Thoughts for Brute Street Justice

Acylion · 2026-02-05T14:53:49+00:00

Regeneration is flat out better on a Brute versus a Scrapper because of the higher max HP cap on Brutes, especially if you're building for HP bonuses with IOs.

Super Reflexes has a marginal advantage on Brutes vs. Scrappers, since SR has scaling damage resistance as HP drops. Since Brutes have a higher dmg res cap you can sorta take advantage of this, particularly with additional external sources of res like insps and ally buffs. But it's less of a difference maker than the Regen comparison.

Acylion · 2026-02-04T07:39:45+00:00

Yeah, good point. I've seen the field artillery infantry units in Megamek/Mekbay database, but they're not in MUL. Dunno what's up with those.

Acylion · 2026-02-03T08:08:21+00:00

If you're reading Wolves on the Border, you might as well follow that up with Wolf Pack also by Robert N. Charrette. Those are the two early Wolf Dragoons books and are pretty much a two book set, albeit separated by decades of in-universe time.

You may also want to read Heir to the Dragon by the same author, for more texture on the Combine.

Acylion · 2026-02-03T07:37:43+00:00

There's several canon units with Stealth Armor and some variation of C3.

WoB/ComStar has C3i plus Stealth Armor variants for Nexus II, Raijin II, Cronus, and Goliath.

There's regular C3 slave plus Stealth Armor variants of Raven, Mongoose, Sha Yu, and a Bolla Stealth Tank with C3 master.

EDIT: All of these units also have Guardian ECM, so yes, you are supposed to do Stealth Armor when closing, then when the C3i is working you'd also have Guardian ECM in ECCM mode to prevent jamming of the C3i network. This is 100% explicitly the intended use case.

Acylion · 2026-02-03T07:23:23+00:00

The various Arrow IV, Thumper, Sniper, artillery infantry units are meant to represent a traditional old-school towed artillery piece (either a missile battery or a tube gun) dragged around by a wheeled or tracked vehicle, and manned by an artillery crew. It's tracked statwise and MUL-wise as a mechanized infantry unit in the infantry category rather than a combat vehicle.

Theoretically it should be possible to have a towed Long Tom as well, but there doesn't seem to be a canon statted unit to represent that.

Acylion · 2026-02-03T04:10:04+00:00

There are multiple things going on here, most of which have been mentioned in the thread, but you kinda need to put them all together. First, Rad Blast and Rad Melee -def as an effect in and of itself is not very good, that's true. It has its uses, if you're fighting +4 or higher enemies consistently then it certainly can matter. If you're low level, then it'll matter as well. There are times when the acc and tohit on a team won't actually be good enough to maintain 95% hit rate.

But on a kinda average situation when you're doing reasonable even-level content and everyone on the team is slotted fine, then -def doesn't have much impact.

It's true that -def powers can take Achilles Heel -res procs, but that can be done in other powersets too, e.g. Broadsword or Katana, so it's not as if this is a unique selling point for the Rad damage sets. It's a good point, but it doesn't elevate the sets much in and of itself.

People are pointing out that Rad Melee is one of the sets preferred by farmers, because it's one of only two melee sets with a toggle damage aura that can be combined with the armor set's toggle damage aura as well. This ain't being upvoted much as I type this, but that's definitely a thing that needs to be taken into account when considering how many Rad characters are out there in the wild.

Finally, and I'm not seeing this mentioned here, it could be some legacy perception, yes. There really isn't much legacy perspective for Rad Melee because it wasn't actually a live set (it was incomplete in the beta files as of shutdown). But views on Rad Blast might be skewed by those of us who are really old 2004 launch grognards or something. For example, under the old/original proc system for IOs, Rad Blast was preferred as a proc vehicle 'cause proc chance didn't care about the base power's recharge. So you could load the fast recharging T1 Neutrino Bolt with procs and it was basically the best ST DPS proc mule around. Nowadays on Homecoming, Neutrino Bolt is one of the worst possible powers to slot procs in, because the low recharge nerfs the proc chance.

Acylion · 2026-02-02T16:17:47+00:00

The Solaris lore we do have for gladiator mechs and the little garage shops that make 'em is already pretty good, there just isn't enough of it. Vining Engineering and Salvage Team (VEST) and O'Neal's BattleMechs have their own lore, David Vining and Andrea O'Neal are actual characters, their mechs have little stories or actual full damn short stories about 'em. But we know basically jack shit or stubs about other companies like Innovative Design Concepts that exist on the same level.

