- Joined
- Jun 4, 2018
There's a Berserker variant with TSM. 100 tons. Let that sink in.
You don't need to go that far back. The original Vindicator was a result of arguing over what the mission profile should be, which is why its loadout is so odd.
Battletech - Also known as Trannytech
- Thread starter Frosted Snowflakes
- Start date
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
At least TSM requires a bit of tightrope-walking to get to work perfectly. Meanwhile, a Clan ER PPC is still going to decapitate your 'mech from across the field.
Ironically, Battletech as a setting does very well at avoiding Pentagon Wars-style design clusterfucks.
The nations themselves very rarely design their own 'mechs. They put out specifications, and companies offer their designs in return for evaluation. If everything lines up, a contract signed. Take the Blackjack I linked earlier as an example: GM designed it as a way to capitalize on a niche that the company thought would give them money through Star League contracts. When you do see weird or flawed designs being deployed by the militaries of the Inner Sphere, it's usually either due to technological limitations (the Periphery powers suffer from that a good amount), unforeseen design flaws only detected after deployment (see: the Jackrabbit), weird/conflicting specifications (see: the Hollander or Vindicator), or just good old graft and corruption.
(Of course, in-universe the companies have to work with what they have. While for us, homebrewing a 'Mech is instant, for Defiance Industries moving that PPC from the left arm to the lower left torso is going to result in months of redesigns and could even be impossible because the 'mech's main power bus can't provide that much power in that location, or some other fluff reason. You see those things in the fluff for units in the Technical Readouts all the time, as a way to explain why very few canon designs are truly optimized.)
The realy funny thing is that even the Clans, the government functionally controlled by their generals, with government factories producing everything... follows the same philosophy in essence. Simply because the Warrior Caste calls the Scientist Cast and tells them to build a 'Mech that can do so-and-so and it's up to the Scientists to get it to work. Surprisingly small amount of micromanagement in the Clans. The Warrior Caste just wants new toys to stomp around in, they don't care how they're made.
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- Mar 23, 2016
The Bombadier looks like it has a goofy smileyface, but this is easily one of the worst designs (from a POV of aesthetics) in BT.
But I think it's not half bad within its niche of long range fire support. 60 tons, capable of launching 50 LRMs for 12 consecutive turns (with the option of sub-munitions like mines or semi-guided missiles), that is pretty decent and with how far away from the frontlines it should (due to a lack of backup weapons for close combat), the lack of torso-twisting is not a big hindrance... But man, would it have killed them to make it look less like a stereo on legs?
Yeah, I was playing it up a bit for the joke value, but I still can't figure out why anyone would put ammo in the legs outside of giving the mech a bit of a quirk that can lead to hilarious results and FUN. Or why some mechs use more than half a ton of MG ammo (well, unless you assume the mech participates in drawn out campaigns and you want to avoid running dry).
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
It's even nuttier when you realize some of the mech production companies have factories in multiple or even all five successor states, just building different mechs and in theory not sharing state secrets. I think Star Corps is in every one.
No, it's pretty good at what it does, although why the League would want yet another LRM boat when they already have the Apollo, the Trebuchet, the Archer, and the Longbow and I'm sure I'm forgetting some, boggles the mind. I'm a League, parking a fire lance behind a hill and indirect firing someone to death is our bread and butter, but dammit, we didn't need another LRM boat at the time, we needed a dual gauss trooper that didn't have tinfoil for armor. If you want bad design, the Marauder-9M. The -9M2 makes up for it, but the -9M hurt in how bad it is.
Also, at the time? No, most mechs in 3060 look bad.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
I honestly can't remember a single Canon 'Mech carrying ammo on its legs. I think it was a rule for the design team that the leg crits were reserved for heat sinks, a-pods, or Endo/Ferro-Fibrous dead space. Ammo in the head, on the other hand... I remember seeing a couple 'Mechs carrying that. As for MG ammo... I think the reasoning is something along the lines of "we got the space, this ammo is cheap, and that's that". Plus, IIRC in the fluff MG ammo isn't the memetic deathtrap it is in the game itself.
