Alternative versions of the game color your perception of the game

[Crimson Dawn]

So I do not know the make up of the community here but for me at least I came into battletech via liking the mech designs because I saw Robotech designs (yes I am one of those) and that got me into the books.  So fluffwise I tend to think in a mindset of the books I read which were up to the end of the Twilight of the Clans set of novels.  After that the books just lost me and I have sadly not read much since.  At the same time I also bought technical read outs since I really liked the idea even though I had never played or owned the game.  I liked what I saw and I kept hoping to find one that had the Robotech designs on them like the one I saw in a book store once that had an Officer's Pod on the front (sadly did not buy that book at the time because I had no money and the parents said no maybe later but that version of the book was never seen again).

As for playing the game I did not own the tabletop game but I did eventually get the battletech sega genesis game, mechwarrior 2 mercenaries, mechwarrior 3, and mech assault.

Of those the most important to my view of the overall game itself were Mechwarrior 2 and 3 (the genesis game and mech assault were fun but are so different in how they play that they may be better as a separate discussion). Mechwarrior 2 made me realy like PPCs and hate autocannons.  On that game I could load 5 or 6 ER PPCs on a mech with heat sinks and still get 3 salvos before having to stop firing to let me cool.  Obviously this would not fly in a tabletop game but I would not know that.  IN mechwarrior 3 I stopped PPCs since they overheated my mech way too fast and made my screen go all fuzzy.  Autocannons got a buff though.   They did seem low in damage for their weight but at least they fairly often knocked enemies down which helped. It also made me fall in love with jump jets and long range weapons (slowly destroying mechs at extreme ranges was very common for me in that game).

Mech assault had no ammo on a basic level so I no longer hated ballistic weapons and I really fell in love with machine guns especially the 4 you get on the Thor in that game.  Combining with ump jets made that easilly my favorite mech.

Not just did those games make me like certain weapons but certain mechs.  Mechwarrior 2 made me fall in love with the Thug as it was tough and those PPCs made it very effective (it also had double heat sinks early in that game).  Also the catapult as I gave it to my lance mate and she wrecked house with it.  Mechwarrior 3 made me fall in love with the bushwacker (used it or so long) the shadow cat to a lesser extent and the Thor. 

NOw the mechanics of the game can really mess with you too.  As another example in MW2 pulse lasers, especially medium ones were brutal.  Get 4 of those and they fire like machine guns and destroy everything at close range very fast.  SRMs tended to be poor because they were hard to hit and did not fire that fast.  Also in these games the best parts of SRMs (critical hits) do not really apply and massed fire of smaller weapons are better because you can easily target the same spot whereas in the standard game that is not as easy to achieve.

Does anybody else have experiences where different versions of the game or media really color how you view the game?  If for example you play MWO I could see people having very different ideas on what is effective and fun than if you play the tabletop game (for one it seems that heat sinks work less effectively but at the same time the problems with high heat outside of killing yourself are much less problematic which allows for some weapon combos that I do not think you would ever see on the table top).  Heck until I got here I did not know that some weapons killed infantry faster than others and so had no idea about the value of certain common weapons and how sometimes even the tech manuals will lead you astray such as how common in those books it is to say that the small laser is for dealing with infantry but a standard small laser apparently has no bonuses against infantry so I kind of feel that the book is talking slightly out of its butt.

If not games does other media influence you?  Due to my reading of the novels I have some preconceptions about some things that I am not sure bare out in the game such as clan aerospace being way overrated and that clan breeding is more talk than actual bringing in quality.  Just wondering how we all come into the hobby and how the different versions play with our expectations.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

I'm strongly influenced by the Succession Wars era materials.  I can't help but feel that everything that's come since ~1989 has been getting BattleTech "wrong" :D

[Garrand]

Agree about the influence of the Succession Wars era materials. I still prefer this era above all others, for setting reasons mostly.

I bought into battletech whenever the 2e boxed set was out (so around '85 or so). At the time I was also really into Robotech, but over time my preference for the latter waned & came to appreciate Battletech more.

