Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

[TFT-A9]

Omnis are fairly stupid premise-wise, because improving modularity should make something cheaper to work with, not more expensive. I get that it's supposed to be a balancing thing, but they should've just made the better components themselves more expensive rather than try to have a bizarre tax on standardized construction. That thing that made the industrial revolution possible and propelled humanity into our joyous future.

FASA/Weisman et al are kind of fucking retarded tbh but there really aren't and weren't any great alternatives

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Old MW4 fan, haven't got into the ttg because holy shit that's a huge timesink, games you have to play in person are hard to organize, and mechs with hands are dumb.
What was the final verdict on the recent Trannytech game from HBS? Is it worth trying?

I'm playing it vanilla and it's enjoyable that way, too. Just saying to point out, your mileage may vary. There are a few bad design decisions, but nothing that makes the entire game unenjoyable. It's main flaw is that some missions throw rather annoying cheap shots at you, but most of the time, it's pretty entertaining. The Multiplayer is 1v1 only and completely dead (it seems), but it's actually quite good. Played it a couple of times with a friend and it's ok. Campaign is fun with good missions, too. Get it in a sale if you're unsure. If you enjoy it, get the DLC in a sale, too.

 

[Snekposter]

How long does the average mission last in that? I struggle to enjoy TBS games a lot of the time because anything more than 5-10 minutes of clicking and watching an animation happen over and over is just something I can't do.

 

[TFT-A9]

How long does the average mission last in that? I struggle to enjoy TBS games a lot of the time because anything more than 5-10 minutes of clicking and watching an animation happen over and over is just something I can't do.

Some can really drag on, but apparently the main culprit of that is CPU taking fucking forever to decide/resolve at times

 

[Snekposter]

Ah, that's no biggie then. Just free time to take a leak or grab a drink.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

There's also an option to speed up combat, which makes unit movement happen a lot faster. You either do that manually by hitting spacebar during the movement or you set it to always active in the menu. Missions can take some time, but it doesn't feel that long (especially since the speedy movement means most of that is planning and watching attacks).

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

HBS's Battletech is probably one of the most poorly optimized games out there, and that includes Minecraft.

I love it, it's fun to play, but I had to upgrade my RAM just to get it to run smoothly and it does NOT load fast.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Omnis are fairly stupid premise-wise, because improving modularity should make something cheaper to work with, not more expensive. I get that it's supposed to be a balancing thing, but they should've just made the better components themselves more expensive rather than try to have a bizarre tax on standardized construction. That thing that made the industrial revolution possible and propelled humanity into our joyous future.

The in-universe explanation is that everybody simply gave up on standardizing ammo, data, coolant and power ports because there are roughly a billion different manufacturers and models for everything, across the entire Inner Sphere. Worse, with salvage being what it is two Defiance B3M Medium Lasers may be technically from the same manufacturer and model, but since one was manufactured 150 years ago the design has drifted since. Even in the Clan Homeworlds, things built by one Clan don't necessarily follow the same patterns as the other clans. The solution, instead of getting everybody to shape the fuck up and standardize on a single pattern, was to create OmniPods.

OmniPods are finely engineered shells that fit around the module in order to bring it up to the correct dimensions and line up all the ports so they fit in the standardized pod bays inside OmniMechs. They don't take up any additional crit slots in the 'Mech's paperdoll because the modules themselves don't take up all the space the game's abstraction says they do. A Small Laser takes up the exact same 1 crit slot as a Medium Laser, but the weapons themselves are different in size. Since all the internals of a 'Mech are irregular in shape, designing a BattleMech is basically a huge game of Tetris, trying to optimize how everything fits around everything else and routing ammo, power, data and coolant lines. OmniPods take up slightly more space (not enough to actually count as crit space), but make it much easier to just slot things in and out by vastly simplifying the routing.

In computer terms, think of them as the equivalent to caddies that let you affix 2.5" SSDs to 3.5" HDD bays. Two PPCs of different models may look completely different before being installed into OmniPods, but after they are installed, anything behind the barrel (the stuff that's hidden inside the 'Mech itself) will look the same: regular cuboids with attachment points and ports on the same locations. That's why you can't install a piece of equipment that was mounted into an OmniPod into a non-OmniMech. You have to rip out the shell first, because the OmniPod takes up too much space in the cramped guts of a normally-designed 'Mech.

