#battletech advanced

[nyxgoddessofcandles]

See also: LBX-RAC/5

LAC 10/20

C-ULBXs

C-Snub-Gauss ("What if the clans took the idea of H-Gauss and made it Smaller")

C-Ultra-Snub-Gauss (^ That but it fires 2)

C-SB-HAG/10 (Silver bullet HAG!)

Stormbreaker Gauss Array (12x Magshot (or AP gauss, clanners did it too??) crammed into one mount)

Rotary Lasers (3 bursts per shot, slightly lower damage per hit, more overall)

the "Super" MML (15 missiles per salvo, 12s/20t, can load ANY missile ammo. Even Arrow-IV ammo.)

Most of these were made for mod patreon supporters and are explicitly marked "Community Content"; IE: Non-Canon

but some of them are goofy fun ideas some could make a teaspoon of sense as like, one-off experimentals

thinkin about Battletech: Advanced mod

about the goofy fucking rotary-UAC/20 yes that's right its a UAC/20 that also is a RAC/20 6-shot bursts 2 projectiles per shot

[thallium6193]

The smartest thing the Capellan's ever did was mount an AC/20 on an UrbanMech, but I think they didn't do enough. Today I present to the fine ladys, gents, war profiteers, people unable to identify with the concept of human gender after the horrors of war, and anyone else, to gaze upon the perfection of a UrbanMech with a fucking Ultra AC/20 and a fucking Wrecking Ball. This thing can punch through the torso of a King Crab with 1 salvo and comes at the low low price of 3 million C-Bills(less than 1/3rd the cost of said King Crab). While this model doesn't have any longer range, this is an UrbanMech, not a WideOpenFieldMech. If your enemy wants to take your city whats a better deterrent than a swarm of Ultra Autocannon wielding mechs? The other problem tackled by this innovative design is the low ammo storage, with the addition of a Wrecking Ball, which is useful for city defense, civil projects, and pop music videos(or so I'm told).

Buy Now!

[bitternest]

brb inventing the pinball sutra from first principles

[garfunclegaming]

If you think about it Battletech is far darker than Warhammer 40k. 40k is obviously science fantasy, extremely so. There are magic powers, literal demons, and eldritch forces. It is also cruel and unusual to the point of absurdity.

Meanwhile Battletech's horrors are mundane. Besides the main conceit of the setting, the giant robots, everything else is fairly grounded. Even the FTL is stringent in its implementation.

Battletech is so dark because it postulates that even if Humanity spreads itself across the stars, we can never escape the problems of the present and past. We will never escape inequality, being ruled over by so-called elites, the general population is strung along by oligarchs, corporations will exploit and corrupt anything and everything to turn a profit, a limitless military industrial complex that sustains a never ending series of wars that are fought over to see which inbred 'noble' House gets to rule over the irradiated ashes of planets that have been warred over for centuries.

Everything in Battletech is self inflicted. There are no intelligent, advanced aliens, ancient evils or divine powers. Humanity took to the stars and war followed us there. Cursed to fight and bleed ourselves dry forever.

[highlander-732b]

The mildly insane commander takes a Hatamoto-Chi and lists it as a Charger with visual mods- this plan works because the Hatamoto-Chi's armor mountings are similar enough to replace with actual Charger armor if required, and a Hatamoto-Chi is basically a Thug internally. There is much shock and awe when what appears to be a Charger wearing samurai armor begins shooting dual PPCs and SRM-6s.

When it comes to the Charger...

The untested commander is fooled by the impressive armor and goes for it without a second thought.

The educated commander knows its track record and steers well clear of it, armor or no.

The romantic commander is taken in by its repute of being 'rough and ready', takes it for an icon of adaptability, and takes it with gusto.

But the intelligent commander also takes the Charger- because if you take that, enemies will write your unit off as obviously being commanded by a nitwit who thinks the Charger is a good combat 'mech, and so even the slightest competence on your part will catch them completely off guard.

[theurbanmechcomesforthee]

In Battletech, the Protomech is a type of mech that is roughly half the size of its mech counterpart, equipped with lighter weapons, engines, and sometimes ECM suites to cut off the mechs it attacks while allied protomechs assist.

Here we see the prefix Proto and Battle can be used to denote either larger mechs capable of extended combat, or smaller units that group up on a target to take it down.

