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Post by earthcrosser599 on Mar 24, 2017 19:42:47 GMT
Mildly uninterested tone: "Ah, a bit heavier I guess?" Me (troll mode engaged) "Yeah a bit." Jump around I remember the first time I saw the mech in TRO3055 I thought the weight was a typo. That book was actually my first foray into classic level 2 technology, so I thought "there's no way an 80 tonner moves that fast, and I know the Phoenix Hawk is a medium mech."
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Post by earthcrosser599 on Mar 24, 2017 19:46:15 GMT
As far as standalone games, do you think there's anything wrong with munchkin designs? We had a design experiment once where the only limit was the C-Bill cost and it was actually pretty interesting.
Anyone got any radical custom mechs?
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Post by Havock on Mar 24, 2017 22:55:33 GMT
I don't like cheesing it because cheese mechs always come down to "TC + clan PPC's/LPL's", which is boring as Firetruck.
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Post by earthcrosser599 on Mar 27, 2017 11:11:03 GMT
Maybe...it's been my experience that it starts out like that, but people begin to build to beat it. They'll start to use what was it, glazed armor? I can't remember if glazed or blazer was the anti-energy armor. They'll start to build lights with enough speed to make the -3 targeting pulse mod necessary to make the shots possible at all.
Clan tech is blatantly and unapologetically easy mode. I've found the game far more interesting and satisfying leaving it on the sidelines. There are some IS things that I likewise think are a bad idea, c3 networks being even more egregious than clan tech, but on the whole it feels like it lends itself to better games.
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Provengreil
Junior Strategist
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Posts: 850
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Post by Provengreil on Mar 30, 2017 12:08:31 GMT
As far as standalone games, do you think there's anything wrong with munchkin designs? We had a design experiment once where the only limit was the C-Bill cost and it was actually pretty interesting. Anyone got any radical custom mechs? A personal favorite custom of mine is a vehicle hunter packing 100 rounds of MG ammo, 10 machine guns, a big engine (moved like 10/15 or something dumb) and nothing else. Called it the Rum Runner. Is it good? no. is it fun and/or funny? oh hell yeah. I later adapted the design to have torso flamers (venting the RAEG) to heat up some TSM and removed all the mguns, then had it pick up a tree and try to beat people with it. As a 25 ton mech.
Honestly, I hate munchkining outside of D&D, where it's pretty much just an expected part of the game to me. The battletech customization schemes mean that while you can get creative, eventually things tend to calcify to a couple primary designs by weight class, with a couple more counter designs involved. ----- EDIT: to your other post, I think it's called reflective armor that is anti-energy(blazer being anti-missile, and IDK if physical weapons have an equivalent). You can counter that again with a single AOE weapon per lance, it'll deal double damage to the armor bubbles and take the reflector out fast.
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Post by earthcrosser599 on Mar 30, 2017 15:54:19 GMT
It's too bad that your experience has been negative. Making mechs was one of the things I remember most fondly of Battletech. Yes, you can take it to an extreme if you want to or if your playgroup is into it, but I had fun with the designs we used to come up with.
As a segway/commentary about the RumBuster, it's actually not too far off from a design someone came up with a while back. 30 tons, 8/12/8, something like twenty-six machine guns. It was made after someone saw a Vulture A lob all the SRM 6s at someone and watching how many random head hits were scored. The guy playing it actually had one of those clear plastic multicompartment storage boxes with four dice in each one so that he could roll all of the shots in a reasonable amount of time.
Anyways, after the match the spectator started brainstorming on how he could do something similar and went through several different approaches until he settled on the massed machine guns rout. It didn't end up being a complete show stopper but it did give many of the attendees pause, which was pretty amusing considering how small and cheap to manufacture it was. Even if it wasn't getting head hits it did a pretty good job of opening up rear armor if it could close with something.
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Provengreil
Junior Strategist
Choir Kills: 12
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Post by Provengreil on Mar 30, 2017 17:19:56 GMT
I think campaign systems, or giving refit class limits in one-off games, are good ways to mitigate munchkinism while still keeping the spirit of customization. Because I've never heard of someone who has a problem with such things when the result is not OP, such as a flavorful but ultimately lower-grade mech.
For instance, I have a buddy who writes little stories for his wargames that link his matches, whether his opponents are directly cooperating with it or not. So if his pirate company press gangs a commando and it's owner into their service, I'd be neither surprised nor bothered when it's a veteran of the clan wars that has upgraded to a clan pulse large laser that's slowly slipping into disrepair, and giving it an ineffective cooling jacket, a partial engine repair, and a jury-rigged ankle. The end result is a mech that has personality in the form severe cooling and reliability issues, but will still pack a severe punch, particularly against others in its weight class.
It's when someone "somehow" ends up with a Saggitaire 15 years early that you know customization has gone wrong.
BTW, this is not the first forum I've heard of the "Box'O'Death" dice shaker idea in. I wonder if it was someone from the same group?
