Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

[Tactical Wizard]

The Falcons were also rather capitalistic with their strong banking sector. But yeah the clans are really weird. Also obliterating the one clan who espoused strong forms of Democracy (the Wolverines) because big Nicky K started to loose control after Klondike

The story of the clans is the story of a closed off society finding itself exposed to an outside society and learning just how badly that they've deceived themselves. Like, the clans claim to have eliminated all forms of bigotry but everyone looks at the elementals who've been bred for maximum aggression and mistake that aggression for stupidity and so they don't often find themselves in the upper echelons of command outside of clans like smoke jaguar.

But every generalized statement about the clans needs to be followed by "except for X clan."

 

[dame dudi jench]

The battletech setting is my favorite ever and I agree these changes are good. But fundamentally the game just isn't good, and nibbling on the edges like this won't bring in new blood. It was built by Jordan Weisman to be a beer and pretzels quick-play game that was all about pushing your luck with the heat curve. That kept games moving fast b/c it was relatively easy to blow up and mechs had paper-thin armor much of the time. Double Heat Sinks, even moreso than clantech, ruined the game b/c 20 base heat reduction made medium laser/pulse laser spam optimum even for fast jumping mechs. Now, decades later, the game still uses the same shallow beer-and-pretzels ruleset. Except it's even dumber b/c the heat mechanic is now mostly irrelevant and it's not quick-play because there are 30 years of sidegrade equipment rules and combined arms mechanics to wade through, and mechs move way faster and are harder to hit. and that's before we get to how miserable it is to resolve missile and LBX attacks. playing megamek really drives this home b/c it automates all the bookkeeping so you see how little there is to do in terms of decision-making. It's like using the advanced squad leader ruleset to play checkers.

Alpha Strike could have revived game by being a new X-Wing/clickytech, but b/c Randall Bills is a bad game designer and won't let go. So AS sucked too and doesn't give the player anything in the way of interesting risk/reward mechanics or decisions to make. That said from a business perspective i have nothing but props for the CGL team, they have managed to make a viable business out of churning out terrible lore updates and unnecessary technical read-outs to an ever-dwindling audience of people who got into the game decades ago and still have fond memories of it/are extremely autistic. the kickstarter model is the real genius move as it lets them extract a lot of $$$ out of that group, even if it slowly shrinking. they are all middle-management in IT or whatever and have lots of disposable income/no families to spend $ on.

I hate to toot my own horn here, but here in the recent ruleset playtest doc the developers are admitting this is exactly how things are and they like it this way. completely bonkers. like here they are saying they wanted to modernize the rules, but just couldn't figure out a way to model LBX weapons that didn't force you to (1) roll 2d6 to determine if you hit, then (2) roll 2d6 to determine how many clusters hit, then (3) roll 2d6 for each pellet that does hit to determine location. So let's say you have a Hunchback with an LBX-20, 3 medium lasers and an srm4 - if you land say, 18 pellets and 2 SRMs, that means you are making 5 to-hit 2d6 rolls, 23 2d6 location rolls, and god knows how many critical hit rolls if you penetrate armor. to look at that and say "good, that's the kind of interesting decision-making we want players to spend their time on" is why battletech is bleeding out.

The story of the clans is the story of a closed off society finding itself exposed to an outside society and learning just how badly that they've deceived themselves. Like, the clans claim to have eliminated all forms of bigotry but everyone looks at the elementals who've been bred for maximum aggression and mistake that aggression for stupidity and so they don't often find themselves in the upper echelons of command outside of clans like smoke jaguar.

But every generalized statement about the clans needs to be followed by "except for X clan."

ya that's why i get so surly about the ilclan era - they should have assimilated into the IS between 3050-3150

 

[BlackDragoons]

I hate to toot my own horn here, but here in the recent ruleset playtest doc the developers are admitting this is exactly how things are and they like it this way. completely bonkers. like here they are saying they wanted to modernize the rules, but just couldn't figure out a way to model LBX weapons that didn't force you to (1) roll 2d6 to determine if you hit, then (2) roll 2d6 to determine how many clusters hit, then (3) roll 2d6 for each pellet that does hit to determine location. So let's say you have a Hunchback with an LBX-20, 3 medium lasers and an srm4 - if you land say, 18 pellets and 2 SRMs, that means you are making 5 to-hit 2d6 rolls, 23 2d6 location rolls, and god knows how many critical hit rolls if you penetrate armor. to look at that and say "good, that's the kind of interesting decision-making we want players to spend their time on" is why battletech is bleeding out.

Ehh its not bad, make your own shake and bake solves everything.

 

[dame dudi jench]

Ehh it's not bad, make your own shake and bake solves everything.

