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Yeah, it’s in the old Alpha Strike book, I don’t know about the Commanders Edition. They’re the same Total Chaos campaign system that everything BT uses, and it recommends the number of mechs/units described above. They have army listings of five factions and two clans a bit further in the book, and they recommended using those in duplicate. However, I like PV, and having used it for multiple lance level skirmishes, found it pretty drat balanced, even with Clan vs IS mechs. They list a PV for each army list of near 400 PV, with the IS having three lances shown, and each Clan having a Binary (two stars). The Total Chaos rules don’t give you much guidance on an appropriate starting force for a campaign though, and just say the wide range of 36-45 mechs. I was hoping to get a little more granular and get a PV out of it before we decide our army lists.
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Jan 12, 2022 19:52
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What sort of campaign? Is it a GMed one, with players working against a single GM; or a PVP campaign with players playing against each other?
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Jan 12, 2022 19:54
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PvP, planetary invasion style. The book has multiple “tracks,” which are individual scenarios that tell you how much it costs to engage in, as well as how much of your total army you can commit. There are scenario specific rules, and depending on who wins, it will progress to a different scenario. It all ends when either the scenario conclusion says “your side wins/loses,” or you don’t have enough Warchest Points to engage in the upcoming scenario, therefor losing. There are also rules for salvage and rebuilds and buying stuff between rounds specific to each track/scenario.
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Jan 12, 2022 20:01
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That's in the Alpha Strike Companion but for what I'm fairly sure are a bit of pagecount reasons and a bit of "just use Chaos Campaign" it was not included in Commander's Edition. Depending on how long the campaign is going in terms of number of games I'd say that 36-45 on each side is entirely reasonable. I'd expect that starting force to be somewhere between 1200 (relatively cheap-ish 36 units) and 1800 (relatively expensive 45 units) and as long as that's pretty close for both sides it'll be fine.
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Jan 12, 2022 20:58
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I’ll probably pick a nice round 1500 PV for army construction then, with a +- to be determined later. On the Alpha Strike note, is the Commanders Edition worth picking up? I know they released a 2021 update with errata fixed.
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Jan 12, 2022 21:16
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I haven't actually run a campaign yet (previously I spoke about my effort to 3d print and paint a few dozen mechs, and also make an entire modular hex table. I'm about 50% through the mechs and about 1/3rd through the table... will share pics in the near future), but check out Death From Above Wargaming. Their modules/house rules are what I'm planning on using (maybe with some eventual tweaks of my own), and they have better guidance about force composition and such as I recall. They also have a much better mission pack that integrates with their campaign system. It looks like they've released a new version and updated their website since I last looked as well and it looks a lot better/more professional now, so even better.
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Jan 12, 2022 21:21
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:I haven't actually run a campaign yet (previously I spoke about my effort to 3d print and paint a few dozen mechs, and also make an entire modular hex table. I'm about 50% through the mechs and about 1/3rd through the table... will share pics in the near future), but check out Death From Above Wargaming. Their modules/house rules are what I'm planning on using (maybe with some eventual tweaks of my own), and they have better guidance about force composition and such as I recall. They also have a much better mission pack that integrates with their campaign system. It looks like they've released a new version and updated their website since I last looked as well and it looks a lot better/more professional now, so even better. That’s much more specific and less vague than what I was working off of. For reference I was going from “Campaign Rules,” page 114. It’s absent from the Commanders Edition.
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Jan 13, 2022 01:51
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ah, yeah i have the commanders edition so i'm not sure about that one. i was thinking of the catalyst free issue here: https://store.catalystgamelabs.com/products/battletech-chaos-campaign-succession-wars
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Jan 13, 2022 02:17
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A guy near me is selling the 25th Anniversary Introductory Box Set for pretty cheap. That's worth getting if I already have the full rulebook, right? I don't have anything else, because there's nowhere to buy anything else
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Jan 16, 2022 13:50
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Those are all old sculpts, but they are the only way to get a lot of those models in plastic right now. Catalyst’s store currently has stock of the new sculpts and has the Clan Invasion box too. That said, the 25th anniversary box has a ton of stuff and if it can be had for a good price is a pretty nice deal.
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Jan 16, 2022 14:31
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I was planning to print mechs, but figured that this is 25ish that I won't have to use resin on. The mounted board seems nice, and since I'm in Denmark it's the only way for me to get a hexboard without paying giant import fees.
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Jan 16, 2022 15:12
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You get two very nice double sided mounted maps. For 25 euro it’s an absolute steal. Question again for Alpha Strike ppl: what’s the PV cost of one Point of bog-standard Elementals? MUL only has specialists (flamer, mg, laser, etc)
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Jan 16, 2022 17:45
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Dr. Lunchables posted:You get two very nice double sided mounted maps. For 25 euro it’s an absolute steal. 'Laser' is the standard Elemental for most of the timeline, they cost 16 points. 'AP Gauss [Fire Resistant]' are the Elementals that are so good in classic play they accidentally obsolete every other suit of medium BattleArmor. In Alpha Strike they cost 18 points (because Alpha Strike is not really an infantry game).
