Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

[Snekposter]

Okay, I'll bite: how are the Blood Spirits the second more American of Clans? I love the Blood Kite as much as the next guy since it's the most Inner Sphere of all Clan Assault 'Mechs, but I'm not really following here.

They did their best to nope out of the clusterfuck that was Clan politics to a distant colony far away, and then when that didn't work out handed out guns to anyone with a pulse.
As to the most American of the Clans...

"We're not a Clan, we're just a business. Now fuckin' pay me."

And for a bit of an autistic detour since I'm kinda sleep deprived at the moment... the Ares Conventions were signed by everyone but the Taurian Concordat, who were kinda pissed that the Cappies were committing war crimes against them at the same time they called for a big meeting to create a treaty to prevent further war crimes after the Tintavel Massacre, and the United Hindu Collective, who claimed that such a treaty would legitimize warfare. Now, the UHC were a functioning democracy and fully committed to non-aggression, while maintaining a substantial defensive army for a Periphery power. Are you worried yet? A democratic nation of Indians, refusing to sign a treaty that would forbid the deployment of nuclear weapons? We all know how the First Succession War went down, or rather... we think we do.

Shouldn't have taken over the Space Indians, Space Brits. You didn't let his people go, so now its time for you to glow.

 

[Deepthoughts]

Are you saying you like actual fights instead of running meta garbage with built in delete buttons

Amazing that in 3025 it takes combined arms to effectively take down a mech.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Got a few mechs in the mail today, now I can paint a whole company's worth of lances.
One of the mechs in question is a Crab and is it just me or is the Crab looking so much better when you cut off the weird little things on the back of its legs?

Those protrucing things on the back of the leg would just get in the way of any regular walk-cycle. Fortunately, they are easily cut off and the miniature (which is a beauty to begin with!) looks even better.

The Crab in general is a weird design. I didn't like it when I first saw it, but the more often I saw it, the more I started to like it and now I really love it. Also 2 Large Lasers in a beefy medium mech, that's pretty cool. It's also a solid medium mech in HBS BT game.

Feeling slightly humorous, so let's talk about the Bright Star Auto Scout.

The Bright Star Auto Scout is proof that even machines can recognize when shit is fucked up in spades. It was a highly sophisticated, proto-AI-driven surveying Jumpship. And the initial automated jump worked fine. Mind you, this was in 2543, well before the Star League collapsed.

So then the company, Ulsop Robotics, programs in a ten-jump mission, returning to their home planet when it was done. No problem, right?

Wrong. The Bright Star immediately begins jumping away. Ulsop reps tried to catch up to it and failed. It was last seen at New Samarkand, moving in the general direction of 'away'.

All I can think of is that AI looked around at the Inner Sphere, realized how bad things were going to get, and said, 'Nah, fuck this. Imma gonna go cruise the galaxy. I'm out.'

This feels kinda like a setup for something like V'GER in Star Trek 1. But it's small tidbits like that, that make the world of BT so interesting.

EDIT: You remember the discussions about the Gauss Hetzer a while back? Well, its cancer, and like all cancer in BT, TRO 3067 does not fail to deliver.
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Gauche

Light Gauss? Nah, the Gauss Hetzer is where it's at, baby.

Amazing that in 3025 it takes combined arms to effectively take down a mech.

Combined arms... is that like... a Lance?

 

[Balr0g]

If I remember correctly the Outworlds Alliance also didn't sign the Ares Convention. Though from their point of view they didn't sign it because the Ares Convention actually promoted war as a tool of politics. Or in other words: the Ares Convention cemented von clausewitz "war is the continuation of politics by other means" into law. And it gave the Hegemony a leg up since their troops already fought within set rules.

 

[A_Callow_Youth]

They did their best to nope out of the clusterfuck that was Clan politics to a distant colony far away, and then when that didn't work out handed out guns to anyone with a pulse.
As to the most American of the Clans...

"We're not a Clan, we're just a business. Now fuckin' pay me."

>Sea Fox
>Most American Clan
Fuck no, that was the Wolverines, Blake rest their souls.

 

[TFT-A9]

>Sea Fox
>Most American Clan
Fuck no, that was the Wolverines, Blake rest their souls.