And it really shouldn't be. Even a full ton of .50 BMG rounds would go off more like the world's deadliest popcorn bag, as opposed to the sort of cataclysmic explosion you'd get from hitting an ammo bin containing 120 fully-loaded and fueled long-range missiles. Sure, half a ton of MG ammo would still mess up a torso, but it wouldn't send the reactor flying a hundred feet in the other direction as it does under standard rules.
Compare and contrast:
I have no idea how Quickscell Company, of all industrial conglomerates out there, manages to have branches in four out of the five Successor States. Yes, fucking Quickscell, the guys known for shoddy, poorly-built, low-quality, lowest-bidder cannon fodder... get to shovel their wares (with good profits, seemingly) across four fifths of the Inner Sphere. Even a thousand years from now, cheap shit sells.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
To be fair, most places that buy Quickscell protects probably don't see battlemech raids very often. There are still better, low tech options, but maybe they just put all their money into really hot salespeople. Also generic corruption.
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2016
My first guess would be to make a cheaper, more easy to produce and field mech for fire support in the heavy bracket... but the Catapult only costs like 100k C-Bills more than the Yeoman and despite not having as many LRMs to spam per turn, it's much more mobile and versatile. And even though it doesn't have the "ubiquitous" quirk, it has been around for so long and fielded by so many armies, you should literally be able to buy Catapult spare parts in any given junkyard across the Inner Sphere. Fuck, when you buy a gallon of milk at the grocery store, you get a lower Catapult leg actuator as a bonus, I bet.
And speaking of the Trebuchet, I recently used it in BT2018 and I fell in love with that little rascal. Two LRM15s at 50 tons, that's a pretty neat package. Puts out as much indirect fire support as the Catapult C1 while being comparatively cheap... what's not to like?
I also like the Dervish, even though that one is a bit more of an allrounder with two LRM10s and two each of SRM2s and medium lasers to tell anyone to get lost that gets too close. Seems like a versatile platform, that can strike from afar, close in and then use those other weapons to ruin someone's day.
The Awesome 9M does. (But it's admittedly the only mech that I can remember atm, too.)
Just put the ammo literally anywhere else and this seems like a decent design. I mean, 3 ER PPCs, 2 Streak SRM2s and a bit of disco-death blinklights to soften up someone before giving them the pimphand of doom, that's always nice.
The "weapons can feed from ammo bins in any location" mechanic is a bit of a pet peeve of mine tbh. It makes the game a lot easier when it comes to ammo-management and mech design, but I just dislike this idea of having arm-mounted weapons that feed from ammo that's like strapped to the right ankle of a mech. Especially when the weapon is something super massive and the arm is way too thin to feasibly allow ammo to be transfered through by any means.
Well, you do have a point, but what you should not underestimate: Even if a ton (or half a ton) of MG ammo might not instantly ignite into one big explosion that turns a mech into two smoldering legs on different continents, seperated by an expanding mushroom cloud, burning ammo (as in your video) produces a shitton of fire and expanding gas.
The difference between the pile of ammo and a bomb: The bomb is built to ignite a as much of its explosives as possible while building up pressure within a hardened shell while the ammo was allowed to slowly burn and crackle merrily in the breeze.
When you confine those hot gases and fire from the machinegun ammo, you quickly end up with something that looks like this. (Video can't be embedded
).Sure, still not a huge explosion, but a fire like that will turn everything on the tank's inside into white-hot sludge. When shit goes south and the ammo cooks off really fast, it can easily launch the turret into the air like it was a pebble. There was an image of a wrecked tank in a Syrian city, it was literally just a floor plate with tanktracks to its sides and the entire area was covered in fist-sized chunks of armor pieces.
When an ammo cook-off is happening inside a closed, armored compartment, it either burns its way through and turns into a giant zippo or it just builds up pressure until it has enough force to make an opening.
Maybe the low quality nature of their products made them end up not as badly hit during the succession wars. I mean, there's undoubtedly other targets more deserving to be put on the list of primary targets... and afaik, armies kind of like giving contracts to the lowest bidder, even if that ends up with a bit of a lackluster product. Of course, that doesn't apply to the corporations that make stealth bombers and guided missiles, but you need someone to manifacture raincoats and eating utensils for your soldiers and every now and then, the guys that make that shit also get a bit of a juicy contract to keep them around and they are allowed to make something more interesting than a toenail-clipper with integrated compass for GI John Doe.
