that you're dealing with it being an expat community which really limits the pool in the first place so it's not just people being kept away by grogs, but by circumstance. Of course, if you're an expat dealing with all the headaches of being an expat, taking up a hobby where a guy threatens to toss his models because of a bad game is probably not all that enticing either.
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Sep 1, 2021 03:27
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To be clear, I don't think you did anything wrong or should have done something else. There's no way I'd have anything approaching full context, and there's not a right answer to that kind of thing in the first place. I am emboldened by my growing local scene to be able to do that because we're large enough that one or two players isn't going to make the wheels fall off, but that guy had been around for years making people feel unwelcome. Not everyone has that luxury, or should act on it if they do.PoptartsNinja posted:BattleTech is too unbalanced to be a great competitive experience. Even at 3025 there are 'mechs that break the game in half like the Spider and the Banshee (Steiner Special Edition). I feel BattleTech really shines as a GM-driven excuse to tell a little story about a bunch of plucky mercs getting their first ever Grasshopper. BV helps a lot. Short/mid-range fast medium Clan buzzsaws are probably the best mechs in the game, but the Introtech 4/6 SFE heavy with good armor and moderate guns is not far behind. All hail the ON1-K.
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Sep 1, 2021 03:36
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PoptartsNinja posted:BattleTech is too unbalanced to be a great competitive experience. Even at 3025 there are 'mechs that break the game in half like the Spider and the Banshee (Steiner Special Edition). I feel BattleTech really shines as a GM-driven excuse to tell a little story about a bunch of plucky mercs getting their first ever Grasshopper. Wait, people think the spider is good?! I love it and role with it in my main lance, but i've never been under the impression it is a good choice...
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Sep 1, 2021 03:45
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It is extremely fast and there are no -TN weapons to reduce its TMM in 3025.
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Sep 1, 2021 03:59
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It is very hard to hit and excels at winning the marginal advantage tradeoff where it shoots an opponent on 11s and the opponent fails to hit it on 13s. I've personally found this to be correct only until the Spider loses initiative against any opponent planning even a single turn ahead, at which point it is not durable enough to take any good hits at all. And even then, it's a status quo that exists only as long as the Spider makes no mistakes. It's the kind of thing that a good player will pilot to a flawless victory over a bad pilot, but against another good pilot it's a dice game where the Spider must succeed 20 times before the opponent success twice even in its dominant era.
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Sep 1, 2021 04:03
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Virtual Russian posted:Wait, people think the spider is good?! I love it and role with it in my main lance, but i've never been under the impression it is a good choice... The Spider's a broken little monster in 3025. It's extremely fast so it should always have a +4 TMM, and it doesn't have any pulse lasers to worry about so even a good 3 gunnery pilot has a minimum of a 7+ to hit one, not counting range or its own movement. It gets even more broken with quirks in play, since the Spider's a nimble jumper, it can basically sacrifice a hex of jump distance to push its TMM up to a +5 (in exchange for a slightly worse shot). The only reliable counter for a Spider is another Spider (or baiting it into taking a rear armor shot on something that has support nearby), and Spider hunting is the one legitimate use case for the classic Cicada. The Cicada's still bad at it, but it's better at the job than most anything else. Edit: The Spider's not a game-winner by itself, but it's a very solid distraction that's just threatening enough that it can't be ignored and nearly always gets to choose when (or if) it engages. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Sep 1, 2021 |
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Sep 1, 2021 04:07
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Interesting, I'm going to retcon my purely aesthetic decision as being a good move.
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Sep 1, 2021 04:15
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I really hope Fedex decides to deliver after I get home from work tomorrow. I don't want to have to futs about with a 12lb box away from home 
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Sep 1, 2021 04:17
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awww, and mine is only 11 pounds. I won't have mine until next week for sure, Canada and all.
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Sep 1, 2021 04:25
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Virtual Russian posted:awww, and mine is only 11 pounds. I won't have mine until next week for sure, Canada and all. In Canada, large town, took 15 days for it to change from "Sent information to Fedex" to "On its way"
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Sep 1, 2021 04:36
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I'm looking at possibly giving this a go, but I'm conflicted. I like ComStar, Stiener, and Clan Ghost Bear, but not sure who I want to call "my" faction. Does this even matter? Am I worried too much about people judging me based on my faction?
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Sep 1, 2021 05:04
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Jobbo_Fett posted:In Canada, large town, took 15 days for it to change from "Sent information to Fedex" to "On its way" Mine just flipped to on its way, I'm on the west coat, I assume I won't see it until next week. Which is ok because I have to go to Vancouver for work the next few days anyway.
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Sep 1, 2021 05:07
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Feeple posted:I'm looking at possibly giving this a go, but I'm conflicted. I haven't picked a faction at all and have been thoroughly enjoying the game. I have both Clan and IS mechs.
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Sep 1, 2021 05:08
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Feeple posted:I'm looking at possibly giving this a go, but I'm conflicted. Factions don't exist in the base rulebook, but the correct answer is House Steiner.
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Sep 1, 2021 05:13
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Feeple posted:I'm looking at possibly giving this a go, but I'm conflicted. It will depend on your gaming group, but no one I play with actually cares about faction. It's a personal choice if you want to restrict your painting and force composition to a specific group. I paint each of my mechs in its own colors as if it is a feudal knight from some backwater with an obscure heraldry.
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Sep 1, 2021 05:23
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Feeple posted:I'm looking at possibly giving this a go, but I'm conflicted. I'm judging you as having excellent taste.
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Sep 1, 2021 05:33
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Ice Hellions 4 Lyfe
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Sep 1, 2021 05:36
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If you play long enough you end up with a bunch of factions. I just finished putting together an entire Lyran Guards battalion and I'm ostensibly a Free Worlds League player. Had to get to somebody last, I guess. Hunting Season, the new Free Worlds League centric novel that dropped yesterday, is pretty good incidentally. It's solidly average genre fiction, which puts it well in the top quarter of BT books and it's the best FWL book by a mile.
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Sep 1, 2021 05:46
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Strobe posted:If you play long enough you end up with a bunch of factions. Or you end up like me and decide that your goal is to field the entire 2nd Donegal Guards RCT.
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Sep 1, 2021 05:47
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Defiance Industries posted:Or you end up like me and decide that your goal is to field the entire 2nd Donegal Guards RCT. You have not yet reached the end of your time, you'll end up with more than one at some point, and then it'll be, like, an FRR unit or something.
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Sep 1, 2021 05:50
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