Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

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White Devil said:
Yeah, I think it's a mistake to think people will continue to prop up CGL. Battletech is a particular type of grognard and there's no reason to spend hundreds when you can just get a 3D printer nowadays.
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Like Gezkill said, books are probably going to be your main point of sale with BT, as 3rd party miniatures have been around for a long time. Though it is worth noting that unless you invest in a 3d printer, CGL are your cheapest option for minis. As someone with a 3D printer, I can say that that is a lot of work for meh payoff, as sadly most of the 3d printed models are kind of shit as they are ripped from MWO. But to each there own on that.

Regardless, even if boycotts do work, the main issue isn't CGL, as while I'm sure there were people who didn't like BLP, his firing was the result of one of many internet weirdos who get off on inflicting their political beliefs on to a hobby and stirring up drama as a result. If you don't drag people like that into the light for being the terminally online faggots that they are, they will continue to stir up shit like this, which causes drama in the fanbase, which is what is actually needed for a hobby to be successful.

As for grognards, I have yet to meet one who isn't online. Everyone at my LGS's stance is either silence or "oh great, now there is going to be a Anti Woke and Anti-Anti Woke war, which means drama." Maybe that means I got a bad hand in LGSs, but I think writing in anyone who fails to speak up about their opinions is on your side or in some silent majority.

I hope I've just got PTSD from other hobbies, and I'll get proven wrong, but at a certain point you can't police the companies behavior, and you have to look at your own.
 
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And here we have an example of your average Catalyst Boot Licker.
 

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Gezkill said:
You only need the books thats it. Catalyst doesn't get a dime from mini sales from IWM.
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And the changes in rules in Battletech are minimal at best over the timeframe of several decades.

I own a copy of 4th Edition from 20 years ago and the modern edition of Total Warfare. The only differences that I could find are: How Partial Cover works, how TAG and spotting works.
I also peeked into the rulebook for Battledroids and was surprised how similar it was to modern BT. It does damage a whole lot differently, but a lot of things work out the same or are at least on a basic level similar.

Grognards can really just grab their ancient rulebooks and have a single page of Errata, so you don't have to buy a whole lot of books if you don't want to. If you do not care about pirating, there's always someone or someplace that will give you access to a pdf.

As for the IWM minis, CGL might not get any money, but their parent company does and they are the ones that most likely had BLP fired. But IWM is offering really good quality, so even at their increased pricepoint, you still get something worth your money.
3D printed models ripped from MWO are nice and dandy, I guess. I dislike some of the designs, since they are all very same-y in how angular and boxy they are. The CGL minis look absolutely terrific, ngl, but at the moment, I don't feel like giving them my money. I guess if someone managed to 3D scan these minis, that'd be baller af.
 
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RomanesEuntDomus said:
And the changes in rules in Battletech are minimal at best over the timeframe of several decades.

I own a copy of 4th Edition from 20 years ago and the modern edition of Total Warfare. The only differences that I could find are: How Partial Cover works, how TAG and spotting works.
I also peeked into the rulebook for Battledroids and was surprised how similar it was to modern BT. It does damage a whole lot different, but a lot of things work out the same or are at least on a basic level similar.

Grognards can really just grab their ancient rulebooks and have a single page of Errata, so you don't have to buy a whole lot of books if you don't want to. If you do not care about pirating, there's always someone or someplace that will give you access to a pdf.

As for the IWM minis, CGL might not get any money, but their parent company does and they are the ones that most likely had BLP fired. But IWM is offering really good quality, so even at their increased pricepoint, you still get something worth your money.
3D printed models ripped from MWO are nice and dandy, I guess. I dislike some of the designs, since they are all very same-y in how angular and boxy they are. The CGL minis look absolutely terrific, ngl, but at the moment, I don't feel like giving them my money. I guess if someone managed to 3D scan these minis, that'd be baller af.
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honestly I got all my battletech stuff from the secondary market bought a decent bundle and it had the major books on a usb drive...saved me some time on pirating.
 
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Capsaicin Addict said:
I'll be honest, I thought Trollman's take was self-serving, and frankly he's a titanic cunt of the first order anyways.

Also, the fact that nobody even tried to oust Coleman, let alone press charges, made me suspect the issue wasn't so much embezzlement as it was accounting incompetence. Nobody fucking writes off $900k, especially not an RPG studio not named 'WotC'.

All that being said, it's very hard for me to give Coleman any credit for this. He looks like a fucking toolbox. If I'd been in his shoes, with Fanatics pushing for Pardoe's dismissal, I'd have straight up said, 'You can force this -- we can't stop you -- but I will put the fucking hat on you over it.'
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Jennifer Harding resigned because she was ordered to falsify royalty reports and because she was told to conceal information. It's not in doubt that Loren Coleman withdrew large sums of money from the company to himself. Sure, all they admitted to was vague "financial mismanagement" but I don't give them credit that this was ignorance or incompetence. You don't pull out 800,000 from a company to build a house out of incompetence. Nor does Trollman's cuntishness or otherwise (and I've had clashes with him so I know first hand how obstinate he can be) change whether he was in the right or not here. It often requires someone with a degree of asshole-ishness to spark off a push back.

