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Holy poo poo. I see why Plasma Rifles are good now. enemy mech: Gains 50 heat. Sinks 26 heat. 24 heat remaining... ammo kaboom.
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Feb 28, 2023 09:23
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They are also incredibly powerful against tanks and battle armor, plus they are one of the few anti-infantry weapons that work outside knife fighting range.
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Feb 28, 2023 09:36
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Weissritter posted:Question on that - Did Nicholas have any plans to resolve the differences with Andery? Based on Nicholas' dialog he saw Andery as his Aaron DeChavalier, a sounding board and support, and sometimes restraint. By Operation Klondike the two respected each other although Nicholas would not tolerate Andery (or anyone) telling what to do. I don't think Nicky really had a plan for "dealing" with Andery, he was convinced he needed him. Had Andery lived, my best guess is he would have become a lightning rod among Nicholas' biggest detractors, like Sarah McEvedy, but I'm not sure Andery would want that, as he was convinced by the final novel the Clans and Nicholas were necessary after all the trauma of the PCW. He probably would have caused another Prinz Eugenz situation, and again sided with putting it down. Atlas Hugged posted:My son is ecstatic. This is my son right now but with Legos Knights. Also, taught two students to play Alpha Strike last night. Saw a Stinger get ammo exploded and a Stalker got stripped all the way to the structure bone but dodged a critical hit. Alpha Strike is even more fun than I thought. Crazy Joe Wilson fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Feb 28, 2023 |
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Feb 28, 2023 13:40
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So while playing BTA last night, I noticed that the Lyran Commonwealth had a planet called "New Capetown" and the description was pretty clear that it was Aparthied-era South Africa. what the gently caress?
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Feb 28, 2023 14:52
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That planet is probably closer to the lovely end of the spectrum as per earlier discussion about common people in Battletech Edit yknow after looking into this for two minutes on Sarna, I'm unimpressed by your apparent outrage? quote:This was just the first in a larger effort by the Archon to curb the planet's hateful influence, leading to a wider reform movement which would eventually result in a civil war breaking out in the early 3030s. By the middle of the decade the racist regime was overthrown and a new, egalitarian government was put in place, with the capital renamed to New Hope. The new government was largely successful in stamping out all racial bigotry on New Capetown, though a few pockets remained into the middle of the century. Were you so tweaked by the mere representation of apartheid that you ran to the forums with it? Luckily Battletech rarely approaches nuance levels of war crime stuff so you shouldn't encounter many reformed apartheid planets, but you might want to steer clear of stuff like Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It spends a lot of time examining the pros and cons of a totalitarian system explicitly founded on mass genocide. Marx Headroom fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Feb 28, 2023 |
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Feb 28, 2023 14:55
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TheKingslayer posted:Holy poo poo. I see why Plasma Rifles are good now. I thought there was a limit on heat gain from external sources? I might be talking out of my rear end. Or was that 50 heat from plasma rifles plus its own activity.
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Feb 28, 2023 17:24
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General Battuta posted:I thought there was a limit on heat gain from external sources? I might be talking out of my rear end. There is, it's 15 points from external sources.
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Feb 28, 2023 17:31
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SirPhoebos posted:So while playing BTA last night, I noticed that the Lyran Commonwealth had a planet called "New Capetown" and the description was pretty clear that it was Aparthied-era South Africa. In its first mention (HSTLC) it basically exists for the writers to condemn the then-current South African government because the writers weren't subtle, saying that the local government spreads an "evil hate-philosophy" and that Katrina Steiner is out to stomp it out but has to contend with terrorist attacks on the people trying to change their society for the better. Coincidentally, the next time we looked at the world the Apartheid system had fallen, because it had also fallen in real life and so the target was no longer there. HTH
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Feb 28, 2023 19:16
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Want a despicable regime in BT canon that's caused controversy since 3058? Look no further than the Capellan Confederation! /s Actually with the exception of the Chancellor's autocracy much of the rank-and-file make their place on the galactic level through a Platonic merit system with miraculously little corruption and that's the real science fantasy right there. SkyeAuroline posted:There is, it's 15 points from external sources. And begs the question: "Why isn't there an Awesome with 4 Plasma Rifles yet?"  4d6 heat averages out to just about 14 heat on every salvo of 4 PRs.
