Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

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Snekposter said:
Out of all the combat vehicles they decide to throw at you early on... its Myrmidons. Goddamn PPC's... punch a hole in your 'Mech if you're not careful.
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Those things provide a hell of a rough wake-up call in your first playthrough. Those beams will put the fear of God in you.

Speaking of MW4, I distinctly remember there being one very specific vehicle in that game that wasn't actually in BattleTech. It wasn't even backported into the tabletop game after MW4 was released. I used to think it was the Myrmidon, but it's apparently something else. The Nightwind, maybe?
 
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Corn Flakes said:
Those things provide a hell of a rough wake-up call in your first playthrough. Those beams will put the fear of God in you.

Speaking of MW4, I distinctly remember there being one very specific vehicle in that game that wasn't actually in BattleTech. It wasn't even backported into game after MW4 was released. I used to think it was the Myrmidon, but it's apparently something else. The Nightwind, maybe?
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Yeah a couple of the VTOLs in MW4/MW4M are apocryphal/sketchy, I remember looking on Sarna out of curiosity and not seeing them. Nightwind is one, the Nightshade in MW4M is not the same Nightshade you find on Sarna, and those ground attack Aerospace things you first see giving air cover for your lance on a Halloran mission don't really match anything in Sarna.
 
Nightwind is a Potemkin-class cruiser according to Sarna, Nightwing a spook WarShip. Sarna doesn't talk about the CV's in MW4, so your guess is as good as mine.

And I got ninja'd thanks to my modem deciding to derp...
 
Corn Flakes said:
Also, I'm still not sure why there were so many APCs in these moon missions in MW4. It's not like you're going to be using infantry in space, and you don't need APCs for BattleArmor.
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Oddly, you do see some specialized vehicles built to carry battle armor in later eras. The Tyr, for example, acts as an APC for battle armor.
 
Capsaicin Addict said:
Oddly, you do see some specialized vehicles built to carry battle armor in later eras. The Tyr, for example, acts as an APC for battle armor.
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That's fair, although the Tyr (as much as I unironically love it because Elemental memes are my jam when I'm playing my Ghost Bears) and other BA transports like it are very specialized machines to begin with. In the Tyr's case, for example, it was specifically made as a vehicle for second-line and garrisson units, which wouldn't normally be issued a lot of OmniMechs (the only choice for a toad ridin' in style).

Even though the Inner Sphere spammed out BA designs like there was a fire sale on the damn things, it was like the Clans and their ProtoMechs: no one really used them all that much in open combat because it was a brand "new" weapon type that still needed a solid doctrine to back it up (and in the end, they operated best as ultra-heavy infantry that was difficult to dig out). What IS BA really did make a big splash with were in those situations in which you couldn't just use 'mechs to blast/stomp everything to pieces. Security detail, room-to-room urban combat, breaching operations, space boarding parties, all that good stuff. Things that you tend to see more in side games or novels, and less on the tabletop itself.

Being in an Inner Sphere Standard suit doesn't do you much good against stompies or tanks in open combat since a single Clan Medium Laser is still going to cook you, and heavier suits like the Kanazuchi can be very easily outranged and outmaneuverd... but going up unaugmented infantry in a messy urban slugfest even a relatively primitive suit is going to make you feel like a god of war.
 
Corn Flakes said:
That's fair, although the Tyr (as much as I unironically love it because Elemental memes are my jam when I'm playing my Ghost Bears) and other BA transports like it are very specialized machines to begin with. In the Tyr's case, for example, it was specifically made as a vehicle for second-line and garrisson units, which wouldn't normally be issued a lot of OmniMechs (the only choice for a toad ridin' in style).

Even though the Inner Sphere spammed out BA designs like there was a fire sale on the damn things, it was like the Clans and their ProtoMechs: no one really used them all that much in open combat because it was a brand "new" weapon type that still needed a solid doctrine to back it up (and in the end, they operated best as ultra-heavy infantry that was difficult to dig out). What IS BA really did make a big splash with were in those situations in which you couldn't just use 'mechs to blast/stomp everything to pieces. Security detail, room-to-room urban combat, breaching operations, space boarding parties, all that good stuff. Things that you tend to see more in side games or novels, and less on the tabletop itself.

