Yay a new one, welcome aboard.
So far seems like Jihad to Republic Era (Early, Late, and Dark Ages) holds most of my interest particularly with establishing a Mercenary unit within that time frame.
Well anything with the years 3070sh to 31whatever will be books you'll probably enjoy.
Anyways, I've got some questions for you guys:
- Outside of the core rulebooks what should be the books I acquire over time to construct my unit and just great reads in general?
- I've been thinking on having the Merc Unit based out of a massive Warship or Jumpship with no formal planetary installations, not entirely sure how feasible that is in the BattleTech universe and I am wondering if there are examples of that in BT or if anyone has done a similar instance?
1. Well as I stated earlier the two eras you listed will encompass things from 3070 or there arounds to the 3100s. So Technical Readouts and Record sheets are going to be a good start. Era Reports, Era Digests, and Field Manuals will help you get a feeling for the Universe as well.
Eventually there's going to be a Campaign Creator, giving us more detailed rules on how to construct units.
At the moment the Beta rules are on the site
(Link #1) and
(link #2)So you can get a taste of what is to come at least.
Right now in the non-beta world, there's Chaos Campaign system from Total Chaos.
It is a fun abstract way to keep track of missions and keeping your people in shape. Focused on more of the "You fixed? Good now OUT YOU GO!" than the minutia of accounting.
2. Warships are very rare, mostly state held. There were some exceptions but I think the fires of the Jihad burned a few away.
Even then there's always a presence on ground. Whether it be the Hiring halls of Outreach (or other places) or somewhere else approximate.
Jumpships don't have that much room either since 90% of the ship is the jump drive.
At the very closest you might get away with a small caravan of Drop ships, but most mercs plant themselves on a planet (even temporarily) because of either contracts or they don't want to go broke with transportation fees.
Still, your table your rules, there's plenty of old ship designs you could use and say "oh that? recovered from a place and barely working." or something. You don't have to follow canon, you have to follow fun. That's the big thing here.