Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Any heavy mech when its variant is designed properly.

The Marauder's standard was a powerhouse, two PPCs, two medium lasers, and an autocannon/5 (something for all ranges). But that's unlikely to show up for copyright reasons...

Oh yeah, that funny looking reverse jointed Mech.

I suppose I could role with that until we either switch to Clan, or yoink their stuff (depending on how they take the whole thing).

Personally I prefer the catapult combined with a NARCing scout, myself. MechCommander didn't really use NARCs though...




The catapult, the walking missile launcher which the TimberWolf/MadCat was based on.

Hard to say exactly what would be comparable to a Summoner until we know a bit more about the setting and availability of 'Mechs. A few choices, however:

Black Knight
Penetrator
Hercules
Cestus

Problem is, none of them have the jump capacity that a Summoner did. The closest that does would be the Grasshopper, but it's kind of crappy.

As Melissa said, though, it all depends on your lance setup. Missile heavy with a scout is a good choice, so is mix and match. Really you want to max/min within your group.

EDIT: Did some searching around, and don't know why I forgot about this, but the CTF-3L Cataphract is VERY similar to a Summoner. ER-PPC, LBX-10, 4 MPL and jump capability. Basically an IS version of a Summoner Prime.

Hmm, I could see myself piloting a Black Knight or Cataphract, truth be told.

Slarg232 wrote:So, if we are stuck with IS mechs right off the bat, what all is comparable to the Summoner?

More in playstyle than anything (All around heavy Mech), I never really bothered with Inner Sphere Mechs.

The Thunderbolt TDR-5SE is the mech you want, it is basically a Summoner.

65tons
LRM-10
LL
3x ML
bout 13 tons of armor
4 JJs
17 Single Heat sinks,meaning managing one's heat is a cake walk.
and a 6/4 speed(bout average for the heavy mechs of the time)

Other Note:
The CTF-3L wasn't produced till 3051, so it's unlikely to show up in the game, unless players go and make it.

Ah, the Catapult. That was my 'Mech of choice in MW2: Mercs. I'm generally a fan of larger heavy 'Mechs.

We might still see the Marauder and the rest of the "Unseen", since they've all been redesigned. It won't look like the Marauder we all know and love, but it'll be there.

Garuss Acine wrote:

Slarg232 wrote:So, if we are stuck with IS mechs right off the bat, what all is comparable to the Summoner?

More in playstyle than anything (All around heavy Mech), I never really bothered with Inner Sphere Mechs.

The Thunderbolt TDR-5SE is the mech you want, it is basically a Summoner.

65tons
LRM-10
LL
3x ML
bout 13 tons of armor
4 JJs
17 Single Heat sinks,meaning managing one's heat is a cake walk.
and a 6/4 speed(bout average for the heavy mechs of the time)

Other Note:
The CTF-3L wasn't produced till 3051, so it's unlikely to show up in the game, unless players go and make it.

That's what I'm talking about.

Soo... I kinda want to get more into the fluff of battletech now. But where do I start?

All I've played is mech commander gold and MC2, without paying any attention to the story.

All I know is that the Blood Asp is my favourite mech.

I would recommend the novels actually. Unlike GW, Battletech novels are actually qutie good on average. Most of them focus on the Clan Invasion, the very same one that was covered in the first MechCommander game, as well as in Mechwarrior 2 and its Ghost Bear's Legacy expansion, Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries, and Mechwarrior 3. The clan invasion, I believe, has already been stopped but is still a massively important background event for MechCommander 2 and Mechwarrior 4.

The Blood Asp is a quite rare clan design that, until after the clan war, was almost exclusively seen by Clan Star Adder. After the clan war, Davion forces brought back some captured examples, but whether or not they were eventually produced for sale or reproduced by the inner sphere using IS/C technology I don't know.

Now, for book series...

The Blood of Kerensky series is a three-parter that provides an excellent view of the start of the clan invasion.

Twilight of the Clans is an eight-part series covering the end of the clan invasion.

The Capellan Solution is an interesting look at the Capellan Confederation as it tries to take back the St. Ives Compact after the clan war, which seceded from them and allied with House Davion.

If you're looking for more individual, self-contained stories, I recommend the Mechwarrior Series, which provide an excellent look in to the lives of mechwarriors around the galaxy without delving too much in to the inter-house politicking.

For a more in depth view on clans and clan politicking, the Legend of the Jade Phoenix is an excellent place to start. It begins before the clan invasion, and ends at the Battle of Tukayyid, the battle which stalls the clan invasion and one of the most important battles in the entire history.

For an older classic tale, the seven-part Saga of the Gray Death Legion is a great look at mercenaries of the inner sphere.