That's why OmniMechs and gear mounted in OmniPods are more expensive. They're a solution to the inability of the people in the setting to agree to any standards in manufacture. The pods don't so much standardize parts as they serve as a kind of "emulator" (or a compatibility layer, I guess?) between the parts and the 'Mech, and all that equipment has a cost. The OmniMech itself needs a much better gyro and battle computer in order to accept the plug-and-play nature of OmniPods (this is the setting that has targeting computers weighing multiple tons). And finally, the pod bays also have to be built to tight standards and tolerances in order to take in the pods.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Question to the CBT players out there: Hex-maps or miniature rules?
I kind of like the straight-forward nature of using hexes, since they abstract the game down in a neat way, but I'd like to try out the miniature-rules version (the upside is that you can use buildings and setpieces a bit more easily than with the hex-fields).

The in-universe explanation is that everybody simply gave up on standardizing ammo, data, coolant and power ports because there are roughly a billion different manufacturers and models for everything, across the entire Inner Sphere. Worse, with salvage being what it is two Defiance B3M Medium Lasers may be technically from the same manufacturer and model, but since one was manufactured 150 years ago the design has drifted since. Even in the Clan Homeworlds, things built by one Clan don't necessarily follow the same patterns as the other clans. The solution, instead of getting everybody to shape the fuck up and standardize on a single pattern, was to create OmniPods.

Fuck, I bet somewhere on old Terra, in a part formerly known as Germany, there is some government official, who still has a Telekom fax machine hooked up to an HPG-socket.

(this is the setting that has targeting computers weighing multiple tons)

I'm kind of running the head-canon, that the weight of a targeting computer partially also means more finely tuned actuators, sensor suits (both for targeting as well as controling the mech), stuff to automatically counteract the movement of the mech and so on...

 

[Corn Flakes]

Question to the CBT players out there: Hex-maps or miniature rules?
I kind of like the straight-forward nature of using hexes, since they abstract the game down in a neat way, but I'd like to try out the miniature-rules version (the upside is that you can use buildings and setpieces a bit more easily than with the hex-fields).

I'm partial to hex maps, but my group has always played using minis. Since I was always the dumbass who liked trying different lance compositions and weird/rare 'Mechs I had to use the little stand-up cutouts a lot.

These things:

In some ways, I prefer them to the minis. I can't paint my way out of a paperbag, but with even my shitty GIMP skills I can recolor images like that to match the camo/paint I wanted, then print them, glue them to the cardboard and cut them out.

Fuck, I bet somewhere on old Terra, in a part formerly known as Germany, there is some government official, who still has a Telekom fax machine hooked up to an HPG-socket.

Somewhere in the ComStar offices...
"Johann! Wir müssen mehr Beten! Das Fax geht schon wieder nicht!"
(Go go high school German!)

I'm kind of running the head-canon, that the weight of a targeting computer partially also means more finely tuned actuators, sensor suits (both for targeting as well as controling the mech), stuff to automatically counteract the movement of the mech and so on...

You're more or less on the money there. The targeting computer adds gyroscopic stabilizers, recoil baffles, and all sorts of delicate equipment to allow the weapons to actually hit where you're pointing them at more reliably. The weirdness is that all that material is concentrated in a single module as opposed to spread across the 'Mech since it's actually attached to the weapons themselves. But we know the reason for that, it's just another game abstraction to keep things simple--

Well, I say "simple". It's BattleTech. Let me rephrase.

Targeting computers are a single module in order to keep things less complicated.

 

[Snekposter]

Speaking of the mindfuckery caused by trying to understand BT's 1980's technology basis, I am very sad the Clancyverse crossover died to bickering and trying to make the BT shit make sense instead of having the in-story stuff be "What the fuck are these people smoking? Everything is a bunch of kludged-together crap that looks like the lowest bidder bribed a few ignorant politicians to go with their super-awesome idea and then subcontracted out to the lowest bid-" before everyone sobbed themselves to sleep over their drinks as they realize the most truly grimdark part of BT is the fact government procurement changes even less than war, and that due to how fucked up the state of the IS they've forgotten what military contracting used to look like and instead all think it was designed to work that way instead of being the result of government corruption and shifty corporate dealings.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

Speaking of the mindfuckery caused by trying to understand BT's 1980's technology basis, I am very sad the Clancyverse crossover died to bickering and trying to make the BT shit make sense instead of having the in-story stuff be "What the fuck are these people smoking? Everything is a bunch of kludged-together crap that looks like the lowest bidder bribed a few ignorant politicians to go with their super-awesome idea and then subcontracted out to the lowest bid-" before everyone sobbed themselves to sleep over their drinks as they realize the most truly grimdark part of BT is the fact government procurement changes even less than war, and that due to how fucked up the state of the IS they've forgotten what military contracting used to look like and instead all think it was designed to work that way instead of being the result of government corruption and shifty corporate dealings.

