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Xotl posted:It would have: there would have been an advantage to having a sixth major IS faction with a reason to be annoyed with everyone, a reason for everyone to be annoyed with them, and mutual access all around. I'm not sure ultimately why they decided the Republic had to go, and I have to admit to being less than thrilled with Hour of the Wolf / IlClan and how they specifically went. But I do like the idea of Terra being a poison pill and all sorts of chaos and anarchy developing as a result. And I generally feel that the two current line devs are good guys with a decent understanding of what the universe needs to thrive as a game rather than an excuse to write nothing but giant universe-shaking spine novels and then explore them as already-done deals via dry post-facto historicals (even if as a historian I tend to enjoy those, I think they're bad game products). Speaking of this, someone made a reference in the /btg/ which went like this: "I don't know Anon, the Falcons effectively lost their entire military on terra." "Oh no! That'll take a whole third of a novel to rebuild!" What's this in reference to?
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Feb 1, 2022 00:20
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All BT writing is writer fiat, but some examples are more egregious than others. In the past writers have been inconsistent with the effects of losses, so that losses that by general in-universe logic would take a very long time to rebuild from and should invite attack by enemies are glossed over or even outright ignored. If you search the official forums for "magic warehouses" you'll find one such example, where the idea was that Davion losses in the FedCom Civil War were near-instantly replaced (the existence of warehouses full of unused mechs thus being the joke answer to how that was possible; you can read a good discussion of that at https://bg.battletech.com/forums/the-successor-states/magic-warehouses/). The one you're talking about is how the Falcons turboed through devastating losses after the Falcon-Wolf War (and maybe others; can't recall offhand) by handwavium such as "accelerated sibkos" and the like to bring their force back up to speed despite the fact that they should have been ripe for crushing or at least a serious rollback. Xotl fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Feb 1, 2022 |
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Feb 1, 2022 00:37
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They also genocided literally their entire scientist caste, but still had a bunch of new units ready in time for the next TRO because they simply "trialed for some Wolf scientists" and that fixed everything.
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Feb 1, 2022 00:51
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General Battuta posted:But wouldn't the Republic lurking behind its borders and occasionally launching bizarre raids all over the Sphere have been good for that kind of low level anyone-fights-anyone world? I miss them Xotl posted:I'm not sure ultimately why they decided the Republic had to go, and I have to admit to being less than thrilled with Hour of the Wolf / IlClan and how they specifically went. But I do like the idea of Terra being a poison pill and all sorts of chaos and anarchy developing as a result. The general gist from Blaine Lee Pardoe on his blog was that the Dark Age era was still rather disliked by a lot of the "playerbase" (read: Grognards), and they associated the Republic with all that was wrong with Dark Age (Read: they're still mad about clix and them being too dumb to understand what was going on), and therefore Catalyst felt like the best thing to show that the Dark Age was over was to destroy the Republic (Read: Give in to grognards). TheDiceMustRoll posted:
Crazy Joe Wilson fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Feb 1, 2022 |
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Feb 1, 2022 17:48
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Pardoe is a hack and if his blog said the sky was blue I would go double check it wasn't green.
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Feb 1, 2022 19:11
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The hand they were dealt from MWDA was that the Republic was small but had a force field that nobody could get through. So you have two options: let that stand and there's just a group of worlds nobody can go in, or destroy them for calling base. One observation that Arrastia made about the Dark Age that made a lot of sense was when he pointed out that the jump ahead was way too far. Compare it to the 20-Year Update, which worked pretty well. In 20 years, you can make new characters, but keeping characters around (if you want to) is pretty easy. They can still be at the same game they were twenty years ago, like Takashi Kurita, or you can have them promoted to a more senior position, like Caesar Steiner, or maybe they've really hosed up their lives like Richard Whitman. Jumping 90 years, though? You don't really have that option. That's going to be a pretty big stumbling block for a lot of people.
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Feb 1, 2022 19:49
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:House Liao is an interesting exception as I don't think it's that popular but They're Coleman's favorite faction and "for some reason" Pardoe likes them too.
