Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

[Shakatherapy]

I think a grand strategy game for Battletech would be interesting, maybe some thing like Stellaris.

 

[White Devil]

I think CK2 and Stellaris both have BT mods.

 

[Snekposter]

I think a grand strategy game for Battletech would be interesting, maybe some thing like Stellaris.

There's a wonky Supreme Commander one out there. And just some emblem/flag/music mods for Stellaris, although there's a few mods that add BattleMech armies. AlphaMod is one of those.

 

[BlackDragoons]

"Total War: [insert favorite BT era here]" would be fucking amazing. A game where you have a shitton of unit types including infantry, tanks and VTOLs, where Mechs are just the high tier stuff that you will ever only have a small handful of, now that would be something I could get behind. Though admittedly, it would be something that would be a niche franchise in an even more niche genre... so never gonna happen.

I was thinking maybe something like World in Conflict but with a progressive system as you manage your own merc unit, or the option of taking command of House Battalion.

 

[Corn Flakes]

My BT group decided it was finally time to play normal rules again after playing only Alpha Strike for a while, and so for shits and giggles we spent most of yesterday rolling dice for what we called Omicron Cup. A little 3062-era Nova vs. Nova tournament with full zellbrigen dueling rules, Prime omni configs, and each player roleplaying one clan that canonically has or had an Omicron Galaxy. Since I already have the models I went with Ghost Bear, and the other three guys went with Jade Falcon, Cloud Cobra and Wolf (natch). Whoever lost a match had to buy the winner a 6-pack of whatever they wanted.

Since we didn't want to be stuck there all weekend, we went with simple elimination 1v1 matches. I'm not going to give full battle reports but here are a couple of highlights:

• The Falcons and Wolves went at each other first, and they both went ham on the roleplay. The Wolf player dramatically called a melee when the Falcon's command 'Mech landed a headshot with a large laser on the Wolf's command 'Mech, and the whole fight turned into a huge furball.
• By the end of that match, the only 'Mechs left standing were a Wolf Stormcrow with half its weapons and a side torso blown out, and a mostly undamaged Jade Falcon Fire Moth with a damaged hip. The Falcon player started gloating about how he could circlestrafe the Stormcrow all day, and then his pilot failed a roll, faceplanted right in front of the Stormcrow, failed the consciousness roll, and got promptly blown away. Wolves win by Kerensky's plot armor, more on that later.
• It was my Ghost Bears vs. the Cloud Cobras next. A sequence of incredibly lucky rolls meant my Battle Armor went full can opener on the Cobras' Vulture and forced the enemy MechWarrior to eject by essentially ripping out the canopy.
• My Warhammer IIC's bad luck streak is still going strong. After a couple good shooting phases, the poor thing took two Gauss slugs to the right torso, had a SRM ammo cookoff, and then spent the rest of the fight face-down in Level 1 water because I couldn't for the life of me make the piloting roll for standing up.
• On the other hand, My Hunchback IIC (I like the IICs, shut up) challenged the enemy command 'Mech and damn near turned that Summoner inside out in a single shooting phase. The Summoner got finished off the next round and the Hunchie was in a pretty bad way, but without their Vulture and down one Summoner (they still had another), the Cobras were on the back foot. Plus I still had a Dire Wolf in the field.
• The final match was Ghost Bears vs. Wolves. My Hunchback was taken out before it could do any real damage, but the Warhammer IIC decided to behave this time around and took a Gargoyle apart without much damage before the enemy Dire Wolf issued a challenge and turned it into slag.
• My Dire Wolf was basically a pair of legs with an engine, a gyro and a cockpit strapped on after challenging and beating the two enemy Timber Wolves one after the other (the second one took out the Hunchie and was basically standing around not doing much while everybody else dueled). It put up a stiff fight against the enemy Dire Wolf before going down.
• The Elementals spent the entire battle going full hockey brawl in the middle of the field. I don't even remember who won that one, because there wasn't a single Elemental alive by the end of the battle.
• I still had a Timber Wolf in good health by the end of the fight, against a Shadow Cat with an open side torso and the heavily damaged enemy Dire Wolf. Challenged the Shadow Cat first to get it out of the way, took a Gauss slug to the cockpit for my trouble.

The lesson learned? Fuck these fucking Clan Wolf bastards and their fucking plot armor.

On the bright side, the Wolf player drinks fucking Coors Light so at least it wasn't an expensive loss.

 

[LurkNoMore]

Challenged the Shadow Cat first to get it out of the way, took a Gauss slug to the cockpit for my trouble.

Ah, the good old gauss round to the face. At least it happed at the end of the game and not one of those turn 1 shooting phase decapitations...