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Post by earthcrosser599 on Apr 1, 2017 3:29:37 GMT
That narrative fluff is awesome. There's stuff like that sprinkled over the tech readouts and it seems like hardly anyone ever reads those sections. I think the Bandersnatch in TR3055 has a blurb on poor cooling jackets and it's one of the things that adds subtle flavor to things.
Campaign-style games with that sort of customization are great, if you've got a good DM and players who aren't Urani. Picture this: we were playing sometime around Operation Bulldog and we had the stereotypical mercenary team hodgepodged from various places. One of the guys was playing an Elemental who was also a Mechwarrior, apparently either defected or surviving the destruction of Clan Smoke Jaguar.
Anytime there was salvage, he'd claim a trial of possession for it (never minding that he was the only Clanner present). In the beginning, he'd just beat us up for it, because unless you're Phelan Kell, it's usually a bit difficult to fistfight an elemental, and after several sessions his mech was many times better than ours because he always got the best stuff.
I was kind of an outsider in this group; I was friends with the guy running the game, and I was very casually acquainted with most of the group, so I didn't really understand the dynamic between the alpha/bully player and everyone else. Anytime I'd mention how Firetrucked up this situation was I'd run into a wall of "there's nothing against it in the rules" and "he's roleplaying his character," or "Haven't you ready the fluff? The Jaguars are pretty brutal."
One day, or, more accurately, my last day, I had enough. I said both in game and out of game it was nonsense that this was how this group worked. We'd just gotten our hands on some Clan tech and of course, Firetruckface McDouchebag laid claim to almost all of it. I said it wasn't fair and he and one of his lackeys basically said "life isn't fair."
So I agreed and started shooting at them with a gyrojet longarm my character had brought with him to the hanger confrontation. I don't think I actually killed him, but I basically removed one of his arms and hit one of his lackeys in the hand before I was killed. There was some half-hearted laughter around the table at the state of things before the DM started narrating current events. He asked what we all did.
As$whole McCocksmoker said something about some activity he was going to undertaken and I said, "It's gonna be hard to do that minus an arm. " And they all just stared at me like I was from a other planet or something. "What do you mean?" they asked. I blinked and reminded them of the battle at the hanger from all of six minutes ago.
"Uh, that never happened," the alpha said. "Pretty sure dice were rolled," I countered. "Ummm...you wouldn't really do that," he said. And I'm not kidding, everyone at the table, including the DM, had been thinking the same thing. "Why wouldn't I?" I asked. "Your character attacks me and steals from me. Why wouldn't I try to kill him?"
I don't usually have awkward moments at the gaming table, but this was certainly one of them. I kind of rode out the rest of the session, but I called the guy running the game afterward and said I was out. Apparently even before this they'd agreed after I'd left that day that I didn't really fit too well with the group. And yes, apparently, that entire battle at the hanger 'never happened.'
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Post by earthcrosser599 on Apr 1, 2017 3:36:57 GMT
Had a Warhammer 6D with both arms wrecked. Swapped the PPC's for ER larges and extra heatsinks when the "refit and repair phase" of the campaign turned up. Damage was shit but the thing had even better stamina and more flexibility. Back when the intro set had those plastic Ral Partha mechs, someone in our group had lost the physical arm to his Warhammer and replaced it with an arm from a Rifleman, since the pegs were the same size for all of the mechs. He kept complaining about how he couldn't bring along the over/under large laser and AC5 on the physical model without dropping like half of his armor. Eventually he decided to just do the laser because it was then simplest WYSWYG conversion.
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Post by Havock on Apr 9, 2017 11:52:13 GMT
That narrative fluff is awesome. There's stuff like that sprinkled over the tech readouts and it seems like hardly anyone ever reads those sections. I think the Bandersnatch in TR3055 has a blurb on poor cooling jackets and it's one of the things that adds subtle flavor to things. (...) I don't usually have awkward moments at the gaming table, but this was certainly one of them. I kind of rode out the rest of the session, but I called the guy running the game afterward and said I was out. Apparently even before this they'd agreed after I'd left that day that I didn't really fit too well with the group. And yes, apparently, that entire battle at the hanger 'never happened.' That roleplay group didn't sound much like a group worth sticking around with tbh. You made the right call. I'd love to run a BT campaign, but the system would be hard on my usual groups. I'd probably run ot off Old World of Darkness Mortal character sheets. It's a dumb-easy system (as in, you only need the sheet and my group knows the system) and I could easily translate the system to flat-out tabletop BT where you can make do with piloting, gunnery and the odd trait or two.
