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General Battuta posted:I’m curious whether vehicles were ironically more viable in the fiction than on tabletop for a while. Vehicles were semi-consistently depicted as rare (and occasionally scary) opponents for 'Mechs to face. But since the novels were generally about robots fighting robots they didn't come up very often. They showed up pretty frequently in the Gray Death Legion books. The other ones I can remember of off the top of my head are: - The Blackwell Zoomer elemental transport sleds that show up during Wolf Pack and are implied to have helped turn the tide in Jaime Wolf's favor. This was before there were game rules for mounting Elementals on OmniMechs so BattleArmor that didn't have to walk to a battlefield and could take a more offensive role was new-ish to the fiction. - That one time Wendy the Davion Heavy Guardswoman (who dodged a bullet by not marrying Kai Allard-Liao) got her only callback appearance puttering around in a Devastator quietly admired the work of a lance of Alacorns during the Twilight of the Clans or Fedcom Civil War or something - That time in Hearts of Chaos Cassie used a rock slide to dump a Dragon off a mountain cliff causing a column of Black Dragon Society tanks to back off and flee (likely because there were rocks in the road and they needed to call up a bulldozer but possibly because their battalion commander just fell in a hole and they didn't want to take the blame. It's not like they could send Vedettes down after him to pull him out) - Also from Hearts of Chaos, Towne's extensive wet-water navy got a few mentions as being far too serious for the Black Dragon Society (who lacked competent AeroSpace assets) to take on but were also easily ignored because most of Towne's infrastructure wasn't coastal. So yeah, I'd say tanks and other vehicles were definitively viable combattants in the fiction even before the game rules made them useful in tabletop. They just didn't make many appearances and even more rarely got "screen time" in actual combat. Nearly every novel has 'Mechs and at least one AeroSpace fighter mentioned, but probably less than half of the novels had combat vehicles appear even as set dressing much less in actual combat capacity. Except for Mobile HQ vehicles, those things are apparently ubiquitous. IIRC they started pushing combat vehicles around the time of the CityTech box set. Before that combat vees were an afterthought in tabletop. OG tanks in tabletop were always more like a jump scare or occasionally useful glass cannons that couldn't stand up to a real engagement. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 17:55 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 17:52
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BattleMaster posted:Most UrbanMechs are poo poo (I say that with nothing but affection in my heart) but the UM-AIV is probably the best value per BV of any 'mech in the entire game Why wouldn't you just use a field gun if you're that desperate to put the worst artillery in the game on the board
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May 7, 2023 18:28
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Defiance Industries posted:Why wouldn't you just use a field gun if you're that desperate to put the worst artillery in the game on the board Because a field gun isn’t a 
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May 7, 2023 18:31
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You can't field gun an Arrow IV to my knowledge, I think that's limited to direct fire weapons (Rotary AC/5 all the way, though, a Rotary A/C field gun is immune to the RAC's normal jam chance). 603 BV isn't bad for a semi-mobile somewhat armored Arrow IV launcher. Slap an inferno missile in there and light some tanks on fire.
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May 7, 2023 18:33
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You can't hide an urbanmech inside a fortified bunker and use it as an impenetrable bulwark for artillery barrages though.PoptartsNinja posted:You can't field gun an Arrow IV to my knowledge, I think that's limited to direct fire weapons (Rotary AC/5 all the way, though, a Rotary A/C field gun is immune to the RAC's normal jam chance). For some reason they have "field guns" and "field artillery" separated out into two separate rule section even though they work exactly the same. I call them all the same thing. Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 18:42 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 18:36
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I mean, you can. That's probably a better use of an UrbanMech's armor than taking fire. What's a few points of building damage anyway?
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May 7, 2023 18:41
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General Battuta posted:Okay so I remember that effective use of combined arms is one of the Good Guy Traits in Battletech fiction - iirc Davion and Wolf both get the "recognize the value of non-mech units" doctrinal quirk in the novels. And the very first GDL novel had Grayson Carlyle commanding PPC carriers and infantry with infernos and stuff.
