Battletech Young Blood

[Obsidian Crow]

Good day everyone,

Well as the title says I have pretty much just discovered BattleTech, I have been lingering around on these forums for about two weeks reading (mostly looking at the MUL and comparing it with SARNA). 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.

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?

Anyways; I look forward to being here and catching up on another great Sci-Fi.

[Sartris]

Greetings and welcome to the BattleTech Universe

since you are interested in the Jihad through what is now the "present" (3150), I'd make the following recommendations to get you started

Rulebooks
------------
-Total Warfare (main rulebook)
-Tactical Operations (advanced equipment that show up on a lot of designs produced 3075 and later)

Sourcebooks
---------------
-Technical Readouts 3067, 3075 (jihad); 3085, Prototypes (early republic); 3145, and 3150 (mainly stuff introduced 3100-3150). Other TROs like 3050 Upgrade, 3055 Upgrade, 3058 Upgrade, and 3060 have units common to the era as well. The good news is that you can buy as many or few of these as you want as they are basically the BattleTech equivalent of Jane's.

-Jihad Secrets: The Blake Documents and Jihad: The Final Reckoning - the two Jihad plotbooks that give a fairly concise history of the conflict

-Field Manual: 3085 and Field Manual: 3145 - gives a military readiness breakdown for all major factions in the year on the cover

-Era Report: 3145 - Sociopolitical report on the state of the Inner Sphere in 3145

-Historical: Wars of the Republic Era - synopsis of some conflicts that occurred between the end of the Jihad and the Dark Age

Record Sheets
-----------------
I recommend starting with MegaMekLab as it has the files for all the record sheets. You can also search for units with specific gear or combinations of gear. very handy. Also the home of MegaMek, which allows you to play BattleTech on your computer.

http://megamek.info/downloads

I'm sure others will have additional suggestions and let us know if you have any other questions

[Atlas3060]

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.

[Obsidian Crow]

Thanks for the reading list Sartis, I'll start working on those as I do some story crafting.

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.

Thanks for the links, after doing a quick skim through I'm going to have to work up some spreadsheets.

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.

Yeah I figured as much, I was planning on using the hull of a decommissioned / disabled warship to act as a installation in some remote area of space where the unit it primarily based / stashes their equipment and hardware. Following that I'm going to have to think of regions within civilized space they could established training / recruitment / staging facilities prior to working out contracts.

As for the role of the mercenary unit I'm creating; I am going for a Special Missions / Specialized Light Infantry / Light BattleMech and BattleArmour / Comprehensive Logistics Support force. Neither overly over powered in any sense, nor under powered, yet suitable for a variety of contracts post Jihad from what I've delved into thus far.

[guardiandashi]

for the "merc unit with no home other than a ship" idea I would recommend one of 2 options:
take one of the smallest warships listed (I am thinking a corvette or frigate) have it have 1-4 drop collars (better yet have it have say 2-4 but all but 1 is currently broken) most /all of the Naval guns are nonfunctional for various reasons, for instance any naval missiles are basically shout out of ammo 1-3 rounds on the entire ship, guns are broken or stripped off etc.
basically the unit is such a wreck that no one else really wants it because 1 its not a credible threat to any house, and 2 it would cost more than its worth to get it fully operational again (or so it appears)

the other option is to take a standard jumpship, scout merchant or similar and make a "compact core" version of it, basically its a lousy Q ship (warship disguised as civilian) and is a 1off survivor but still have it basically not a threat other than having unusually large cargo holds that you insist are dropships that cannot be detached because the docking hardpoints they are attached to failed in the "docked" mode and will not allow the dropships to undock without destroying the dropships, and damaging or destroying the jumpship.

[Atlas3060]

Yeah I figured as much, I was planning on using the hull of a decommissioned / disabled warship to act as a installation in some remote area of space where the unit it primarily based / stashes their equipment and hardware. Following that I'm going to have to think of regions within civilized space they could established training / recruitment / staging facilities prior to working out contracts.

That's where contracts with Houses, especially longer termed ones, are helpful. A garrison or training cadre duty contract allow you to settle on a world, gain experience via training, recruit locals, and when your time is up either the House renews it or gives you time to move out.

As for storage cache, I guess one could go the Wolf Dragoon route and store them somewhere that is pretty well hidden.
If I were doing it, there's some great examples of satellites in TRO Vehicle Annex. The Cassion Payload Satellite can hold 151.5 tons, just park it around the orbit of some forgotten rock and done.

Barring that, the Cassion is pretty old and used by the WoB, I'd just find some forgotten mining base on some lost rock. Keeping the coordinates hidden, I'd put my stuff there. Then again if I have that much in resources I could also purchase some storage units in various inhabited worlds and go that route. There's a myriad of ways to solve these problems.

I do recommend an older publication called Field Manual Mercenaries. It gives the run down on various Hiring Halls, systems dedicated to being a mercenary market. By the time of the Jihad/Dark Age, Outreach is deader than dead dead dead, so Galetea took back her old title of Mercenary's Star once more. More than likely you'll have an office there to arrange contracts and such.

As for the role of the mercenary unit I'm creating; I am going for a Special Missions / Specialized Light Infantry / Light BattleMech and BattleArmour / Comprehensive Logistics Support force. Neither overly over powered in any sense, nor under powered, yet suitable for a variety of contracts post Jihad from what I've delved into thus far.

Oh you'd have real fun playing various small time nobles against each other with that type of force.  >:D
Heck, the Jihad was a grand time for old feuds to boil over to the surface once again.

[Feenix74]

Welcome to the Battletech universe and the ranks of the soldiers of fortune.

Just a friendly suggestion, do not call your mercenary character Youngblood (that has already been taken) http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Crescent_Hawks  8)

[Obsidian Crow]

Thanks for the welcome,

As far the naming scheme I'm going with; definitely will not be naming anyone Youngblood.  O0

[CungrVanck]

Welcome to the Inner Sphere!  May your salvage be plentiful and your hiring rates be fair!

[elf25s]

welcome to your everlasting addiction where just one more turn and just one more mech is never enough... >:D

anyhoo welcome to our little corner...

[Don Lunardi]

Yeah I figured as much, I was planning on using the hull of a decommissioned / disabled warship to act as a installation in some remote area of space where the unit it primarily based / stashes their equipment and hardware. Following that I'm going to have to think of regions within civilized space they could established training / recruitment / staging facilities prior to working out contracts.

While it does follow the Rule of Cool, it's not terribly practical to make your base out of a floating Space Hulk.  The logistics effort required to keep such a thing in operation, not to mention the constant need for vigilance against opportunistic scavengers would probably put such a thing beyond the reach of your typical Merc outfit.  If you just want a place to hide out, the Periphery has lots of wide open and relatively unpatrolled spaces that one can establish a hidey hole on.

That said, it's your campaign, play it how you like.  All depends on how Gritty or Cinematic a feel you're aiming for.

[Obsidian Crow]

I ended up scrapping them being in a floating space hulk, instead I did exactly what you said would happen to them as how they (the founding members) struct their fortune to fund the establishment of their own unit.

Pirates working out of a warship crashed / embedded in a asteroid.

[Don Lunardi]

Pirates?  Now that should be interesting to play.  It also gives you a powerful tool as GM since any Pirate group which becomes too successful is going to start attracting undue attention.  House/Periphery Militaries will be a useful Beat Stick to help keep player groups from getting too overpowered.

[Obsidian Crow]

Still mercenaries, just while the group was in its infancy on a anti-piracy contract they stumbled on pirates working out of a warship embedded in an asteroid which they salvage for all the c-bills plus any equipment still functioning that the pirates were previously using prior to their interaction.