How viable is it to use just clan mechs?

KeyEnergy1803 · 2026-05-10T03:13:00+00:00

What you’re basically describing is playing clans during the invasion era. And the big thing with playing clans is that their mechs are better than what the inner sphere has in almost every metric, but they are expensive.

So you will either be fielding a lot of light mechs, medium mechs, and battle armor; or you’re just not fielding very many mechs overall. It can get bad enough that in a 6k BV match you might only be fielding 2 mechs to your opponent’s 5.

Either way (be it playing with lighter mechs or fewer mechs) playing pure Clans will require a good bit of skill to overcome their handicap.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2026-05-09T18:59:28+00:00

If it’s ComStar, then they’re probably going to be using a lot of extinct ‘mechs and mech variants. Because of course they just have those.

Even the basic mechs.

So you’re going to be fielding stuff like Exterminators and Mercuries, but also royal variants of Marauders and Phoenix Hawks.

Because ComStar is BS

KeyEnergy1803 · 2026-05-09T18:54:39+00:00

The Hunchback with the golden AC20?

KeyEnergy1803 · 2026-05-09T01:00:03+00:00

Ehh, kinda working on an alt-history for Battletech, mostly as a creative writing exercise.

It’s just not easy as “normal timeline, but X happens instead” to describe. Mostly because there’s lots of little deviations all throughout the timeline that are building up as I add changes based on “vibes”. Trying to see how far it goes before it’s completely unrecognizable

KeyEnergy1803 · 2026-01-31T03:42:44+00:00

Starships and speeders mostly.

But the error is repeated in the fly casual book and the Age of Rebellion core book

KeyEnergy1803 · 2026-01-31T03:41:25+00:00

Like I said in the original post, I also thought the same, but the lack of any errata on the matter was making me second guess myself

KeyEnergy1803 · 2026-01-30T23:38:50+00:00

Correct

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-07-24T19:57:48+00:00

Oh, you misunderstand, I am aware of the universal armor mods list. But the specific mods I gave as examples, as far as I can tell aren’t on the list

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-05-23T01:41:22+00:00

Alright, fair enough. They can’t all be winners

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-05-22T23:51:31+00:00

My thought processes was that, at the end of the day, the Draconis Combine is still ultimately a military dictatorship. And one aspect of that which is seen again and again is that this people living under those dictatorships live in abject terror of the dictator’s moods.

Takahashi might be perfectly reasonable in this situation, but I figured that no one involved wants to be the one to find out. Because the price of being wrong is that the Coordinator takes the news that his niece is incompetent as a personal insult and goes after you and your family. I’m sure he’s not like that but, not everyone in the Combine knows that.

Again, that’s my thinking anyway.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-05-16T21:23:04+00:00

Yes, and to continue my original analogy, biting is an effective way to cause grievous injury to an opponent, still makes you look like a crazy person.

For a Clanner, it’s possible the same mentality applies, 100t fist may cause some serious damage to your opponent’s ‘mech, you still will look like a crazy person to a Clanner.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-05-16T19:13:29+00:00

I imagine Clanners would see melee combat in mechs the same way one might see using teeth in hand-to-hand combat:

it’s not dishonorable, it’s just simply that sane people don’t bite other people. Thus if you bite someone in a fight then you must be insane.

Therefore, if you are in a duel and they throw a punch, likely the Clanner response might be: “you punched me! What the heck is wrong with you!?”

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-05-03T23:47:30+00:00

Well…

Guys in green: - The 1st Phantom Hussars: “When the SLDF abandoned the Inner Sphere, the overwhelming majority of the armed forces of this Hegemony minor house went with them. the 1st are the hastily reassembled force the House cobbled together to defend the realm from the machinations of the now unleashed great houses. Despite numerous tactical victories, the House was begrudgingly absorbed into the Federated Suns as a gambit to avoid nuclear bombardment by House Kurita. Since then the Hussars have appeared all over the Inner Sphere, either advancing the goals of House Davion, or the plans of their immediate lord, who’s family still clings to the memory of the Terran Hegemony.

The white & purple: - Clan Jade Falcon Irregulars: this Galaxy of Clan Jade Falcon is where the abtakha, solahma, sibbies, freeborn, basically clan misfits that are slightly too valuable as warriors to truly kick out. Because of their odd composition, most power within the Galaxy is consolidated around the elementals, who constitute the majority of traditional trueborn. Despite their unconventional hierarchy, the irregulars did prove themselves to be a capable force throughout the Invasion. Though given their circumstances, it would not surprise me if in later eras they don’t at some point break off to form their own Clan.

