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WarLocke posted:Don't forget the planet with bird aliens that worship a Locust Every time you mention that, Santa Claus gets a tumor. Why do you hate Christmas. 
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Jan 30, 2011 03:04
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Agent Interrobang posted:Every time you mention that, Santa Claus gets a tumor. Why do you hate Christmas. Because it was the first BattleTech book I ever read. 
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Jan 30, 2011 03:06
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Better late than never - signing up to do the whole Mechwarrioring thing. I got PM.
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Jan 30, 2011 03:11
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WarLocke posted:Don't forget the planet with bird aliens that worship a Locust gently caress that planet. gently caress that entire planet.
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Jan 30, 2011 03:15
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Agent Interrobang posted:Every time you mention that, Santa Claus gets a tumor. Why do you hate Christmas. Because I got nothing this year and I was terribly emotionally hurt inside about it. Bird aliens. They worship a locust. They be  to the core.TAKE THAT, SANTA CLAUS! Also, I wonder who the hell got permission to canonize sapient alien life in the BTech universe, and who did they have to blow to do it?
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Jan 30, 2011 03:15
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Der Waffle Mous posted:gently caress that planet. This is my reaction to that book: 
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Jan 30, 2011 03:20
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Speaking honestly, I don't mind aliens. Hell, Farscape is one of my favorite things ever, and it introduced like fifty new species per season(not an exact figure). But they just don't WORK in Battletech, because the entire series is predicated upon endless, largely pointless feudal conflicts. It's basically a never-ending War of the Roses with dozens of sides. Adding aliens SERIOUSLY gets in the way of that. Who the hell thought it was a good idea?
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Jan 30, 2011 03:23
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Agent Interrobang posted:Adding aliens SERIOUSLY gets in the way of that. Who the hell thought it was a good idea? Honestly the fact that there are no aliens is kind of a cornerstone of the universe. At least that book kind of  'd it so the planet could have been in another galaxy or a seperate drat universe for all we know.Plus it had a LAM in it, those two things definitely make it the shittiest BT novel ever (and I really, really hate the first GDL trilogy, so this means alot coming from me).
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Jan 30, 2011 03:30
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Zaodai posted:AT&T isn't responsible for a lot of things, and that's why they piss off a lot of sane, intelligent people too. I've had to do over the phone tech support myself, and yeah, there are a lot of idiots out there. But it still pisses me off when I have to call tech support, in general (usually because a warranty requires you to have tech support submit a ticket before you can get them to fix something, even if you know what's wrong already) they're very dismissive of you and treat you like an idiot. yeah without going into job firing details and derailing this further, AT&T has rather severe limits now days, and working against them is hard. I've run into the same thing with time warner,but both with AT&T and Time Warner is knowing how to work the system. I got it down to me getting Tier 3 tech support from time warner in 6 minutes flat  , I just did everything they asked before they asked.WarLocke posted:Honestly the fact that there are no aliens is kind of a cornerstone of the universe. At least that book kind of That book is like the combination of all the bad ideas people have had in battletech rolled into one. Aliens will never really make sense in context cause the whole idea is that it's basically every group of humans being a huge idiotic jerks toward each other and the politicing governments screwing each other over. I don't know about you but I don't like the republic much, it completely negates the whole "prophectic visions" of the clans that claimed this was the star league now, for example, Nova Cat and Ghost Bear joining the new star league. 
Axe-man fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Jan 30, 2011 |
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Jan 30, 2011 03:36
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Arglebargle III posted:Well aside from hardware, I think all the Successor States that truly want to revive the Star League see it as the ultimate prestige item. The Star League was created by Terrans and ruled from Terra, and of course Terra is the origin of humanity. Any ruler who wants to genuinely claim lordship over the entire human race would need Terra as a symbol of legitimacy. Theoretically yes, but until some other method of operating communications that's not an HPG, Terra will have one choke chain to pull.
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Jan 30, 2011 03:48
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Axe-man posted:I don't know about you but I don't like the republic much, it completely negates the whole "prophectic visions" of the clans that claimed this was the star league now, for example, Nova Cat and Ghost Bear joining the new star league. As far as I'm concerned the BattleTech timeline stops in the early 3070s with the end of the FedCom civil war. 
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Jan 30, 2011 03:50
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WarLocke posted:As far as I'm concerned the BattleTech timeline stops in the early 3070s with the end of the FedCom civil war. This is pretty much what I do. I actually had someone run an alt-verse campaign set in the post-FedCom Civil War era where the Wobblies didn't go UTTERLY BUGFUCK when the Star League dissolved. We played as a Ghost Bear Dominion unit with a mix of Clan Trueborns, Freeborn sibko grads who were born after the Ghost Bears arrived, and former members of the 3rd Drakons. We mostly fought the Jade Falcons and Hell's Horses, with a couple of fun times allying with the DCMS Genyosha, Ghost Regiments, and the Nova Cats when a bunch of traditionalists decided Theo Kurita was too liberal and tried to break away. God, that was SO MUCH BETTER than the actual timeline. 
