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Big Beef City posted:What the hell is this guy talking about? And yet more people speak my weirdo bastard language than have ever been born on Clan Planets. Must sting. Maybe if you lose enough wars people will start taking your dead tongue as a high school elective or something.
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May 22, 2021 09:23
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I'll throw some in.  Art by Keith Thompson. The Stormwalker from the Leviathan book trilogy. The setting is alternate fantasy WW2, where you have one coalition that uses mecha (called "walkers"), and the other coalition uses bioengineered beasts. The steampunk mechas look cool next to those dashing uniforms and coats.   The Koubu from Sakura Wars 2. The setting is alternate fantasy 1920s, where instead of WW1, you instead have a demon invasion. Only a handful of people who have awakened their spiritual powers can fight back against the demons, but the casualty rates were high. Steampunk mecha were invented to help protect the warriors from the demons' attacks. The top picture depict's a Japanese Koubu. The bottom picture has my favorite Koubu variant, the "Eisenkleid", which is a German version used by Reni. Again, I quite like the mixture of elegant uniforms with elegant mechas. Starting with Sakura Wars 5, the Koubu start getting a little too... "out there" for me, where they start doing stuff like flying at supersonic speed like a missile (whereas in the prior games, the Koubu had been slower, more like lumbering giants).    The caped mecha "Scherazade" from Escaflowne, piloted by the deuteragonist Allen Schezar. In the setting, you have a one of a kind ancient mecha called "Escaflowne" (shown on the left on the second image), which is powered by the heart of a slain dragon and piloted by the king. The Escaflowne was reverse engineered to create Guymelef mechas like Scherazade for the common soldier (the power source of the Guymelefs is never explained IIRC). The Escaflowne and the Guymelefs have a unique control system, where instead of having joysticks and throttles and keyboards like in most mechas, the pilots instead insert their arms and hands into a rig, allowing the mecha's arms to imitate their pilot's arm movements. Thus, your fencing skill directly translates into your mecha's melee combat ability. Strong warriors on foot are to be especially feared in their mecha suit. I thought this system made a lot of sense (in Trails of Cold Steel, it doesn't make sense how strong warrior's melee combat skills translate into mecha combat skill if they're using a joystiq/throttle/keyboard control interface). The protagonist, King Van, is an arrogant kid who sorta sucks at combat, but he's piloting the well armored Escaflowne so he's safe to make mistakes. Allen, however, is a master fencer, and is pretty awesome with his mass produced Guymelef. Plus, his mech has a shoulder cape, so obviously he's cooler.   Spiegal variant Soldat. Valimar, from Trails of Cold Steel. Like Escaflowne, Valimar is an ancient mecha, which the mass produced mechas for the common soldier of the present day (called "Soldats") were reverse engineered from. I thought Valimar had some really cool lore about how it was created, the history of wars it was involved in, and it's psychic/lifeforce connection to its pilot. Valimar was also sentient, and over the course of the games became one of my most favorite characters. The Soldats do the Code Geass thing where they have wheels in their feet, so they can travel very quickly across smooth surfaces like paved roads. One thing I really like about the depiction of mechas in Trails of Cold Steel is how mecha don't invalidate tanks. In most mecha shows, tanks and other ground forces are puny compared to the mechas, and you wonder why anyone still bothers making them. Well, in Cold Steel, tanks aren't really invalidated. They are capable of taking out Soldats (happens quite a lot onscreen) and are very much a threat. It often boils down to the terrain: the tanks do really well on wide open fields of soggy lands, where the soldats can't just rollerblade straight up to them and have to walk a long distance. Whereas soldats have the advantage in uneven, hilly and forested terrain where it is difficult for tanks to manuever. They're about equal on large open fields of smooth surfaces. I particularly like the Hector variant of Soldat. It is boxy and armored.    