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I am reading all the novels that came out in the 80s and I think I've decided I like when these books and stories are smaller scale. I quite liked the Gray Death Legion trilogy, they're pretty solid airport fiction, and the small stakes feel more real somehow. I thought Wolves on the Border was solid, even if the samurai stuff was incredibly silly. The Warrior trilogy... they're fine? I dunno, Stackpole's characters aren't as likable and the villains are more one-dimensional. I'm also just more interested in Private Jane Doe, Mechwarrior than I am Hanse Davion and Melissa Steiner. The only newer book I've read is Betrayal of Ideals, which I also liked ok. Probably because I think the Clans are just awful, which the book reinforces pretty hard.
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Jan 4, 2021 07:54
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 00:28 |
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I said come in! posted:I am not at all familiar with characters in the Battletech universe. But I am curious about Hanse Davion and Melissa Steiner, as I just saw a slap fight over these two on a Facebook Battletech group and the whole thing is one big From what I have gathered, Hanse Davion is the Cleverest Character Ever and Melissa Steiner is a damsel in distress that everyone loves. They have a very medieval-aristocrat-style political marriage to cement an alliance, which fits with the neofeudal theme of Battletech but is still pretty grody, given he's like 30 years older than she is. I think they also come to love each other? They're designated protagonists so I think so.
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Jan 4, 2021 17:58
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I kind of enjoyed Betrayal of Ideals but that was mostly because it's about how awful the clans are and how they're built entirely on lies. Besides that, it's only passable and the characters are all pretty cartoonish and one-note. Everything I head about Hour of the Wolf made me very frustrated, though, so good riddance to a bad writer and a horrible chud.
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Jul 31, 2022 03:21
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https://twitter.com/CGL_BattleTech/status/1553095688392941568?t=-H6MTX0gvJ-0HNZF0ottdA&s=19
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Aug 7, 2022 02:40
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Comstar posted:So the recent kerfuffle about a writer leaving because he's going to kickstart his own Big Giant Robots universe and game has shown up many many different Battletech channels on YouTube for me. The Death From Above guys seem pretty above board, I haven't seen any weirdness from them.
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Aug 8, 2022 17:39
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Defiance Industries posted:Getting rid of Pardoe is a massive positive but the best thing to do is to stop caring about the white supremacist who is also a bad writer. This is where I'm at.
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Aug 8, 2022 21:11
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Engaging with fashy culture warrior types is dumb, but I think stating those that respond are "fake fans" or whatever is also kind of dumb. I don't know how engaged those people are with Battletech and it doesn't really matter. I also don't really think Pardoe was fired for being a right winger, so his whining is pretty hollow. The general story I've been able to piece together from my admittedly half-hearted investigation is that he went in on the company that was set up to produce the "deluxe" miniatures and they ended up doing a pretty poo poo job of it with the Stormcrow and Black Knight minis being super delayed. Catalyst started looking around for a different company to do those and Pardoe's company then decided to make their own knockoff Battletech in response. Catalyst wasn't wild about this and decided to stop commissioning Pardoe for new stuff, who then threw a tantrum about being cancelled because he either wants that sweet, sweet chud money, truly thinks he's a persecuted truth-teller, or most likely both. Now, his recent mask-off approach to his poo poo politics probably didn't help his case, and based on his behavior over the last month or so, I bet he's a nightmare to work with. I suspect he was a guy who was kept around because he's been writing for the brand since like 1990 and those kind of guys are impossible to get rid of in a company like Catalyst that's seemingly frozen in amber. The poor reception of his recent output (including the novel that was supposed to launch the flagship line, lol) couldn't have helped either, but if he thought Catalyst would keep him on after he launched a knockoff direct competitor to Battletech he's delusional.
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Aug 8, 2022 21:48
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Is there a place to buy bases that match the bases used on the plastic mechs? I bought some from Death Ray designs, and while very nice, they're mdf and don't really have space for a magnet on the bottom. I also like things to match because I'm just like that.
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Aug 9, 2022 19:57
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The Reaper ones might do the trick, but I might just see if any of my local stores have something. Would be cool if Catalyst sold some that match the plastic minis, though.