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Jan 16, 2022 17:53
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Electric Hobo posted:A guy near me is selling the 25th Anniversary Introductory Box Set for pretty cheap. That's worth getting if I already have the full rulebook, right? The minis are bad, like embarrassingly bad, but there's also 24 of them (26 if it has the much better quality Thor and Loki minis still) and the rest of the material is all very high quality.
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Jan 16, 2022 18:46
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Yeah, all of the previous generation plastics have been total rear end. My favorite is still the (Ostscout?) that was pointed towards a hex corner not a hex side. Edit: and the exceedingly polite CityTech Daishi. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Jan 16, 2022 |
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Jan 16, 2022 18:52
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It does have the 2 extra mechs, so that's pretty nice! I'll go for it, just to get a pile of stuff that I can use right away. Then I'll print some better looking mechs if there are some of them that I really like.
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Jan 16, 2022 19:39
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PoptartsNinja posted:Yeah, all of the previous generation plastics have been total rear end. I had not seen that one before and sheesh 
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Jan 16, 2022 20:33
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once went on a trip to a space museum and in the gift shop they had a bags of, like, green toy soldier-quality "alien invader" figures that were apparently the citytech mech molds with alien heads attached to the top. Plus a bunch of barely changed Star Trek ships. being like 12 I thought this was pretty great in spite of the quality.
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Jan 16, 2022 21:48
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PoptartsNinja posted:'Laser' is the standard Elemental for most of the timeline, they cost 16 points. tell me more!
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Jan 17, 2022 04:23
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Right, so: The standard Elemental is in a weird spot. It was the first BattleArmor ever conceived for the game and, just like the Timber Wolf and Stormcrow, was accidentally hyper-optimized. It's very hard to design a suit of medium BattleArmor that can outperform an Elemental in a specialist role, much less design a suit of generalist BattleArmor that equals it in all capacities. The Elemental is so good that most of its "descendants" don't even try: just like the Timber Wolf and Stormcrow's 'children' and 'grandchildren' they're nearly always intentionally worse than the design they were intended to replace because hyper-optimized units are a pain to balance around. The Elemental only has two real flaws: 1) it's vulnerable to Infernos and Plasma Cannons 2) its primary armament is a bog-standard small laser; which means once an Elemental point runs out of SRMs their ability to be an area denial weapon (one of the chief defensive uses of BattleArmor) falls off a cliff. The small laser's garbage range brackets aren't even its only flaw: due to changes in the way weapons work, the small lasers are now utterly worthless against standard infantry. The standard 'laser' Elemental was obsoleted in 3060 when the Smoke Jaguars introduced the Micro Pulse Laser (and Micro Pulse Laser Elemental), which had the same range and damage as the original but a -2 bonus to hit with its primary weapon attack, effectively extending the Elemental's range while also making it an order of magnitude more effective against infantry (rather than dealing up to 5 whole damage to infantry, a 5-man point with micro pulse lasers can deal anywhere between 5-75 damage to an infantry squad in a single attack). Around the same time as the Micro Pulse Elemental started to take over, [Fire] Elementals started turning up. This was essentially a 'free' upgrade replacing the Elemental's Clan Standard Armor with the Fire Resistant Armor that had formerly been exclusive to the Salamander. Fire Resistant Armor makes them outright immune to infernos and plasma cannons, which are hard-counters to most BattleArmor. The mPL Elemental was mostly obsoleted (outside of niche edge uses, like boarding actions in space) in 3069 when the Jade Falcons introduced the AP Gauss Rifle. In exchange for being only slightly worse at engaging actual infantry and being less good in the 0-1 hex range bracket (i.e. the range no sane opponent will ever let BattleArmor close to), traded the godawful 1/2/3 range bracket of the small laser and micro pulse laser for a 3/6/9 range bracket. This lets them effectively engage most of their common counters and completely demolish most types of standard infantry from beyond the range of most reprisals (at a minor cost of damage, AP Gauss Elementals only do 2-60 damage to infantry on a successful hit  ).TLDR: The AP Gauss Rifle and Fire Resistant Armor are just flat upgrades that eliminate the Elemental's only weak points at no cost. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Jan 17, 2022 |
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Jan 17, 2022 05:07
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There is a cost: the original Laser Elemental is 447 BV for a point, the AP Gauss Fire Elemental is 576 BV for a point, almost 30% more expensive. We can probably argue about whether that's a representative increase, but it's not nothing.
