#megamek

[vanvelding]

Playing MekHQ--the Java program that runs Battletech campaigns the same way MegaMek lets you play Battletech games--has been revelatory.

-The "tech" in Battletech refers to the meds used by quartermasters.

-It took a good tutorial, a night's sleep, and a full-on bankruptcy to begin to be able to use this, but it was a good time.

-Don't tell anyone on the Battletech forums I said this, but it actually does take more than some SRMs and a solid kick to take care of vehicles. Fuck those guys.

-MegaMek is used to resolve fights and MegaMek's bot, Princess, will let transports deploy basic infantry in environments cold enough to drop a 'mech's heat. RIP, PBIs.

-I'm going to narrow my stable of 'mechs down to 'mechs of each movement profile by tonnage. They're going to have large lasers, AC/10's, LRM 15, medium lasers, SRM 4's, and machine guns only. None of this searching for a new right arm for a 50 ton 'mech plus the PPC to put on it, but one roll failed so now I'm debating whether to put equipment I already have--a large laser--onto it.

-Machine guns aren't bad in The Succession Wars (intro tech)...provided they're banked as a 5-ton, 10-crit, 0 heat, spray weapon.

-Mechwarriors and staff will just quit??? Staff leave the company? Staff take severance and abandon the Colonel? oh! oh! Dispossession for mechwarriors! Dispossession for mechwarriors for One Thousand Years!

-I'm absolutely not sure how force balancing works. I was slammed by vees and aerofighters in my first contract, but then I dropped several lances of 'mechs on subsequent contracts and just clobbered them. Maybe that's the merc game and I should be prepared for the same kind of clobbering to come my way in the future.

-MekHQ isn't great at sending victory conditions to MegaMek when it kicks off, so in a game where I had to keep half the enemy from getting away, I killed a dozen vehicles before three swirling fighters started picking me apart. Left the battlefield victoriously on turn 20, but my allied Kuritian Trebuchet spent 400 turns whittling away at the enemy fighters with just his medium lasers...and won. Those Draconis Combine guys are obsessive!

#battletech #megamek

[worseaccount]

Don't have the disposable 60$ for Armored Core 6 so I'm playing Armored Core 6 at home

It's a little more "spreadsheet" than "high-speed action shooter", but the game feel is pretty much the same as AC6

#armored core #armored core at home #megamek #battletech #shitpost? #joke would've worked better with C21 than with megamek

[pandacommander24a]

Bug Batchall

Sometimes you do silly things. @asksanguinius40k

Right so the story.

It should maybe end with a funny joke about what I bid, but at the same time... A voice came to me, and it asked a simple question...

And, like, I took that personally.

For those that don't think about 80s wargames lore all the time... The fuck are we even talking about?

A batchall is the Battle Challenge, get it, issued before a Trial in Clan "Culture."

The clans are a group of space weirdos who left Earth after pulling a Space Middle East, leading to a Galactic war that left hundreds of worlds burning and hundreds of trillions dead. After they almost killed themselves in the same way that the poor bastard they left behind had, the worst son of the greatest military leader mankind ever had, came up with the "perfect society" to never have that threat happen again to the human race... Except he created the very thing that would lead to happening four more times. Trail of Annihilation, which you know the Wolverines were right, the Clan Invasion, the War of Reaving, and the Conquest of the Republic. Not my Ilkhan.

A Trial is an honorable combat to settle a dispute between Clans and inner Clan disagreements. There are six, and they grow in severity, ending with Annihilation. You can't have a Trial without a Batchall.

In this case, the Trail of Possession to Call a bug looking mech a bug, https://www.tumblr.com/gort-grundlekin/739688789810823168/bug-type-mech

Normally, a Batchall would start with me issuing the challenge and declaring what I think this attack should cost; my opponent would then state what they are bidding in defense. If I was cool, and I am cool, I would counter-bid with a lower force than my opponent. Then my opponent, being a cool person, would counter-bid lower. Then, because, as stated, I'm cool, I would counter a lower force. And then... You get the idea...

