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Arglebargle III posted:Yeah. That was me. Dropping truth bombs from my That might have been a point if all the tabletop wargames were made in America. Out of the 4 major ones I can think of, Battletech was originally developed by an American company, but Warhammer and 40K were made in Britain, Heavy Gear was made in Canada, and War Machine is hardly the standard 'World War II in space' dynamic.
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Feb 7, 2011 09:36
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Look if you'd had an intelligent argument I wouldn't care but your point is incoherent. Why does it matter who is making the war games? Who has the empire and fights the wars in the Anglosphere? Yeah. It's not Britain and Canada. Oh, well I guess you might have some kind of point if Britain and Canada had been involved in a major war since WWII while no one was looking. Did they? Because if they did you might have some kind of point there. So you admitted that "World War II in space" is a standard "dynamic" although that's probably not the word you should have used. Jeesh, I'm not really sure what you were trying to say at all now. Maybe your point is that WWII was the last major world war? Wow. Thanks for that one. World War II is such a confusing name, I always get confused as to whether it was a major world conflict. And fantasy game settings don't count, that should be obvious. Nobody would ever ask why there are no guided missiles or satellite comms in War Machine. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 10:06 on Feb 7, 2011 |
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Feb 7, 2011 09:57
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ShadowDragon8685 posted:Warring factions don't, as a general rule, target the other side's best and brightest for death, they capture them. We'll even go and bend the ruled to keep these people happy. ComStar doesn't need to capture them. ComStar already has all the tech anyone is researching, they just don't want anyone else figuring it out. Thus, all the sabotage/bombings/assassinations any time anybody else comes close to discovering or recreating lostech.
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Feb 7, 2011 10:21
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Arglebargle III posted:And fantasy game settings don't count, that should be obvious. Nobody would ever ask why there are no guided missiles or satellite comms in War Machine. I would contend that nobody should be asking why there are no guided missiles or satellite communications in any given setting unless it claims to be an exact continuation of the timeline of the real world. "Because it's a game and poo poo doesn't work that way" should be a viable enough solution for anybody. The MST3K mantra should be employed to cover the discrepancies most of the time. And for the record, I'd say 40k is a lot more like WW1 in space than WW2. It's a large scale, low tech (generally), wide spanning meatgrinder of a fight. Especially for the Imperial Guard, who tend to fight with actual WW1 style trench warfare and human wave attacks.
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Feb 7, 2011 10:46
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Arglebargle III posted:
The other problem is that the modern combat environment is so hideously complex that trained professionals who spend their professional lives focused on delivering performance in one tiny slice of the battlefield have to work REALLY hard to keep all the elements in control - consider ASW. Combined with the fact that a modern battlefield with tanks and planes is instant death for whichever side is one electron slower in the electronic arms race means that modern combat is just not a fun 'game' - it's complex and one sided. quote:And for the record, I'd say 40k is a lot more like WW1 in space than WW2. It's a large scale, low tech (generally), wide spanning meatgrinder of a fight. Especially for the Imperial Guard, who tend to fight with actual WW1 style trench warfare and human wave attacks. It's worse than that. They don't have machine guns, and lots of people fire one volley and charge in with close combat weapons. 40K is Napoleonic battles IN SPACE.
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Feb 7, 2011 13:45
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Arglebargle III posted:Look if you'd had an intelligent argument I wouldn't care but your point is incoherent. Why does it matter who is making the war games? Who has the empire and fights the wars in the Anglosphere? Yeah. It's not Britain and Canada. Oh, well I guess you might have some kind of point if Britain and Canada had been involved in a major war since WWII while no one was looking. Did they? Because if they did you might have some kind of point there. You were trying to say that it's an 'American culture' thing. It's not, because it's not just America making them. That's all I'm saying. Gothsheep fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Feb 7, 2011 |
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Feb 7, 2011 13:51
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:It's worse than that. They don't have machine guns, and lots of people fire one volley and charge in with close combat weapons. 40K is Napoleonic battles IN SPACE. They may not have "machine guns" per se, but generally guardsmen are given at least Lasguns, which do offer repeating fire, which can be either more like a basic semi auto rifle, up to something like an assault rifle if memory serves. Though they do tend to have bayonet fixtures. It's just that they're considered true cannon fodder by the Commissars, and they're generally facing a superior entrenched opponent with a lack of effective artillery or air support. The Guard HAVE air and arty assets, they just never seem to be in position, or the enemy is too well dug in for it to be effective. Space Marines have a wider array of weaponry (including true point denial machine guns in the form of Heavy Bolters and the occasional Assault Cannon), which changes their combat style up a bit, but give their focus on close combat and small numbers, even they tend to be more like Vietnam than WW2.
