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The Marik unit is very dangerous. Two hard hitting, heavy armor powerhouses and a pair of flankers that can do some damage.

Hello everyone.

I recently became interested in this game. I was always a Battletech/Mechwarrior fan, through the books and games, but I NEVER played this game. I am new to miniature gaming, so I was wondering if I wanted to play this where do I start? Is this still supported? Do new edtions, models, etc still come out?

Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask, but I LOVE mech style sci-fi in general, and being able to take mechs and duke it out is very very appealing to me.

So, if I understand this right, are you taking squads based on weight limits or credits spent? It is squad based, right? Not just one on one mechs? Sorry for asking such questions, but this has only recently caught my attention.

Just point me where I can get some info! Thanks!

Generally people play lance on lance which is 4 on 4.

New stuff is constantly coming out, but it is additions. Changes between editions are pretty minimal, and you can still use the original mechs.

You can take lances based on weight (very unbalanced), creidt cost (Never tried it) or BV (Battle Value - The most common form of balancing. It's a complicated forumla, but the canon mechs are already done and easily found.

@Vision...

Everyone plays it differently. The origional game was more as a board game than a miniatures game, using hexgrids and precise facing and movement rules. It is much less ambiguous than a 'miniatures wargame' about things like distance, line-of-sight, and other such stuff. Years ago a company called Ral Partha (which unfortunately went out of business) made an entire line of every mech design that existed at the time, giving the impression that it was a 'miniatures wargame', but really they were just fancy playing pieces. The actual game used carboard cutouts origionally as playing pieces. All things battletech can be found at this website, including the origional basic rulebook PDF download and loads and loads of cool pictures of giant killer robots... check it out:

www.sarna.net

Vision:

Best resources for Battletech are unsurprisingly the company sites:

http://www.classicbattletech.com

Also includes forums, free downloads of Quick Start rules, and a metric buttload of information. Jump on the forums and introduce yourself.


http://www.catalystdemos.com

Official Demo Agent site. You can find local players and demo agents who can help you learn the game. I'm an Agent myself, but not for your area according to your profile.

From 3025 i loved the Ostroc and BattleMaster
From 3050 i loved the Timberwolf but used the Warhawk much more frequently.
From 3055 the Vixen was my fave by far.
But my absolute fave mech was one my brother designed. 75 Tons, 4-6 move, 26(52) heatsinks, and 12 Medium Pulse lazers. He called it the "Chain"
it was a sometimes a pain to get in range, but once you did you peeled a mech to shreds in short order.
At close range with it I have taken out 100 ton Mechs, in one volley. One game i actually managed to knock out 2 timber wolves with it. I admit freely i got lucky surviving the shootout and at the end i had massive damage. But it was still awesome.
Another he made was also very impressive, 100 tons, 3-5 move, 20(40) heatsinks, and armed with 3 ERPPC and 2 Gauss cannon. He smoked me plenty of times with this monster. Hes beat me with a heavy star with this mech on several occasions. he named it " Thunder Hawk" He named it and built it before the 3060 book where another mech with the same name appeared. But FASA has the licensing, he never changed the name however.

Thanks for the info and links. I stopped by my shop today (for 40k) and found that they had ALOT of Battletech goodies. Lots of rulebooks, lots of mechs, a bunch of different starters (I know atleast 4, maybe more) and best of all there is a small group that meets on thursdays that consists of 4-5 people. I will go check them out, get some insight, then go downstairs and start grabbing what I need.

Thanks again!

Jay-Man McDougall wrote:
But my absolute fave mech was one my brother designed. 75 Tons, 4-6 move, 26(52) heatsinks, and 12 Medium Pulse lazers. He called it the "Cheese"

Fixed.

Orlanth wrote:

Jay-Man McDougall wrote:
But my absolute fave mech was one my brother designed. 75 Tons, 4-6 move, 26(52) heatsinks, and 12 Medium Pulse lazers. He called it the "Cheese"

Fixed.

Indeed. That is one of the most boring, silly 'Mechs a person could design. It is a sign that while you understand the game of Battletech, you don't understand the universe. Not much different than giving a Carnifex a pair of twin-linked lascannnons.

Mattlov wrote:

Orlanth wrote:

Jay-Man McDougall wrote:
But my absolute fave mech was one my brother designed. 75 Tons, 4-6 move, 26(52) heatsinks, and 12 Medium Pulse lazers. He called it the "Cheese"

Fixed.