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Aug 10, 2022 06:20
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I love writing TO&Es and organizing forces so I've been very busy poring over the Master Unit List and availability tables doing exactly that. My clan mechs are getting split between Smoke Jaguar's Third Jaguar Cavaliers and Jade Falcon's Fifth Battle Cluster because I don't like the "good" clans very much; I don't really like apologia for authoritarian eugenicists so playing as the Wolves feels more icky to me. My Inner Sphere mechs are getting split between DC's Second Legion of Vega and my own mercenary group, the Fifth Apollo Regulars. I have written up the Regulars to be a regiment-sized relic of the Amaris Civil War similar to the Eridani Light Horse, but instead of being descended from SLDF forces they're instead descended from a Rim Worlds Republic unit that defected when the SLDF invaded the Republic and then fought against Amaris in the Hegemony. I'm writing them to have a lot of the older Periphery/Rim Republican Army/borderline pirate character that I like, so their officers are elected, stuff like that. I've got a whole write-up in line with Combat Manual: Mercenaries because that's the kind of stuff I get hyper-fixated on and love doing. The Legion of Vega are there to fight Smoke Jaguar on Luthien and because I like the idea of a gently caress-ups battalion quietly resisting their fascist leadership. One thing I like about Battletech is it's written in such a way that weirdos like me can get super into the specifics of "this unit should have these mechs" but it's also fine to just throw four of whatever together, call it a lance, and say that it's salvage. Both approaches work, and that's Cool and Good.
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Aug 20, 2022 19:46
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Catalyst should sell the plastic bases the new mechs are on. I'm planning on backing the upcoming kickstarter and I'm going to pester them about it
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Aug 27, 2022 23:07
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My issues with the Clans are how they are portrayed in the fiction, particularly the "good" clans like Wolf and sometimes Ghost Bear. They're pretty monstrous autocratic oligarchies with rigid caste systems and hosed up eugenics programs, and all of that is fine for a villain faction or if you want to explore how people navigate these horrible systems. It starts to feel kind of gross to me when you focus on their "honorable warrior culture" though. It's why I like the Jade Falcon books, which are primarily about how the hosed up Clan society punishes a man who otherwise embodies their ideal for petty, bigoted reasons, and the mainline Phelan Kell/Clan Wolf books felt pretty icky to me. The focus on how smart and noble the leadership of Clan Wolf is just feels lovely, considering Ulric Kerensky and his peers are the dictators of a literal might-makes-right fashy autocracy. I much prefer the psychos of Smoke Jaguar and Jade Falcon, they're detestable and that's great. Ruleswise, I think one of the designers said they regretted giving the Clans ER everything in their initial invasion and should have given them something more like Heavy lasers; weapons with more tradeoffs that would emphasize getting in close for fast ritualized duels, rather than staying at range. I still like the Clans overall, but they've got problems as written.
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Sep 4, 2022 07:09
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I have disliked every Stackpole book I've read. His prose is fine, but his characters and plots are just awful. I see people recommend his stuff as good books to get into Battletech and I much, much prefer the Grey Death Legion books. They're not high literature or anything, but they're pretty fun, have relatable characters, and do a great job of showing the low-level conflict the game is mostly about.
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Sep 4, 2022 08:14
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I'm almost done listening to Blood Will Tell and I've liked it a lot so far, partially because it doesn't really have bad guys. If anything, our protagonist Danai is kind of the villain, given how lovely the Confederation is. The book doesn't shy away from portraying that, but also does a good job showing why people would buy into their system. There's a great scene where Danai is touring a hydroelectric dam on Sian and talks to the people who built it and work there. They talk about how proud they are to be a part of something that improves the lives of other people on the planet and it made me kind of emotional which I wasn't expecting from a loving Battletech book.
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Sep 4, 2022 21:30
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I was going to say, an antagonist doesn't have to be a villain, they're not synonymous. I love a good villain as much as the next person, but they aren't necessary for a good story.
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Sep 6, 2022 00:42
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So I played my second ever game of Classic today and I have some thoughts. Firstly, I really love it. The game is great fun and there are always decisions to be made and I'm always thinking when I'm looking at the board. While going through the motions and rolling everything can take a while, you don't spend a lot of time waiting on your opponent, and when you are something interesting is usually happening. Battletech has a lot of "old-school" tabletop design at it's heart, what with the billions of tables to roll on, but it feels really refined. It's pretty clear that while the core of the game is an engine designed in the 80s, the 30-some-odd years in the meantime have been used to perfect those tables and the rest of the mechanics. For example, in our first game, my opponent and I did a 1v1 of a Griffin against a Wolverine, both dancing around each other trying to get an advantage. Our hits ended up mirroring each other in the way they clustered in a really interesting way. Lastly, the Battlemaster rules, I love shooting 4 lasers and a bunch of missiles and machine guns into a mech before punching it right in the face and then PPCing a Shadow Hawk right in the ammo next turn. Game rules, mechs rule, can't wait to play again next weekend.
