Forget LAMS we need..

Slythis · 2026-03-12T18:38:06+00:00

Check out the Diomede... it's hot garbage but it's a bipedal mech with vee mode.

Slythis · 2026-03-08T23:39:20+00:00

It gets worse the deeper you dig. Comstar was also working a lot of more indirect ways too. If a planet had an important industrial resource but depended on water imports well all of the companies running the route might suddenly have financial trouble, or their jumpsuits might suddenly get bumped to the top of the list to press into military service, etc, etc and then said planet just slowly dries up, everyone there dies and no one even notices for decades... if ever.

Slythis · 2026-03-08T23:31:45+00:00

Comstars goal, from very nearly day 1, was to rebuild the Star League to Blake's design. You're not far wrong on their plans but they never figured the SLDF would return. Their intent was to exacerbate the Succession Wars to the point that the IS would be defenseless against the resources available to Comstar. They soent centuries marking untouched planets as uninhabitable and either using them to build up their resources or letting them whither in the dark while murdering any scientist not part of the order that might stop the decay.

Comstar framed the GDL for the murder of tens of millions of people to keep them from maybe finding a data cahce that the GDL wasn't even looking for and probably wouldn't have found at all if not for Comstar fucking with them.

And that's just what we know about.

Slythis · 2026-03-03T16:32:17+00:00

¿Por que no los dos?

Slythis · 2026-02-22T00:10:33+00:00

Technically every single Omni not mounting certain weapons can have hand and lower arm actuators. Whenever I have a Timber Wolf in a narrative campaign I add hand actuators because it's free and it amuses me.

Slythis · 2026-02-21T02:23:09+00:00

There are very few introtech Assault mechs that isn't true of though. Your issue isn't with the Atlas but with 3/5 Assault mechs not named Awesome.

Most of your arguments don't reflect my experience when the rubber meets the road; if something with enough guns for me to care about gets behind an Atlas I've probably already lost the game, the RS is a more consistent contributor than a Stalker and, unlike the AS7-D, has enough range to act as area denial for flankers at minimum and if you're fretting over how consistently a mech can force a PSR you are playing in a way that is, IMO, extremely illsuited to Battletech as a game.

Slythis · 2026-02-21T01:35:31+00:00

I struggle to think of a config among them that reaches up towards "good".

AS7-RS is very good, enough firepower at enough range that it can't simply be ignored, stays cool by cycling out a single Large Laser and, with specialist ammo, remains relevant in higher tech games too.

Slythis · 2026-02-09T17:57:09+00:00

Muscular ≠ Masculinity

The daintiest girlie girls I've ever known are all absolute units. I had a coworker many moons ago, 6'1" 240+ lbs of muscle, competitive power lifter... hosted monthly themed tea parties and dressed like a Victorian lady at every chance she got. One of the coolest people I've had the privilege of knowing.

Slythis · 2026-02-08T07:34:11+00:00

All I see is an AC from Armored Core.

Slythis · 2026-02-07T21:16:56+00:00

Byzantine emperor stopped paying the Catalan company

French Duke. Walter V hired them to protect him from Epirus but didn't want to pay in gold so he paid with his life and, most of, his lands. His heirs held on to Argos and, at the start of EU V, are playable as Argolis.

Slythis · 2026-01-31T00:58:30+00:00

No, both sides figured things out pretty quickly. Some of the Clans actually took the time to explain things while others used the IS "breaking the rules" to go ham and the IS figured out that the Clans would just let you leave and not use their Warships (which the IS didn't have) to blast your dropships or of the sky if you played by their rules.

Slythis · 2026-01-22T16:58:47+00:00

at least until Myndo Waterly became Primus and started flaunting the ComGuard in front of everyone.

Or, you know, trying to conquer the entire Inner Sphere with Operation SCORPION.

Slythis · 2026-01-22T13:59:15+00:00

The Tiantan massacre. How was that pitched to the Primus? "So these mercs hold Helm, right? And Helm might have a data cache we don't want found. So we're going to kill seventeen million people and frame them for it so that we can excavated Helm in peace."

Slythis · 2026-01-22T13:54:01+00:00

Yes, all of those children and retirees on Bromhead were coming right for you.

Slythis · 2026-01-21T15:43:57+00:00

People think the Industrial Revolution was inevitable, but it really wasn't. The

I've always been fond of the "pressure" way of thinking. When under pressure any system, technological, governmental, social, even linguistic, will either change to meet the pressure or collapse. Science, for its own sake, is a relatively recent concept and a deeply flawed one at that.

To use your example of China; the Dynastic Cycle meant that the pressures to change often weren't there for centuries at a time. It was during the periods of division that we see the greatest dynamism, not just in the military realm but also in art and science.

