|
School Nickname posted:Just getting into Battletech, despite playing Mechwarrior (2!) since I was eight. I got the Clan Invasion starter set as AGoAC was sold out at my local store. I assumed since it said it had a rulebook I was ok but forgot to read the fine print that AGoAC is required. The complete rules are available as separate rulebooks, though at least Total Warfare is organized as an advanced reference rather than a "here's how to play the game" document. The AGOAC rules are organized more as an introduction "learn to play" document and abridged but complete enough if you just want to make the big robots kiss. I don't know if it's  but a simple google search for the agoac rulebook turned up a PDF copy pretty quick.If you want a hard copy I picked up a few AGOAC boxes during the half off Barnes and Noble sale to ratfuck for mechs and mapsheets and would send you one if you cover postage and one beer.
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 15:58
|
|
Did I gently caress myself over or can I just download a copy of the core rules and work away just to get a feel for the game? To be honest I was gonna buy it anyway down the road, as my brother is picking it up alongside me and he likes clan mechs so I'm not too miffed about it.
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 11:46 |
|
|
Owlbear Camus posted:AI still slips up a little on the deep cuts. So, is the ship really called "Tripitz" or did the AI just not know about the Tirpitz and started bullshitting real hard?
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 16:13
|
|
|
School Nickname posted:Just getting into Battletech, despite playing Mechwarrior since I was eight. I got the Clan Invasion starter set as AGoAC was sold out at my local store. I assumed since it said it had a rulebook I was ok but forgot to read the fine print that AGoAC is required. Just download Alpha Strike rules and play with those. Way more fun. Finishing up my Two Binaries of Steel Wolf mechs, going to then work on a Binary of Raptor Keshik (Dark Age era) Jade Falcons for my old clix buddy who always played the Green Turkies back in the day. Going to put a Mad Cat into his Star, but might try to trade it for a Summoner for someone since that is more Falcon-esque. https://camospecs.com/listing/hierofalcon-prime/ If anyone has a Summoner they're willing to trade for a Mad Cat let me know. Crazy Joe Wilson fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Feb 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 16:17
|
|
|
Thanks for the info. To be honest the dude at the store was helpful and gave me fair warning, mentioning that I could just download the core rulebook (great salesman lol). Was just wondering if elements of AGoAC were required. It's one of the only stores with any amount of Battletech outside of Dublin, likely the best Battletech-selling hobby store in the country. Plus they have demo days on Fridays, so I'll head over there to learn if needed.
School Nickname fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Feb 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 16:17
|
|
|
Libluini posted:So, is the ship really called "Tripitz" or did the AI just not know about the Tirpitz and started bullshitting real hard? The ship was called the Tripitz, a Black Lion class Battlecruiser WarShip. It was lost somehow in a recoverable state during the reuinification wars and rediscovered in 2979. The Taurians had a recovery operation underway when they were attacked by mysterious all-white fighters and vessels with no insignia or markings that destroyed the air wing defending it and the prize itself. The attackers were, of course, from the phone company.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 16:17
|
|
|
School Nickname posted:Thanks for the info. To be honest the dude at the store was helpful and gave me fair warning, mentioning that I could just download the core rulebook (great salesman lol). Was just wondering if elements of AGoAC were required. It's the only store with any amount of decent Battletech outside of Dublin, plus they have demo days on Fridays, so I'll head over there to learn if needed. Highly recommended to get an experienced player to demo for ya, you’ll learn much quicker than trying to figure everything out yourself!
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 16:19
|
|
|
School Nickname posted:Thanks for the info. To be honest the dude at the store was helpful and gave me fair warning, mentioning that I could just download the core rulebook (great salesman lol). Was just wondering if elements of AGoAC were required. It's one of the only stores with any amount of Battletech outside of Dublin, likely the best Battletech-selling hobby store in the country. Plus they have demo days on Fridays, so I'll head over there to learn if needed.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 16:21
|
|
|
a cyborg mug posted:Highly recommended to get an experienced player to demo for ya, you’ll learn much quicker than trying to figure everything out yourself! Have a day off next Friday so will definitely be attending. They've also organised a convention later this month at the local rugby stadium that covers all the popular games that they sell, with free Battletech demos as well. They've hosted Euro BT tournaments there as well so yeah my guess is they're well experienced.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 16:25
|
|
|
Owlbear Camus posted:The ship was called the Tripitz, a Black Lion class Battlecruiser WarShip. It was lost somehow in a recoverable state during the reuinification wars and rediscovered in 2979. The Taurians had a recovery operation underway when they were attacked by mysterious all-white fighters and vessels with no insignia or markings that destroyed the air wing defending it and the prize itself. This is amazing. So the writers hosed up their Tirpitz-reference even in fiction? 
