The Sarna one; details in the actual books are way too spread out to be worth the angst of trying to track down for every separate subject that comes up. It's not like I'm being paid for this, after all.
Tell The World That We Tried (Battletech CYOA) (Complete)
- Thread starter Valles
- Start date
VhenRa
MechWarrior
- Location
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Have you SEEN the dress uniforms the Kell Hounds adopted?
Yeah, Sarna one is more of a later part in timeline.
In 3015 the Centurion only just returned to production. From memory their association with the Centurion lies more from, they had a factory spitting out spare parts for it while everyone else didn't. So any Centurions they got their hands on stayed working while everyone else's broke.
Yeah, Sarna one is more of a later part in timeline.
In 3015 the Centurion only just returned to production. From memory their association with the Centurion lies more from, they had a factory spitting out spare parts for it while everyone else didn't. So any Centurions they got their hands on stayed working while everyone else's broke.
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Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
Was that before or after they were associated with one of these most legendary duels in history? Before or after they have the personal favor of one of the leaders of a Successor State?
The point is that the Kell Hounds and the ELH can get away with things that get them seen as 'eccentric' as opposed to people treating them negatively because of it.
And beyond that, that's still a dress uniform, which is entirely fine anyway within reason.
Probably easier to alter the origin of the shipment than the mechs, at this point. I dunno that the CapCom or FWL ever ran Battlemasters or Marauders in any real numbers, but those were both SLDF machines that are supposed to've ended up widely spread, so enh.
VhenRa
MechWarrior
- Location
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Multiple production sites for Marauders, even in 3025 and the main production site for Battlemasters.
I mean, FedSuns doesn't produce Battlemasters either. They might have at some point, but they certainly haven't for awhile. Its why they designed their Battlemaster variant field refit. To increase the Beamer's durability to preserve those valuable command mechs as long as possible.
CapCom is kinda irrelevant.
The Bushranger
In the Danger Zone
- Location
- TSAB Asura
What? Yes, they speak English, but they have very different accents. A chap from London and a lady from Cornwall will both speak English, but it's entirely possible it'll take a minute for them both to understand each other, and a third party listening in may well be hoplessly confused.
Somebody needs to watch Hunt for Red October again. Givsh me a ping, Vashily!
The fabled Handbag With Brick Inside™....no, you deal with the purse, it's where you're supposed to pack the biggest of your three+ concealed personal defense weapons.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Missing my point. My point is that the UK is, for all practical purposes, still one dialect continuum (i.e., you can still understand the guy 20 miles away, who can still understand the guy 20 miles further and so on and so forth), whereas each successor state is an unorderly patchwork of different languages, so "Lyran accent" makes little sense - since, for the accent it would matter more what mother tongue they have, rather than from what Successor State they come.
You've got this concept that the Mercenaries need to be taken seriously and dress appropriately, but let me remind you that 'dress appropriately' for Mechwarriors is 'combat boots, cooling vest, everything else is optional. (for the love of god people, make Cooling Vest Pants, your legs have more surface area than your torso.) Everyone's equally undressed in a Battlemech, good looking Mechwarrior outfits are Lostech (except in the Aurigan Reach), and different worlds of origin means that different mercenary commands will have different ideas what dress uniforms ought to look like anyways-if they have any dress uniforms at all. Most mercenary outfits don't have enough members to make that a cost-efficient move, to hire a designer and work with them to develop a good look, which is also reasonably practical and distinctive... much easier to just go with civilian dress, especially for new units. That or use debased versions of the dress uniform of your state of origin, since officers from there probably had tailors who did alterations and would be used to orders for customized uniforms.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
Assertion unsupported. Mechwarriors aren't showing up to formal events with cooling vests on, stop being daft.
The whole point is that it sends two entirely different messages to be dressed as a trendy party girl vs wearing whatever passes as the outfit's formal uniform. When you're the leader of a green merc outfit trying to get hired by people who aren't desperate and want to get taken seriously, the former is not particularly advised.
