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No problem on the maps.

For the minis, it was probably a molding issue.

Those maps look pretty nice, Mmmpi. And the minis look well formed at least, which I understand had been a problem for some of the Citytech stuff.

yeah, I think I lucked out.

So, I was looking at the Shoguns fluff, and a number where still being operated after the exodus of the SLDF. It is conceivable that one could be found in an old SLDF cache.

Yes it's true that this is a possibility and it's something that often gets forgotten that even the TROs as a whole were not written as being 100% unfailingly accurate in universe, so it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that a single Shogun may have been uncovered from an old SLDF cache somewhere that didn't come to wider attention. To be fair though, I don't recall that anyone was particularly saying that you absolutely couldn't have a Shogun or an Imp in your unit, but broadly that having either in a company that isn't a Wolf's Dragoons unit would be unusual to say the least (and a single Shogun being recovered from a cache doesn't really change that) and having both together would be extremely unlikely.

I wouldn't have a problem with you fielding either or both in a game and not just because I don't think the Shogun's a particularly good mech, but if you're going to come up with a head-canon way of explaining how the Shogun found its way into a non-Dragoons unit where there also happened to already be an Imp, there are more interesting ways of doing so IMO than resorting to the "Star League Cache" explanation, they could be piloted by a pair of disgruntled ex-Dragoons who were somehow able to take their mechs with them when they left for example (A Rhonda's Irregulars type unit is a possibility). Of course, you don't have to provide any explanation beyond just liking the mechs and wanting to have a game with them.

I like the idea of the disgruntled ex-dragoon. To tell the truth though, its a case of what I have and do not have at the moment when it comes to deploying Mechs, so I am a bit limited. I have to agree though, the only variant of the Shogun worth using is the individual Jihad era one, with its LBXAC5's. That said, the prime variant does find its way into a fire support lance when other missile boats are not on the offing.

 master of ordinance wrote:
I like the idea of the disgruntled ex-dragoon. To tell the truth though, its a case of what I have and do not have at the moment when it comes to deploying Mechs, so I am a bit limited. I have to agree though, the only variant of the Shogun worth using is the individual Jihad era one, with its LBXAC5's. That said, the prime variant does find its way into a fire support lance when other missile boats are not on the offing.

One of the most wonderful aspects about Battletech is the lack of WYSIWYG requirement. If you have a Shogun model? Great? You don't have to call it a Shogun, but even have it be a lighter mech that was just cobbled together to look a lot like a Shogun! Treat it as a modified Crusader (SRMS in the torsos instead of legs) if you want. It's big stompy shooty 'Mechs, what's not to love?

Just call it a Crockett/Katana. It's close enough!

Aye, could do! Man, Battletech is awesome.

By the way, what are peoples opinions on trains in BT? I'm working on an armoured train for use in BT and the rules look interesting, but I have never tried them out before.
From what I understand there is a set limit to how many carriages a engine can pull, and you can mix and match carriages so long as you do not exceed the engines limit. Is this correct?

Its a factor of mass. With land trains you get na engine car and trailer cars. Normally the engine car masses the same as all the trailer cars. You have to add tonnage for what are the equivalent of lift hoists so you can pull your own tonnage around without loss of speed.

There are two land trains available, though you can generate more under standard vehicle rules. These are the Elite Series 3 and the Prairie Schooner. There is nothing comperable to the Amtrak Wars land trains, though there is nothing stopping you from having multiple power cars, and snake several trains together.

Railway trains themselves are not really covered in Battltech, except that trains have an estimated mass and a speed rating and you can calculate the damage caused by a train impact. There is an example in one of the expansion books covering just that. Long and the short of it is that a train impacting at reasonable speed will wreck just about anything.

I havnt looked too closely at them, but the rail train rules do seem to cover designing new vehicles and some basic limitations and the like.

Anyway, an armoured train is going to be a fun project to work on.

Seems to me a PPC or such would ruin a train’s day - not aiming for the train itself, but the tracks.

Land trains are a good canon alternative.

 master of ordinance wrote:
So, I was looking at the Shoguns fluff, and a number where still being operated after the exodus of the SLDF. It is conceivable that one could be found in an old SLDF cache.

Also the Dragoons may well have left some on battlefields - especially the larger ones.

Lets work this out. How to get Wolf's Dragoons speciality equipment in numbers?

1. Join Wolf's Dragoons, and this is not easy, and you likely wont survive running out on them with mechs.

2. Taking the mechs off them. Ok, not viable, a Stinger yes, an Imp, not likely.

3. Loot a battlefield. Wolf's Dragoons fought two major engagements where they took massive casualties in this part of the timeline. Misery in 3028 and Hesperus in 3019, and the latter was a defeat.