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Sep 26, 2022 07:27
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Yeah, our second game was 2v2 and I much preferred it. Winning initiative was still important but it wasn't the deal breaker that it seemed to be in a 1v1.
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Sep 27, 2022 23:37
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They teased some variant models recently which I would be more interested in than just a dozen UM-R60s but I guess you could do 3 full lances in different colors for infinite campaign OpFors. At least it means resellers will have cheap singles. FishFood fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Oct 1, 2022 |
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Oct 1, 2022 00:47
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lilljonas posted:As a new player, I almost immediately got a distaste for everything involving Clan Wolf and their off-shoots because the stench of "author's favourite" sits like a heavy cloud over everything I've read so far. Is that an unfair reaction? This is 100% the case and it's dreadful. If anyone should be annihilated, it's the Wolves.
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Oct 18, 2022 17:19
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Did some quick googling and it might be a reference to this ancient greek letter that isn't really used any more. A lot of Clan stuff seems like history nerd hyper-references (kind of like Caesar in New Vegas) so it would fit.
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Oct 31, 2022 22:02
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I just read Redemption Rites (which is pretty good, by the way) and the main character, Haya Tetsuhara, is pretty heavily implied to be a lesbian, along with the earlier mentioned Extremely Gay Star Captain Thabo.
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Nov 5, 2022 01:19
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Pretty sure I have ordered stuff from him, I think that's one of the big online Battletech stores along with Aries.
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Nov 6, 2022 06:13
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Just demoed the game for my buddy and I think it may have been the best game demo ever? We were doing a 2v2 against my regular opponent, I gave my friend a Wolverine, I'm in a Battlemaster, and my more experienced buddy has a Wolverine and a Marauder. Well, my new friend managed to get a through-armor critical with his SRM-6 against the Marauder, exploding its ammo. CASE kept it standing, but a couple of turns later another of his SRMs hit the head, forcing the pilot to test for consciousness, which he failed and passed out, landing directly on his cockpit killing him stone dead. Just a hilarious series of events and I think we sold my friend on the game.
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Nov 7, 2022 00:02
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I do wish they would just reprint the original TROs with the new art. I don't think TRO Succession Wars is too bad, but it is missing most of the Unseen mechs so it feels pretty incomplete. They show up in TRO Clan Invasion, but with writeups for the updated versions instead of the originals.
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Nov 7, 2022 03:16
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The lance abilities are super fun and make me scratch my head that the popular fan-made tournament format doesn't use them. That's the whole point of putting together cool and flavorful lances!
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Nov 28, 2022 04:38
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Dec 8, 2022 17:44
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There are two current RPGs, one spreadsheet simulator and one more modern narrative system. I haven't been able to play either, but I've read them both so I can offer a little bit of insight. "A Time of War" is the old-school, hyper-detailed point-buy system. It's absurdly crunchy and building a character with the lifepath system took me over an hour and basically requires a spreadsheet. Gameplay itself doesn't seem insanely complicated, as you're rolling 2d6, adding your bonus, and comparing it to a number for most activities. Mech combat is handled entirely by regular old Battletech and the characters are designed to be transferrable between the two systems. Personal combat reminded me of Cyberpunk in my brief read-through, but I was more interested in character creation to be perfectly frank so I can't offer a whole lot of comment on it. "Mechwarrior Destiny" is a more modern narrative game that takes inspiration from things like Apocalypse World and FATE. Character creation is quick and the gameplay is designed to be fast and cinematic. Personal combat is decided in a couple of rolls and the mech combat is a halfway point between Alpha Strike and Classic Battletech. It's supposed to be pretty good and there's a fan-made hack to expand it into a full wargame. Destiny uses "cues" which are less well defined than I would like but are basically FATE aspects; statements or facts about characters/objects/scenes that you can refer to for gameplay purposes. Interestingly, Destiny kind of expects either a rotating GM or even no GM: I think the designers assume you're going to add this to an existing Battletech campaign/group.
