Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

"Pulse lasers". Bah. Back in my day we loaded up on plain old Small Lasers instead. And we liked it. We needed the TSM to get our 'Mechs to go uphill, in the snow, both ways.
Even in post Dark Age the basic ML is the math queen of the game.

I do like keeping both one ER SL and one basic SL one all my TSM builds to tweak and adapt for shit like movement. TBH if you DO go TSM (and I love that shit) keeping it able to tweak into the 9 range isn't min maxing it's just how should be.

I know canon isn't always best but it's absurd to have a mech that OVER cools and TSM. I don't mind mechs that run your min 10 (20 dhs) cooling and need a tweak for cutting one to hit TSM but sorry over cooling is just flavor and gay AF.
 
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I know Tex wrote his MIC/Baron rabbit hole way beforehand, but did anyone else start drawing parallels to the Russo Ukraine war within the first couple minutes?
 
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Even in post Dark Age the basic ML is the math queen of the game.

I do like keeping both one ER SL and one basic SL one all my TSM builds to tweak and adapt for shit like movement. TBH if you DO go TSM (and I love that shit) keeping it able to tweak into the 9 range isn't min maxing it's just how should be.

I know canon isn't always best but it's absurd to have a mech that OVER cools and TSM. I don't mind mechs that run your min 10 (20 dhs) cooling and need a tweak for cutting one to hit TSM but sorry over cooling is just flavor and gay AF.
Okay, real talk here: unless it's something zany like the Hollander where it physically cannot overpower the 10 engine heatsinks, I find designs that can sink all the heat they can produce while running and alpha striking to be terminally boring.

Heat management is such a core element of the game, it's a huge chunk of the record sheet for 'Mechs and it's baked right into the fluff. Designing a 'Mech that outright ignores the heat scale is so damn safe it feels uninspired. You've got a whole damn football field's worth of space between "stone cold" and "hot enough to cook off ammo three hexes over", use it. Even if you're a complete wuss and terminally afraid of taking even a simple -1 MP or to-hit penalty, you still have 4 points of heat on the scale where you can technically "overheat" and be completely fine.

Double Heatsinks expanded build options massively, but sometimes I feel they were a mistake in general. Or at least allowing the Engine heatsinks to be double. If not every single 'Mech since 3055 came out of the factory with 20 heat capacity for no cost, and instead had 10 single heatsinks in the engine supplemented by however many doubles they actually assigned tonnage to, I'm sure designs these days would have been quite different.

I know Tex wrote his MIC/Baron rabbit hole way beforehand, but did anyone else start drawing parallels to the Russo Ukraine war within the first couple minutes?
It's topical, but the comparisons don't go very far. The Concordat didn't have the entire rest of the Inner Sphere supplying them with enough weapons to make Defiance Industries blush.

I mean, if they did the Taurians would have marched all the way to Terra to personally tell Ian Cameron to fuck off.
 
Okay, real talk here: unless it's something zany like the Hollander where it physically cannot overpower the 10 engine heatsinks, I find designs that can sink all the heat they can produce while running and alpha striking to be terminally boring.

Heat management is such a core element of the game, it's a huge chunk of the record sheet for 'Mechs and it's baked right into the fluff. Designing a 'Mech that outright ignores the heat scale is so damn safe it feels uninspired. You've got a whole damn football field's worth of space between "stone cold" and "hot enough to cook off ammo three hexes over", use it. Even if you're a complete wuss and terminally afraid of taking even a simple -1 MP or to-hit penalty, you still have 4 points of heat on the scale where you can technically "overheat" and be completely fine.

Double Heatsinks expanded build options massively, but sometimes I feel they were a mistake in general. Or at least allowing the Engine heatsinks to be double. If not every single 'Mech since 3055 came out of the factory with 20 heat capacity for no cost, and instead had 10 single heatsinks in the engine supplemented by however many doubles they actually assigned tonnage to, I'm sure designs these days would have been quite different.
Agreed. Double heat sinks can make it trivial to avoid heat issues. It's why sometimes I prefer a good old fashioned 3025 era brawl.

It's topical, but the comparisons don't go very far. The Concordat didn't have the entire rest of the Inner Sphere supplying them with enough weapons to make Defiance Industries blush.

