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The Neanderthal is as Regulan as you can get, being built on Regulus itself.
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May 15, 2024 17:31
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Signal posted:This is the part that's hard to grok as a new player. Understandable. What it really boils down to is, "if you like it, go ahead and field it" with a few exceptions. For example: House Kurita and the Capellan Confederation don't really export military hardware, so if it's a Kurita specialty, fielding it in the periphery feels weird. That isn't to say that you'd never see a Dragon in the Taurian Concordat, but if you do it should probably be the oldest production model. Which is where the MUL saves the day: If we take a look at another Kurita specialty, the Panther:  There're a lot of variants available, but only a few of them have stars by their name. Those are the production models of the Panther. Everything else is a field refit. So every Panther that rolled off a Kurita production line was a PNT-9R, until 3051 when the PNT-9R was phased out in favor of producing the PNT-10K, and 3076 when the PNT-10K was phased out in favor of the PNT-13K. So if you wanted to field a Panther in your Taurian Concordat force, it should either be the base production model PNT-9R or something with a lower BV, like the PNT-8Z. And those would be the only Panthers you could reasonably expect to see in the Periphery until the 3060s at best, which is about when you'd expect Captain James Tanaka of the Taurian Concordat asks his cousin who has a friend who has an uncle who has cousin who has a sister who was the former roomate of a member of the Yakuza and can get a PNT-10K smuggled to him. And even then they're likely to still get a PNT-9R, because House Kurita still has so many of those in mothballs that they used the frames to build the Wight. So, TLDR: Look for the starred "production model" units in the MUL, if it's intro year is 3025 or earlier it's always periphery safe. If it's newer than 3050, give it at least a decade before you field one. Defiance Industries posted:The Neanderthal is as Regulan as you can get, being built on Regulus itself. Yup, you're right. I'm running on memory in between tasks at work. Edit: Which opens up another can of worms: non-specialty specialties. That is, 'Mechs that a nation makes a lot of but also absolutely hates; and 'Mechs that nations don't make but absolutely love. The best examples of this is the Charger and the Thug. In 3025, House Kurita was making more assault 'Mechs than anyone except maybe the Lyrans... it's just that, until the 3050s something like 60% of their assault 'Mech production was the Charger. There is no place for the Charger in House Kurita's entire war doctrine. House Kurita prefers to scout with infantry, scout vehicles, and aircraft because it has a lot if infantry and scout vehicles and because aircraft are generally just better at scouting when stealth isn't a factor (and stealth is not a DCMS doctrinal concern). So year after year they crank Chargers off the assembly lines (because that production gets reported via ComStar to the rest of the great houses and makes their enemies nervous) but march that Charger production straight into mothballs to rot. And then ComStar gave House Kurita some Thugs in exchange for letting Rasalhague balkanize. And the DCMS went nuts for the Thug, it became the DCMS's absolute favorite BattleMech overnight. Enough so that House Kurita reverse engineered it to start up their own Thug production... except it turns out Thugs are kinda tricky to produce. So the DCMS decided that what they needed was a "we have a Thug at home." So they slapped the Thug's armament onto the Charger's frame, and called it a job well done. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 18:11 on May 15, 2024 |
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May 15, 2024 17:43
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Arquinsiel posted:It was explained in the Liao entry in the House Book series, published in 1987. The novels assume you already have some baseline familiarity with the setting and know how to go find more information if there's a reference to something in them. Huh. Makes sense, I didn't know this, then. I fell into Battletech sidewasy, starting with Mercenary's Star and Price of Glory, which were the only Battletech-novels in our local library. And an architecture student who lived below us for a while had the later books of the Warrior-trilogy and a couple random ones from later. Of couse I went "poo poo, there are more than two books about this???" and borrowed them all. The game came only years later, and a lot of the early game lore poo poo was just left on the table. But anyway, I'm just glad that little bit of sweet weirdness was accounted for.
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May 15, 2024 17:57
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Slight correction: stars on the MUL indicate featured variants in a TRO. They're likely to be production models and common ones among that chassis but there can be a lot more of them than just that. The Thunderbolt is a great example again, with there being like eight different variants in production across like six planets in 3150, but only two get the star because they're the feature variants.
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May 15, 2024 18:27
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I was being a little imprecise, but the TLDR is still "the starred variant is probably going to be the most common," and that the most common variants are probably periphery safe.
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May 15, 2024 18:31
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It's definitely not a bad rule of thumb. I'd probably start first at what's on the Periphery General list but both methods work just fine.
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May 15, 2024 18:50
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And I'm talking along the lines of "I want to use unit X in my periphery outfit, can I?" to which the answer is always 'yes' in isolation. It only looks weird if your Taurians are fielding an entire lance of Panthers, a second of Spiders and Jenners, and a third that's a Dragon, Wolverine, Thug, and Phoenix Hawk. At that point, your Taurians are starting to look like a DCMS formation on false flag duty. At the same time, that doesn't hold true for Free Worlds League or Lyran specialties, since they export the gently caress out of their military hardware. Sure, the Albatross probably isn't going to be common by any means, but that's because of the pricetag not because the League isn't selling it. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 18:59 on May 15, 2024 |
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May 15, 2024 18:57
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Help. I've been narced. It's stuck on my War Crow how do I get it off
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May 16, 2024 01:42
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Try rubbing it up against a building like a bear scratching an itch
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May 16, 2024 01:47
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Get the location it's attached to blown off.