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 16:28
|
|
|
Libluini posted:This is amazing. So the writers hosed up their Tirpitz-reference even in fiction? I suspect the BT author was inspired by some article or whatever about Norwegian salvage operations and either didn't have spellcheck or wanted to be like 2 degrees less on the nose.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 16:37
|
|
|
You could always just refer to the fact that the ship was built hundreds of years after the real-life ship and people forgot how to write the name somewhere along the way. Easy
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 16:38
|
|
|
Or some malicious compliance on the part of an SLDF staff officer. "What did you want to call this one again? Ok, ok, yeah. I got it. Tripitz it is."
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 16:43
|
|
|
School Nickname posted:Have a day off next Friday so will definitely be attending. They've also organised a convention later this month at the local rugby stadium that covers all the popular games that they sell, with free Battletech demos as well. They've hosted Euro BT tournaments there as well so yeah my guess is they're well experienced.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 16:43
|
|
|
a cyborg mug posted:You could always just refer to the fact that the ship was built hundreds of years after the real-life ship and people forgot how to write the name somewhere along the way. Easy The other two options sound more plausible, as "Tirpitz" and "Tripitz" have comically different pronounciation. Also, Tirpitz was a well-known figure in German history, and his name used for more than just the famous ship. You'd thing the SLDF would have at least one Lyran on staff to check this kind of thing. Alternatively, the names are just coincidental and the ship was just named after something in-universe. Like the "Battle of Tripitz in 2567" and "Tripitz" is just the name of the river Tripitz, formed from the streams of Tri and Pitz. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 17:03
|
|
|
Libluini posted:This is amazing. So the writers hosed up their Tirpitz-reference even in fiction? A lot of the early "background" fiction in BT was copy-pasta from real history. The New Avalon Catholic Church is another big one that is kind of dumb when you think about it for more than a few seconds.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 17:33
|
|
|
Libluini posted:The other two options sound more plausible, as "Tirpitz" and "Tripitz" have comically different pronounciation. Also, Tirpitz was a well-known figure in German history, and his name used for more than just the famous ship. You'd thing the SLDF would have at least one Lyran on staff to check this kind of thing. A tripitz is the future tern for doing three whippets at once.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 17:46
|
|
|
Cthulu Carl posted:A tripitz is the future tern for doing three whippets at once. This is how the ship got wrecked in the first place
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 17:49
|
|
|
Crazy Joe Wilson posted:A lot of the early "background" fiction in BT was copy-pasta from real history. The New Avalon Catholic Church is another big one that is kind of dumb when you think about it for more than a few seconds.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 17:51
|
|
|
Arquinsiel posted:I mean, it's not at all when you know that the Society of Saint Pius X exists, and that they have their own schismatics called the Society of Saint Pius X Resistance who are extra mad about Vatican II and think that "mainstream" SSPX priests aren't mad enough about it. Modern day schismatic groups with the Catholic Church are mad about certain councils or teachings, the New Avalon Catholic Church got started over a garbled phone call one Archbishop got (The fiction says it was a Cardinal, but the proper term for an authority figure over a large territory would've been AB, Cardinal is a title any Catholic man can have that doesn't bestow any authority other than voting for Pope), that made him think he was the new Pope and in charge of everything. All the other Archbishops got the right phone call and understood what was going on. All the other Archbishops had to do was contact the New Avalon Archbishop, give him the correct phone call recording, and say "you're not Pope, calm down buddy." But they... didn't, for... reasons? It wasn't until the ACW was over and a new Pope elected that the RCC Pope told the NA pope the news? And even if the Archbishop refused to listen all the other Archbishops had to do was disseminate the correct phone call to all the dioceses in the Federated Suns and say "don't follow this schismatic, he's misinterpreting a phone call. And I bet most Archbishops and Priests in the Fed Suns would've given the NAAB the finger, leaving him a rump church of political cronies. Now you can argue that the Princes of the Fed Suns interfered and wanted a pet Church to control for... reasons, but given that in fiction it's clear that the First Prince tells the NA pope what to do, I don't see why any NA pope would agree to that given that secular vs. religious authority has always been a sticking point in Western Christendom history. You can also argue that maybe the other Archbishops couldn't get through to the Fed Suns space because of an HPG blackout, and by the time the rest of the Catholic Church knew what was going on the NE pope had established too much legitimacy in the eyes of his subordinates, but my understanding was that the HPGs only got shutdown in the Hegemony during the Amaris Civil War, not all the Successor States. So that doesn't add up either. It's a dumb copy-pasta to have an Avignon Papacy present when the story already had a stand-in for the Catholic Church and its schisms; Comstar and the Word of Blake. I do like that at least in more recent (Dark Age) fiction, it's been pointed out that the New Avalon Catholic Church has followed the same trajectory as the Anglican Church, and changed all sorts of teachings, so now there are real reasons the two sides can't reconcile. Crazy Joe Wilson fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Feb 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 18:10
|
|
|
To be fair, the Anglican church is basically the same trajectory too, just older. It's a quick shorthand for adding some flavour to the world in a way that's incredibly silly but also really plausible because it just keeps happening.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 18:37
|
|
|
The only unrealistic part of the Feddies having a state-run religion is that it doesn't openly worship their military.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 19:16
|
|
|
Defiance Industries posted:The only unrealistic part of the Feddies having a state-run religion is that it doesn't openly worship their military. Turn your hymnals now to "Oh comfort me, heavy autocannon."
