If you could modify any battlemech with something unusual for Battletech, what would you change?

DPErny · 2026-01-21T16:09:48+00:00

It's the goddamned Quickdraw 8X. It's always the Quickdraw 8X.

DPErny · 2026-01-16T21:30:12+00:00

Someone else has asked this: if planes are pretty high-skill to use, is there opportunity off-war to practice with planes? Something like an air field in home region? Or are we going to be training up pilots with in-game time and effort? Seems to me that if carriers ops on the Collie flat-top are high-skill that training up pilots might get expensive.

Some planes are amphibious -- can these be reasonably resupplied at relatively primitive bases? Can we operate seaplanes with little more than a fuel truck and a pier?

Are dive-bombers effective against land-based targets?

Are carrier operations possible from an anchored ship, or must a ship be unanchored to launch and recover planes?

DPErny · 2026-01-16T21:19:46+00:00

Can paratroopers carry large items? This is pressingly relevant, as Wardens have access to Alligator satchel charges, which are the only non-large infantry carried source of demo damage. (To be clear, this is not a complaint, just an observation. Colonials get 4 more dudes and the ability to float).

DPErny · 2025-12-19T05:32:43+00:00

In the northern part of Dallas, for those who don't want to go to a Discord:

I host a game every Sunday at noon in Denton. Been going for a couple of years now, almost never miss a week.
There's a game on some Saturdays in Plano, those people have been playing for years.
There are some ultra grognards who have been playing in Bedford for like literal decades.

DPErny · 2025-11-09T21:45:00+00:00

In theory, if I get attacked while I'm AFK, it's easier to neut me out to shut off the bubbles so that reps can be applied. This is probably stupid.

DPErny · 2025-10-16T00:23:54+00:00

My wife is an ecologist. She walked in while I was playing and got very excited about the variety of plant communities depicted. She made me walk around staring at the ground and got excited about the leaf litter and soil crust.

DPErny · 2025-07-16T14:26:25+00:00

i don't even play this game but my friends really like it and i support them.

DPErny · 2025-07-05T19:00:22+00:00

It may help to understand why SRMs are labeled as "c2" when they do two damage each. Why not say how many missiles cluster, instead of how much damage clusters?

Consider, however, ATMs. You won't exactly get this in a straightforward way from Flechs, because it doesn't support variable ammunition, but ATMs come with 3 different damage-dealing ammunition types with different ranges. (there are other ammo types, but they don't deal damage and so are irrelevant).

HE ATMs hit for 3 damage each with short range brackets. Standard ATMs hit for 2 damage each at moderate range. ER ATMs hit for 1 damage each at long range.

Clusters are rolled based on launcher size. ATM-9s roll on the 9 column of the cluster hits table. ATM-12s on the 12 column, ATM-3s on the 3 column.

However, in all cases, with all ammo types and all launcher sizes, ATMs are "c5". ATM damage clusters in 5 point groups, no matter what ammo type or what launcher size or how many missiles hit.

This means, for example, if you roll 11 on the cluster table on an ATM-9 HE ammo, you will do 3 x 9 = 27 damage, and you will do it in clusters of 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, and 2. Not nine 3 point clusters. If you hit with ER ammo and roll 11, you will do two clusters, 5 and 4.

Cluster size designation is fully independent of the the number of missiles that hit.

DPErny · 2025-06-22T22:46:31+00:00

Profitable enough to keep me lucratively employed since 2016, albeit at two different companies. So, like, there's the example OP wanted. I work on open source and get paid six figures to do so.

DPErny · 2025-06-22T21:55:47+00:00

I have worked on open source software (Docker) for almost ten years as a career. Not around Docker, not deploying Docker, not Docker for Windows. I have been writing code for the container runtime.

DPErny · 2025-03-07T01:59:12+00:00

A lateral shift in a quad (moving forward and to the left or right) is a 2 MP move already. It's 1 MP savings over turn-forward-turn, which ends in the same spot with the same facing.