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Feb 1, 2022 20:23
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The Capellans are great even if they really feel like a productive of the time.
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Feb 1, 2022 21:42
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My hot take is that the more Battletech lore I read the more I'm of the opinion that very little of value would be lost my burning it all to the ground and starting again with a reboot, though the time to do that was before the Clan Invasion kickstarter and now that's out there it gets significantly harder.
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Feb 1, 2022 22:19
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So I've been reading through MechWarrior 1st Edition and the difference in feel between what was presented in that book vs everything that followed is really stark and I wouldn't mind the franchise starting from that sort of base, honestly. There was stuff that really underlined the lovely feudal nature of the Successor States in the late Succession Wars. Like how House Liao is really big on the Hapsburg routine, marrying into and consolidating their space with like a third of Capellan worlds featuring a Liao cousin that married the local noble and brought them into the fold. Or how the Davions are constantly dealing with serious internal strife from basically having three equally powerful dukes on New Avalon, Robinson, and New Syrtis eyeballing each other and their levied military forces. Additionally, the primacy of the Davions in the Federated Suns is secured mainly by the old Star League naming the Dukes of New Avalon as the SL rep, so that's the core of their "legitimacy". But generally the feeling of each of the Successor States is less "space Japan" or "Space Germany" etc. but does lean more into how these are the broken ruins of civilization centuries removed from a contemporary viewpoint, and aren't really analogues to 20th century nations. Finally, the original Free Worlds League insignia is baller, and it's dumb how they just reduced it to the Marik Eagle later on.
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Feb 1, 2022 23:17
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Holybat posted:So I've been reading through MechWarrior 1st Edition and the difference in feel between what was presented in that book vs everything that followed is really stark and I wouldn't mind the franchise starting from that sort of base, honestly. I remember reading somewhere that the sourcebook implies that humanity's teeming billions were down to hundreds of millions by the Clan invasion and I like that - its legitimately horrifying and that works. The problem is battletech games sort of ruin the illusion of it all, having a pair of locusts in the original lore really does make it seem like you've got some good firepower, and then in every battletech game I've played you're basically expected to slaughter your way through a dozen or more battlemechs. I remember a MW5 mission where I destroyed something like 32 mechs, which is insane, that would cause a goddamn crisis for any of the great houses, people surrender if it looks like they're gonna lose a lance in the novels.
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Feb 2, 2022 00:01
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I've always liked some of the more outward nation stuffv until I read into early written Canopus stuff and oh boy it's bad. I do think House Arano was a good addition from the video games though.
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Feb 2, 2022 00:17
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I think part of the reason people started rooting for the Cappies is that the Davions were actively discarding their interesting hooks. Stuff like thisHolybat posted:Or how the Davions are constantly dealing with serious internal strife from basically having three equally powerful dukes on New Avalon, Robinson, and New Syrtis eyeballing each other and their levied military forces. Additionally, the primacy of the Davions in the Federated Suns is secured mainly by the old Star League naming the Dukes of New Avalon as the SL rep, so that's the core of their "legitimacy". got replaced with "each Duke has three regiments of troops, and not only does the First Prince have eight regiments in the Royal Brigade, he's also got eight more regiments of Crucis Lancers and ten regiments of Avalon Hussars and three regiments of Ceti Hussars, so the Dukes not only can't effectively stage their own operations, they don't even have the forces to defend their own territory without major assistance from the Federal units."
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Feb 2, 2022 00:32
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:I remember reading somewhere that the sourcebook implies that humanity's teeming billions were down to hundreds of millions by the Clan invasion and I like that - its legitimately horrifying and that works. The problem is battletech games sort of ruin the illusion of it all, having a pair of locusts in the original lore really does make it seem like you've got some good firepower, and then in every battletech game I've played you're basically expected to slaughter your way through a dozen or more battlemechs. I remember a MW5 mission where I destroyed something like 32 mechs, which is insane, that would cause a goddamn crisis for any of the great houses, people surrender if it looks like they're gonna lose a lance in the novels. The problem with this is it's really hard to justify two medium lasers and four .50 cals as 'good firepower'. Like the idea of two mechs being enough to threaten a continent of dirtbag moisture farmers into obeying the local lord is cool on its own, but then you hit "four machine guns????"