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May 7, 2023 18:57
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I absolutely hate the current infantry rules and I hope they get a rework whenever Total Warfare is replaced. I whipped up a set of my own rules based on how battle armor works and i'm actually about to go playtest them now. I'll post the rules themselves and how they worked out when I get back if people are interested.
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May 7, 2023 19:03
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Defiance Industries posted:Why wouldn't you just use a field gun if you're that desperate to put the worst artillery in the game on the board Field guns are technically custom units and may not be allowed at a table, and an IS platoon needs to use a non-standard 30-man platoon to equip two of them, and each weapon only gets one ton of ammo. The UM-AIV carries two tons of ammo, is more likely to keep its Arrow IV when shot at, and believe it or not is significantly faster than a 1 MP infantry platoon (field artillery is reduced to 1 MP) that additionally can't fire while moving and has to spend its one MP to turn the artillery. Too bad if you don't get to choose a specific deployment spot Plus Arrow IV the worst artillery in the game? What? You bring an UM-AIV and some TAG and it's likely to do more damage than most of your team on its own. edit: Oh I get it this corpo shill is going to be like "don't use artillery use a DI Morgan" or some poo poo BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 19:21 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 19:06
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I played a couple of games of Battletroops (rules were fun, if wonky) but never bought Clantroops. Think they'll ever do a new version?
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May 7, 2023 19:16
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There's a Novella that features the gunner on a PPC Carrier, called sniper, because that's what he does. He has a habit of deleting mechs with carefully placed shots.
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May 7, 2023 20:01
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FishFood posted:I absolutely hate the current infantry rules and I hope they get a rework whenever Total Warfare is replaced. I whipped up a set of my own rules based on how battle armor works and i'm actually about to go playtest them now. I'll post the rules themselves and how they worked out when I get back if people are interested.
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May 7, 2023 22:28
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Honestly the biggest issue with infantry is that they don't really function at the game's timescale. An average fight in Tabletop is over in under five minutes of in-universe time, and will usually average what, two and a half minutes give or take?
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May 7, 2023 22:37
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I'm not super worried about the exact timescale of a game because I tend to think in terms of story pacing rather than strict, 30 second turns or whatever they're supposed to represent. As for my problems with infantry, I found playing with them just incredibly frustrating. Non-burst fire weapons feel useless against them and they can do a lot of damage, while their low movement means they're effectively static unless they are motorized/mechanized. We faced them a lot in a recent campaign where we were in light mechs, and they were incredibly un-fun to face off against. A single platoon of guys with rifles was considerably more dangerous to our bug-mechs than we were to them. It felt pretty bad and didn't really fit the fiction of the setting. I also didn't like how differently they functioned from every other unit; they don't fire weapons in the same way as every other unit, they don't take damage in the same way as every other unit, etc. They felt like something from a different game grafted on. Their static nature can't really be helped, and infantry on foot acting primarily as static assets fits a game about mechanized warfare pretty well, but I definitely wanted to change how they functioned in combat. A few people had posted on the CGL forums about using the original infantry rules from Battledroids and that kind of set me to thinking about how I would switch up the current infantry rules. I also took a look at the battle armor rules and basically asked myself why not just use those? So I tinkered around a little and came up with the following: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AHyIpUEVuSgZb_rcgZmEM3NqvKvybYm9?usp=share_link I stole 99% of these rules word-for-word from the rules for battle armor; the primary difference is that instead of tracking each individual armored trooper, you track squads. Each squad basically functions as battle armor with armor equal to the number of soldiers in the squad. Inspired by the altered Battledroids rules posted on the CGL forums, each squad carries a single weapon from the battle armor list. I created a few arbitrary limits on what a squad could carry to match what felt reasonable, and