I had already been playing the tabletop game for several years, therefore, when the MW1 and on games came out. Each had their own idiosyncracies (my PC for MW1 didn't really have the horsepower to run the game properly, so when I upgraded to one that did later on, the locust became absolutely deadly because I had gotten used to fighting them on a laggy balky computer!), but a lot of my experience was colored by how well (or not) the games matched the tabletop.

As an aside, I love the Catapult as a tabletop mech, but hated it in WM2: Mercs. The head was placed at such a position to make it more vulnerable to head hits...

Damon.

[Daryk]

I think I found BattleTech before Robotech.  A friend of mine had the game in high school, and I enjoyed playing it.  I seem to remember reading the Robotech books after that.  I really got into the game in college, and have been a 3025 proponent ever since.  That said, I LOVE the additions that fit into that era, Blazer Cannons especially, but also Rocket Launchers, Artillery Cannons, and Recon Cameras.  I like to imagine what a TRO: 3025 would have looked like with those technologies available.  I think Rocket Launchers and Recon Cameras would be FAR more common, but the other two would be reserved to specialist designs.

[Wolf72]

My first experience was MW2 and Ghostbear's legacy, then MW2 Merc's.

My first go with jump jets was awesome ... it was a massive speed boost.  Then I discovered ER ML's on chain-fire for a Nova (dropped down to 7 or 8 ML's though).  I too did not like AC's; MG's on the other hand were amazing.  Maxed out MG's on a MAD IIC and mugged everything in one of the city missions (added a S PL for that targeting laser effect).

Learning actual BT was fun though.  My ammo bins always had some sort of red dot painted on them and exploded, and my rolls almost always suck.

[Porkins]

That said, I LOVE the additions that fit into that era, Blazer Cannons especially, but also Rocket Launchers, Artillery Cannons, and Recon Cameras.  I like to imagine what a TRO: 3025 would have looked like with those technologies available.  I think Rocket Launchers and Recon Cameras would be FAR more common, but the other two would be reserved to specialist designs.

Agreed.  I also think some other tech like the MRM's should really be SW era stuff too since they fit in to the tech degradation given that they have less guidance and more warhead; that sort of thing.   

[Crimson Dawn]

Agree about the influence of the Succession Wars era materials. I still prefer this era above all others, for setting reasons mostly.

I bought into battletech whenever the 2e boxed set was out (so around '85 or so). At the time I was also really into Robotech, but over time my preference for the latter waned & came to appreciate Battletech more.

I had already been playing the tabletop game for several years, therefore, when the MW1 and on games came out. Each had their own idiosyncracies (my PC for MW1 didn't really have the horsepower to run the game properly, so when I upgraded to one that did later on, the locust became absolutely deadly because I had gotten used to fighting them on a laggy balky computer!), but a lot of my experience was colored by how well (or not) the games matched the tabletop.

As an aside, I love the Catapult as a tabletop mech, but hated it in WM2: Mercs. The head was placed at such a position to make it more vulnerable to head hits...

Damon.

Yea I was always able to kill catapults that way too but for some reason my lancemate always destroyed everyone in it.  So since I always liked its look (well depending on the artist) it has become a favorite for me.

It is also funny because I think since I played those games first I am very into using mech customization with no thought about it but here it seems that people want to use stock load outs.

I also did not realize that extra light engines made you more fragile.  I assume those games did use the rules that kill mech losing their side torsos with those engines but they certainly did not make a big deal of it so I thought XL engines were just epic win.

[Valkerie]

MW4: Mercs colored my perspective on the artwork for several mechs.  Thought they were better than their TRO artwork (Bushwhacker).

[Crimson Dawn]

MW4: Mercs colored my perspective on the artwork for several mechs.  Thought they were better than their TRO artwork (Bushwhacker).

I have to admit I did not like the TRO artwork for that mech either thankfully I liked it in MW3 and seeing it in videos I think MWO does a good job with it too.  Granted I prefer mine with a changed load out with more energy weapons but that is typical for me.

[JadedFalcon]

While I had been aware of battletech before (bought the Studio Nu-styled minis), the MW2 Refusal War was the real entry point into the franchise for me. Summoner and Timberwolf ended up as the most iconic mechs of the game, and the Clan-versus-Clan elements of the franchise tend to be my favorite.

