Commentary on comics, games, books, and their occasional intersection with politics and other serious business.
I initially posted all of these together with a to-do of adding example 'mechs made with those rules. I knew that including example 'mechs was important, but I didn't really play my hand that way. Each custom 'mech requires some discussion and review. Enough to make each rules system into its own post.
April, 3044
“Thank you. I’m glad to be here at the…Hobbyist Battlemech Society. Please forgive me for my lack of visual aids, but as many of you know I’ve been traveling quite a bit to demonstrate these new systems. I believe that these systems will, if they receive sufficient interest and investment, can create a new generation of battlemechs, a generation in which each unit can perform the roles of multiple mechs, perhaps every other ‘mech.
“Because this hotel–this venue–doesn’t have the facilities to demonstrate the prototypes we’ve created, I only came here with a visual demonstration. Uh, unfortunately, I believe that my data was corrupted on the way over.
“So let me do this with just my words. A lance of Vindicators today will be a lance of Vindicators tomorrow. With these new systems, these Everymechs could act as a lance of Catapults, a lance of Spiders, or even a lance of Atlases.
“These three systems all share similar basic engineering principles…”
The Battlemech Equipment Survey is an ongoing, swiss-style tournament which pits equipment for Battlemechs against one another. I like brackets and tournaments and I don't know a lot of the new Battletech equipment so it's a great opportunity to get familiar with a lot of it.
Surveys below. The listed matchups aren't the only ones in the survey; just the most eye-catching ones. I've also included the 'mechs I've made which use the included technologies. Surveys close Friday evening.
The swiss bracket is doing its job. It's separating good equipment and bad into tight matchups. I might just be in a funk, but that last round of tight matchups between equally irrelevant equipment failed to inspire. As of right now it's sitting at 8 votes and I don't blame anyone.
I like a lot of the write-ups I've done here. I think Mother & Monitors is a bit 'bleh.' The rest are written to as to have been lost to history, which makes them feel a bit one-note. 3087 it's not.
Round 4, Survey 1 - Gauss Rifles versus Omnimech Technology, feat the Risccing, a RISC test platform omnimech carrying a variety of gauss weapons.
Round 4, Survey 2 - Streak SRMs versus all other special missile munitions, feat the Superchoad, a rebuild of Round 2's Maquess after it was fielded, defeated, and salvaged.
Round 4, Survey 3 - Cruise Missiles versus the Light Probe, feat the Paradigm, or at least a recreation of the allegedly groundbreaking 'mech whose original model and inventor were destroyed in the opening salvos of The Jihad. It was simply a few advanced technologies and a set of two completely unique 'mechs created by a talented Periphery engineer with pirate connections. No mystery at all.
Round 4, Survey 4 - Nuclear Weapons versus Triple Strength Myomer, feat Mother and Monitors, a control 'mech and two drones which patrol a vacuum world occasionally torn by storms.
Round 4, Survey 5 - ATMs vs MMLs, feat Neuron, a Raven variant commissioned by The Society around the same time as the Capellans' own RVN-4LC. Not pictured are variants with the MML 7 swapped for iATM9 or the Streak LRM 10 and the NARC Beacon swapped for an iATM3 or Streak LRM 5.
Round 4, Survey 6 -Single Heat Sinks versus...Rifles?, feat Bubblewrap, an undocumented, unnamed, jury-rigged ultralight outfitted with Rocket Launchers that saw one battle against oppressors on a Periphery world.
Still working on the nation interaction game and the Mercury System and the Battlemech Engineer's Handbook.
And the Bookclub on the Edge of Forever. And a vacation next week. And doing something for the patreons and Morning Perfect Base and The Based Report.
And playing Alpha Strike and hammering out a simple Alpha Strike campaign system and doing dishes and doing laundry--oh crap I didn't do laundry.
A few weeks back I talked about making a new, worse, more-restrictive, version of omnimechs. Points:
-I wanted them to have construction-level costs
-I wanted pod restrictions
-I threw in at the last minute that I wanted pod weight penalties
The hardpoint system borrowed from the Battletech video games seemed like a good answer. How else do you restrict omnimech loadouts?
Terms
First, lets define some terms.
'Mechs using the Mercury System are not omnimechs, but we will use 'omnimechs' to describe them for simplicity. "Mercury-type omnimechs" would probably be the most accurate phrase, but we won't worry about that right now.
Traditional omnimechs have "pod space," the tonnage and unused crits into which new equipment can be installed. Those pieces of equipment are called "pods." Pods used on traditional omnimechs are nearly identical to those same pieces of equipment which aren't pods ("pod-mounted"). In the Mercury System, pods will differ from non-pod equipment in some way.
In the Mercury System, we'll be using the concept of hardpoints, which are tonnages and crits that are subdivisions of pod space. They will still mount pods, but they will have restrictions on the pods they can mount.
I'm not a fan of the sketch comedy group, The Whitest Kids U Know, but I don't hate them either.
