Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

[Corn Flakes]

Eh, your average BattleMech is already a jury-rigged mess on the inside, which is why the spit and bailing wire actually works. You don't need a TDR-5LS left hand actuator if you can shove a Stinger right foot actuator in there and get similar results. Do agree on a desire for spare parts as a thing though, just so long as the enemy forces get rebalanced. No offense, but from what you've told me about them its a hard pass. At least MW5 has you personally there as Mr. FPS Hero.

On the contrary, it's actually very explicitly stated that BattleMechs are designed very specifically to work the way they do. It's one of the reasons why designing a new 'mech is so expensive. Yes, if you have a good enough technician team working for you you can likely replace that Thunderbolt's hand actuator with a Stinger's right foot actuator with enough time and effort (the actuator accounts for all the joints in the hand/foot)... but it will almost invariably result in a loss of performance. But since having a malfunctioning 'mech in 3025 is 500% better than not having a 'mech at all in 3025, you see a lot of jury-rigging in that era in order to keep the family's 450-year old Catapult in more or less working order. But when you look into the old premade scenario books you start seeing those well-used 'mechs going around with equipment that can't be repaired anymore.

Anyway, one of the reasons I'm usually so autistic about the videogames allowing for things pulled out and shoved around is that the actual rules (based on the in-universe fluff) are actually very restrictive. After all, the internal space in a 'mech gets filled with stuff or covered in structure and armor when the design is finalized. Those empty crit slots aren't just open air, they're literally places that shots can't hit because they are not there. 99% of the custom 'mech designs you see in BT2018 or any of the MechWarrior games would be upright only as long as it took for them to fall over again.

That's also one of the reasons why OmniMechs were such a breakthrough. Besides standardizing weapons to fit into pods and coming up with a gyro that's sophisticated enough to take variable loads, the Clans did a lot of work standardizing other internal bits of their 'mechs. And even then, downrating/uprating a 'mech's engine was considered a major refit since it required replacing a very large object buried deep in the 'mechs' torso, but it's something you can do pretty much instantly in the videogames at no major cost.

That's enough of me being a spergy greybeard, though (and I'll accept my puzzle pieces with good grace). As @RomanesEuntDomus said, things can get a bit ridiculous in BT2018 but it's still a fun game regardless. It could have been way better, but as it was it still exceeded my expectations.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

That's also one of the reasons why OmniMechs were such a breakthrough. Besides standardizing weapons to fit into pods and coming up with a gyro that's sophisticated enough to take variable loads, the Clans did a lot of work standardizing other internal bits of their 'mechs. And even then, downrating/uprating a 'mech's engine was considered a major refit since it required replacing a very large object buried deep in the 'mechs' torso, but it's something you can do pretty much instantly in the videogames at no major cost.

Yeah, in the videogames, changing your Mech's loadout is always a very trivial matter and it's weird how you run with totally custom Mechs while your enemies bump around in standard designs. When you check Sarna for different versions of mechs, there's something that'll become very clear:
Sometimes, it takes a major IS house decades to finalize a new mech version, that merely replaces a gun and adds a bit of armor or a heatsink. Even a mech as old and venerable as the Marauder has a surprisingly small number of variations, when you consider that it has been a staple of IS warfare for 500 years.
Some variations are named after individual pilots that used them, so there is some customizing going on, but it has to be really rare and even then, happened on a small scale if it's special enough that these variations go down in history.
In BT videogames, you usually have some design and go "Yeah, I'll take that mech, switch out the engine for a bigger one, upgrade the internal structure to Endo Steel, change the armor to Ferro Fibrous, take a completely different set of weapons... and hey... let's use Tripple Strength Myomers, too!"
It's literally building a new mech from scratch and your mechtechs will slamdunk that design before the next mission starts like it was nothing.

I understand that videogames need to be accesible to the non-grognards, but it might be nice to have an option of using special construction rules, kind of like a hardcore mode in some games, that makes character deaths permanent.
And credit where credit is due: BT2018 at least enforces the type and number of weapons depending on the location of each mech, so you can't just shove a gauss rifle into a Catapult (like you could in MW3) and it takes some time to make the changes happen. With that game mechanic, you could still have omnimechs enjoying some edge over regular ones, by making their weapon switches happen instantaneously. If BT2018 added a game mechanic that made your mech more vulnerable to overheating, being knocked down and so on to reflect a failed attempt by your mechtechs to change a weapons loadout, that would be neat. Could be an opt-in thing, that you activate in the settings, too.

That's enough of me being a spergy greybeard, though (and I'll accept my puzzle pieces with good grace). As @RomanesEuntDomus said, things can get a bit ridiculous in BT2018 but it's still a fun game regardless. It could have been way better, but as it was it still exceeded my expectations.