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Feb 2, 2022 01:30
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Defiance Industries posted:The hand they were dealt from MWDA was that the Republic was small but had a force field that nobody could get through. So you have two options: let that stand and there's just a group of worlds nobody can go in, or destroy them for calling base. 3rd Option, let them drop the wall, strike out, reclaim territory, and re-establish a 6th Inner Sphere state to make politics more interesting. 4th Option, go the original 2013 outline and have the Wolves and ROTS merge when they realize they're going to run each other dry fighting over Terra. They went the most boring predictable route. quote:One observation that Arrastia made about the Dark Age that made a lot of sense was when he pointed out that the jump ahead was way too far. Compare it to the 20-Year Update, which worked pretty well. In 20 years, you can make new characters, but keeping characters around (if you want to) is pretty easy. They can still be at the same game they were twenty years ago, like Takashi Kurita, or you can have them promoted to a more senior position, like Caesar Steiner, or maybe they've really hosed up their lives like Richard Whitman. Jumping 90 years, though? You don't really have that option. That's going to be a pretty big stumbling block for a lot of people. In the defense of Weisman/Wizkids and the jump, they had always planned on keeping CBT around and slowly advancing things. The fact that Grognards went ballistic and ignored everything Wizkids was saying/releasing in terms of fiction to flesh out the new setting is the Grognard's own fault. The number of Battletech fans out there who think the Wizkids team/writers were an entirely new batch with no BT history is still astonishingly high. TheDiceMustRoll posted:I remember reading somewhere that the sourcebook implies that humanity's teeming billions were down to hundreds of millions by the Clan invasion and I like that - its legitimately horrifying and that works. The Battletech Universe and its themes work way, way better when you go with the old (Battledroids I think) fiction that there are literally a handful of planets out of thousands with anything above 19th/20th century levels of technology due to the Successions Wars, and most planets are literally just neofeudalism, with the nobles in power because they control giant 26th century death machines that peasants and pitchforks have 0% chance against. The Nobles being aware of the difference in technology is fine since, well, they're nobles who probably travel. As soon as nearly every planet became "21st century tech, but better", or at least MOST Successor States (I know House Davion still gets the peasant thing going on occasionally) , you have to wonder why exactly all these Battlemechs aren't just getting wiped out by mass artillery and high-powered sniper rifles.
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Feb 2, 2022 01:44
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:3rd Option, let them drop the wall, strike out, reclaim territory, and re-establish a 6th Inner Sphere state to make politics more interesting. If you can drop the wall, you can raise a new one. No, they had to die for the crime of calling base. It's the only option. Crazy Joe Wilson posted:In the defense of Weisman/Wizkids and the jump, they had always planned on keeping CBT around and slowly advancing things. The fact that Grognards went ballistic and ignored everything Wizkids was saying/releasing in terms of fiction to flesh out the new setting is the Grognard's own fault. The number of Battletech fans out there who think the Wizkids team/writers were an entirely new batch with no BT history is still astonishingly high. The idiots who are into the novel line were always going to be salty because the entire line was MWDA stuff now, there was no getting around that. That it took us 13 years to get an actual accounting of the forces involved or a good idea of what the Houses looked like (FM: 3145) doesn't really fill me with confidence to where WK was going to put their world-building priorities though Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Feb 2, 2022 |
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Feb 2, 2022 02:29
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Defiance Industries posted:The idiots who are into the novel line were always going to be salty because the entire line was MWDA stuff now, there was no getting around that. That it took us 13 years to get an actual accounting of the forces involved or a good idea of what the Houses looked like (FM: 3145) doesn't really fill me with confidence to where WK was going to put their world-building priorities though Before the clix game was even released Wizkids wrote these articles about all of the major Battletech factions. https://bg.battletech.com/download/DarkAge_Touring_the_Stars.pdf The Great Houses were already making a splash in the novels by #7 (A Coleman Liao pro-terrorist novel). It's a fair point that Wizkids never published a sourcebook detailing regiment #s or positions, but they also only had 6 years before the Great Recession killed the mini-craze of the 00's, and sourcebooks detailing all the regiments would've gone against their goal of "Let's get back to the 3025 aesthetic of single lances/companies deciding whole planets/small scale warfare". They clearly acknowledged regiments/galaxies, as plenty of the novels reference both new and old ones, and sometimes give estimates of faction strengths. Honestly, up until the last 4 or so years most of what Catalyst released was following the basic blueprints of what Wizkids had planned (Ex. Nova Cat rebelling, although Wizkids were going to let them win, Stone returning but demented, the Wall coming down).