The use of "Protogen" in the modern era thusly implies the existence of the "Battlegen", a type of protogen which is twice the height of its standard counterpart and capable of mounting sophisticated targeting computers, larger electronics warfare packages, and advanced weaponry. In this essay I will

[agbpaints]

My local battletech group is doing a random custom mech free for all, and in order to make things spicy, I've opened up the techmanual to pike around the guts of the BV formula to make something as dumb as possible. I've got a hard 2100 bv limit and I think I managed to make something

Behold! Coming in at exactly 2100 BV, the Wallfacer! You know how expensive ERPPCs can be BV-wise? Well, what if you mounted one backwards to discount all your other torso mounted guns? Oh, it also adds discounts a second time 'round because it's a huge fuckin heat hog and it means *technically* if it were to fire it and every other weapon while jumping it'd have problems, but because it's going the wrong direction it probably won't.

As for the game plan, the armor gives it away- the Wallfacer is a pair of bad hellbringers stapled together. Going forward it has a bunch of missiles and accurate efficient lasers to sandblast the enemy appart, going backward it has a big, long range 'fuck you' gun to snipe with. Advance to a firing position ass-first, dome the enemy with the particle cannon a couple of times, and then flip around to finish with the rest of the guns. Hopefully splitting damage between the front and rear arcs will make up a bit for the thin rear armor but it does mean you can get double tapped by your own main gun with that isXLFE.

I don't expect this to perform well oerse but if someone pulls it it'll be funny

[krinsbez]

World building/Storybuilding: BattleTech+Pern

I said I would do it, and so here we go.

Pont the first: IIRC from *Dragonsdawn*, a one of the reasons that many of the original Pernese colonists were willing to leave their lives behind and try to make a go at down-teched pastoralism on a resource-poor planet out beyond the edges of settled space was because a big chunk of them were veterans of a brutal interstellar war. Also, because it was Admiral Benden's idea, and after the leadership he showed during said war, they were willing to follow him anywhere.

Well, that sounds familiar. So the original colonists being a segment of the Exodus Fleet that misjumped to ~2,000 years into the past somewhere in the Deep Periphery makes sense. And really, who but the SLDF is going to have a sapient supercomputer and the ability to turn small psychic flying lizards into Dragons? I'm gonna leave out the dolphins, though.

You are perhaps asking, wait, if you are leaving out the dolphins, why are you including AIVAS? Well, because I want to not just have Peen exist in BT, I want it to be RELEVANT, and since it's a single, resource-poor largely pre-industrial world, that means I need to give them as many advantages as possible, and an advanced AI with all the knowledge of the Star League goes a long way towards that goal. For the same reason I am considering having Yokohama be a WarShip. Although it's been sitting in orbit without maintenance for 2500 years, it probably isn't in fighting shape even before they used it to move the Red Star (can you do that with KF Drives, BTW?). I also considered that they have basically a Brian Cache at Landing, but again over 2500 years with no maintenance, and also that might be a bit much

Anyways. It's noted that the Dragonrider playbook was adapted from space fighter tactics, and AIVAS still recognized them as such in the Ninth Pass, so theoretically Dragonriders can be retrained as ASF pilots. Although, I am not sure that's needful: I vividly remember an illustration in The Dragonlover's Guide To Pern that show Ramoth as being roughly the same size as a jumbo jet. Ramoth is, of course, the biggest dragon ever, but there's no indication that she has gigantism, so one presumes the other Golds, while smaller, are of roughly similar size, that the Bronzes are only somewhat smaller than that, and the Browns only slightly smaller than that. Who knows about the Blues and Greens? But anyways, something that big dropping on your head out of *between* (stupid phone not letting me italicize on Tumblr) is going to ruin pretty much any Mech's day, even if they weren't also able to breathe fire or yoink you off to *between*, and maybe do other TK tricks.

Ok, so. As you might imagine by what I have said thus far, I am figuring that, on the Pern side of things, the planet is rediscovered during All The Weyrs of Pern, or perhaps slightly after if we leave out AIVAS deactivating itself. Not sure what's a good time on the BT side, or by who or how, and no idea what comes next.

Hence my asking y'all. Please help?