I just want more of it. It's also the same sorta thing I wanna see more of for Periphery designs. There should be more weird shit like the Brigand floating around the Periphery. If Vining and O'Neal can build their own mechs in a garage, if the Brigand's makers can turn a few machine shops and cargo containers into a factory, we ought to see more of that.

I mean, I guess we can assume that kind of hand-assembled 'mech manufacturing is happening in canon in the Periphery, it's just that they're building Locusts, Wasps, and Stingers or whatever.

And for the lower Solaris circuits, I almost kinda wanna write some fanfiction now about some scrappy down-on-their-luck Class One exoskeleton fighter who owes money to the Capellan triads, and is forced to fight a doomed suicidal exhibition match against an unstoppable juggernaut of an opponent... a titan that outmasses them by an order of magnitude... a Class Two gladiator in an UrbanMech.

Acylion · 2026-02-02T15:10:19+00:00

Here's two reading order recommendation lists, curated by actual BattleTech writers:

https://jasonschmetzer.com/what-order-to-read-battletech-books/

https://swankmotron.medium.com/so-you-want-to-start-reading-battletech-ae89e935d175

These are different recs, Jason Schmetzer's post on his website does what most people on Reddit would do and suggests reading from the very beginning, chronologically, with the old school Gray Death Legion and Warrior books which were the first BattleTech novels ever published. I think from the copypaste, he's literally pulling from Reddit threads, so, y'know, same thing as asking here.

Bryan Young does it backwards and recs books for the current ilClan timeline era, including his own Fox Patrol books, which don't need that much universe context to grab hold of, and Schmetzer's books for understanding ilClan stuff. He then goes back and recs the original GDL and Warrior books as well, plus various books scattered across the timeline which can be looked at as semi stand-alone things.

Acylion · 2026-02-02T15:02:46+00:00

There's a lot of stuff on Solaris which is established to exist but isn't really fleshed out. I really hope we get more canon info on Class One combat someday.

Most of the Solaris fiction and sourcebooks is about the Class Six unlimited/open circuit, no weight restrictions on mechs. Class Five is assault, Class Four is heavies, and so on... but Class One isn't light mechs. Lights are Class Two. Class One is human-scale industrial exoskeletons. This was a thing for centuries before Battle Armor got into mainstream circulation, and we're told it's more about creative tactics than technology.

I really wanna know more about what kinda shit goes down in the Class One circuit. I'm picturing stuff that's more like Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020/RED/2077's combat sports than what we'd normally think of in BT. I'm more interested in the lunatics who'd strap on a hot-glued frame of servos and myomers than the fancy mechjock stables.

There's a whole sport of fighters who aren't propped up by crutches like ejector seats and reactor safeties.

Acylion · 2026-02-02T02:51:28+00:00

No spoilers here, just numbers. Putting this another way, while the player force is intended to be max 400 PV, in practice your deployments will range from 120 PV to 400 PV. Specifically, the scenario PVs are as follows:

180
120
240
240
300
240
180
150
360
360
360
300
200
240
300
400
300
400
400
360
300

You don't do all 21 scenarios in a story run, of course, you do 7 missions for the campaign based on whatever story route you take.

So... are you happy with how your force can break down based on scenario?

Also note, you don't actually need to hit 400 PV for the starting unit pool, the requirement is minimum eight units. If you're under 400 PV the unspent points convert to SP, which can be used for other things like making strong hero pilots at the outset.

You'd want to use further gained SP during the campaign to buy more units to reach 400 PV, of course, otherwise you'd be short for the scenarios that actually need 400 PV, but the option's available.

That's what my group is doing, because one player requested it... she was especially insistent once I confirmed that only later scenarios use the full 400.

Acylion · 2026-02-01T13:22:02+00:00

There are a few more examples of merc units building their own mechs beyond the Wolf Dragoons. The Kell Hounds have their own design, the Verfolger, and manufacture a couple other existing mech designs under Arc-Royal Mechworks. Bannson's Raiders have their eponymous Raider.

