Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

The Great Turtle is what happens when the game designers hear complaints that they can't design optimized 'Mechs, and then decide to have a bit of fun. I love that thing. It might not kill you quickly, but dear God with a -3 to hit and standing still in a prepared position it is going to outlast you.
 
Those quad designs are something I'd love to see make appearances in the MechWarrior games just because of how interesting they'd be to drive. There's no real torso twist on something like that, so the weapons themselves would basically count as arm-mounted, even when on the torso, so they'd be surprisingly capable at long range, if hampered in close quarters by the lack of twist. Plus you have designs like the Sirocco and Goliath that might as well be AT-AT's...
 
Snekposter said:
Those quad designs are something I'd love to see make appearances in the MechWarrior games just because of how interesting they'd be to drive. There's no real torso twist on something like that, so the weapons themselves would basically count as arm-mounted, even when on the torso, so they'd be surprisingly capable at long range, if hampered in close quarters by the lack of twist. Plus you have designs like the Sirocco and Goliath that might as well be AT-AT's...
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I think they haven't made an appearance since MW2 exactly because their control scheme would be too similar to a standard FPS instead of the tank controls we expect in a MechWarrior game. Quads can pivot on the spot and they can side strafe, so they'd be a bit like playing a Terminator in Deathwing: a very slow soldier, with extra-slow mouselook.

That and just try to imagine animating a Goliath strafing from side to side. It doesn't work, these things need way more sophisticated legs. And if people already screeched autistically at Flyingdebris' redesigns for MWO (which for all their issues made a lot of 'Mechs actually able to move), you can imagine what the reaction would be now. So I would expect the more spider-like 'Mechs to have a better chance of being added to a MechWarrior game, and I would pay good money to see a Stalking Spider or a Fire Scorpion in game. These things are goofy as hell, but I love them.
 
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For me I'd prefer the Xanthos or Trebaruna. Slow and steady wins the race. Very, very steady in their cases.
 
Stalking Spider or bust.
Stalking_spider.jpg

50 tons of "try and squash THIS spider, shithead".
 
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Corn Flakes said:
Don't forget it has Jump Jets!

In Clan Cloud Cobra, spider squishes you!
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JJs, MASC, an ERPPC, 2 SRM4s and 2 MPLAS. It's a bit undersinked but honestly with the kind of horseshit you can pull with a 5/8/5 with MASC+JJ and pulse lasers alone it barely matters, if the prime version had a TC and swapped out the Medium Pulses and ERPPC for a Large Pulse and upgraded the SRMs to Streaks this thing would be straight-up bullshit on 4 legs.
 
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One of the things that's made its way into the rules from the art is the Quad turret, which is... exactly what it sounds like. It's a turret system mounted on the quad torso that lets the attached weapon rotate 360 degrees. Suddenly the lack of torso twist isn't so bad, and its cost is fairly modest (one crit slot in the same location as the weapon, and it weighs 1/10th of the weapon tonnage, rounded up to the nearest half ton).

Freebirth Toad said:
JJs, MASC, an ERPPC, 2 SRM4s and 2 MPLAS. It's a bit undersinked but honestly with the kind of horseshit you can pull with a 5/8/5 with MASC+JJ and pulse lasers alone it barely matters, if the prime version had a TC and swapped out the Medium Pulses and ERPPC for a Large Pulse and upgraded the SRMs to Streaks this thing would be straight-up bullshit on 4 legs.
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The Stalking Spider-3 has improved jump jets. I hate those things because any mech with those and a decent move rate, if it loses initiative, can simply zoom away. Good luck getting any kind of decent to-hit numbers on a mech that just jumped eight hexes away from you. It's like fighting LAMs all over again.
 
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Guys think there is a chance of HBS making another BT game? I keep hoping for the equivalent of SR: Hong Kong but I doubt we're going to see it.
 
TerminalTryHard said:
Guys think there is a chance of HBS making another BT game? I keep hoping for the equivalent of SR: Hong Kong but I doubt we're going to see it.
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White Devil said:
Probably not since Paradox runs that show now.
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I would bet on more DLC instead. Something set in the Clan Invasion for sure. And completely ignoring the fact that HBSBT takes place on the literal opposite side of the Inner Sphere to the Clan Invasion Corridor.
 