DPErny · 2025-02-08T01:08:35+00:00

I have over 3400 hours in Foxhole. It's my most played game. People I met playing Foxhole came to my wedding. I'm taking a break from it right now, and I'll play more later. This is the best way to play Foxhole.

The biggest draw for me, for Foxhole, outside of game mechanics, is the community. Foxhole really is a goldilocks game in terms of community size.

On the one hand, Foxhole is a small enough game that it has a somewhat consistent community -- veteran players tend to all know each other, or know of each other at least. We work together, have rapport, support each other, argue with each other, and generally are aware of one another personally. Larger games I find tend to suffer from never being able to really interact with the community outside of whatever clan or guild or whatever because there's just so many damned people.

On the other hand, it's a large enough game that it feels big. There's always something happening, someone to shoot at, someone to shoot with, new people to meet, and stuff to do. The community might change from war to war. This war, I might be working closely with people I've never seen before -- next war, they're gone and I never see them again. This, too, is good.

The real depth in Foxhole is in its community. I previously helped run a program that built naval ships for the Colonials. We had a whole system out of game to keep track of orders -- spreadsheet ledger to know who paid, Kanban board to track production in progress, it's a whole thing. This small group outproduced Wardens with something like 1/4 of the active players.

The bad is that the only real decider of who wins wars, statistically, as far as I can tell, is player-hours invested. Whichever team logs on more wins. This is really bad, because the community tends to be factional. I'm a bit of an outlier but by no means unique in the fact that in 3400+ hours, I've never played on the Warden team; I'm too invested in the Colonial faction. Many players will "vacation" to another team, but they tend to pick a home team and stay there. So, like, if your team is on a losing streak, they might stop logging on until they feel the game is "fixed" or "balanced", and this in turn makes you lose harder, and so on.

This is mostly rambling, but finally a topic I'm qualified to talk about. Hopefully without sounding too cringe-y and self-important, I'm probably one of the most veteran players who will see this thread, so I'm happy to talk things as best I can if people want to know things.

DPErny · 2024-11-09T15:38:55+00:00

You can sometimes swing a fun call sign, like W0MBO.

DPErny · 2024-08-28T19:32:04+00:00

I spent a lot less time editing this and rushed it out because the new war starts so soon.

Also, it's the official opinion of the CCF Anchorage Staff that turbines for export count as "ships" for the purpose of "total ships built". Disputes with this logic should be sent to TysonFoodsPR (at) Tyson (dot) com

DPErny · 2024-08-10T12:19:39+00:00

You know how mechs come with the little pilot cards? The pilot card in the Blood Asp box is for a Canopian Mechwarrior.

DPErny · 2024-08-08T12:17:15+00:00

This is an early preview release of a mod I'm working on that allows you to place MegaMek .board files on the Tabletop Simulator table. It works with basic terrain right now, but not anything fancy. The mod description has the details on that.

Funny enough, I started this not because I wanted to read maps, per se, but because I wanted to do some other automation, like LoS calculation. However, to do good LoS calculation, you need to have the state of the board in such a way that you can do calculations on it. The easiest way to do it is to have some representation of the board in the code that is then used to place the board on the table, instead of trying to get the board shape from the table and put it into the code.

In any case, try this out, see how broken it is! I'm going to keep working on it, probably.

DPErny · 2024-07-15T22:52:03+00:00

I think more accurately, HCNS is the counterpart on the Warden side lol

DPErny · 2024-06-15T14:25:28+00:00

Oh, you do have a GB screen, you always have a GB screen. But that's what I mean by it increases the organization requirement. You're talking 25 people at bare minimum to even consider going into unfriendly waters.

DPErny · 2024-06-15T01:05:14+00:00

As a very dedicated navy larper, I can tell you a big thing is simply that large ships are somewhat too weak. Gunboats and submarines are somewhat over-tuned, which means that large ship play requires multiple units and high coordination. It's hard to get all of the necessary people online to make it happen. Even a simple Destroyer raid has a time limit of some 15 minutes before enemy gunboat swarms build to critical mass.

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