Outside of that, the original version of TRO3025 is to me the most essential Battletech product ever made.

The rules for Alpha Strike has made much more sense of the universe and stories compared the original game rules, giving distinct advantages to mechs that wouldn't much matter in a 1v1 or lance vs lance game. Being able to play out games on the tabletop that actually resemble the history of the franchise is very satisfying.

[Daemion]

Well, I did like the cover art of TRo '58 and that Bushwacker.

As for coloration, It's safe to say that my coloration of BattleTech really did start with playing the board game. Once I learned that certain things had to be reconceptualized - in highschool, no less - it sent me on the road to madness that is reconciling game performance with reality.

Two key things have colored my perspective of BT and how I think things really operate in that universe. It makes me feel a little disappointed when I find depictions that don't really follow that thought.

Part one - Lasers don't miss. Throw that against the fact that failure rates in the game reach almost impossible at times, and range being one of the reasons, that means - to me - that the term 'miss' used in the rules is a misnomer. There were interesting things in the rules which actually backed this idea up for me, and I still cling to it, and hope future rules sets would do a little bit more to really emphasize this aspect of a potential scifi future.

Part two - it's in the future, and the Mech, along with the laser, become the main weapon of the futuristic army, along with all kinds of supplementary weapons, like micro missile swarms. With that in mind, the high failure rates for the game mean that it's a high-tech defense issue, and not a tech degradation issue which some people have used.

Part three - the novels are wonderfully nebulous about fight details, leaving room for (mis)interpretation of character insights, which could be dodgy. But, one thing about the novels I enjoyed is that it seemed most writers were cognizant of game mechanics, and you could map out a fight on record sheets, if not necessarily a map. This reinforced in me the notion that the game was a strong indicator of how things worked on the futuristic Battlefield of the BTU.

And, it stuck, no matter what people may say or bring up to suggest it was 'representative' and that I should divorce the concept of Game and Fiction. I've seen what that does for other settings, and the huge aesthetic problems which have come up in other franchises for such a divorcing of material.

But, aside from minor details, that's how my introduction to the BTu colored my view of how things work.

[Drewbacca]

I could be wrong, but I think I fall into that rare group that liked Robo, got into Battletech because of it and then found Battletech completely blew Robo out of the water. I really prefer Battletech at this point. Of course the legal stuff did not help Robo's case any.

As far as eras go, I prefer the Age of War/ Star League era, because I LOVE the Terran Hegemony, and the Late Succession Wars to the start of the Jihad era. I did take a LONG break for a few years, and I have to say, the post-jihad era really did not do much for me, with the fluff changes and the increase in systems making it seems a bit "messy". But it is slowly growing on me.

[massey]

Bought the 3rd ed boxed set in about 1991, maybe 1992.  The Clans were out by that point, but I was in junior high and didn't get an allowance, so the only way I could afford to buy Battletech stuff was by not eating and saving the dollar I got every day for the school lunch (given how the lunches tasted, that was not as big a sacrifice as you might think).  But as a result, I had no money to buy anything other than the boxed set, so my little group of friends made do with that.  It was a few years before we eventually figured out what the Clans were supposed to be.

We eventually picked up a copy of the Aerotech boxed set, and then somebody got the Compendium with the MadCat on the cover (which had all the game rules for the Clans and basically zero background), and so we started playing using Inner Sphere tactics and background with Clan stats.  "Who are these Clan guys?"  "I don't know, but their stuff is cool!"  "Die, filthy Kuritan!  I'm from Clan Davion!"  We really didn't know what we were doing.

Anyway, I'd seen glimpses of Robotech, but I don't remember it ever being on the air in my area.  I'd heard of it, and the Battletech minis looked vaguely familiar, but I had no idea what any of it meant.  I do think that those designs are some of the best that Battletech has ever had, and I'd rather play in the Succession Wars era rather than at any other point in time. 