Being in an Inner Sphere Standard suit doesn't do you much good against stompies or tanks in open combat since a single Clan Medium Laser is still going to cook you, and heavier suits like the Kanazuchi can be very easily outranged and outmaneuverd... but going up unaugmented infantry in a messy urban slugfest even a relatively primitive suit is going to make you feel like a god of war.
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I'm surprised the PA(L) suits haven't caught on for that role, at least among various second-line units. Yeah, something like the Smoothdavid-II only has 50kg of armor, but two armored gloves and two AP Weapon mounts on a human-sized frame is hard to pass up since you can carry a whole squad of 9 plus support weapons, ammo, medical equipment, etc. for the same tonnage as 6 light BA suits, and for a fraction of the price.
Smoothdavid II.jpg

Oh, and I forgot to mention each suit can haul around 205kg of gear using the usual BattleTech hammerspace storage rules, so that's even more spare capacity inside your preferred transport.

And a Machine Gun only weighs 44 kilos when an infantryman is hauling it around, 5kg per ammo box... yeah. A Heavy Recoilless 60kg, 4 kg a shell. Say hello to their little friends...
 
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Snekposter said:
I'm surprised the PA(L) suits haven't caught on for that role, at least among various second-line units. Yeah, something like the Smoothdavid-II only has 50kg of armor, but two armored gloves and two AP Weapon mounts on a human-sized frame is hard to pass up since you can carry a whole squad of 9 plus support weapons, ammo, medical equipment, etc. for the same tonnage as 6 light BA suits, and for a fraction of the price.
View attachment 2215179
Oh, and I forgot to mention each suit can haul around 205kg of gear using the usual BattleTech hammerspace storage rules, so that's even more spare capacity inside your preferred transport.

And a Machine Gun only weighs 44 kilos when an infantryman is hauling it around, 5kg per ammo box... yeah. A Heavy Recoilless 60kg, 4 kg a shell. Say hello to their little friends...
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You kind of answered your own question there, actually. That power armor has an armor rating of 1 (2 for the heavy version), plus 1 for the gooey center. Small arms will give them pause, a good machinegun will still mow these guys down, a support laser will melt them, and heavy infantry weapons only get heavier than that. For security detail they're fine (and they're stated to have done great against protesters and assassins), but since most powers prefer a little more versatility I guess they're fine springing for proper BattleArmor when equipping heavy troops for actual combat. So these powered armors end up being too much for all but the most well-equipped police/security forces, but not enough for the militaries to bother with.

Man, get yourself some Clan tech and field a couple Salamanders for riot control. Crispy!

Gezkill said:
Also I heard MW5 is cross platform play? Is it true?
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I can only confirm it's cross-store. I've had lobbies with friends where two people were on Epic and two on Steam with no issues. Don't know anyone with the Xbox version to test it with.
 
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Corn Flakes said:
You kind of answered your own question there, actually. That power armor has an armor rating of 1 (2 for the heavy version), plus 1 for the gooey center. Small arms will give them pause, a good machinegun will still mow these guys down, a support laser will melt them, and heavy infantry weapons only get heavier than that. For security detail they're fine (and they're stated to have done great against protesters and assassins), but since most powers prefer a little more versatility I guess they're fine springing for proper BattleArmor when equipping heavy troops for actual combat. So these powered armors end up being too much for all but the most well-equipped police/security forces, but not enough for the militaries to bother with.

Man, get yourself some Clan tech and field a couple Salamanders for riot control. Crispy!
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Like I said. Second line. Nobody should be equipping anything expected to face serious combat with those, but garrison forces in places that might deal with pirates or less-serious threats? Cheaper and easier than BA, and the big cargo capacity is exactly what you need for long patrols, especially with that 30kph move speed. I'm not at all saying they're BA or anything close, but as equipment for infantry it seems pretty hard to beat.

A 15 ton transport CV like the transport version of the Marten can fit the three ton BA bay needed to haul around 12 PA(L) guys, and considering you get 12 of those in that space for 6 BA, seems like an easy deal. Or go up to 20 tons and use the Heavy Tracked APC to drop off the full squad and provide fire support. Or get something like the Winterhawk APC, downgrade the bay from 4 tons to three, and slap some more armor on or upgrade the SRM-2 to an SRM-4. Sure, you've gone from a platoon of infantry to a squad of hilariously light PA(L), but I'd consider the PA(L) guys a whole lot more versatile, especially in a semi-important not-quite-backwater.
 
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Corn Flakes said:
I'd believe that explanation if those weren't literally just APCs. Like, they could have stayed within Quickscell's catalogue and bought more Bulldogs with the money. Even a Scorpion tank with the blistering firepower of a single AC/5 would be more useful than an APC's twin machineguns, for less than the price of three APCs.
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Absolutely, but I think in that situation, they just use what they have on hand and sadly, the capabilities of same-day-delivery are somewhat limited in the IS.
 