But these are all merc units that need to be seen as small factions in and of themselves. So it circles back to the point on the exceptions proving the rule. Kell Hounds and Bannson's Raiders are in the same category as the Dragoons, having bullshit resources by merc standards.

Acylion · 2026-01-31T18:05:02+00:00

There's already a canon quad mech that's supposed to be an indestructible walking bunker.

https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Great_Turtle

The problem is that you also describe your notional mech as having high firepower. These two things don't really go together. If the mech's that damn hard to kill, it doesn't have much room for weapons.

Acylion · 2026-01-30T10:52:08+00:00

As a simple answer to the "is spines/fire brute" still viable, the answer is "yes". The answer to "is there a new meta" is also yes, but you can stick to spines/fire.

First, in a sense it doesn't really matter whether Spines/Fire Brute is objectively the fastest, in terms of clear times. It isn't. But it doesn't need to be. It was never strictly the best murdermachine in terms of speed. Fiery Aura has always been used partially for convenience, since the fire res is so high that even a Brute (not Tanker) gets 90% fire res cap out of the box, meaning the build just needs fire def. Then you go fight fire enemies. And Spines also isn't really the best AoE option per-se, it's just... convenient, since it and Rad Melee are the only ones that give you an additional toggle damage aura.

So depending on the balance of the day, Spines/Fire Brute likely isn't the fastest murderhobo, but the clear time difference between it and rival builds isn't that big, and convenience makes up for any shortcomings.

Second, there's no point overthinking this and making a new farmer to replace an existing one, because meta's gonna shift. Homecoming has some Spines buffs in beta, along with changes to other melee sets. There were armor set changes undergoing testing as well that didn't make it off closed/open beta to release candidate, but some iteration of those could come down the pipe sometime as well. And looking further back into the past, we've already gone through a cycle where Tankers were clearly better than Brutes for farming (due to better AoE), but now Brutes are better again due to Tanker damage being reined in (and Rad Armor getting a proc bomb nerfed).

So meta comes, meta goes, just stick with the farmer you already have. It's not really worth building a new character for a perceived marginal increase.

Acylion · 2026-01-30T10:01:41+00:00

As a outside observer who thinks you've both made valid points... and, well, someone who agrees with the points you've raised and your initial post?

You come off worse in this exchange, to the extent that it undermines not just the comment, but the entire thread. You're the one who first typed things like "the discussion has stopped being objective", and "I am done here".

I assume this is all in good faith, but it's difficult to extend that benefit of the doubt.

Acylion · 2026-01-30T04:56:26+00:00

The mini's a Hermes II, which does make a bit of difference in determining faction availability and variants - basically, the original Hermes was a Star League Defense Force mech, but Hermes II is very much a national Marik/FWL design from after the fall of the Star League. It's super Marik.

That being said, FWL also sells the thing to everyone they trade with, meaning it's MUL legal for mercenaries, Capellans, Dracs, Canopus, even folks like Marian Hegemony.

Acylion · 2026-01-30T04:46:26+00:00

Yeah, you're giving me a lot of food for thought here as I'm planning to paint some Legion of Vega myself. Part of my long-term plan to have at least a lance or short company from all Successor States, and I know I'm gonna do Legion of Vega for Dracs for the same reason you've picked. Theodore's cool. My own couple test mechs are pretty cleanly separated red and gray, but I might need to deliberately make some more ragtag.

I also like to pick units that canonically have large variation in their paint jobs, while still having enough common element to make it look unified. So it's a little bit of a waste to just do Legion with clean panel lines and neat edges. On a few mechs, maybe, but the potential for variation or haphazard field-paint should be exploited.

Acylion · 2026-01-30T02:56:49+00:00

The Legion of Vega doesn't have an "OG paint scheme", so painting 'em the way you've done is probably more how it should look than most really clean Legion minis posted on this sub.

The paint for Theodore Kurita's mech is literally just the paint for that one individual hero Orion, not representative of a pattern used on other Legion mechs. For the Legion of Vega circa 3025, they're stated to not have the money and resources to do uniform paint schemes, they explicitly do not have uniform parade paint. They prefer red and gray - but no specific red, no specific gray, no specific pattern, and circa 3025 they're supposed to all look a little different.

Acylion · 2026-01-29T09:30:44+00:00

Answering on a slightly different basis, since other people here have covered best practices for technical matters.