The idea is to get to the lowest cost possible for the conflict, agreed to by both parties. Mind you, this is expected to cost human life; the question is, how good is my human life to be able to beat the other person's human cost.

Which brings us to the Bid;

One War Hawk, an 85-ton gun platform, smashed into the IS forces of the DCMS so hard they named it Masakari because it hit like an ax and split forces in two. There is not a bad variant of this; all of them hit like a MACK truck, and none of them are fun face down.

Three Horned Owl Light mechs. Relatively lightly armed, the Horned Owl makes up for it by having speed, dexterity, and staying power, unlike most clan designs. The Clan Weapons easily make this one able to punch into the Medium Tonnage, but this guy is sharing the tonnage ranking just before you get medium and is basically, in some ways, a clan Panther.

Fun fact; this mech was based on the Zaku from Gundam, and you can see it with its mono-eye cockpit.

Finally, a star of Elementals. Imagine Astates in a hard Sci-fi setting instead of a Space Opera one, and that's the Elementals. Genetically engineered super soldiers clad in advance power armor, allowing them to rip apart tanks and mechs while moving faster than

In a bit of humor, the two clans that have championed this fight, the Goliath Scorpions and the Coyotes, are more responsible for the Elementals than their credited creators, Clan Wolf. All they did was steal better ideas for themselves; it is almost as if that will be the trend for their narrative...

Thanks to the Goliath Scorpions' creation of underwater suits known as Water Elementals to complete complex tasks at incredible depth, the Elemental Suits have incredible armor and a flexible chassis.

However getting any weapon systems or the amount of options that are fielded by the Elementals would not be possible without the OMNITECH created by Clan Coyote. The "Hey man, if you keep changing your fucking work order every five minutes, I'll brain you, warrior caste or no warrior caste" clan. Coyote Tech Caste created the flexible slot system to allow a greater amount of customization in payloads which allowed for rapid force changes in battle and easier repairs to a degree.

Additionally Clan Hell's Horse created the genetic template that would become the Elemental people. The first drafts were so good without the elemental suits they almost won against normal Clan Wolf Dudes in the power armor.

That is a good Star, strong punch, movibility and a surprise waiting at your feet.

My Rebuttal Bid:

Savage Coyote is an 85 ton Assault Mech built to showcase two weapon systems; Omni-Tech Advance Tactical Missiles or the Clan ATM, all the fun of LRMs with SRM fun. Thanks to a XL engine this bad boy is stuff with armor and weapons. Built to bring the Coyotes in tho the post Golden Century Swinging.

An oldie but a classic, the Coyotl is the first Omnitech. However, built to prove the concept, it is a capable machine. All of its variants are built to have a solution to any problem.

The Rabid Coyote is a medium mech designed to serve as backup to slower mechs. It's moderately armored, but its pulse laser ensures its deadly accurate and carries a mixed tonnage of ATM ammunition. It is more than able to punch up from its modest 55 tons.

To round this out, I have also taken;

TWO ELEMENTAL STARS!

The total of my Bid is 180 Tons vs 195. Kids never play tonnage, however, since everyone was Clan... It was the only way to do this. However surprisingly?

Pretty close in BV.

Right, so let's get to the actual fight:

For the purpose of not knowing and also keeping things relatively interesting, I decided I would use late-era mechs, mostly Jihad mechs.

Also Clan Coyote stops being important in the Clan Invasion and suffers from the "Don't want to write a complex Clan narrative anymore" that CGL blessed us with in the War of the Reaving. There are a lot of reason people hate the Jihad, and besides its name, this is one of the reasons.

Lamba Galaxy is generally my go-to pick for Clanners. Coyotes and I like our mechs experimental and they have a neat paint scheme in the lambas. Seen here on a group of bois I need to touch up at some point:

Clan Coyote will also join the Society in a big way; Lamba Galaxy almost completely defects to them during the War of Reaving. The Society was a revolt from Clan Scientists Caste who was tired of Collage Jocks making all the big choices because dying young is a big clan ethos for Warriors. So they threw out a bunch of tech and advanced battle mechs to maybe save the clans from their ways. They lost, big shocker right?