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 19:29
|
|
|
Arquinsiel posted:To be fair, the Anglican church is basically the same trajectory too, just older. It's a quick shorthand for adding some flavour to the world in a way that's incredibly silly but also really plausible because it just keeps happening. The Anglican Church broke off because the ruler (Henry VIII) wanted a state-run Church that would acknowledge his annulments. The New Avalon Catholic Church broke off because of a garbled phone message in which there were a dozen simple ways to resolve the situation, and no one made any effort to take any of them. It's dumb and a result of lazy copy-pasta. And 300 years later no one still seems to be bothered by it. Whereas in real life today we can see Anglicans and Catholics flip-flopping back and forth over stuff 500 years old. What would've been plausible is if the First Prince had appointed the New Avalon Archbishop "The Pope" after the murder of the actual Pope by Amaris, citing the need for continuity of faith over their subjects, with the goal being to actually try to assert state control over a trans-space religion, and the Archbishop accepted because he was power-hungry. Meanwhile, the rest of the GH Archbishops refuse and you get a split that way. I don't mind adding flavor to a universe, but I do mind if the path to it is really dumb. Crazy Joe Wilson fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Feb 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 19:40
|
|
|
I don't see how those two things are incompatible given that nobody's ever decided to specify a motive for the events. I think it's perfectly reasonable that the Archbishop accepted what he heard because he was power-hungry and nobody confirmed the order because the Prince (who had already decided he was the rightful First Lord and gently caress everyone who says otherwise) wouldn't let them. There was no neutral transnational communications agency at the time, they were part of the government and the Davions were happily nationalizing every piece of the Star League that was within their borders (like Boeing, for instance).
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 19:53
|
|
|
What DI said, but if you think this is bad look at what FASA did with the Church of Ireland in Shadowrun  Sometimes you just gotta accept that a lot of this stuff was laid down in vague terms before the internet existed.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 20:10
|
|
|
I've always viewed it as: the New Avalon Catholic Church was on the verge of breaking away over policy reasons anyway (such as: allowing priests to marry and allowing women to be priests, both important given how frontier a lot of Davion space is) and the "misunderstood phone call" was just a convenient excuse. They pushed through a lot of their policy changes almost immediately after breaking away. Like, the phone call wasn't even over before the New Avalon Pope had a 'priests can marry' doctrine finished and signed. They misunderstood it in the same kssschk kssschk--orry going int--kssshck--space tunnel an--kssschk kssschk--you back once--kssschk ksschk--civil war is over. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Feb 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 20:14
|
|
|
PoptartsNinja posted:I've always viewed it as: the New Avalon Catholic Church was on the verge of breaking away over policy reasons anyway (such as: allowing priests to marry and allowing women to be priests, both important given how frontier a lot of Davion space is) and the "misunderstood phone call" was just a convenient excuse. Yeah, I've never believed there was a genuine misunderstanding. The Cardinal saw his chance and he took it, with full support of John Davion, who realized it was a chance to stoke nationalism.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 20:54
|
|
|
PoptartsNinja posted:I've always viewed it as: the New Avalon Catholic Church was on the verge of breaking away over policy reasons anyway (such as: allowing priests to marry and allowing women to be priests, both important given how frontier a lot of Davion space is) and the "misunderstood phone call" was just a convenient excuse. You've got an in with CGL right? Get a Shrapnel pitch written.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 20:55
|
|
|
Libluini posted:This is amazing. So the writers hosed up their Tirpitz-reference even in fiction? The official answer from official staff members when told on the forum that their foreign language words are gibberish or misspelled is "languages change over time." Except English, English has remained completely static. The biggest development in English is that some factions speak perfect English with some tacticool jargon and Mongol words thrown in as the sole development in a thousand years. This is not because the writers are bad at using foreign language dictionaries, it is because linguistics, obviously BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Feb 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 21:03
|
|
|
Arquinsiel posted:I mean... I'd do it but I still need to get my story about Leonard Kurita's drinking saving the Draconis Combine published (after my current piece which is in editing rn).