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May 16, 2024 01:47
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Punch it off, nothing will go wrong I swear.Strobe posted:Slight correction: stars on the MUL indicate featured variants in a TRO. Any sourcebook, really. The PXH-99 is in Caveat Emptor, and -1bC is from the new Tukayyid sourcebook. I think that it's a decent rule of thumb for the 3025 era and brand new designs in the Dark Age, but the more products a design is featured in and more variants it has the murkier it gets. The PHX-4L was from Project Phoenix, but I can't really say that it's any more or less prolific than the other House-specific variants from the same volume. It also doesn't apply for OmniMech variants like my personal unfavorite: the Tukayyid sourcebook's Adder TC, which is a waste of page space because they go to great lengths to make it a one off which is never used again.
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May 16, 2024 01:50
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Wait, can you remove narcs with a self-targeting melee attack like you can battle armor?
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May 16, 2024 01:56
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Nope, they're too small. The only way to deal with a Narc beacon is ECM, or to lose the location the beacon attached to.
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May 16, 2024 02:01
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You can remove the iNARC pods because they are bigger, which gets people thinking that you can remove regular NARC pods too.
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May 16, 2024 02:07
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You can remove them but it would require you to trundle over to a repair bay and stand still for several dozen turns.
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May 16, 2024 02:23
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I'm hearing a lot of glowing reviews for 'Without Question', gotta get my DTF soon.
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May 16, 2024 13:47
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So supposing that I want to do something insane and run a campaign mixing classic and the RPG, what are the main books I would want handy for the necessities of an ongoing campaign in classic?
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May 16, 2024 16:29
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I am actually looking to do this very thing, and I would honestly just say MegaMek. Campaign Operations has all the rules for running campaigns, but they are complicated and poorly laid out. MegaMek can do all the heavy lifting for you and its learning curve is probably about the same as learning to use the stuff in the book.
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May 16, 2024 16:34
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FishFood posted:I am actually looking to do this very thing, and I would honestly just say MegaMek. Campaign Operations has all the rules for running campaigns, but they are complicated and poorly laid out. MegaMek can do all the heavy lifting for you and its learning curve is probably about the same as learning to use the stuff in the book. Unless it includes campaign management stuff independent of play, that's not super helpful, on account of I'm trying to run this offline, in person.
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May 16, 2024 17:02
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NinjaDebugger posted:Unless it includes campaign management stuff independent of play, that's not super helpful, on account of I'm trying to run this offline, in person. It does. You'd need to set up your PCs as pilots and record what happens to them, but I ran a merc game briefly with it and it's way better than loving around with spreadsheets/notes/etc.
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May 16, 2024 17:30
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actually3raccoons posted:It does. You'd need to set up your PCs as pilots and record what happens to them, but I ran a merc game briefly with it and it's way better than loving around with spreadsheets/notes/etc. Could get complicated, since it's probably going to be like four players with a lot more PCs than that, both mechwarrior and non-coms, but probably still going to be better than doing it manually. Thanks!
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May 16, 2024 17:40
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You can arbitrarily make as many pilots as you want and if you aren't actually running the games in MegaMek there's no need to assign them to anyone. I don't even think players will need to download it, you can just run it "behind the curtain" and have the unit's accountant and/or head tech give in-character updates on finances, repair jobs, etc. MegaMek is a bit fiddly but using it is still light years ahead of trying to do Campaign Ops stuff manually.
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May 16, 2024 19:32
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The stuff like fixing mechs and ordering parts is a huge drag on megamek. I understand that it's a part of the game but abstracting the rolls away and balancing the c-bills around that would be so nice
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May 16, 2024 22:10
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Just warchest the whole thing TBH. Grab yourself Operation: Flashpoint or Total Chaos and go hog wild.
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May 16, 2024 22:31
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Does megamek have settings for that? I got the free chaos campaign primer. I don't think there's anyone who plays where I live now. Shame we didn't get to play again lol
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May 16, 2024 22:35
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There's probably options in MekHq you could fiddle with to make those rolls guaranteed and make delivery instant. I don't think it supports Chaos Campaign, though.
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May 16, 2024 22:47
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You turn on GM Mode and right click -> magic fix everything.
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May 16, 2024 22:49
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Canned Bovines posted:There's probably options in MekHq you could fiddle with to make those rolls guaranteed and make delivery instant. I don't think it supports Chaos Campaign, though. You can give bonuses to the rolls and such, and I think delivery time is also an option. Honestly between auto repair/salvage and just pressing the "order all missing parts" button when it appears I spend no time to speak of on repairs anyway
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May 16, 2024 23:40
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Big news from the current CGL Q&Aquote:[...]we expect to launch the new MUL in the next few weeks.