Indeed. That is one of the most boring, silly 'Mechs a person could design. It is a sign that while you understand the game of Battletech, you don't understand the universe. Not much different than giving a Carnifex a pair of twin-linked lascannnons.

Never claimed to have all knowing super knowledge of the universe regarding battletech.
The thread is called "favorite Mech designs" sounded to me like someone was interested in learning about other people interested in the game. I had no idea it would be Battle tech canon quiz.
An opinion was asked for, and it was given.
With regards to your opinion of it. Thank you. Its an opinion thread.

@Guitardian: I'm going with Mattlov on this one, that Marik lance could be a big surprise indeed. I hope you actually run the simulation, it would be interesting to see the results.

Sorry I forgot to post them. It came out pretty much as expected. It takes a couple of hours to set up a program called 'MegaMek' to play itself with 4 bots versus 4 bots on a 'standard' map, each lance from each house played 1 battle against each lance from the other houses. I ran it in fast foreward just to watch the action, instead of just the results(still took a couple of hours). If I ran it again I'm sure the results would be slightly different but one thing was clear, Marik DOMINATED, often only losing their Locust (although they lost the Orion in one battle against Davion - That Awesome and Valkyrie combo saved Davion from fail)

Marik 4/0 (the Battlemaster/Orion combo was just unstoppable)

Liao 3/1 (only beat by Marik, Vindicator seemed to be doing most of the work but that is unsurprising)

Davion 2/2 (Awesome and Valkyrie were its strongpoints, 2 out of 4 games the Awesome went down to headshots, bad luck, otherwise they may have come out with better results)

Kurita 1/3 (The Dragon seemed kind of useless, which surprised me, maybe just bad dice but it never really did much damage)

Steiner 0/4 (not surprisingly. But the Zeus did seem to take forever to take down and the Commando did most of their killing, scoring 3 kills in 4 games, but goes down kind of early)

---- so anyways... You guys were right, Marik was pretty sick and performed outstandingly well. It was like there was no question... battle after battle it just seemed like it was won before it started.

MegaMek is the name of the simulator I used. It's a neat freeware program. You can play it against the computer, on a LAN, or just have the computer play itself (which I did to avoid any personal bias in the outcome) It's more or less an exact computerized version of the board game. I gave each lance one 4/3 pilot, one 5/4 pilot, and two 6/4 pilots and had it randomly assign them between each battle so sometimes a 4/3 would wind up in a Locust or something and be kind of wasted... but hey, luck of the draw, right?

The sim keeps track of everything from total damage output to hit percentage and so on, but I didn't save all that kind of info I wasn't thinking at the time. The game was played for total attrition, 'last mech(s) standing' kind of scenario, you can't program it to do any kind of 'victory conditions' it's not sophisticated enough. It should be noted though that the A.I. is not nearly as sophisticated or capable of trickery and subterfuge as one of us. If it were humans playing the results may have been different too just due to our more natural ability to outwit the other guy, minimize our weaknesses and so on.

The megamek bot is notoriously bad at using tactics, and varying more than the mechs (The pilots) makes it for a bad sample.

Indeed. If you run the games again, put all the pilots at 4/5.

Agreed. I don't know which version you use, but mine occasionally locks itself up incapable of 'thinking' straight. Most of the tactics involve trying to find elevations, woods to hide in. It's fine with heat management, but it must be difficult to teach a computer how to make the kind of decisions a human might make (for instance it never deliberately takes a chance to overheat in order to get in a good shot when the opportunity arises).

Also it has a hard time juggling the tradeoff between movement and accuracy that we all instinctively understand. It won't take risky shots at -3 from jumping, even with things like Assassin and Spider, for whom jumping all around is really their only defense... It sometimes keeps them grounded in order to get a better shot (which to me is just stupid). I have to say though that Marik Hermes II...

the bot went wild with that flamer and to really good effect, that thing had the board lit up. I've never liked that mech because I think an AC5 is too big a gun for its size and it would have been better off with a LL or something, but the bot was doing some interesting tactics just using it to set all the woods on fire while the two heavies were just standing out in the open waiting for everyone to come out. I don't know if that situation a was randomthing or if the computer could actually 'think' like that.

Well, that said, is it surprising? Humans will always beat the bot because we can make the decisions of when to take calculated risks, where it can only be predictable. I would have liked to play out all the games with 8 real players just to get the real feel, but around here there's nobody to play with, so I guess MegaMek will have to suffice.

Okay, now that is very interesting.