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Jan 30, 2011 04:04
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Agent Interrobang posted:This is pretty much what I do. I actually had someone run an alt-verse campaign set in the post-FedCom Civil War era where the Wobblies didn't go UTTERLY BUGFUCK when the Star League dissolved. We played as a Ghost Bear Dominion unit with a mix of Clan Trueborns, Freeborn sibko grads who were born after the Ghost Bears arrived, and former members of the 3rd Drakons. We mostly fought the Jade Falcons and Hell's Horses, with a couple of fun times allying with the DCMS Genyosha, Ghost Regiments, and the Nova Cats when a bunch of traditionalists decided Theo Kurita was too liberal and tried to break away. That sounds pretty awesome. The Jade Falcons make fun enemies no matter what. Unrelated trivia fact: For a given desired walking speed, there is a mech weight that gives the maximum amount of space for weapons and armor! That is, if you start out saying "I want a 4/6 'mech", you actually are better off picking an 85-ton chassis than a 100-ton chassis all else bein' equal. (I am ignoring XL engines because they are satanspawn, but they'd make the optimum at a 95-ton chassis at 4/6). At 3/5 and below, you want the max tonnage. 
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Jan 30, 2011 04:08
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Mukaikubo posted:Unrelated trivia fact: For a given desired walking speed, there is a mech weight that gives the maximum amount of space for weapons and armor! That is, if you start out saying "I want a 4/6 'mech", you actually are better off picking an 85-ton chassis than a 100-ton chassis all else bein' equal. (I am ignoring XL engines because they are satanspawn, but they'd make the optimum at a 95-ton chassis at 4/6). At 3/5 and below, you want the max tonnage. I was playing MW4Mercs earlier, and I'm horrible about downgrading engines as far as they'll go. Hellspawn w/64mph top speed, an ER large laser and as many LRMs as I can stuff in it? Hells yeah.  (Even if the stupid targeting reticle hates moving up or down  )
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Jan 30, 2011 04:11
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Mukaikubo posted:That sounds pretty awesome. The Jade Falcons make fun enemies no matter what. Oh hell yes they are. They're just honorable enough to be respectable, just crazy enough to never feel any guilt about wasting them. Honestly, though, we had the most fun that campaign fighting the DCMS breakways, who I think were calling themselves the Pure Land Ronin, after the Pure Land Buddhist sect. They had oodles and oodles of older, outdated mechs, so it was basically our smaller, Clantech-equipped force against sheer weight of numbers. I remember fondly the time my character, Star Commander Elizabeth Tseng, had to honor-duel one of the ronin commanders to give our troops an extra week to land, while an entire company of ronin mechs sat idling on a ridge above the battlefield. It was so amazingly tense and awesome. Oh nostalgia. That campaign was where I learned to love the Arcas.
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Jan 30, 2011 04:19
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WarLocke posted:I was playing MW4Mercs earlier, and I'm horrible about downgrading engines as far as they'll go. Hellspawn w/64mph top speed, an ER large laser and as many LRMs as I can stuff in it? Hells yeah. Speed plays far less of a role (... for the most part) in favor of decent armor and superior firepower. At least until "OH GOD IT WAS ALL A DIVERSION, THE ESCORT OBJECTIVE IS BEING ATTACKED ON THE ENTIRE OPPOSITE END OF THE MAP, GET YOUR ASSAULT MECHS THERE AS FAST AS POSSILBE!" Which in particular gets to be an issue if you intentionally walk into a certain ambush early on so you get an assault mech way before you're supposed to. Free Mauler please!
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Jan 30, 2011 04:19
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You know I once read that due to the massive size of the Periphery, some of the sections are much larger number of worlds and population wise than the inner sphere but is completely disjointed and unregulated. However, unless it is a one shot series, like the "bird men" or some house sending out famous mercs into it to kill a few pirates and call it a day, the IS ignores the Periphery. What i would propose that instead of having WoB, having a unifying force take over the Periphery and give it the age of renaissance that WoB was supposed to give, then finally reverse traditional role of the Periphery as a "planet of plot convenience." It's well established in the canon, not even Kerensky completely were able to bring the Periphery to it's knees though it did certainly kowtow.