McEvedy basically telling Nicky to suck a fat dick and daring him to do something about that was crazy ballsy and very American

 

[Snekposter]

If I remember correctly the Outworlds Alliance also didn't sign the Ares Convention. Though from their point of view they didn't sign it because the Ares Convention actually promoted war as a tool of politics. Or in other words: the Ares Convention cemented von clausewitz "war is the continuation of politics by other means" into law. And it gave the Hegemony a leg up since their troops already fought within set rules.

The Outworlds Alliance was formally founded the year after the conventions were signed, and the MoC not for another hundred. That was originally an error, which got fixed later on by replacing them with Rasalhauge and the Hindus.

 

[Corn Flakes]

The Outworlds Alliance was formally founded the year after the conventions were signed, and the MoC not for another hundred. That was originally an error, which got fixed later on by replacing them with Rasalhauge and the Hindus.

The rules are consistent in BattleTech. The fluff, though... well, it occasionally takes a few dips into retcon lake.

 

[Deepthoughts]

Combined arms... is that like... a Lance?

Lance of mechs, platoon of tanks, wing of fighter planes. Anything besides one mech with a reset button.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

The rules are consistent in BattleTech. The fluff, though... well, it occasionally takes a few dips into retcon lake.

Battletech can use the convenient excuse of the Succession Wars to explain such inconsistencies, I think. You just have to sorta treat those informations as In-Setting knowledge, so it can sometimes run at odds with other facts and a retcon is more of a "historians found out..." incident.

It's my headcanon for the deviation of the BT timeline from our actual history so far, like GM not yet having made nuclear fusion reactors... after a thousand years, some dates are just off by a few decades and some details might have been slightly altered to fit a political narrative.

Lance of mechs, platoon of tanks, wing of fighter planes. Anything besides one mech with a reset button.

I just heard "lance of stompy robots" and static thereafter.

All joking aside, over the past couple months I bought some tanks and vehicles to round out my growing collection, cause it might be fun to be flexible with what I can put on the field.
It's actually kinda crazy, how most blisters come with 2 vehicles, it allows you to put together a pretty chunky army in no time.

 

[Balr0g]

Battletech can use the convenient excuse of the Succession Wars to explain such inconsistencies, I think. You just have to sorta treat those informations as In-Setting knowledge, so it can sometimes run at odds with other facts and a retcon is more of a "historians found out..." incident.

It's my headcanon for the deviation of the BT timeline from our actual history so far, like GM not yet having made nuclear fusion reactors... after a thousand years, some dates are just off by a few decades and some details might have been slightly altered to fit a political narrative.

The BT timeline in regards to europe is also interesting. iIn the Bt timeline Germany was reunited in the 21st centruy after the Second Soviet Civil War that spilled into Nato territory. Or even funnier it states that Great Britain had a prime minister called Boris Johnsons who was passionate to found a new state wide alliance to prevent wars.

 

[SITHRAK!]

I just wanted big muscle girls cheer me on when I go to workout.

That feel when no big titty Elemental GF.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

The BT timeline in regards to europe is also interesting. iIn the Bt timeline Germany was reunited in the 21st centruy after the Second Soviet Civil War that spilled into Nato territory. Or even funnier it states that Great Britain had a prime minister called Boris Johnsons who was passionate to found a new state wide alliance to prevent wars.

The BT timeline is a weird little vignette of 80s politics extrapolated into the future, that's for sure.
With many futuristic settings, it's really interesting to look at what developements they'd expect or how technology and politics would transform in the future.

Given Germany's economic power in the 60s, 70s and 80s, a reunification would seem like a rather significant event that is not too far off, as would be the fate of the Soviet Union, Japan and whatever the hell china would be up to. When the BT timeline was put together, many such things were anticipated and put into the game, the dates and details are way off, but the basic, general idea is remarkably close to what happened.