Czlyydwr Llrngwl
"Sell ya a door Learn gull," Czly/Celly for short
- Location
- Where the Beef is
- Pronouns
- Any
It's a Battletech fic and I don't hate it? What is this I don't even...
Looks Like I'll be giving False Prophets a fair try too, from the snippet of discussion I saw about it right after one of these story posts.
Looks Like I'll be giving False Prophets a fair try too, from the snippet of discussion I saw about it right after one of these story posts.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Considering just rare and sought-after mechs are (not even just the price - given the "Mechs are expensive, lives are cheap" line, the official prices of mechs in the BT universe are too cheep by at least one order of magnitude, what with demand and supply mechanics...), merc units being silly and whimsical always struck me as a bit... unfitting. And maybe even unlikely. Possession of a mech can already give you a landgrant, so mechwarriors (and ASF pilots, I guess) really should be a class of their own, and not hang around cheap mercenary bars and the like...
- Location
- The deathworld-in-miniature that is Australia
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Ooh, I am liking this! And Sophitia's Centurion is a mod of my favourite Cent variant for 3025 work, as it reduces torso-bomb tendencies and ammo dependencies, letting my merc unit eliminate one source of operational costs! Plus, extra armour, because armour is cheap, components aren't.
With Marauders, the damn things are so thin-skinned I honestly prefer to rip out the AC/5 and ammo entirely, and spend a good chunk of the weight budget freed up on armour. But if I have to take a canon variant, I like the 3D that the Davions use. It's a Davion 'mech that actually removes an autocannon - madness! It replaces it with a Large Laser, which takes a bit of the bite out of your long-range hits (well, it's taking an AC/5, so not that much damage is lost) but gives you a better infighting capacity when they try to close to get under the PPCs, and in the meantime, the extra heat sinks give you a better rate of fire for your two PPCs. Also a mean punch if they haven't reached ML range yet, since they're in optimal range for the PPCs and the LL - only problem is you'd better be running cool beforehand, as you're going to cook your pilot.
As for the Beemers, I honestly think the Davions had the right idea. Yeah, losing those two rear-arc MLs will suck when a bug 'mech gets behind you, but those were the only things they were a real threat to, and Battlemasters are fast enough and lightly enough armoured for an Assault that they can easily get their pilots into trouble when punching through, and those two MLs are just enough of a security blanket to lead pilots to take risks. Removing them was a good idea. Losing the SRM rack hurts a bit more, but that price is easy to pay in exchange for better heat management and thickening up that armour. It's still a Light-Assault, and it's never going to win a fight with a 3/5 proper assault if you just stand there and trade shots, but those heat sinks and the extra ton of armour can't but help. Of course what might have helped more is ditching those MGs and their ammo for an extra two tons of armour, as MG ammo is the most explosive thing in the Inner Sphere, ton-for-ton, and even a light assault has no business fighting infantry - that's what your lights and mediums are for - but still.
You may have noticed from my preferred variants for the above three 'mechs that I'm a flashbulb enthusiast. Yes. All the way. Especially in 3025, without CASE, but even after that comes back. That said, never let it be said that I can't appreciate a good Macross Missile Massacre, so let's move on to Reyes' Crusader - what model is it? The standard 3R is a very good mech, but I admit to being partial to the 3D, despite the loss of some of the short-range punch. You gain better ammo endurance and the ability to actually use all your short-range weapons at once without the pilot smelling bacon, as well as getting rid of that damn MG ammo. All 3025 variants are lacking a hole-puncher, but they're some of the best sandpaper stocks around, and that's what the rest of the lance is for anyway, right?
*ahem*
Hardware-geeking aside, I'm liking the characters, the commentary on the Future!80s is great, and people are acting like people, not vehicles for the plot or perfect cold-calculus machines. My only constructive comment is that while you've done a pretty good job of showing that time has elapsed between each chapter, I feel more emphasis on that could be a good thing.
