Zink Posted November 24, 2019 Share Posted November 24, 2019 So as is typical with me and the kids we've been going hard with the game we're interested in at the moment. Then they get dropped and not played for months. Lately it's been Battletech. I've downloaded a ton of stuff and am kind of suffering information overload between the tabletop and videogame versions. Got a few source books trying to focus on the ones that'll give me info for campaigns. Soooooo much info out there but have found what I need to run simple campaigns. Just need to sort and crunch it all into the form we want. We played the last scenario out of the Chaos Campaign: Succession Wars last weekend. #1 son got to repair, buy and use all his mechs. I got to use any mechs not used in the last mission and some new ones I bought. As it was possibly the last battle we both spent all our warchest points upgrading our companies. The mission was Assault and the attacker (son) had to destroy or force all my mechs to withdraw. I had to destroy or force 50% of his to withdraw. He severely outclassed me and easily killed me and for a while I thought I had no chance until I realised I only needed to severely damage enough mechs. Came close to a draw. Not sure if I was ding the campaign right but it was fun. Yesterday we started a new campaign and he wanted to continue with his company from the last round. I gave him extra points for his victory in the last round on top of the new ones starting values. I'm kind of winging the battles for the moment because we don't want to have it escalate into a 12 on 12 battle as fast. We'd like this one to last longer even if I totally suck again. First battle was a match up of our 2 light lances with the objective to destroy or force to withdraw 50% of the enemy. He kicked my butt again although technically it was a draw because I killed and damaged enough of his mechs. We're using a rule out of the Succession Wars book that you can't repair mechs with destroyed center torsos. 1 of his mechs and 3 of mine were wrecked enough to not be able to salvage. So I have 1 light mech left for the future and he got no salvage off me. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jasper_the_2nd Posted November 26, 2019 Share Posted November 26, 2019 Ordered a new PC today so hopefully soon I'll be playing the video game. My paint area is almost set up so I'll be back to painting BSRs soon, although I need to start with CAV. Unfortunately, the local BT community so far seems fairly passive. One player tried to get a game day together at a local shop, but cancelled due to lack of interest I guess. Once I get settled and everything set up I'm hoping to see if I can someone interested in just a 1-1 game or two so I can get the rules down, to get things started. And in case anyone is looking for some really pretty BT equivalents, check out kids logic's Robotech releases. Here is the upcoming Tomahawk (aka the BT Warhammer), shipping in Jan. These are resin, and come in just a couple of pieces. I have some of the earlier releases ordered, and they should be shipping next week when the Dec releases launch. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zink Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 I've been searching for cheap mechs every so often. Battletech seems like there aren't aren't a ton of deals for older stuff. But I did just stumble across a website selling the Plastech mech box and 25th anniversary box for reasonable prices. They'd give me a lot of mechs for a lot less than metal prices and some of them are ones I'm not getting out of the Clans KS. The website doesn't want to accept my card and I've contacted them about it. They say they have multiples in stock so if my order goes through I'll let people know how to find them in case anyone else wants some. Went from interested in BT but not playing for 20+ years (except video games) to spending "Oh dear gods, my poor wallet!" this fall. Think I might be done buying for a bit now IF I get the stuff I'm trying to. Between a good laptop and all the Battletech stuff I'm starting to fell guilty about how much I spent on myself this fall. Not guilty enough to not spend it though. 2 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jasper_the_2nd Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 6 minutes ago, Zink said: I've been searching for cheap mechs every so often. Battletech seems like there aren't aren't a ton of deals for older stuff. But I did just stumble across a website selling the Plastech mech box and 25th anniversary box for reasonable prices. They'd give me a lot of mechs for a lot less than metal prices and some of them are ones I'm not getting out of the Clans KS. The website doesn't want to accept my card and I've contacted them about it. They say they have multiples in stock so if my order goes through I'll let people know how to find them in case anyone else wants some. Went from interested in BT but not playing for 20+ years (except video games) to spending "Oh dear gods, my poor wallet!" this fall. Think I might be done buying for a bit now IF I get the stuff I'm trying to. Between a good laptop and all the Battletech stuff I'm starting to fell guilty about how much I spent on myself this fall. Not guilty enough to not spend it though. While I shouldn't, I'd be interested in that information. Also, if you can find the Robotech RPG Tactics Destroid packs (there are 2 different packs_ cheap, they are the same scale and match to 4 of the unseen. I'm not sure if the Glaug officer's pod is the right scale for a Marauder or not from the Zentradi side. I guess the Valkyries can be used as well? Didn't realize that before a minute ago. The models have a lot of fiddlely little bits but are decent models once assembled. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zink Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 Wouldn't be Battletech without Robotech. I only watched Robotech for the first time a few years ago and was enjoying how many of the original mechs were there. I've kind of skipped the whole "unseen" era of Battletech. Not crazy about most of the Zentraedi designs but like lots of the UEDF ones. Something else to look at. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Posted December 6, 2019 Author Share Posted December 6, 2019 The Robotech models are really, really nice and the Valks and Destroids are properly scaled but I will be careful transporting them. The Glaug "Marauder" is too big for BT sadly, but it is really nice! And I too, would like to check out those older boxes you found. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zink Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 Haven't got a reply yet about why I can't pay for my order from the one help page so sending another to a different email. Just had a nice meeting with my banker about increasing my farm operating loan for next year so I should be good for toys. What? I know I've read about agromechs and I just watched the Love, Death + Robots episode Suits about farmers using mechs to protect themselves from nasties. Gotta be some business related reason for buying more mechs. I get a bit guilty spending hundreds of dollars on toys at times but my yearly spending is about equal to 1 or 2 minor repairs on the farm. Spent some time combining all my mech lists, already owned, new intro boxes (Christmas presents), Kickstarter and the two boxes I mentioned. Comes to 134 mechs with a few repeats which isn't a bad thing. Think that'll be enough for now although there are a couple mechs I like not in this master list. Big jump from the 10 I already have. Have still been playing 1-2 games a week with my oldest and losing badly each time. Combination of terrible rolls and stand and die tactics. Can fix my tactics but haven't figured out how to improve my dice skills and nerf his. My moment of glory in the last game shooting his valkyrie in the back, having 1 point of damage penetrate and causing three critical hits and shutting down it's engine. His favourite moment was rolling 2 separate snake eyes for location causing my otherwise undamaged marauder II to withdraw early in the game. It was so slow moving and long ranged that it still fought for half the game before it got off board. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zink Posted December 7, 2019 Share Posted December 7, 2019 Update on my order. Haven't heard back from them yet but found that in the my account link I have 13 orders of the 2 boxes marked as pending. Here's hoping that I can get a dozen of those cancelled or else get current inflated ebay prices selling them. That'd double my money but I seem to be terrible at selling things so would most likely end up with $1000 of oop Battletech sitting in the basement. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arc 724 Posted December 11, 2019 Share Posted December 11, 2019 (edited) I've been wanting to get back into BT for a while. I'm hoping to this year. Until that time I just started play the newly released MECHWARRIOR 5 Mercenaries on PC! (released Dec 10). It's amazing. I'm even doing a series for it on my Youtube Channel (Arc of Fire). Still filming right now but I hope to have something released soon. Edited December 11, 2019 by Arc 724 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jasper_the_2nd Posted December 19, 2019 Share Posted December 19, 2019 Will hopefully have the Battletech PC game up and running this weekend. It is installed on the new PC now, but I need to move some hardware around and get my speakers hooked up and the like before I start playing (not to mention finishing an exchange figure). Of course now that I have a decent machine, Mechwarrior 5 is tempting too, not that I recall being very good at at the last time I played one of those (maybe Mechwarrior 2?? It was many years ago). It probably works better with a controller of some sort? I suspect I still have a joystick in a box somewhere....it was nice for its day....I wonder if it still uses an interface that modern PC use? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zink Posted December 19, 2019 Share Posted December 19, 2019 I've put in nearly 300 hours on Battletech in the last less than 3 months. Guess I like it. I did one run through of the campaign in vanilla. Decided I wanted the whole map so installed the 3025 extended commanders edition which also uses the community assets bundle giving me a lot of different mechs, better enemy AI and other upgrades. I kind of like the campaign and the mechs they gave me as part of it so did it again as well a bunch of the Flashpoint missions. Got tired of it only being assault mech battles (except the flashpoints) so looked up mods to tweak that and installed them. Decided to give the campaign another go with mission control, bigger drops, classic battletech balance and tonnage limits installed on top of the BCEX. That totally changed the gameplay again. Just finished the campaign a 3rd time and most of my battles were involving large numbers of light and a few medium mechs. The story line missions were tricky because I hadn't collected a bunch of heavy and assault mechs and my pilots weren't as experienced because the battles they fought gave less xp. I'm finally able to leave the Aurigan Restoration and it's possible to pick what difficulty of battles I want to fight by checking the map. I've got my ship upgraded to allow 6 mechs to drop in non storyline battles and can do more when I earn some more money. Need to unlock the 3rd mech bay too so I can get more ready mechs. I normally don't do much modding of my games but these were easy enough to install (need to run older version of the game (1.7) and mission control to work with BCEX) and they improved the game a lot for me. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Posted December 19, 2019 Author Share Posted December 19, 2019 If you are running 3025 and want some fun with a Marauder, pull the PPCs and Autocannon, replacing them with 3 Large Lasers and use the tonnage save for heat sinks. It is a beast. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhiteWulfe Posted December 19, 2019 Share Posted December 19, 2019 I've been enjoying the BattleTech game on and off. Still haven't complete the campaign though, but I'm definitely looking forward to giving a few mods a shot after. Bought MechWarrior 5 last night and installed it, but haven't fired it up yet. I know I'll be doing the "Gold Community Edition" mod, aka renaming the Pirahna Games logo video file. Alternate name of mod is "save your hearing" mod... I am curious though - both games feature the King Crab... Why is there so much love for that mech in games? 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Posted December 19, 2019 Author Share Posted December 19, 2019 Because the King Crab packs 2 AC20s and max armor. It is a beast [until you use up all 10 rounds of your ammo]. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klarg1 Posted December 19, 2019 Share Posted December 19, 2019 (edited) 55 minutes ago, Corsair said: Because the King Crab packs 2 AC20s and max armor. It is a beast [until you use up all 10 rounds of your ammo]. The tragedy (if memory serves) is that it lacks the hard points to mount 4 AC/5s. (A statement which feels weird to express, as a long-term tabletop player) Edited December 19, 2019 by klarg1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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