Recent Posts

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The Inner Sphere / Re: Political instability in the Capellan Confederation?

« Last post by BrianDavion on Today at 21:12:50 »

And as for "the current system working for someone", just whom benefitted from the romanoist system, besides Romano herself (and perhaps her thuggee supporters, whom weren't that much of a thing as yet back then)?

So pray tell, where could opposition to Xin Sheng come from? The thuggees? Now THAT would be confounding in disbelief (hope I'm using "confounding" rightly, but you get the point).

Except SunTzu Liao didn't just "change how things where under his mother" (although keep in mind there are people who will rise to the top, or a comfortable position in any system who won't like change) STL did numerous things, just off the top of my head he changed the ranking system of the military, he changed the FLAG (and given he replaced the Katana with a Dao he basicly threw out an important family symbol "cause we need to be chinese!") he also implimented safe guards for servitors, which would certainly upset some people (one only need to look to the history of american civil war to see what happens when you tell people they can't abuse a opressed population as badly anymore)
Hell we saw in one of the sourcebooks (wanna say the sourcebook titled "inner sphere" but it might have been "shattered sphere") it mention that the capcon in the 3060s was developing a racism problem.

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Off Topic / Re: NHL 2023-2024 Vegas Edition: Mojave, Mo' Problems

« Last post by Firesprocket on Today at 21:00:01 »

It's up for diagestion.  The annual Maple Leafs euology (40 mins long).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeqL6-iV4PQ
 
Without completely spoiling the ending, his conclusions are probably correct on what will likely unfold this off season.

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Fan Designs and Rules / Re: "Metal fountain" extreme performance dropship cooling system

« Last post by DevianID on Today at 20:49:10 »

tin droplet radiators are fun, so this is a cool idea.  You dont necessarily need to spray in a vacuum either.  You can make a transparent to infrared liquid material that is enclosed in a transparent to infrared bubble, and pump your metal fountain onto the bubble protruding out of your ship.  The metal, so long as it stays mobile, will cool and flow back down with minimal pumping from the hot internal side to the space side.  This lets you spray metal under some thrust without losing coolant mass, with the infrared heat radiating out into space.  Taking damage to the bubble enclosure from weapon impacts means you start losing reaction mass, as its not being collected, but at the same time now you have open cycle cooling.

For gameplay though, this is tough to implement for space ships.  The reason being that space ships have so much tonnage, cooling systems are a mere afterthought, and heat issues are easily solved.  The fact that warships have heat at all is silly--the math is cumbersome to figure out how many bays your mckenna can shoot.  12650 heat sinks with 900, 135, 40, 255 heat bays is just a pain in the butt to actually add up on the table.  Its the worst kind of gameplay loop IMHO.  Unlike with mechs where riding the heat is a risk reward thing, with various penalties as you heat up leading to dramatic shutdown or ammo rolls, heat is aerospace has no gameplay pay off, and the numbers involved are WAY higher then the 30 scale we have for mechs to count.  You just cant/arnt allowed to over heat in space.  Thus, its just useless math homework, and for just .2% of the ships tonnage you can easily add more HS to a mckenna to avoid stupid busywork.

I bring that up because, while I think the 'metal fountain' idea is cool, the base system the idea is working with is totally pointless to begin with.  HS tonnage isnt a limiting factor, nor is the heat gameplay loop interactive or fun at all.  Just some of the flaws of the battlespace framework.  So I dont see how this heat system will help dropships.  The castrum has 1200 cooling and 1109 in weapon heat, and despite being one of the most well armed dropships that exist it still has enough tonnage left to add 16000 more heat dissipation without issue. 

If the metal droplet let the castrum have triple HS, for example, instead of doubles, the castrum would save 200 tons, and the cooling system would go from 236 tons in heat sinks to 36 tons.  200 tons of weight saving is a .2% mass difference, on something with 8.8k unused tons as it is.  HS are such a tiny unnecessary part of dropships that I dont know if these special rules are worth the trouble any possible rules for damage or G maneuvers would add sadly, which is true of a lot of the aerospace systems.

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Off Topic / Re: What are we Reading Now: Conan the Librarian

« Last post by Top Sergeant on Today at 20:43:07 »

Mortar Gunner on the Eastern Front

I am enjoying the view from a that of a Private rather than a General, politician or historian.

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General BattleTech Discussion / Re: If you could get pre-painted BattleTech figures, would you?

« Last post by klarg1 on Today at 20:39:32 »

Well you are right about Pewter prices being insane.  Sadly nothing IWM can do about that.   But honestly the only reason plastic is that much cheaper is because they are making it in China.   If you look at the CGL Premium line (which has the worse quality control on earth) those are not that much cheaper depending on the model.  Yes they are cheaper but nothing like the force pack mechs.   

My real concern is can CGL keep the cost of the plastic under control.   A lance pack started at $20.    They are now with this kickstarter going to be $30 bucks that is a 50% price increase in a few short years.   If that keeps up you have to wonder of plastic is going to stay affordable.