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Feb 2, 2022 02:50
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:Before the clix game was even released Wizkids wrote these articles about all of the major Battletech factions. https://bg.battletech.com/download/DarkAge_Touring_the_Stars.pdf And almost none of it actually tells you about things in the current era. They vaguely explain some of the events of the Jihad, but it doesn't really do anything to ground you in the current era. The 20-Year Update spends several pages on the War of 3039, but it also tells you that there are all these other things that happened, here are the important people now, here's the political state of the major powers. As an introduction to the Dark Age setting, TTS didn't really do its job. Crazy Joe Wilson posted:sourcebooks detailing all the regiments would've gone against their goal of "Let's get back to the 3025 aesthetic of single lances/companies deciding whole planets/small scale warfare". We had them in 3025 so I don't see why that would be a problem. quote:Honestly, up until the last 4 or so years most of what Catalyst released was following the basic blueprints of what Wizkids had planned (Ex. Nova Cat rebelling, although Wizkids were going to let them win, Stone returning but demented, the Wall coming down). They've never been very good at pivoting to new ideas as they come. That's why we got Hour of the Wolf.
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Feb 2, 2022 03:21
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:3rd Option, let them drop the wall, strike out, reclaim territory, and re-establish a 6th Inner Sphere state to make politics more interesting. This option would result in fans assigning moral good to the central faction. That is the opposite of interesting. Also, gently caress the Federated Commonwealth
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Feb 2, 2022 03:45
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General Battuta posted:The problem with this is it's really hard to justify two medium lasers and four .50 cals as 'good firepower'. I mean its doubly hard to justify say, the Events of Battletech 2018, because the battles you do against the aurigan directorate alone and all the material you capture and destroy would basically mean the end of the Aurigan anything other than a state people haven't conquered yet because they're busy
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Feb 2, 2022 15:33
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Defiance Industries posted:And almost none of it actually tells you about things in the current era. They vaguely explain some of the events of the Jihad, but it doesn't really do anything to ground you in the current era. The 20-Year Update spends several pages on the War of 3039, but it also tells you that there are all these other things that happened, here are the important people now, here's the political state of the major powers. As an introduction to the Dark Age setting, TTS didn't really do its job. Fair enough. I still think they were great introductions to brand new players. And the most complaint from grognards I see is NOTHING was told to them about anything, and they "thought" (lol like grognards think) that all the old factions were gone for good. quote:We had them in 3025 so I don't see why that would be a problem. I think it went against the aesthetic. Hyper-detailed field manuals and the like are nice, but to a certain degree I also see them as superflous since (at least in the current storyline), they're obsolete within a year or two anyway. All the regiments the Republic had were ground down by Wolves & Falcons in 5 years, Wolves and Falcons suddenly had tons of new units to play around with, same with other factions. If you're going to take all this time to write a Field Manual, why then turn around and basically destroy half of it? Keeping things a bit more vague allows for more story flexibility with more believability. Sidesaddle Cavalry posted:This option would result in fans assigning moral good to the central faction. That is the opposite of interesting. Also, gently caress the Federated Commonwealth The Writers did a good job of pointing out the Republic was capable of just as many war crimes as your average (read: Not Kurita levels) Inner Sphere state), I don't think in 2022 anyone would've seen them as a white hat faction.
