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Floppychop posted:Anyone have a collection of good scenarios for pick-up games? Can you just play with the new players? Succession War grogs are annoying.
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Sep 3, 2022 21:33
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long-rear end nips Diane posted:Can you just play with the new players? Succession War grogs are annoying. We only have like 8 people in our community so far, the woes of gaming in the Midwest. 4 of them are the grogs that only want to do succession war era.
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Sep 3, 2022 21:43
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lol wtf, succession wars grogs still exist? are these people in like their 60s now or something
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Sep 3, 2022 21:50
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I dislike the Clans as a whole but only rocking one tech area is kinda dumb
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Sep 3, 2022 22:05
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Very small check-in: local store did a demo day and got enough interested people for multiple 3-round demos of Alpha Strike (and a little interest for Classic). Not a very well trained rep but they did a decent job teaching. Been away from BT for the better part of a decade and was neat to see what's changed with the new version. Sounds like there's 20+ people in the area and they actually play midsized to large games regularly. Maybe I'll pick up a lance after all.
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Sep 3, 2022 22:43
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Floppychop posted:We only have like 8 people in our community so far, the woes of gaming in the Midwest. 4 of them are the grogs that only want to do succession war era. Shame. Inexperienced guys in Clan gear versus grogs in IS would be an interesting way to balance things.
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Sep 3, 2022 23:21
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GD_American posted:I dislike the Clans as a whole but only rocking one tech area is kinda dumb Eh, I understand WHY some people prefer Level 1 play over other types, and God knows rule overload is a thing in BT sometimes (I still am dubious I follow a lot of the tech rules for Jihad+ tech stuff the way I follow everything up to 3058 or so), main thing that annoys me is how many of them act like only an idiot or a cheater won't agree with their preference. Sorry, not everybody who plays the Clans is a munchkin; hell, I got stuck with a munchkin using level 1 stuff the one time I tried the RPG (getting a stock Crusader with a pilot who thanks to a dubious reading of the rules for Reflex had skills WORSE than a green pilot sent up against a 0/0 Atlas pilot kinda told me how fair he played. Still think he was mad I happened to win our introductory Battletech match thanks to a lucky set of bad pilot rolls to stand up). Also wonder how many of them have the will to try all the earlier era stuff now that they've started filling in that timeframe; there's a way to do even cruder than 3025.
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Sep 3, 2022 23:25
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I think primitive tech has been a great addition to the game, but I'd never play it in a pickup game. Has the same problem as IS1 vs Clantech: there are some units that simply don't get to play the game. They're great for a campaign to give the players a bunch of mooks to mow down though.
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Sep 3, 2022 23:37
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:lol wtf, succession wars grogs still exist? are these people in like their 60s now or something One's around 50, the others are in their 20s-30s. It's baffling to me that they bitch about not having a large community and then do things that actively hinder new people wanting to join. We balance games using BV and only do canon variants, so it's not like we're doing 200t of IS vs 200t of Clan or someone rolling with munchkinned custom mechs.
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Sep 4, 2022 01:00
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what is people's beef with the Clans anyway? I'm coming from 40k and they just seems like a more elite faction compared to the more bog standard Inner Sphere factions, plus once the timeline advances it seems like the Inner Sphere gets to play with their toys anyway. Don't really get the hate.
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Sep 4, 2022 02:16
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I like the 3025 tech in the agoac box, but that's probably because it's all I've messed around with and also is the setting for the PC game
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Sep 4, 2022 02:25
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AnEdgelord posted:what is people's beef with the Clans anyway? I'm coming from 40k and they just seems like a more elite faction compared to the more bog standard Inner Sphere factions, plus once the timeline advances it seems like the Inner Sphere gets to play with their toys anyway. Don't really get the hate. Whenever anything changes in a setting some percentage of people won't like it because nobody likes all changes. The longer a setting has been around the more of these people accrue. e: also they were horribly balanced at first
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Sep 4, 2022 02:32
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Note that "At first" was about three decades ago now and the first version of BV is around 25 years old now. Clans are only op if you let them be.
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Sep 4, 2022 02:56
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For me, I tend to stick to 3025 just because I don't game very often and I think the Introductory level rules are something that can easily be kept in one person's head without a ton of cross referencing the rules. Clans don't ruin the game or setting for me, but adding them and other eras/levels of play slows play down a lot and the game is already not particularly fast.