Corn Flakes said:
I would bet on more DLC instead. Something set in the Clan Invasion for sure. And completely ignoring the fact that HBSBT takes place on the literal opposite side of the Inner Sphere to the Clan Invasion Corridor.
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Yeah Paradox loves their (overpriced) DLC
 
So I booted up my latest save in HBS-BT and realized I had a Locust in storage. That got me wondering. Has anyone here ever made a non-gimmicky Locust work in the tabletop game?

The fluff makes it sound like they're great little 'Mechs, with famous pilots actually maining the damn things, but 20 tons and ~420 (#blazeit) BV for a single Medium Laser and a pair of peashooters feels like a bit of a waste.
 
It depends on the variant. The basic -1V is mediocre at best, but the -1M and -1S have a strange niche. That aside, at 1.5 million its cheap as shit, which is arguably a greater concern for the Successor States than BV. As far as a pure scout platform goes, its really hard to beat, especially since 20 tons doesn't allow for much equipment. That said, it does manage to devote a full fifth of its mass to armor at four tons, which means its impressively survivable given how fast it can run.

That said, in a pure wargame like BattleTech or MechWarrior, its always going to be considered garbage due to the poor armament and lack of JJ.
 
Snekposter said:
It depends on the variant. The basic -1V is mediocre at best, but the -1M and -1S have a strange niche. That aside, at 1.5 million its cheap as shit, which is arguably a greater concern for the Successor States than BV. As far as a pure scout platform goes, its really hard to beat, especially since 20 tons doesn't allow for much equipment. That said, it does manage to devote a full fifth of its mass to armor at four tons, which means its impressively survivable given how fast it can run.

That said, in a pure wargame like BattleTech or MechWarrior, its always going to be considered garbage due to the poor armament and lack of JJ.
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Locust used to be pretty good in MWO, you load up the 1E with an XL180 and a half dozen small pulses or medium lasers and as many DHS as possible and players would screech Locust OP. It wasn't OP obviously but it could be good at its job. The Flea ended up completely obsoleting the Locust though.
 
Locusts in general make decent scouts, but not much else. In tabletop, their mobility is slightly hampered by a lack of jump jets; I prefer the Spider for that reason.

On the upshot, they are a ridiculously common mech, manufactured by eleven different companies since 2499 and shows no sign of stopping. There are Locusts everywhere; in military units, garrison formations, police precincts, and there's probably some crazy fucker on a farm who's rebuilt his to do AgroMech work.

Adding advanced technologies can result in interesting results, too. The LCT-6M, built in 3071, shoves a 280XL engine into the chassis and adds MASC; the result is a Locust that can run 226kph with bursts up to 306kph (in table top terms, it moves 14/21 with MASC kicking it up to 28. Because who doesn't want a Mech that can cross the board in a turn?)
 
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Also the 1M is an utter suicide sled of the kind that would make the Clanners and their Hunchback IIC coffins blush. Might as well strip out that Medium Laser entirely because if you're smart you will NEVER get close enough to use it.
 
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Freebirth Toad said:
Also the 1M is an utter suicide sled of the kind that would make the Clanners and their Hunchback IIC coffins blush. Might as well strip out that Medium Laser entirely because if you're smart you will NEVER get close enough to use it.
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I had to look that one up. That's a Locust with a grand total of 1 ton of armor.

I'm pretty sure that's just so the pilot doesn't get cooked by the missile blasts. Or sunburned if he forgets the SPF 50. Or falls off when walking faster than your average septuagenarian.

Seriously, with that little armor you might as well wear a WWI fighter pilot uniform, complete with goggles and flowing silk scarf, and fight without a cockpit canopy.
 
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Corn Flakes said:
I had to look that one up. That's a Locust with a grand total of 1 ton of armor.

I'm pretty sure that's just so the pilot doesn't get cooked by the missile blasts. Or sunburned if he forgets the SPF 50. Or falls off when walking faster than your average septuagenarian.

Seriously, with that little armor you might as well wear a WWI fighter pilot uniform, complete with goggles and flowing silk scarf, and fight without a cockpit canopy.
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It only has armor because otherwise it couldn't cross a stream or something like that without the myomer seizing and the mech becoming effectively inoperable
 
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