OK, this is fairly autistic, but I decided to look up some Battletech books on The Trove; found what I think is the "current" version of Mechwarrior, A Time of War?

I thought I'd roll up a character just for old time's sake, and holy hell. Maybe it's because I'm a boomer, but I cannot wrap my mind around this fucking system! It takes so long to calculate all the XP points I'm spending at every step, and I have no idea if I'm even understanding the rules properly.

My idea was to make a Draconis war orphan who was adopted by a Yakuza boss and trained as a Mechwarrior, in-house, by the gumi (one of their front businesses is a mercenary company). Her main job within the Yakuza was covert intelligence gathering; her Alternate Identity is a geisha/entertainer from Rasalhague who would honeytrap rich Lyrans and Draconis nobles, syphoning off information that could then be used or sold by the Yakuza. This cover identity has never been caught or compromised, but it's been at the center of a lot of scandalous and illegal stuff throughout the northern regions, and at least one Lyran (an ongoing antagonist/ comic-relief villain) wants to track her down, and has placed a bounty on her head. Not long into her career, her adoptive father died, and a minor rival took over as boss. Left out of the succession, she only inherited a Mech and a small bit of land on a backwater planet; now she's striking out on her own as a merc.

Pretty straightforward, but I've got no idea how it's supposed to work with this Alternate Identity trait. How would this character translate in game terms?

Right now, I've got Primary Identity as a mercenary mechwarrior at the start of her career.
Dark Secret (-1 or -2TP) / is secretly affiliated with the Yakuza​
Reputation (-1TP) / for being a merc with little reputation or history.​
Alternate ID is a geisha-entertainer from Rasalhague space.
Reputation (+2TP) / underground, but respected​
Bloodmark (-1 or -2TP) / simp stalker.​
Dark Secret (-4TP) / major cause of information leaks in the Commonwealth and Combine, would embroil multiple resourceful nobles in scandals if it all got out.​
No idea if this is rules-legal, though. For example: can an ID have both a Bloodmark and a Dark Secret? Can an Alternate ID have a Dark Secret, or is that restricted to a Primary ID? etc

Other things I'm not sure about:
  1. if she got War Orphaned and adopted early in life - midway through early childhood - is her Module 0 Draconis, or something else? Module 1 War Orphan, or something else?
  2. do I need to purchase a Rank for Mechwarrior Training, even though the training wasn't in the military?
  3. do I get any auto XP towards a Primary Language?
  4. does "Yakuza" or "Syndicate" count as an Affiliation e.g. for Protocol and Streetwise skills?
  5. if the above, then does a Syndicate Affiliation count as general knowledge about the entire underworld, or only about her one specific Yakuza gumi?
  6. does a skill like Language/Syndicate indicate knowledge of a secret Syndicate thieves cant? Or is it any normal language the Syndicate speaks e.g. English or Jap?
  7. do I really have to purchase things like Attractive twice?
  8. can I shuffle around Module experience, like e.g. take the Demolitions XP from my Yakuza Module and move that into Gunnery/Mech instead?
  9. can bounty hunters track you if you're not actively using the Bloodmarked ID? (my thinking is that maybe the bloodmark is actually posted at a higher monetary value, and it effects her regardless of her current ID, but the low encounter rate is because bounty hunters don't realize who she is, and those that do show up have "mistaken her" for "somebody else".)
  10. do I need to purchase Connections and Wealth to reflect being adopted by an oyabun? Or does the fact that he's now dead and the new oyabun is ghosting my ass, relieve me of that XP obligation?
  11. similar question to above, but assuming the original birth parents were low-ranked nobles (whom the oyabun had merced for)
  12. what's a reasonable number of Compulsions to take?
  13. do ALL Lyran Affiliates REALLY start with shit like Glass Jaw?!

I don't know why the character creation system is this complicated. I just want to make a character who can stomp people with a big robot... (:_(
 
Snekposter said:
Like I said. Second line. Nobody should be equipping anything expected to face serious combat with those, but garrison forces in places that might deal with pirates or less-serious threats? Cheaper and easier than BA, and the big cargo capacity is exactly what you need for long patrols, especially with that 30kph move speed. I'm not at all saying they're BA or anything close, but as equipment for infantry it seems pretty hard to beat.

