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So it sounds like basically just buy TROs and ignore the rest unless for whatever reason I decide I want to take a deep dive into the fluff.

chaos0xomega wrote:
So it sounds like basically just buy TROs and ignore the rest unless for whatever reason I decide I want to take a deep dive into the fluff.

TBH even the TROs aren't important if you're not intreased in the fluff, Battltech is a VERY fluff driven game.

Yeah. Basically all you need to play is a few of the core rulebooks, some maps, dice and a recordsheet/mechlab program. Some minis or tokens. All the rest is fluff of one sort or another.

 darkkis wrote:

 Prometheum5 wrote:

As someone who's coming back to CBT for the first time in ~15 years, I'm also a bit lost trying to navigate the different types of books both old and new. I get TROs vs. Record Sheets and the basics of what I need to play (Total Warfare), but I am really struggling to understand the difference between Field Manuals, Handbooks, and Source Books.

Field Manuals contain information on the military side of a society, so units, commanders, deployments, etc. Handbooks are of the society as a whole, with lots of history attached, how did the nation form and so on. Source books are usually related to singular events, eras or units, and can contain a mix of the info above, but usually more in depth than the FM or Handbooks would, since the scale of information/event is smaller and the content can thus be deeper.

Thank you for this! I'm mostly focusing on Merc fluff right now so probably going to buy all the vintage books regardless, but this is really helpful for figuring out what else to go back and grab.

chaos0xomega wrote:
So it sounds like basically just buy TROs and ignore the rest unless for whatever reason I decide I want to take a deep dive into the fluff.

Mainly yes, and as said before, if you don't want any fluff at all, not even that. Take, for example, MegamekLab and you'll have all the construction rules to create your own mechs and/or a whole load of official designs to play with without needing absolutely anything else. You can even go to Sarna for pics and fluff.

And on that environment, you could also take the whole Megamek kerfuffle: MekHQ, that will allow you to both run a full mercenary campaign, play the battles over Megamek and maintain and design mechs with MegaMekLab.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Got my Shilone and BattleTech Legends today - really enjoyed reading through the latter

Still waiting for mine (UK) - starting to get a bit nervous...

 Prometheum5 wrote:

 darkkis wrote:

 Prometheum5 wrote:

As someone who's coming back to CBT for the first time in ~15 years, I'm also a bit lost trying to navigate the different types of books both old and new. I get TROs vs. Record Sheets and the basics of what I need to play (Total Warfare), but I am really struggling to understand the difference between Field Manuals, Handbooks, and Source Books.

Field Manuals contain information on the military side of a society, so units, commanders, deployments, etc. Handbooks are of the society as a whole, with lots of history attached, how did the nation form and so on. Source books are usually related to singular events, eras or units, and can contain a mix of the info above, but usually more in depth than the FM or Handbooks would, since the scale of information/event is smaller and the content can thus be deeper.

Thank you for this! I'm mostly focusing on Merc fluff right now so probably going to buy all the vintage books regardless, but this is really helpful for figuring out what else to go back and grab.

I belive the merc unit construction rules is in campaign ops (revised) if that helps. in terms of merc fluff there's a lot of it out there, but as mercs also fight for the various great houses it helps to know who you're working for too (word of advise don't work for the dracs! )

Haha, totally. I just started Decision and Thunder Rift and plan to plow through the GDL stuff. I was deep into CBT back during the FedCom Civil War era and then the start of the Dark Ages so that's what I've read. Time to go back further!

Start with Sword and Dagger.

 Orlanth wrote:
Start with Sword and Dagger.

they never printed that book again after it's inital run so it's damn near impossiable to find. It's also not very good. I'd start with the Warrior trilogy.

TROs aren't necessary to play the game.

They're 90% background books, and contain basic stats but none of the record sheets. And then even the record sheet books, as others have said, aren't necessary given that there are lots of 'Mech building programs out there.

Personally I use Solaris Skunk Werks, which is the spiritual successor to The Drawing Board, the best 'Mech program that ever existed. SSW is also back in development, and getting updates again after many years on hiatus, which is great, as it means it can keep adding all the newer stuff. Every record sheet I use comes out of that program.

As for the other books, really it depends on what you want. Handbooks/Field Manuals tend to look at factions, whereas Sourcebooks tend to look at events. There was a long period where the story in BTech was driven by sourcebooks because they weren't doing novels. So the FedCom Civil War and especially the Jihad leading into the Dark Age-era was all sourcebook based.

Catalyst have said that they don't want to just have sourcebooks driving everything forward, and want to make novels a big part of the universe again, which might be why Hour of the Wolf was the first big IlClan thing to come out rather than the actual IlClan sourcebook.

