The Scorpion Empire: All your Warhawks are belong to us

[Tyler Jorgensson]

Planning out a Scorpion Binary, Klondike era. How does this look?

1st Star
Falcon
Phoenix Hawk
Eagle
Zephyr
Zephyr

2nd Star
Thunderbolt
Marauder
Thunder Hawk
Eagle
Puma

(As a reminder, OP Klondike says Scorpions are required to have at least one mech, tank, and ASF in each Star. Similarly, by this point the Clans have not yet standardized into doubling their vee and air Points.)

Interesting: where (aka what page/ section) does it say that point about comp? I don’t remember reading that but very interesting.

But otherwise interesting. I might have gone for a more direct fire tank than the Puma but it works.

[Weirdo]

Interesting: where (aka what page/ section) does it say that point about comp? I don’t remember reading that but very interesting.

Page 149.

But otherwise interesting. I might have gone for a more direct fire tank than the Puma but it works.

The intent there was a tank that could basically become a strong point for the rest of the force to maneuver around, and able to support buddies all across a battlefield. Being able to fire in almost every direction(especially indirect) seemed useful. Also, the Royal Puma has deeper LRM bins than the equivalent Rhino, which I considered important both in terms of endurance and ammo variety.

[Tyler Jorgensson]

Page 149.
The intent there was a tank that could basically become a strong point for the rest of the force to maneuver around, and able to support buddies all across a battlefield. Being able to fire in almost every direction(especially indirect) seemed useful. Also, the Royal Puma has deeper LRM bins than the equivalent Rhino, which I considered important both in terms of endurance and ammo variety.

Thanks

And fair enough: we’re most designs going to be Royals? Cause obviously that’s a huge difference.

[Weirdo]

By and large, it looks like the vast majority of the early Clans' gear was Royal. A benefit of having 20 years of relative peace with which to repair the damaged equipment that came on the Second Exodus, upgrade regular stuff where possible, and cherry-pick the best of what was found in available Brian Caches. Nutty Nicky demanded nothing but the best for his nascent Clans and By Dad, he got it.

[glitterboy2098]

By and large, it looks like the vast majority of the early Clans' gear was Royal. A benefit of having 20 years of relative peace with which to repair the damaged equipment that came on the Second Exodus, upgrade regular stuff where possible, and cherry-pick the best of what was found in available Brian Caches. Nutty Nicky demanded nothing but the best for his nascent Clans and By Dad, he got it.

and they'd attritted that gear heavily by the time the golden century tech started showing up. between the pentagon civil war, opKlondike, and the many trials afterwards.

[Weirdo]

Yup, that's why I believe modern Clan forces have more Regular stuff than Royal. Regular units were cached or shuffled to minor postings, while Royal gear was in demand on the front lines - where it fought and died against other Royals as well as early Clantech.

The reason the bulk of the SLDF gear in Clan service now is...that's what's left.

[Kharn01]

Hey,
Scorpion Empire vehicle question:

Do the Scorpion Empire have vehicle stars in their clusters (also in their Seeker Galaxy)?

In the Tourning Point: Hanseatic Crusade is a table with the star composition:
"Trinary Type Composition (Stars)
Assault 2 BattleMech, 1 Elemental
Battle 1 BattleMech, 1 Elemental, 1 Aerospace
Command 2 BattleMech, 1 Composite* ->2x Elemental Points, 2 Battlemech, 1 Aerospace Point
Guard 1 BattleMech, 2 Elemental
Specialist 2 Elemental, 1 Aerospace
Striker 2 BattleMech, 1 Aerospace"

I'm missing the vehicles completly.

[Weirdo]

It looks like the vast majority of vehicles were reassigned to the Grunt Caste, along with conventional infantry.

It seems pretty unrealistic to say 100% of them were dumped like that, so for Clusters containing those Stars I'd say that Vehicle Stars are equivalent to Mech units and Infantry Stars equivalent to Elementals, at least in terms of organization if not in prestige or capability.

Personally, I'm curious where ProtoMechs fit into those schemes, during the golden eras where they were available.

[Starfury]

Unfortunately previous sources don't give any real indication on vehicles and conventional infantry usage ny the Scorps pre Emperio/Empire.  I assume that Protos would be setup like battle armor, 1 Star per Trinary so 25. I agree with Weirdo on vehicle and conventional infantry, though with probably the typical two vehicle equal one mech routine the rest of the Clans use.  The Scorps inherited several vehicle factories from the Hansa, the Caliphate and the Castilians, let alone what they picked up from the Blakists so it would be silly to lump them all together.