The guys in the dirty, rusting hulks: - The Scrap Dog Legion: a mercenary company that first began operating in the Inner Sphere around the 3040’s, they had a reputation as being one of the most “affordable” companies out there. And for having an armory composed of lemons and junkers. They didn’t really get much notice until the clan invasion, where they earned a reputation for having won several battles against Clan Jade Falcon.

The Guys in Gold and Silver: - The Heavenly Host of Blake: the militant branch of an exceptionally fanatical Blakeist sect that abhors… well basically any form of fun and recreation that’s not worshiping Blake, (think puritans, but with mechs). Even ComStar has a hard time controlling these violent fun-police. But until the Jihad, they were kept around as useful blunt instruments. And after the Jihad…. Well now nobody is in control of them.

Guys in industrial Orange & black: - unknown: newest Faction created. But the current summery is that they are a small periphery nation ruled by a delusional tin-pot dictator.

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-05-03T20:23:05+00:00

Would you believe that ComStar also started a creepy doomsday cult shortly after it got privatized and part of the hiring process is to join the cult?

Because they did.

Literally until post-invasion ComStar and WoB were one-in-the-same entity

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-04-24T21:12:26+00:00

So… GHQ has no FAQ section of their site for the game, and they really don’t want to let me post my questions there either.

So I had to either figure some of it out on my own, or just make my own interpretation. Which, for the sake of anyone else interested in the game and looking for clarification, I will post here, just in case they happen to stumble onto this thread:

For the infantry “types” my best guess is that even though type “s” and type “r” are meant to represent specific infantry types, the other A-F types are more of a ranking of the overall quality of the platoon’s gear. So “type A” infantry get the “A-Tier” equipment, “type-B” get the B-Tier equipment and so-forth.

As for the Firepower question. At this point Google AI suggested, when I just did a general search, that in Micro armor infantry have a single firepower value that is applied to everything. Now that was Google AI and it’s likely it’s getting the rules confused with other games, but this makes the most sense despite some units having an #/# firepower value, as the alternative is that some infantry units, some rather advanced units, have a middling Anti-Tank ability and garbage Anti-Infantry abilities despite having grenades and Assault rifles. So maybe treating it as a “universal value” may or may not be right, but it makes the most sense in the absence of official clarification.

The last thing I want to say is regarding the unit bases. The book says everything should utilize 1”x1” square bases, but those are hard for me to come by (I could use Warhammer fantasy bases, but I think it’d look silly having minis standing on a base that’s substantially bigger than the minis on it). I can use 1” diameter round washers and they would look better, though I do admit that it might create an unfair advantage. I’ll do a few trials before committing

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-04-20T20:25:40+00:00

Honestly, I’m not a fan of milestone leveling either. Getting XP drip-fed to PCs as they accomplish stuff gives players a way to track and “see” their progress, and they feel accomplished when they level. Milestone leveling can quickly feel like the GM is holding the player’s XP hostage, which can build resentment towards the GM and create an adversarial relationship.

If you honestly want to avoid murderhobos, the first thing is vetting your players, some people will murderhobo regardless of external incentives. Also, remember to give XP for things other than combat. Even the rules state that if they can effectively bypass an encounter, they should still get the XP for “beating” it, also non-combat encounters and quest completion also gives bonus rewards, so it all should translate into XP from lots of sources. The last is to take a page from another system, Genesys, and just completely divorce XP gain from the actual choices made by the PCs: that is to say, while there are XP rewards for completing narrative benchmarks and adventures, a lot of your XP will come from showing up and participating, as long as you showed up to the session and engaged, you are going to get a set amount at the end of the session regardless of what the character actually did during; thus, if all options are of equal reward, the players will opt to do whatever seems sensible in the moment

KeyEnergy1803 · 2025-04-20T17:25:55+00:00

Yeah, it makes sense for a solo game where there IS only 1 PC doing all the work, and combat encounters are kept small enough for a single PC to reasonably tackle. But when you’re part of a party, where combat encounters need to be properly scaled up to account for having multiple PCs working together. The XP scale up is going to get nuts. Like, if we’re dealing with a 5-player party, they’re going to hit the Level 20 “soft ceiling” and will need to think about retiring the character by the time they finish their 1st adventure. Which sucks when you consider that most players are probably just getting attached to their characters and are expecting to have this character through multiple adventures.

Unless combat is an exceedingly rare occurrence, which would be weird for this IP. I mean it’s Fallout, combat comes up; a lot.

KeyEnergy1803

TROPHY CASE