built squads from there. I haven't typed out the construction rules yet, but I have them in my notes. The differences between how they function and how battle armor functions in the game itself are pretty small. The biggest one is that conventional infantry take half damage from everything except burst fire weapons, which function basically the same way they do now. If an infantry platoon is hit with a burst fire weapon, you don't roll to see which squad is hit; instead, you roll to see how much damage is dealt, and then mark off that damage starting with the first squad, and then moving on. Heat weapons apply damage in the same way, starting with the first squad and moving on. Squads can have different weapons but fire them in the same way as battle armor, with one attack roll for each type of weapon, which then roll on the cluster table as normal. I also kept battle armor's innate +1 to be hit, but only for non-motorized infantry. I eliminated mechanized infantry and kept the transport rules as-is, just reorganizing them from the mess that is Total Warfare. I might come back and hammer something out to represent mechanized infantry in a way different from tracking individual squads and APCs, but I'm not there yet. I had my first playtest game today and I think it went pretty well! I had two forces, one with a Stinger, Panther, and two LMG foot platoons, and the other with a Valkyrie, Locust, and two LMG foot platoons, duking it out on a single mapsheet. I wanted to see how infantry fared against bugs and test a few different weapons against them, and they felt a lot more interesting to play against with the bug mechs. Machine Guns were just as deadly, but shooting a medium laser at a platoon didn't feel like a waste any more. The bugs still had to put themselves at risk to get into MG range, but it didn't feel suicidal anymore. The platoons' low damage but decent number of hits felt pretty good; they were good at fishing for criticals, putting chip damage on mechs, and finishing off wounded machines, but couldn't really take on a mech 1v1, which felt right to me. We had some interesting gameplay, with the Panther hitting the Locust in the leg right as it had gone in for a pass on the infantry, with the two platoons then proceeding to blow off the leg later in that turn, leaving the Locust open to being swarmed. It was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to see happen; the infantry were powerful enough to be useful, but not so deadly that the correct move is to just ignore them. The Stinger was mauled by multiple turns of low-damage fire, combined with a few through-armor criticals, but remained standing and was able to destroy a platoon entirely by itself. It felt good and like the BV were about where they should be. My opponent and I both agreed that these rules felt a little bit more intuitive to people already familiar with Battletech, but YMMV. I would love for other people to try these out if they're interested, I'm definitely going to try to foist them on my local group so I can get more data. FishFood fucked around with this message at 23:38 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 23:34
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I finished a few more mechs   This was supposed to be the Clan Wolverine star from the LP but I got distracted so it's just a bog standard SLDF lance instead 
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May 8, 2023 01:05
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BattleMaster posted:
Arrow IV has a tiny range and Copperhead rounds do the same thing as homing ammo but with a longer range. Mechs are bad arty platforms, wisen up and AT LEAST use a ver
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May 8, 2023 01:12
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I've honestly never had a game with ranges farther than like 3 mapsheets
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May 8, 2023 01:13
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Z the IVth posted:I finished a few more mechs Did you freehand those numbers? They look great!
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May 8, 2023 01:22
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The original 3025 background was that MechWarriors are knights and lords of land- so they don’t want the idea that non-noble tanks and infantry can actually do anything in the battlefield. Leave that stuff to the people if good…breeding.
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May 8, 2023 01:32
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Z the IVth posted:I finished a few more mechs I really like what you done with the hot orange windshields. Well done.
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May 8, 2023 03:59
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Cockpit jeweling is as impressive looking as it is time consuming
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May 8, 2023 04:03
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Icon Of Sin posted:Did you freehand those numbers? They look great! Thanks, I'd love to take the credit but I only managed the stripes. Numbers and decals are all from GW. Leftover Aeronautica Imperialis and Titanicus decals.