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Feb 3, 2022 14:09
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Do factions have any specific mechanical advantages or is it just a "these dudes tend to favor this type of mech?" I decided to get back into this after a LOT of years of just GW games and am working off the old OLD Battletech Manual at the moment.
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Feb 8, 2022 21:04
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There are advanced optional rules that give special abilities to specific regiments. In terms of the base game rules though, there are no factions, nobody cares where you're from. It's all optional role playing stuff.
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Feb 8, 2022 21:08
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Defiance Industries posted:There are advanced optional rules that give special abilities to specific regiments. In terms of the base game rules though, there are no factions, nobody cares where you're from. It's all optional role playing stuff. So do color schemes even matter? Like I can do whatever color and slap whichever decals I want on?
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Feb 8, 2022 21:10
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They matter even less than what faction you say you're playing. The game is 100% mini agnostic and can be played with anything as long as two things are true: 1. It is visually distinguishable from other pieces on the board 3. It must have a way to designate the front (except infantry) You can play with bottle caps if you want, I've done it before.
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Feb 8, 2022 21:15
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Jelly beans, coins, and slips of paper are all valid battletech minis.
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Feb 8, 2022 21:30
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But now the question is: what force size and composition should you put together to have fun at the LGS
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Feb 8, 2022 21:41
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Sidesaddle Cavalry posted:But now the question is: what force size and composition should you put together to have fun at the LGS I only game in my garage to avoid the local chud gamers, so that's not an issue. I'm just grabbing whatever I see on the shelves at the moment; so far I've got a Warhammer, Rifleman, Phoenix Hawk, Wasp, Longbow, Stalker, Zeus, and Trebuchet. Probably grab that Barnes and Noble exclusive box also while I'm waiting for the box set to get re-issued. EDIT: Which leads me to the question about it being minis-agnostic: I REALLY liked the designs for the Japanese Battletech releases. Is there anyone that does prints or STLs of these? I found a Crusader, which is pretty nice, but I want way more of those. EdsTeioh fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Feb 8, 2022 |
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Feb 8, 2022 21:46
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Yeah, dig around the Battletech Reddit. There should be a handful of folks with nice resin printers that would get you something for a reasonable price. (Personally I think it’s kinda neat that Catalyst knows about and encourages other minis in their game. I’ve seen company reps comment on cool prints and mech designs.)
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Feb 8, 2022 22:20
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Sidesaddle Cavalry posted:But now the question is: what force size and composition should you put together to have fun at the LGS There is no standard. And everytime I bring it up on the BattleTech forums it gets a frankly confusing amount of pushback even as a concept so  I personally like 1-4 mechs at 6000 BV but good luck with that if it isn't arranged ahead of time.
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Feb 8, 2022 22:20
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One day I will get a book of standards and scenario designs out. I really love BT's "play whatever, who cares", but at the same time we could really use at least a baseline. TW's scenario section is just sad.
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Feb 8, 2022 22:38
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Strobe posted:There is no standard. And everytime I bring it up on the BattleTech forums it gets a frankly confusing amount of pushback even as a concept so If it wasn't for the pandemic I'd probably have a few games under my belt, and frankly I own far too many books for the limited time I've put in to learning the tabletop game, but this is surprising to me. As an almost complete outsider, I would imagine that they could compete at least somewhat against Games Workshop if they had some standard scenarios and objectives.
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Feb 8, 2022 22:41
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Sidesaddle Cavalry posted:But now the question is: what force size and composition should you put together to have fun at the LGS The answer really depends on how long you have to play.
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Feb 8, 2022 23:11
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We've kind of settled onto 4K BV2 to learn after picking up the very basics, if that helps.