Pictured top: Ruby Weapon. Second two pictures are of Diamond Weapon Final Fantasy XIV has storyline called "The Sorrow of Werlyt". It is about trying to liberate a small country called "Werlyt" from the VIIth Imperial Legion. The VIIth Legion's gimmick is their mecha research. The Empire dug up an ancient mecha called the "Ultima Weapon" and reverse engineered it, and now they are producing their own mechas. It has already been brought up numerous times before in the XIV discussion threads, but the FF7 Weapons are pretty explicitly based off of various Gundam mechas. FF14's redesigns makes the weapons out to be more bio-organic and it's a cool aesthetic. Another creepy-cool thing about the FF14 Weapons is their Oversoul ability. As you might have guessed, the empire is in a Japan vs US situation where they are way in over their head and their defeat is a foregone conclusion. In their delusion, they have turned towards horrific superweapon research, hoping against hope that this will somehow carry them to victory. They have installed a "Oversoul" system into the cockpits of the Weapons. When activated, it warps/mutates the pilot into a famed Imperial warrior of eld (whose combat data was recorded by the armor they wore into battle). The Empire hopes that they can stash newbs into their mechas and turn them into ace warriors with the flick of a switch. It's pretty gruesome and horrific. My personal favorite design is Diamond Weapon. The weapons weren't destroyed, but were captured. I really hope that if the Weapons come back, that I can choose to pilot the Diamond Weapon. They gave us a smaller Weapon of our own to pilot, the G-Warrior, which is cool, but Diamond Weapon is cooler.  SHD-2H Shadowhawk by Shoji Kawamori. I loved the feel of early Battletech, when mechs were very rare, almost always the treasured heirloom of a feudal house, and you had chivalrous duels between mechs. The early clan invasion storyline was cool, when you had that "civilized knights defending against savage barbarians" feel. But then the clans overstayed their welcome and started getting watered down, and started feeling less like terrifying savages and more like silly cartoon villains. Mecha battle started becoming more and more corporatized, with the feudal feel of the setting going away, and every tom and his grandmother had a mecha. I loved Shoji Kawamori's initial designs for Battletech. Unfortunately, the Harmony Gold fiasco happened, and instead we got... well, I just don't really have anything nice to say about the designs of the mechas after Kawamori's were ditched. I'm also not too into the predominantly ranged combat. I like melee mechs like Hatchetman, but they're never playable in the video games, and I bowed out of tabletop years ago.  Barbatos art by theDURRRIAN Barbatos has already been brought up before, but that's not going to stop me from gushing about IBO. I liked the stories and characters of prior Gundams (particularly Wing and War in the Pocket), but I just don't like the aesthetic of the mechas and I don't like the lasers. Also, the Gundam stories became very formulaic: space colonies versus earth federation. IBO was a huge breath of fresh air for me in that regard, with the setting expanding to include Mars and Venus (not seen in the show) and even a mafia based in orbit around Jupiter. And you had feudal houses and their treasured heirloom Gundams, and you had ancient gundams being dug up which fought in a war against FF7 style Weapons. And they fight in melee combat! And you had the dangerous nervous system implants that let pilots directly jack into their Gundams (which may or may not be literally possessed by demons). This is my kind of setting and I want more of it, but sadly it's been 5 years since IBO and there has been no news on a IBO spinoff or of a new Gundam series that will continue down this direction. Moofia Boss Val fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Jun 6, 2021 |
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May 23, 2021 00:54
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quote:I like melee mechs like Hatchetman, but they're never playable in the video games, and I bowed out of tabletop years ago. The Hatchetman is in the newest turn based Battletech game!
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May 23, 2021 01:25
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That 'scorpion' in the second image there reminded me of this thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alI5LphKOyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeFgdnoRqWA LazyMaybe fucked around with this message at 01:45 on May 23, 2021 |
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May 23, 2021 01:43
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RBA Starblade posted:The Hatchetman is in the newest turn based Battletech game! Thanks for the headsup! IronicDongz posted:That 'scorpion' in the second image there reminded me of this thing: The Zoid-like designs of the Cybran experimentals were cool. One of them reminded me of a Power Rangers dino mecha.  