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Jan 17, 2022 05:29
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I meant no cost to the Elemental. They don't have to sacrifice a jump jet or any durability, if you've got the spare BV to upgrade them it's best to upgrade them because that range increase is significant. If you've only got the BV to pick one, pick the AP Gauss Rifle if you can or the Micro Pulse Laser if you can't. Edit: Forgot the Fire Elementals lose one of their SRM reloads, which is significant. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Jan 17, 2022 |
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Jan 17, 2022 05:31
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Is it true that Canopus has catgirls?
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Jan 18, 2022 01:02
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Is it true that Canopus has catgirls? The cat parts are cyborg but yes
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Jan 18, 2022 01:14
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It's to more effectively ring additional money out of very lonely, sad people, so a very realistic depiction of how that sort of thing works
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Jan 18, 2022 02:34
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You take that back about mai waifu’s job right loving now
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Jan 18, 2022 05:05
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AFAIK, this is the sole canon pic about Canopian Catgirls and I accept it 100%
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Jan 18, 2022 08:23
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So I painted up my first lance of minis yesterday. Started with the Archer, then the Blackjack, Timber Wolf, and finished with the Rifleman. The Archer kind of went gloppier in parts on the torso than I originally wanted, and under the flash I see where the weapons can be touched up, but I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. on to more lances, gotta fill out the rest of the company!  Click here for the full 1920x1440 image
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Jan 18, 2022 18:49
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Tamar Rising finally came out. At least one person will be happy that the WhipIts have been resurrected.
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Jan 19, 2022 22:28
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That one person is me. Shine on, you crazy technicolor diamonds.
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Jan 19, 2022 22:34
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It's a pink Wight now, not a Panther, though.
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Jan 19, 2022 22:54
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The Wight is at least 70% Panther by volume.
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Jan 19, 2022 23:29
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What are the proportions of the mix of Clan tech and IS stuff (old or advanced) over there by now? I'm wondering about how the scenarios in Tamar are getting balanced
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Jan 20, 2022 00:24
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Defiance Industries posted:Tamar Rising finally came out. At least one person will be happy that the WhipIts have been resurrected. People who aren't happy with the return of the WhipIts are people who are bad for Battletech.
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Jan 20, 2022 00:33
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Sidesaddle Cavalry posted:What are the proportions of the mix of Clan tech and IS stuff (old or advanced) over there by now? I'm wondering about how the scenarios in Tamar are getting balanced Not really that different from what it was in TRO: 3145, though the addition of the Rec Guide units give the IS forces a few more mixed tech units to pick from, especially when it comes to heavies and assaults. Stuff like the Atlas, Banshee, Flashman and Crusader are the new mixed tech ones. It also doesn't have pre-made scenarios, instead it has a section that is basically a how-to on running a campaign in the region, which I think fits more with how they're presenting the region, basically a sandbox for small-scale conflict.
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Jan 20, 2022 01:45
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Been reading through Tamar Rising and I have to say despite my dislike of ilClan's handling of that core conflict with the Republic, Wolves, and Jade Falcons (mainly because Hour of the Wolf novel was garbage), this new area of space and era of conflict is pretty neat as this sourcebook presents it. I hope that other regions will have similar shakeups in the ilClan era in future sourcebooks. I'm also curious if there's going to be any remnant of the Republic of the Sphere going forward, like a Republic in Exile along the lines of these fiefdoms in Tamar space, but that comes from me and one other player in my group still flying that flag so I'm biased  Of course if it comes to it, it's nice to be able to play loosey goosey with the Battletech setting and just slot in whatever for the games I've been having with my friends. One of my buddies likes playing his Com Guards force, and they're dead as a doornail in the canon current era but nbd ComStar lives on for our campaigns.
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Jan 20, 2022 23:26
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I think the idea of a Republic in Exile died when Stone killed Redburn and told all their troops they were coming to die on Terra
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Jan 20, 2022 23:37
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Friendship with Republic in Exile ended, Jade Falcon remnant is my new best friend.
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Jan 20, 2022 23:43
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It's definitely interesting to see them on the back foot, instead of simply handwaving a current problem away with the idea they do some short-term fix that "will have consequences in the future" (it doesn't).
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Jan 21, 2022 00:10
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Defiance Industries posted:I think the idea of a Republic in Exile died when Stone killed Redburn and told all their troops they were coming to die on Terra Yeah you're probably right about that one. I guess it's just a little frustration with the run up to ilClan on my part. I didn't have a problem with the Republic losing, they were in the crosshairs of a bunch of factions with Terra as the goal, I had a big problem with Hour of the Wolf all of a sudden deciding to pull entire regiments out for the "big showdown" just to have them die offscreen. It all just seemed perfunctory. All told if CGL just wanted to shitcan the Republic, why bother with the Fortress Republic and what followed through 3145 to 3150? Why not just go "hey after they collapsed into Prefecture X it fell apart at the seams almost immediately"?
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Jan 21, 2022 01:46
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