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- Jun 4, 2018
Forget the MAD-9M. Let's talk about the HBK-5M Hunchback refit. Because some dumb motherfucker thought 'You know what? This medium mech with a superheavy weapon needs to have its ammo supply halved'. There's a reason why the -5N existed.
Honestly, if I was going to change something about BT, it would be how ammo and locations are handled. It's arguably one of the sillier aspects of the game (although I do love to troll 40k players by stating Battletech simulates the deranged, 'everything happening at once' nature of combat much better than 40k does).
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Actually, traditionally the Catapult is unusual outside of the Combine and the Confederation, and the Combine love their -K variants. Everyone else pretty much makes do with the Archer, since everyone has them and besides the rear pointing lasers, the Archer is a slightly better design in general. Hand actuators mean your 7-point punches can connect.
It's not. See, half the battle with the Awesome is that it's a Zombie mech. You have to core the CT or headshot it to actually kill the damn thing. If you crit, you're likely to hit a heat sink, which the -Q can shrug off. No XL engine, but most importantly, nothing that goes boom. The 9M breaks that by shoving ammo on a mech that runs hot, and for no real reason, since the streaks don't really add anything. Other than something that can explode when crit. And the XL engine? You just go to 4/6 and now you die when a torso goes up. It's the exact wrong way to use recovered tech and upgrade a mech. The -9Q is how you upgrade an Awesome with recovered tech, just use double heat sinks to free up enough room to slap on a fourth PPC. Now you've increased your firepower by 33% and not made the mech more fragile for no reason. The only time you want to use an XL to gain movement is if it moves you into a better to-hit modifier bracket. For an assault that's slow anyways, lighten everything else first and if you have to, try a light engine.
It's so bad I forgot it existed.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
To quote Bugs Bunny: NO.
As to the Quickscell shit... once you get it working despite the fact it almost certainly wasn't shipped with all necessary parts, it works pretty damn well. Its also weird yet nifty shit like the Hetzer (still Hetzes even in the 31st Century) that does a job and does it pretty damn well. I mean yeah, half the time the only functional component is the structure, but you don't pay a whole lot for that and it isn't like the Inner Sphere has a shortage of spare parts lying around.
And regarding the Scarecrow... you guys do realize the FedSuns are the Space Brits, complete with the British total disregard for convention and honor when it comes time to the waging of war? FFS between MIIO and DMI they've got the best damn spooks in the Inner Sphere after all. Bitching about a sneaky infantry-mulcher that technically doesn't violate any rules of war is just sour grapes as far as I'm concerned. Its no different from the French bitching about longbows because "muh nobility". If you don't want to get burned to a crisp by an invisible MixTech 40-tonner, all you need to do is just drop your weapons and learn to enjoy the comforts of tea and biscuits in a PoW camp well, well beyond the front lines.
Oh, and speaking of Clan Happy Merchant:
And as far as dumb-ass Hunchbacks go, you're not besting the Hunchback IIC for stupidity and waste. There's ways to give solahma an honorable death besides throwing away a whole BattleMech, you know.
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- Dec 17, 2019
See, I know that, you know that, everyone else in the entire Inner Sphere knows the Fed Sun's Arthurian pretentions and wearing of the White Hat is bullshit. The fluff says that the people who had the biggest issue with the Scarecrow were people inside the Fed Suns. It was a minor scandal since "we just don't do that." Which is also very British. The rest of us already know that they're assholes, Hanse's wedding gave that away.
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- Dec 16, 2019
I had a long post typed up about how the Confederation was a marvelous wedding gift and it being a shame about the lack of a Sian honeymoon, but the server decided to die right as I hit the reply button. That aside, you're just mad you couldn't join in on the fun thanks to the Concord of Kapteyn.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
Welcome back, gentlemen. In these trying times, I would like to reinstate: fuck Comstar.
That the booth babes are extra-hot is just a bonus.
It gets really weird when it comes to OmniMechs, though. Of all the scientific advancements the Clans have made, the biggest one has got to be inventing ammo feed systems so damn flexible they can just squeeze 'em through the 'Mech like conveyor spaghetti in Factorio.