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 21:37
|
|
|
BattleMaster posted:The official answer from official staff members when told on the forum that their foreign language words are gibberish or misspelled is "languages change over time." Except English, English has remained completely static. The biggest development in English is that some factions speak perfect English with some tacticool jargon and Mongol words thrown in as the sole development in a thousand years. we have a linguistics thread here on this forum, should we ask them how likely it is that "Tirpitz" changes to "Tripitz", because I'm now honestly getting curious (normally, those kinds of linguistical drift follow roughly the same pronunciation for ages, with only gradual change, e.g. you'd expect stuff like "Tyrpitz" or "Thirrpiz", not a complete switch like this one, disclaimer: I'm just an idiot sometimes reading about this poo poo)
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 21:41
|
|
|
BattleMaster posted:This is not because the writers are bad at using foreign language dictionaries, it is because linguistics, obviously Aff
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 21:41
|
|
|
Defiance Industries posted:I'd do it but I still need to get my story about Leonard Kurita's drinking saving the Draconis Combine published (after my current piece which is in editing rn).
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 21:54
|
|
|
Libluini posted:we have a linguistics thread here on this forum, should we ask them how likely it is that "Tirpitz" changes to "Tripitz", because I'm now honestly getting curious It's very likely because the League was run by Americans, and when they get something wrong they just insist that they are actually correct and everyone else is wrong. When someone tried to tell them that they spelled the name of the ship wrong, the First Lord just screamed at them until they "admitted" that actually it was spelled that way.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 22:01
|
|
|
Defiance Industries posted:It's very likely because the League was run by Americans, and when they get something wrong they just insist that they are actually correct and everyone else is wrong. When someone tried to tell them that they spelled the name of the ship wrong, the First Lord just screamed at them until they "admitted" that actually it was spelled that way. this would have ended in that last First Lord getting committed for insanity, it's not like the Star League was a 100% autocratic system where the Space Czar can just do anything they want, the great houses would have that fucker decapitated for doing something on this level of stupid
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 22:10
|
|
|
bad_fmr posted:Aff BattleMaster posted:The biggest development in English is that some factions speak perfect English with some tacticool jargon and Mongol words thrown in as the sole development in a thousand years. everyone likes to bring up Clan speak as an example of how English has actually changed in BattleTech but it is straight up perfect English (to the point where they don't even like using contractions) with just a handful of new words that are almost entirely military tacticool radio brevity words. And only used by a minority of English speakers in the universe, the majority of which speak perfect 20th century English. BattleTech has never actually been interested in exploring linguistic development and that's a bad excuse for how every non-English language usage is completely jacked up. They can just say they made a mistake and move on instead of trying to dress up misspellings and bad dictionary usage as linguistic drift. BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Feb 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 22:26
|
|
|
BattleMaster posted:everyone likes to bring up Clan speak as an example of how English has actually changed in BattleTech but it is straight up perfect English (to the point where they don't even like using contractions) with just a handful of new words that are almost entirely military tacticool radio brevity words. I live in a Swedish-Japanese household. When I read about the Raselhague speaking a Japanese influenced Swedish, I imagine it’s close to my daily life. A weird version of Swedish where you’re prone to put verb phrases at the end of a sentence, and refer to random stuff with japanese nouns because you forgot what the hell a vending machine is called in your mother tongue.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 22:36
|
|
|
Libluini posted:this would have ended in that last First Lord getting committed for insanity, it's not like the Star League was a 100% autocratic system where the Space Czar can just do anything they want, the great houses would have that fucker decapitated for doing something on this level of stupid I want to speak to your manager
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 22:42
|
|
|
What I want to know is what happened to all the African languages in the setting; there's got to be billions of people speaking Swahili and Hausa and Amazigh and all the other hundreds of languages out there but there's basically no mention of them. I think Battletech does ok on cultural and linguistic diversity for an 80s-as-gently caress pulp sci-fi setting, but the narrow American perspective really shows when you look at the list of "common languages" in each successor state and more than half of them are European.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 22:58
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 11:46 |
|
|
One of the reasons I'm painting up some Arano Royal Guard right now is I like the idea of a polity where Samoan and Urdu are languages that all government documents need to be published in.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 23:19
|
|