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Sep 4, 2022 02:58
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:lol wtf, succession wars grogs still exist? are these people in like their 60s now or something It's nuts to me that it's still a thing.I was like 5 when the Clan Invasion happened and introduced to it via the cartoon and the MechWarrior games. I've had the name BattleMaster on these forums for 22 years. I'm almost 40 now. There are people who have had a bug up their rear end about the Clan Invasion for almost my whole life. Hell of a long time for people to hold a grudge against additions to a game. I just can't imagine that. Atlas Hugged posted:For me, I tend to stick to 3025 just because I don't game very often and I think the Introductory level rules are something that can easily be kept in one person's head without a ton of cross referencing the rules. Clans don't ruin the game or setting for me, but adding them and other eras/levels of play slows play down a lot and the game is already not particularly fast. I find Clan Invasion games go faster because of the firepower increase allowed by double heatsinks and the weight savings of various techs - plus added vulnerability due to XL engines. And I mean what rules are there to remember? Pulse lasers give -2 to hit? You can fire ultra autocannons in single mode and LB-X autocannons with slugs if you don't want to remember the rules or slow down the game with cluster rolls. Artemis and NARC get a little scummy to keep track of if ECM is in play I suppose. But nothing as bad as actuator hits in the base game, which I still need to look up to remember what happens for each one. BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Sep 4, 2022 |
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Sep 4, 2022 02:59
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AnEdgelord posted:what is people's beef with the Clans anyway? I'm coming from 40k and they just seems like a more elite faction compared to the more bog standard Inner Sphere factions, plus once the timeline advances it seems like the Inner Sphere gets to play with their toys anyway. Don't really get the hate. Their design philosophy was to take the Star League technology and then eliminate downsides. This makes most of their equipment feel very samey and less interesting compared to Inner Sphere technology. For example: BattleMaster posted:I find Clan Invasion games go faster because of the firepower increase allowed by double heatsinks and the weight savings of various techs - plus added vulnerability due to XL engines. The Inner Sphere XL engine is a great piece of game design. You get a tremendous amount of saved weight but in exchange, losing any torso now mission kills your unit. It's an important decision that informs how a unit will play. The Clan XL was reduced to two crits, which means you are mission killed when you lose both side torsos (at which point you're almost useless anyway). If you don't use a Clan XL you are basically just wrong for doing so.
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Sep 4, 2022 04:20
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My issues with the Clans are how they are portrayed in the fiction, particularly the "good" clans like Wolf and sometimes Ghost Bear. They're pretty monstrous autocratic oligarchies with rigid caste systems and hosed up eugenics programs, and all of that is fine for a villain faction or if you want to explore how people navigate these horrible systems. It starts to feel kind of gross to me when you focus on their "honorable warrior culture" though. It's why I like the Jade Falcon books, which are primarily about how the hosed up Clan society punishes a man who otherwise embodies their ideal for petty, bigoted reasons, and the mainline Phelan Kell/Clan Wolf books felt pretty icky to me. The focus on how smart and noble the leadership of Clan Wolf is just feels lovely, considering Ulric Kerensky and his peers are the dictators of a literal might-makes-right fashy autocracy. I much prefer the psychos of Smoke Jaguar and Jade Falcon, they're detestable and that's great. Ruleswise, I think one of the designers said they regretted giving the Clans ER everything in their initial invasion and should have given them something more like Heavy lasers; weapons with more tradeoffs that would emphasize getting in close for fast ritualized duels, rather than staying at range. I still like the Clans overall, but they've got problems as written.
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Sep 4, 2022 07:09
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Stackpole has never been a writer who uses nuance. If you are one of his good guy factions he ignores every bad thing that's ever been written about you. If you are a bad guy faction, you are completely devoid of merit in any way. At the same time he's writing all that Wolf stuff he's giving the same treatment to the Dracs. Spends the next several books arguing for why everything that they do isn't so bad.
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Sep 4, 2022 07:21
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I have disliked every Stackpole book I've read. His prose is fine, but his characters and plots are just awful. I see people recommend his stuff as good books to get into Battletech and I much, much prefer the Grey Death Legion books. They're not high literature or anything, but they're pretty fun, have relatable characters, and do a great job of showing the low-level conflict the game is mostly about.
