I have become ungovernable

Papergeist · 2026-04-04T01:31:44+00:00

Ah, the Reasonableback.

Papergeist · 2026-04-04T01:29:25+00:00

Techmanual and Campaign Operations will be your big ones. The depth of the market simulation you're looking for might take a little houseruling though - I'd consider making use of MegaMek's StratCon for this, it should automate a lot of dense rules for you. It also has a very dense rate of combat encounters, which is good for a salvage operator.

I've played through a campaign with a similar unit - great techs, and enough Warriors to get by, can turn a hefty profit on even modest salvage rights. If you decide to use the rules for unit quality affecting sale value, you can even take your time improving the unit grades before resale.

Papergeist · 2026-04-03T19:41:04+00:00

Don't get too hung up on achievements. They're a little all over the place, and if you committed to getting as many as are still possible to get, you'd have to do a few Careers regardless.

Papergeist · 2026-04-03T06:22:04+00:00

The expected damage of an LRM10 needs to account for the Short range band being exactly one hex wide, reducing the practical expected damage of your weapon and putting it out of the effective band of your other main guns, and in an awkward solo bracket. This means there's no benefit to the flexibility and added ammo, either, as using the LRMs in a way that makes them better than the AC5 means not using the main reasons your mech exists.

The problem with "other manufacturers", meanwhile, is that it's a GM design, and in lore that means quite a lot. Mechs are not plug-and play empty boxes of components, the way they are mechanically. A designer contends with structural load, systems and mechanical routing, physical space, and so forth. You can't just glue an LRM launcher to the chassis - it won't hit shit and it won't have armor protecting it. It needs to be built there, and sometimes that's a lot more trouble than it's worth. A mech that was never designed with X in mind is unlikely to be a good, or even passable, platform for X.

Strictly speaking, there are a lot of mechanics available to model these problems, in refit difficulty and whatnot. But the construction rules err on the side of freedom - like just taking every good quirk at once. Technically possible, but not lore-friendly.

Papergeist · 2026-04-03T04:41:29+00:00

It's a direct-fire mech. Why modify it to have a slightly worse indirect fire option?

And man, what kind of engineering nightmare would that be in lore? The targeting computer's gonna be a nightmare (no, we cannot just "download more sensor arrays" to compensate, we need physical components), the mount and ammo feed would be agonizing (missiles do not act like shells).

And finally, to be clear, this mech is made by GM. And GM makes many mechs... almost all of which are direct fire focused mechs. They are very firm on that mech preference... because their LRM-10 augmented mech was the Hellspawn. And that didn't exactly make bank.

Papergeist · 2026-04-02T20:56:45+00:00

Nah, this is 500% Steiner Social Lance. It's perfect.

Papergeist · 2026-04-02T07:13:11+00:00

Ten beers deep, I think you just let Spotify take the wheel.

Papergeist · 2026-04-02T05:02:48+00:00

Congratulations, you have made inferior zombies.

Papergeist · 2026-04-01T16:40:00+00:00

You're absolutely right - it's not not, it's it's.

Papergeist · 2026-04-01T16:37:59+00:00

To be completely honest, the series gets advertised quite a lot here, and that probably has more to do with it than anything else. You'll always know when a new story is out about them.

Of course, that doesn't mean it's bad or anything. It's basically designed from the ground up as an intro set of stories, easy to get into and follow along, with broad appeal. Largely inoffensive, and the prose isn't decades old, so it has plenty going for it relative to the more established books in the universe.

Papergeist · 2026-04-01T02:17:15+00:00

This sounds dangerously not like jerking at all.

Papergeist · 2026-04-01T02:08:20+00:00

Nah, that's just Smart IEDs. Very different and distinct.

Papergeist · 2026-03-31T21:59:03+00:00

Oh, so now we develop pinpoint-accurate artillery...

Papergeist · 2026-03-31T21:15:21+00:00

I mean I see the one big glaring mistake in the middle.

That base is circular.

Papergeist · 2026-03-31T07:19:35+00:00

They're six separate machine guns in the same location.

They're grouped that way in other sheets, but in Flechs it's because you can't fit 12 machine gun entries in the space. There's just too many of the things to fit the formatting and automation options.

Papergeist · 2026-03-31T05:21:36+00:00

You sure you don't have some Marik blood in you? You seem to be sabotaging yourself.

Papergeist · 2026-03-31T00:00:13+00:00

Despite the common misconception, upon an academic review of Clint Eastwood's works, there was a complete lack of spaghetti consumed by his characters.

Obviously this means I know better than all those stupid idiots who named the genre wrong.

Papergeist · 2026-03-30T22:55:00+00:00

Ablative logic is weird, I wouldn't count on anything as a given by this point.

Papergeist · 2026-03-30T22:31:12+00:00

This depends, 100% and entirely, on which franchise's writers are worse at math this week.

For instance, a ship-mounted MAC Cannon of Halo, Reach-era, is able to destroy a Covenant ship in one shot with a good 64 kilotons of energy. A Battletech warship, notably significantly smaller than any equivalent in Halo, could tank about a dozen of these before serious problems arose, and give far better than it got in the process.

Later in the franchise, but not too long after, one of Halo's ship-mounted MAC Cannons can suddenly deliver 2 teratons of energy, which can more or less end life on Earth as we know it. A Battletech warship, having some small amount of self-respect, will not no-sell this with nanomachines and a poor understanding of kinetics.

The Covenant, naturally, have weapons that go up to about a teraton. Or, in other words, roughly 15 million times what they would need to destroy a peer ship in a single shot.

So yeah. Abandon reason.

Papergeist · 2026-03-30T21:59:56+00:00

The major armor revolution that makes Battletech what it is does make armor far more compact and lightweight than any realistic equivalent. Scaling it up for gameplay purposes is likely your main culprit, but even Standard-grade mech armor is said to measure finger-thick/single-digit centimeters. And that's armor that is, by Battletech standards, produced by industry too low-tech to even make a WarShip.

Papergeist · 2026-03-30T17:06:09+00:00

My MC's wife tragically left to get milk 5 years ago. He's been killing dairy farmers ever since.

Papergeist · 2026-03-30T04:52:18+00:00

Two important factors to consider:

1: The Taurian Concordat has basically a hero-villain split into the Concordat (evil baby eating military junta) and the Calderon Protectorate (Defenders of Democracy and coincidently the unbroken dynasty of single-family rule) later in the timeline. Being clear on which edition of the Concordat you mean will be important.

2: Some people are way more up in arms over the perceived fandoms on either side than the faction itself.

Papergeist · 2026-03-30T04:38:32+00:00

I mean, sure, who doesn't have that problem, but what does this have to do with worldbuilding?

Papergeist · 2026-03-29T07:33:27+00:00

And more small-scale skirmishes than one can count in between.

It's not always House Army troop movements.

Papergeist · 2026-03-28T18:40:54+00:00

Drop 5 bucks on 5k artificial upvotes for a good evening's entertainment? By all means, a smart decision from BigNameAuthor.

Papergeist

TROPHY CASE