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Jan 30, 2011 04:21
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Well the main issue is that the Periphery is a huge amount of space that doesn't allow easy travel between most of it's zones. You can't unify it, per se, because someone is going to think the people on the opposite side of the galaxy is getting a better deal and then you get civil war, etc. Plus, it's hard to concentrate your forces to attack such a large, spread out area.
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Jan 30, 2011 05:08
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While I'm thinking about it, I'd like to sign up as a tank driver, should you need one.
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Jan 30, 2011 05:20
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Agent Interrobang posted:Speaking honestly, I don't mind aliens. Hell, Farscape is one of my favorite things ever, and it introduced like fifty new species per season(not an exact figure). But they just don't WORK in Battletech, because the entire series is predicated upon endless, largely pointless feudal conflicts. It's basically a never-ending War of the Roses with dozens of sides. Adding aliens SERIOUSLY gets in the way of that. Who the hell thought it was a good idea? Any alien race not advanced enough to pose a threat to humanity would be exploited or eradicated. Any race that was advanced enough to pose a threat would unite all humanity and void the whole political discourse of Battletech. Hell it's just human nature that groups of people with slight differences will put those differences aside to fight something that is categorically aliens or different. If only to go back to fighting over the same reasons again once its all said and done. Also Agent Interrobang it looks like your avatar is kneading the air like a kitty. 
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Jan 30, 2011 06:21
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Agent Interrobang posted:Speaking honestly, I don't mind aliens. But they just don't WORK in Battletech, because the entire series is predicated upon endless, largely pointless feudal conflicts. One of the setting's appeals to me actually is that there ARE no aliens. It's still about man's cruelty to man - all the sci-fi trappings but without bumpy forehead peoples and such to distract. Fighting against other people rather than against generic stereotyped aliens gives it more impact.
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Jan 30, 2011 06:33
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Trast posted:Any alien race not advanced enough to pose a threat to humanity would be exploited or eradicated. Any race that was advanced enough to pose a threat would unite all humanity and void the whole political discourse of Battletech. Hell it's just human nature that groups of people with slight differences will put those differences aside to fight something that is categorically aliens or different. If only to go back to fighting over the same reasons again once its all said and done. Yup, you pretty much hit the nail on the head, with regards to WHY aliens don't work in Battletech. Although since I mentioned Farscape before I'm now imagining the Inner Sphere coming together to fight the Scarrans, and that is so awesome in concept I don't even care how ridiculous and implausible it is. And yesssssssss. It is beyond adorabledome. It's actually Rarity doing the "ooooOOOOOOooooOOOOOOOooo spooky ghost story" thing, but it had to be cut down from 28 frames to 6 to get it fit in under 30 KB.edit: DURRRRRR ME SPEL GUD.
Agent Interrobang fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Jan 30, 2011 |
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Jan 30, 2011 06:34
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Tempest_56 posted:One of the setting's appeals to me actually is that there ARE no aliens. It's still about man's cruelty to man - all the sci-fi trappings but without bumpy forehead peoples and such to distract. Fighting against other generic stereotyped people rather than against generic stereotyped aliens gives it more impact. I fixed it!  But seriously, I do agree. Battletech is awesome partly because it's an answer to "Whatever would people do with an endless frontier and nobody else in our way?" And it's answer is "Expand for a while, then get bored and launch wars on a scale never before seen until we can't expand and can't fight anymore. But we'll still try to do the latter." Bleak, but I can't really say it's not probable. quote:Although since I mentioned Farscape before I'm now imagining the Inner Sphere coming togehter to fight the Scarrans, and that is so awesome in concept I don't even care how ridiculous and implausible it is. They tried to use wormholes to blow up the sun, but <mary sue> was on the Scarran ship for some reason and peed into the reactor coolant valve by mistake, blowing their dreadnought up. Then they wasted a lot of time reassuring the <mary sue> that he really was a special snowflake, but nobody cared because--then John went slightly more crazy and hosed your favorite female character while making pop culture references nobody else understands. And somehow it's all loving awesome. edit #2: Oh christ, now I'm mentally comparing the Peacekeepers and the Clans, and it completely and perfectly fits. Jesus. I am going to go to sleep before my own nerdery becomes toxic and I keel over dead. But seriously, now that I think of it the Peacekeepers societally pretty much are "The Clans, minus the honor". Which is why they're so scary. (clearly this means the character above is Joanna) Mukaikubo fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Jan 30, 2011 |
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Jan 30, 2011 06:35
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mostly ignorant of the clans outside of the brief trawls through the wiki, but wouldn't the Peacekeepers be a mostly-united clan which actually managed to conquer the Inner Sphere instead of the clans in any of their canonical states?