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Nothing as graceful as winning a match by turning the last living pilot and his cockpit into a smoking crater... it's the kind of attack that hits like the fist of an angry god right into the soul.
When you're on the receiving end though... shit sucks.

As far as my BT endeavours are concerned, I am currently working on painting my 1st Ghost Regiment units. I put them on neat bases (designed to look like a Japanese shrine garden with a one-inch torii, a tiny bridge, a lantern and all that jazz), I basecoated them in corax white and slapped on a layer of light grey contrast paint and lo and behold: It looks like shit. So I coat them in corax white again, try the contrast paint and it looks a bit better but still kinda shit with a lot of details being washed out by the paint. Had to strip the minis and the meticulously crafted bases got ruined. FML.
On the bright side, the new bases I made today look even better than the original ones since I knew what I was doing and this time, I'll just go with corax white primer without contrast paint. Canonically, the basecolor is a very very bright grey that's almost white anyway.

Also, there's about a battalion's worth of plastic minis in the pipeline to be delivered to my doorstep, if only those stinking chinese polution goblins would finally get their shit together so I'd get my Wave 2 boxes...

 

[Corn Flakes]

Ah, the good old gauss round to the face. At least it happed at the end of the game and not one of those turn 1 shooting phase decapitations...

I don't know what is worse, to be honest. Once I had taken out that Shadow Cat, I was planning on slamming that Dire Wolf with so many LRMs the local weather forecast was going to turn into "cloudy with a chance of high-explosive". Still, that's what I get for going against Clan Kerensky.

Exaggerated salt aside, though, that was a hell of a fun afternoon (okay, the games ended at like 8PM...) for all involved. We hadn't rolled that much dice in a long time.

 

[White Devil]

Clan Plot Armor ekes out another win.

All said and done though, sounds incredibly fun. I've not played actual tabletop BT since college and I miss it fiercely.

 

[Bassomatic]

Great to read a bat rep and nice to see people are still getting back out and rolling dice.

I need a shadow cat mini now you mention it.

 

[White Devil]

Great to read a bat rep and nice to see people are still getting back out and rolling dice.

I need a shadow cat mini now you mention it.

You can find them on Etsy for pretty cheap. I always preferred Ironwinds minis though.

If you have a 3D printer, you never have to buy minis again.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Clan Plot Armor ekes out another win.

All said and done though, sounds incredibly fun. I've not played actual tabletop BT since college and I miss it fiercely.

Does Clan Plot Armor apply when it's all Clan vs. Clan?

Anyway, no joke: the most fun way to play Clan, by far, is to go full ham on the roleplay. I thought the "YOU DARE REFUSE MY BATCHALL?!" joke would have outstayed its welcome by the end of the session, but we were still laughing like a bunch of morons whenever it dropped even after the post-game pizza arrived.

I need a shadow cat mini now you mention it.

I like using Shadow Cats when I'm playing against type and fielding a lighter formation on my Ghost Bears. They're fun little death machines, for sure. 17 tons of pod space on a 6/9/6 chassis with MASC lets you do all sorts of silly shit even with the fixed endo and ferro crits.

Word of warning, though: in my experience Shadow Cats, no matter the configuration, are some of the most inconsistent units I ever fielded. No kidding, I might as well just flip a coin on whether or not mine is going to do fuck-all the entire battle, or end up competing against my Daishi for MVP status. No middle ground. Worse, that thing draws fire like nobody's business.

 

[White Devil]

Does Clan Plot Armor apply when it's all Clan vs. Clan?

Anyway, no joke: the most fun way to play Clan, by far, is to go full ham on the roleplay. I thought the "YOU DARE REFUSE MY BATCHALL?!" joke would have outstayed its welcome by the end of the session, but we were still laughing like a bunch of morons whenever it dropped even after the post-game pizza arrived.


I like using Shadow Cats when I'm playing against type and fielding a lighter formation on my Ghost Bears. They're fun little death machines, for sure. 17 tons of pod space on a 6/9/6 chassis with MASC lets you do all sorts of silly shit even with the fixed endo and ferro crits.

Word of warning, though: in my experience Shadow Cats, no matter the configuration, are some of the most inconsistent units I ever fielded. No kidding, I might as well just flip a coin on whether or not mine is going to do fuck-all the entire battle, or end up competing against my Daishi for MVP status. No middle ground. Worse, that thing draws fire like nobody's business.

Clan Plot Armor always applies. I never meant to imply the roleplay isn't fun, my comment was more tongue in cheek. I've always been a Ghost Bear guy when it comes to Clans but I'm always gonna be a 3025 tech guy first. Just how I initially learned how to play and the setting I prefer.