You are totally correct, it's not a big deal and it's definitely something you can work around and show newbies how to do, or just adopt a saner house rule. Upon reflection I am so tilted because if this is their big rationalization of the rules, and their opening declaration is that they aren't going to streamline something as obviously pointlessly crunchy as like LBX cluster shot resolution, and their reason is it's because rolling 2d6 23 times to resolve a single mech's firing phase is "interesting gameplay" they want to preserve, this is bad news. if this is where their head is at, the overhaul is going to make the game even more pointlessly fiddly and crunchy. so the game is going to remain the preserve of a shrinking number of people who like it bc they played it' as a formative experience. kickstarters are going to hit streisand/eagles-tickets level of prices as they monetize an increasingly smaller-but-wealthier playerbase.

i think the the thing that bugs me the most is that FASA came up with a better more streamlined damage resolution system in Renegade Legion and then modernized it for Crimson Skies. they could easily adapt it for BattleTech. Crimson Skies used gs pulled in maneuvers as the risk-reward mechanic instead of heat and could easily be converted back into heat. Even if the audience didn't want devs to "modernize" BT with that radical a change, they could have made Alpha Strike a genuinely good game by giving it Crimson Skies rules with X-Wing-style blind movement chits instead of making Alpha Strike a shallower, quicker, equally decisionless version of battletech.

 

[Corn Flakes]

There is only so much streamlining you can do with a game system whose entire point is crunch and granularity before the system starts losing its character. People play BattleTech for the stupid moments where the Melee Attack Table Twister declares Left Battlefist On Head and someone's MechWarrior turns into a smear in the cockpit, or when the AC/2 Hail Mary from two map sheets over gets a floating crit onto a hip joint and the other guy spends the entire battle face-first into Level 1 water, or when you roll a 3 on an ammo explosion check and that innocent half-empty SRM ammo bin in the center torso ejects your VOX 340 into the stratosphere. The memorable moments in BattleTech are usually as a direct result of how many rolls you have to make and all the modifiers that go into them.

They've already tried making a streamlined version of BattleTech. It's called Alpha Strike and I love it to death, but even though I'm a total fanboy for it there's no way I can claim it has anywhere near the same level of funny zany moments as classic 27 x 2d6 BattleTech. I suppose you could replace the whole rolling for locations and critical hits with a single unified damage table, but at that point you'd be fully redoing the system and all the previously released content would be rendered incompatible.

 

[BlackDragoons]

Got the new TRO 3025 edition that came out.

Got caught of guard with the LAM redesigns.

Phoenix Hawk


Wasp


Stinger

 

[Snekposter]

The Falcons were also rather capitalistic with their strong banking sector. But yeah the clans are really weird. Also obliterating the one clan who espoused strong forms of Democracy (the Wolverines) because big Nicky K started to loose control after Klondike

The Foxes/Sharks were the other democratic clan, which is hilarious when you realize their ideological founder was a literal Karen.

"I'd like to talk to the ilKhan, please."

The Foxes are pretty fucking awesome though, especially since they invented the Clan version of the Internet and allow every one of their members to shit post there no matter their caste, and when they aren't shitposting trawl it for information they can use for either mercantile or military purposes. If the Clans have a version of the Farms, its hosted in Sea Fox territory because you bet your ass the Foxes would want all that shit archived for their own purposes. Or was until they moved to the Inner Sphere and took up the life of nomadic space traders selling everything to everyone.

The story of the clans is the story of a closed off society finding itself exposed to an outside society and learning just how badly that they've deceived themselves. Like, the clans claim to have eliminated all forms of bigotry but everyone looks at the elementals who've been bred for maximum aggression and mistake that aggression for stupidity and so they don't often find themselves in the upper echelons of command outside of clans like smoke jaguar.

But every generalized statement about the clans needs to be followed by "except for X clan."

Don't forget about the ASF pilots who are even lower than Elementals on the totem pole. I'm fully convinced the fact they were bred small enough to be shoved into lockers is completely intentional, especially since they're the one sub-caste of Warriors that is no better than their Spheroid counterparts, if not worse.

 

[Bulk Bogan]

The Foxes are pretty fucking awesome though

Fuck the Sea Foxes, they're one of the most inexplicable parts of the already inexplicable ilClan era. I got tired of their whole meme when I learned about the Sea-Bill.

Don't forget about the ASF pilots who are even lower than Elementals on the totem pole. I'm fully convinced the fact they were bred small enough to be shoved into lockers is completely intentional, especially since they're the one sub-caste of Warriors that is no better than their Spheroid counterparts, if not worse.

A lot of modern literature is playing up the Snow Ravens and their incredible pilots, only matched by their new comrades in arms: the space amish. I thought it was great that a non-Magistry Periphery power finally got to win, but then the same stories about the Raven Alliance emphasized how the clanscum see the amish as a bunch of exploitable yokels who must be marginalized at the earliest opportunity. Why does Battletech hate the Periphery so much, catgirlboss empire excepted?