I think BT has been exceptionally lucky with its video games. Overall, it seems to have had rather decent videogames on average.... sure, there are some games that fail to deliver, but overall, you're not as badly off as, say, Star Wars, Star Trek or even Warhammer I guess.

That being said, I can't be the only one that would welcome non-mech-based games in the BT universe, too. I could very well imagine a game where you're a fighter pilot... just thinking about doing a strafing run on an Atlas gives me goosebumps. Similarly, a spacebattle sim with controllable pocket warships, maybe even a trader game or some open world game like Elite: Dangerous could be pretty nifty.
Also a game where you're a dude in a battle armor could be fucking awesome. MWLL allows you to jump around in battle armor and with the scale of those maps, you can jump on top of large houses, duke it out with mechs below you and so on, I could see that work very well in its own game.

 

[Snekposter]

@Corn Flakes I mean, you're not wrong about the amount of work necessary to get a 'Mech working optimally (and I'm stuck just facepalming over muh Omnitech because we have that capability now with advanced fly-by-wire designs, but I digress), but you also have scenarios in various novels where Techs are doing field repairs with whatever is at hand, including slapping a leg from one Mech on one that got kneecapped with a satchel. IMO the best way to represent things would be with factory vs. improvised repairs, with factory-standard parts for the first and whatever your Techs can come up with using parts at hand for the second, and BT2018 would be a good place to have something like that. Could also have Techs fabricate new "factory" parts using existing salvage, with the appropriate cost in time and C-bills for complexity.

And yes, I'm well aware of the video game vs. actual wargaming mechanics, which is why I stick with the vidyda. (That and no players for the wargame...)

 

[White Devil]

And yes, I'm well aware of the video game vs. actual wargaming mechanics, which is why I stick with the vidyda. (That and no players for the wargame...)

I asked before if people in this thread would be interested in doing a Megamek campaign or something and all I got was crickets.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

One of the most extensive Mech redesigns in Successor State history was the rebuild of the BNC-3E Banshee into the BNC-3S. The -3S didn't debut until 3026 -- almost six centuries after the original Banshee was introduced.

It amuses me how CASE systems were considered Lostech in the Succession Wars era, considering the real world M1 Abrams tank has something like that for its munitions bays.

 

[Snekposter]

I asked before if people in this thread would be interested in doing a Megamek campaign or something and all I got was crickets.

I mean, there's time issues and just straight unfamiliarity with the system in my case. Also need to figure out what the plan is. Against each other? Against the bot? What year, what scenario?

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

I asked before if people in this thread would be interested in doing a Megamek campaign or something and all I got was crickets.

Hey, I rated it "agree"... so... uh... I. Yeah. If we could get a game going every once in a while, that'd be neat (though I have to get myself familiar with Megamek first).

Could also have Techs fabricate new "factory" parts using existing salvage, with the appropriate cost in time and C-bills for complexity.

I think one of the upgrades for the Argo mentions tooling to make/fit spare parts that improves repair times...

 

[Snekposter]

Ah, tooling... one of the most essential industrial items out there, next to the machines themselves. Speaking of LosTech, a crate of tools for Mech parts would bring in a massive fortune to the right buyers. I mean, you can totally trust ComStar with it, right? They're paying well and they've got all these humanitarian efforts going to keep things from backsliding even more. Totally won't kill you and destroy the parts afterwards, nope.

 

[Love Machine]

>battletech
>no one here plays the table top

What a shame...

 

[Corn Flakes]

Yeah, technology in BT is schizophrenic by design. Besides the need to make the BattleMech the most powerful thing on the battlefield (despite the laws of physics dictating that they'd have cardboard-thin armor all over), the initial state of the game is something a lot of people overlook. As it was released, BattleTech was a game about humanity undergoing a literal Dark Age where a lot of knowledge was lost seemingly (oh hello ComStar!) at random after the first three Succession Wars. So they retained the ability to weaponize particle accelerators (PPCs) and generate nuclear fusion with light water, but lost the knowledge of how to make blow-out panels (CASE) or design linear motors (Gauss Rifles).

Meanwhile, even at our peak Star League performance, we couldn't come up with a "Long Range Missiles" that hit past 1km. The weirdness is baked into the setting to make it feel internally consistent without necessarily having to push for realism. So if you look into it too hard it falls apart. Although in my first Battletech group we had a little running gag that LRMs had that name for the same reason the Land Raider is called that in 40K. They were named after Dr. Augustus Long, their inventor.

I asked before if people in this thread would be interested in doing a Megamek campaign or something and all I got was crickets.