Sidesaddle Cavalry fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Feb 28, 2023 |
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Feb 28, 2023 20:01
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Sidesaddle Cavalry posted:And raises the question: "Why isn't there an Awesome with 4 Plasma Rifles yet?" Irian doesn't make Plasma Rifles.
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Feb 28, 2023 20:12
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e: wrong thread
TheDiceMustRoll fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Feb 28, 2023 |
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Feb 28, 2023 20:37
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We played our first game from AGoAC on Saturday. We did the first scenario in the back where we each had the same roster and just had to beat the poo poo out of each other until someone was out of mechs. Starting around 2pm we packed up a little after 5 with only one mech from each side down. It did start to go faster towards the end as we got better at GATOR but I think we were playing too conservative with heat generation and not just firing enough guns Some questions I had before our next game: Am I actually supposed to count 200 machine gun shots? That seems excessive Are there any city based maps or is it all just fields and canyons and mountains?
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Mar 1, 2023 00:54
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Sidesaddle Cavalry posted:And begs the question: "Why isn't there an Awesome with 4 Plasma Rifles yet?" One of the new Vipers from RecGuide 32 has four AES-guided plasma cannons.
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Mar 1, 2023 00:55
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Len posted:Some questions I had before our next game: Yes, you are supposed to track that many (each time one MG is fired, that's just 1 of 200 shots). But you'll never fire that many unless you have tons of MGs / are using the optional rapid-fire rules. It's been acknowledged as a goofy part of the game since 1984. As for city maps, devs have said that one of the next map sets due is a new city-based set, so you'll see it this year or perhaps next. In the meantime you'd have to track down older urban-based maps: if you can find an old CityTech boxed set you get a couple of those maps plus a ton of building counters to add to them to make custom urban environments. I warn you though that the urban rules are a particularly clunky holdover from the earliest days of the game and can be a bear to run if you actually want to to do more than just set your conventional battles in an urban-looking environment.
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Mar 1, 2023 00:58
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Marx Headroom posted:Luckily Battletech rarely approaches nuance levels of war crime stuff so you shouldn't encounter many reformed apartheid planets, but you might want to steer clear of stuff like Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It spends a lot of time examining the pros and cons of a totalitarian system explicitly founded on mass genocide. Yeah I like the prologue of the first Legend of the Galactic Heroes novel where it goes over how the Empire works. It states explicitly that the only privileged people in the Empire are white people with German names. They murder children with birth defects and developmental difficulties. They implemented verbatim the Nazi lebensraum strategy of bulldozing cities, moving everyone to villages, and invading more planets to have the space to house their preferred citizens. They have killed billions of dissidents and enslaved billions more and there are billions of people enslaved for whatever minor crime the descendents of theirs committed hundreds of years ago. The people they are at war with a democracy formed by escaped slaves, joined by defectors and planets who willingly joined them once it was shown that there is a better way to live. But actually there are shades of grey because the Free Planets has some corruption, some extreme, callous or incompetent military leaders, and the war has been going on for so long that people are growing tired of [fighting for their freedom and even their existence from a regime that would murder or enslave them]. So did you consider that they are maybe just as bad as the Empire? edit: I actually like Legend of the Galactic Heroes (outside of them trying to treat the Free Planets as being as bad as the Empire, it agrees that the Empire is bad but the two nations are NOT the same) but its attempts to show some kind of nuance about who is good or bad just falls flat. The Free Planets suffers from essentially identical problems as the Allies from World War II but only like actually the worst people say that the Allies were anywhere near as bad as the Nazis. "Well the Nazis built brutal concentration camps that needed full-time incinerators to deal with the number of dead produced by disease, starvation, and industrialized murder but did you consider that some people might have died when the Allies liberated the camps?" It is actually possible, in real life, for their to be good guys and bad guys and fiction doesn't needs to twist itself into a mass of tangled spaghetti trying to find shades of grey in situations that are like vantablack versus computer case beige at worst BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Mar 1, 2023 |
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Mar 1, 2023 01:03
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Urban maps aren't particularly fun to play on. If you do I advise ignoring skidding rolls or restricting them to some very specific places like: having each side pick a 'main street' where skidding rolls apply. 'Mechs are heavy enough to crush concrete so it's only specially reinforced roads like main thoroughfares and bridges intended for 'Mech traffic or airfield/spaceport tarmac that should cause them trouble. You can also add buildings to pre-existing maps. I wish Catalyst's hex packs had sold better so we could've gotten some nice building tokens that way. I think they were just released too early and if they'd been included or released as a kickstarter bonus people would've taken much more notice. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Mar 1, 2023 |
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Mar 1, 2023 01:10
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You count machine gun ammo solely so you can know exactly how much damage your mech takes when your kid scores another lucky critical hit on the ammo location.