[is-the-battlemech-cool-or-not]

"I am so, so sorry about this, Anya," Savannah says, clearly on the verge of breaking down. "I've put you in danger now, and I should have told you earlier and I- goddamn it, I'm so so sorry..." It's clear to Anya that Savannah's mind is fixating on some manner of horrible nightmare scenario - probably with roots back in her family's murder, and then having to hide from the depravities of Amaris.

(Starting post date scene)

"...wow...that was....wow..." Anya says, wrapped in perhaps the softest robe she's ever felt. The date was...well...amazing, at least under her opinion. She had gotten dressed up in her best clothes, had a lovely dinner, some drinks some....well...other things...a lot of other things, and now, she is plonked on perhaps the comfiest couch she's ever been on.

"...just...wow..."

"You can say that again," chuckles Savannah, whom Anya is using as a very large and fluffy full-body pillow. "Damn, that was fun..." she says, giving Anya a kiss on the cheek. "So... wanna go get an after-date drink, or sit here and cuddle some more?"

[cantsayidont]

May (?) 1992. Few fictional universes (even Tolkien's) can rival the depth of lore found in the tabletop wargame BATTLETECH and its RPG spinoff MECHWARRIOR, which encompasses over a thousand years of absurdly detailed future history, and the rise, fall, and disintegration of an interstellar Star League into an array of warring feudal states. Until recently, a central feature of that universe was ComStar, the former Star League communications ministry, which reinvented itself as a quasi-religious mystic order, jealously guarding its virtual monopoly on the faster-than-light communications vital to interstellar trade and diplomacy. ComStar was headquartered on Earth, which it controlled as a Vatican-like independent micro-state. Ostensibly a neutral party that could be called upon to arbitrate disputes (as well as issuing the only universally accepted currency), they were secretly engaged in all manner of nefarious scheming schemery for about 200 years before falling into civil war.

The religious overtones of ComStar were never entirely convincing, being closely tied to the original idea that much of the advanced technology essential to the premise — faster-than-light travel, fusion power, and robotic "BattleMechs" armed with energy weapons — was no longer really understood, with surviving examples kept running over the centuries through jury-rigging and rote habit. The intent was to lend a medieval chivalric vibe to the game's mecha combat scenarios, which might have worked in books (BATTLETECH spawned dozens of prose novels and short stories), but wasn't really compatible with the conceits or commercial needs of the game, since new weapons, 'Mechs, and rules were what sold supplement books. So, the "LosTech" concept faded out fairly quickly (although BATTLETECH remains unusual in its preoccupation with technological infrastructure — not many sci-fi settings have detailed lists of which factories make a given type of fusion engine!), leaving ComStar's religious trappings feeling a bit out of place, as if your cellphone company started trying to describe your monthly charges as a tithe. (On second thought, let's not give them any ideas …)

[boinkingbattlemechs]

Hello and welcome to Battletech Smash or Pass!

This blog's purpose is fairly self-explanatory, but here's some other relevant info:

1) Polls are active for a week at a time and queued in advance, on shuffle. Polls go up once a day. I recommend turning on notifs if you want to keep up to date!

2) Polls contain a link to the Sarna page for the 'Mech in question - it's there as an optional supplement to the description (which is pulled off Sarna anyway). Often times information about weapons and variants will not be in the description, so check Sarna if you're curious!

3) I am using the ilClan Recognition Guides to determine what gets polled and when. If we haven't gotten to your favorite 'Mech yet, don't worry! We'll get there!

4) Related to the above: I am only making polls for canonical/apocryphal BattleMechs. No IndustrialMechs, no Combat Vehicles, no ASFs, etc. I may do Battle Armor on a specific day if there is interest.

5) Related to the above, if there is interest, I may do a Fan Art Friday, where I will take submissions of fan made mechs. If you choose to send something in, please format it like one of the standard polls, as such:

1. [Picture of 'Mech - if sourced from someone that isn't you, please credit the artist]

2. [Name of Mech]

3. [Poll (2 options, SMASH or PASS; set for 1 week)]

4. [Description - a paragraph or two about the Mech in question]

5. [tags, to include 'battletech', 'mechwarrior', 'battletech smash or pass', 'tumblr polls', and 'fan art friday']

[impossiblepackage]

say, i heard you reblog a post about role playing games. do you happen to know of any ones that i, a beginner, could feasibly get into in this day and age? i tried DnD but a combination of not having anybody to play with (whether irl or online) and a dissatisfaction with low level boringness kind of made it fizzle out for me

oh hey an ask from 3 months ago that I didn't even see. hi.