10 years ago, I would laugh at the idea that the world in Shadowrun was shaped in large part by a rogue AI that was supposed to handle stock-exchange and suddenly became self-concious... now I look at how AI and machine learning has progressed, how stock exchange operates with a latency of nanoseconds and all that jazz and it suddenly doesn't look so silly anymore.
Then you have stuff like Cyberpunk 2020, that foresaw mobile telephones, but assumed they'd be only capable of making phonecalls - with premium models (at more than three times the price) having an electronic register for phone numbers and the ability to send and receive text messages.

It's hit and miss - and usually more miss - but it's still interesting to see what people expected the future to bring. It's a time capsule of its current politics.

 

[Snekposter]

>Sea Fox
>Most American Clan
Fuck no, that was the Wolverines, Blake rest their souls.

McEvedy basically telling Nicky to suck a fat dick and daring him to do something about that was crazy ballsy and very American

Ah, you've all got me there. I sometimes forget the Wolverines ever existed since they didn't exist for very long and are one of the few things in BattleTech that are completely irrelevant to the setting as a result of how quickly they got BTFO'd. We couldn't even get the Minnesota Tribe to return as the ones helping out the Sphere, but no, that the was Jaggies who are fucking back from the dead, thank you ilClan.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

We couldn't even get the Minnesota Tribe to return as the ones helping out the Sphere, but no, that the was Jaggies who are fucking back from the dead, thank you ilClan.

Wait what?
I just checked Sarna... boy, is this silly. Their storyline was good ending after Operation Bulldog, this feels pandery and I don't even know whom it is pandering to...

I recently bought Total Warfare and as much as I love that hardcover full color book, I just can't bring myself to read any of the flavour-text set after 3068. Stuff like this is the reason why.

 

[BlackDragoons]

Holy crap, what a wonderful day for glorious mech combat.

Did a 2v1 with 8000 BV with the 2 having to split the cost. I was with the partner.

Todays game was pretty gruesome, early game was plagued by shitty dice rolls and misses on both sides. Mid game it was pretty solid except for my Thunderbolt which kept fucking missing every single shot till late game. He did tank a shit ton of damage and went through some shit.

And at least it wasn't the commando that decide to break off its leg because it fell down.


Also Battlemaster got ganked heavily by Elementals late game.

 

[Bassomatic]

So I just downloaded the mw5 update. Last week first irl bt in ages so much fun I yolod a charge at a cliff took out a near jenner with a fresh zeus both fell but many lulz.

Also making a marik paint banshee because I like purple and never enough best assault.

 

[StevieLasVegas]

So I just downloaded the mw5 update. Last week first irl bt in ages so much fun I yolod a charge at a cliff took out a near jenner with a fresh zeus both fell but many lulz.

Also making a marik paint banshee because I like purple and never enough best assault.

Jesus christ, your second sentence is giving me a stroke.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

I'm currently painting a new lance of mechs and once I blu tacked all minis on small pieces of wood to better hanlde them, I realized that the Commando had a severe kink between the torso and hips. It wasn't that particularly noticable from the front, but from the back it looks really meh... so I am now trying to dissolve the glue via lighter fuel, cause I didn't have any acetone at hand... it has been sitting in a small jar submerged in the fuel, but so far the glue does not budge.
God damnit.

But the new Commando miniature from IWM (BT20-5185) is fantastic, very detailed design, the edges are super sharp and the proportions are spot on (a lot of the older models suffer from stork-leg syndrome). It's also nicely scaled with other models, standing next to a heavy or assault, it does look very appropriately sized without being too small.
You can't put much torso-twist on the model out of the box, since the torso and legs might get in the way of each other, but you could always sandpaper away a little bit of the edges around the lower torso/legs and it would fit like a charm. I wouldn't mind the model being a tiny bit more expensive but containing another arm/leg to be able to choose a pose more freely tbh.


But at less than 10 Euros, the model is pretty cheap and the quality is really high.

Once I get the lance fully painted and based, I'll share some images. It's going to be a Steiner Royal Guards paint scheme.

Also, opinions on the Dervish? I paired the Commando with a Dervish, and while that mech lacks the hefty punch of a dedicated missile boat, it seems rather flexible with its varied selection of weapons and the mobility thanks to its jumpjets. And it looks really sexy.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Why did the main game box go out of print and go way up in price? Is there any word on another printing?