As for the other books, really it depends on what you want. Handbooks/Field Manuals tend to look at factions, whereas Sourcebooks tend to look at events. There was a long period where the story in BTech was driven by sourcebooks because they weren't doing novels. So the FedCom Civil War and especially the Jihad leading into the Dark Age-era was all sourcebook based.

actually the FCCW had novels dedicated to it, it was the Jihad that was entirely sourcebook driven

Without fluff Btech is not that interesting. The stuff that makes Btech great in my opinion are all the small things you find in the sourcebooks. I have all the TROs up to Jihad, and the why some mechs, tanks, warships came to be is hilarious sometimes.

M.

 Miguelsan wrote:
Without fluff Btech is not that interesting. The stuff that makes Btech great in my opinion are all the small things you find in the sourcebooks. I have all the TROs up to Jihad, and the why some mechs, tanks, warships came to be is hilarious sometimes.

M.

ohh agreed. Battletech is a MUCH more intreasting game as a setting then just a game.

BrianDavion wrote:
actually the FCCW had novels dedicated to it, it was the Jihad that was entirely sourcebook driven

Actually yes, I remember now. Ended with a big stoush where Nondi Steiner got ganked.

BrianDavion wrote:

As for the other books, really it depends on what you want. Handbooks/Field Manuals tend to look at factions, whereas Sourcebooks tend to look at events. There was a long period where the story in BTech was driven by sourcebooks because they weren't doing novels. So the FedCom Civil War and especially the Jihad leading into the Dark Age-era was all sourcebook based.

actually the FCCW had novels dedicated to it, it was the Jihad that was entirely sourcebook driven

I was gonna say, my whole exposure was driven by the FCCW novels. It's the Dark Ages books that lost me... After I do some of the earlier stories I want to dive into the Clan Invasion and do the Blood of Kerensky books then the decline of the invasion stuff. And here I thought I was going to dive back into the Horus Heresy books

the early MWDA novels where TERRIABLE, some of the later ones less so but a lot of ".... yeah this happened because plot, ignore the extreme level of bs required for it" happened there but that's the NORM in Battletech novels. this is the game setting where we are told repeatedly that nationalism is largely dead and the people over all don't care which flag flies over their head, until suddenly the entire sarna march collapses due to capellan nationalism...

BrianDavion wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Start with Sword and Dagger.

they never printed that book again after it's inital run so it's damn near impossiable to find. It's also not very good. I'd start with the Warrior trilogy.

Glad I found my copy at a used bookstore years ago (or maybe not after reading the book... )

 Ghaz wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Start with Sword and Dagger.

they never printed that book again after it's inital run so it's damn near impossiable to find. It's also not very good. I'd start with the Warrior trilogy.

Glad I found my copy at a used bookstore years ago (or maybe not after reading the book... )

yup I got my copy, up until they resumed making the novels I could proudly boast of having EVERY Battletech novel on my book shelf.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
TROs aren't necessary to play the game.

I would go further and avoid then frankly,

Use Sarna to find which of the mechs you like best fit which factions and use that knowledge to help justify the mechs you wanted to field anyway.
As a general rule so long as the mech is not lostech in an era when that was important or hasn't been manufactured yet then anything goes. So long as you pay some lip service to faction production you can get away with a lot and in most cases have at least one or two unusual units the faction does not normally produce or purchase.

The worst way to design a mech force is by rolling on TRO tables. Not only will you get a very skewed force that does not make sense, but you may well roll mechs you do not like or do not own, and many TROs are either flat out wrong or contradict the sourcebooks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Start with Sword and Dagger.

they never printed that book again after it's inital run so it's damn near impossiable to find. It's also not very good. I'd start with the Warrior trilogy.

Glad I found my copy at a used bookstore years ago (or maybe not after reading the book... )

yup I got my copy, up until they resumed making the novels I could proudly boast of having EVERY Battletech novel on my book shelf.

I had all the early novels in mint condition, then they were stolen and only slowly replaced. Sword and Dagger was the hardest to find, I was lucky, my copy was(is) damaged and thus a reasonable price. It goes for silly money nowadays.

Frankly I think it one of the better novels and introduces new concepts from the get go.

I like RATs.

Then again, I like fanmade (and far more comprehensive) RAT. The big one that a guy at the BTech forums has been working on for years.

 Orlanth wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
TROs aren't necessary to play the game.

I would go further and avoid then frankly,

Use Sarna to find which of the mechs you like best fit which factions and use that knowledge to help justify the mechs you wanted to field anyway.
As a general rule so long as the mech is not lostech in an era when that was important or hasn't been manufactured yet then anything goes. So long as you pay some lip service to faction production you can get away with a lot and in most cases have at least one or two unusual units the faction does not normally produce or purchase.