I thought it was an interesting idea but couldn't go along with it.

In my defense, I ignore KF gaming groups because they would require me to expand the identity I use here into other environments/communities and I don't like that. The more you reuse a pseudonym on the internet, the easier it is to lose infosec.

 

[White Devil]

I mean, there's time issues and just straight unfamiliarity with the system in my case. Also need to figure out what the plan is. Against each other? Against the bot? What year, what scenario?

MegaMek can be a little obtuse to use, yeah. It's pretty dated at this point and a pain to get working, but when it does work it's fun. All those details would have to be figured out if people actually wanted to do it though.

Hey, I rated it "agree"... so... uh... I. Yeah. If we could get a game going every once in a while, that'd be neat (though I have to get myself familiar with Megamek first).

https://megamek.org/

In my defense, I ignore KF gaming groups because they would require me to expand the identity I use here into other environments/communities and I don't like that. The more you reuse a pseudonym on the internet, the easier it is to lose infosec.

That's fair and I thought about that as well but then I also considered nerds playing Battletech online (the pnp not the Troontech) probably wouldn't be that malicious towards each other considering we're already a niche as it is.

 

[Corn Flakes]

That's fair and I thought about that as well but then I also considered nerds playing Battletech online (the pnp not the Troontech) probably wouldn't be that malicious towards each other considering we're already a niche as it is.

Well, there's nothing stopping you from posting a link to a community here and people who are obviously completely unrelated to the farms joining.

We do have plenty of "lurkers" here, people who would "never" make a KiwiFarms account. People that, if asked, would deny any involvement with this horrible place.

Hint, hint. Nudge, nudge.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

>battletech
>no one here plays the table top

What a shame...

I'm preparing to play some rounds once the lockdown ends in my neck of the woods. Still need to buy the current rulebooks...

So they retained the ability to weaponize particle accelerators (PPCs) and generate nuclear fusion with light water, but lost the knowledge of how to make blow-out panels (CASE) or design linear motors (Gauss Rifles).

Meanwhile, even at our peak Star League performance, we couldn't come up with a "Long Range Missiles" that hit past 1km.

I guess a lot of the inconsistencies happened when the people behind the game realized that certain things like CASE or gauss rifles (some inspired by things that exist, some that are staples of sci-fi) would be a neat addition and then made them rediscoveries, rather than new inventions. It's more believable that this was something the SLDF had and that was forgotten, than to imagine that someone managed to crank out all this stuff during the 4th succession war, when the SLDF couldn't at its peak. Of course, that leaves us with weird stuff like CASE being lostech... but it bends my suspension of disbelief, it doesn't break it.

When it comes to ranges, there's a little text in the Battletech Mech Manual:

Given the 30-meter area of each hex stated above, players may note various oddities in the weapon ranges presented in this book, such as the fact that the standard ’Mech-scale machine gun of the distant thirty-first century only reaches out to 3 hexes (90 meters). As today’s machine guns have effective ranges of some 2,000 meters, this may seem somewhat absurd.
The reason for this is simple: BattleTech is a game. Because BattleTech mapsheets are only seventeen hexes long, recreating realworld ranges on a table would require more than seven mapsheets
laid end to end, for a playing space greater than twelve feet in length.
Few people have that much table space. Nor would it provide players with any tactical maneuvering room: anywhere a player might move a ’Mech on the map, an attacker could hit it. As such, while we may safely assume “real” BattleTech weapons have exceptional ranges, range abstractions are an absolute necessity unless one is regularly able to rent a tennis court for game time.

There's rules to make attacks beyond the long range bracket possible at a +8 or something, but that effectively allows the player to make attacks at any range, but you'd need a pulse laser, a targeting computer and a really good pilot in a mech standing perfectly still to pull off a hit.

Also I just learned that Airships still exist in BT and that's pretty fucking neat-o.


The logic is that these ships require little to no fuel to operate, can lift massive amounts of weight and can be used on newly established colonies on as of yet uninhabited planets in various ways, despite no infracstucture on the ground being present.
I have to admit, that makes a lot of sense.

Frankly, that tiny bit of Dieselpunk in the BT setting really makes me appreciate the setting even more.

 

[murdered meat bag]

is the battletech strategy game worth getting on a steam sale? used to play MWO and want a PC battletech game.

 

[White Devil]

is the battletech strategy game worth getting on a steam sale? used to play MWO and want a PC battletech game.

Not to sound too autistic, but Mechwarrior and Battletech are different games. Mechwarrior is basically the RPG side of the franchise where you're a lone pilot in a lone mech, etc etc etc. Battletech is the strategy shit where you control multiple mechs. I know you seem to get this fundamental difference but I just wanted to double down on it since you said you used to play MWO and I'm assuming thats your only experience with the franchise.