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Sep 4, 2022 08:14
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Stackpole writes like a teenager.
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Sep 4, 2022 10:24
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Stackpole is good and also bad but mostly bad. His good part is that he deftly handles a large cast across the whole Inner Sphere while still giving them clear personalities and conflicts. He’s a strong choice for the ‘spine’ writer in the franchise. I’m rereading Blood of Kerensky and one of the more obnoxious parts is that good guys (tm) all get along and have friends and behave like normal people while the bad guys (people who aren’t Wolves, Davions or Davion allies, cool mercenaries or Dracs) are all insane, vicious backstabbers with bottomless grudges and no chance of accomplishing anything. Sun Tzu Liao is such a goddamn dick that it’s either four dimensional narrative chess or he’s just a ridiculous caricature. His contempt for politicians really comes through in the way that all “righteous” politicians are also good MechWarriors. I will say that the Clans being painted as cool badass dudes whose only weakness is internal politics makes a degree of sense _for Battletech as a setting_ because in Battletech the best and most important thing you can be is a MechWarrior. Not because this is right or moral, just because it’s a game about mechs. The Clans kind of recognize the core toy-logic of the setting, so while they’d be a horrible fascist death regime in reality they’re fun in the fiction. They’re most fun when they’re having civil wars though.
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Sep 4, 2022 13:31
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:lol wtf, succession wars grogs still exist? are these people in like their 60s now or something I'm a mild 3025 grog. I don't mind playing with 3050 and later tech, but I prefer sticking to the basic stuff and having to struggle to balance accuracy, heat, and mobility.
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Sep 4, 2022 15:58
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AnEdgelord posted:what is people's beef with the Clans anyway? I'm coming from 40k and they just seems like a more elite faction compared to the more bog standard Inner Sphere factions, plus once the timeline advances it seems like the Inner Sphere gets to play with their toys anyway. Don't really get the hate. Suuuuper short version: When the Clans were introduced, Battletech didn't really have a solid balancing mechanic yet so everything was by tonnage. You have 200 tons of mechs, your opponent has 200 tons of mechs. Except Clan mechs were, ton for ton, several times better than any IS mech. Faster, more durable, longer ranged, higher damage, running cooler, higher skilled. You can probably see where this went. It created a reputation for Clan players to be powergaming munchkins, which was made worse by the number of IS players who started to have 'Clan salvage' in their units. The game's narrative push framed it as normal, too: the various IS factions were constantly portrayed in the fiction as being completely inferior and getting their asses kicked at every turn. That was 1990; the first balancing mechanic (Combat Value) came out in 1994; the far better Battle Value appeared in 1997 and was revised in 2007 and 2021. The Clan/IS disparity more or less disappeared when BV came out, because there was actual balance mechanics that made Clan stuff less powerful and the fiction shifted to something that wasn't "The Clans win everything all the time and your favorite faction loses no matter what (except for a few specific protagonists)." I haven't seen an anti-Clans grog in more than a decade, but there's some still out there. People hold dumb grudges for a long time.
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Sep 4, 2022 16:13
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FishFood posted:
Maybe they didn't pull this off in Battletech but there's some good media out there illustrating well-run autocracy, eg Legend of Galactic Heroes. Takes a really thoughtful and even handed approach to do justice though, which Stackpole kinda lacks.
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Sep 4, 2022 18:09
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General Battuta posted:Stackpole is good and also bad but mostly bad. His good part is that he deftly handles a large cast across the whole Inner Sphere while still giving them clear personalities and conflicts. He’s a strong choice for the ‘spine’ writer in the franchise. I strongly disagree with this. A spine writer for BT should be adept at writing for any faction in the setting and making a case why their system is right while their enemies' is wrong. Stackpole simply won't or can't do this.
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Sep 4, 2022 18:33
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I picked up the starter set and the clan invasion box at B&N on clearance, should I bother learning the game that way or dive in to the "full" game and which one of those is even the standard mode? This poo poo is daunting!