I'm sorry, say again? There was a proposed crossover with Tom Clancy's stuff?

What.

 

[Snekposter]

Not proposed. It actually happened. It was a round robin on the SpaceBattles forums. It actually had a nice mix of the absurdly plausible and believably plausible when it first came out, but slowly devolved into techwank vs. techwank before getting killed off as just a bad dream Jack Ryan had. Still a damn fun read though, although some of the posters had to do some terrible inserts of other universe's characters that don't fit, but the scene about the Japanese engineers being pissed that the Star League would copy Macross designs then fuck them up had me chuckling.

 

[Corn Flakes]

It's fun to rag on BattleTech and MechWarrior's schizo technology, but there are a few things we definitely need to give them respect for. These guys are like the perfect mix between German and Slavic engineering: they build shit to last and to be repairable.

The family's Catapult is 150 years old? That's fine. Joe the Tech has been keeping it more or less functional with baling wire, insulating tape, spit, wishful thinking, and that box of Defiance-brand non-adjustable metric spanners he found under the pilot's seat 25 years ago. Ammo feed in the left box launcher is acting up? It probably just got a bit kinked, get Joe to pop off the cover and shimmy some scrap armor plate to hold the thing in place. Sure, a couple of the tubes might not load with every salvo, but you're still chucking between 24 and 30 missiles downrange every 10 seconds.

And then there's salvage. You survived a fight? Good! BattleMechs are so large and their internal modules so self-contained you can rip out basically anything that wasn't outright vaporized, fix it up, give it a fresh coat of paint, and install it in your 'Mech. And even if those Magna Mk. II© Medium Lasers don't fit exactly in your Catapult, if you give him a day or two and some scrap Joe can bodge up some new mounting brackets and use them to replace the two Martells© that burned out when Cousin Todd took the old 'pult out hunting megasaurs for burger meat about ten years ago. It's not gonna work perfect, but it'll work well enough. And even if it 100% doesn't fit, Joe can rip out the power circuits and the focusing lenses and use those to fix the Martells©. Everything else goes into the spare parts bin. Did you know Joe even built a whole electric scooter out of left-over parts when he was done repairing a Jenner?

Tech in that universe is ridiculously rugged. Even if you're just talking about normal operating conditions instead of trying to keep an ancient 'Mech alive: an ammo feed going from the right torso, through the center and left torsos, and into the left arm will still reliably feed that fast-firing autocannon unless something external damages it. No matter whether the 'Mech is static in the firing range, running at full pelt, being showered by a Yeoman's worth of indirect fire LRMs, trading blows with another 'Mech, or getting back up after skidding for 90 meters at full speed and faceplanting into a 10-floor building (which promptly fell on top of it). The lasers will remain aligned, the particle beams collimated, and the Gauss coils synchronized. The fusion engine keeps turning hydrogen into helium, the gyro keeps screaming away inside its housing trying to keep everything together. There's a lot of stuff that gets taken for granted, but if you kicked a M1 Abrams even half as hard as a 'Mech shoves itself around while running, you'd have an Imperial crapton (about 1.6x a metric crapton) of things losing alignment, unplugging, jamming or flat-out breaking on the spot.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

I'm partial to hex maps, but my group has always played using minis. Since I was always the dumbass who liked trying different lance compositions and weird/rare 'Mechs I had to use the little stand-up cutouts a lot.

These things:

In some ways, I prefer them to the minis. I can't paint my way out of a paperbag, but with even my shitty GIMP skills I can recolor images like that to match the camo/paint I wanted, then print them, glue them to the cardboard and cut them out.

Sorry, I kinda worded it badly: I meant using hex-map sheets vs. open maps (like WH40K or Saga), where you use rulers to determine ranges and walking.
The rules seem a bit wonky when it comes to movement, firing arcs are indicated by the hex-base of the mech, and so on. It works more or less like regular Warhammer with some minor changes...