Something that 40K got right for a long time, there's a fundamental difference between a setting and a story.  Battletech's 3rd SW is a great setting.  It gives you plenty of room to tell your own stories.  But once you hit the Clan Invasion era, you're now living in someone else's story.  Nothing you can do is going to stop the Clans from attacking.  Or help them win at Tukayyid.  Or will stop the FedCom from descending into Civil War.  Or will change how the Jihad plays out.  Or can affect how the Republic gets set up.  All the important stuff in the universe gets done by other people, people who are not you.  Sure, you can fight over some little chunk of land in some battle somewhere, but the metaplot moves ever forward.  I'm not really a fan of that.

In the 3rd SW, you know that you'll seize their planet, and then they'll counterattack and try and take it back.  But there's no sense of predestination, that everything you do is going to be made irrelevant in three years when the next big event happens.  "Actually, this entire border is going to break away and become the Free Rasalhague Republic.  And then it's going to get annihilated by an invading force from beyond."

[Kovax]

I actually discovered the game with the "Crescent Hawks Inception" video game, which was a very limited and skewed view of the BT universe.  MechWarrior (I) came out, and played completely differently, as a first-person perspective flight simulator / shooter.  Then I picked up a copy of Succession Wars, the grand-strategic-level board game.  Finally, I started getting into the tabletop tactical board game.

The early artwork was subject to a series of legal actions, and comes and goes as the lawsuits change the situation.

[Kidd]

Oh yes.

I started out with MW2: 31st Century Combat, and it seemed the Clans were the protagonists of the universe. The TROs and aftermath reports enthralled me and the account of the Battle of Tukayyid (directly inserted from Twilight of the Clans I believe) seemed a tragedy rather than a triumph... simply because I didn't realise I was on the "wrong" side.

Much later I found MW4: Mercs, and scoured every single bookshop I could find for BT novels. Not only did I realise how wrong I initially was, I was hooked on Battletech. I learned the rules and read all the Civil War novels, then the Wolf's Dragoons novels, a couple of Clan novels, and decided Victor and Friends and Jaime Wolf were really swell guys...

...and then Dawn of the Jihad and Total Warfare debuted, and I had the rug pulled out from under me again. It was glorious.

As such I bear the events of the Jihad much less malice than other longtime fans might. It was the third act of the story for me. I play a lot of games set in that time.

[SteelRaven]

I'll have to give credit to Battletech Animated Series for introducing me to me and the BTU. My friends and I agreed that Exo Squad was the better show at the time but there was something about Battletech that resonated with us. My bud found the novels at Barns and Nobel, the 3rd Edition Box after that and then we found MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat. All and all, I would say Mechwarrior 2, From fighting with Clan Wolf to riding with Hansen's Roughriders has influence me the most. Also considering MechWarrior 2 was one of the most proliferated games of the 90's probably influence many other BT fans others as well. 

...Though the animated series is probably why I will never take Clan Jade Turkey too seriously ;D     

[Crimson Dawn]

I'll have to give credit to Battletech Animated Series for introducing me to me and the BTU. My friends and I agreed that Exo Squad was the better show at the time but there was something about Battletech that resonated with us. My bud found the novels at Barns and Nobel, the 3rd Edition Box after that and then we found MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat. All and all, I would say Mechwarrior 2, From fighting with Clan Wolf to riding with Hansen's Roughriders has influence me the most. Also considering MechWarrior 2 was one of the most proliferated games of the 90's probably influence many other BT fans others as well. 

...Though the animated series is probably why I will never take Clan Jade Turkey too seriously ;D   

Ooo Exosquad so underappreciated.  I should go back and watch the Battletech animated series just for a lark.

[Simon Landmine]

I started with the Battletech, 2nd Edition boxed set, and then picked up some of the TROs - so I've always ended up playing heat-cautious, and actually liking the AC/5, for the range/damage/heat ratio. Coming back to discover all of the changes that had taken place since I was playing BT has been a bit of a learning curve - double heat sinks ... and everything moving so fast ... [grin]

It's also probably to blame for my liking of the Shadow Hawk, I must admit.