Moofia Boss Val fucked around with this message at 06:33 on May 23, 2021 |
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May 23, 2021 06:30
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it's also called "Cybranasaurus Rex"
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May 23, 2021 19:39
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It's too bad Supreme Commander 2 was such a garbage fire.
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May 23, 2021 21:00
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The Cargo Cult era of Square-Enix was just crammed full of bad decisions.
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May 23, 2021 21:15
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Supreme Commander 2 isn't anywhere near a garbage fire. At absolute worst it's not quite what supcom diehards wanted due to being less macro/"huge unit numbers" focused and a bit more casual.
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May 23, 2021 21:16
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The problem is that it's not anything different anymore. It's just a generic RTS trying to chase what they assumed would be hype for SC2 (lol)
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May 23, 2021 21:35
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That doesn't really mean anything to me as a non-diehard, it's a game I played when I was a kid(maybe 13-14 years old?) over at a friends house on their laptop and enjoyed watching the big robots blow each other up
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May 23, 2021 22:16
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Then skip the parts where you try to defend its quality and instead say "have you considered using time travel to play it when you were a child and didn't know any better"
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May 23, 2021 22:18
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"Let's make the sequel to the game in which you were a faceless commander of a vast military machine, throwing hundreds of units at your enemy at once in the hopes of ending a war that has claimed countless lives over a thousand years. But instead, let's make the player an anime protagonist, scale back the combat so it can fit on an XBox 360, and make the faction of religious zealots have all of their units named after puns."
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May 23, 2021 23:01
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Defiance Industries posted:Then skip the parts where you try to defend its quality and instead say "have you considered using time travel to play it when you were a child and didn't know any better" If you don't like it that's fine, but it is in no way shape or form a "garbage fire". Garbage fire videogames are things like Sonic 06 and Cyberpunk 2077.
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May 23, 2021 23:42
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IronicDongz posted:I've also played it recently because I own it on steam. It is still, as it was then, a totally fine RTS game which is why it has good ratings and is remembered fairly well outside of a specific small niche of players who are still playing FA. One of the Aeon anti-air units is called "Airnomo". It's a garbage fire.
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May 24, 2021 00:05
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Sorry about your extreme allergy to goofy unit names. Also, I recently found this cool artist: https://mobile.twitter.com/buragay_jan/status/1382003764492521474
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May 24, 2021 00:29
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IronicDongz posted:Also, I recently found this cool artist: I like the paint decal on the mecha in the 4th picture. I wish cool paintjobs were more common on mecha, though I understand that it's hard to do for 2D animated mecha, since you already have a LOT of lines that have to be painstakingly drawn, and an elaborate paintjob adds even more. Hawken (was Quake but with mechs, was quite fun but the developer abandoned it and it shut down, RIP) had animal skins that you could buy, which reminded me of how WW2 plane nose art. Seriously, why doesn't more sci fi do this with mecha and spaceships? It's an easy way to make stuff more unique, identifiable, cooler, and could even expand the lore/worldbuilding if you have an industry of artists who hang out in hangar bays, being paid to paint mechas and spaceships. IIRC the only anime that even touched on this was Aldnoah.Zero, in which Inaho ordered that his suit be painted orange so his rival could find him on the battlefield.  
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May 24, 2021 01:09
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You want cool, intimidating mech art? *sigh* Alright, but don't say I didn't warn you. 
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May 24, 2021 01:24
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I have a weird grognard form of dyslexia where I can never, ever, ever tell you which is which when looking at pictures of the Ostscout, Ostroc, and Ostsol
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May 27, 2021 05:02
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GD_American posted:I have a weird grognard form of dyslexia where I can never, ever, ever tell you which is which when looking at pictures of the Ostscout, Ostroc, and Ostsol Haze'n Thley II Rah and Haze'n Thley Rah II would like to warn you away from Advance of Zeta.