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Feb 7, 2011 14:01
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Arglebargle III posted:I think the real reason is that WWII was the United States' last war. Period. Every war the United States has fought since then has really been a counter-insurgency or a punitive expedition. I'm serious about this. Korea.  Good parts of Vietnam, too, given that the PAVN wasn't exactly averse to jump into division+ size battles every once in a while.
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Feb 7, 2011 14:24
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Zaodai posted:They may not have "machine guns" per se, but generally guardsmen are given at least Lasguns, which do offer repeating fire, which can be either more like a basic semi auto rifle, up to something like an assault rifle if memory serves. Though they do tend to have bayonet fixtures. It's just that they're considered true cannon fodder by the Commissars, and they're generally facing a superior entrenched opponent with a lack of effective artillery or air support. The Guard HAVE air and arty assets, they just never seem to be in position, or the enemy is too well dug in for it to be effective. Yeah, but while a bunch of guns have 'fluff' depictions as being semi auto or whatever, what you actually get is Napoleonic era tactics. The reason is that HMGs as seen in ASL or a similar 'realistic' (please note the quotes) games have a suppressive effect - the total lack of suppressive effects is what makes 40k CHARGE tactics (as exemplified by races like tyranids and orks) so effective. So as Battletech is to WWII war gaming, Warhammer 40k is to Napoleonic era. If the warhammer 40k = WWI hypothesis was true, you'd see attacks getting pinned down by HMG fire etc - but that never happens because the game lacks the Infantry weapon that redefined warfare and created what happened in WWI, the beloved HMG. Tanks in Warhammer 40k remind me a lot of the Hungarian tactics circa 1600-1700 against horse armies, where they would circle their (armored) wagons with chains strung between them, and artillery firing between the wagons while men fired from loop holes. This tactic has problems (like.. what do you do about water?) but at least you have big wagons to carry your stuff around! Edit: TL;DR The HMG created WWI, and the combination of delicious artillery, tanks and HMGs created WWII. Warhammer 40k, the tabletop game, doesn't have functional rules for artillery or HMGs. While it does have rules for tanks, they play absolutely nothing like WWII tanks. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Feb 7, 2011 |
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Feb 7, 2011 14:30
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That would depend on the 40k "game" you're specifically talking about. The Dawn of War games have suppression and pinning fire built in in various ways. Heavy Bolters and Assault Cannons both tend to suppress while various explosives (and especially artillery) tend to pin their targets down. Sniper Rifles could suppress with certain upgrades. What makes Tyranids and Orks effective is that they're completely fearless and they mass in overwhelming numbers. And that completely leaves out Eldar and the Tau which don't rely on zerg rushing people at all. [EDIT] And on top of that the novels clearly involve suppression/pinning, artillery, air strikes, orbital bombardment, wave attacks and all the various other assorted stuff. Zaodai fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Feb 7, 2011 |
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Feb 7, 2011 14:38
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who would win a tyranid genestealer or jaime wolf in an atlas? what im trying to say is lets just drop the wwII/wh40k discussion please.