Clan Coyote however gets to stay in the Tree house and disappear from the game's story. Possible forever... Fucking Jihad.

The Savage Coyote Variant was one such model built by the Society, with a HAG, targeting computers and Imporved ATM its a tough nut with a great punch.

The Coyotl, like wise was a bunch of tech from later than the Golden Century but felt right as a good addition to my bid.

Finally I brought a regural Rabid Coyote default, because 3 pulse laser should kill Elementals dead. It is why the Komodo has 9 fucking Medium lasers after all.

Clan Goliath Scorpion got kicked out of the tree house and is running around the Deep Periphery kicking ass and taking names. They, too, lost the War of Reaving, but they aren't bitches like Jade Falcon, Wolf, and Ghost Bear. Ultimately, it looks like they are going to pull a Clan Invasion 2.0. It's going to be more Revenge of the Periphery than Attack of the Clans though, I'm hyped for it. So the Scoripon Empire moves on closer and closer to the Inner Sphere.

For the Warhawk, I picked the mixed tech Alternate Configuration T to reflect this era. This does drop the long-range murder effect to a degree but it gives it two PPC that are also flamers, which for a clan mech is murder on the wheel, they run hot, and it also kind of better puts it in the timeline for a dust up of Clans in a late-era that aren't just Sucessor States that were once Clans... Fucking Wolf Empire.

For the Owls I pick two later eras ones and one default. The Default is murder; the other ones are just fun. I do this when I field a bunch of the same much, take variants, and they stacked up well enough to help each other out and make so I can't quite use the same tactic on all three.

But I made creative choices that might not be made if we did this for real.

BV and tonnage works out. Sadly I didn't have any friends online, so I had to resort to Princess, megamek's ai, and since this will be a quick game, brawler seemed good (maybe I shouldn't have had the Run Away so high in hindsight.)

Default victory I used with my friends is 40% BV lost, which is a good place for a friendly fight. Also so it doesn't last forever which can happen with bad dice.

For Pilots, I set all to the Clanner Default, 3/4 for everyone.

I picked the terrain.

A good mix of hills and vegitation. Flipping a coin, I was north, and my opponent south.

The fight was pretty fast. we moved quickly towards each other and started blasting, mostly missing. My Rabid Coyote got caught in the open and was knocked down, but the pilot managed to get her up and moving next round.

Then we slammed into each other, and the first blood went to the Scorpions.

The Coyatl has ECM, but it really didn't do much. It was funny. The Owls proved to be deadly, swarmed my Rabid Coyote and just sliced him to pieces. Managed to knock one of the Owls down.

The Toads jump in behind.

The next phase, I pulled back into the forest, and as my Coyotl pulled rapidly back trying to catch the Owls in a better firing line. The Owls that could jump far and wide, with one finding my rear armor of the Savage open to their pulse weapons. The owl, knocked prone, made an effort to go hull down, unable to get back up the next round.

The Warhawk fell back and opened fire on my Savage as well; with the high advantage and those long-ranged guns, it was the smart call.

In the firing phase saw my Savage tooke nearly 120 damage. Luckily no punches through the armor for the Warhawk and some how under the pulse lasers the back armor held.

Thanks to that barrage, my savage was knocked down, but the pilot pulled a hull down, allowing it to stay fighting.

Since this massive exchange happened in rapid order and heat was running red for both of us. I couldn't get the Savage moving too much heat, but to my dismay, the Warhawk bet heavily on that attack as well and was left unable to move and, worst, exposed on that hill.

Moving my elementals I forced them to get the Owls off the Savage while moving my Coyotl into minimum range bracket for all its weapons. This allowed me to pour fire from both the Savage and the Coyotle, scoring two engine hits despite not punching through the massive armor. The Warhawk had been cripple and couldn't likely survive another attack with that savaging, and with its engine compromised, so too were the heat sinks.

The Warhawk had to pull back and try and get off that hill.

Meanwhile, the Owl knocked prone manage to get up and turn on my Coatyl near it. However, thanks to the coyotes movement, I was able to win that fight and knock out that Owl.