ANYWAY. First things first, i cannot recommend @theresattrpgforthat enough. Ain't nobody better at recommending rpgs than that blog right there. Now, on to my thoughts.

If you want a DnD-like rpg, Pathfinder 2nd Edition is gonna be my first recommendation. It's harder to find games for on account of being significantly less popular than dnd5e but it's probably the 2nd most popular game. It's also completely free, with everything being hosted on https://2e.aonprd.com/. It's got everything except adventures, those ya gotta buy. For the next 10 days, there's a humble bundle that includes PDFs of lots of the pre-remaster legacy books, and includes a couple adventures, including a whole adventure path going from level 1 to 20. As a whole, the game is different to dnd but it's recognizable. Big fan myself, and paizo isn't a bunch of pricks. The setting is also super gay. There's a potion of trans your gender, and one of the main religions in the world is the worship of 3 gods in lesbian polycule.

Ironsworn: probably my favorite RPG, period. (also has a space version, that works the same way). It is narrative focused, and designed for solo play or in groups with no GM. Works just as well by yourself, as a duo, in a small group, or in a traditional way with a few players and a GM. It's structured around it's vow system. Your character makes a vow, you decide how difficult that vow should be to accomplish, and as you do things that advance it, you mark progress. Eventually, you make a roll to try and fulfill the vow, with the difficulty determined by how much progress you've made. If you fail that roll, it's bad. Cool thing is that just about everything works that way. Undertaking a journey, delving a dungeon, fighting a dude, it's all handled with the same system. It's a game about perseverance and struggle and relationships, both with people and with places. also very fun to play for writing practice. It's mechanics are rooted in it's setting, but there's no reason you couldn't play it in basically any setting. the youtube channel Me, Myself, And Die is, essentially, Critical Role But It's Solo RPGs, and he did a great season where he played Ironsworn, check it out. Also, Basement Fort on youtube did a duo playthrough. I've only seen the first episode but it seems like a fun watch, as well as showing off duo gameplay.

the Witcher RPG: i haven't played this myself or even looked at the books yet, but everything I've heard about this game has me super excited about it. the general consesus seems to be "yo this is wayyyy better than I thought it would be, why aren't more people playing this, what the fuck". If somebody more familiar wants to talk about it, that'd be dope.

gonna ramble about the rest much less, LIGHTNING ROUND OF RECOMMENDATIONS

Dungeon World: same genre as dnd, but much less crunchy gameplay. Much easier to learn.

Kids On Bikes: it's Stranger Things but as a ttrpg.

Call of Cthulhu: get spooky, idiot. The players are investigators unraveling some mystery or another, and trying to keep their sanity in the face of some cosmic bullshit.

Lancer: it's about mechs! closer to anime-style mechs than battletech style, from what I can tell. I've heard good things.

Vampire: The Masquerade: you will NEVER guess what this is about. It's a classic, it's great, it pretty much redefined the way I think vampires should work. The new version of Werewolf: The Apocalypse is coming soon, and I'm real hyped for that, too.

Shadow Of The Demon Lord: my understanding is that this game is basically "DnD 5e, but good".

[ariesgamesandminis]

BattleTech Universe pre-orders are LIVE plus a TON of restocks are in from Catalyst Game Labs! Unfortunately a good chunk of our order was damaged due to improper packing as well as physical damage during shipping, so we've already placed another order with another distributor so replacements are on the way.

Pre-Order - BattleTech Universe Standard Edition (29 at this time, more opening up soon)

NOTE: Pre-orders are set for the amount we will be receiving from our first distributor with more due to ship soon! If we sell out of the shipping amount, pre-order option will disappear until more ship, at which time the pre-order option will open back up. If that happens, sign up for In Stock Notifications so you know when that happens! Shipping the week of October 2nd!