That being said, I honestly think the Shadow Cat is probably one of the best all rounder units. They've never really been inconsistent in my experience, they're just a great mix of weaponry, armor, and mobility.. And they're jump capable too. That's also the reason why they draw fire, people see those fuckers and they know if they let them go undealt with for awhile, it's gonna bite them in the ass.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Clan Plot Armor always applies. I never meant to imply the roleplay isn't fun, my comment was more tongue in cheek. I've always been a Ghost Bear guy when it comes to Clans but I'm always gonna be a 3025 tech guy first. Just how I initially learned how to play and the setting I prefer.

I'm a post-Helm, pre-Clans kinda guy. Either that or FedCom Civil War, but mostly Late Succession War. A few new toys but not the whole range, and no Clan. If I'm playing Clan, it's more fun to do Clan vs. Clan stuff like that little tourney.

That being said, I honestly think the Shadow Cat is probably one of the best all rounder units. They've never really been inconsistent in my experience, they're just a great mix of weaponry, armor, and mobility.. And they're jump capable too. That's also the reason why they draw fire, people see those fuckers and they know if they let them go undealt with for awhile, it's gonna bite them in the ass.

That's fair. My problem with the Shadow Cats is that since they're Mediums I like specializing mine to a specific task and sometimes I just don't get a good chance to use them as intended. Build it as a sniper and end up forced to use it in an urban area... make it a brawler and end up stuck on a flank with heavy or assault brawlers... you know how it goes. And yes, these suckers draw a lot of fire.

Ironically, for all my talk about unreliability, the real fun unit in that Nova I fielded was the Hunchback IIC. There's something magical when all four shots hit and the other player is struck by the realization that his unit is about to have a very bad day. Sure, the thing usually gets popped like a balloon long before I can lay any sort of accurate fire, but having an AC/20 on the field is going to make everybody around start smiling and/or sweating. AC/20s of any kind are just visceral crowd-pleasers in a way even Gauss Rifles can't top.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

You can find them on Etsy for pretty cheap. I always preferred Ironwinds minis though.

If you have a 3D printer, you never have to buy minis again.

Thingiverse has a bunch of really cool models, usually under the name of "American Mecha" with weird nicknames to evade detection by CGL like the Banshee is called "Wailing Spirit" or something like that.
But there must have been a purge anyway, since I just looked over it and even though you still find a lot of models, a few really cool ones are gone. Like there was a Shadow Hawk with open canopy and battle damage sitting on pile of rubble.

 

[BlackDragoons]

Went under a couple weeks hiatus do to catching Covid. Fun time yah?

Otherwise a bunch of my stores are finally receiving huge amounts of products from both Wave 1 and Wave 2.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Went under a couple weeks hiatus do to catching Covid. Fun time yah?

Otherwise a bunch of my stores are finally receiving huge amounts of products from both Wave 1 and Wave 2.

Hope you did alright (a friend of mine can no longer eat meat cause his tastebuds got fucked seven way from sunday).

Also: No Wave 1 or Wave 2 products in my neck of the wood

 

[BlackDragoons]

Hope you did alright (a friend of mine can no longer eat meat cause his tastebuds got fucked seven way from sunday).

Also: No Wave 1 or Wave 2 products in my neck of the wood

Mostly body aches and just feeling like shit. I can't explain it, i didn't really lose my sense of taste but it was pretty muddled during and a bit after. Shit was nuts.

But I finished grabbing some mechs I've mostly been missing, as well as my tasty Incubus.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Mostly body aches and just feeling like shit. I can't explain it, i didn't really lose my sense of taste but it was pretty muddled during and a bit after. Shit was nuts.

But I finished grabbing some mechs I've mostly been missing, as well as my tasty Incubus.

Eesh. Glad you're on the mend, man. This thread isn't very active to begin with, we don't need to lose anyone.

As for the Incubus, I don't know what dark sorceries they cast on that thing during the redesign process, because the results were night and day. Original design? Pure anime bullshit, made no sense whatsoever. IlClan design? Fucking boss.

Even the MWO redesign has some nice things going for it.

 

[BlackDragoons]

Eesh. Glad you're on the mend, man. This thread isn't very active to begin with, we don't need to lose anyone.

As for the Incubus, I don't know what dark sorceries they cast on that thing during the redesign process, because the results were night and day. Original design? Pure anime bullshit, made no sense whatsoever. IlClan design? Fucking boss.

View attachment 2881863

Even the MWO redesign has some nice things going for it.

The Redesign drew me towards it, and honestly its a really solid Light Mech. Its faster then a Locust, has more weapons then a Wolf Hound and is just plain dope.

They put this as a mech used for duels but in all honestly this thing is killer at Hit and Runs.