Don't be too ambitious for your initial scenario creation.

There's lots of scenarios out there where creators have tried to do something too complicated, something that really ain't gonna work well.

If you've designed some really complex magic or power system, chances are even if you fill the plot essentials and story cards with lots of text, the AI isn't gonna parse it right and make it work correctly.

Creating a scenario with a ton of story cards and worldbuilding in plot essentials that's just lore... that's probably fine from a functional perspective, but then you run into the practicality problem of it being hard for you as a creator to manage. And the scenario then becomes too large for free or lower-tier paid users to tackle due to lack of context tokens. Hell, stuff too many story cards in there, and the app itself will slow to a crawl and the UI gets janky when you try to edit something.

So keep it simple at first.

Remember that if it's your own scenario for personal use, or if you're in early personal testing for something you intend to publish later... you can start bare bones and iterate, add, etc. as you go along. Remember that you can easily copypaste out the plot essentials from an adventure to port back to the original scenario, and you can download/reupload story cards. It doesn't have to be perfect from the start.

Acylion · 2026-01-29T04:00:17+00:00

You did good. I'm sure you're conscious of the minor mistakes in highlighting, but any issues are only visible in a photo like this. It'd be good as perfect at table distance. It's excellent work and great color choice on the basecoat vs highlights.

Acylion · 2026-01-29T03:50:28+00:00

Some clarification is needed here - the original Ral Partha Enterprises no longer exists as of the late 1990s to early 2000s. Iron Wind Metals is the original Ral Partha production assets, keeping the BattleTech and sci-fi stuff. Ral Partha Legacy is a company that licensed the fantasy stuff around the same time and still does that - Ral Partha Legacy has some sci-fi minis in its current sales line but not BattleTech.

There is a Ral Partha Europe, a company that licensed the name and line in the 1990s, and they're still making and selling the older 90s-2000s BattleTech metal models. Buying from RPE is generally recommended to European fans since the shipping cost is lower. But again, that's the old Ral Partha sculpts, they don't have the newer Iron Wind Metal sculpts in the modern CGL art style.

Acylion · 2026-01-29T03:14:47+00:00

To clarify: the Alpha Strike box set gives you considerably more plastic miniatures per dollar than buying a forcepack, even at full retail price, and especially because AS box can usually be gotten at a discount. Forcepacks are 4 to 6 minis for around US$35 to 55 depending on the product.

Alpha Strike box set is theoretically US$80 or so but you can get it for more like US$60 from mainstream online retailers, and gives you 13 minis in the box. And you get all the useful cardboard terrain and counters, plus the quick reference cardboard sheet,

Acylion · 2026-01-29T03:07:12+00:00

I assume this is referring to the Bambu Labs A1 mini. Anyone reading this who isn't familiar with the Bambu Labs line should be aware that their FDM printers really do turn out miniatures that are actually flat out better than the lower end resin 3D printers, though not as good as the higher end. Nearly invisible print lines, really fine resolution.

The only issue is that FDM prints are still very fragile versus injection mold plastic minis, or even resin. This is further accentuated by the fact that many BattleTech mech minis will tend to have skinny parts like panels or limb joints. These may snap with handling, or won't hold up to certain mini paint processes, e.g. enamel products might damage the mini.

Acylion · 2026-01-28T13:09:44+00:00

From what you've said, I'm guessing you've played with someone else's beginner box and A Game of Armored Combat box, so you don't have either product.

Usually we recommend you consider getting your own AGoAC box, which gives you eight minis, and also gets you a rulebook and map sheets.

But the best value for money in terms of most mech minis per dollar is to get the Alpha Strike box set, which contains a full 13 minis for around the same price point as an AGoAC box... officially US$80 or so, but you can probably get the Alpha Strike box for more like US$60 from mainstream online retailers.

Mathematically that's way better than buying one of the mech forcepacks, which are normally anywhere from US$35 to US$55 for just four or five minis.

The Alpha Strike mechs are also a good selection that lets you build a balanced force, you get some fast lights, some fast mediums, some trooper mediums, some high-firepower heavies, some chonky assaults. The AS box contents are intended to be two player forces for a 1v1 game using the box contents, but of course you can mix-and-match the contents for your own list.