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May 8, 2023 09:36
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General Battuta posted:No I’m saying the opposite, vehicles WERE worse on the tabletop. The old critical hits table for vehicles really poo poo on them, they had a good chance of straight up dying to a single hit. At some point the vehicle rules got cleaned up to make them less of a joke, and BV as a balancing mechanic made vehicles and infantry more appealing too. Vehicles from my memories back in the 90s had their uses. Mostly that their speed could get silly and if you were someone who balanced by C-bill cost (most people who tried didn't try more than once) you could have a hoard of the things.
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May 8, 2023 13:19
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Z the IVth posted:I'm accumulating a company of vehicles for Alpha Strike. Are there any notable vehicle-centric units and/or interesting colour schemes to try out? Otherwise I might just paint them all a fairly standard Soviet or SLDF green and call them planetary militia. PopTartsNinja posted:Edit: Any of the surviving Dark Age formations, too. Like the Swordsworn, Spirit Cats, or Steel Wolves. It's almost a pity Bannson's dead, I liked the Raiders' color scheme. Just throwing this out there but the Steel Wolves look hella cool, plate mail metal base coat with fur brown paneling. Easily my favorite paintjob to do. SwordSworn being alive is really weird too since Dominions Divided makes zero mention of them yet Damocles Sanction has them as the backbone of Erik Sandoval's campaign.Technically a lot of Bannson's people survived and are off running as mercenaries, some of them were involved in Vedet Brewer's creation of his new Duchy. That new beginner's box has $20 off the CGL online store coupon in it, think that's a decent reason to get it. Free forcepack basically. Also on the vehicle chat, I will just throw out there if you want to read about vehicles fighting mechs, the Dark Age books up until the last 7-8 of them are absolutely full of combat vehicles and infantry. Most of the books have more vehicles than infantry, to fit Weisman's goal of making mechs more rare and menacing again. Dark Age clix made vehicles pretty viable overall, to the point that the rules had to be tuned to make 'mechs more viable after a while. Crazy Joe Wilson fucked around with this message at 14:51 on May 8, 2023 |
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May 8, 2023 14:32
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The Stormhammers are also still around, they're just the second battalion of the 17th Arcturan Guards now.
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May 8, 2023 22:06
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Are there any books about C3 networks in use? Or any crazy wobbie shenanigans?
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May 8, 2023 23:14
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Isle of the Blessed is a great read.
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May 8, 2023 23:37
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Defiance Industries posted:The Stormhammers are also still around, they're just the second battalion of the 17th Arcturan Guards now. Where was that from? I must've missed it. After Jasek died it made sense to roll them into another command, but man. At their height they were almost 2 regiments, now to be a single battalion is a lot of attrition over 10 years.
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May 9, 2023 01:21
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:Where was that from? I must've missed it. After Jasek died it made sense to roll them into another command, but man. At their height they were almost 2 regiments, now to be a single battalion is a lot of attrition over 10 years. 19 years.
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May 9, 2023 01:23
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:Where was that from? I must've missed it. After Jasek died it made sense to roll them into another command, but man. At their height they were almost 2 regiments, now to be a single battalion is a lot of attrition over 10 years. It's in the book where Jasek dies, which I think is The Anvil? Anyway, besides losing their elite unit entirely when the Commonwealth began operating openly, they also probably got a lot less support since the LC was now sending that hardware to its own troops.
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May 9, 2023 01:29
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Quick and simple SLDF inspired paint job. Just trying to get through my backlog a bit faster.   
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May 9, 2023 01:40
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Basic green's a good paint job if you want to match a ton of different units. What are Oriente Hussars one day can be 3rd Proserpina Hussars the next and Crucis Lancers after that.
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May 9, 2023 02:00
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Strobe posted:19 years. True, although I figured they were at least a regiment up until 3142-3143, since they were big enough to absorb the Steiner Strikers in Bonfire of Worlds (And lost that battalion after Stormhammers got mauled by Alaric in turn). Defiance Industries posted:It's in the book where Jasek dies, which I think is The Anvil? Anyway, besides losing their elite unit entirely when the Commonwealth began operating openly, they also probably got a lot less support since the LC was now sending that hardware to its own troops. Yeah, I had a feeling it might be in there. And yeah, going from being the Archon's pet unit to just another line regiment probably hurt their ability to keep numbers up.