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Feb 7, 2011 14:40
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Zaodai posted:That would depend on the 40k "game" you're specifically talking about. The Dawn of War games have suppression and pinning fire built in in various ways. Heavy Bolters and Assault Cannons both tend to suppress while various explosives (and especially artillery) tend to pin their targets down. Sniper Rifles could suppress with certain upgrades. Tabletop. The computer games are a completely different ballgame, but really I would draw a line between RTS and wargames ;P And yes, while the fluff has all sorts of stuff in it, the tabletop game is mechanically Napoleonic era warfare, just as battletech is WWII. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Feb 7, 2011 |
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Feb 7, 2011 14:41
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Magni posted:Korea. Korea's been stricken from the national memory so it never happened as unfortunate a development as that is.
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Feb 7, 2011 14:42
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:Tabletop. The computer games are a completely different ballgame, but really I would draw a line between RTS and wargames ;P Yes, but that's not the discussion we were having. In the discussion for the thread we were considering the computer games, the tabletop games, the novels, and everything (for Battletech/Mechwarrior). I assumed it was all fair game when comparing to other games too. The 40k universe isn't just the tabletop rulebook. That would be retarded. If you consider the entire 40k universe, it's pretty heavily influenced by WW1. If it's the tabletop, it's probably pre-Napoleonic as it's a heavy emphasis on retarded "tactics", big melee combat supported by random archers and poorly mobilized, reasonably inaccurate short range cannons.
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Feb 7, 2011 14:45
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Zaodai posted:Yes, but that's not the discussion we were having. In the discussion for the thread we were considering the computer games, the tabletop games, the novels, and everything (for Battletech/Mechwarrior). I assumed it was all fair game when comparing to other games too. The 40k universe isn't just the tabletop rulebook. That would be retarded. To be fair, the 40k fluff is all over the shop. For example, the two books I have on hand (Inquisitor and Space Marine), have an inquisition team that makes Mossad look pants on head retarded, and the space marines are Now, if take the codex I have handy (the imperial guard), you can actually assign the various nations as to their source of inspiration. The Catchans are VIETNAM IN SPACE (with Rambo as a special unit!), while the gas mask dudes from Armageddon are WWI Germans, and those guys in Boer War-era British outfits are directly ripped out of the Napoleonic war.
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Feb 7, 2011 14:51
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Isn't that basically the hat they wear? The Inquisition is all about secrecy and crazy superpowered spec ops poo poo, and the Space Marines are superhuman killing machines with power swords and force halberds, and giant guns with crazy armor (even moreso if they're Terminators). The fluff gets more coherent (at least in the novels I've read), and yeah, the Space Marine chapters tend to have their own inspirations as well, but they still share the general overall combat style. And while the Guard units are generally unique, flavored by their homeworlds (or lack thereof, in the case of Gaunt's Ghosts), they're still pretty much herded to their deaths as chaff. I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree in this case, because we seem to come from opposite ends of the spectrum. My primary background in 40k is the computer games and the novels, and yours seems to be the tabletop game (which is understandable). We're just derailing the thread when neither of us is really wrong, we're just looking from opposite ends of the field.
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Feb 7, 2011 14:59
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Affi posted:who would win a tyranid genestealer or jaime wolf in an atlas? Seconding this. I'm a fan of WH40k, too, but can we at least try to keep thread derails in BattleTech territory?
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Feb 7, 2011 15:03
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Zaodai posted:I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree in this case, because we seem to come from opposite ends of the spectrum. We're just derailing the thread when neither of us is really wrong, we're just looking from opposite ends of the field. Yeah, I'm done too, though imho the cognitive dissonance? in the fluff is more glaring in the tabletop rather than the RTS. quote:Seconding this. I'm a fan of WH40k, too, but can we at least try to keep thread derails in BattleTech territory? Bah, it's vital to establish if Battletech is WWI in space, or Beowulf in space!
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Feb 7, 2011 15:06
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Are Dreadnoughts considered Battletech territory? (I'm kidding.) At least we didn't interrupt a part of the thread when an update was likely. But I do apologize for the derail. I get rambly when I haven't slept in a couple days.