This is true to a point, but economies of scale also matter. They are producing literally three or four orders of magnitude more of each plastic ‘mech than they are premium minis. It’s probably closer to five orders of magnitude than IWM produces for all bi the most popular sculpts.

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Fan Fiction / Re: Regulations and Regrets

« Last post by Daryk on Today at 20:39:19 »

Heh... I was half expecting a 'mech with that build up, but a Star League infantry company with APCs isn't too shabby! :)

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BattleTech Miniatures / Re: A couple of Typhoon.

« Last post by Daryk on Today at 20:21:10 »

Ah, thanks!  From the angle, I thought maybe it was a variant pulling up the pavement with a lift hoist... :)

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Clan Chatterweb / Re: “Save” the Jags

« Last post by Sjhernan3060 on Today at 20:06:42 »

One or more Khans could have easily gotten the Grand Council to delay a vote. Under any number of pretenses. There is nothing that said they had to vote a replacement that day. Even invoking some obscure procedural thing could have delayed the vote for a while.

My precedent for this is the simple fact that there hasn't always been an ilKhan. So, it isn't a post that must always be filled.

Also, after ilKhan Garrett Sainze was killed in February or March 3071. ilKhan Andrews was elected in December 3071. So the better part of a year had passed between those two events and the ramifications of that first death took time to play out. Between those two events, a lot happened. In any case it's further evidence to that fact that they didn't have to vote a successor immediately.

During this period, what we see Vlad do more than anything was stymie the other Clans. He was blunting their other efforts and playing political games. FM: CC does a decent job of showing the snapshot state of Clan Wolf about 5 months prior to the Great Refusal. What it shows is a Clan Wolf still rebuilding, still looking at a few more years of development before it's front-line galaxies would be fully refitted with Omnis and other Galaxies stood up. Working to regain prominence but still rebuilding. Vlad definitely had ambitions that Clan Wolf would one day resume an invasion of the Inner Sphere, but in 3059/3060 his Clan wasn't in a position to lead that.

In that moment any ilKhan would have been forced, first and foremost, to come up with a response to Operation Bulldog/Taskforce Serpent. Vlad was adamantly trying to ensure that there would be no response from the other Clans. Osis was calling for the other Clans to jump in, to act, and Vlad was one of the voices trying to shut that down. He was one of the voices trying to say this was a Jaguar problem, not an attack aimed at all the Clans.

The actual quote from Vlad in FM: CC is "The Jaguars may die, but the Clans are eternal." (FM: CC page 138)

So Vlad wasn't trying to portray himself as a savior of the homeworlds. He was trying to say this is a Jaguar problem and the other Clans should just stay out of it.

It's very telling that after Osis death, there was no ilKhan election. Which I think also answers your question.

Vlad was quite happy to dodge the outcome of the Great Refusal by abstaining, and quite happy to just maintain the status quo with no ilkhan. Clan Wolf needed more time. My takeaway from that was that even if he did have ambitions to be an ilKhan someday, that just wasn't the right time. But honestly I'm not even sure if he did, he was all about just promoting Clan Wolf above all others. His attitude toward the other Clans was frequently downright scornful, and that's not an attitude the other Clans want from an effective ilKhan.

Alan! As always you bring the facts and analysis. I think you perfectly addressed one of the very important underlying reasons why the jags were allowed to die. And in their death the jags opened a power vacuum which took attention off both the falcons and wolves who needed space to rebuild.

Hence my somewhat sarcastic “save” in my thread title any clan who attempted to preserve and or absorb the jags could not be seen as an immediate threat to wolves.

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Fan Designs and Rules / Re: Brining the Anime Into BattleTech - The Return of the Reaction Phase

« Last post by DevianID on Today at 20:01:36 »

I think this system works only in a modified turn structure.  Battletech is played in 5-15 turns normally, so adding a reaction phase like this cuts your turn time to 3-7 turns in the same amount of game time.  I am thinking like the solaris game here, with turns having multiple steps of action and reaction, with higher weapon rates of fire and such.  It works in that system a bit better cause the number of units is very low, so taking so much more time with 1 unit is more acceptable.

The point of the reaction system also seems to be to limit how much a pilot can do, but this doesnt scale like normal.  If you are familiar with HBS Battletech video game, they have a similiar system where every time you are fired upon, you lose one point of evasion (but you generate a bit more evasion then normal).  This works cause you have 4 total units.  If you have 12 units, well now you can easily strip the evasion off of things.  And, as mentioned by speedbump, like in HBS btech multiple target suppression fire, aka shooting 1 shot at every visible unit with an early activation to strip 1 evasion (or add 2 activity level, which eventually is the same thing), is a very valid tactic.  In late game HBS, the standard tactic becomes to take lots of damage by getting fortified in woods, as evasion becomes less and less reliable versus large numbers of enemy units by design of stripping evasion, but fortified cover doesnt lose effectiveness unless you get melee attacked/knocked down.

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General BattleTech Discussion / Re: Units that may be involved in IlKhan's Eyes Only

« Last post by Angrii on Today at 19:58:07 »

Happy to see Dai Da Chi get some time in the spotlight!