4. Loot a derelict dropship. Dragoons fought many bloody engagements in seperation, it might be possible for a whole dropship to be disabled and lost, and later salvaged.


I suggest that a hoard of Dragoon tech is best accounted for by:

a Defending/ witnessing the defence of Hesperus. The Lyrans were desperate and bussed in lots of mercenaries. Notably Hsien's Hotheads and Hansen's Roughriders, your characters could be affiliated with either or minor independents, or even former Lyran house troops. Hesperus is a good bet as the Dragoons were forced to retreat after taking massive casualties, so salvage is guaranteed, it is just a matter of who gets it. Hesperus is not the sort of place where you can just dig up bones, its watched and wired, so you need to either 'ninja' the loot, or be well connected. The former is more likely, scavengers are drawn to battlefields an a neutral force can sweep in and loot salvage more easily because it is not interested in the actual fighting.

b. Hanging around Marik space after Duncan Mariks rebellion. The Wolf's Dragoons were split up to fight the rebellion on many fronts. There were many small unit actions, and thus small unit deployments. House Marik is no slouch when it comes to aerospace assets so it is not a desperate stretch that a Dragoon dropship is shot up by Reivers and then lost if the fighters are redeployed in the battle before trackers are in place. A dead dropship could easily contain two or more intact mechs, its a matter of blind chance to find a dropship in these conditions. A dropship is only likely to be missed if there is nly a small engagement and also there is a secondary target to draw fighters away. Wolf's Dragoons are heavy on jumpship assets and can afford to deploy company or battalion sized forces by Leopard. A company of Dragoons making a raid from three Leopards, could be caught by Marik aerospace and one Leopard destroyed, the wreck is lost because the aerospace fighters have to chase the other two an drifts off into the void. The Dragoons are forced to retreat, but the Marik forces are too hard pressed, or their dropships are damaged and cannot adequately track the wreck (not unlikely Marik space is particularly backward). Thus neither side gets to recover. Later someone with access to recordings of the engagement can plot likely vector and speed of the wreck and find it. Voila Dragoon mechs.

These are two good options to justify the assets. Wolfnet will not come after you for looting battlefield salvage, its a common action, so long as you didnt interfere with or deny medical aid.

Option c. You really helped them out, maybe passed on some info that really made a job easier, or helped out their families when they were in a bind. As thanks, they let you buy a couple of their more smashed up mechs. Similar to Barber's Mauraders II.

 Mmmpi wrote:
Option c. You really helped them out, maybe passed on some info that really made a job easier, or helped out their families when they were in a bind. As thanks, they let you buy a couple of their more smashed up mechs. Similar to Barber's Mauraders II.

Only if you insist. It happens in some of the novels granted, but its just fiat. Use fiat if you must, but ignore it if you can.

This is the same answer as Join Wolfs Dragoons. You are talking about affiliated membership right here However mech givaways are rare, rare mech givaways more so.
Reviewing the consequences t also means you have heavy backup and aren't really a lone mechwarrior out on your own, its a Mary Sue of a backstory. "Knew Jaime Wolf, he showered me with mechs", I think we can do better than that.

 Orlanth wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:
Option c. You really helped them out, maybe passed on some info that really made a job easier, or helped out their families when they were in a bind. As thanks, they let you buy a couple of their more smashed up mechs. Similar to Barber's Mauraders II.

Only if you insist. It happens in some of the novels granted, but its just fiat. Use fiat if you must, but ignore it if you can.

This is the same answer as Join Wolfs Dragoons. You are talking about affiliated membership right here However mech givaways are rare, rare mech givaways more so.
Reviewing the consequences t also means you have heavy backup and aren't really a lone mechwarrior out on your own, its a Mary Sue of a backstory. "Knew Jaime Wolf, he showered me with mechs", I think we can do better than that.

Compared to "Be on one single planet on the exact day and time to salvage a specific rare mech"? I believe you doth protest too much.

 Mr Morden wrote:


Also the Dragoons may well have left some on battlefields - especially the larger ones.