You want to say that Coleman is incompetent as well as corrupt, I'll buy it. The rapid dumping of every un-spellchecked scrap of unpublished material they had to drivethrurpg when Trollman brought all this to light is evidence of that. But I wont accept that Coleman is incompetent instead of corrupt.
 
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Overly Serious said:
Jennifer Harding resigned because she was ordered to falsify royalty reports and because she was told to conceal information. It's not in doubt that Loren Coleman withdrew large sums of money from the company to himself. Sure, all they admitted to was vague "financial mismanagement" but I don't give them credit that this was ignorance or incompetence. You don't pull out 800,000 from a company to build a house out of incompetence. Nor does Trollman's cuntishness or otherwise (and I've had clashes with him so I know first hand how obstinate he can be) change whether he was in the right or not here. It often requires someone with a degree of asshole-ishness to spark off a push back.

You want to say that Coleman is incompetent as well as corrupt, I'll buy it. The rapid dumping of every un-spellchecked scrap of unpublished material they had to drivethrurpg when Trollman brought all this to light is evidence of that. But I wont accept that Coleman is incompetent instead of corrupt.
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I cannot say either way. The old saw about 'never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity' kind of springs to mind here.

Regardless, at the least Coleman looks like an enormous jackass for pushing Pardoe out like this.
 
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Capsaicin Addict said:
I cannot say either way. The old saw about 'never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity' kind of springs to mind here.
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No it doesn't. When someone involved (whom I trust) says that she was told to falsify royalties reports and we know Coleman personally removed large sums of money directly from the company to his own bank account, I'm calling bad faith. That "old saw" isn't a law. Loren Coleman is someone we know has enriched himself at the expense of others. And continued to act unethically beyond the point a generous person could claim ignorance - i.e. when freelancers had been diplomatically been trying to get paid for over a year behind the scenes before Frank took the non-payments public.
 
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Overly Serious said:
No it doesn't. When someone involved (whom I trust) says that she was told to falsify royalties reports and we know Coleman personally removed large sums of money directly from the company to his own bank account, I'm calling bad faith. That "old saw" isn't a law. Loren Coleman is someone we know has enriched himself at the expense of others. And continued to act unethically beyond the point a generous person could claim ignorance - i.e. when freelancers had been diplomatically been trying to get paid for over a year behind the scenes before Frank took the non-payments public.
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And yet: Coleman is still there.

Nobody writes off a $900k embezzlement. No fucking body. Especially not Catalyst.

And that's why I think there's more to this story than 'Coleman's a crook'. I do feel for the freelancers who didn't get paid. They SHOULD have gotten paid. But I do wonder about the causal relationship.
 
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Gezkill said:
I'm sorry what? Is he telling me that pointing out that Catalyst have been complete scumbags is libel?
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Technically, it is. Because it's a defamatory statement that has potential to cause damage (financial in this case).

But the idea that a company would take legal action against some rando on Twitter says a lot more about that company's business practices than anything else. It would be a fantastic way to Streisand their bullshit and tarnish their reputation even harder.

This is business 101: do not. antagonize. your. clientele.
 
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Reluctant Baron said:
Well you could stop being a stupid fucking Clanner for starters. If you want actual advice, Clan mechs suffer in AS if you don't bring Elementals. At my local game group, the only time I have ever seen clans win against inner sphere is with Elementals, and they did so handily. I didn' t play the game, but tl;dr the Elementals can get up close and felt a mech by doing auto heat damage, and doing an auto crit to the mechs. They can be countered by having your mechs cover each other, but that limits your fire power, and numbers, which is what clans want.
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Any particular changes to the list that you’d recommend? I think I want to keep the sheer threat of the dire wolf if at all possible, and the indirect fire from the archer or something comperable. I have to keep it at or under 250.
Gezkill said:
I'm sorry what? Is he telling me that pointing out that Catalyst have been complete scumbags is libel?
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He looks like a colossal faggot.
 
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Okay, so one of the weird angles I've seen is that Pardoe was bad because he inserted names of Confederates and Civil War battles into the Battletech fluff. Ship class names and whatnot.

They're just scrambling for justifications at this point.
 
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Capsaicin Addict said:
Okay, so one of the weird angles I've seen is that Pardoe was bad because he inserted names of Confederates and Civil War battles into the Battletech fluff. Ship class names and whatnot.

They're just scrambling for justifications at this point.
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Doesn't the US army do that too?
 
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