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Feb 8, 2022 23:50
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If you use masterunitlist.info it makes it much easier to balance a force. Personally I prefer Alpha Strike PV over BV, because it takes into consideration ammo duration for the fight. Doesn’t mean you have to play AS though, just build a force based on equivalent PV and run from there. (Don’t use BV1, always use BV2 if you’re gonna use BV). I’ve found it does help to at least limit the timeline though. Having folks choose mechs from around the same era is much more balanced in terms of available weaponry than allowing any era. (Again, this is super easy to filter using masterunitlist.info) An average lance should probably sit around 130 PV. Dunno if/how that translates to BV2. e: 130 PV is roughly equivalent to 4500 BV2. A lance v lance engagement should be expected at a FLGS, so plan around that. Grogs might get pissy if you run 5 (non-clan) mechs Dr. Lunchables fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Feb 8, 2022 |
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Feb 8, 2022 23:54
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If it helps, the best response to anyone complaining about not running perfect 4 'Mech lances is: "Oh, this force is the remains of a larger detachment and this is all they were able to put together after field repairs. They're just fighting tooth and nail now to avoid becoming Dispossessed" It's nonsense but it's also BattleTech as gently caress enough to keep the Grogs happy. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Feb 9, 2022 |
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Feb 9, 2022 00:18
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There's a time for specifying unit sizes, since the game works much better when both sides have similar numbers. 4 v 5 isn't it.
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Feb 9, 2022 01:01
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Seeing this discussion does make me think that there's a big missed opportunity in the setting to have House forces being different in their organization, like from Great House to Great House. I don't think players need a Field Manual series to give a breakdown of all military's regiments that don't matter in a random novel anyway because the writer will just pull units out of their asses (see: Hour of the Wolf), but why not a lighter book that shows different organizational schemes? Like you keep some notable regiments for fluff/flavor text, but leave the rest more vague. Then with these more broad Field Manuals, you get descriptions of how some House regiments might be very very strict on organizing in four mech lances, but other Houses found that they worked better in 5 mech lance/platoons and four platoon companies, etc etc. This obviously will extend to mercenary companies, where the sky is the limit for weird-rear end organizations. This is Dark Age era, but I did like in the MWDA novel Wolf Hunters, Anastasia Kerensky just went whole hog with not having an officer corps outside of her as the Alpha of the Wolf Hunters. Does it make sense from an even remotely realistic military standpoint? gently caress no, but it's fun flavor imho In the fiction you could have something pointing to the old Star League days because of the influence of the SLDF the armies of that time were a lot more standardized but after the First Succession War and the massive depletion of reserves and the death of so many troops from decades of conflict, by the Second Succession War you start to see a lot of "drift" from the old SLDF standard across different fronts. That can tie in with some "modern" regiments that hold heritage from the SLDF like the Eridani Light Horse being very strict in adhering to SLDF standard TO&E. Hell, even the concept of "regiments" could be reworked. Some regiments like the personal Household Guards of a Great House lord could be many battalions in strength, but other local nobles might have a "regiment" that's a few battered companies' worth of forces. I'm biased because I think the Battletech universe gets more interesting with smaller regional conflicts like the PC game, and I have to say that I found the Tamar Rising book fun because I like the idea of a more fragmented Inner Sphere, so maybe this slots in better in my head.
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Feb 9, 2022 02:29
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You've seen examples of that ad-hoc organization before. House Liao for a while experimented with combined armed lances of 2 'mechs and 2 vehicles. Really desperate powers will call a 'mech battalion with a ton of attached infantry and vehicles a regiment. In FM3145, the Republic had a whole brigade of 3-battalion regiments (Hastati & Stone's), a brigade of 2 battalion regiments (Principes), and a brigade of 1-battalion regiments (Triaari). I also know the Clans will create understrength Galaxies that they then build up (EXCEPTION: Clan Jade Falcon and Clan Wolf always can create full-strength galaxies with chewing gum and twine).
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Feb 11, 2022 13:55
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The Jade Falcons have been pulling troops out of their asses since Coventry. They should really just go all-in and say the Falcons are abusing the Maeve Wolf solution (cloning their warriors with only the gender swapped).
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Feb 11, 2022 14:35
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