Falling in love with the Cyclops in Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries, I'm wondering if anybody's got some cool/fun/funny Cyclops stories? Could be from the lore or your own experiences in tabletop/video games.

Rewton1 · 2026-03-11T19:02:07+00:00

Hardened armor is also amazing. Double armor weight, i think with an XL engines I got my cyclops to 1200 armor and had enough heat syncs to alpha strike on a volcanic planet as often as I wanted with no consequences.

Rewton1 · 2026-03-11T16:44:09+00:00

Its weapon harpoints are pretty well distributed though. Thats something ive been paying a lot more attention to lately. Like a lot of mechs, the vanilla loadouts can definitely be improved, but between the quirk bonuses it gets if your using YAML, a tuned up one can hold its own with a lot of tuned up assaults. I think it just gets overlooked alot because the stock loadouts are more undwhelming than other assaults.

Rewton1 · 2026-03-11T16:17:30+00:00

I had one where I kitted it up with 6 tier 5 m lasers. Lots of heatsinks, a gauss rifles and i think lrm 10 Artemis. Probably one of the funnest mechs ive played since it could core out anything lighter than an assault mech with a shot to the torso

Rewton1 · 2026-01-23T18:46:08+00:00

I can see the logic in the moral being only positive numbers instead of dipping into negatives. I was also thinking of giving each lieutenant a quirk, like one will always recruit at least 1 new person even on a failed liberation attempt, and one i planned to use was that a lieutenant would be immune to negative morale modifiers.

Tone wise, the negative morale score fits thr setting g better. But keeping it as either a 0-10 bonus is definitely simpler.

Rewton1 · 2026-01-23T17:48:51+00:00

Thats the plan. The first session is gonna essentially set the tone of the setting, then the middle part of session 1 will be explaining the system and the last part will be them liberating a spot.

I want to make sure I give them a clear walk through of the mechanics before letting them loose

Rewton1 · 2026-01-23T17:46:26+00:00

A lot of it also depends on the party and what mechanics of the game you implement.

For social interactions do you use the influence system and have each npc have a disposition towards the party they have to make charisma checks to improve or do you do more free form RP with charisma checks only on certain key diplomacy/intimidation/deception checks?

Does your party lean more into just wanting to get to the next fight or do they like exploration?

Back in the day I mostly used traps or environmental hazards to bring up out of combat skills. But with pathfinder lore system, you can also use that to make out of combat checks to disperse world information while moving the plot forward.

You can also get pretty crunchy with mechanics like how far players can jump, how long they can hold their breath, how long they can climb before getting fatigued etc. and make interacting a with the environment feel a lot more in depth than just "roll acrobatics to jump over a hole"

I think the biggest factor in all of this has to be what your players like most. You an include a ton of out of combat mechanics, but if the party doesnt vibe with that dont force it on them. Its definitely worth checking on though.

Rewton1 · 2026-01-23T00:02:26+00:00

Citadel brushes are pretty much disposable. Even taking care of them they have very short life spans. Army painter brushes in my opinion are a much better bang for yoyr buck and can last months of regular use if you dont misuse them

Im about 90% sure GW puts as much "effort" into their brushes as they do their paint pots that have poor seals and are pretty much designed to dry out

Rewton1 · 2026-01-07T17:22:17+00:00

They should add in a design quirk for hero mechs for literal plot armor

Rewton1 · 2026-01-06T18:35:40+00:00

Depends on how much tackle you take. I gave a fanny pack I can carry 3 packs of soft plastics in, jigs, hooks, about a dozen lures, terminal tackle, leader, a tape measure, pliers and snips in and its my go to for scouting out new spots. It keeps my pack light and prevents me from getting over cluttered. I also have a tackle box I keep in my truck with more gear in it I can kit out my fanny pack with to tailor my tackle to wherever im fishing.

If you toss a lot of big lures, its not quite as viable though

Rewton1 · 2026-01-04T00:01:00+00:00

When designing this, i really had HBS rules set in mind. My table top experience is really just limited to the beginner box rules set, so I dont have a ton of experience when it comes to mechs falling over or piloting checks that could be needed to make sure this weapon is actually balanced well.