Restocks: A Time of War Alpha Strike - Box Set Alpha Strike Game Aids - Clan Invasion Cards Battle of Tukayyid BattleMech Manual Campaign Operations Dominions Divided Empire Alone Force Manual - Davion Initiative Deck Map Pack - Battle of Tukayyid Map Pack - Deserts Map Set Grasslands Miniature Force Pack - Clan Ad Hoc Star Miniature Force Pack - Clan Command Star Miniature Force Pack - Clan Fire Star Miniature Force Pack - Clan Heavy Star Miniature Force Pack - Clan Heavy Striker Star Miniature Force Pack - Clan Striker Star Miniature Force Pack - Clan Support Star Miniature Force Pack - ComStar Battle Level II Miniature Force Pack - Inner Sphere Direct Fire Lance Miniature Force Pack - Inner Sphere Fire Lance Miniature Force Pack - Star League Command Lance Miniature Force Pack - UrbanMech LAM Recognition Guide Volume 1 - Classics Recognition Guide Volume 2 - ilClan Strategic Operations - Advanced Aerospace Rules Tactical Operations - Advanced Rules Tamar Rising Technical Readout Clan Invasion Technical Readout Succession Wars Total Warfare

[mortallyminiaturewerewolf]

Battletech Duel

So my friend and I had our duel where we revealed our mystery mechs, I got this wonderful Starscream themed Battlemaster while I gave to them a Guncannon themed Atlas. (It was somewhat appropiate we had this duel around Halloween). We managed to perfectly draw, our shooting taking each other out at exactly the same turn. I am definitely going to try the more advance version of the rules soon, especially the Melee rules.

[doolallymagpie]

had a thought for a BattleTech RPG campaign that was "you all start out with an allowance of 5 million C-Bills for an Urbie and whatever upgrades you can fit in it at 3025 Advanced tech level in that budget, because your employer is as filthy rich as she is eccentric, and she may be plotting to marry whichever of you shows the greatest combat prowess in this Super-Urbie"

and I do mean "Super-Urbie", turns out the leftover ~3.5 mil can get you a pretty sweet 'Mech out of that chassis

[gun-witch]

So, back in the days of the original Xbox, there was a Battletech game called Mech Assault.

And in Mech Assault, among the many canon and non-canon mech designs, there’s a truly bizarre version of the Uziel called the Belial.

The regular Uziel mounts two PPCs, two machine guns, and an SRM-6. The Belial swaps this out for two gauss rifles, two pulse lasers, and keeps the SRM-6.

If you’re not familiar with tabletop, gauss rifles do more damage than PPCs (15 vs 10) and generate SIGNIFICANTLY less heat (1 vs 10). So what’s the downside you might wonder? Well, a PPC weighs 7 tons, that means the Uziel, a 50 ton mech has 14 tons dedicated to just its main weapon (weight does vary but the Uziel uses a particular model of PPC that does weigh exactly 7 tons). A Gauss Rifle, however, typically weighs around 15 tons. This means the Belial would need to dedicated a whole 30 tons to just these main guns, leaving only 20 tons for the rest of the entire mech.

Needless to say, a lot of people, including myself, just accepted that this was an oversight in a non-canon game.

But I was bored today and decided to boot up MegaMekLab (a program that simulates the tabletop mech building rules and does all the math for you) and take a shot at building this insane war machine.

And, well... I did it. Kind of.

First of all, swapping machine guns for pulse lasers is easy, depending on the variant they weigh roughly the same. I chose to use a lighter pulse laser model to save mass for the Gauss Rifles.

Installing the Gauss Rifles is where it got hard. First of all, I decided to use Clan Gauss Rifles because they weigh only 12 tons. That’s still a lot, but 24 tons total is easier to make room for than 30.

So, I threw them on, and it came in way over tonnage as expected.

And, well, long story short, I downsized the engine to a 200 XL (the Uziel uses a 300 XL), this dropped the top speed a fair bit but freed up a lot of mass. I also downsized from double heat sinks to singles. They weigh the same, but take up less space, this allowed me to use lighter (but bulkier) armor. Then removing the Beagle Probe (an advanced sensor system) and adding the ammo the weapons needed.

And here it is, a working Belial stats sheet made using mixed Clan and IS parts. I think using mixed parts is appropriate, considering the mech is used by the Wolf’s Dragoons in the game, a faction with access to Clan tech.

Slower, weaker armor, and no Beagle, but 30 damage per turn without any excess heat makes this kind of build worth the effort. To me though, this is just a bit of nostalgia, I probably won’t even end up using it outside of private matches.

I feel like bringing this to anything else is a surefire way to make sure nobody ever plays with you again.