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Provengreil
Junior Strategist
Choir Kills: 12
Posts: 850
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Post by Provengreil on Apr 9, 2017 21:58:10 GMT
That narrative fluff is awesome. There's stuff like that sprinkled over the tech readouts and it seems like hardly anyone ever reads those sections. I think the Bandersnatch in TR3055 has a blurb on poor cooling jackets and it's one of the things that adds subtle flavor to things. Campaign-style games with that sort of customization are great, if you've got a good DM and players who aren't Urani. Picture this: we were playing sometime around Operation Bulldog and we had the stereotypical mercenary team hodgepodged from various places. One of the guys was playing an Elemental who was also a Mechwarrior, apparently either defected or surviving the destruction of Clan Smoke Jaguar. Anytime there was salvage, he'd claim a trial of possession for it (never minding that he was the only Clanner present). In the beginning, he'd just beat us up for it, because unless you're Phelan Kell, it's usually a bit difficult to fistfight an elemental, and after several sessions his mech was many times better than ours because he always got the best stuff. I was kind of an outsider in this group; I was friends with the guy running the game, and I was very casually acquainted with most of the group, so I didn't really understand the dynamic between the alpha/bully player and everyone else. Anytime I'd mention how Firetrucked up this situation was I'd run into a wall of "there's nothing against it in the rules" and "he's roleplaying his character," or "Haven't you ready the fluff? The Jaguars are pretty brutal." One day, or, more accurately, my last day, I had enough. I said both in game and out of game it was nonsense that this was how this group worked. We'd just gotten our hands on some Clan tech and of course, Firetruckface McDouchebag laid claim to almost all of it. I said it wasn't fair and he and one of his lackeys basically said "life isn't fair." So I agreed and started shooting at them with a gyrojet longarm my character had brought with him to the hanger confrontation. I don't think I actually killed him, but I basically removed one of his arms and hit one of his lackeys in the hand before I was killed. There was some half-hearted laughter around the table at the state of things before the DM started narrating current events. He asked what we all did. As$whole McCocksmoker said something about some activity he was going to undertaken and I said, "It's gonna be hard to do that minus an arm. " And they all just stared at me like I was from a other planet or something. "What do you mean?" they asked. I blinked and reminded them of the battle at the hanger from all of six minutes ago. "Uh, that never happened," the alpha said. "Pretty sure dice were rolled," I countered. "Ummm...you wouldn't really do that," he said. And I'm not kidding, everyone at the table, including the DM, had been thinking the same thing. "Why wouldn't I?" I asked. "Your character attacks me and steals from me. Why wouldn't I try to kill him?" I don't usually have awkward moments at the gaming table, but this was certainly one of them. I kind of rode out the rest of the session, but I called the guy running the game afterward and said I was out. Apparently even before this they'd agreed after I'd left that day that I didn't really fit too well with the group. And yes, apparently, that entire battle at the hanger 'never happened.' First off, that's terrible. However, in my experience this is often more of a DM issue than a player one. Yeah, that dude's a dick and the others are basically wimps for rolling over for it, but the guy feels empowered by the DM not stopping him, and the others are trapped by the DM not stopping him (to include, apparently, the intra-party conflict required to stop him falling into temporal black holes). The DM, therefore, ultimately sets the culture of the group. If the DM is unwilling to say NO, then he needs to get creative about slowing the dude down. Maybe enemies identify him as a greater threat and move specifically to neutralize him. maybe someone got inside intel on his gear, packed reflective armor. Maybe an old clan rival found him out and is hunting him. What would he do if some Sstar Colonel in a Daishi led an entire cluster at your group, and challenged him to a duel? followed by the madcat if he wins? then the other madcat? and of course he can't run....he clearly follows clan honor, right? He'd be dezgra. And then the whole cluster is on him...
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Post by earthcrosser599 on Apr 10, 2017 11:28:50 GMT
Oh, he can break all the clan social rules he wants to. He's a FORMER smoke jaguar, remember?
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Post by Havock on Apr 10, 2017 14:34:37 GMT
In either of my usual groups that wouldn"t have gone. He'd either be dead because someone rigged his cockpit with an AP mine or just shot repeatedly. The other group would have just kicked him out. Me? I'd probably be honest and call the situation for what it is: a GM who can't really GM. The fact that he just claimed you did not really fit in shows how far his head was up his ass
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Provengreil
Junior Strategist
Choir Kills: 12
Posts: 850
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Post by Provengreil on Apr 10, 2017 14:56:52 GMT
Oh, he can break all the clan social rules he wants to. He's a FORMER smoke jaguar, remember? then he's ALREADY dezgra and the target of the 5 clanners on the next battlefield.
BTW, I'm unclear on elementals as a whole (never had much opportunity to dive into the lore beyond what's in the rulebooks), but aren't elementals massive? can he even fit in a cockpit?
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Post by Havock on Apr 10, 2017 21:30:06 GMT
There are a few, but it was the exception, not the rule.
It's sad because it's also a completely wrong interpretation of said trials, as they are almost always set up in a fair way; a fistfight between an Aerospace Pilot and an Elemental is not going to happen, and were it forced there would be no shame whatsoever for the pilot to decline.
There's a Firetruckton of ways you could play this correctly, like a wizened old survivor mentoring some clueless freebirths in how to fight honorably, staging little mock trials post-operation for some extra spoils, all the while looking over his back for former 'clan buddies' or Inner Sphere specops.
There, instantly more interesting and playable and unlikely to get shot in the face by another PC. imho, any situation that degreades in 'player willingly makes an attack roll against another player' in a party-based RPG is either a storyline coming together in the best way but most often it kills games.
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