It is possible, but again you come up against the issue of how likely or not it is. Even within the Dragoons the Shogun and Imp would be fairly unusual so pretty much outside of full regimental deployments or unless your unit has a protracted experience of combat against the Dragoons the chances of you encountering one of those never mind both to begin with are fairly small. I'm not suggesting that the Dragoons never lose or have to abandon equipment, but even if you do encounter one you then have to destroy it and secure the battlefield long enough to get the recovery vehicles and those mechs have to have been destroyed in such a way as to be economically repairable rather than write-offs and bear in mind that the Dragoons themselves will be pretty much your only source of spares so any destroyed body segments are likely to stay that way for the duration of the conflict unless you kill and salvage a second example with the required section intact.

It's just not that plausible from a fluff perspective to find both in a company sized unit outside of the Dragoons themselves for this reason. One or the other, OK, maybe, but both...?

Recovered from a Dropship shootdown is also possible but then you still run up against the first point of contention that it'd be somewhat unusual to find one in a Dragoon's Lance or Company to begin with and two would be doubly unusual.

Compared to "Be on one single planet on the exact day and time to salvage a specific rare mech"? I believe you doth protest too much.

You're talking about somewhere in the region of 30 Million C-Bills worth of kit there though and a Mercenary unit (Even Wolf's Dragoons) is a business, they'd not last long even with their reputation if that was the sort of thing they made a habit of doing. It's possible however also unlikely that a couple of ex-Dragoons were able to take their mechs with them by accruing enough money somehow to purchase them, the problems with this as an explanation though is that it's a huge chunk of money and what's the probability that the Dragoons would be happy to sell on such pretty unique kit?

Well, being pretty unique means having a control over a high portion of the needed supplies for it. If someone uses your stuff, that only you use and have spare parts for, it makes them a lot more... controllable.

I guess a lot depends on how strictly you play salvage. I'd always assumed that things like actuators were fairly interchangeable in the hands of an experienced tech crew, so for example you could probably repair/replace a damaged leg actuator on an Imp with one recovered from a wrecked Atlas with a bit of work, but if the entire leg was destroyed you'll probably need either a replacement from the factory or a leg from a second wrecked Imp, you couldn't just take the entire leg from the same Atlas and bolt it in place.

Well, we used to be fairly strict in that regard: if you needed actuators, you could either get ones from the same design, form a related one (Wasp/Stinger, for example), or you could jury-rig them from some actuator of the same class, but they will always work quirky.

The more "special" was your ride, the harder it would be to get it well maintained.

For me I think most of that was covered by the Repair Roll, a successful roll and the techs have managed to get the replacement part to fit and work correctly or a failed roll indicates that it's totally incompatible and can't be made to work.

I'm generally in favour of being fairly strict when it comes to salvage, so stuff like making sure body parts get like-for-like replacements from the appropriate chassis is fine and I don't just assume that a salvaged mech is repaired unless I have enough of the right spares available to fix it back up. But if I had to keep track of which specific mech type each salvaged actuator came from I think I'd struggle to ever repair any salvaged mechs since I tend to use the Mechwarrior 2nd Edition Encounters tables and deliveries of supplies or encounters with traders who might have such specific pieces of equipment happen at best infrequently.

Last game I played I was using MekHQ, which certainly helps in the managing of all things unit.

 simonr1978 wrote:

Compared to "Be on one single planet on the exact day and time to salvage a specific rare mech"? I believe you doth protest too much.

You're talking about somewhere in the region of 30 Million C-Bills worth of kit there though and a Mercenary unit (Even Wolf's Dragoons) is a business, they'd not last long even with their reputation if that was the sort of thing they made a habit of doing. It's possible however also unlikely that a couple of ex-Dragoons were able to take their mechs with them by accruing enough money somehow to purchase them, the problems with this as an explanation though is that it's a huge chunk of money and what's the probability that the Dragoons would be happy to sell on such pretty unique kit?

Oh, not likely at all, but in the fluff there are occasional mentions of equipment that a bigger/stronger/richer force wouldn't bother fixing, at least when they could find other supply to replace them. It's not completely unreasonable to think that the Dragoons would recover the mechs, and then decide not to fix them, but someone else might be interested. I also don't think it's the most common possible solution, just that it's as conceivable as ninja looting on one of the most heavily defended worlds in the inner sphere in the middle of a battle.

 Mmmpi wrote:

 simonr1978 wrote:

Compared to "Be on one single planet on the exact day and time to salvage a specific rare mech"? I believe you doth protest too much.

You're talking about somewhere in the region of 30 Million C-Bills worth of kit there though and a Mercenary unit (Even Wolf's Dragoons) is a business, they'd not last long even with their reputation if that was the sort of thing they made a habit of doing. It's possible however also unlikely that a couple of ex-Dragoons were able to take their mechs with them by accruing enough money somehow to purchase them, the problems with this as an explanation though is that it's a huge chunk of money and what's the probability that the Dragoons would be happy to sell on such pretty unique kit?