That is the one thing I like about MegaMek over the regular game: I can do some setups and rules that I don't normally use because they bog down the game. Fire is one of those things which I don't normally see on the table, but al the time when I played Megamek.

The only real problem I have ever had with MegaMek is the Random Number Generator. It quite simply is flawed, and much closer to a linear distribution than it is a bell curve like 2d6 should be.

REM dicerollsubroutine2d6
randomize timer
x=int (6*rnd) +1
y=int (6*rnd) +1
diceroll=x+y

How hard can that be to make a computer understand? I never noticed the dice rolls I just assumed they were using the standard random number generator command that bases itself off of the computers internal clock milliseconds. Random numbers over and over and over have a good much chance of having ridiculously improbable outcomes when done enough in succession, and also a good chance of turning out like 'mathhammer' too, but it is never precision probability. I dont know if they used a 2 x d6 routine or if they just made a number between 2 and 12... which is vastly different probability. I shall observe.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm running sims now of mech vs mech in each weight category from the different house 'standard' lances. So far the Hermes II and Locust have sucked. The Valkyrie beat the Panther in a tough slugfest which I expected the Panther to win... hey dice are dice... and the Battlemaster has beat everything except the Awesome. I have yet to try the Vindicator but I am expecting a close matchup between that and the Davion Enforcer, and a win over all the other mediums. One on one is never very accurate assessment of a mech's full potential though as it gives the advantage to hitting power rather than maneuver, and there's only so far you can run around on the playing field.

Other bets being taken: The Cyclops will probably lose to every matchup but maybe stand a chance over the Zeus. The Dragon will dominate the riflemen and get hosed by Orion, who has a clear advantage over all of its peers (in all fairness it is just a lot better armored and armed than the sixty-tonners so it's hardly fair), the Locust will continue to suck versus all the other house lights in the contest, and the big toss up is between Vindicator and Enforcer. (edit) never mind, the Enforcer isn't their 'average' 7 on the 2d6 standard mech its a Dervish (with its ammo up its lightly armored sleeves... I'm pretty sure how that matchup will go... boom!)

Taking bets...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@ Mattlov...
I think you're right. It does seem to get a very disproportionate number of very high or low rolls. I wonder if the programmers just told it to generate a number between 2 and 12 instead of 2 numbers between 1 and 6. That would be serious oversight on their part. Hey can't really complain about freeware though I guess.

Jay-Man McDougall wrote:

Mattlov wrote:

Orlanth wrote:

Jay-Man McDougall wrote:
But my absolute fave mech was one my brother designed. 75 Tons, 4-6 move, 26(52) heatsinks, and 12 Medium Pulse lazers. He called it the "Cheese"

Fixed.

Indeed. That is one of the most boring, silly 'Mechs a person could design. It is a sign that while you understand the game of Battletech, you don't understand the universe. Not much different than giving a Carnifex a pair of twin-linked lascannnons.

Never claimed to have all knowing super knowledge of the universe regarding battletech.
The thread is called "favorite Mech designs" sounded to me like someone was interested in learning about other people interested in the game. I had no idea it would be Battle tech canon quiz.
An opinion was asked for, and it was given.
With regards to your opinion of it. Thank you. Its an opinion thread.

Remember this is a 40K forum at heart, and above all Dakka where substandard lists are critiqued heavily and many options are eschewed from army lists under the category 'not worth it'. To appreciate Battletech properly you have to do the equivalent of giving your 40K squads the crap guns that noone uses along with the lascannon and autocannon. Learn to love the heavy stubber shotgun and grenade launcher. learn to love krootox, multimelta devastators, pariahs and all the other things normally not seen. This seperate attitude is what seperates Battletech from 40K. Because not only are there decent guns as well as poor guns, and decent designs as well as poor designs sometimes the decent guns are cheaper than the poor guns. If a heavy stubber cost 10pt and a lascannon 5pts would you stomach taking the heavy stubber every now and then because it fits the army theme? This is how Battltech is, autocannon are too heavy for what they do, and LRMs start to lose efficiency if the launcher is larger than a five missile rack. There isnt any good reason to take an LRM20 over four LRM5's, it weighs a lot more is more vulnerable to critical hits and has a poorer missile spread, yet the LRM20 exists, and thrives.
Battletech breaks down as soon as someone tries to apply to the philosophy of force organisation used in games of 40K. I can see room for a 'gladiator tournament' for Battletech, though there would probably be only three or four designs on the battlefield and about as many actual weapon options.

amen brotha!

