Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

[White Devil]

Other GUY?!?! You fucking bigot, I have to get you cancelled from the merc company.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Other GUY?!?! You fucking bigot, I have to get you cancelled from the merc company.

No, it's fine. The Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission standard application form requires you to state your target's pronouns, self-identified species and/or ethnicity, and safeword before you can place a bounty. So it was a guy. Maybe not born a guy, but if they want to die as a man then I have a couple Gauss Rifles that will be happy to oblige.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

And the leveling system for the pilots is so basic it doesn't even matter in a practical sense anyway.

I don't think I quite follow. The abilities that the pilots gain and the bonusses from leveling make experienced pilots insanely more powerful than untrained ones.
Getting a boost to your damage reduction when standing in a forest, being able to attack multiple targets and breaching shot are an insane combination. Especially given that Breaching Shot ignores damage reduction, when you fire one gun per target, not per turn, ie: an Awesome shooting 3 mechs with one PPC each will ignore their damage reduction.
When I originally read the description, I thought it meant I can only fire one weapon in total and I thought that ability was pretty strong. Given how it actually works, my LRM-Stalker tears enemies asunder like they were wet toilet paper, even when they are inside a forest.

The sheer amount of heat inside a BattleMech's cockpit is something you rarely if ever see depicted in any of the games or associated tie-in products. You're literally sitting right on top of a miniature sun, surrounded by electronics that eat up megawatts of power by the minute, inside a machine that moves around on artificial muscles that generate waste heat like there's a sale on the stuff, with a cooling system riding the fine edge between "wasting tonnage" and "cooking the pilot alive". Unless they're actively connected to the 'Mech's life-support system, and they won't be in the Periphery in 3025, those flight suits are just about the most stupid thing you can wear inside a 'Mech, but people think they work because that's what real life fighter pilots wear. But pilots go around at high altitudes with rarified air and very low temperatures. MechWarriors are doing the equivalent of manning AA positions in the Pacific Theater in the middle of summer.

Really puts in perspective why they had those booty shorts in the 80s.

The games, including the TT, don't really depict it well. When you read the novels, the very first time someone fires even just a medium laser, the narration will mention how the heat notably rises inside the cockpit. They really drive home the point that even just walking creates an absurd amount of heat and that the heatscale that the games use isn't a "the mech is running hot" scale, it's a "the mech is always hot but now it's turning into a furnace" scale.

 

[Snekposter]

Everything in BattleTech is hot as fuck. In Daggerpoint the ELH BA doing nothing but running around while on SAR in the middle of winter still get hot as fuck inside their suits.

 

[Balr0g]

Everything in BattleTech is hot as fuck. In Daggerpoint the ELH BA doing nothing but running around while on SAR in the middle of winter still get hot as fuck inside their suits.

Well technically the one thing that never gets hot except when doused in inferno gel are tanks. Tanks are constructed in a way that they can fire all weapons and don't explode from the heat. Case in point: the Schreck PPC carrier. 3 PPC's and it can fire those at will

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Everything in BattleTech is hot as fuck. In Daggerpoint the ELH BA doing nothing but running around while on SAR in the middle of winter still get hot as fuck inside their suits.

Fuck, that just made me imagine how much it must suck to be forced to eject from a Mech during a winter battle. You get shot out of a baking oven of a cockpit and right into a drift of snow, wearing nothing but hotpants, a water-filled vest and about a pint of sweat.
Anything short of a Full-Head-Ejection-Systems would mean your pilot freezes to death within a few turns.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Well technically the one thing that never gets hot except when doused in inferno gel are tanks. Tanks are constructed in a way that they can fire all weapons and don't explode from the heat. Case in point: the Schreck PPC carrier. 3 PPC's and it can fire those at will

That's actually the stated difference between BattleMechs and conventional vehicles. 'Mechs are tough as nails because they're built tightly, sturdily and sealed on the inside, which also results in a lot of heat getting "trapped" in there and having to be moved around with heatsinks. That's also why they're a bitch to repair. Vehicles by comparison have a much more "open" construction that allows them to shed heat a lot more easily, but also leaves them vulnerable to incendiary weapons getting into the intakes and spreading through the engine bay and other compartments.

(It's all 100% BS from a physics standpoint, literally none of the technological improvements that made 'Mechs so deadly could not also be applied to standard vehicles. But this is a game about big stompy robots and by Jove we'll have big stompy robots!)

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

That's actually the stated difference between BattleMechs and conventional vehicles. 'Mechs are tough as nails because they're built tightly, sturdily and sealed on the inside, which also results in a lot of heat getting "trapped" in there and having to be moved around with heatsinks. That's also why they're a bitch to repair. Vehicles by comparison have a much more "open" construction that allows them to shed heat a lot more easily, but also leaves them vulnerable to incendiary weapons getting into the intakes and spreading through the engine bay and other compartments.