Really it depends on what you're looking at. I recommend the MechWarrior series for beginners because it doesn't require them to keep track of any of the politicking, but even the other stories actually do a good job of not requiring the reader to keep track of too much.


Here's a chronology of the entire list of novels:
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/BattleTech_Novels_chronological_order
They're divided between "Classic" battletech and "Dark Age" battletech-- dark age is set ~80 years after the end of classic. Sarna.net is essentially the wiki for battletech.

I put in very large votes for Blood of Kerensky series, Legend of the Jade Phoenix, and then the Black Thorn's series (Main Event & D.R.T)

Thanks a bunch, will see what's available here when I get home

Also, what games are a must? Though I might be forced to pirate the older ones if they aren't on steam or shops here because of old age.

Soladrin wrote:Thanks a bunch, will see what's available here when I get home

Also, what games are a must? Though I might be forced to pirate the older ones if they aren't on steam or shops here because of old age.

Really, all of them.

MechWarrior 1 and Ghost Bear Legacy are classics and you get to see a lot from the Clan's perspective. Although the graphics are pretty dated.
MechWarrior 2 brings in the Inner Sphere, and Mercenaries is probably the best MechWarrior game of all
MW3 continues IS
MW4 is the "worst" of them, but it is still a good game.

None of them really delve deeply into the fluff, but will be closer to the playstyle of MW:O

EDIT:

One thing to point out, you may not need to pirate them. A few have been released as free software.

Some of the books ahve been released as free PDFs I think too, but I'd have to check.

If you're willing to get your fluff in non-narrative form, you can actually learn an awful lot from sarna.net. It has all the designs, usually with cross links to houses/clans that use them and manufacturing plants. It also has timelines a plenty, and details on many of the notable events.

Catalyst Games has also put a primer of some sort up on their website.

By far the most enjoyable way is definitely to read the Blood of Kerensky trilogy. Absolutely extraordinary stuff.

Sarna.net gets my vote as well - you can get lost in their, with links taking you from page to page to page!

And I'm surpirsed no one has yet mentioned the Warrior Trilogy for some good 'ol Succession War stories.

Is it just me, or does Stackpole seem to be the Abnett of the Battletech universe? Or the other way around, rather.

The first Q&A blog for MW:O is up. Unfortunately there's not all that much information. Realistically I think we're just a bit too early in development to get any solid answers.

As for the Un-seen, they aren't giving out any information despite a few questions on them.

Is this game going to have lots of servers like a WoW or are you hoping for a single persistent server world like EVE Online?


[MATT C] Each game spawns its own dedicated server, these are not persistent like WoW, as mentioned that would take us into MMO territory. There is persistent game world information, i.e. match results are communicated to affect the balance of power in the Inner Sphere, who owns what planet etc. but there is no true persistent world, more of a persistent meta-game.

I see what they're going for now. I kinda like the idea.

With the release timeframe you have, are you planning on releasing a fairly compact but well developed game and adding lots of content in the months following that?


[PAUL] Herein lays the beauty of the F2P model. We will be releasing the compact but well developed game that we want players to experience with the ability to expand on the core presentation to give you the AAA quality title that we want to share with the awesome community that has been waiting for so long. Our use of agile project development and listening to community feedback allows us to steer and correct our designs and implementation as needed.


[MATT N] In my mind Quality has always trumped Quantity. Especially when you can continually add content and respond to what the users want with updates.

This is a group that knows how to handle F2P. Let's hope this succeeds.

What difficulties have you had transferring the mechanics from the tabletop game to a PC game, and what mechanics have you had to change or modify? Since this is a reboot, will history change in-game or do you mean reboot in the same way as a movie franchise is rebooted?


[MATT N] Hey you said REBOOT! You win a prize! Someone knows how to get their questions answered! Good job!


[PAUL] Challenging question and I’ll try my best to answer. There’s been a common misconception amongst the community that I’d like to clear up. While MechWarrior® Online™ does refer to BattleTech® for historical and canon reference, it does not mean that it’s a direct port of the table top rules to a videogame. The table top rules are laid out to make sense for a turn based strategy game. Some of those rules just don’t apply when dealing with a real time game environment. Core rules such as munitions accuracy, heat management and movement speed will have to be tuned for real time gameplay and will differ in varying degrees from the table top rules. How far they differ will come out of gameplay testing and tuning and at this point I cannot comment further on how that progress is going. It is an exciting time in the studio right now and I don’t want to release information too soon and have it change on you, the community, later. I am quite vulnerable to pitchforks and torches.


[DAVID] While there hasn’t been anything that I would call a great difficulty, the thing that we always have to keep in mind is that we want to capture all of the flavour of the tabletop game but need to be aware of when a direct translation of a tabletop system won’t work for a real time computer game. Though I would say that the biggest impasse we’ve come across is melee combat; that’s a system we don’t want to tackle until we know we can do it right.