[Fire Scorpion IIC]

I've been going over that discussion about which new mechs Scorpions could be building, more specifically which new 100 tonner they could throw in the mix while fitting their lore and doctrine

I noticed that the good old Direwolf has two very interesting features that I completely missed before: standard chassis and standard armor

That's right, only remotely fancy component is the engine which Scorpions are long since manufacturing en masse

Building Direwolves locally should be no problem for them (and considering how often they are mentioned in stories they probably do)

And we all know that they are building Warhawks (in two production sites) which use endo-steel chassis, ferro-fibrous armor and leg assembly from Direwolf


So where am I going with this?

The answer is Iron Cheetah


It's basically a Direwolf with endo-steel chassis and ferro-fibrous armor

It's new enough but not too new or complicated, it's proven design, all components are already available, Homeworld Clans are not familiar with it and it fits Scorpion doctrine and industrial capacity

Plus Scorpions have well established affinity for Jaguar and Wolf designs


If Scorpions didn't already swipe Iron Cheetahs and/or their blueprints during the Sea Fox incident they could always trial for it, buy one and reverse engineer it or just throw enough cash at Foxes to license it



While I would personally love something like Amarok for Scorpions it's a bit too new, fancy and complicated for their taste and location

But Iron Cheetah is definitely the 100 tonner that could be the one to take the Empire to the future

[Dronko]

So I am rather new to playing BT, was mostly just playing the PC games and sifting through the background - reading some novels, browsing Sarna etc. As it happens the Hanseatic League caught my eye (coming froma Hanseatic city), but the first batch of minis I had were lots of Clan mechs. By now I have a good chunk of IS minis as well, so in theory I could set up a Hanseatic League force and a few Scorpion Empire stars as OpForce.

But somehow I'd rather have a more uniform set of mechs - makes it easier to paint just one or two schemes and I could more easily mix and match them. And I could still run them against each other if I gave them some League markings. I was thinking of just a red-white stripe on the arm, just a small touch to differentiate them. The idea is to field a Scorpion force but one that feels like it's a bit "off" and hasn't been fully integrated into the new system yet.

So I got the idea what if the Hanseatic League forces that survived the Scorpion attack stayed more or less intact as their own formations that just got augmented with some Clan mechs and had their IS mechs partially refitted to C or IIC standards or similar? They would probably be used as Provisional Garrison Clusters and not be part of the touman directly or might form a new, permanent Grunt Galaxy, maybe even still using IS formations (lances instead of stars), though that really doesn't matter much to me. To be honest, this probably fits Eta Galaxy best, even though there isn't much information available about it.

Either way, not having played a lot, I was wondering how you'd go about this? For painting, I was looking at Scorpion and League camos, seeing if I could blend them somehow. Regional Defense Force 1 uses gray-bluecolors, while Alpha Galaxy uses slate gray according to CamoSpecs, so some sort of grey-ish camo with some Hanseatic markings for the IS mechs probably fits. I guess any Clan mechs wouldn't have markings, due to their pilots being the ones that would have come to terms with the new situation better?

For force building, I am a bit stumped though. My initial idea was to the the Hanseatic Lague RAT and either swap out one of the mechs for a Clan mech or augment a lance with a fifth (Clan) mech and thereby create a star. Question then would be how to do that in a way that fits.

Anyway, long post, so any help or input would be appreciated.

[Doc Swift]

Since Eta Galaxy hasn't been overly detailed (yet), feel free to make of it what you will. 

[Crimson Dynamo]

Anyway, long post, so any help or input would be appreciated.

First off, welcome! Second, as the man said, Eta Galaxy is not really detailed much, so your force can be whatever you'd like and nobody could really tell you you're wrong. At some point, they will update Eta and your force will not look what canon says it should in composition or colors, but that's where some of the most fun (for me) in force creation can be had. You could tell the story of an experimental unit that blends Hanseatic and Scorpion doctrine/culture together, a group of RDF survivors who band together after the Crusade and go merc with their hard-won Clan salvage, or even a unit of newly minted Scorpion Warriors having to make do with mostly isorla (which would still beat Aranas and Reptars!). Or something else entirely. I would note that dark green also is a color that comes up with some frequency with the Scorpions, being the color of the actual goliath scorpion.

