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Lol, well, when half the game is dice rolls and table lookups it's less fun. AS has the right amount of dice rolling for a modern tabletop game, but it does lose some of the charm of BT by not being able to blow off parts, watching the mechs degrade slowly as they lose capabilities, etc. Ideally I'd like to use both in a campaign where larger fights are played using AS and smaller, more important fights with CBT. But in the modern day, so much of what CBT is is just computation, better handled by a dedicated computer rather than by hand, imo. Flechs Sheets looks perfect for what I want to do, just wondering if people have experience playing with it, since I haven't even played one game of CBT yet.
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Nov 23, 2021 17:22
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:has anyone played using Flechs Sheets? I have, I like it. It knows more than I do and doesn't really disrupt game flow all that much. I play rarely enough to remember the basics, but not enough to recall everything so it's nice.
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Nov 25, 2021 13:10
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Volcano Hex tiles are up if you are quick: https://store.catalystgamelabs.com/products/battletech-lava-hex-promotional-tile Free with $10 order.
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Nov 27, 2021 20:07
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Just saw these Japanese mock-ups of some classic Mechs from a reddit thread and losing my mind http://www.gearsonline.net/series/battletech/mecha/
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Nov 28, 2021 23:00
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Those were from the early Unseen era when they were looking into alternatives and/or when they were trying to market BattleTech to the Japanese market. I forget the specifics. It's from the same general time period when a lot of the IIC 'Mechs were being designed and FASA hired an anime artist to do the work; so we wound up with the Shadow Hawk IIC's original design looking like this:  Which at least does a good job showing off that 'Mechs are insanely flexible. I keep waiting for one of the fluff writers to write 'Mech armor as non-rigid. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Nov 29, 2021 |
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Nov 29, 2021 00:15
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'Mech internals are honestly pretty amazing. They inflate BattleMech sizes to physics-breaking volumes while still managing to contain insanely violent synthetic muscles, while also acting as sometimes-extra armor on a 58.3% chance
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Nov 29, 2021 00:51
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'Mechs make more sense when you realize the actuators aren't the joints but the muscles themselves; and that the 'Mechs themselves are mostly hollow shells full of ammo. The Reptar (and Ostsol) kinda epitomize this, they're just an engine block, some spindly limbs, and just enough armor to keep the internals covered without any embellishments.  It's why I still say 'Mechs make more sense as an ego thing. The Camerons tricked the Great Houses into a more limited form of warfare to keep them from slinging nukes at each other, and because 'Mechs are big and fancy looking and impressive and have lightning guns all the Great Houses stood in line to drink the giant robot kool-aid. Once one of them finally realizes they've been duped and switches to power armor the Inner Sphere is in trouble. Fortunately, the allure of the Giant Fighting Robot as a prestige thing is just too strong. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Nov 29, 2021 |
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Nov 29, 2021 00:59
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PoptartsNinja posted:Those were from the early Unseen era when they were looking into alternatives and/or when they were trying to market BattleTech to the Japanese market. I forget the specifics. Those were designs for a Battletech video game released in Japan, using the Unseen when everyone would recognize them as Macross was a no go. The core board game in Japan had a different batch of locally designed versions, those were used in the Solaris VII set here,
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Nov 29, 2021 02:25
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PoptartsNinja posted:'Mechs make more sense when you realize the actuators aren't the joints but the muscles themselves; and that the 'Mechs themselves are mostly hollow shells full of ammo. But this would require the Camerons to be smart, and actually, they were dumb as poo poo.
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Nov 29, 2021 04:11
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This is true, but someone in the Star League was on the ball, and the Camerons were also easily manipulated. That's why they were in charge.
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Nov 29, 2021 04:32
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I think the military industrial complex was driving the bus when it came to the Star League and all its antecedents. What was good for Boeing was good for the League.
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Nov 29, 2021 04:34
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:So a friend and I played a mock version of Alpha Strike to familiarize the rules, and while it's fun and will be even more fun with a campaign framework (and miniatures and terrain of course), it has me back to thinking I'd also like to give CBT a try. I'm just so put off by the endless dice rolling and insane record keeping, has anyone played using Flechs Sheets? The sheets themselves and the player aids (the auto dice rolling/resolving functions) seem like they would speed up play quite a bit and make the 80s style buckets of dice and charts a lot more bearable. I use it and really like it, speeds things up significantly. It is always catching PSRs I'd otherwise forgotten.
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Nov 29, 2021 04:35
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Defiance Industries posted:I think the military industrial complex was driving the bus when it came to the Star League and all its antecedents. What was good for Boeing was good for the League. I also think its pretty important to point out that all the mental capacity that the ruling class of a feudal society is dedicated to making sure the classes at the bottom can't rise up. The battlemech is just a technological jump specifically in the difficult to manufacture and reproduce rather than actual capability and it's pretty visually inspiring/terrifying that it's the perfect weapon platform to prevent a lower class from ever being able to effectively fight against it. If there is one thing the Terran Hegemony hated more than anything else, its remote planets deciding they wanted autonomy.