With Marauders, the damn things are so thin-skinned I honestly prefer to rip out the AC/5 and ammo entirely, and spend a good chunk of the weight budget freed up on armour. But if I have to take a canon variant, I like the 3D that the Davions use. It's a Davion 'mech that actually removes an autocannon - madness! It replaces it with a Large Laser, which takes a bit of the bite out of your long-range hits (well, it's taking an AC/5, so not that much damage is lost) but gives you a better infighting capacity when they try to close to get under the PPCs, and in the meantime, the extra heat sinks give you a better rate of fire for your two PPCs. Also a mean punch if they haven't reached ML range yet, since they're in optimal range for the PPCs and the LL - only problem is you'd better be running cool beforehand, as you're going to cook your pilot.
As for the Beemers, I honestly think the Davions had the right idea. Yeah, losing those two rear-arc MLs will suck when a bug 'mech gets behind you, but those were the only things they were a real threat to, and Battlemasters are fast enough and lightly enough armoured for an Assault that they can easily get their pilots into trouble when punching through, and those two MLs are just enough of a security blanket to lead pilots to take risks. Removing them was a good idea. Losing the SRM rack hurts a bit more, but that price is easy to pay in exchange for better heat management and thickening up that armour. It's still a Light-Assault, and it's never going to win a fight with a 3/5 proper assault if you just stand there and trade shots, but those heat sinks and the extra ton of armour can't but help. Of course what might have helped more is ditching those MGs and their ammo for an extra two tons of armour, as MG ammo is the most explosive thing in the Inner Sphere, ton-for-ton, and even a light assault has no business fighting infantry - that's what your lights and mediums are for - but still.
You may have noticed from my preferred variants for the above three 'mechs that I'm a flashbulb enthusiast. Yes. All the way. Especially in 3025, without CASE, but even after that comes back. That said, never let it be said that I can't appreciate a good Macross Missile Massacre, so let's move on to Reyes' Crusader - what model is it? The standard 3R is a very good mech, but I admit to being partial to the 3D, despite the loss of some of the short-range punch. You gain better ammo endurance and the ability to actually use all your short-range weapons at once without the pilot smelling bacon, as well as getting rid of that damn MG ammo. All 3025 variants are lacking a hole-puncher, but they're some of the best sandpaper stocks around, and that's what the rest of the lance is for anyway, right?
*ahem*
Hardware-geeking aside, I'm liking the characters, the commentary on the Future!80s is great, and people are acting like people, not vehicles for the plot or perfect cold-calculus machines. My only constructive comment is that while you've done a pretty good job of showing that time has elapsed between each chapter, I feel more emphasis on that could be a good thing.
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For purposes of the version of the 'verse I'm writing, the cost of new parts for energy weapons tends to roughly balance their logistical tail with autocannons and missile. You need a new lens assembly a lot less often than you need another magazine load of buwwet, but when the bill comes due it has to be shipped from someplace like Hesperus with all the agony of the wallet that implies.
All of the Marauders in the shipment that started the Blackwings were Dash-3Rs. I really like the computer game conceit of typed weapon slots, and the 3R/3D shift would require changing one - a major refit, outside the Blackwings' technical capability. Their technical department was aimed at having enough hands over relying on a handful of mad geniuses.
That said, I think that most of what's wrong with the Marauder's armor suite isn't the amount of it - Yeah, it's a bit short, but so are lots of the things it faces - but the headscratching arrangement choices. Fix that, and shift a couple of the heat sinks from legs to left torso to pack around the magazine, and you've got a much better machine that's within the capabilities of a mechanic who still keeps his manual open in arm's reach every time he goes to work.
We're in agreement on the machine guns, yeah. Replacing both of them with a single flamer would be worthwhile, but technically out of reach. Vehicle flamers are... hard to judge, but... Better to just delete the things and pour the weight into armor. Leave the rear MLs as-are, delete one ton (of two carried by the base Dash-1G) of SRM ammo in favor of another heat sink, boom.