Hopefully taht satisfies the people whining about tabletop (eyes DoW).

Really, all of them.

MechWarrior 1 and Ghost Bear Legacy are classics and you get to see a lot from the Clan's perspective. Although the graphics are pretty dated.
MechWarrior 2 brings in the Inner Sphere, and Mercenaries

Actually, correction here:
MechWarrior 1 is an ancient game (1989, requiring a 286 Processor, MS-DOS, and a whopping 640KB of RAM) in which the player is an Inner Sphere Mercenary taking contracts and fighting other Inner Sphere forces.

MechWarrior 2 is a less-ancient MS-DOS game that they made a Windows 95 version of that contains two campaigns; in one, the player is a Clan Wolf Mechwarrior, and the second he is a Clan Jade Falcon Mechwarrior. The game details the War of Refusal, I think it is, between Clan Wolf and Clan Jade Falcon, in which the Falcons blamed the Wolves for the failed invasion of the Inner Sphere.

Its expansion pack, MechWarrior 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy, the player is a Clan Ghost Bear Mechwarrior stationed in the Inner Sphere and IIRC the plot is fairly convoluted.

MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries is sort of like MechWarrior 1 in that the player is an Inner Sphere Mercenary, and takes place before MechWarrior 2. So basically, again, you work for various Inner Sphere Factions, and the final campaign is the Clan Invasion of the Inner Sphere.

IMO they're not the best way to absorb the BattleTech fluff, but you'll get a decent feel for it and the games themselves are excellent.

I can't speak for MW3 or later.

The warrior trilogy was actually my introduction to battletech.

A bit hard to grasp at the start because of so many characters,but dang, was it a good intro.

Followed up with the blood of kerensky trilogy, and every other battletech book I read after those first 6 has been a bit of a let down.

Mechwarrior 3 is, IIRC, part of operation serpent? I forgot its name. It's the IS secret counterattack against the clans to annihilate the Smoke Jaguars.

It's actually the same general setting as the first MechCommander, I believe.

yea, in MW3 you play a lance that lands on Tranquility, and you go through and annihilate the entire planet. Not exactly realistic, but quite cool.

Nothing like an unsupported lance taking out a couple of trinaries of heavies like they are nothing.

Well yeah, it's not like any of the Mechwarrior ones are "realistic". They represent you as one of the most skilled Mechwarrior pilots ever, from MW1 all the way to MW4's expansions.

well, if Kai Allard-Liao can take down what, a whole Galaxy? Single handedly? Then it makes sense for lesser pilots like us to be able of crazy stuff too

RatBot wrote:

Really, all of them.

MechWarrior 1 and Ghost Bear Legacy are classics and you get to see a lot from the Clan's perspective. Although the graphics are pretty dated.
MechWarrior 2 brings in the Inner Sphere, and Mercenaries

Actually, correction here:
MechWarrior 1 is an ancient game (1989, requiring a 286 Processor, MS-DOS, and a whopping 640KB of RAM) in which the player is an Inner Sphere Mercenary taking contracts and fighting other Inner Sphere forces.

MechWarrior 2 is a less-ancient MS-DOS game that they made a Windows 95 version of that contains two campaigns; in one, the player is a Clan Wolf Mechwarrior, and the second he is a Clan Jade Falcon Mechwarrior. The game details the War of Refusal, I think it is, between Clan Wolf and Clan Jade Falcon, in which the Falcons blamed the Wolves for the failed invasion of the Inner Sphere.

Its expansion pack, MechWarrior 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy, the player is a Clan Ghost Bear Mechwarrior stationed in the Inner Sphere and IIRC the plot is fairly convoluted.

MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries is sort of like MechWarrior 1 in that the player is an Inner Sphere Mercenary, and takes place before MechWarrior 2. So basically, again, you work for various Inner Sphere Factions, and the final campaign is the Clan Invasion of the Inner Sphere.

IMO they're not the best way to absorb the BattleTech fluff, but you'll get a decent feel for it and the games themselves are excellent.

I can't speak for MW3 or later.

TY for the correction. It's been awhile.

What should we name our mercgroup?


DakkaKorps?

NMD Inc? (Needs More Dakka)

Hmm.... How about something with a "W"... "WMD".... W-- More Dakka.?

WMD (Want More Dakka) Inc.?

DakkaKorps gets my vote of those suggested.

WMD doesn't sit well with me, it's a bit cliche and the name, "Want More Dakka" doesn't really sound like a merc group to me.

I alos rather like DakkaKorps. Both a reference to Dakka and to DKoK...