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May 27, 2021 06:55
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Big Beef City posted:You want cool, intimidating mech art? 
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May 27, 2021 14:20
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Defiance Industries posted:It's a Mad Cat 
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May 29, 2021 05:50
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Going to stick this here as well for those that might enjoy it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv0HjfuMt-c The background and features of one of the most iconic mechs, the Marauder!  A mech that is not only original and unique but transcends multiple brands due to being so awesome. A true beauty. The Last Call fucked around with this message at 23:29 on May 29, 2021 |
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May 29, 2021 23:21
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I JUST watched this last night. He's SO goddamn good at these. Everyone should watch all of his poo poo. His two parter on The Amaris Civil War should win some kind of major award. Except with this, particular one, he ...missed one thing. It's not a big thing. But when you're talking about the ENTIRE history of the Marauder program and you even have a little segment about "One offs and legendary versions" of the Marauder, and you miss this ONE THING, it sorta stands out. The Black Marauder isn't covered wtf its like the only supernatural thing IN battletech and you DON'T talk about it 
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May 30, 2021 03:41
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How awesome can it be if it has a giant cannon on the part least able to handle recoil?
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May 30, 2021 07:20
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Big Beef City posted:Except with this, particular one, he ...missed one thing. It's not a big thing. But when you're talking about the ENTIRE history of the Marauder program and you even have a little segment about "One offs and legendary versions" of the Marauder, and you miss this ONE THING, it sorta stands out. Huh, didn't know that one was real, or true to canon. Because it showed up in the Battletech Tabletop LP session and I had just sorta dismissed it as something the guy running it came up with because the thread is all about changing the setting.
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May 30, 2021 14:47
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Nah, I don't introduce stuff like that unless it exists in canon in some way. Most of my weird HPG shenanigans are "Wobbies Did It First" stuff. BattleTech doesn't shy away from weird unexplainable pseudomagical poo poo like the Phantom 'Mech pilots, the Black Marauder, Word of Blake hyperspace Kronenberg research, or Nova Cat visions always being 100% correct (with the Nova Cats themselves generally not being worldly enough to interpret them correctly until after the events have already happened). PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 15:49 on May 30, 2021 |
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May 30, 2021 15:37
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Prophecies in good stories both modern and ancient are written as setups for punchlines.
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May 30, 2021 16:12
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Cooked Auto posted:Huh, didn't know that one was real, or true to canon. Because it showed up in the Battletech Tabletop LP session and I had just sorta dismissed it as something the guy running it came up with because the thread is all about changing the setting. Nah, that's why everyone in the thread was like "oh poo poo! no way!" when it showed up, heh. It's not really anything you expect to run into. Ever. At all. PoptartsNinja posted:Nah, I don't introduce stuff like that unless it exists in canon in some way. Yeah, but 'phantom' mech pilots like The Mysterious Stranger or whatever that assassin is, is plausible because it may just be one person assuming the mantle of previous ones (at least that's the one I'm thinking of). WoB's FTL stuff I'm not familiar with but I guess I didn't consider 'what happens when you jump/look into hyperspace' to be paranormal, just "Thems the breaks", sorta. The Tripitz, and whatever that one jump ship was that warped in with everything inside it sliced in half and moved over a couple mm's The thing I mentioned seems to be the only ACTUAL paranormal thing out there that I'm aware of? Given that it eats people and shapeshifts and grows teeth and poo poo, and isn't just 'oh spooky' But I'd defer to your call on that kinda thing I think 
Big Beef City fucked around with this message at 19:58 on May 30, 2021 |
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May 30, 2021 19:51
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PoptartsNinja posted:Nah, I don't introduce stuff like that unless it exists in canon in some way. Roy Calbeck when?