I'd pick a 3D myself, too, but Reyes' is his own, and he's got a 3R. He's also a tough old bit of beef jerky with no trouble riding a heat wave in a good cause, hence his willingness to alpha the Cicada.
In more general terms, while I freely acknowledge the mechanical efficiency of pure-energy loadouts under the existing game rules, I find the ammo weapons more interesting. I didn't go into this consciously intending to adopt the revised autocannon damage and missile hit mechanics from the new HBS game as 'closer to real', but I like the way they improve relative balance enough that it's probably inevitable.
Given the apparent confusion that's cropped up from several different people, I was planning on it.
I'd like the new game better if I could beat that damned ammo dump mission.
There's something that's helping though; if you are an energy weapon heavy military unit those lenses take up a lot less space than more bullets. This lets you put more of your space to either food and other non-munition supplies or it lets you stockpile more lenses. Like if you are near Hesperus anyway, so you might as well just order a few literal metric tons of lenses.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
I'm not quite sure that's in-line with notes on various mech designs that remove ammunition based weaponry solely to ease the logistical burden but whatever works for you.
Also, with the hilarity of battlefield salvage being the way it is, you can just scrounge up someone else's ML after their arm's been blown off. Can't do that for their ammo.
Czlyydwr Llrngwl
"Sell ya a door Learn gull," Czly/Celly for short
- Location
- Where the Beef is
- Pronouns
- Any
While I prefer Mekton over BT, I also usually go for energy and melee weapons over projos and missiles, specifically due to the thought of extended operations with only as much support as you can scrounge. Having had a major Rifts stage back when it was the hot new thing can also be considered an influential factor in this tendency. The only BT material I ever actually owned was the Aerotech boxset, because I liked the Crusher Joe ripoff fighter on the front and wanted to see their take on variable fighters. Needless to say, I was underwhelmed at the actual treatment of their Macross ripoffs, which carried over to a general dislike of the lumbering cargo-cult lashups rampant in the setting in general. Even so, a middle-weight LAM with a couple missile pods and otherwise all Medium Lasers for mobility and balanced damage vs. range is at least capable of standing among the ranks of my Mekton popcorn mooks.
slybrarian
Creature of Fable
- Location
- A Far and Sunless Land
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Personally, for fiction purposes I'd adopt another change from the new game and decree that either ammo explosions are harder to set off or that they are treated like the mech has CASE. (Or both.) It's hard to see how any ammo-carrying mechs have survived for decades or centuries when statistically most of them should get vaporized after a few battles.
GiovanniBlasini
Transhumanist Nutcase from Niops IX
- Location
- San Diego, CA, USA, Sol III
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's an especially critical issue, even worse than on a MAD-3R, on the Crusader 3R, which has not one, but two torso bombs, in the form of LRM ammo in the side torsos with absolutely nothing else there. Any critical there is guaranteed to set off that LRM ammo.
I'll probably do that, thanks. Good idea.
Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
ok so this is great but given my only BT is from the game and one really odd LP of mechwarrior for I have...questions.
Like can I safely assume the lightest//heaviest of a class tend to suck? My understanding is that Cicadas and dragons//quicksilvers have the issue of just being innefficient with their tonnage so that they don't really benefit much from the extra weight.
Also what would the average breakdown of mech clauses be like? 40% light, 30% Medium, 20% heavy 10 % assault?
And I guess role match ups go like Sniper->Brawler->Striker-Scout->Sniper? Pretty much a rough who kills who before jump jet flanks start happening I guess.
And mech accuracy is like base ball numbers right? At around 25% you're competent at about 33% you're amazing and if you can consistently make it go where you want you get a big contract.