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Feb 7, 2011 15:12
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:
It's Jason and the Argonauts fighting the 30 years war in space with giant gently caress-off robots ad nauseum.
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Feb 7, 2011 15:25
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Can someone tell me how to get into the MegaMek IRC channel? I feel like seeing what this whole thing is all about.
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Feb 7, 2011 15:26
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Son Ryo posted:Can someone tell me how to get into the MegaMek IRC channel? I feel like seeing what this whole thing is all about. Download an IRC client. mIRC for windows usually, or just google for IRC client. Then after setup write /server irc.synirc.net After that /join #megamek
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Feb 7, 2011 15:50
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Get an IRC client, connect to "irc.synirc.net" and join #megamek.PoptartsNinja posted:The Northwind Highlanders have lostech laser-comms (extremely expensive). They FLOOD every normal-radio comm channel with bagpipe music to inspire their own troops and gently caress over everyone else's communications. It's pretty neat, actually. ShadowDragon8685 posted:I'm sorry, but I have to call bullshit on a technology we possess in 2011 - and have possessed since the 1960s - becoming LosTech. Trast posted:Now I need to pilot one of those and fabricate a giant kilt for the mech to wear. Arglebargle III posted:The parts of our military that we do use have been steadily shifting focus to counter-insurgency and punitive expeditions, and that's not something you can really feel good about war-gaming. Arglebargle III posted:hmmm can you get patents on games? Arglebargle III posted:Nobody would ever ask why there are no guided missiles or satellite comms in War Machine. Cthulhu Dreams posted:It's worse than that. They don't have machine guns, and lots of people fire one volley and charge in with close combat weapons. 40K is Napoleonic battles IN SPACE. Cthulhu Dreams posted:and those guys in Boer War-era British outfits are directly ripped out of the Napoleonic war. Arquinsiel fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Feb 7, 2011 |
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Feb 7, 2011 15:54
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e; f,b and derailed further. Ignore this.
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Feb 7, 2011 16:10
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On-topic thought: Do we have hostile air support incoming, artillery, or is PTN just loving with us? Discuss.
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Feb 7, 2011 16:18
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Tempest_56 posted:On-topic thought: Do we have hostile air support incoming, artillery, or is PTN just loving with us? Discuss. On the one hand, this mission is already several times more complex than the previous one, what with the hostage countdown and infantry tricks. On the other hand, it's PTN. So my guess is, no air support. Just watch out 10-15 turns in when the Capellans have sacrificed enough hostages to summon that Greater Demon.
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Feb 7, 2011 16:31
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Tempest_56 posted:On-topic thought: Do we have hostile air support incoming, artillery, or is PTN just loving with us? Discuss. I think it could be enemy reinforcements.
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Feb 7, 2011 16:31
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Tempest_56 posted:On-topic thought: Do we have hostile air support incoming, artillery, or is PTN just loving with us? Discuss. I think its artillery. They could have hidden infantry too. I mean if our infantry can hide why can't theirs?
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Feb 7, 2011 16:34
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Affi posted:I think its artillery. They could have hidden infantry too. I mean if our infantry can hide why can't theirs? Yeeeeah, I know what you mean. I keep eyeballing the building at 1519 and wondering. At mission opening, it's the only building on the map that didn't have Cappellan infantry inside it. And it's a pretty good location for an ambush, too.
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Feb 7, 2011 16:38
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Tempest_56 posted:Yeeeeah, I know what you mean. I keep eyeballing the building at 1519 and wondering. At mission opening, it's the only building on the map that didn't have Cappellan infantry inside it. And it's a pretty good location for an ambush, too. Shoot it. Just to be sure. And buildings are pretty easy to destroy!
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Feb 7, 2011 16:39
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I think it is going to be arty, this sounds planned out, but i believe that any lack of LOS was lost last turn so we will get to see! they are death commandos so combined arms assholishness is to be expected.