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Sep 4, 2022 18:45
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Sidesaddle Cavalry posted:I'm you but about a couple years older. Also I can see more your whole bit with the Republic being a thing. Yeah, when I came in Republic was the default, and since most of the fiction was about them or stuff inside them I just kind of liked them. Even when they got to take the White Hat off in fiction (SYD), they weren't much worse than any other faction. It's hard now in the more recent fiction that almost everyone wants to mention the Republic's dead. I haven't read that speech, but have heard of it. Wouldn't be surprised if it influenced the BT writers when the Republic was being developed. A lot of Republic fiction is very strongly 2000s stuff culturally that seems weird 20 years later. hot cocoa on the couch posted:lol wtf, succession wars grogs still exist? are these people in like their 60s now or something The BattleTech "Renaissance" is only a few years old, those grognards, as much as I hate to admit it, were the only fanbase for BT up til 4 years ago, or later. I remember when clix died and a lot of clix players were considering switching over they decided not to, on account of the cold reception they received from a lot of the grogs. Fishfood posted:My issues with the Clans are how they are portrayed in the fiction, particularly the "good" clans like Wolf and sometimes Ghost Bear. They're pretty monstrous autocratic oligarchies with rigid caste systems and hosed up eugenics programs, and all of that is fine for a villain faction or if you want to explore how people navigate these horrible systems. It starts to feel kind of gross to me when you focus on their "honorable warrior culture" though. It's why I like the Jade Falcon books, which are primarily about how the hosed up Clan society punishes a man who otherwise embodies their ideal for petty, bigoted reasons, and the mainline Phelan Kell/Clan Wolf books felt pretty icky to me. The focus on how smart and noble the leadership of Clan Wolf is just feels lovely, considering Ulric Kerensky and his peers are the dictators of a literal might-makes-right fashy autocracy. I much prefer the psychos of Smoke Jaguar and Jade Falcon, they're detestable and that's great. I mean, you can say the same about most of the Successor States minus the Eugenics part. Space Feudalism is pretty castey, even if the fiction has tried to shy away from that part of BattleTech lore by treating all populations as "21st century living standards and cultural outlooks". No one in BattleTech is even close to a Democracy except... Marik? And even then they're an elective monarchy with lots of nobles. Not saying Clan society is swell or anything, it's just that no society in BattleTech is really ideal by 21st century standards. And the fact that the fiction focuses so much on Clan "Honorable Warrior Society" is an issue with all factions. I can think off the top of my head maybe 5 novels where the main characters are not nobles/in the military/mercenaries. I think BattleTech would benefit from at least short stories from other POVs. One thing that really gets ignored in BattleTech fiction about the Clans (And I guess all the factions) is just how tiny a percentage of the population the warrior castes are. Most Clan civilians will not even see a Warrior for most of their life, except for the paramilitary police subcaste. Defiance Industries posted:Stackpole has never been a writer who uses nuance. If you are one of his good guy factions he ignores every bad thing that's ever been written about you. If you are a bad guy faction, you are completely devoid of merit in any way. Strangely enough his "Masters of War" novel in the Dark Age line was kind of exempt from this tendency. The Wolves and Alaric are presented with plenty of flaws, and Alaric suffers for them. It's a... weird book.
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Sep 4, 2022 18:53
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Those are crusader wolves and they are bad guys so of course they're going to have flaws.
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Sep 4, 2022 18:58
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PeterWeller posted:I'm a mild 3025 grog. I don't mind playing with 3050 and later tech, but I prefer sticking to the basic stuff and having to struggle to balance accuracy, heat, and mobility. When I do get a chance to play, I'm the same way. I like the Mad Max vibe 3025 gives off, where you have to make due with what you have and work around it. It's fun to me. But play what you want, it's still just a game.
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Sep 4, 2022 19:00
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Defiance Industries posted:I strongly disagree with this. A spine writer for BT should be adept at writing for any faction in the setting and making a case why their system is right while their enemies' is wrong. Stackpole simply won't or can't do this. I think that on Maslow's Hierarchy of Franchise Writer Needs that is a couple steps above "able to write and deliver a book that conveys all the intended events in logical fashion within word and time limits." Which Stackpole does!
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Sep 4, 2022 19:00
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Is it really a logical fashion when the antagonists are so incompetent that you can't believe that they successfully feed themselves or tie their shoes? I consider being able to hit your deadline the bare minimum in this situation, and a strong choice would actually make compelling fiction that can convey more than one viewpoint. He's a D-, does just enough to pass the class.