Hopefully not to bore you with this example, but I've been anxious for a force from Wolf's Dragoons Striker Battalions but the process to canonize new schemes is apparently very slow. I decided to take the older fluff about WD's preference for bold colors and ran with it, going for a bright yellow and tying it in to their parent command with black and red details. In my games, they're a special objective-raider group called Reichardt's Raiders, a sub-unit of whichever Striker Battalion I need them to be. That way, when they finally do canonize a scheme, there is a plausible reason why my minis won't look like them. For other games, they can fill in as Clan Fire Mandrill Kindraa Mattila-Carrol with a mix of Clan Omnis and a few IS designs that the SLDF used, allowing them to pull double duty if a Homeworlds game comes up. Cool story bro I know, but I hope it helps with your force creation process.

[Dronko]

Well Eta Galaxy or some PGC it is. A more practical question then: I'd go with the idea of augmenting some IS lances with another Clan mech to get some mixed stars, adding in some Clan stars without IS mechs in them, as I feel like this fits the theme pretty well - pilots still using their old mechs or C/IIC upgrades, waiting for new ones and some of them getting new rides due to trials or just newly produced ones. I got a bunch of pretty random mechs from the Game of Armored Combat and CI box plus some IS lance packs and 3 (don't ask why) Clan Support Star packs. Rolling on the RAT tables probably ends up with me having some nice paper stars that I don't have the mechs for.

So advice on how to build some stars that fit thematically to the Scorpions and make sense to actually play?

[Doc Swift]

I'd suggest checking out Operational Turning Points: Hanseatic League, page 20. Trinaries and Clusters are listed by various types. This is repeated from existing sources, but with some additions. The role each Cluster or Trinary typically specializes in is listed, as well. This could help shape the selection of 'Mechs to group in Stars to assemble into those larger formations.

[Tyler Jorgensson]

A LOT of IS mechs have C or IIC upgrades which is a good start. I often use regular Rifleman as Riflemen IIC (up until this Kickstarter arrives!) as most people in games don’t care if ‘proxies’ are used (except in tournaments or official events). That being said Rifleman C’s (and similar mechs) are not the worst, especially if you’re making a provisional or garrison unit.

OmniMechs would most likely be the commanders with the biggest/ best IS mechs also assigned to the higher ranked warriors. Take for example Trent in the Exodus Road book. He claimed the largest mech a Marauder IIC (?) while the next warrior took the Atlas (?) (been a while since I read that book)

I, personally, would mix the best chassis to have the best lances regardless of IS or Clan origin with exception to the OmniMechs. Command units should definitely have a majority of Clan units over IS ones. However the Scorpions are unique with such a variety of origins of their equipment.

If you give us a list of what you have available some of us would enjoy grouping them into fictional units for you.

[Dronko]

A LOT of IS mechs have C or IIC upgrades which is a good start. I often use regular Rifleman as Riflemen IIC (up until this Kickstarter arrives!) as most people in games don’t care if ‘proxies’ are used (except in tournaments or official events). That being said Rifleman C’s (and similar mechs) are not the worst, especially if you’re making a provisional or garrison unit.

OmniMechs would most likely be the commanders with the biggest/ best IS mechs also assigned to the higher ranked warriors. Take for example Trent in the Exodus Road book. He claimed the largest mech a Marauder IIC (?) while the next warrior took the Atlas (?) (been a while since I read that book)

I, personally, would mix the best chassis to have the best lances regardless of IS or Clan origin with exception to the OmniMechs. Command units should definitely have a majority of Clan units over IS ones. However the Scorpions are unique with such a variety of origins of their equipment.

If you give us a list of what you have available some of us would enjoy grouping them into fictional units for you.

Thanks, that makes sense and lines up roughly with what I thought and read. It does feel like asking someone else to do your homework, but here's the list and a lot of thanks in advance:

Lights: UrbanMech, Valkyrie, Stinger, Jenner, Panther, Wolfhound, Raven, Commando, Locust, Adder and 3 Arctic Cheetahs
Mediums: Trebuchet, Blackjack, Centurion; Enforcer, Shadow Hawk, Wolverine, Nova, Mongrel, 2 Black Lanner and 3 Battle Cobras
Heavies: Marauder, Archer, Grasshopper, Catapult, Thunderbolt, Timber Wolf, and 3 each of Linebackers and Night Gyrs
Assaults: Longbow, Stalker, Zeus, Banshee, Victor, Awesome, Battlemaster, Executioner, Dire Wolf

[Tyler Jorgensson]

Nothing says you have to use the lists but some people have free time and enjoy theory crafting or making tables and charts. That and you get different perspectives and ideas. I try to make lists based on speed these days myself (unless I have a specialized unit type).

But since I have some free time I’ll write up a list and message you when I’m done just so you have one opinion.