And as I said, I do like the somewhat archaic feel of using hex-maps and it leaves nothing to discussions, something is in your arc, or it isn't, something has partial cover, or it hasn't. It also is a nice way to stand out against other systems, I think. It's only downside is that the paper maps aren't as nice-looking as some of the terrain you can plop down for Saga or the likes, but there's ways to improve that with CBT, too.

 

[More AWS-8Q Than You]

Not proposed. It actually happened. It was a round robin on the SpaceBattles forums. It actually had a nice mix of the absurdly plausible and believably plausible when it first came out, but slowly devolved into techwank vs. techwank before getting killed off as just a bad dream Jack Ryan had. Still a damn fun read though, although some of the posters had to do some terrible inserts of other universe's characters that don't fit, but the scene about the Japanese engineers being pissed that the Star League would copy Macross designs then fuck them up had me chuckling.

It's been a long time since I've been to SpaceBattles, but isn't that true of any Fanfic they write? Or was that BigSteve's rather infamous on the board Fanfic? We gave him so much shit for that over the years.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

Not proposed. It actually happened. It was a round robin on the SpaceBattles forums. It actually had a nice mix of the absurdly plausible and believably plausible when it first came out, but slowly devolved into techwank vs. techwank before getting killed off as just a bad dream Jack Ryan had. Still a damn fun read though, although some of the posters had to do some terrible inserts of other universe's characters that don't fit, but the scene about the Japanese engineers being pissed that the Star League would copy Macross designs then fuck them up had me chuckling.

Oh, this was fanwank, not something official. Pfft.

 

[Snekposter]

It's been a long time since I've been to SpaceBattles, but isn't that true of any Fanfic they write? Or was that BigSteve's rather infamous on the board Fanfic? We gave him so much shit for that over the years.

I only went there for the story, so I don't know who's who there or who did what for it, and I really can't be assed to go back and dig shit up for obvious reasons.

Oh, this was fanwank, not something official. Pfft.

Yeah, but it was fun fanwank while it lasted, at least. I mean, did you really think anything like that would ever officially happen? If you think fans are bad when it comes to wanking over shit, you haven't seen what corporate front offices are like, never mind the debate over licensing fees and agreements! It would have taken years just to get a deal signed, never mind get any actual work started.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Sorry, I kinda worded it badly: I meant using hex-map sheets vs. open maps (like WH40K or Saga), where you use rulers to determine ranges and walking.
The rules seem a bit wonky when it comes to movement, firing arcs are indicated by the hex-base of the mech, and so on. It works more or less like regular Warhammer with some minor changes...

And as I said, I do like the somewhat archaic feel of using hex-maps and it leaves nothing to discussions, something is in your arc, or it isn't, something has partial cover, or it hasn't. It also is a nice way to stand out against other systems, I think. It's only downside is that the paper maps aren't as nice-looking as some of the terrain you can plop down for Saga or the likes, but there's ways to improve that with CBT, too.

No, that's what I meant. For some reason I keep referring to "minis" as the freeform movement style of play (and yes, I do use the cardboard cutouts when I don't have the minis). Maybe it's from when I got into Warhammer Fantasy and played with a friend's army for a while. Anyway, the guy who makes most of our group's terrain does it in "terraces" so the height levels are well-defined and there's no argument about it.

For other possible issues, one of the players in the group brought in a pretty simple system for resolving things from a previous Warhammer 40K group he played with, and we had been using it for a few months before lockdown-a-palooza started: we allow measurements to be eyeballed if you don't feel like measuring, but any other player in the game may issue a challenge if they feel your distances are wrong. For example, you claim a target is within 6" or within the Medium range bracket for your 'mech (we play mostly Alpha Strike these days), but if another player thinks that's wrong, they may challenge that. Everything is measured up with tape and the correct values used. If the challenger is correct, they earn a 2d6 re-roll they can use at a later turn. If the challenger is wrong, the player they challenged gets that re-roll instead. It actually speeds up the game by a lot, although it does require players to trust each other a bit more than normal.

 

[Snekposter]

So, I just "acquired" a copy of BT, and I love the opening cinematic. "Hey, look, we're going to the stars, we've got this neat Star League to make it all peaceful.... oh. Not so peaceful...." Turns out there's only an eternity of carnage among the stars, and the laughter of thirsting Clanners.