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May 9, 2023 02:04
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Wow, jumpy mechs are really really good. Nightstar 9FC, Nightsky-4T, Wraith TR1, Grasshopper 5N vs Awesome, Catapult, Battlemaster and Wolverine. Poor deployment on the opponent's side, but the Nightstar held and tanked the middle of the map while the 3 jump mechs just stuck together and rolled up the flank. Took out the Catapult and battlemaster while only suffering some armor damage to everything before we called it.
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May 9, 2023 06:22
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Stomp.
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May 10, 2023 01:44
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Alright, which one of you named a dropship "the Joseph LeDoux"?
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May 10, 2023 02:31
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Xotl posted:Not that I recall, but I'll take a look when I get home in a couple of days if no one else clarifies first. To follow up, a cyborg mug, there's no melee rules in the Essentials box: it's still just the Beginner rules so there's no Piloting skill or physical attack phase.
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May 10, 2023 23:33
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Had a really fun game last night. We went ~2500 BVP so I took a Commando 2D and a Wolverine 6M both with gunnery boosted to 2. My opponent took a Thunderbolt 5S and a Hunchback 4G (the one that has an AC20). Neither one of us really wanted to spend a whole lot of time dancing around at long range so we ended up closing very quickly. From the very first time he fired, my Commando was getting hits with both SRMs and laser on every turn - the extra gunnery really pays off! Anyway, I was consistently whittling down the Thunderbolt's armor (my Wolverine wasn't hitting poo poo) when eventually the Hunchback nailed the Commando with an AC-20 round that blew off his left leg and much of his left torso. This is where the other player made his mistake - he wrote off the Commando as being as good as dead, but didn't finish the job. For the next two or three turns, my Wolverine was jumping his guts out trying to maneuver around both baddies, while simultaneously barely landing any hits. Eventually, I had pulled both his bots back in range of the Commando, which promptly landed an SRM-6 hit on the Hunchback. 4 missiles hit, one of which got a through-armor crit on the left torso, igniting the AC-20 ammo. The Hunchback went from barely scratched to a smoldering ruin due to 2 points of damage - a wonderful sight! Having learned a lesson, the Thunderbolt then started to blast the Commando, but he was getting some really unlucky rolls, including a couple of failed seatbelt checks as both my mechs proceeded to pummel him. After a turn or two, he had successfully removed an arm, but the Commando was still lying there in the mud, holding itself up with its remaining arm while blasting the Thunderbolt with its torso SRM launcher. At this point my Wolverine overheated from all the jumping and firing and I failed my shutdown roll. Since I was literally just standing there for a whole turn, the Thunderbolt hit my Wolverine with everything it had, tearing through my right torso armor and destroying a heat sink and two jump jets. It hurt bad, but I was still standing. We could tell things were coming to a conclusion, so we both decided to go for broke and attempt kicks. Both kicks landed and another beautiful thing happened: his kick destroyed my right leg, and some damage transferred to my right torso. He rolled a critical, and the only thing left was the SRM ammo, so my Wolverine just burst into a ball of fire right then and there. At the same time, my kick destroyed his leg, his mech fell, he failed his seatbelt check yet again, and his pilot died. After all that, the Commando was the only thing left on the field. I imagine he had a long crawl home, but it was worth it for the story he got to tell his bunkmates...
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May 11, 2023 17:20
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Through armor crits blowing up ammo are simultaneously the most bullshit and excellent thing
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May 11, 2023 18:22
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Xotl posted:To follow up, a cyborg mug, there's no melee rules in the Essentials box: it's still just the Beginner rules so there's no Piloting skill or physical attack phase. A gladitorial mech fight without melee is a shameful gladitorial mech fight.
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May 11, 2023 18:49
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