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Feb 7, 2011 16:46
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Arglebargle III posted:Look if you'd had an intelligent argument I wouldn't care but your point is incoherent. Why does it matter who is making the war games? Who has the empire and fights the wars in the Anglosphere? Yeah. It's not Britain and Canada. Oh, well I guess you might have some kind of point if Britain and Canada had been involved in a major war since WWII while no one was looking. Did they? Because if they did you might have some kind of point there. Off the top of my head, not counting deployments smaller than Brigade, peace support or counterinsurgencies like Malaya, Aden or NI: Korea 1950-53 - Full warfighting (Division sized) (Brits and Canadians) Suez 1956 - Full warfighting (Division sized) The Falklands 1982 - Full Warfighting (Division(-) plus sizable naval contingent) Op Granby 1990-91 - Full Warfighting (Division sized) Op Telic 2003 - Full Warfighting (Division sized) As much as Catalyst try to deny it, people will write what they know. For example, since Blaine Lee Pardoe is a self-admitted American Civil War enthusiast, the Archer Christifori series reads like you could just replace some of the names and have the whole thing take place in 1863. Additionally, some of the incidents have been very allegorical to RL, St Ives-Hong Kong, or FWL-Holy Roman Empire anyone? Battletech is far better for not ripping off historical sources than 40K has ever been though. In terms of what time period Battletech is based on, I always thought that 3025 was meant to be Medieval times crossed with a hint of Mad Max, then lurching forwards in time to a more Napoleonic time. Mukaikubo posted:Shoot it. Just to be sure. And buildings are pretty easy to destroy! Remember, this is the Death Commandos, so fuckery should be expected at every level. The hostages we know about are probably just DCs in disguise, and the actual hostages are in that building, or the whole thing is wired up with some crazy biological or chemical boobytrap.  Also remember that in the normal timeline, up until Xin Sheng it is required that all Capellans be hilariously over-the-top moustache-twirling villains, so Im interested to see how PTN writes them now.
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Feb 7, 2011 17:20
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Skillness622 posted:Battletech is far better for not ripping off historical sources than 40K has ever been though.
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Feb 7, 2011 17:34
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I'll try to avoid derails from now on, sorry guys. I seem to be a major source of track-breakage. I'm really psyched for the new Mechwarrior game now that everyone has had a turn bashing the BT canon. A reboot could be seriously exciting. I would absolutely love to see what happens in a new canon timeline where the Word of Blake Jihad didn't happen or wasn't as catastrophic. There's certainly room for lots of evolution and conflict now that the Clans are living cheek-by-jowl with the Inner Sphere. In fact I would love to see the Clan homeworlds added to the maps and see the shape of politics in a shiny new era where things aren't quite as bad as they used to be. (But of course people still fight with giant robots.) (The 40K setting is awesome and awesomely derivative. That is all.)
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Feb 7, 2011 17:43
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Pure Kamikaze posted:I'm very sorry but this is the music that is playing for the round. Don't worry, there are many rounds to come yet.
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Feb 7, 2011 17:48
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Mukaikubo posted:Shoot it. Just to be sure. And buildings are pretty easy to destroy! Nuke it from orbit. Its the only way to be sure.
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Feb 7, 2011 18:16
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Trast posted:Nuke it from orbit. Its the only way to be sure. So that's the Blackist's deal! Maybe they know about some xenomorphs that other people with less advanced science don't. Obviously they did the whole of the inner sphere a favor.
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Feb 7, 2011 18:43
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PoptartsNinja posted:(CapCon spoilers here.) So, a less crazy Romano? Maybe shacked up with Justin? 
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Feb 7, 2011 19:06
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Kenlon posted:So, a less crazy Romano? Maybe shacked up with Justin? Thanks, I just threw up a little in my mouth at the idea of his spawn being a Successor Lord. edit: Okay, okay, maybe it wouldn't be that bad. 
Mukaikubo fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Feb 7, 2011 |
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Feb 7, 2011 19:10
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Pretty sure his Grandson was implied to be the real power behind the Republic of the Sphere.
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Feb 7, 2011 19:29
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