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Jan 30, 2011 07:10
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Mukaikubo posted:(clearly this means the character above is Joanna) Aeryn is Joanna 
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Jan 30, 2011 07:23
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WarLocke posted:Aeryn is Joanna Even better: Aeryn and Joanna: COUPLE OF THE CENTURY x 2 combo
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Jan 30, 2011 07:24
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Agent Interrobang posted:Even better: Aeryn and Joanna: COUPLE OF THE CENTURY Does this make Horse Crichton? Or is Crichton Victor since he's the audience self-insert? 
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Jan 30, 2011 07:43
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Well now you people have completely lost me. I'm going to bed. PS - Crackers don't matter. Not even to big robots.
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Jan 30, 2011 07:48
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WarLocke posted:Does this make Horse Crichton? Or is Crichton Victor since he's the audience self-insert? Victor never goes crazy enough times or gets the poo poo kicked out of him enough to be John Crichton.
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Jan 30, 2011 07:48
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re: books, the best book of them all has to be Wolves on the Border. It's written very nicely for a cheapo sci-fi paperback, the story holds to the end and from the first pages it captures the feel of Battletech perfectly. Anyone contemplating whether to get a few novels should start here.
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Jan 30, 2011 08:15
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I gotta get in on this! Sign me up I got PM. And I also hated that book with the locust worshiping birds and that LAM that was loaded down with gold. It was a waste of money. 
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Jan 30, 2011 09:27
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Alright, so my basic reading order is: Blood of Kerensky, Wolves on the Border, then Twilight of the Clans. The Warriors trilogy will basically just be a whenever thing. Also, I hate you all for bringing up Farscape in the middle of my BT binge. You all DO realize there are only 24 hours in a day, and 8 of them are reserved for sleep, right?
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Jan 30, 2011 10:40
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Veyrall posted:and 8 of them are reserved for sleep Maybe if you weren't such a pansy you could get by on 18 hours of sleep a week like a normal person.
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Jan 30, 2011 10:58
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Real men sleep 12-18 hours per day! (Real men are literally bears. The flag of California? That's actually their founder. True story.)
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Jan 30, 2011 11:04
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WarLocke posted:Aeryn is Joanna That's what I was getting at in my own sleep-deprived way. quote:Also, I hate you all for bringing up Farscape in the middle of my BT binge. You all DO realize there are only 24 hours in a day, and 8 of them are reserved for sleep, right? 8 a day? Man. I might have thought that before college. Now I know that I "need" 8 hours in any given two day stretch, but that I "want" 10 hours a day. e: quote:mostly ignorant of the clans outside of the brief trawls through the wiki, but wouldn't the Peacekeepers be a mostly-united clan which actually managed to conquer the Inner Sphere instead of the clans in any of their canonical states? Mukaikubo fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Jan 30, 2011 |
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Jan 30, 2011 15:42
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What does it say about me that the second Farscape gets mentioned that I start thinking of living dropships and mechs? And now I can only think of getting a living Atlas named Chuck, and the two of us becoming best friends forever.
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Jan 30, 2011 16:33
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I'm on a back-to-back shift today (sucks), so no update until tonite. Also, farscape is extremely tangential from the rest of the thread; but I'm tired so I don't care right now.
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Jan 30, 2011 17:08
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Yeah, sorry for the inadvertent derail there. I think, however, that the basic gist of my opinion can be summed up as 'Battletech is about big robots and should stay that way.' Speaking of which, to veer this back on-topic, has anyone heard any more news about the Harmony Gold bullshit surrounding the upcoming MechWarrior game? I can kind of understand if they're just griping about the Warhammer used in the trailer, but does anyone know if they were planning to have more of the Unseen mechs in the game? It seems a bit too hissy for them to be complaining this much about just one.
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Jan 30, 2011 17:32
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Agent Interrobang posted:Speaking of which, to veer this back on-topic, has anyone heard any more news about the Harmony Gold bullshit surrounding the upcoming MechWarrior game? I can kind of understand if they're just griping about the Warhammer used in the trailer, but does anyone know if they were planning to have more of the Unseen mechs in the game? It seems a bit too hissy for them to be complaining this much about just one. From the information I've read and heard, it boils down to that Smith & Tinker wanted to use the Unseen (several of them), and Harmony Gold pitched a fit and a half despite not actually using those designs in any way in like 15+ years. So off to lawsuit land it went.
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Jan 30, 2011 17:42
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Couldn't they just use the Project Phoenix designs? I know the old-school Warhammer and the rest of them are pretty iconic, but if Harmony Gold are going to consistently be huge dicks about it...
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Jan 30, 2011 18:00
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