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May 30, 2021 20:05
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Big Beef City posted:Yeah, but 'phantom' mech pilots like The Mysterious Stranger or whatever that assassin is, is plausible because it may just be one person assuming the mantle of previous ones quote:WoB's FTL stuff I'm not familiar with but I guess I didn't consider 'what happens when you jump/look into hyperspace' to be paranormal, just "Thems the breaks", sorta. A lot of the weird stuff in universe is explainable but in a way that usually leaves the explanations just inadequate enough to leave just enough of a margin for doubt that it really could be something supernatural or alien at play. The Black Marauder could be the story of a demonic BattleMech possessed by unknown forces that brings ruin to all around it or it could just be the story of an AFFC officer who had a psychotic break and turned pirate and just so happened to pilot a Marauder.
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May 30, 2021 21:24
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Big Beef City posted:I JUST watched this last night. He's SO goddamn good at these. Everyone should watch all of his poo poo. His two parter on The Amaris Civil War should win some kind of major award. Tex and the others that contribute to the Battletech stuff is really outstanding. I've probably watched/listened to it all a few times by now. It's so well done and captivating. I never knew of the Black Marauder, so that's pretty cool. It's only fitting there would be some ghost stories out there.
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May 30, 2021 21:30
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Alway have a ghost mech when you run a campaign, is my DM advice. Mine was a solid gold mech piloted by the devil called the Baphomech. Players love themselves a ghost story.
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May 30, 2021 21:52
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The Last Call posted:Tex and the others that contribute to the Battletech stuff is really outstanding. I've probably watched/listened to it all a few times by now. It's so well done and captivating. I dunno if you play the latest Battletech pc game that came out (2019?) but one of the biggest/best mods for it, RogueTech, has him and Duncan Fischer, the producer, and I think a couple others as pilot voice packs. Without knowing this, I got a pilot named 'Tex' at startup after installing the mod. Thought nothing of it. Went into a battle, and...holy poo poo, it was TEX, TEX, talking to me! lol (plus just get RogueTech anyway it's got pretty much every mech ever made in it, a mech designer, lets you use two lances, as well as pilot vehicles and stuff, it's a GREAT add on) Big Beef City fucked around with this message at 03:35 on May 31, 2021 |
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May 31, 2021 03:30
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Might well just be a Marauder that's got some weird mods and sometimes has shark jaw nose art and panicking pilots and soldiers end up hallucinating. Or some poorly understood Lostech used to scare the enemy. Came up before that Battletech actually has a much worse case of lost technology than 40k, that Star League tech at its height was well beyond anything the survivors understand. I still have my own personal headcanon that Battlemechs were the Star League equivalent of monster trucks, but they were the only advanced military tech remaining after devastating wars blew everything else up.
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May 31, 2021 08:25
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Big Beef City posted:I dunno if you play the latest Battletech pc game that came out (2019?) but one of the biggest/best mods for it, RogueTech, has him and Duncan Fischer, the producer, and I think a couple others as pilot voice packs. Crowd funded it, played it, beat it. I haven't touched it in some time but that's cool that they made a mod like that. That's awesome. I'm about to start playing Mechwarrior 5 now that it's out on Steam, hopefully somehow we'll get the same for that.