That being said, the game is fine on sale. I definitely wouldn't pay full price for it and I'm one the higher tier KS backers of the game. It's fun if you're into an Firaxis XCOM like experience with giant robots.

 

[murdered meat bag]

Not to sound too autistic, but Mechwarrior and Battletech are different games. Mechwarrior is basically the RPG side of the franchise where you're a lone pilot in a lone mech, etc etc etc. Battletech is the strategy shit where you control multiple mechs. I know you seem to get this fundamental difference but I just wanted to double down on it since you said you used to play MWO and I'm assuming thats your only experience with the franchise.

That being said, the game is fine on sale. I definitely wouldn't pay full price for it and I'm one the higher tier KS backers of the game. It's fun if you're into an Firaxis XCOM like experience with giant robots.

Yeah i've only played Mechwarrior games and watched the battletech tv show. XCOM with mechs sounds good.

 

[Snekposter]

There's rules to make attacks beyond the long range bracket possible at a +8 or something, but that effectively allows the player to make attacks at any range, but you'd need a pulse laser, a targeting computer and a really good pilot in a mech standing perfectly still to pull off a hit.

Are you forgetting the Arrow IV with a range listed in maps, not hexes? Of course, if you want something even more absurd, there's the Long Tom which is 30 maps instead of the Arrow IV's measly eight.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Are you forgetting the Arrow IV with a range listed in maps, not hexes? Of course, if you want something even more absurd, there's the Long Tom which is 30 maps instead of the Arrow IV's measly eight.

Artillery is special in Battletech and the only weaponsystem with halfway realistic ranges, but even there the "extreme range" rules apply (I think)... I don't know the rules at the top of my head how to make attacks beyond long range and what the penalty is for that, but it was a lot (I think +... gonna have to check with the rulebooks.
As for artillery:
The shots need time to hit, one round per map that they cross, and you can place your artillery off map with a distance to the frontlines in mapsheets (ie: You can say your Arrow IV UrbanMech is 5 maps away from the actual playing field), this will influence the time it takes for the missile to reach the target and you can use this to outrange other artillery pieces, such as using a Long Tom to outrange a Sniper and thus prevent counter battery fire... though your artillery fire will now most likely take longer to reach the map than the game is going to take.

Also there's rules like "rolling maps", where you could just dash across the boundaries of the regular map and move towards the soon-to-be-ON-the-map artillery to fuck its shit up.

Yeah i've only played Mechwarrior games and watched the battletech tv show. XCOM with mechs sounds good.

As has been said, at a sale, I think it's absolutely worth it. They went their own way with the setting and gameplay, but in my opinion it works out rather nicely.
A very small word of warning: The game has a bit of a reputation for including "they/them" pronouns in the character creation and a rather obnoxious muslim engineer, but that's not so bad in reality. A few annoying lines from that muslim chick and that's it, really, while the silly pronouns factor into precisely nothing in the game once you leave character creation.

Check out the basegame now and if you enjoyed it, pick up the DLC at the next sale. Personally, I like the story and I think it fits neatly into the BT setting.

 

[Snekposter]

Well, she does show up later to remind you that Mercs don't just kill people for mon- bah ha ha, I can't keep my face straight even at my own PC! What a moralizing bint, especially since the Dracs happen to rule over a nice subset of Muslim vassal worlds and are exactly as happy with them existing as you would imagine Space Nippon to be.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

So, I've looked up the rules on extended ranges:

There are actually two more range brackets after "long range", specifically "extreme range" and "LOS range".

Extreme range extends from long range up to two times medium range (For a medium laser with 3/6/9 range, that means extreme range is 12) and receives a penalty of 6 points on the to-hit. Firing at that range also reduces damage depending on the weapon type used (cluster-weapons receive a penalty on the cluster hits table and pulse weapons do half damage, regular lasers and gauss weapons reduce damage by one and so on... ). Interestingly, when using a C3 unit, you merely use one range bracket more than you normally would. Ie: You're firing a gauss from 28 hexes away and the spotter is 5 hexes from your target. Normally, you'd use the short range bracket, in this case you use the medium range bracket. It's actually not that bad, when you have a C3 lance at your disposal.

LOS range extends from extreme range up to however far you can see (so technically, you could snipe that off-map Arrow IV Urbie that is supposedly placed 5 maps away, if there is LOS). This attack receives a +8 modifier and can only be used by missile and ballistic weapons with a long range of at least 13 and energy weapons with a long range of at least 7. Damage is even more drastically reduced and C3 networks are incompatible with LOS range. But on the upside, it's literally the Todd Howard meme of "See that mountain? You can shoot it!"