Oh, not likely at all, but in the fluff there are occasional mentions of equipment that a bigger/stronger/richer force wouldn't bother fixing, at least when they could find other supply to replace them. It's not completely unreasonable to think that the Dragoons would recover the mechs, and then decide not to fix them, but someone else might be interested. I also don't think it's the most common possible solution, just that it's as conceivable as ninja looting on one of the most heavily defended worlds in the inner sphere in the middle of a battle.

If the Mercs that helped defeat the Dragoons on Hesperus had a good salvage clause in their contract and IIRC they are big name units themselves- that seems a very plausible recovery.

Same with the DCMS - after the 4th Succession War IIRC units went mercenary so if they had picked up the vast quantities of mechs that had been lost on Misery - seems plausible?

I kind go with that a good tech should be able to make actuators etc work on a similar weight of Mech - there used to be Frankenstein Mech's that worked - one of things that I thought they might do with the BattleTech computer game was have glitches and qualities for Mechs - Even the Black Widow Company had these and their Tech support is very good.

The end of the 4th Succession war lead to Takashi Kurita issuing his "Death to Mercenaries" order which remained in place until after Wolf's Dragoons and the Kell Hounds aided the Combine in the defence of Luthien though so anyone from the Combine taking that route would do so largely knowing that they'll never be able to return home and there's a good chance that their friends and families are likely to get punished by the ISF for what would probably be perceived as their betrayal. I don't think many DCMS units are going to end up going Mercenary in the aftermath of that (The Bushido culture as portrayed largely precludes many units or individuals taking that route anyway) and the battle of Misery involved some of the newest and best units in the Draconis Combine and IIRC whilst some of the Ryuken left to become mercenaries they did so by joining Wolf's Dragoons.

If the Mercs that helped defeat the Dragoons on Hesperus had a good salvage clause in their contract and IIRC they are big name units themselves- that seems a very plausible recovery.

It's stretching it a bit IMO to say that it would be very plausible in a roughly company sized unit. Realistically even assuming that you've got full salvage rights, in my experience it's going to be a pretty good day if half the enemy mechs you take out are going to be economically worth repairing. For mechs without CASE anything that's lost to an ammo explosion is scrap and the likelihood is that anything that's been destroyed by CT destruction is going to be broken up for parts. It's always possible that a lucky pilot might score a triple-Engine or Cockpit Critical and take out an otherwise intact mech or a double-Gyro and the mech is abandoned or surrendered, but is it very plausible that these lucky hits just so happen to be against these particular rare mechs?

It's not impossible that over the course of an extended engagement with multiple contacts like at Hesperus you might encounter and destroy enough Imps and Shoguns to piece together a working example of each, but at the risk of repetition, they're pretty uncommon mechs even among Dragoon units so you're not that likely to be encountering them in significant numbers to begin with, the probability though is that if you don't have the luxury of salvaging two or three of each you'll be reliant on the Dragoons being willing and able to sell you the parts you need to put them back in action again. There's also the issue there that you're setting the bar of the backstory of your unit pretty high, suggesting that they've won multiple combats against one of the Inner Sphere's premiere mercenary outfits.

When all's said and done though if you're happy with it as an explanation, go for it. It doesn't work particularly well for me personally, but that shouldn't matter. There's nothing particularly wrong with not even using a head-canon explanation and just putting down whatever you like the look or feel of on the board.

just that it's as conceivable as ninja looting on one of the most heavily defended worlds in the inner sphere in the middle of a battle

To be fair, the Dragoons did make a number of failed attacks during the Hesperus campaign and on Misery too (And no doubt suffered local defeats elsewhere as well at various stages during their history) so it's entirely probable at some point that they had to fall back leaving some kit behind rather than it being a case of calling in the recovery vehicles on the battlefield to attempt to salvage under enemy fire.

I'd still personally be inclined towards saying that whilst it's definitely not impossible, it's very unlikely and highly implausible though YMMV.

For the Shogun/Imp, could always go with someone managed to steal or otherwise duplicate the design plans and churn a couple out for sale before they were forcibly shut down (or maybe still selling them on the black market).

This is hilarious - with RRT dead, this is now becoming the “Battletech and other big,stomp robot” forum.

 Stormonu wrote:
This is hilarious - with RRT dead, this is now becoming the “Battletech and other big,stomp robot” forum.

Hey! Heavy Gear is on here too!

They have medium stomp robots.