Battletech BattleTech discussion thread: May the light of Hanse Davion guide us

[Blasterbot]

does a club also prevent you from making torso attacks?

i will try paging through the Max tech I have again to see what those rules are. not to hopeful at this rate. still might be fun to try and make a janky 100 tonner that is built around using either 2 1 handed or 1 2 handed pods. ferro, endo, TSM keep the feet and head free to load what weapons you can in.

paged through my max tech before realizing it was on page 78 to 79. it requires the heat and ammo to be incorporated into the HHW. offhand I agree 1shot rockets are prolly the best use with how restrictive the rules are. I could see arguments for either 1shot rockets for greatest weight and damage efficiency, or a 1shot LRM pack so you have an opening volley that goes further than most your other weapons.

 

[Bear Ribs]

does a club also prevent you from making torso attacks?

i will try paging through the Max tech I have again to see what those rules are. not to hopeful at this rate. still might be fun to try and make a janky 100 tonner that is built around using either 2 1 handed or 1 2 handed pods. ferro, endo, TSM keep the feet and head free to load what weapons you can in.

paged through my max tech before realizing it was on page 78 to 79. it requires the heat and ammo to be incorporated into the HHW. offhand I agree 1shot rockets are prolly the best use with how restrictive the rules are. I could see arguments for either 1shot rockets for greatest weight and damage efficiency, or a 1shot LRM pack so you have an opening volley that goes further than most your other weapons.

Per Total Warfare 146, you can use a club and also fire all your arm and torso weapons. It's only handheld weapons that are so restricted.

 

[Blasterbot]

Per Total Warfare 146, you can use a club and also fire all your arm and torso weapons. It's only handheld weapons that are so restricted.

in that case clubs are mandatory pick ups when you have a shot at it. i get a bit why they made the rules so painful for a HHW but man is it disappointing. if they were gonna make it so restrictive with the torso mounts they could have made the weapons better. considering how little tonnage you have to work with it is kinda sad how weak most of what you can do is. considering you need active TSM to hit the 20% bracket and then you might have something fun to work with as an assault mech.

 

[Bear Ribs]

in that case clubs are mandatory pick ups when you have a shot at it. i get a bit why they made the rules so painful for a HHW but man is it disappointing. if they were gonna make it so restrictive with the torso mounts they could have made the weapons better. considering how little tonnage you have to work with it is kinda sad how weak most of what you can do is. considering you need active TSM to hit the 20% bracket and then you might have something fun to work with as an assault mech.

Yeah, the devs have a real problem with making every new option or idea super-restricted and useless.

I feel like Clubs are going to be less effective than punches with spikes most of the time. The -1 to hit is nice but you only get one hit, in a best case scenario with a 100-ton 'mech that's 20 points. You get two punches and use the punch table (1/6 to hit the head instead of 1/36), so a 60-ton 'mech will inflict the same 20 points of damage as a 100-ton 'mech with a club would and will be more likely to land a headshot.

Not if we take the common houserule that lift hoists allow for larger handheld weapons that makes them actually viable. Ye old 100-ton 'mech could be packing a 50-ton handheld which is more than enough room to do some real damage even with the restrictions on handhelds. Such a 'mech would likely be built to be almost all engines and armor since it won't be firing guns out of its arms or torsos, so it would be significantly faster than a typical 'mech.

 

[PsihoKekec]

Catapult, but without jump jets.

 

[Bear Ribs]

 

[Bear Ribs]

 

[Skitzyfrenic]

Urbanmechs are so lovely and memey.

I did up a stealth Urbie once. And you can fire a Plasma Rifle until it's out of ammo and then stealth around with pulse lasers. In an urban center, god that must be terrifying. You can't even flank the fuckers cause they got 360 turret action.

 

[Atarlost]

Urbies are a symptom of bad maps. Real city blocks are wider than 60 meters and real urban areas tend to have buildings too tall for them to jump onto as well. Also, mercs often have to travel and urbies are dropship inefficient.

The winning play is probably to spend your money on a single lance of 55 tonners that you can fit in a Leopard and that can undertake a variety of contracts.

 

[Knowledgeispower]

Urbies are a symptom of bad maps. Real city blocks are wider than 60 meters and real urban areas tend to have buildings too tall for them to jump onto as well. Also, mercs often have to travel and urbies are dropship inefficient.

The winning play is probably to spend your money on a single lance of 55 tonners that you can fit in a Leopard and that can undertake a variety of contracts.

Or buy 3 Awesomes

 

[PsihoKekec]

I had to try, one MadCat against 16 Urbies is possible if you got big enough map to maneuver and keep the range open, as long as the Urbies don't corner you, you are good. Of course MadCat can only be at one place, but four lances of Urbies can be at four or provide rotating overwatch...
They are much more expensive to transport though.