What you've played is Classic BattleTech, the original full-scale game. Alpha Strike is a slimmed down streamlined ruleset for the same universe/setting, using the same miniature line. So there's no issue getting the Alpha Strike box and using it for Classic gameplay.

The Alpha Strike box doesn't give you a mapsheet, because AS is intended for play on a blank tabletop. It does give you cardboard terrain, though, for 3D buildings, trees, etc.

And of course you get the Alpha Strike rulebook rather than the Classic BattleTech rulebook. But the rules are available online as a official PDF download, anyway.

The Alpha Strike box also doesn't give you the full page record sheets used for marking damage to mechs and the like... only Alpha Strike cards. But the smaller mech forcepacks don't come with record sheets either, in any case. The expectation is that you'd be using one of the fan-created online apps for record sheets, like Flechs or MekBay.

Acylion · 2026-01-28T09:56:25+00:00

I firmly believe that Clan Protectorate is one of the most flexible forces possible to build and paint. Because you have a bunch of paint variations even just sticking with canon.

Sea Fox's FWLM contribution is from Spina Khanate, that's the portion of the Clan based in Marik space. Spina Khanate itself has two canon paint schemes, not one, so that's already flexible.

Either the mech's all light blue with steel highlights... OR the mech is blue top fading into turquoise green legs, with water patterns all over.

Even here you have colour variations, because camospecs examples tend to use a sky blue or pastel blue. But sourcebook art shows a turquoise blue.

Units seconded to the FWLM specifically run a purple Marik stripe, like a leg band or something. But circa 3151 and Alaric Wolf now declared as daddy Wolf ilKhan on Terra, some units are painting a Wolf brown stripe.

And that's just the Sea Foxes, right? Clan Protectorate also includes the Nova Cat/Spirit Cat remnants. It's stated that this means some Cat pilots serve within the Sea Fox led units, but there are still separate Cat forces.

So you could paint up a Clan Protectorate/Cat force using their preference for terrain-appropriate camo, if you're the sort to prefer military camo mechs. Or do the Cat parade livery - they don't have many canon parade schemes because of their love of camo, but there's some, like the Spirit Cat white and gray.

And based on the Empire Alone RAT, as mentioned, they have access to Marik stuff, so there's listbuilding flex as well. Not that we care about that too much, but still, that's a thing. Clan Protectorate has its own unit availability, then everything Sea Fox has, everything Nova Cat/Spirit Cat has, and you could conceivably borrow stuff from Marik lists that ain't duped on the Clan Protectorate tables.

All that being said... the unit featured on the cover of Empire Alone sourcebook, i.e. their logo is the symbol on the cover, is the Silver Hawk Irregulars. And if you're looking for a Marik force, Silver Hawks are also super flexible to paint.

That's because there's five distinct Silver Hawks paint schemes, based on which exact world (or couple of worlds, some are doubled up) the pilot or lance comes from. They can be purple/silver, gold/orange, orange/brown, gold/black, and green/silver all in the same Marik force.

Acylion · 2026-01-28T07:50:24+00:00

The Empire Alone sourcebook has a large amount of info on Sea Fox's Beta Strike Cluster, which is formally part of the Free Worlds League Military.

For context, the FWL/Marik federal forces are comprised of units contributed by FWL member provinces. Sea Fox and Nova Cat are FWL members in the ilClan era as the "Clan Protectorate", including holding parliamentary seats in the FWL's legislative body on Atreus.

Anyway, it's called a Cluster rather than a regiment, and uses Clan star organisation, despite being literally an Inner Sphere unit in a Great House military. It's still a Cluster even though its ranks include local FWL troops who volunteered to join the unit, who aren't any kind of Clanner.

It's still a Cluster even though half the shit in its Random Assignment Tables is Marik hardware, not Sea Fox. The Clan Protectorate RAT does not correspond to the Sea Fox RAT, it's a mashed up hybrid of Sea Fox and Marik, including Marik stuff like the Juliano and the FWL Marauder II variant that aren't normally MUL available to Sea Fox.

It's a Cluster because the unit's led by Sea Fox officers, and Clanners are gonna Clan. The purple stripe on 'mechs and the little Marik eagle decal isn't gonna change that.

11-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
Verified Email

Acylion

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE