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Ya love to see it e: oops page snipe. uhh so what's the timeframe or road map looking like for the mercs kickstarter or maybe more immediate stuff like ilClan sourcebook prints/reprints? Sidesaddle Cavalry fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 17:52
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Both IlClan and Tamar Rising have already been reprinted. Still nothing on the Kickstarter at the moment.
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Sep 8, 2022 22:15
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So I have some Mech Sheets from the AGOAC box but where do I find sheets for the other mechs?
AnEdgelord fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Sep 9, 2022 |
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Sep 9, 2022 02:41
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Download megameklab, you can print them all off. Your alternative is buying the record sheet books individually and don't do that
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Sep 9, 2022 03:46
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There are a bunch of free sheets on the Downloads section of the official site, too, including several sheets for anything and everything currently avialable in plastic.
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Sep 9, 2022 04:49
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OTOH those are pretty limited. Only two versions of the Centurion? Get the gently caress out, there were more than that in TRO: 3025.
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Sep 9, 2022 05:04
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They're at least starting to learn that "letting people play the game without buying a thousand extra splats is good and gets more people playing the game," give it time. There really should be official free record sheets on the Master Unit List, but I imagine that would be a lot of work.
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Sep 9, 2022 05:18
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Defiance Industries posted:Download megameklab, you can print them all off. Your alternative is buying the record sheet books individually and don't do that My brain first parsed that as “me game klab” and I felt like I was having a stroke
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Sep 9, 2022 06:35
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Defiance Industries posted:OTOH those are pretty limited. Only two versions of the Centurion? Get the gently caress out, there were more than that in TRO: 3025. It's a good and free place to start. IME, tossing someone new to the game into the deep end of the pool to figure out which of over 4000 variants they want to use is a lot more frustrating than only having two versions of some 3025 staple to pick from among the several hundred sheets in those free PDFs to start. My hot onboarding take is that it's better to dive into the advanced equipment with low numbers of available sheets than it is to stick around in Introductory or even IS-Standard but have the full catalogue of thousands of mechs open at all times.
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Sep 9, 2022 18:59
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Anyone here play infantry? The last models I painted 15 years ago were Epic 40k Orks which I never played with. However, I did enjoy painting 6 mm infantry. So when I realized you could have infantry in BattleTech too, I knew I wanted some. There’s basically no official plastic infantry available (elementals aren’t conventional infantry) but I was happy to find Death Ray Designs’s 6 mm models. And, since I could find very little information on them online, I decided to buy some myself and make my own video on them. https://youtu.be/vqMJ3PkdL9U Highly recommended if you’re interested in fielding some infantry in your BattleTech force!
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Sep 10, 2022 10:47
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I'm not a huge fan of how infantry work in BT as they do now, but they can definitely be useful in the right circumstances or built well.
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Sep 10, 2022 17:41
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I 3D print my own infantry (mostly for basing), but those look nice enough to be really tempting.
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Sep 10, 2022 18:11
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I like deploying anti-mech trained jump rifle infantry out of helicopters to force movement out of woods and draw attention away from my actual force. I like battle armor even better for that, especially ones with jump 4 like Kages, Voids, and Afreets, but everyone in all time periods and tech levels get helicopters and jump infantry. Also if the game rules allow, motorized field gun infantry are like the best way to make use of small autocannons, which otherwise don't always feel great to use. And Word of Blake cyborg infantry can hook into C3i networks for extra accuracy with their field guns. Come to think of it, you could make a whole C3i network with just field gun infantry and some jump infantry spotters and it probably wouldn't blow the bank on BV, though the cyborg infantry options are like a level above Tac Ops rules. BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Sep 10, 2022 |
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Sep 10, 2022 18:49
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Technically if a Clansman was challenged to a trial of grievance that they could care less about, they could choose a non-violent competition like chess or a swim competition to resolve it? More traditionally hide-bound Clansmen would probably be scandalized or consider it cowardly, but I remember several times it happening in stories (Nova Cats choosing a coin toss to decide a trial, ghost bears choosing a football game).