See Tactical Operations Page 85 for details.


While looking up those rules, I also stumbled upon something else on the same page:

Linking Weapons

Similar to the DFA Wargaming "Group Fire" rules, this allows to combine weapons into firing groups to reduce number of dicerolls.

	DFA Wargaming "Group Fire"	CBT "Linking Weapons" (TO page 85)
Requirements:	All fired weapons have to be either group-fired or chain-fired (per target)*.	Weapons need to have the (exact) same arcs. Weapons can only be linked or unlinked during the end phase of each turn. Note that you don't have to fire all linked weapons if you don't want to and that the player decides which weapons are in the group and which are not.**
Determining hit:	Throw one pilot die and one die for each weapon per group to determine hits for every weapon individually.	Throw 2d6 per group. All fired weapons hit or miss based on the result. The to-hit number is the worst one in the linked group.***
Determining hit location:	When using group fire, use pilot-die and 1 hit-location-die per weapon fired to determine each hit individually.	As usual, roll hit location for each weapon/cluster individually.
Pros:	cuts down on dice rolls each weapon still has an individual chance of hitting very flexible to use makes hits cluster around the same location	cuts down on dice rolls a lot still allows the use of side-arcs linked fire and regular attacks can be combined you can freely choose the composition of each group
Cons:	possibly prevents the use of side-arcs can't mix firing types	needs to be set up before the turn in which it is used hits still spread out over entire mech only useful, with many similar weapons in one arc

* I don't remember if DFA rules allow splitting attacks on multiple targets or the use of side-arcs.
** You can only link weapons in the same arm location, in the torso locations or in the legs with one another. Ie: You can link both torso mounted LRM-15s of a Viking into one group, the small lasers in group 2, the 4 MGs in his legs into group 3 (or 2 into group 3 and two into group 4). The arm-mounted LRM-20s can not be linked to any other weapon. Technically, you could also link the small lasers in with the LRM-15s, but that would be silly.
*** When you mix different types of weapons, you need to figure in every modifier for the weapons and use the lowest to-hit number. Ie: A pilot with a gunnery of 4 (that didn't move) links a medium laser and a large pulse laser to fire on a static target that is 7 hexes away, to-hit for the medium laser would be 4 (gunnery skill) + 4 ( long range) = 8. The LPL has a to-hit of 4 + 2 (medium range) -2 (pulse laser) = 4. So the to-hit for that group is 8. Minimum/Maximum ranges still apply, obviously. Linking together the same weapons (ie: all 6 torso-mounted medium lasers of a Hunchback 4P) has no effect.

All in all, I really like both systems of handling things, but both have their perks and drawbacks. The big drawback of the official CBT rules is that one roll decides whether you hit or miss, which leads to kind of a paradox, where you neither really want to use it when the to-hit is bad nor when it's good. When the to-hit is bad, you'd rather want to roll all weapons individually to increase your chance of a lucky roll and when the number is low, you want to decrease your chance of a single bad roll ruining the entire attack. It's also not much use with most mechs due to their varied weapons loadout due to different range brackets.
DFA's version is pretty neat in that regard, but CBT is more flexible when it comes to using mutliple firing groups and the requirement of arcs and the set-up before the turn seems like a good way to balance things a little. Overall, I'd say DFA's system looks better and more applicable than the CBT one.
geez, sorry for the tl;dr post...

Well, she does show up later to remind you that Mercs don't just kill people for mon- bah ha ha, I can't keep my face straight even at my own PC! What a moralizing bint, especially since the Dracs happen to rule over a nice subset of Muslim vassal worlds and are exactly as happy with them existing as you would imagine Space Nippon to be.

There's a random event that involves Ms Muslim. Basically, a reknown merc unit (can't remember, either Kell Hounds or Gray Death Legion) contacts you and asks you to lend them Ms Muslim and 100k C-bills for some project that they have.
Your options: Don't send anything. Send her but no money. Send her with 50k C-bills. Send her and the full 100k C-bills.
When you choose to send her and 50k C-bills, you receive a doubleheatsink in return... and the leader of the merc unit tells you to have more faith in Ms Muslim, cause she's -and I quote- "the best engineer he has ever seen".

She's the only political thing that's truly fucking annoying and outright grating (if the Argo was actually my ship, the moment everything's upgraded, she'd be out on her ass at the next space-port... if she's even that lucky) thankfully she only raises her ugly head every once in a while and can be easily ignored the rest of the time.
Given how much fun the game can be, I wouldn't let her presence get in the way of my fun.