The worst way to design a mech force is by rolling on TRO tables. Not only will you get a very skewed force that does not make sense, but you may well roll mechs you do not like or do not own, and many TROs are either flat out wrong or contradict the sourcebooks.

TROs don;t have RAT tables.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I like RATs.

I like them too. Coming from 40k I look at them like army lists - these are the units available to your faction. I've copied out the Hells Horses ones and am using them to choose what stuff to buy.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Then again, I like fanmade (and far more comprehensive) RAT. The big one that a guy at the BTech forums has been working on for years.

This one?

That's the one.

And 10.64? I don't have that version.

Got a bit muddled there.

So I'm thinking of getting some TROs, as it seems like they might be worth it on the basis of fluff based on some of these responses.

I'm looking at:

TRO: Succession War
TRO: Clan Invasion
TRO: Jihad
TRO: Golden Century
TRO: Irregulars

These seem to all be the "new" standard for TROs going forward, collapsed by era rather than a mess of specific books by year, with new artwork, etc. Worth it? Also considering the Recognition Guides but not sure if I should just wait for the eventual TRO: IlClan compilation.

Also, some said before that the TROs don't include record sheets, but several of these indicate that they include "game stats" for a number of mechs - are game stats not the same as record sheets?

A few of them indicate specifically that they do include Record Sheets ("Statistics and Record Sheets are included for 29 new IndustrialMech MODs, Security- and MilitiaMechs, support vehicles, and their variants ready for play." Golden Century says something similar).What gives?

chaos0xomega wrote:
Also, some said before that the TROs don't include record sheets, but several of these indicate that they include "game stats" for a number of mechs - are game stats not the same as record sheets?

A few of them indicate specifically that they do include Record Sheets ("Statistics and Record Sheets are included for 29 new IndustrialMech MODs, Security- and MilitiaMechs, support vehicles, and their variants ready for play." Golden Century says something similar).What gives?

I'm not sure about that last part as I don't have that book, but all the TROs I have are like this:



So you have the fluff of the mech and the stats listed as such, but not the record sheet to play with it.

Golden Century and Irregulars are kind of obscure ones, TBH.

And yes, some TROs do contain record sheets, but usually the smaller ones (the IlClan Recognition Guide TROs have regular TRO entries plus all the record sheets in there).

TRO: Succession War, TRO: Clan Invasion, TRO: Jihad would be a good starting point, but again these are mostly fluff. They're not really gaming aids.

Yeah, so I feel compelled to pick them up on the basis of fluff. I basically have an at-best cursory understanding of Battletech fluff. I know that there was once a spacefaring human government centered on earth and then some stuff happened that resulted in a civil war that saw it fracture up into 4 or 5 major competing states (and a number of smaller minor powers on the periphery) while the commander of the military fled into the unknown regions to establish the clans. I know that as a result of this a bunch of tech and R&D capacity was lost and a whole bunch of wars and conflict occurred. And I know that one day the clans showed up and started kicking the inner spheres asses forcing them to kinda unit against a common enemy. And I know that a religious cult based on space telecommunications arose in the aftermath of that invasion and caused even more problems, and then somewhere in all that a couple of the clans managed to invade earth and reestablish rule on earth or whatever...

but thats about *all* I know. I see people throwing names of characters and mechs around, and I'm clueless. Events get mentioned, and assigned from the Battle of Tukayyid I know nothing about them, etc. etc. etc.

So the TROs seem like a good place to start in terms of learning some of the background.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Yeah, so I feel compelled to pick them up on the basis of fluff. I basically have an at-best cursory understanding of Battletech fluff. I know that there was once a spacefaring human government centered on earth and then some stuff happened that resulted in a civil war that saw it fracture up into 4 or 5 major competing states (and a number of smaller minor powers on the periphery) while the commander of the military fled into the unknown regions to establish the clans. I know that as a result of this a bunch of tech and R&D capacity was lost and a whole bunch of wars and conflict occurred. And I know that one day the clans showed up and started kicking the inner spheres asses forcing them to kinda unit against a common enemy. And I know that a religious cult based on space telecommunications arose in the aftermath of that invasion and caused even more problems, and then somewhere in all that a couple of the clans managed to invade earth and reestablish rule on earth or whatever...

but thats about *all* I know. I see people throwing names of characters and mechs around, and I'm clueless. Events get mentioned, and assigned from the Battle of Tukayyid I know nothing about them, etc. etc. etc.

So the TROs seem like a good place to start in terms of learning some of the background.

I don't own a ton of TROs myself but I don't think you're going to get as much of the basic setting background from them, they are more specific to individual mech fluff. You'd probably want Handbooks or Field Manuals for the setting and events.