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Bob Lorgar wrote:
It's one of the trashiest of trash units. Never understood why anyone ever wanted one. Ever.

You... do realize that is the point, right? It's a cheapo unit made to defend stuff and leave better stuff available.

For what is worth, it actually is pretty decent used on urban environments. Able to give a headache to much larger opposition. Almost as if it was designed for that or something.

Bob Lorgar wrote:
It's one of the trashiest of trash units. Never understood why anyone ever wanted one. Ever.

it is all about the Memes and the price

 Elbows wrote:
Seems awfully wasteful to break down a game this large to simple meta-gaming. We have Warhammer for that. Your argument could be used to ignore, likely 75% of all Battlemechs which are outclassed by various other mechs in their weight class, etc.

I agree. Metagaming with BTech is silly given that there is one faction that is literally, in every way, superior to the others.

Not morally superior.

Nurglitch wrote:
Not morally superior.

Clearly you need to spend more time with the words of the Blessed Blake and those who can help you better appreciate them.

Nurglitch wrote:
Not morally superior.

I was talking about their technology. Clearly.

If attitude counts, they certainly are morally superior as well. No one, not even Blakists, can talk down to you like a Jade Falcon!

I am issuing a batchall to your manager, surat!

Urbie was the original meme, before memes even existed. It was always a joke of a unit: ugly and awful but cheap and plentiful and reliable. People love it BECAUSE it's such an ugly duckling that usually dies horribly, but every now and again you get an amazing story of triumph out of one when it sucker punches somebody important with that AC-20.

And again, in-universe it's dirt cheap and mass produced, meant for garrison and city defense where they don't need to move around much and their short range is mitigated by knowing the enemy is coming to them

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
Not morally superior.

I was talking about their technology. Clearly.

I was clearly not making a joke.

The Urban is fluffed as a milita mech. For the foes it was designed to face - civilians mainly - it is perfect. Mech grade armour and a stonking great gun. Load foam rounds for crowd control.

Cheap as well. You don't need a twenty-five million C-Bill TimberWolf pulling garrison when your heaviest enemy is likely to be a machinegun mounted on a technical.

They are all but useless in a normal mech on mech lance sized game of Battletech. You really need fast movers with an AC-20. A Saladin Assault Hover Tank would be my ideal choice. Two to really freak out an opponent.

niall78 wrote:
The Urban is fluffed as a milita mech. For the foes it was designed to face - civilians mainly - it is perfect. Mech grade armour and a stonking great gun. Load foam rounds for crowd control.

Cheap as well. You don't need a twenty-five million C-Bill TimberWolf pulling garrison when your heaviest enemy is likely to be a machinegun mounted on a technical.

They are all but useless in a normal mech on mech lance sized game of Battletech. You really need fast movers with an AC-20. A Saladin Assault Hover Tank would be my ideal choice. Two to really freak out an opponent.

The regular urbie (UM-R60) only has an AC/10, not a 20 (that's a variant), plus a small laser for point defense, but it has basically as much armor as a 30 tonner can possibly have... and is a mech, which makes it inherently much more resilient than any similarly sized vehicle. The greater range of the AC/10 also benefits it.

The Saladin is a great hovertank, but even though it's front armor is decent at 17 points, the sides and the rear are paper mache (plus, it's a vehicle). Being a hover vehicle is particularly unsuitable for the Urbie's playing field (that is, packed urban environments) what with the skidding and the like (kind of an accident waiting to happen). Plus, hover vehicles have a really big tendency to lose movement when hit, and the Saladin has no turret, which makes it even less suitable for protracted environments.

Out in the open? Yeah, Saladin's a great little bugger, but I'd argue that for the same in-universe price tag, I'd rather get 10 Savannah Masters than a single Saladin. Those things are murder.

The Urbanmech operational parameters are written in its freaking name. As simple as that.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
Seems awfully wasteful to break down a game this large to simple meta-gaming. We have Warhammer for that. Your argument could be used to ignore, likely 75% of all Battlemechs which are outclassed by various other mechs in their weight class, etc.

I agree. Metagaming with BTech is silly given that there is one faction that is literally, in every way, superior to the others.

that and you can design custom mechs that are better anyway, mechs tend to be designed with some character, and there's a story behind em, sure the CGR-1A1 is crap (although you can make it work by doing exactly what it's name says) but it
s the type of thing you can totally see coming out of military procurement

Deleted.

one thing battletech has going for it over 40k is the mech design system. I'm not going to claim every mech is perfectly balanced etc as there are definatly some things that are better then others, but over all, everything is based around trade offs. you can't have a mech that is simoultaniously the fastest, most armored, most shooty mech in the game, because the rules don't allow for that...

I think it's also worth noting that the character of battletech players tends not to be WAAC as much as other games, TROs outsell record sheets books, by a huge margin

So basically that Battletech players are more gentlemanly?

The most gentlemanly.