 

[Blasterbot]

The winning play is probably to spend your money on a single lance of 55 tonners that you can fit in a Leopard and that can undertake a variety of contracts.

while a good generalist lance they would have issues if they come up against heavier opposition. they got good speed and solid armor but they feel a little light in terms of armament. full lance of them needs 4500 BV to comfortably fit in table top. would generally prefer a mixed lance there with a heavy mech.

playing the HBS game for a while I occasionally ended up hitting a bit of a plateau there where if I did not get good salvage for a heavy mech I ended up fielding lances of the 55 tonners that would get buried under the sheer weight of numbers of some missions. 3 lances of mechs even if they are mostly lights get a bit difficult to deal with since they move so fast the end up converging on you stupid fast. then you don't even get good salvage out of the missions. usually end it by going to the store and hoping it has something that i can complete.

Admittedly I probably need to download MegaMek to play around with to see if those experiences translate to the tabletop. 5/8/5 movement does let you get a pretty solid move modifier so that might completely change things considering the difference in how that is handled between the systems.

 

[Skitzyfrenic]

Admittedly I probably need to download MegaMek to play around with to see if those experiences translate to the tabletop.

Pilot skill is a lot more impactful on the TT, I think.

Also the 'perfect' generalist lance is like 1 Light, 1 Medium, and 2 Heavies.

So something like: Spider SDR-5V is 622, Grifin GRF-1N is 1,272, Thunderbolt TDR-5S 1,335, Archer ARC-2R 1,447. That's 4,676 BV and a pretty solid indirect fire, skirmish lance. The kind of thing a single lance Merc is going to want since that'll hoepfully reduce a lot of the damage you take.

The Spider mostly runs or jumps around keeping eyes on everyone, and it should always be RUNNING never walking, taking the occasional shot when something chases after it, but it should be 100% focused on scouting. Your griffin is going to snipe and skirmish. Your Thud is going to push in, relatively, and your Archer is going to exhaust it's LRMs before pushing in.

And that's with 4/5 pilots. I forget the BV increase that comes with skill increases, but a single step to 3/4 is IIRC worth ~15% more tonnage.

I know at Hero level skills 1/2-0/0 that basically no Light without some sort of stealth gimmick or some truly insane movement is going to matter, like a pacifist, because they instant they get noticed, pop.

 

[bullethead]

Get ready for new Tex Talks BattleTech - it's about that infamous scrub, the Charger:

 

[Bear Ribs]

I had to try, one MadCat against 16 Urbies is possible if you got big enough map to maneuver and keep the range open, as long as the Urbies don't corner you, you are good. Of course MadCat can only be at one place, but four lances of Urbies can be at four or provide rotating overwatch...
They are much more expensive to transport though.

That img must have been drawn by an AI, everybody knows that outfit belongs to a Clint.

while a good generalist lance they would have issues if they come up against heavier opposition. they got good speed and solid armor but they feel a little light in terms of armament. full lance of them needs 4500 BV to comfortably fit in table top. would generally prefer a mixed lance there with a heavy mech.

playing the HBS game for a while I occasionally ended up hitting a bit of a plateau there where if I did not get good salvage for a heavy mech I ended up fielding lances of the 55 tonners that would get buried under the sheer weight of numbers of some missions. 3 lances of mechs even if they are mostly lights get a bit difficult to deal with since they move so fast the end up converging on you stupid fast. then you don't even get good salvage out of the missions. usually end it by going to the store and hoping it has something that i can complete.

Admittedly I probably need to download MegaMek to play around with to see if those experiences translate to the tabletop. 5/8/5 movement does let you get a pretty solid move modifier so that might completely change things considering the difference in how that is handled between the systems.

Yeah, games have a tendency to send ridiculous numbers at you to make up for poor AI, I felt like HBS went really overboard when I'd wind up facing a full company including some heavies on a freaking one-skull mission.

Which 'mech size to go with is going to vary a bit by era as well. Lights are basically nothing but targets in the later eras. Weapon ranges go up a lot, double heat sinks mean a big 'mech can really fire a lot more of those weapons each turn without overheating, and there are options like targeting computers or pulse to increase + to hit. Since lights rely primarily on generating target movement modifiers with their high speed, and armor doesn't advance to keep up, they wind up really hard to keep alive when those high modifiers quit working.

 

[bullethead]

Yeah, games have a tendency to send ridiculous numbers at you to make up for poor AI, I felt like HBS went really overboard when I'd wind up facing a full company including some heavies on a freaking one-skull mission.

Fun fact - the skull ratings are hard coded into the mission contract files.

They have literally nothing to do with the actual strength of the enemy spawns.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Huh, that... actually explains a lot about the problems I had with the game.

 

[bullethead]

Yeah, I have no idea why they did that.

I only know about it because I've done modding stuff with the game.

 

[Doomsought]

Get ready for new Tex Talks BattleTech - it's about that infamous scrub, the Charger:

The production values improve every time the Black Pants legion does a documentary.

 

[Spartan303]

Did Tex get divorced? Just some things he said made me think so.