Either way, my point stands. Sure, half a ton of MG ammo should by all rights mess things up. But it's not all going to go off nearly as instantly or violently as a similar weight in missiles or autocannon shells. Machineguns being as memetically dangerous to the 'Mech they're mounted on is literally just an artifact of the game rules
A good compromise houserule for me would be that damage from MG ammo going off would be treated as if the part affect had CASE: it destroys the internal structure of the location, but it doesn't transfer over to the next part. Bullets have a relatively minor amount of explosive propellant compared to their total mass, they shouldn't have the power to scatter even an Atlas across the entire battlefield.
(Although the mental image of a Locust getting beaned in the cockpit by a VLAR 300 freshly ejected from a detonating Assault 'Mech does make me chuckle.)
You want something that's ridiculously wasteful and stupid? Try the Incubus. A 'Mech that exists solely for duels. Only the fucking Jade Falcons could come up with that shit.
That's fair. I guess an AC/20 rolling at 60+km/h for less than a million C-bills is a hard offer to ignore no matter who you are, even if the armor is basically only there to keep the crew from falling out.
That the booth babes are extra-hot is just a bonus.
The point is that BattleMechs are very finely-crafted machines and so if that LRM-20 on the left arm is literally syphoning missiles across the entire 'Mech from a bin on the right arm, then at least you can be sure it was very heavily tested and it works because it was made very specifically for that design. You actually see a good amount of references in the fluff to 'Mechs with ammo feeding issues because their ammo bays are in awkward locations. The real issue is that the art sometimes really doesn't allow for anything to go through the joint. On something like an Atlas, sure: you could absolutely see ammo being fed through that beefy arm joint. Same with a Catapult: the joint is thick enough that you could imagine LRMs being pushed from the torso into the box launchers. But there are a lot of 'Mechs where you just have to tilt your head, squint really hard, and finally admit there's no way you could get ammo to that cluster of SRMs. This is all llikely because the artist was only told to draw barrels or holes on roughly X location, without being told where the ammo or any of the internals were meant to be. (See also: 'Mechs without hips.)
It gets really weird when it comes to OmniMechs, though. Of all the scientific advancements the Clans have made, the biggest one has got to be inventing ammo feed systems so damn flexible they can just squeeze 'em through the 'Mech like conveyor spaghetti in Factorio.
Keep in mind that the bulk of the fire and the gases in that video you linked were from the main gun ammo's propellant. You heard a bit of popcorning inside there, but it really wasn't much. And it all found a way out pretty easily, as it would in a 'Mech due to all the exhausts required by the heatsinks.Well, you do have a point, but what you should not underestimate: Even if a ton (or half a ton) of MG ammo might not instantly ignite into one big explosion that turns a mech into two smoldering legs on different continents, seperated by an expanding mushroom cloud, burning ammo (as in your video) produces a shitton of fire and expanding gas.
The difference between the pile of ammo and a bomb: The bomb is built to ignite a as much of its explosives as possible while building up pressure within a hardened shell while the ammo was allowed to slowly burn and crackle merrily in the breeze.
When you confine those hot gases and fire from the machinegun ammo, you quickly end up with something that looks like this. (Video can't be embedded
Sure, still not a huge explosion, but a fire like that will turn everything on the tank's inside into white-hot sludge. When shit goes south and the ammo cooks off really fast, it can easily launch the turret into the air like it was a pebble. There was an image of a wrecked tank in a Syrian city, it was literally just a floor plate with tanktracks to its sides and the entire area was covered in fist-sized chunks of armor pieces.
When an ammo cook-off is happening inside a closed, armored compartment, it either burns its way through and turns into a giant zippo or it just builds up pressure until it has enough force to make an opening.