Just give me a smooth Taurian reunification, it's all I want. I ask for so little.

 

[Balr0g]

Don't forget about the ASF pilots who are even lower than Elementals on the totem pole. I'm fully convinced the fact they were bred small enough to be shoved into lockers is completely intentional, especially since they're the one sub-caste of Warriors that is no better than their Spheroid counterparts, if not worse.

Tankers have it worse save for Clan Hells Horse. Just relegated to Garrison duty without much mchance of rising through the ranks.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Aren't tankers outside of the Hell's Horses all freeborn, anyway?

And speaking of the Pilot phenotype, has it ever been stated whether they got owned by Inner Sphere ASF pilots due to their physiological "improvements" being baloney, or more due to doctrinal issues? Like, were they trying to dogfight everything and the IS pilots just went "fuck that!" and ganged up on them like it happened with the Mech jockeys on the ground?

 

[Snekposter]

A lot of modern literature is playing up the Snow Ravens and their incredible pilots, only matched by their new comrades in arms: the space amish. I thought it was great that a non-Magistry Periphery power finally got to win, but then the same stories about the Raven Alliance emphasized how the clanscum see the amish as a bunch of exploitable yokels who must be marginalized at the earliest opportunity.

Wonder which dumbass wrote that since according to Sarna the Outworlds Alliance kicked the Ravens asses first time they met in an aerospace-based trial, earning the OA a ton of respect which continued even up to the creation of the Raven Alliance, which unlike everything else that's a merger was a federation of equals and not conquest.

Tankers have it worse save for Clan Hells Horse. Just relegated to Garrison duty without much mchance of rising through the ranks.

Pretty sure those guys aren't trueborn save for the Horses and their TankWarriors, though, so that's just typical "Fuck the freebirths" stuff.

 

[Ed Special]

Why does Battletech hate the Periphery so much, catgirlboss empire excepted?

Because the original game was about the five gigapowers throwing hands, but the catgirlboss empire is the de-facto tranny DEI faction so woke corpos aren't going to dare to hand them an L lest they be called troonphobic.

You think you've got it bad, Taurian? At least the Taurians got to spend a few hundred years actually being vaguely relevant in lore and telling the Inner Sphere "Fuck off we're full" by the megaton, unlike Rasalhague, which... technically lasted (just barely) into the 3100s, but was actually functionally dead in the water within only a generation of founding thanks to being dead center of the Clan's invasion corridor towards Holy Terra.

 

[Balr0g]

Pretty sure those guys aren't trueborn save for the Horses and their TankWarriors, though, so that's just typical "Fuck the freebirths" stuff.

The Horses had Trueborn tankers even before they developed their tankwarrior phenotype. Oftentimes they were failed Mechwarriors who were allowed to take a second trial for the "lesser forces"

And yes Clan ASF pilots often lost to their IS counterparts despite the technological advantages the Clans have. The ASF phenotype is basically a failure to breed the "perfect" ASF pilot.

 

[Snekposter]

So, looked it up in a few sourcebooks, and the ASF Pilots are mentioned in the Classic BattleTech RPG book as being the "the most radical, but ironically least effective, of the Clan trueborn strains". 5'6", 110 pounds, big eyes and heads... dweebs in a realm of jocks.

I wasn't able to find the rules for high gravity in the book, ironically and disappointingly.

Oh, by the way, that novel I've mentioned a few times about a Ghost Bear Elemental newly arrived in the Inner Sphere: it was named Test of Vengeance, not Path of Glory as was suggested by someone else. And speaking of pilots...

Ghost Bears just straight up don't breed them since they suck so much.
And the "out and about scene" I talked about that was not at a bar, but actually a cafe.

 

[GoodWinSon]

I like reading the sourcebooks sometimes and one thing that really bothers me about the Dominion civil war is that they went out of their way to make the Rasalhague nationalists/anti-clanners a joke. How can you have a civil war and not include anti-clan forces even as a minor faction?

Anyway Amaris did nothing wrong, and all clannerscum belong in mass graves.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I like reading the sourcebooks sometimes and one thing that really bothers me about the Dominion civil war is that they went out of their way to make the Rasalhague nationalists/anti-clanners a joke. How can you have a civil ware and not include anti-clan forces even as a minor faction?

Anyway Amaris did nothing wrong, and all clannerscum belong in mass graves.

The whole Dominion Civil War was one of the most blatant cases of Idiot Ball in the history of the setting. It's like the writers thought the Bears had it too good for too long and decided that they needed to be taken down a peg, so they did it in the laziest way possible.