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Mar 1, 2023 01:17
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Machine guns and their copious ammo bins exist so some idiot marketing dick at Andorian Indistries can slide a glossy brochure to an SLDF procurement board general with the bullet point "ballistic weapons loadout with week long time on target between resupplies!"
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Mar 1, 2023 01:32
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I'm guessing that mechs probably see a decent amount of action just putting down local unrest or acting as an intimidation force, so the machine guns make sense.
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Mar 1, 2023 02:10
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At least until the small pulse laser is invented
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Mar 1, 2023 02:15
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That sucks to hear that urban maps aren't much fun to play on. I guess really what I'm picturing is just a canyon where you can blow the walls up to make more los range How do y'all go about keeping track of bullets? Just writing them on the mech sheet as you go? We put our sheets on page protectors so we could erase and reuse them but it still feels real clunky
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Mar 1, 2023 02:24
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Lots of -1's or -2's next to bins on the record sheet. Maybe a -20 if I'm feeling particularly Krakenish.
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Mar 1, 2023 02:28
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I make tick marks over the top of the ammo bin that I'm firing from, or cross out individual letters or something like that. It's a good visual shorthand for how empty your magazine is getting, although if you only get a few shots per ton you might need to color in blocks or something
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Mar 1, 2023 02:31
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Xotl posted:
where on this subject have you heard anything wrt the battletech universe book
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Mar 1, 2023 02:37
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Len posted:That sucks to hear that urban maps aren't much fun to play on. I guess really what I'm picturing is just a canyon where you can blow the walls up to make more los range The good news is that Alpha Strike is awesome so if you really want your robits to smash about a city Godzilla style, you can do that pretty easily.
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Mar 1, 2023 02:38
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Cities are fun in the sense that they're very built up and lots of things that otherwise will get completely tarred on an open field can be useful, but the skidding rules are awful and it's easier to just ignore half the urban fighting rules than to actually try to keep track of everything accurately. Basements are funny once or twice but after that they're just frustration engines that happen to also make the coolest moves (crashing through a building to slam into something on the other side like it's Pacific Rim) even more dangerous.
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Mar 1, 2023 02:48
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Strobe posted:Cities are fun in the sense that they're very built up and lots of things that otherwise will get completely tarred on an open field can be useful, but the skidding rules are awful and it's easier to just ignore half the urban fighting rules than to actually try to keep track of everything accurately. Battletech from the AGOAC rules feels very different once you add in all the complicated bullshit from total war. Like it's so beer and pretzels presentation wise. DFAs, random headcaps, critical hits than at minimum make your weapon not work all the way to "and then you explode with your health at 99%, it's crazy how poo poo like this happens." the constant falling down, overheating because, hey, they are literally right in front of me and I need a 6 to hit, what could go wrong and the answer is I managed to get an ammo explosion from shooting too much gun. And then the game will also have rules that weird and very simulationist. I really wonder why
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Mar 1, 2023 02:58
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Grogs. Someone wanted to do A Thing in the game and so rules were made to do A Thing. Sometimes the thing is sensible like "I want to track my unit's maintenance for this campaign" and is crazy detailed, and sometimes it's "what if it's raining frogs?" which is silly, but once the rule is made you gotta collect them all somewhere.