(It's all 100% BS from a physics standpoint, literally none of the technological improvements that made 'Mechs so deadly could not also be applied to standard vehicles. But this is a game about big stompy robots and by Jove we'll have big stompy robots!)

Or vice versa, if making something capable of dishing out PPC salvos with impunity merely by not enclosing them so tightly inside the chassis, you could bet your ass someone would strap a poorly-enclosed PPC to a mech's arm and enjoy blasting enemies with his heat-neutral sledgehammer until someone melts it off his mech.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

Fuck, that just made me imagine how much it must suck to be forced to eject from a Mech during a winter battle. You get shot out of a baking oven of a cockpit and right into a drift of snow, wearing nothing but hotpants, a water-filled vest and about a pint of sweat.
Anything short of a Full-Head-Ejection-Systems would mean your pilot freezes to death within a few turns.

Most ejection seats are equipped with a small pack that contains survival gear, so your chances are pretty good assuming you don't land in a volcano, get stuck in a tree, or some asshole doesn't shoot you out of the air.

That being said, up till the later eras Mechwarriors were pretty much dressed for a day at the beach, if that. In Decision at Thunder Rift, when Grayson captures Lori Kalmar and her Locust? She's wearing nothing but boots and panties. Grayson has to threaten the troops with a pistol to keep them from doing something stupid.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Or vice versa, if making something capable of dishing out PPC salvos with impunity merely by not enclosing them so tightly inside the chassis, you could bet your ass someone would strap a poorly-enclosed PPC to a mech's arm and enjoy blasting enemies with his heat-neutral sledgehammer until someone melts it off his mech.

I'm pretty sure the reason why they don't already do that is because with how much 'Mechs move around (and/or get jostled around by fire), a poorly-enclosed piece of gear is going to fall off or break off the moment the 'Mech takes a step.

Most ejection seats are equipped with a small pack that contains survival gear, so your chances are pretty good assuming you don't land in a volcano, get stuck in a tree, or some asshole doesn't shoot you out of the air.

That being said, up till the later eras Mechwarriors were pretty much dressed for a day at the beach, if that. In Decision at Thunder Rift, when Grayson captures Lori Kalmar and her Locust? She's wearing nothing but boots and panties. Grayson has to threaten the troops with a pistol to keep them from doing something stupid.

So, basically, what we're all saying here is that this picture is canon:

(I love Matt Plog's 'Mechs but man he draws some weird humans.)

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

I'm pretty sure the reason why they don't already do that is because with how much 'Mechs move around (and/or get jostled around by fire), a poorly-enclosed piece of gear is going to fall off or break off the moment the 'Mech takes a step.

You could strap in on tightly enough with copious amounts of duct tape I guess.
And if it stays intact as long as the arm doesn't get hit, it would still have a decent chance to dish out harder than it takes.

But yeah, that's not in the spirit of Stompy Robots, so that's not an option. Exspanded rules offer Mech-quirks that reduce weapon heat for individual weapons, so there's that.
On that matter, I never figured out how the quirk system is balanced (if at all), can you point-buy quirks for mechs or how does this work?

 

[Corn Flakes]

Exspanded rules offer Mech-quirks that reduce weapon heat for individual weapons, so there's that.
On that matter, I never figured out how the quirk system is balanced (if at all), can you point-buy quirks for mechs or how does this work?

Check the BattleMech Manual, page 82. Designs come with quirks out of the box and each quirk has a points value associated with it, but if you're custom-building or altering the quirks you're strongly advised to use the same total points in positive quirks as negative quirks.

So, for example, you might want to give your Ace Custom 'mech the "Stable" quirk, for 2 points. But you would then have to pick up 2 points in negative quirks to balance it out. Maybe the tweaks to the gyro to attain that stability resulted in one of the ammo feeds being cramped and unrealiable ("Ammunition Feed Problem", for 1 point) and the improved leg actuators don't fit inside the original housing ("Exposed Actuators", for 1 point).

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Some canon mechs only have positive quirks, some only negative, so I was wondering how those are balanced in the original game. Maybe they just aren't balanced at all cause they're not meant to (unlike player built mechs, that shouldn't be able to just pile on a load of positive quirks on top of an optimized and decked out design).

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

So, basically, what we're all saying here is that this picture is canon:

View attachment 1868868

(I love Matt Plog's 'Mechs but man he draws some weird humans.)

Pretty much, yeah.

And if that's a Scorpion behind the lady, I'd wager she takes any chance she gets to get out of the driver's seat. Scorpions were notorious for bumpy rides and it wasn't till the Tarantula that quads started to lose their reputation for painful piloting experiences.