I mean, if they did the Taurians would have marched all the way to Terra to personally tell Ian Cameron to fuck off.
At the time, the major Successor States were already more or less under the SL thumb. One wonders how things would've turned out if, after the first round of getting thrashed by the Concordat, the Federated Suns had told Ian to go fuck himself.
 
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I don't have one since the wife insists in letting the cats roam freely around the house and animal fur and 3D printers don't mix, but I'd say all my friends who dabbled in 3D printing would recommend it.

A friend of mine solved a similar issue by putting the 3D printer in a small glas cabinet.
The moment I get some space for a 3D printer, I'm getting one. They are noisy and the resin is kinda smelly, so no option atm, sadly. But Thingiverse has a shitton of neat models, like a Cestus that doesn't look like shit.
 
Here, low-effort shitpost from Yours Truly:
Nuclear Catnip_2.jpg
 
What, don't like Catgirls?
They're great, but its the rest of the baggage in that place I can't stand. Besides, that was the pic I had handy to edit, and the places worth mentioning that start with a "C" are Capella and Canopus. And Capella has to deal with the Davions, making an Ares violation a mercy.
 
They're great, but its the rest of the baggage in that place I can't stand. Besides, that was the pic I had handy to edit, and the places worth mentioning that start with a "C" are Capella and Canopus. And Capella has to deal with the Davions, making an Ares violation a mercy.
What, "the Clans" was not an option there?
 
So, this channel got pushed into my algorithmic feed. It seems like the start of an interesting LoreFag channel:
This looks like it was the particular conflict that Tex was talking about in his last video.

Star League was a bunch of dicks. Canopus had a charming little Ares Convention complaint war. The Outworlds Alliance fighting Star League with not-so-covert House Davion support. The Amaris before *that* Amaris fighting a civil war. And the Taurian Concordat deciding that if they can't win the war, they can at least make sure Star League and friends inherit nothing but the ruins of industry and radiologically active planets.

I don't get it either and I am a oft poster of /btg/. But they are mostly FWL fags so aside awesome spam fuck em.
/btg/ is the best of 4chan, and that's pretty sad.

Still Battle-tech is one of the more chill and mature(?) communities around. Not having a major corp making mainstream pop-culture bait helps. Having a not insignificant amount of math in every version of the games also helps scare off a particular plague as well.

_
As an aside played a bit of RogueTech and BT:A. Looks interesting, but it seems like I will only be able to play it in the dead of winter because of the heat generated by my computer. HBS Battletech was already a hot and loud running game, but the mods make the already un-optimized game somehow worse.
 
Agreed. Double heat sinks can make it trivial to avoid heat issues. It's why sometimes I prefer a good old fashioned 3025 era brawl.


At the time, the major Successor States were already more or less under the SL thumb. One wonders how things would've turned out if, after the first round of getting thrashed by the Concordat, the Federated Suns had told Ian to go fuck himself.
The funny thing is the loss of the Suns to the Concordat was actually a huge win for Cameron as he could drumb up more support for the Reunification war against the "barbarians" of the Periphery.

And imho Tex made a slight mistake: it wasn't the SL navy that got shot to pieces in Case Amber it was the Suns navy. The Hegemony navy on the other hand was way better trained. And the battle at Robsart proved it when the SL navy shot the Taurian navy to pieces.
 
What, "the Clans" was not an option there?
Not when Twycross happened and the Falcons did get what they deserved thanks to Kai pulling a Stackpole. And Tukayyid. And... I'm sure there's a few other things. At this point the "Clans" left in the Inner Sphere might as well be Successor States thanks to how little is left of Nicky's teachings and doctrine.
 
Not when Twycross happened and the Falcons did get what they deserved thanks to Kai pulling a Stackpole. And Tukayyid. And... I'm sure there's a few other things. At this point the "Clans" left in the Inner Sphere might as well be Successor States thanks to how little is left of Nicky's teachings and doctrine.
You haven't given me any reason not to bomb them from orbit, though.
 
You haven't given me any reason not to bomb them from orbit, though.
We call that a (nuclear) holocaust and between the Reunification War, Succession Wars, and the Jihad the Inner Sphere has already seen plenty of them.
 
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