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Nov 29, 2021 04:56
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Eh, they already had the most effective "you can't fight back against me" tool with WarShips. Just a single NL55 looks like the finger of god.
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Nov 29, 2021 04:59
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Defiance Industries posted:Eh, they already had the most effective "you can't fight back against me" tool with WarShips. Just a single NL55 looks like the finger of god. But you can't (easily) see WarShips from the ground, so just knowing they're up there isn't as intimidating as someone marching an Orion through your farmhouse.
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Nov 29, 2021 05:33
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That's why you use the lasers to draw a giant dick on a mountainside.
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Nov 29, 2021 05:37
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PoptartsNinja posted:But you can't (easily) see WarShips from the ground, so just knowing they're up there isn't as intimidating as someone marching an Orion through your farmhouse. I would be significantly more intimidated by the fist of an angry god removing the next mountain over from orbit than a walking robot, 30 feet tall and bristling with guns or otherwise.
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Nov 29, 2021 05:44
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You can only do that so many times before you run out of mountains, though.
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Nov 29, 2021 05:47
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PoptartsNinja posted:You can only do that so many times before you run out of mountains, though. If you have to do it more than once the second time isn't a mountain, no different than if the mech on the ground didn't work either. Looping back to the earlier start of this topic, it's a neat thought exercise but I'm not sure I can take seriously a supposition that the central conceit of the entire franchise is a clever joke played on its inhabitants that no one noticed for over 700 years.
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Nov 29, 2021 05:51
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PoptartsNinja posted:You can only do that so many times before you run out of mountains, though. Also every now and then a mountain wins because the MIC produced another absolute stinker of a warship.
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Nov 29, 2021 06:20
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But enough about the Cameron
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Nov 29, 2021 07:13
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Wrong thread.
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Dec 1, 2021 03:45
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Did Stefan Amaris really do anything wrong in toppling an empire that had "One Species, One Star League, One Star Lord", literally an altered version of Nazi germany's motto, as its official state motto? And before anyone asks, no i am not from house amaris.
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Dec 1, 2021 04:27
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The mass murder of House Cameron was unpleasant, and Stefan Amaris himself was a murderer and a rapist so he personally was absolutely deserving of being ousted. House Amaris did rule for the better part of 13 years and the rest of the Great Houses didn't have a problem with it, I'd be hard-pressed to say they were significantly worse than House Cameron. Some of the periphery's grievances against House Cameron were very legitimate. I am personally convinced the Star League Explorer Corps were actively de-terraforming worlds to make new periphery colonies reliant on the Inner Sphere.
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Dec 1, 2021 04:39
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Amaris also did do that thing that desperate despots do where the final stages of the SLDF's march to Terra the RWR units had a field day with as many war-crimey things as they could possibly manage before the SLDF could successfully liberate places. Stefan Amaris is probably directly responsible for more civilian deaths in his lifetime than any other figure in the BattleTech setting until maybe the Jihad and that one's a maybe.
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Dec 1, 2021 04:57
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If House Kurita started actually losing a war they'd do worse.
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Dec 1, 2021 04:58
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Not that the houses were in any particular position to do anything about it mind you. Amaris' thing was "well nothing I do to the Hegemony can possibly be bad because they're bad" so there's a lot of slave labor camps and destruction of pretty much any kind of research that he couldn't use to make new guns. PoptartsNinja posted:If House Kurita started actually losing a war they'd do worse. House Kurita definitely has all the worst traits of the other factions, minus any redeeming qualities they might have. A lot like the Jags. Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Dec 1, 2021 |
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Dec 1, 2021 04:58
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Defiance Industries posted:House Kurita definitely has all the worst traits of the other factions, minus any redeeming qualities they might have. A lot like the Jags. It's not their fault, they have to live in jacksonville
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Dec 1, 2021 12:03
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Defiance Industries posted:Not that the houses were in any particular position to do anything about it mind you. I was going to say, while the Star League did tons of poo poo to the Periphery, pretty sure Amaris took up war crimes to 11 in the Hegemony worlds that resisted his rule.
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Dec 1, 2021 14:57
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PoptartsNinja posted:It's why I still say 'Mechs make more sense as an ego thing. The Camerons tricked the Great Houses into a more limited form of warfare to keep them from slinging nukes at each other, and because 'Mechs are big and fancy looking and impressive and have lightning guns all the Great Houses stood in line to drink the giant robot kool-aid. Weren’t the Mackies also introduced with much better armor and weapons than the vehicles of the time to boot? Seem to recall that was a big reason they were trouncing tons of tanks at the time, but of course everybody thinks “Wow, these Battlemechs are super powerful, we need them!” instead of “Wow, imagine how good this armor will be when we put it on a tank!”. Vehicle tech caught up later but the damage was done. I figure the real reason they stay king of the battlefield is inertia from that, the ego boost it gives feudal lords, and some slight advantages in planetary assault (Pretty sure you can’t orbital drop vehicles, right? Or did I miss something?). In-universe anyway; real reason of course is most players love our nonsensical giant robots and whining about their presence in a game made to have them is like complaining how real bishops don’t only move diagonally so chess doesn’t make sense.