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Mar 1, 2023 03:08
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Battletech is a lot like a roleplaying game in that the fundamental core mechanic of the game is just "roll 2D6 and compare it to a target number to see if Thing happened". Given that, you can always just add in another Thing and the only requirement is to figure out what contributes to the bonuses on the 2D6 roll and what other parts of the game might interact with the new Thing. You can literally just keep stapling on new Things forever.
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Mar 1, 2023 03:11
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When you get down to it it's more of an RPG than it is a wargame.
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Mar 1, 2023 03:12
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Also that. MechWarrior 2nd edition is literally just that core mechanic with a pile of skills to add on to "Piloting" and "Gunnery".
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Mar 1, 2023 03:13
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Arquinsiel posted:Grogs. ayup. 
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Mar 1, 2023 03:14
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I legit never made it through the rulebook for Car Wars because it's so badly laid out. It's sitting in my pile of "things to demo at a con someday" box in storage at home, and there it shall remain.
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Mar 1, 2023 03:17
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I went through a huge Car Wars phase for several years as a kid because the setting and the weapons were cool. The rules have never been anything other than terrible dogshit.
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Mar 1, 2023 03:20
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Defiance Industries posted:When you get down to it it's more of an RPG than it is a wargame. I feel like this is as much a reflection of who was still playing from 2001-2013 than anything, though it's definitely reinforced at CGL's highest levels. If you're just playing a game out of Total Warfare (or more practically the BattleMech Manual) it's still a perfectly serviceable wargame much more than it is an RPG.
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Mar 1, 2023 03:24
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GD_American posted:I went through a huge Car Wars phase for several years as a kid because the setting and the weapons were cool. The rules have never been anything other than terrible dogshit. 
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Mar 1, 2023 03:29
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Taught two students how to play Alpha Strike yesterday at the board game club I run. They liked it, one of them killed a Stinger via ammo explosion on the critical hits chart. They really liked that part  Got two more students interested. if my principal springs for a boxed set, I'll teach them to paint all the 'mechs in their school colors. Got another teacher who plays at the school already, so once we get enough kids learning how, we'll do a big 3 on 3 battle with a lance for each player. I think the students will enjoy it more if they pick the 'mechs they want to play with, rather than pre-assigned lances.
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Mar 1, 2023 03:33
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Arquinsiel posted:Look, all I'm saying is I got the game for free at some point in the last decade and I haven't played it despite the concept being I think I literally bought every supplement they made for it (I mean, like with allowance money) and I might have played it 3-4 times. The setting was that good and the gameplay was that bad.
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Mar 1, 2023 03:39
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I think I might have to start taking an RPG approach Battletech with my son now that he has a better understanding of the core rules. It will give him something to work for rather than just blowing poo poo up (which he enjoys just fine).
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Mar 1, 2023 03:55
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Strobe posted:I feel like this is as much a reflection of who was still playing from 2001-2013 than anything, though it's definitely reinforced at CGL's highest levels. If you're just playing a game out of Total Warfare (or more practically the BattleMech Manual) it's still a perfectly serviceable wargame much more than it is an RPG. The core business model is that of an RPG, not a wargame. If people only cared about the rules of the game, FASA would have gone belly up by '86. The business model is based around splatbooks (TROs) and worldbooks (plot sourcebooks) rather than the GW model of monetizing the rules of the game and requiring you to buy shitloads of minis. The core game is more like a boardgame, a single one-and-done purchase.
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Mar 1, 2023 04:33
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