Battletech mech designs from 3025 were intentionally flawed. All of them had some kind of weakness. Just as no marine commander in his right mind would use anything but las/plas at least in some squads, and nobody would ever want to leave a meltagun behind, or a landraider that isn't full of thunderhammers.... No battletech commander in 3025 wouldn't want to take an Awesome, Marauder, Griffin, Panther combo lance either but those are the no-brainers. The funnest games were the ones where you just get a random pilot in a random mech just like all the other guys in the beer-n-pretzels circle and learn to make the best of its janky ass. "Yay I get a firestarter! well.. at least I know what I need to get busy doing..."... or... "I get a Warhammer! I'm pretty sure I'm the first priority target for all the other guys and will probably sit out the latter half of the game with a leg blown off from fire on all sides of my dumb machinegun ammo blowing up on me, but at least I scare the crap out of people with my big arms!... sucks for me..."

Btech wasn't meant to be a streamlined matchup between well matched forces, all with perfect speed/armor/heat/mediumlaser combos which obviously can dominate on a restricted map where sooner or later you will get in range. It was meant to represent a 'dark age of technology' before the comstar cache was found or the clans showed back up. All the mechs were flawed (well.... not the Awesome but that's a subject all by itself) and you just make do with the junk you were lucky enough to inherit.

Well said you guys.

Battletech is a game about flavor and fun, more than just winning. Some of the best games you can play involve the worst units in the game because you have to think more and be smart. But not just for a short time! You have to strategize for turn after turn of fighting that may or may not even hurt the enemy that much! It's great.

@Guitardian: Yes, the Awesome is flawed. It is very slow, and all of it's firepower has annoying minimum ranges (at least in 3025). It is easily flanked by faster machines who can exploit the minimum range issues and lack of speed. Closest thing to an unflawed design (to me) in 3025 is the Grasshopper 5N. No situation it really can't deal with. I don't like the medium laser boat aspect of it, but it can fight most anything of the time and have a chance to come out on top.

@Mattlov:

Awesome is indeed flawed against multiple opponents as it will inevitable get backshot if it is double teamed. Using it with any almost any other mech to guard its back though it is the way to go.

Grasshopper... as a brawler, it is peerless I agree. It is the closest thing to a medium laser/heat sink cheesy ubermech for 3025. But that LRM5 always seemed out of place though, sort of useless, and given the rest of the mech's energy/heat sink basis, adding the possibility of an ammo explosion just to get a couple of points at long range when the guy is clearly intended to close in and just jump around blasting away, what's up with the LRM? So yeah, even the most efficient mechs when it comes to heat, firepower, mobility, protection all balanced out... they still come with some kind of flaw.

Dumping the Awesome's arm mounted PPC in favor of a LL, and rear mounting the SL would turn it into a near-perfect mech, with less minimum range, perfect heat management, and nearly as much damage output (especially since its an arm mount so with some torso twisting and arm fire arcs it can protect the rear).

You can't really put any more armor on it than it already has and it would have the perfect number of heat sinks for firing its main weapons every turn. what to do with the two tons of space saved by the weapon switch? umm... rear-mounted medium lasers! Now try flanking my slow ass! Mwaahaahaaa...

I prefer to not play modified mechs though, and just deal with the flaws inherent in them all in one way or another.

Guitardian wrote:@Mattlov:
Grasshopper... as a brawler, it is peerless I agree. It is the closest thing to a medium laser/heat sink cheesy ubermech for 3025. But that LRM5 always seemed out of place though, sort of useless, and given the rest of the mech's energy/heat sink basis, adding the possibility of an ammo explosion just to get a couple of points at long range when the guy is clearly intended to close in and just jump around blasting away, what's up with the LRM? So yeah, even the most efficient mechs when it comes to heat, firepower, mobility, protection all balanced out... they still come with some kind of flaw.

Ah ha, but I said the 5N not the 5H.

The Grasshopper 5N has a PPC and 5 mediums, along with a metric buttload of heat sinks. Still has near maximum armor, and still jump. Basically drops the large and LRM 5 for a PPC and a medium laser. It is BRUTAL.