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Sep 11, 2022 18:40
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You can resolve it through any method, but the person issuing the challenge has first dibs on how it will be fought. They get to choose the weapon, the person who is challenged gets to choose where it is fought. In cases where it's otherwise, like Sheliak, I assume that the invader felt so confident that they deferred that choice to the defender.
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Sep 11, 2022 19:56
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I always thought it was kind of bullshit how Vlad just beat Elias Crichell to death. The political khan didn’t have any way to avoid that? Really? He was a character I would’ve liked to keep around.
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Sep 11, 2022 20:09
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That would imply that there are legitimate solutions to problems other than soldiers doing soldier things, which was not in the author's wheelhouse.
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Sep 11, 2022 21:03
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Silly question and maybe something i'm supposed to not think about too hard but how are decks oriented on aerodyne dropships? on spheroid ships decks are oriented vertically so that down would be facing the engines. in space acceleration at 1g would therefore create a feeling of normal 1g gravity and in atmosphere gravity would do the same. If aerodyne decks are oriented vertically then acceleration would do the same as above but the ship seems like it would be unusable in atmosphere. if oriented horizontally this would work in atmosphere but make movement really hard if not impossible in space under acceleration.
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Sep 12, 2022 00:53
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That depends on the ship. Fluff-wise some have to be reconfigured between the orientations when they enter atmospheres.
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Sep 12, 2022 01:05
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CalvinandHobbes posted:Silly question and maybe something i'm supposed to not think about too hard but how are decks oriented on aerodyne dropships? Not BattleTech, but IIRC in The Expanse novels, the Rocinante has its decks oriented vertically, but since it's capable of planetary landings it also has fixtures that allow the crew to use the bulkheads as decks (In the novels, the Roci lands on its belly instead of vertically like in the TV series). And Tycho Station is described as being able to change the orientation of its desk for when it went under thrust to get to a new jobsite, but that might be more like how the Argos moves its pods in the HBS BattleTech game I guess aerodyne dropships could be similar? The mechs would probably have to be rotated for thrust or planetary gravity, though.
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Sep 12, 2022 01:21
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CalvinandHobbes posted:Silly question and maybe something i'm supposed to not think about too hard but how are decks oriented on aerodyne dropships? There is actually some dumb as poo poo lore (which I have gotten into silly nerd fights about with Battletech grogs) which says that aerodynes like the Leopard carry their interplanetary drives on their bellies, and fly through space with their dorsal surfaces pointing “forward”, so that they can always have gravity pointing towards the floor/bottom/belly/ventral side. The reason this is ridiculous is that anyone who’s played KSP knows the folly of dragging an entire spare set of engines around as dead weight.
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Sep 12, 2022 01:34
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Also it would look dumb as poo poo. And how would they keep the thrust pointed through the center of mass?
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Sep 12, 2022 01:34
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I like spheroid dropships but I never liked aerodyne ones because they don't really make sense.
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Sep 12, 2022 01:40
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BattleMaster posted:I like spheroid dropships but I never liked aerodyne ones because they don't really make sense. Interstellar ships are vastly undersized for the setting already, building a whole rear end dropship for 4 Mechs is incredibly silly
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Sep 12, 2022 04:43
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I think if it wasn't for the leopard being in a bunch of video games, aerodynes would just not be a thing outside of ships that are incapable of touching sky like the Claymore
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Sep 12, 2022 04:48
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Coming up to the end of Blood of Kerensky and man Operation Scorpion is a big dry fart. A bunch of slimeballs declaring they’re in charge on grounds of ??? and immediately getting owned. Not really coming off as the major setting-shaking event it’s supposed to be.
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Sep 12, 2022 19:24
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Stackpole's antagonists hyping up a master plan that turned out to be nothing? Can't say I saw that coming.