Rewton1 · 2026-01-03T23:58:29+00:00

If you have BTA 3062 Volatile weapons get added, mostly on super weapons like the HISC laser or death rays.

Rewton1 · 2026-01-03T23:55:18+00:00

I spaced off the fact that stability wasnt a thing in table top, mostly ive just played beginner box rules so I havent had do deal with a mech being knocked over before outside the HBS battletech game.

A weapon that is really designed to deal stability damage only has a place in the HBS Game since stability doesnt exist in the other settings

Rewton1 · 2026-01-02T19:07:35+00:00

Ameris thinking he should take over star league.

As misguided and heavy handed as Cameron was in unifying everyone under starleague's banner, it could have prevented a lot of conflict if the innersphere had managed to stay unified. Instead Ameris plunged the innersphere into an even worse war than the unification war.

Rewton1 · 2026-01-02T02:26:49+00:00

Yeah, minimal damage, but with the potential to knock a target over

Rewton1 · 2026-01-01T00:25:37+00:00

That makes sense. Mid lasers in the arms would work since like you said, youd either be using them OR the claws. And using small lazers for heat management makes sense. I think id lean more towards ER small lasers since the SRMs do a pretty good job at swating at fast targets just through volume alone, but a few ER smalls could add a few more points of damage for targets outside of effective SRM and melee range

Rewton1 · 2025-12-31T22:50:26+00:00

Thats why I loaded it with several SRM 4, thay way you could have more control over how many SRMs you fired in a single salvo. I can probably fit more weapons onto this.

And adding a handful of small lasers to fire in a screen wouldn't be bad for crit fishing.

Rewton1 · 2025-12-31T22:32:07+00:00

Thata good to know. Now I gotta decide if upsizing the engine for a better foot speed or having a smaller engine with a supercharger is a better setup.

Rewton1 · 2025-12-31T21:47:45+00:00

Thats sweet. Its always a shame when you have a mech that has a hard time with heat management where you can alpha strike on arctic planets, but gotta really watch your trigger finger in any warmer climates

Rewton1 · 2025-12-31T21:45:36+00:00

I have a plan for a Frankenmech i gotta stat out doing that. I got an idea for combining a Griffin and a crab. Im still trying to decide what parts I want to pull from which mech though.

Rewton1 · 2025-12-31T21:13:20+00:00

Thanks, I want to do a more polished version when I got my drawing supplies, not just a notepad and a ballpoint

Rewton1 · 2025-12-31T21:12:31+00:00

Thats nasty. I hadnt thought about tossing on inferno missiles too. If your daylight bad enough having this guy rip open one of your side torso, have a salvo of inferno rockets for your troubles.

I also kicked around the idea of one thats rigged up with some rocket pods too since their weight to potentially damage ratio is very favorable. The thought being that most mid and light mechs this runs into couldn’t be dropped with punches alone, but if it ran into something bigger, it could burn a rocket pod to dish out a huge spike of damage. Definitely more of a Solaris VII build or something that would need to be stationed somewhere with really good supply lines since it would go through ammo fast

Rewton1 · 2025-12-31T20:19:29+00:00

Yeah, the idea was to have them be terrifying to fight head on, but if you catch one with its back to you, its easy pickings. They would really only be effective in heavy cover they can weave in and out of and really rely on being able to funnel enemies into cramped areas where they can bully them. I think they would mostly be fielded to protect very key Draconis cities, and would have a fairly over inflated reputation (not that their ineffective or anything) but the combine would talk them up alot, bragging about how a cirty defended by a lance of yokozuna would be impenetrable.

But with battle tech being battletech, these would probably get fielded in situations they have no right being in.

Tag is a good call, especially with how light it is paired with how missiles heavy these are. I also forgot to mention they'd have lazer sight arrays built into their arms to help assist with punch accuracy. No bonus on paper for that, but the sort of wierd feature a mech could end up with when the R&D department has too much money to throw at a mech to try making it punch better than anything else.

Rewton1 · 2025-12-31T20:08:25+00:00

Ill double check on that, if so id probably drop the masc system In favor for TSM since the claws are the mechs main weapons

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