I'm looking forward to more of this. Just hopefully with less scumbags. It was suprising how in the course of a second I went from 'meh, another generic pirate' to 'DiEpAiNfUlLy'.
And as a side note, you have giant robots. Why do you even need to care about what people are into damnit? You've already achieved the height of mankind's evolution and aspirations.
Like can I safely assume the lightest//heaviest of a class tend to suck? My understanding is that Cicadas and dragons//quicksilvers have the issue of just being innefficient with their tonnage so that they don't really benefit much from the extra weight.
Also what would the average breakdown of mech clauses be like? 40% light, 30% Medium, 20% heavy 10 % assault?
And I guess role match ups go like Sniper->Brawler->Striker-Scout->Sniper? Pretty much a rough who kills who before jump jet flanks start happening I guess.
And mech accuracy is like base ball numbers right? At around 25% you're competent at about 33% you're amazing and if you can consistently make it go where you want you get a big contract.
I'm looking forward to more of this. Just hopefully with less scumbags. It was suprising how in the course of a second I went from 'meh, another generic pirate' to 'DiEpAiNfUlLy'.
And as a side note, you have giant robots. Why do you even need to care about what people are into damnit? You've already achieved the height of mankind's evolution and aspirations.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
That would be a categorical no. The light/medium/heavy/assault categories are, after all, pretty arbitrary. What matters is the actual weight class. If you go from a 35t to a 40t mech, you haven't just crossed a magical barrier, that is. Now, some mechs are in fact very ill suited for their weight, like say, Chargers, but you can't really determine that by where on the weight spectrum a mech falls. Well, okay, 20t bug mechs are not very awe inspiring, but they are meant to be cheap and replaceable, after all.
I'll leave the other questions to people a bit more versed with the technical side of things, heh.
jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
Fluff-wise, the usefulness of a mech depends on the role that you use it in.
For example the humble locust (20 tons) should never be put into a front-line combat role since it has barely any armor and weak weapons. However as a scout, skirmisher going after logistic forces or artillery units (the back line stuff) or even an artillery spotter it's great.
For example the humble locust (20 tons) should never be put into a front-line combat role since it has barely any armor and weak weapons. However as a scout, skirmisher going after logistic forces or artillery units (the back line stuff) or even an artillery spotter it's great.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
Weight does dictate usable payload and can determine certain performance metrics, but usually the really crappy mechs suck because some idiot decided to ignore how much an engine of a specific rating weighs, or the specific milestones where jump jets double in weight.
That weight class breakdown isn't too far out there, but there are regional variations. Combine is going to have more light heavies and heavy lights than mediums, Lyrans trend heavier, Capellans keep trying to pretend Bugmechs can legitimately serve in line regiments, etc.
Unless your mech really really sucks, or you run your light mech to close range of something with an AC 20, fights tend more towards extended pounding matches whatever your mech's designed role. That whole precision shot from the computer game, or casually coring the center torso of anything that hits the ground for half a second? Almost never happens, and is nowhere as easy as Tactics 9 characters would fool you into thinking is the case. Positioning tends to have a lot more importance, then winning initiative, then skill differential, and then specific mech roles when it comes to determining who kills who in a fight of equal weight and approximate quality of design(in unequal fights, weight and not driving a lemon comes in near the top).
Just hitting a walking heavy mech at medium range in an open field from a stationary firing position 25% more often is half of what bumps a units abstract effectiveness rating by 50%, if you can do that a little less than half again as often you're well on your way to being rated as twice as lethal.
But some people drive the wrong giant robots for the wrong reasons, and this must be purged from the universe with fire.
Nah, still a piece of crap. It can alpha strike any artillery unit but the most basic towed and do nothing, and then get vaporized by the gun firing directly at it. No jump jets, hobbling its mobility. Far more expensive than a five ton vtol for scouting and spotting, and slower too even if you ignore the inability to fly.
It's barely adequate for attacking rifle armed foot infantry in the open, or the most basic of Apcs in small numbers.