The Official Battletech Thread

[AndrewGPaul]

Someone said that playing Battletech was like playing historicals, but in the future.

It is. I haven't the first clue about what's in service when, which is why I intend to start with the end of the FedCom Civil War and the beginning of the Blakist Jihad. Say about 3068 onwards. That way pretty much everything is OK to use!

Where do people actually find these in-service dates? Are you reduced to scouring a dozen TROs and assorted Field Manuals, or is there an actual listing somewhere?

Back when I was painting Battletech minis, I just did all mine in a generic urban camo pattern (inspired by the seat covers in Strathclyde Passenger Transport trains at the time, of all things) to avoid all that trouble. The closest I got to picking an actual faction was having a few Liao-specifc 'mechs because they eere the coolest-looking designs in TRO 3060. Still quite like the design of the Jinggao and Shujenga.

[simonr1978]

I use Megamek a lot for this. Their dates seem broadly about right, you do get the odd error here and there but providing you use a bit of common sense (i.e. if you see a mech with a service date of 2060 it's probably a typo and should read 3060 or if for example you see a mech variant with MRMs and a service date of 3050 it probably should be a bit later.) you have a pretty good guide to what's available and when. Aside from that, yeah, it's a trawl through Sarna.net, and the various TROs, Field Manuals, Source Books and Record Sheets for me, bearing in mind that if you go to any given TRO the Development and Deployment sections often give much earlier production and deployment dates (For example, IIRC according to TRO 3058 the Alacorn was actually first fielded sometime in 3055, some stuff in TRO 3058 was in action as early as 3053, again IIRC) equally though they often don't mention an actual service entry date at all so you can only assume that it was on or about the year of the appropriate TRO. That's what I tend to do anyway unless I can find a game reliable source that says otherwise.

The good thing with the Technical Readouts is that they were written from the viewpoint of Comstar ROM intelligence reports, so just because they don't mention a particular bit of kit as having been seen before a certain point or with a certain faction it doesn't mean it wasn't around then/them, just that they hadn't noticed it until that point. Comstar's espionage people are very good but even then things are more painted on stone rather than carved into it, you've still got a fair bit of wiggle room there if you chose to use it .

[Gen.Steiner]

Much like real life then!

I am getting more and more interested in BattleTech the more I read around and into it. I think after I finish up my Merc/CapCon/Chaos March stuff I will do some pre-Clan stuff.

[simonr1978]

Battletech may go dormant from time to time but it is always there with us.

Sorry Mughi3 but I may have missed this originally but it you're connected with Megamek in any way I owe you one big time, that is basically the only reason I can actually play Battletech in any form these days and I seriously appreciate it.

[mughi3]

Sorry Mughi3 but I may have missed this originally but it you're connected with Megamek in any way I owe you one big time, that is basically the only reason I can actually play Battletech in any form these days and I seriously appreciate it.

Well at least you can play, however i have noting to do with megamek, in fct i have never played it since i play the real deal pretty much every weekend...last weekend my 10th lyran guard smacked around the davion heavy guard in a city...it wasn't pretty.

[Bloodknight]

Sorry Mughi3 but I may have missed this originally but it you're connected with Megamek in any way I owe you one big time, that is basically the only reason I can actually play Battletech in any form these days and I seriously appreciate it.

Where do you play? I'm in the MegaMekNet 3025 campaign (www.mekwars.org), being the chancellor of the Capellan Confederation at the moment.

[Gen.Steiner]

You say that so casually "Oh, I'm just the CapCon Chancellor..."

I'm going to paint up a unit of the 10th Marik Militia today. I'm looking forwards to it! All these Mechs make a wonderful change from lorica segmentata and pilae...

[simonr1978]

Where do you play? I'm in the MegaMekNet 3025 campaign (www.mekwars.org), being the chancellor of the Capellan Confederation at the moment.

At the moment I just play against the computer bot (It's handy when I have an hour or so spare waiting for a job to start, I can sit in my car with my Laptop and occupy myself for a bit), but I would be interested in playing against real actual people although working nights and with 5 little ones running around the time to actually sit down and play a game is pretty limited. How easy or difficult is it to play Megamek online?

[Bloodknight]

In that campaign a lot of the guys are fathers, too, so will be understanding when random afk periods happen. People are active round the clock (I usually play in the morning vs the late-night Americans and the odd Aussie), there are usually between 10 and 40 players logged in regardless the time. The campaign client (map of the Inner Sphere, Mech hangar etc) needs a bit of working into, but the games themselves are being played in Megamek.

Although, if time constraints are much of an issue, Mekwars:Legends might be the better server because the way to get games is less meta-gamey than on MegaMekNet (in one you just announce that you want to play, in the other you sit "active", collect influence points that you then spend to launch attacks on other "active" people. That's called "blinding". Of course we have arranged games as well, but blinding is the standard. Sounds more difficult than it is, though). Timelines are different, though, since MMNet is the 3025 campaign, Legends is more 3067.

When you have 2 hours or so, just give it a try once and find out .

[shelfunit.]

So I finally made it down to this weird "shoppe" of wargaming wonderment and managed to take some pics of a few of the things they had before they shut - sorry for the photo quality...



There are (on average) 6 blisters (or more) of each type and many more boxes I havent even looked at yet. There was also a number of boxes of "plastitech", but I'm not sure if that is anything to do with Battletech.
Sadly looking at the prices on the ironwind website, all of the ones in y'olde shoppe are probably far more expensive.

[Lars Porsenna]

There are (on average) 6 blisters (or more) of each type and many more boxes I havent even looked at yet. There was also a number of boxes of "plastitech", but I'm not sure if that is anything to do with Battletech. Sadly looking at the prices on the ironwind website, all of the ones in y'olde shoppe are probably far more expensive.

Plastech indeed has something to do with Battletech, in that they were standard units remolded in plastic. AFAIK there were only a couple issues of this: the first one was in hard plastic, and had an Atlas, panther, Locust, Hunchback, Valkyrie, Trebuchet and Catapult (maybe missing one or two here...). I think the figures from the 3rd edition boxed set might have been released too, and included the "classic" 12.

One thing to keep in mind is that some of the new IWM sculpts are quite a bit better than the old RP sculpts. The Orion is a classic example: I have both the old and new ones, and I'll take the new ones every time. Same with the Clan mechs. But along with that comes extra complexity...

Damon.