A 15 ton transport CV like the transport version of the Marten can fit the three ton BA bay needed to haul around 12 PA(L) guys, and considering you get 12 of those in that space for 6 BA, seems like an easy deal. Or go up to 20 tons and use the Heavy Tracked APC to drop off the full squad and provide fire support. Or get something like the Winterhawk APC, downgrade the bay from 4 tons to three, and slap some more armor on or upgrade the SRM-2 to an SRM-4. Sure, you've gone from a platoon of infantry to a squad of hilariously light PA(L), but I'd consider the PA(L) guys a whole lot more versatile, especially in a semi-important not-quite-backwater.
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At that point, I think you start having issues because you're using the suit way outside its scope. PA like the Smoothdavid is meant for very specialized work. In this case, police work. They're meant to be proof against small-caliber firearms, melee weapons, thrown rocks, and other threats presented by... well, civilians. Bring full-caliber infantry weapons, support weapons, or anything explosive, and these suits might as well be just very expensive targets that require specialized training to walk around in. Even the Goliath version just goes from "dead on the spot" to "armor stops working" in one good MG burst.

When it comes to actually using these suits in combat against well-armed opponent, the problem stems from the suits being better than unarmored infantry individually but costing disproportionally more than an infantry soldier, but still being considerably worse than Battle Armor, and not really being armored to take on either. Powered Armor like the Smoothdavid II was created for police work, so it only carries infantry weapons. It could carry support weapons, but the BattleArmor versions of those are generally better in every respect. So you get the issue where a squad of Smoothdavids would have issues against an equivalent platoon of unaugmented infantry with rifles and machineguns, while at the same time being completely crushed by even just three IS Standard BA with heavy machine guns (or flamers, since I'm pretty sure PA still counts as normal infantry).

As for dealing with pirates and other minor threats... really, bring a 'mech. Or some cheap vehicles. Or a bunch of poorly-trained militia dudes with disposable SRM launchers. Because that's what the pirates are going to be bringing. Mechs and to a lesser extent combat vehicles are fantastic force multipliers when your numbers are low, they can be deployed and retrieved very quickly, and pirates aren't known for having whole armies of conventional infantry at their disposal. The pirates might bring some PA to help keep the locals "pacified" while they ransack the defeated militia's warehouses for stale MREs.

RomanesEuntDomus said:
Absolutely, but I think in that situation, they just use what they have on hand and sadly, the capabilities of same-day-delivery are somewhat limited in the IS.
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They clearly had enough to plaster that base in turrets that definitely did more damage than those APCs so I think someone who had a huge stash of inexplicably vacuum-ready APCs clogging up their warehouse, and that someone took them in for a ride.

What am I saying. It's Quickscell. They definitely got taken in for a ride.

ETA:
Solid Snek said:
OK, this is fairly autistic, but I decided to look up some Battletech books on The Trove; found what I think is the "current" version of Mechwarrior, A Time of War?

I thought I'd roll up a character just for old time's sake, and holy hell. Maybe it's because I'm a boomer, but I cannot wrap my mind around this fucking system! It takes so long to calculate all the XP points I'm spending at every step, and I have no idea if I'm even understanding the rules properly.

My idea was to make a Draconis war orphan who was adopted by a Yakuza boss and trained as a Mechwarrior, in-house, by the gumi (one of their front businesses is a mercenary company). Her main job within the Yakuza was covert intelligence gathering; her Alternate Identity is a geisha/entertainer from Rasalhague who would honeytrap rich Lyrans and Draconis nobles, syphoning off information that could then be used or sold by the Yakuza. This cover identity has never been caught or compromised, but it's been at the center of a lot of scandalous and illegal stuff throughout the northern regions, and at least one Lyran (an ongoing antagonist/ comic-relief villain) wants to track her down, and has placed a bounty on her head. Not long into her career, her adoptive father died, and a minor rival took over as boss. Left out of the succession, she only inherited a Mech and a small bit of land on a backwater planet; now she's striking out on her own as a merc.

Pretty straightforward, but I've got no idea how it's supposed to work with this Alternate Identity trait. How would this character translate in game terms?