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May 17, 2024 02:09
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Hell yeah. I'll probably keep printing the ones from MegaMek just to keep consistency, but that's an excellent update. I'm interested to see what the new MUL looks like; the current one is a bit clunky, but I've gotten used to its interface, jank and all.
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May 17, 2024 03:06
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ilmucche posted:Does megamek have settings for that? I got the free chaos campaign primer.
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May 17, 2024 03:31
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Yesssss game resourcesssss
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May 17, 2024 03:31
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LaSquida posted:Big news from the current CGL Q&A Holy poo poo, I thought the new MUL and especially the record sheets were still months if not years off!
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May 17, 2024 03:36
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a cyborg mug posted:Holy poo poo, I thought the new MUL and especially the record sheets were still months if not years off! Same. What a difference a bit of cash flow makes.
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May 17, 2024 04:15
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It’s been real hard finding the time to sit down and make a video recently, but I wanted to get this one out before I go on vacation. https://youtu.be/E1r5CuxEr2o?si=v_9G33YoGpqMfBiu It’s about rolling dice in Alpha Strike. I go through the four options I know of: Option 1: RAW: Throw 2d6 and deliver full damage if hit Option 2: From the rulebook, as above but roll 1d6 per damage point and any 3+ rolls hit (why would anyone use this?) Option 3: From the rulebook, roll 2d6 per every damage point Option 4: DFA ”pilot die” method, roll one big die and then 1d6 per damage point, add up each 1d6 and pilot die to see if you hit In what was quite a surprise to me, all of the methods apart from #2 result in the exact same damage statistically. See Pile of Dice’s excellent breakdown of the math here: https://zacgaming.wordpress.com/2020/11/16/alpha-strike-multiple-damage/ Where the difference lies is most of all critical hits and how the game feels. In my simulated 10000 rolls to hit, RAW had a critical hit chance of 2.32%. Pilot die more than doubled that to 5.32%. 2d6 per damage point tripled RAW to 7.35%. And I forgot to mention it in the video but my calculations did take into account the fact that you can only get one natural 12 critical in the multiple attack rolls and pilot die methods. This does change the game a lot because criticals will bring back some of that detail and granularity and BattleTech feel back into the abstracted Alpha Strike experience. Pilot die and multiple attack rolls also make the game feel a bit more like BattleTech where you’re not just firing a big laser once, but multiple weapons systems. Multiple attack rolls even allows you to target multiple enemy units by dividing your damage. RAW has the potential to feel really bad because you might whiff your biggest attacks all at once - even if the numbers are the same statistically, the potential for feelsbad is elevated compared to the other options. a cyborg mug fucked around with this message at 15:37 on May 17, 2024 |
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May 17, 2024 15:35
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Nevermind, I'm wrong! Teach me to do anything from memory. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 15:50 on May 17, 2024 |
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May 17, 2024 15:42
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PoptartsNinja posted:I have to highlight this because it's not true, RAW you'd still need the multi-tasker SPA to split your damage. 
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May 17, 2024 15:47
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It's been several years since I played Alpha Strike, but when I did we always just used the basic system. Might have been part of why I didn't particularly care for it.
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May 17, 2024 16:50
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I remember my biggest actual concern with Alpha Strike's alternate RfEDP (roll for each damage point) optional rule: It skews the points curve in favor of high damage units even more. 1) Under the standard rules, crit chances are even which gives inexpensive, low damage units a niche as crit hunters (especially in numbers). Under the RfEDP alternate rule, units with higher damage become significantly better crit seekers than low damage units. Even if they can only score one critical hit per turn, they get so many more opportunities for the random through-armor crit. 2) The guarantee of being able to split fire, even at a ToHit penalty, means that the high damage unit is no longer wasting some of its time by finishing off a weakened unit. In standard play, a Timber Wolf that does 7 damage to a Blackjack and leaves it at 2 structure either has to waste 5 of its damage finishing it off on the next turn or move on to a different target and hope a weaker teammate can finish it off. With RfEDP, it just finishes off the Blackjack and immediately rolls into something else. With RfEDP it's never worthwhile to bring those cheap, low-cost units that you'd normally use to finish off a weakened target or critseek.
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May 17, 2024 17:34
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a cyborg mug posted:It’s been real hard finding the time to sit down and make a video recently, but I wanted to get this one out before I go on vacation. Southern Assault does option 3, with the caveat that you designate a pair of dice as your crit dice. This set rolls with everyone else, but you can only sneak a crit in if this pair rolls a natural 12. I still managed to lose a pristine Warhammer to someone rolling 2 12’s in a row like that, but at that point the odds are so stacked against it happening that i couldn’t even be mad. I also like that every attack could potentially finish a mech no matter what, even if the odds are tiny.
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May 17, 2024 17:37
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