Due to fanatical insomnia and boredom that ensued... I got the results of all the 'house standard' mechs from the sim. I actually watched the battles play out too and questioned my sanity while doing so, as I am doing now by posting them. I ran 4/4 pilots in all mech and matched up a single mech of each weight class against the 'standard' of each other house. the results were somewhat predictable, but not very pretty. I ran it 3 times over for each matchup and came up with exactly the same results:

Gold Medals goes to....
Davion (Awesome and Valkyrie both 4/0)

Light:
Davion Valkyrie 4/0 (I was shocked when it beat the panther 3 times in a row. lucky shooting i guess)
Kurita Panther 3/1
Steiner Commando 2/2
Liao Stinger 1/3
Marik Locust 0/4

Medium:
Liao Vindicator 3/1 (its only loss was a headshot)
Kurita Whitworth 3/1
Steiner PhoenixHawk 2/2
Davion Dervish 1/3
Marik HermesII 0/4

Heavy:
Marik Orion 4/0 (that one should be obvious)
Liao Catapult 3/1
Kurita Dragon 2/2
Davion Rifleman 1/3
Steiner Rifleman 0/4

Assault:
Davion Awesome (4/0)
Marik Battlemaster (3/1)
Steiner Zeus (2/2)
Kurita Victor (1/3)
Liao Cyclops (0/4) the one between cyclops and victor was pretty intense since they both have crap armor and a huge gun, but the jump jets pulled the victor through

I actually perfer the Valkyrie to the Panther. Panther is too slow for a light mech.

I am half surprised that the Catapult didn't come out on top. Then again, I don't think the bot would use one right.

Here's an idea...Try lances from each weight range...a 6, 2 7's, and an 8.

skyth wrote:
I am half surprised that the Catapult didn't come out on top. Then again, I don't think the bot would use one right.

The Catapult has the dual problems of light ammo and a bit low in terms of armor. While it is a decently rounded 'Mech, it is average in almost every catagory while not really standing out in any of them. It is almost TOO generic. Most 'Mechs are better at in in some way, and worse in others. Depending on what the enemy better at drastically changes the effectiveness of the Catapult. It is a much better team player than an individual 'Mech.

I'm pretty sure that's the same reason Marik's Hermes II got so badly hosed 1-on-1. Catapult will run out of ammo before it ever breaches the armor on another well armored heavy, it should be weakening it before you get into that 9 hex range where all the gak hits the fan. On its own it's a schizophrenic jumping/indirect/ML with too few sinks and the heat becomes a problem using the medium laser/JJ combo which can work up close... So far away, it runs out of ammo pretty fast, and up close, it can't compete due to heat issues. It's a mech that just doesn't work well on its own. Flamer isn't useful on the Hermes II either without a lance to take advantage of the flushout, which is why it died of suck 3 times in a row on the 1-on-1 sim, but when part of a lance, completely changed the battle to its favor.

Guitardian wrote:@Mattlov:
Grasshopper... as a brawler, it is peerless I agree. It is the closest thing to a medium laser/heat sink cheesy ubermech for 3025. But that LRM5 always seemed out of place though, sort of useless, and given the rest of the mech's energy/heat sink basis, adding the possibility of an ammo explosion just to get a couple of points at long range when the guy is clearly intended to close in and just jump around blasting away, what's up with the LRM? So yeah, even the most efficient mechs when it comes to heat, firepower, mobility, protection all balanced out... they still come with some kind of flaw.

Shame, shame. The idea of has ammo therefore its weak is very poor indeed. The only way out is a mech entirely equipped with energy weapons, yawn.
I like the head mounted LRM launcher, this says to me 'trick shot' I can see a Grasshopper pilot with a mobile heavy mech sometimes working as a 70 ton skirmisher, the LRM rack is what gives it that role. Its head mounted so its fires at what the pilot is looking at. I could see the missile rack being a snapfire weapon. The lasers being for main engagements.

Mattlov wrote:
The Grasshopper 5N has a PPC and 5 mediums, along with a metric buttload of heat sinks. Still has near maximum armor, and still jump. Basically drops the large and LRM 5 for a PPC and a medium laser. It is BRUTAL.

Its a mod, while it may be a 3025 orginal mod its still a mod. I would restrict those in most cases. Besides, I see your Grasshopper 5N and raise you Banshee-S.

How is the Grasshopper N a mod? It is a tournament legal, published design.

The Banshee-S is good, easily the best assault 'Mech of 3025. I wish it had dropped the small lasers for heat sinks, armor, or both, though.

Hell, I'd take machine guns in their place for anti-infantry work.

Personally, I consider anything that isn't the actual mech stats shown in the TRO to be a mod

I'm softening in my old age...I just love the Archer-S.