Either way, my point stands. Sure, half a ton of MG ammo should by all rights mess things up. But it's not all going to go off nearly as instantly or violently as a similar weight in missiles or autocannon shells. Machineguns being as memetically dangerous to the 'Mech they're mounted on is literally just an artifact of the game rules
(ammo explosion damage = number rounds * damage per round) that no one bothered to patch out. A ton of actual high-explosives (SRMs, 200 points/ton) deal half the damage of a ton of MG ammo (400 points/ton) when both go off inside your 'Mech. Forget Long Toms, just chuck entire packed crates of .50 BMG at the target and call it a day.A good compromise houserule for me would be that damage from MG ammo going off would be treated as if the part affect had CASE: it destroys the internal structure of the location, but it doesn't transfer over to the next part. Bullets have a relatively minor amount of explosive propellant compared to their total mass, they shouldn't have the power to scatter even an Atlas across the entire battlefield.
(Although the mental image of a Locust getting beaned in the cockpit by a VLAR 300 freshly ejected from a detonating Assault 'Mech does make me chuckle.)
It may be stupid, it may be wasteful, but walloping someone with dual UAC/20s at point-blank range in a suicidal charge nets that thing enough style points for me to forgive it.
You want something that's ridiculously wasteful and stupid? Try the Incubus. A 'Mech that exists solely for duels. Only the fucking Jade Falcons could come up with that shit.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Oh come on, the fact every single BattleMech with MG ammo inside might as well be hauling around a SADM nuclear demo charge on a hair trigger will never not be one the funniest parts of BT. Also, the Incubus actually serves a nifty little role as that of basically a live-fire training platform. It is certainly not designed to be the Clan equivalent of a screaming kamakrazee warboy. Given its deployment to solahma units every single pilot might as well be screaming "WITNESS ME!" as he goes on his little suicide run.
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2016
You sure about that? Master Unit List says the C1 is common among the Inner Sphere and Periphery. Only local variants such as the C4 or the K2 seem to be limited to a small group of factions.
Good point.
But Zombie Mechs only really work when you don't play with forced withdrawal (which I guess a lot of people don't)... which kind of leads me to a question:
The rules state that the unit has to retreat, but it doesn't really say how to handle that in the game. is it allowed to still turn around and fire into combat or is that a "beeline to the nearest exit without attacking/defending" thing in practice?
I only own 4 non-mech units as of now: 2 Savannah Masters and 2 Hetzers, cause Hetzers are just too funny not to use. Vehicle rules make such units rather vulnerable, but I think there's still plenty of space for them to ruin someone's day on the right map. And I have a soft spot for Savannah Masters. They look like a ride from Action Park and they are just really pesky motherfuckers.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
You should also look at the Saladin. 35 tons, fast as a Locust, and an AC/20. Oh, and its a hover, so doesn't give a shit about water. A relative of it called the Saracen played a major role on Wolcott driving circles around the trapped Clan mechs.
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- Mar 23, 2016
That thing is on my shopping list already. Cause, seriously, what's better than a MedLaser on a lightning fast hovercraft? A goddamned AC/20 on a lightning fast hovercraft. With its high mobility, it shouldn't be too hard to get a hit into someone's rear arc every once in a while... And good luck hitting that thing when it has a +4 to-hit.
I guess the most effective way to deal with that thing is to either get up close and personal, shooting it in the back with something like an LB-X AC or to scatter mines in chokepoints for some area denial.
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- Apr 25, 2020
Yes, yes. I'm a fan of the dakka dakka, though, so I just like Machine Guns. I was happy to see rules for Rapid Fire and MG Arrays, but then I was sad they weren't "vanilla" rules (read: part of the basic rules pack most people play with). Seeing everybody fleeing from them because an errant LBX pellet to the ammo bin will turn your 'Mech inside out is a little disheartening.
It's the Clans. Every 'Mech is a live-fire training platform. If you can't make it out of the exercise alive, then fuck you.
(Between CASE as standard, Clan hatred of wastage, and their dueling rules frowning at deliberate headshots, one would expect pretty good survival rates.)
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- Dec 17, 2019
It's common enough that it can turn up, because it was a Star League mech, but the only production lines for it are in the Confederation and the Combine. The Archer, on the other hand, being the most produced mech, probably does give parts away at the bottom of a cracker jack box.
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2018
Vehicles in general are the side dishes of Battletech; they're not the main course but they make a nifty addition. Most Mechs simply can't afford to ignore them (especially heavy-gun systems like the Hetzer or the Saladin) because a good hit will ruin your day. Yes, they're more vulnerable due to the rules, but they're also cheaper by far.