In the moving away from the Toadies one of the other owls messed up a jump roll and was forced off the game, considering it retreated bummer...

Unable to get the Warhawk moving, the AI punched it out as well.

Finally with the toadies in range the real fight got started as the last owl jumped in to finish off my Savage, but my elementals were waiting and pounced on the light mech begingin to swarm as their elements closed distance and proceeded to bloody my other elemental unit.

And the game ended because a lot of BV was scraped off the board.

So I win.

And as my right to decide... It's a bug mech, the king of all bugs even. Realized now, after writing this 3 hours later, that the Trail was for our Gender... Does this make your pronouns my bond servants?

Thanks for Reading. I am now going to have to think about Clans created in the 80s by dudes who gave us a legacy of yellow scare to unpack and how they would have written gender.

#Battletech #mechwarrior #megamek #All my homies hate on clan wolf #I love FASA but some of their takes did not age well #This was not serious #Finding more Articles wrong on Sarna again

[doolallymagpie]

big fan of the "taking enemy pilots prisoner" mechanic in MekHQ, makes me feel all Big Boss

this is my weird oil rig in the Aurigan Reach, and you've been abducted via balloon to join my funky club where we commit war crimes against the Taurian Concordat

#battletech #megamek #mekhq

[catgirlmechapilot]

Cant stop messin with MEGAMEK

been workin on a lance of Aesthetically similar look im goin for

Here’s what ive got for my 6kbv Lance ive named DOWNPOUR >:3

#outside the rave i prefer a lot of their older looks tho id prolly get the older ones if i ever get models #had a hard time picking a medium mech as they nearly all have arms #Im open to suggestions #mecha #battletech #megamek #raven #black lanner #catapult #stalker #mech warrior

[akitoscorpio]

MegaMek is a very enjoyable experience, it's Battletech, that you can play over the internet, and handles all the math for you so you can see how that Cyclops assault mech just vaporized itself with three separate ammo explosions that caused it to cook off like a Russian ammo dump.

#battletech #MegaMek #Shit #is it to soon to make those jokes?

[swedebeast]

Are you fucking kidding me.

#MechBuster 2 is going to Valhalla #megamek #battletech #mechbuster #Gunship's Fly for your Life comes to mind

[radnewworld]

Hey... Wanna see something gross?

#battletech #megamek #from fine to cored in one mech's shooting

[agbpaints]

Ok I'm becoming the Joker right now because I looked at Battletech too hard and fell into a crack.

This is the Archer Rubinsky, a custom refit of an ARC-2R used by Rubinsky's Renegades that takes advantage the Inner Sphere techbase of the 3050s to swap the design's LRMs for 4 SRM-6s and add a Hatchet to the mech. It's a pretty cool design and after I saw Flechs didn't have it (even though Sarna and the MUL did) I decided to track the thing down.

First stop was the MUL to figure out where they're sourcing from, which was apparently Field Manual: Mercenaries. No dice there, just a description of an Archer with SRMs and a hatchet, but no tech readout or record sheet. Then I hear MegaMek has a sheet for the thing. Great!

But where is this thing coming from, because it also says it's in Field Manual: Mercenaries? I did more googling and I stumbled onto this ancient archive of a geocities site

This is definitely our mech, and paging back out of the Archer, we find that this whole thing is an archive of obscure and unknown designs, either made by FASA but with a very limited/no publication, or designs present in other BT media (games, novels, source books, etc.) with no official record sheet where the author made their best guess as to what they'd look like on the tabletop. The Archer Rubinsky falls into the latter category, a fluff only design that was given stats by an old fan working on their blog. At some point, that technical readout probably got ported into MegaMek and because there's a sheet in MegaMek and a reference in an official product, someone put it on Sarna. Because CGL also uses MegaMek, at some point they too got bamboozled and took the BV calculation and stuck it on the Master Unit List without crossreferencing to make sure they actually had a first-party record sheet in their own archives.