Even the much-vaunted Clan Omnis have problems. Take the stock standard Thor. It has terrible ammunition loads. It has a gun that can fire two types of ammunition, carries only one ton of it, but has two tons for its missile launcher. Why? Because that's the way it was designed! And that's fine.

I liken 'Mechs to cars quite often. Not every car design works out well. Some really suck. Some are inexplicably popular despite sucking. Some never gain any traction despite being excellent pieces of machinery. It's better that way. Otherwise we'd all be just targ-comp Clan pulse boats and 100-ton Gauszillas, and where's the fun in that?

 Kalamadea wrote:
Urbie was the original meme, before memes even existed. It was always a joke of a unit: ugly and awful but cheap and plentiful and reliable. People love it BECAUSE it's such an ugly duckling that usually dies horribly, but every now and again you get an amazing story of triumph out of one when it sucker punches somebody important with that AC-20.

And again, in-universe it's dirt cheap and mass produced, meant for garrison and city defense where they don't need to move around much and their short range is mitigated by knowing the enemy is coming to them

THEY FILLED ME WITH TRASH

I FILLED THEM WITH LEAD

LMAO

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The most gentlemanly.


Even the much-vaunted Clan Omnis have problems. Take the stock standard Thor. It has terrible ammunition loads. It has a gun that can fire two types of ammunition, carries only one ton of it, but has two tons for its missile launcher. Why? Because that's the way it was designed! And that's fine.

I liken 'Mechs to cars quite often. Not every car design works out well. Some really suck. Some are inexplicably popular despite sucking. Some never gain any traction despite being excellent pieces of machinery. It's better that way. Otherwise we'd all be just targ-comp Clan pulse boats and 100-ton Gauszillas, and where's the fun in that?

I suppose the fun is having a game that incentivizes de-optimization.

How does the game incentivize de-optimization?

It is kind of Semi-Historical, as you usually play in a specific setting and time frame

can optimize everything, but this is not what most players want from the game

imagine it like a WW2 game, were you can optimze, but a 1942 German Afrika Army will not be that

for BT, instead of building the optimized Mech you take those that were available at the chosen timeframe for your chosen nation and this is also a reason why there are so many background books for the different wars/conflicts and years

The existence of period lists notwithstanding, nothing you described isn't also the case with 40k, yet the mindset of the 40k community is very different from the BT community. I, personally, don't think it has anything to do with the game itself or anything you described - Flames of War is another game that fits with everything you described (including timeframes of availability of various units, etc.) yet thats another game that is viewed primarily through a competitive lens by its community.

for Flames of War, a lot of people here have left with 3rd and play Battlegroup now for that very reason

and also for 40k, a lot of people I know played and builded a specific army for a specific timeframe/scenario

but 40k is not that detailed in the background, and very unbalanced so that if you go for a specific army organisation from the fluff, your opponent need a power gamer list just to have a chance

you never say lets play M41-800 were Primaris did not existed and Ultramarines had not 1st company and chose the army accordingly to that

 kodos wrote:


you never say lets play M41-800 were Primaris did not existed and Ultramarines had not 1st company and chose the army accordingly to that

Thats not how me and my group play Battletech either. *shrug*

chaos0xomega wrote:

Thats not how me and my group play Battletech either. *shrug*

how do you do it?
we agree on a year (3025 most of the time), the point system we want to use and sometimes a specific theatre, chose the factions and the mechs

while for 40k, you get in with how many points and which house rules to be used

We go by general period rather than specific year (thus far either clan invasion or succession wars) and then take whatever we want from within that period - only real rule is don't mix clanner tech and inner sphere tech

Mixing Clanner and IC tech is perfectly viable during Clan Invasion depending on when in that era battles take place, though.

Yeah I know Rasalhague Dominion and all that, i'm speaking in more general terms. We're very casual about our approach to the game, not really rivet counters or fluff historians by any means.

Deleted.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Yeah I know Rasalhague Dominion and all that, i'm speaking in more general terms. We're very casual about our approach to the game, not really rivet counters or fluff historians by any means.

Them, but I meant more that by the end of the Invasion, the IC had scavenged enough Clan Tech to reverse engineer or develop equivalents and both sides were regularly using salvaged/captured mechs.

chaos0xomega wrote:
How does the game incentivize de-optimization?

I can't speak for Alpha Strike, but classic Battletech allows for luck to effect the game in a way that does not lend itself to a competitive mindset. If you jumped your mech expertly behind mine, and unleashed all of your weapons- you should kill me- but sometimes you won't. Even more sometimes, my rear mounted medium laser will instakill your pilot, or deal your gyro 3 critical hits the very first time it strikes.

Few people talk about the times they gloriously wore someone down to internals and blew one part after another off until the mech died. But everyone's got a story like the time my Valkyrie landed 2 lrms into the back of a Hunchback, set off it's ammo and turned that thing into a crater, or the time that Hollander blew away that Daishi with one shot!

Even something like the LRMs, they might be worth their weight this shot or not- who knows!

Other than a few Ork weapons that competitive players avoid like the plague, 40k doesn't allow luck that sort of power in its game.