[Daryk]

*snip*
Something that 40K got right for a long time, there's a fundamental difference between a setting and a story.  Battletech's 3rd SW is a great setting.  It gives you plenty of room to tell your own stories.  But once you hit the Clan Invasion era, you're now living in someone else's story.  Nothing you can do is going to stop the Clans from attacking.  Or help them win at Tukayyid.  Or will stop the FedCom from descending into Civil War.  Or will change how the Jihad plays out.  Or can affect how the Republic gets set up.  All the important stuff in the universe gets done by other people, people who are not you.  Sure, you can fight over some little chunk of land in some battle somewhere, but the metaplot moves ever forward.  I'm not really a fan of that.
*snip*

This might explain why I dislike the clans so much...  Even the 4th SW had quite a bit of latitude regarding where things would go from there, especially on the battlefield.  Once clan tech was a thing, battles were much more foregone conclusions.

[SteelRaven]

Something that 40K got right for a long time, there's a fundamental difference between a setting and a story. 

That's a qestion of taste, I never could get into 40Ks 'your life is meaningless and there is nothing but war' grim dark story telling with such cartoonish characters. 40K is very much the Black Metal of Tabletops (though chaos forces look more like GWAR fan club) while Battletech has been various degrees of Thrash. D&D is very much Glam Metal.

[massey]

That's a qestion of taste, I never could get into 40Ks 'your life is meaningless and there is nothing but war' grim dark story telling with such cartoonish characters. 40K is very much the Black Metal of Tabletops (though chaos forces look more like GWAR fan club) while Battletech has been various degrees of Thrash. D&D is very much Glam Metal.

That's not really what I'm talking about though.

In 40K (at least the way it used to be, I hear they've changed it lately) nothing ever really happened.  The setting was static.  You had the forces of Chaos, and Tyranids, and the ever-present Ork hordes, but the Imperium was always hanging on.  Not that much really changed for any of the major factions.  There was no ongoing plot that you had to keep up with.  Nobody was ever going to have their kingdom destroyed in the next novel.  The timeline didn't actually progress.  It always stayed the same.

[Crimson Dawn]

That's not really what I'm talking about though.

In 40K (at least the way it used to be, I hear they've changed it lately) nothing ever really happened.  The setting was static.  You had the forces of Chaos, and Tyranids, and the ever-present Ork hordes, but the Imperium was always hanging on.  Not that much really changed for any of the major factions.  There was no ongoing plot that you had to keep up with.  Nobody was ever going to have their kingdom destroyed in the next novel.  The timeline didn't actually progress.  It always stayed the same.

To go with a D&D example you can see this idea play out between the Forgotten Realms and Eberron.  So far Eberron has not changed its setting progression even when the game's edition has changed.  The mechanics changed but the setting plot did not progress.  On the other end of the spectrum the Forgotten Realms always changes with the edition and even with every novel that comes out (Eberron's novels were explicitly seen as being one version of events in the setting but none of them were designed to actually progress the setting each was like its own alternate universe story in the setting).  This means that every time the game has changed since the setting's inception the setting has had a major event to explain the changes and that influences the plot.

[Simon Landmine]

Same thing with Shadowrun - because they've been advancing the timeline, each new edition of the game featured a major step-change, and a change in the setting. Sometimes it was used to justify changes in the mechanics, or the introduction of new technology that made more sense given real-world changes (e.g. the wireless Matrix). But while some of them would have made older characters obsolete (or at least, would require them to have a major rebuild), I'm not sure that any of them steamrollered the setting quite the way that the Clans did, but that may be more because the level of the game is more personal.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

Something that 40K got right for a long time, there's a fundamental difference between a setting and a story.  Battletech's 3rd SW is a great setting.  It gives you plenty of room to tell your own stories.  But once you hit the Clan Invasion era, you're now living in someone else's story.  Nothing you can do is going to stop the Clans from attacking.  Or help them win at Tukayyid.  Or will stop the FedCom from descending into Civil War.  Or will change how the Jihad plays out.  Or can affect how the Republic gets set up.  All the important stuff in the universe gets done by other people, people who are not you.  Sure, you can fight over some little chunk of land in some battle somewhere, but the metaplot moves ever forward.  I'm not really a fan of that.

This should be my sig line.

[Kovax]

Good points above.  The introduction of the Clans didn't just advance the plotline, it threw major portions of the existing game mechanics into the proverbial discount rack.  Your rare and expensive Battlemech that ruled a planet suddenly became "last year's fad", and was now obsolete.  The number of factions doubled overnight.  The map was practically redrawn, at least in terms of who owned what.  The player base was divided between those who wanted to play the old "scrounge tech" "Mad Max" style setting and those who wanted factories cranking out the shiny new toys that broke all the old "norms" about heat management and firepower, leading to serious game balance issues.  It practically destroyed our gaming group.