After a hundred fucking years of assimilation into the Inner Sphere, the Warriors in Rasalhague should have given Alaric the middle finger.

 

[RSU 1741]

Fuck the Sea Foxes, they're one of the most inexplicable parts of the already inexplicable ilClan era. I got tired of their whole meme when I learned about the Sea-Bill.

"We're tired of writing Comstar and Robes"
"But we need someone doing work for comms, mercenaries and selling out stuff"
"More Clans. The setting is centered around the Clans. Get more Clans. Now the Foxes do everything Comstar does but Clan, so better. Also Clans."

The only good way to write themselves out of this would be Alaric realizing too late he has sold an ungodly amount of salvage to the Foxes, that they control his economy, his communications and his diplomacy, and they dispose of him sooner or later. But it would be too interesting to write so it cannot happen. They're so balls-deep in the IlClan stuff that they resurrected the SLDF just to conjure a way "and suddenly everyone loved the IlKhan because he gently let them be his boot-licking slaves!"

 

[AbduluCthuluZulu]

The whole Dominion Civil War was one of the most blatant cases of Idiot Ball in the history of the setting. It's like the writers thought the Bears had it too good for too long and decided that they needed to be taken down a peg, so they did it in the laziest way possible.

After a hundred fucking years of assimilation into the Inner Sphere, the Warriors in Rasalhague should have given Alaric the middle finger.

Yeah, it was yet another example of the "Alaric wins by doing nothing" trope the writers were obsessed with at the start of IlClan.

 

[William Murderface]

You are totally correct, it's not a big deal and it's definitely something you can work around and show newbies how to do, or just adopt a saner house rule. Upon reflection I am so tilted because if this is their big rationalization of the rules, and their opening declaration is that they aren't going to streamline something as obviously pointlessly crunchy as like LBX cluster shot resolution, and their reason is it's because rolling 2d6 23 times to resolve a single mech's firing phase is "interesting gameplay" they want to preserve, this is bad news. if this is where their head is at, the overhaul is going to make the game even more pointlessly fiddly and crunchy. so the game is going to remain the preserve of a shrinking number of people who like it bc they played it' as a formative experience. kickstarters are going to hit streisand/eagles-tickets level of prices as they monetize an increasingly smaller-but-wealthier playerbase.

i think the the thing that bugs me the most is that FASA came up with a better more streamlined damage resolution system in Renegade Legion and then modernized it for Crimson Skies. they could easily adapt it for BattleTech. Crimson Skies used gs pulled in maneuvers as the risk-reward mechanic instead of heat and could easily be converted back into heat. Even if the audience didn't want devs to "modernize" BT with that radical a change, they could have made Alpha Strike a genuinely good game by giving it Crimson Skies rules with X-Wing-style blind movement chits instead of making Alpha Strike a shallower, quicker, equally decisionless version of battletech.


View attachment 7986036

I've been saying for a long time they need to just go to the RenegadeTech rules which revamp damage to the Renegade Legion model just like the example above. The stats and rules for some of the weapons would need tweaking, but the Mech stats themselves would be just fine. The biggest reason grognards don't want a ruleset change is because of the mech designs. With RenegadeTech, all that is changed are how armor is treated, how weapons are treated, and the Mech sheets.

But no. We shan't be doing that.

As far as revamping LBX and UAC, just treat LBX like you do LRMs. Roll for how many hit, roll for where they hit, five point damage allocation. UAC jams (and RAC) just means the weapon is unavailable to use the current turn and the next turn and is automatically ready to go the turn after that. No rolling,

 

[Corn Flakes]

I've taken a look at that RenegadeTech ruleset and... honestly, it feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In search of replacing a system that requires you to roll to hit, and then roll for location, they implemented a system that requires you to roll to hit, and then roll to location, only there are a bunch more rules and bookkeeping around the shape of the attack, whether or not you're hitting with the left or right side of the template, whether you're possibly splashing damage to other locations, etc, etc.

And worse, it makes it impossible to have a simplified record sheet like in the TROs:


Because every location needs to be specified in a two-dimensional grid, instead of BT's simple rows. I understand what they were trying to do, but I really don't think it's an improvement.

As for LBX cluster ammo, grouping it like LRMs is completely missing the point of cluster shot. They're there to hunt for critical hits. Grouping it makes a LB 10-X go from 7 chances to hit a head/open location on average, to only 2. And it makes LB 2-X and LB 5-X cluster ammo objectively useless because they'll be paying an average of half their damage (rounding up) for a -1 to-hit bonus.

This all just confirms my previous statement that there's only so much streamlining you can do before things start losing their purpose. Alpha Strike at least tries to come up with a brand new ruleset instead of trying to modify a game with as many variables as BT.