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Dec 15, 2022 18:07
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Owlbear Camus posted:Craft/painting question: Steel Rift offers them, I think you can get them from Fortress Miniatures online.
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Jan 2, 2023 19:22
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I would buy multiple Box o' Bugs, I love those annoying little guys.
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Jan 7, 2023 06:38
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 Here's my Legion of Vega after speedpaint and before metallics/canopy details. I based the scheme off of the Wolverine in Combat Manual: Kurita, but I used Runic Gray because I did not want to gently caress around with the white speedpaint. I'm wondering how I should paint the glass; the image in CM Kurita has blue glass, but I don't think it will pop with the blue-gray chassis. I'm thinking a bright green, maybe?
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Jan 8, 2023 01:00
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I thought the pods were configured for a specific type of 'mech rather than being generic? There might be some interchangeability between chassis but the primary concern was the ability for a given mech to swap configurations. If the problem is missile tubes, you could say that each tube is modular, so you can swap them out from one chassis to another in a different configuration.
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Jan 10, 2023 23:21
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I am curious what exactly makes the Rakshasa bad. It seems reasonable enough; IS XL engines aren't my favorite but the loadout doesn't seem disastrous.
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Jan 18, 2023 07:12
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I've just about finished my Second Legion of Vega, First Battalion, Second Company. It's the first time I've done decals, which were slightly finicky but pretty cool, and I'm really happy with how the cockpits came out. I was initially planning them to be a neon-green color, but eventually settled on turquoise and had a great time blending and such. Here's the whole company, plus a random Atlas I also painted.  The command lance, plus random Atlas. The Wolverine is meant to be Hanfeld Plazmint from Combat Manual Kurita, page 98, whose mech I based the color scheme on. I'm really proud of the cockpit glass on the Katana/Crockett; blending is fun!  The fire lance, featuring the spiffy new Kurita Archer. Once again I'm really happy with the cockpit glass on the Lancelot.  The scout/cavalry lance. Let me tell you, finding a place to fit decals on a Wasp is not easy. When painting the Dragon cockpit I diluted the paint a little bit too much, but the resulting blue wash around the glass looks kind of like a "glow" effect so I'm not too mad about it.
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Jan 19, 2023 03:51
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I think the issue with canonizing currently-used video game designs is the licensing, what with the IP being split evenly in half. I'm not sure how they've gotten away with the Hellcat and that one battle armor from Mechassault, but I doubt we'll see any of the new stuff from MWO or HBS, which is a real shame. I love the Bull Shark, Sun Spider, and the Roughneck.
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Jan 23, 2023 01:37
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Echoing what others have said about Grasslands and Deserts being the best value map packs, but Tukayyid has a couple of maps that would be great in campaign play, regardless of location, like the dropship landing zone or the really pretty rivers map.
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Jan 23, 2023 22:01
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Black Dragon, the third Camacho's Caballeros book, involves treasonous Kurita forces highjacking the Caballeros' mechs en masse. I don't remember if they had some fancy technology that was allowing them to do so, I think they just had the techs refitting them at gunpoint.
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Jan 28, 2023 16:47
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PoptartsNinja posted:Chandrasekhar Kurita was the setting's best supervillain. He really was the best. Just living his best life being fed grapes on a reclining couch while funding terrorists and surreptitiously passing laws for shorter work weeks.
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Jan 28, 2023 20:11
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So I'm looking to start integrating infantry and vehicles and such into my game and I am having some serious trouble navigating Total Warfare, is there a good resource/tutorial for non-Mech units? I'm especially flummoxed by the chapter on Aerospace because dogfights sound pretty fun but good grief I can't parse that. I would kill for a series of books formatted like the Battlemech Manual that covered infantry, vehicles, aerospace, etc. Here's hoping the kickstarter has something like that.
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Feb 2, 2023 21:02
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Yeah, I really think Alpha Strike isn't great until you're at least Company scale and using formations and stuff.
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Feb 7, 2023 20:05
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 00:28 |
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I agree. The setting has problems, the biggest of which is the overwhelming whiteness of the successor states, but it's still pretty rad. The novels... I've enjoyed some of them, usually ones with smaller stories about merc companies or what not, but the bug plot novels are usually pretty dire.
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Feb 9, 2023 20:02
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