Right now, I've got Primary Identity as a mercenary mechwarrior at the start of her career.
Dark Secret (-1 or -2TP) / is secretly affiliated with the Yakuza​
Reputation (-1TP) / for being a merc with little reputation or history.​
Alternate ID is a geisha-entertainer from Rasalhague space.
Reputation (+2TP) / underground, but respected​
Bloodmark (-1 or -2TP) / simp stalker.​
Dark Secret (-4TP) / major cause of information leaks in the Commonwealth and Combine, would embroil multiple resourceful nobles in scandals if it all got out.​
No idea if this is rules-legal, though. For example: can an ID have both a Bloodmark and a Dark Secret? Can an Alternate ID have a Dark Secret, or is that restricted to a Primary ID? etc

Other things I'm not sure about:
  1. if she got War Orphaned and adopted early in life - midway through early childhood - is her Module 0 Draconis, or something else? Module 1 War Orphan, or something else?
  2. do I need to purchase a Rank for Mechwarrior Training, even though the training wasn't in the military?
  3. do I get any auto XP towards a Primary Language?
  4. does "Yakuza" or "Syndicate" count as an Affiliation e.g. for Protocol and Streetwise skills?
  5. if the above, then does a Syndicate Affiliation count as general knowledge about the entire underworld, or only about her one specific Yakuza gumi?
  6. does a skill like Language/Syndicate indicate knowledge of a secret Syndicate thieves cant? Or is it any normal language the Syndicate speaks e.g. English or Jap?
  7. do I really have to purchase things like Attractive twice?
  8. can I shuffle around Module experience, like e.g. take the Demolitions XP from my Yakuza Module and move that into Gunnery/Mech instead?
  9. can bounty hunters track you if you're not actively using the Bloodmarked ID? (my thinking is that maybe the bloodmark is actually posted at a higher monetary value, and it effects her regardless of her current ID, but the low encounter rate is because bounty hunters don't realize who she is, and those that do show up have "mistaken her" for "somebody else".)
  10. do I need to purchase Connections and Wealth to reflect being adopted by an oyabun? Or does the fact that he's now dead and the new oyabun is ghosting my ass, relieve me of that XP obligation?
  11. similar question to above, but assuming the original birth parents were low-ranked nobles (whom the oyabun had merced for)
  12. what's a reasonable number of Compulsions to take?
  13. do ALL Lyran Affiliates REALLY start with shit like Glass Jaw?!

I don't know why the character creation system is this complicated. I just want to make a character who can stomp people with a big robot... (:_(
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I'll be honest with you, I've cracked the MW RPG system way back when I was a teenager with a lot of spare time, but I never actually got to play the game with the characters I created. 20+ years later? I can't make heads or tails out of it.

Seriously, just use the setting and play it on some more rules-light, low-powered system like Storytelling (the NWoD version). Bonus points for stats and skills going from 0 to 5 in that system, so you can have Piloting and Gunnery as character skills for easy transitions to BattleTech proper when the stompies start stompin'. Actually, now that I think about it, the average Storytelling human has 7 HP. The average BT pilot has 6 HP. You know, this might merit further investigation.
 
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While Battletech has more or less remained unchanged, the attached Mechwarrior RPG has... mutated back and forth quite a bit.

However, I have played A Time of War. And yes, it is a bit of a nightmare. It seems to combine some of the worst aspects of Rolemaster, Twilight 2000, and Cyberpunk in character generation. Once you get OUT of character creation it plays reasonably well; but if you're new to the system you should try to find a prepackaged template to avoid losing your mind.

@Solid Snek, if you like, I can hand your questions off to the guy who GM'd my last campaign. His understanding of ATOW is almost autistic and he should be able to answer them.
 
RomanesEuntDomus said:
It's a "everything including the kitchensink" situation after everything else had already been destroyed.
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Okay, I actually went back and watched a full LP of the moon missions in MW4 Vengeance (which is what I've been talking about the whole time). These aren't mercs, they're standard Steiner units. Even the manual doesn't say a word about mercenaries. So I don't know where you're getting that idea that we're fighting cash-strapped mercs on the moon of Kentares.
 
Capsaicin Addict said:
While Battletech has more or less remained unchanged, the attached Mechwarrior RPG has... mutated back and forth quite a bit.

However, I have played A Time of War. And yes, it is a bit of a nightmare. It seems to combine some of the worst aspects of Rolemaster, Twilight 2000, and Cyberpunk in character generation. Once you get OUT of character creation it plays reasonably well; but if you're new to the system you should try to find a prepackaged template to avoid losing your mind.

@Solid Snek, if you like, I can hand your questions off to the guy who GM'd my last campaign. His understanding of ATOW is almost autistic and he should be able to answer them.
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Sure, yeah, if he's got the time and the autism! I'm kind of liking @Corn Flakes idea of just dumping the AToW and moving on, but now I'm curious as to how the character creation is actually supposed to work.

I 'member when I was a kid, playing - what was it? - a dogeared old copy of 2nd Edition, I'd roll up dozens of characters. Entire Mech companies with backstories, so me and my nerd buddies could blast missiles at people with personalities.

This edition, though, it'd be a miracle if I could get through one...
 
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