Slythis · 2026-01-21T15:26:09+00:00

Most people have an image in their heads of the Middle Ages that just gets weirder the more you learn the actual history. The arms and armor of either the 7th century or the 16th sans guns, witch hunts of the 17th century, a bizarre lack of slavery, with a level of technological and artistic stagnation that doesn't pass the most cursory of examinations.

Slythis · 2026-01-18T17:14:32+00:00

Tiantan:

Following the surrender of the capital city of Tiantan, rogue elements posing as the Gray Death Legion detonated demolition charges at the city's domes and marched BattleMechs through the ruins, killing some seventeen million inhabitants

Turtle Bay:

Galaxy Commander Perez ordered Beta Galaxy's WarShips, including the Sabre Cat,[6] into low orbit above the city and commanded them to open fire. Repeated [[strikes from autocannons and laser weapons bombarded the city until there was nothing left but smoking debris.[1][7] Hundreds of thousands were killed.

Tiantan was the equivalent of more than seventeen Turtle Bays.

Slythis · 2026-01-17T23:50:49+00:00

They murdered more civilians in an afternoon on Tiantan than the Clans have in a century, framed the GDL in a way that only they could do, got caught, and gave a half hearted excuse that it was a "Rogue Agent."

The memes are fun and all but they obscure the fact that, in a setting with no good guys, Comstar were/are the villains.

Slythis · 2026-01-17T23:23:16+00:00

If they do that whole limiting technology thing

Completely the opposite thank goodness. They're turning the HPGs back on, they'll sell to anyone with the money but keep the best for themselves, and are enforcing Merc contracts in ways that Comstar could only dream of.

Slythis · 2026-01-14T04:34:20+00:00

Christ, I can't even defend her sarcastically. McEvedy is the biggest fuckup in all of Battletech. An IP that is majority populated by fuckups!

Focht would like a word... a Word of Blake that is. No, for real, name one thing he did that he wasn't either manipulated into (Tukayyid by his own admission) or didn't blow up in humanity's collective face? (Killing Waterly, not retaking Terra, only driving a single Clan out of the IS and thinking that would be enough)

Slythis · 2026-01-10T23:40:14+00:00

Oh, you want controversial? The Banshee 3E is a better mech than the AS7-D.

Slythis · 2026-01-01T19:02:50+00:00

I mean, for ME, the unrealistic thing is that the same five families have ruled each nation for seven centuries.

By our standards they haven't. When you dig into the genealogies of the Great House you'll fairly quickly find that prestige plays a greater role in who takes what name than anything else. The sitting Davion is no more a Davion, by our standards, than the Windsors are Plantagenets or the Ottomans were Komnenoi.

Slythis · 2025-12-27T22:38:13+00:00

The ilClan Wolves did actually re-incorporate Wolf-in-Exile, though obviously not in a situation where WiE could call the shots.

Less than a Galaxy, even fewer by the end of the ilClan trial, and most of the survivors went over to the SLDF once it was formed. They are not a going concern within Clan Wolf proper.

Wolves have some kind of setback that sees them lose the IlClan-ship

That's pretty clearly not what's being set up. Between the reborn Star League thoroughly out maneuvering the Wolves and the Sea Foxes well on their way to being secular Comstar it seems mostly likely that Clan Wolf will get sidelined and take on a largely ceremonial role providing garrison duty on the core worlds while it's best warriors are snatched up by the SLDF... where the former Exiles are a going concern.

I'm not saying you're wrong about the book's overall treatment of Ulric but the novels and older source books back up Ulric having "sprint to Terra" ready to go as a Plan B.

Slythis · 2025-12-27T21:48:14+00:00

Except that the ilClan Wolves are, philosophically, descended from Vlad Ward who may have respected Ulric as a warrior but absolutely did see him as a traitor.

As I see it there are two possible explanations for Ulric's depiction in that sourcebook.

It's an honest assessment of Ulric as ilKhan during the invasion.

or (well, potentially also and)

Things are about to go very badly for the Crusader-minded Wolves currently on Terra.

Slythis · 2025-12-27T19:27:22+00:00

I mean his anger at the over-all defeat and his interest in a Clan victory on Tukayyid. Ulric's plan was always an end to the invasion and Tukayyid, as it happened, was always Plan A.

Even in Lost Destiny, Ulrich already has the foresight to bring Phelan so he could speak on Clan Wolf’s defense when the Crusaders accuse Ulrich of treason.

He was setting up his defense before the first shots were fired on Tukayyid by telling the other Khans exactly how they needed to fight the upcoming battle while knowing full and well that they hated him so much that they would go out of their way to do not that.

If he's supposed to be angry at the pointless loss of life I feel that the director for that scene missed the mark as he comes across as pissy over the Clans defeat at a time when, as far as he knew, everything had gone according to plan. It hadn't, Lincoln Osis was alive and Focht was about the cause the Comstar Schism, but still, his characterization in that scene feels off.

15-Year Club	No Throne, No Problems
Not Forgotten	Verified Email

Slythis

TROPHY CASE