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Sep 4, 2022 19:10
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Tempest_56 posted:People hold dumb grudges for a long time. I just always thought the Clans were a dumb idea, done dumbly. Of all the ways they could have solved the Kerensky mystery, they chose one of the dumbest. The dumbass arena football team-level names for the factions, the sociology that sounds like it was written by a 13 year old that's really into ninjas and Wolverine, etc. It was Rob Liefeld-level backstory. Decent writers came along over the years to backfill in with decent characterization and stories, but the core concept remains, to my opinion, just dumb and bad. The several years of powergaming horseshit on tabletop you mention didn't help at all, either. FishFood posted:I have disliked every Stackpole book I've read. His prose is fine, but his characters and plots are just awful. I see people recommend his stuff as good books to get into Battletech and I much, much prefer the Grey Death Legion books. They're not high literature or anything, but they're pretty fun, have relatable characters, and do a great job of showing the low-level conflict the game is mostly about. I have long advocated for suspending Robert Charrette's civil rights and chaining him to a laptop until he gives us eight timeline novels a year. He is by far the best writer Battletech has had (Vic Milan's a close second, but his stuff was more suited to quirky slice of life than moving-the-timeline).
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Sep 4, 2022 19:21
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I couldn’t find any information, reviews or comments on the Death Ray Designs Battlefield Debris box online so I decided to make my own. Whipped up a video and a new YouTube channel for it. https://youtu.be/ui0Guj-pwjM In short: Ten bucks/euros gets you a fairly sizeable chunk of largely usable bits and bobs scaled for BattleTech. You’ll have to be the judge on whether you can drop a tenner on something like this or not, I’m happy with my purchase.
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Sep 4, 2022 20:13
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Defiance Industries posted:Is it really a logical fashion when the antagonists are so incompetent that you can't believe that they successfully feed themselves or tie their shoes? I thought we weren't going to talk about Pardoe anymore? To be fair, some of Coleman's antagonists have also been so paper thin you'd have difficulty using them as even cardboard standees. Antagonist writing in BattleTech tends to be fairly sub-par. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Sep 4, 2022 |
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Sep 4, 2022 20:20
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The FCCW is definitely the worst of it, at no point is there any reasonable possibility that Katherine is going to win. Even the Warrior trilogy has C* loving around
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Sep 4, 2022 20:39
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The portrayal of antagonists in Redemption Rites was superb, and Hunting Season was pretty good on that front too. I haven't read the new Falcons/Bears book but even if it's back to 1.5 dimensional badguys destined to lose to protagonist power the general quality is still trending up.
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Sep 4, 2022 21:01
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I'm almost done listening to Blood Will Tell and I've liked it a lot so far, partially because it doesn't really have bad guys. If anything, our protagonist Danai is kind of the villain, given how lovely the Confederation is. The book doesn't shy away from portraying that, but also does a good job showing why people would buy into their system. There's a great scene where Danai is touring a hydroelectric dam on Sian and talks to the people who built it and work there. They talk about how proud they are to be a part of something that improves the lives of other people on the planet and it made me kind of emotional which I wasn't expecting from a loving Battletech book.
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Sep 4, 2022 21:30
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FishFood posted:I'm almost done listening to Blood Will Tell and I've liked it a lot so far, partially because it doesn't really have bad guys. If anything, our protagonist Danai is kind of the villain, given how lovely the Confederation is. The book doesn't shy away from portraying that, but also does a good job showing why people would buy into their system. There's a great scene where Danai is touring a hydroelectric dam on Sian and talks to the people who built it and work there. They talk about how proud they are to be a part of something that improves the lives of other people on the planet and it made me kind of emotional which I wasn't expecting from a loving Battletech book. That's the kind of stuff I'm looking for. Danai doesn't have to be correct, she just needs to articulate reasons that she thinks her system is better than that of her enemies.
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Sep 4, 2022 22:51
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PeterWeller posted:I'm a mild 3025 grog. I don't mind playing with 3050 and later tech, but I prefer sticking to the basic stuff and having to struggle to balance accuracy, heat, and mobility. As long as you don't play the ammo-heavy configs of the original 3050 omnimechs, or designs out of Technical Readout 3058, you will be doing this in every >3050 game still That sounds like a lot of qualification but the game is still good regardless
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Sep 4, 2022 23:53
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The suggestion that double heat sinks removed the heat management aspect of the game is the weirdest way to admit that you don't play the fun 'mechs that absolutely exist in later eras.
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Sep 5, 2022 01:41
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