 

[TerminalTryHard]

I don't think I quite follow. The abilities that the pilots gain and the bonusses from leveling make experienced pilots insanely more powerful than untrained ones.
Getting a boost to your damage reduction when standing in a forest, being able to attack multiple targets and breaching shot are an insane combination. Especially given that Breaching Shot ignores damage reduction, when you fire one gun per target, not per turn, ie: an Awesome shooting 3 mechs with one PPC each will ignore their damage reduction.
When I originally read the description, I thought it meant I can only fire one weapon in total and I thought that ability was pretty strong. Given how it actually works, my LRM-Stalker tears enemies asunder like they were wet toilet paper, even when they are inside a forest.

I'm not saying there not useful I'm saying the options are limited. The multi-shot/breaching shot for example is super useful on the Awesome, it's also super useful on the King Crab, the Stalker, both versions of the Marauder, the Cataphract, and the list goes on. I would of just preferred more RPG mechanics, maybe some limits on leveling up so I don't have a stable of pilots with everything maxed out in late game.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Some canon mechs only have positive quirks, some only negative, so I was wondering how those are balanced in the original game. Maybe they just aren't balanced at all cause they're not meant to (unlike player built mechs, that shouldn't be able to just pile on a load of positive quirks on top of an optimized and decked out design).

The stock 'Mechs are not balanced at all, no. So if you want to get a leg up tinkering with 'Mechs, you might as well start with a canon design and tweak it so you can make use of the "free" baked-in quirks.

Pretty much, yeah.

And if that's a Scorpion behind the lady, I'd wager she takes any chance she gets to get out of the driver's seat. Scorpions were notorious for bumpy rides and it wasn't till the Tarantula that quads started to lose their reputation for painful piloting experiences.

From how the feet look and by the perforated cowling on the big gun, I'd wager that's a 10M. That's a Post-Jihad design. Hopefully the full chassis redesign and the XL Gyro they installed in there have improved the ride somewhat. She certainly doesn't look as bruised as a regular 1N pilot would be.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

She certainly doesn't look as bruised as a regular 1N pilot would be.

Maybe not bruised, but mildly concussed if you ask me.

What's the deal with quads anyway? Their biggest advantage seems to be that they are able to walk sideways at the cost of 2MP/hex, which only is a an advantage when you use it to go sideays in a zig-zag motion (ie: alternating between moving to the 2 o'clock and 4 o'clock hexes to go 90° from where your mech is pointing). Otherwise, going 2 hexes in the same direction would be easier with a regular movement.

Quads seem to be rather pointless and gimmicky, but they are at least not as silly as three-legged designs. While they enjoy a genuine advantage over regular mechs in terms of movement rules, they would look less ridiculous if they had 6 legs.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Maybe not bruised, but mildly concussed if you ask me.

What's the deal with quads anyway? Their biggest advantage seems to be that they are able to walk sideways at the cost of 2MP/hex, which only is a an advantage when you use it to go sideays in a zig-zag motion (ie: alternating between moving to the 2 o'clock and 4 o'clock hexes to go 90° from where your mech is pointing). Otherwise, going 2 hexes in the same direction would be easier with a regular movement.

Quads seem to be rather pointless and gimmicky, but they are at least not as silly as three-legged designs. While they enjoy a genuine advantage over regular mechs in terms of movement rules, they would look less ridiculous if they had 6 legs.

Quads are way more stable (they get a -2 bonus to their piloting rolls for remaining upright), they can do that shimmy for just 1MP (no idea why the book shows "1 additional MP" on the diagram, it makes no sense), and if you park them behind 1-level cover you basically get a 50% chance of the shot hitting the berm and completely missing.

So quads are good in two diametrically opposed situations: either as speedy light 'Mechs that would be doing a lot of piloting rolls as they zip around and wouldn't be using up all those critical slots anyway; or as lumbering mobile pillboxes carrying very heavy but space-efficient weapons parked behind cover. A Thunder Stallion (or a Sirocco, or even just a Goliath) can be one hell of a tough rock to shift if it's in cover and you can't flank it. (ETA: cheap, too! No Endo, no Ferro, no XL make for very economical designs.)

 

[Snekposter]

And you have some ridiculously durable designs like the Great Turtle that under RAW has a chance to survive unassisted orbital reentry. 40 tons of hardened armor, torso cockpit, standard engine, and a compact gyro means any sort of quick kill is off the table with any weapon. Granted its not very well armed with just a single LXP Laser and 2 MXP Lasers, but the TC helps with hits and yes its as slow as a turtle, but like I said up above, it will not die.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

And you have some ridiculously durable designs like the Great Turtle that under RAW has a chance to survive unassisted orbital reentry. 40 tons of hardened armor, torso cockpit, standard engine, and a compact gyro means any sort of quick kill is off the table with any weapon. Granted its not very well armed with just a single LXP Laser and 2 MXP Lasers, but the TC helps with hits and yes its as slow as a turtle, but like I said up above, it will not die.

40 tons of hardened armor. My god.

I just looked up the record sheet, that thing would take forever to take down, it's the ultimate ZombieMech, even crushing the head would merely be a mission kill.