The demise of FASA and the advent of "clicky-tech" brought in a bunch of younger players who mostly never got into the classic game, and left when the "collectible miniatures" fad faded away.  The Dark Age itself brought another bunch of incompatibilities and issues, and was a complete dislocation rather than a simple advance of the timeframe and plot.

Catalyst took over the franchise, tried to mend the gaping hole between the old and new settings, and then made a more recent leap forward to the 32nd Century which has effectively left me completely behind.  Basically, it's almost a different game with a totally different pace, but still includes all of the "old baggage" from before, STILL not fixed.  I just don't enjoy it.

Unfortunately, each of the drastic changes did nothing to address the existing problems with the rules, realism, or game balance, they just added more problems on top of the old ones.  Either the series should have incorporated gradual changes, or else rebooted the rules to fix the problems.

[Simon Landmine]

I have to admit, I'm quite impressed by the lengths that have been gone to keep the mechanics almost unchanged, barring minor tweaks, and ensuring backwards-compatibility with most of the old designs, but it does mean that each new technology advance is, almost literally, a game-changer. It means that each era is almost a separate game with the same base mechanics (a bit like different D&D setting books). Anything post-Clans will likely play rather differently to 3025-era games. On which note, I'll be off to lose another set of Warhammer legs ...

[Lanothe]

   
Original Mechwarrior PC game - refused to upgrade Gideon’s mech past the Warhammer because I loved it’s look so much.

Beat the game many times sniping the heads of enemy Battlemasters with the Warhammer.


Used to load up a locust in the MW4(?) arena with as many PPC’s as it would carry. 3 maybe.  And just run away and fire from a distance. Owned everything in all tiers of the arena doing that.

[mbear]

Part three - the novels are wonderfully nebulous about fight details, leaving room for (mis)interpretation of character insights, which could be dodgy. But, one thing about the novels I enjoyed is that it seemed most writers were cognizant of game mechanics, and you could map out a fight on record sheets, if not necessarily a map. This reinforced in me the notion that the game was a strong indicator of how things worked on the futuristic Battlefield of the BTU.

IIRC, Michael Stackpole once said in an interview that he actually used the game's hit tables and dice to see where shots landed on a 'Mech.

I could be wrong, but I think I fall into that rare group that liked Robo, got into Battletech because of it and then found Battletech completely blew Robo out of the water. I really prefer Battletech at this point.

I picked up the original TRO:3025 and MechWarrior RPB because they had a Robotech design on the cover. Of course now I can't remember what the Robotech names are for the designs. ;) And I agree, BattleTech is a much better game than anything Robotech's ever had.

[Kidd]

IIRC, Michael Stackpole once said in an interview that he actually used the game's hit tables and dice to see where shots landed on a 'Mech.

Unfortunately his work often sounds exactly like an AAR writeup. There's a time for that, and a time for vaguer descriptions.

Also seems like he gets legged pretty often ;D

[Crimson Dawn]

IIRC, Michael Stackpole once said in an interview that he actually used the game's hit tables and dice to see where shots landed on a 'Mech.

I picked up the original TRO:3025 and MechWarrior RPB because they had a Robotech design on the cover. Of course now I can't remember what the Robotech names are for the designs. ;) And I agree, BattleTech is a much better game than anything Robotech's ever had.

Yea I picked up my first BT novel due to having a phoenix hawk on it and despite it being stylized a bit I still thought it looked close enough to a robotech valkerie that I wanted to try it.

I am not surprised you do not remember the names to the Robotech mecha as the show did not push the names of the mecha that much outside of the word veritech.  Heck if you look at enough books/episodes/whatever you will find that the names are inconsistent between media which makes it even harder. I think you could make a good game for Robotech but they stick with Paladium which is not the worst but it is not great either.  Did like the art in the books though and that it describes so much o the mecha (even if it may not actually be that way in teh show but sometimes what is written was more interesting).