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May 31, 2021 21:37
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Might well just be a Marauder that's got some weird mods and sometimes has shark jaw nose art and panicking pilots and soldiers end up hallucinating. Or some poorly understood Lostech used to scare the enemy. The non-mystical interpretation is that it's a Marauder someone painted Vantablack that was equipped with a smoke machine; and that it had a faulty neuro-linkup or some sort of prototype SLDF DNI system that very quickly drove its pilots into addiction and violent psychosis. It doesn't take much to start a ghost story in the periphery. Just like the non-crazy explanation for Far Country is that it's a hyperspace-induced hallucination experienced by the leader of a DEST team that plays out over the course of the week or so it takes their JumpShip to plummet into some random system's primary star after their misjump. Content: the Savage Wolf It takes a lot of effort to make a 'mech that can compete with the Timber Wolf in a significant way. The Timby was one of the most accidentally perfectly optimized 'Mechs in BattleTech. It practically pioneered a short list of other accidentally 'near perfect' designs like the Black Python (Viper), Stormcrow, Mad Cat III, Elemental BattleArmor, Hellstar, and (weird as it is to say) Grand Dragon. Like the Hellstar, the Timber Wolf was so accidentally good the line developers have shied away from making anything that really came close to matching it for over a decade. The Timber Wolf was so successful it became the start of a family of 'Mechs that are all so good that if you see any 'Mech with the Timby's profile in play you know it's probably going to gently caress something up. I'd be willing to bet that nearly all of the Timber Wolf's descendants have been better (accidentally or intentionally) than the designers probably intended, starting from its fat goony troll of a son the Mad Cat Mk II to its sleek and efficient grandson the Mad Cat III. Both were good designs (with the III being a genuine contender for unseating the Stormcrow as the best medium 'Mech ever designed (at least until the Stormcrow's own grandson, the Skinwalker, was designed)); but none could really challenge the Timber Wolf directly. The Savage Wolf (Mad Cat IV) is the Timber Wolf's great grandchild and its only direct competitor. And it's close, really close. The Savage Wolf trades a little of the original model's inherent Clan durability for a different kind of durability that completely changes the way the 'Mech is actually played (and allows for extreme aggression against targets the Timber Wolf would prefer to avoid), thanks to the Savage Wolf's near immunity to the most common critseeker weapons: the LB-X autocannons. It's a design that says "Hey, what if we took the Timber Wolf and designed a replacement for players who are even more aggressive!" and I absolutely love that. It also helps that you can see how past iterations have influenced the design: it shares the blunter nose of the III, and the arm and launcher designs of the Mk II, while sporting what is basically a minor update of the original's legs done up in the more angular Dark Age style. It's a good 'Mech. Familiar, yes, but even the variants that are direct copies of an original configuration play differently in a way that makes it more than just microwaved leftovers. 
PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Jun 1, 2021 |
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Jun 1, 2021 04:16
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PoptartsNinja posted:The non-mystical interpretation is that it's a Marauder someone painted Vantablack that was equipped with a smoke machine; and that it had a faulty neuro-linkup or some sort of prototype SLDF DNI system that very quickly drove its pilots into addiction and violent psychosis. It doesn't take much to start a ghost story in the periphery. The funny thing is that's also a pretty cool idea and makes for a scary fucker with a pretty good tactic, especially for piracy. Scooby-doo plots can actually work pretty well when the villain is entirely willing to actually kill people rather than just try to scare them. (see also Hound of the Baskervilles) Another thing I just found out about Battletech; in the right conditions, a big enough mech with jump-jets can pull off a loving Goomba Stomp as a successful strategy. Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Jun 3, 2021 |
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Jun 1, 2021 08:17
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I feel like somebody needed to post these in this thread.   These are the mechs from Scythe, a board game themed around an alternate universe where there's a world-war style confrontation between the Great Powers of an alternate Europe (and alt-Japan in the expansion).  The name I guess is because the game has a lot of economic engine stuff aside from the war fighting, and you command farmers and workers around on your map as well as giant robots. I thought at first that might mean that the robots would also help in the farming and building and stuff, but no. The Russian robot does kind of have scythe-hands, but not for harvesting with. At least not so far as I remember.   There is a bit of an issue I think with the overall design of the mechs. A lot of them don't really seem well-conceived, and a few of them are basically just real-world vehicles on legs. Saxony has a tank on legs, the Nordic Kingdom has a boat on legs, the Crimean Khanate is basically the Tsar tank but with legs added. The official art is also very beautiful, but a lot of the time the mech depicted isn't even one of the mechs actually in the game.     
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Jun 5, 2021 20:49
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If you haven't played Iron Harvest you should. The 1920+ mechs look sooooo good in motion.
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Jun 5, 2021 22:58
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