So congrats to Matt McLaine, wherever you are. You put together a project to archive obscure designs from a game you liked and threw some of your own stuff in there as well, and at some point it got so old that your fan design accidentally made it into the official game's site.

#battletech #battlemech #mech talk #im not sure ive encountered another game thats thrown me down a hole of source hunting like this #every once in a while you see a detail on sarna and when you go to look for it you just find an abyss opening up

[matrim-cauthons-hat]

alright i finally managed to get megamek working thanks in no small part to my little brother, so i dicked about for a bit to try and figure out the meklab and made a 100 ton periphery garbage heap with like 10 heat sinks (4 came free with the engine), no ejection system, 35 light machineguns (four of which are in the legs), and 2000 rounds to feed them with. idk how to display it as the mechsheet yall usually do tho :(

#battletech #my stuff #mech brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[mortallyminiaturewerewolf]

So I saw the Tex Talks Battletech on the Urbie

Spoilers for the aforementioned Tex Talks Battletech.

So when that Jade Falcon Urbie (Just look at her) showed up in the ending animation I just had to make it real using Megamek.

So using the Urbanmech IIC as a base I made this

So obviously ripped out everything and shoved in dual SRM 6 Launchers (I made them Streaks cause I like streaks, even though they weren't in the video.) Obviously it needed Partial Wing too, and other than that there isn't really much. It only has 1 tonne of ammo cause if this thing can survive 7.5 rounds of combat it is doing quite well. If I ever field this thing the hope is it'll jump around delivering a dozen missiles into people's backs. As for making this a real model, I might get a metal Urbie and try cutting that up to give it bird feet, probably make the wings and everything else out of plasticcard and greenstuff.

#battletech #urbanmech #clan jade falcon #I dunno if this is a good mech but I think it would be funny

[vanvelding]

Playing MegaMek tonight and I was irked at the bot's luck until my ER Large Laser hit the left torso of a Hunchback, scored two crits, hit an empty AC/20 ammo bin and then a very full AC/20 ammo bin.

The enemy Sentinel STN-1S actually performed admirably with its SRM 4 and AC/2. The SRMs finished off one of my guys with crits while the AC/2 landed consistent damage. It even got a through-armor crit, which kind of loops me back to grousing about the bot's luck.

#fun game though #megamek #battletech

[worseaccount]

Obsessed with fighting Balteus in AC6(at home). I managed to recreate the experience perfectly(he obliterates me in the first 3-4 turns every time).

Unlike real Balteus he is not restricted by game balance and I make him just fire every weapon at once every turn

Feeling good about this attempt though, I managed to disable his missiles

My AC isn't faring much better... But at least I still have all my bodyparts

#megamek #game #armored core at home

[tacitgadget]

Reading and wanting to get back into Battletech gaming is reminding me that:

1) I'm bad at war games

2) Battletech is really fucking intense mechanically

3) is so so so small community wise

4) doesn't have a lot of support through other online spaces (yes I know about megamek its amazing but not what I'm looking for)

#battletech #tryna get roll20 to do what i need is frustrating #tacit stirs

[doolallymagpie]

whenever I'm "giving orders" in BattleTech, I always go with, lorewise, "the pilot decided to do that", especially when it's something like "Sergeant Joanne Billescas charging an enemy Griffin in her Shadow Hawk one turn, and then DFA-ing it the next while it's down"

you're getting a medal and a cool callsign for that, pal, and we're sending the vid to those folks on Solaris, you might have a career there (also, entirely fair, those Taurians did kill one of our tank crews on this op, they had that severe beatdown coming)

#some commanders would get mad for just how much damage you've done to your Hawk #not me because that was cool as hell and you should do it again. maybe we can refit that thing to suit this. #battletech #megamek #mekhq #minnesota quickhatches

[is-the-battlemech-cool-or-not]

"Old Bird's Nest" Record Sheets

(OOC: Here is a link to the Record Sheets (in standard CBT and TRO form), Alpha Strike cards, and MegaMek file for the "Old Bird's Nest", if anyone wants to use it/try her out. If you do, let me know how she does!)

#battletech #mechwarrior