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Sep 12, 2022 22:34
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General Battuta posted:Coming up to the end of Blood of Kerensky and man Operation Scorpion is a big dry fart. A bunch of slimeballs declaring they’re in charge on grounds of ??? and immediately getting owned. Not really coming off as the major setting-shaking event it’s supposed to be. I always assumed Scorpion was a big flop because A) The ComGuards were all off fighting for their lives, leaving Comstar Zealots like Waterly with no muscle to enforce her interdiction, and B) Focht refused to support it, meaning leadership was divided at the start. But then again I've never read any of those older books.
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Sep 13, 2022 01:03
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Yeah, even in fiction it appears to have been a giant nothingburger dreamed up by an insane person.
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Sep 13, 2022 01:09
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Don't forget it was also spoiled by a Combine agent.
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Sep 13, 2022 04:48
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A Combine agent who had worked their way to the highest levels of power and was the Primus' protege. And then, even knowing this, they still put her in charge. If these assholes had been running things during the 2nd Succession War, every Holy Shroud hit would have included leaving a C* business card behind.
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Sep 13, 2022 05:31
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Waterley was also like, 0:3 choosing loyal minions. Focht? More loyal to House Steiner than to his job. Sharilar Mori? LOL O5P spy. Thomas Mark? Enough said.
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Sep 13, 2022 05:36
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The leadership of Comstar at that point had been high on their own supply since the fourth succession war (actively promoted by the Primus Julian Tiepolo). They thought they could lead the Inner Sphere houses by the nose into repeating the mistakes of the First and Second Succession War, only to have Hanse Davion eat their lunch (as well as Max Liao's lunch as well) Waterly actually believed that the Inner Sphere Houses couldn't figure out how to operate a HPG. If (and only if) that was true, then you could kinda see the methodology behind Operation Scorpion (we see it in the chaos of the Blackout in the Republic/ilClan era) But she didn't know that the Davions had the blackbox system (which is close enough to HPG's to be relatively functional, and a MAJOR strike against ComStar's intelligence gathering) Operation Scorpion was one of those things that looked good on paper and under wishful assumptions, that fell apart when confronted with actual reality. (like another current, real-world conflict that I could mention)
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Sep 13, 2022 07:57
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BattleMaster posted:I like spheroid dropships but I never liked aerodyne ones because they don't really make sense. I assumed aerodyne Dropships (the in-atmo ones anyway, strangely enough the Achilles and Vengeance designs can't enter atmosphere; Vengeance might use shape for launching its 40 fighters better, but not sure of the logic for Achilles being aerodyne) were used to have a Dropship that could more easily deploy between sites on the surface. Spheroid Dropships look like they'd probably need to get to at least suborbital height to relocate with any ease. It would explain the Leopard at least as a raider; it's able to move its Mechs around to various targets if they're scattered across a planet (or hasty relocate them away from responding forces). I imagine the Star League used the Confederate more since they did less raiding like that (if they want something, they could just drop a regiment on the defenders' heads). The belly drive is still kinda crazy as mentioned, though I suppose it could explain why something that big doesn't need a 20 mile long runway to launch. Spheroid is probably much better for just dropping somewhere and staying given the fully vertical takeoff/landing setup and for military vessels you have your weapons arrayed (and higher up) to cover all approaches better.
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Sep 13, 2022 08:44
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The shape doesn't really matter for redeployment. None of them fly, they're just bricks that blast a literal sun out of their assholes, so either you take parabolic arcs or you need to clear a full-on airport runway.