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Dec 1, 2021 17:30
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MadDogMike posted:Weren’t the Mackies also introduced with much better armor and weapons than the vehicles of the time to boot? Seem to recall that was a big reason they were trouncing tons of tanks at the time, but of course everybody thinks “Wow, these Battlemechs are super powerful, we need them!” instead of “Wow, imagine how good this armor will be when we put it on a tank!”. Vehicle tech caught up later but the damage was done. I figure the real reason they stay king of the battlefield is inertia from that, the ego boost it gives feudal lords, and some slight advantages in planetary assault (Pretty sure you can’t orbital drop vehicles, right? Or did I miss something?). In-universe anyway; real reason of course is most players love our nonsensical giant robots and whining about their presence in a game made to have them is like complaining how real bishops don’t only move diagonally so chess doesn’t make sense. Anything is Once.
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Dec 1, 2021 17:53
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MadDogMike posted:Weren’t the Mackies also introduced with much better armor and weapons than the vehicles of the time to boot? Seem to recall that was a big reason they were trouncing tons of tanks at the time, but of course everybody thinks “Wow, these Battlemechs are super powerful, we need them!” instead of “Wow, imagine how good this armor will be when we put it on a tank!”. Vehicle tech caught up later but the damage was done. I figure the real reason they stay king of the battlefield is inertia from that, the ego boost it gives feudal lords, and some slight advantages in planetary assault (Pretty sure you can’t orbital drop vehicles, right? Or did I miss something?). In-universe anyway; real reason of course is most players love our nonsensical giant robots and whining about their presence in a game made to have them is like complaining how real bishops don’t only move diagonally so chess doesn’t make sense. The first Mackies mounted primitive armor and weapons like you would find on a Marsden II or Estevez MBT. By the time they proliferated, though, I think modern armor and weapons were being invented, so you get things like the first Commonwealth Mech company DBZ-ing their way through an entire Marik artillery regiment's barrage to step on the Captain-General. The thing is they ARE an unstoppable superweapon... under the rules of the Ares Conventions. But those haven't existed since the First Lord threw them out.
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Dec 1, 2021 18:11
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My Barnes & Noble Exclusive Wolfs Dragoons Star came in today. I thought it'd just be the Annihilator, but it isn't. Every 'Mech in this set is unique. The Annihilator doesn't have anything to compare itself to.  The Rifleman and Timberwolf both got reposes, the Timberwolf looks like the Aidan Pryde hero legs with the Prime's torso at a different angle.   The Blackjack and Archer both have remodels, with the Blackjack sporting bigger autocannons and SRMs in the torso; while the Archer has lost the rear-firing medium lasers and has SRM-4s slung under the missile launchers.   Much better than I was expecting.
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Dec 3, 2021 21:27
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Oh, they actually made a 2W sculpt, that's cool. Wouldn't mind getting one in metal.
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Dec 3, 2021 22:20
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Jamie Wolf got a card. He's not worthy of being a hero like Morgan Kell, but he has an outright illegal number of SPAs: Blood Stalker, Cluster Hitter, Demoralizer, Iron Will, Sandblaster, and Tactical Genius
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Dec 3, 2021 23:26
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Considering he took on a company of Waco's Rangers and won (but bled out shortly thereafter), that sounds about right. One small gripe, sounds like Tamar Rising is long since done, but because of the shipping clusterfuck that is global shipping right now, the release of the PDF is pushed back for a while because they release physical and PDF at same time 
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Dec 4, 2021 01:29
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Tamar Rising has been done since GenCon, they sold copies there. Couldn't get one but The Falcon OZ fragments into a bunch of micro-states and the Sea Foxes get HPGs working
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Dec 4, 2021 02:41
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Defiance Industries posted:The Falcon OZ fragments into a bunch of micro-states and the Sea Foxes get HPGs working Good
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Dec 4, 2021 18:01
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What size are the "standard" BT hexes? I have 3D printed mechs (Syllogy's MWO adaptations), and at first they looked like they'd need large bases, but I printed some 30, 40, and 50 mm hexes and rounds, and I think maybe 35 mm hexes will be ideal? I'd like to go as small as practically possible so I can get lots of ground cover on my terrain hexes, but I'm curious what CGL/FASA provides.
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Dec 10, 2021 01:16
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The standard hex base is 1.25" across. 30mm will also work, but I picked up some 40mm after being frustrated with some of the bulkier minis not fitting on the base unless I flipped it over.
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Dec 10, 2021 01:49
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