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Sep 13, 2022 09:42
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Having finished Blood of Kerensky, I'm quite torn. I can see how much work the trilogy is doing - introducing the Clans, introducing a new cast of younger characters, setting up conflicts like the Word of Blake schism or the Capellan-St. Ives conflict that would define the setting for no poo poo 20 real world years. There's a lot in there. Sun-Tzu's fun to read because absolutely everyone sees him as a pathetic worm but he's sort of got his poo poo together. But it is all just told in the most god drat narrow-periscope way possible. Phelan, Victor and Kai are all wrapped up in their inner lives to a sometimes frustrating extent. Their personal arcs - Kai learning to accept his ~killer instincts~, Victor stepping out of his father's shadow and building a relationship with the Combine, Phelan becoming a Wolf - get a lot of word count but don't involve a lot of real conflict. Phelan's a great Clanner, he wins his climactic Bloodname duel by getting better hit location rolls. Victor is sad quite a bit, but always comes through when it counts. Kai kills the poo poo out of everyone despite self-doubt. Meanwhile, the major events, like Luthien and Tukayyid, are skimmed over in a couple chapters when (with their sheer importance to the setting) it seems like they could've been entire novels. Luthien takes just two days and it's the literal peak of Clan threat to the Inner Sphere for the next hundred years. Tukayyid is entirely done in summary except for battles Phelan personally participates in. I said earlier that Stackpole was a good choice for the spine novels and maybe he is if only because he's so utterly efficient at churning through the story beats he's given. But then you get an entire book of Kai camping out shooting redneck bounty hunters and you gotta wonder, maybe this could've been used for something else. I dunno. It's funny that the Clan threat is...almost nullified by the end of these three books. Yeah, they're still out there, yeah, they're going to be a huge part of the story going forward, but they failed in every major battle of the trilogy. They ate poo poo on Tukayyid and they're never going to manage more than some planet poaching and the occasional scare like Coventry for the next century. Operation Revival was their best chance to conquer the Inner Sphere and they absolutely blew it. They're pretty much going to sit in their OZs from here until the Dark Age. From one of those unromantic, structuralist-historian perspectives, their defeat seems as predictable and inevitable as the Nazis losing WW2. They've got all this Mongol inspiration, but they show none of the actual flexibility or ruthlessness of the Mongols. Their ilKhan doesn't even want them to win. Like the Fast and the Furious guy, they never had the Inner Sphere cause they never had themselves.
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Sep 13, 2022 20:53
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I see they put the Legendary Mechwarriors pack up in the store. Any word on the Hammerhead restock?
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Sep 14, 2022 19:27
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General Battuta posted:Having finished Blood of Kerensky, I'm quite torn. I can see how much work the trilogy is doing - introducing the Clans, introducing a new cast of younger characters, setting up conflicts like the Word of Blake schism or the Capellan-St. Ives conflict that would define the setting for no poo poo 20 real world years. There's a lot in there. Sun-Tzu's fun to read because absolutely everyone sees him as a pathetic worm but he's sort of got his poo poo together. Stackpole's main characters gain power with every surname they collect. Phelan Kell Wolf Ward, Victor Ian Steiner Davion, Kai Allard Liao.
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Sep 14, 2022 19:42
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General Battuta posted:
A big problem of BattleTech sometimes is the really interesting stories get shunted to the side for far more banal things. Modern BattleTech books especially suffer from this, since it seems Catalyst can't get the novel -> sourcebook order correct, and keep releasing sourcebooks before novels, meaning all of the surprise in the novels are neutered. For instance, Hunting Season was decent but 90% of its plot was already revealed in Shattered Fortress, same with Blood Will Tell Meanwhile, stuff like "what's going on in the Combine" or "Are the Spirit Cats trying to rebuild at all gets a few whispers here and there in sourcebooks, and that's about it. I feel like they are starting to turn this around, "A Question of Survival" was completely new territory, and supposedly there's a Davion-focused novel coming out at the same time/before A Dominion Divided. Hopefully they keep that up.
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Sep 15, 2022 00:57
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Sourcebooks as “here’s what’s going on in the universe” and novels as “here’s a fun romp in the universe with minimal geopolitical impact” would be a way to resolve that. But then you couldn’t have your novels be about the Great Men of Future History which is what they mostly seem to want.
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Sep 15, 2022 01:17
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