84 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

Tincan Nightmare, on 03 December 2017 - 09:44 PM, said:

So basically after a wall of text, your basically saying that your terms for things like a 7th generation Atlas are just something you came up with on your own, with nothing backing it in canon books. There is nothing in the first edition of MechWarrior RPG that talks about external mounts for ammo in legs, and I've read almost all novels except the Dark Age stuff, and in none of them do they talk about the ammo feed for a Blackjack or Hunchback. I was hoping you could actually cite a source, instead of throwing a wall of files and links at me and saying 'find it yourself'. I understand your reasoning, the Corsair fighter in TRO 3025 talks about the different versions leading up to the V12 that entered service, but one shouldn't assume that's how it works for all mechs and combat machines in BT. At least now I know its just your own personal ideas you throw out here, nothing from an official source.

You did not read.

I said he CANON calls them "Models" and "Variants"
Example:
Atlas AS 7th Model Davion Variant.
Atlas AS 8th Model Kurita Variant.

I said that was confusing as **** and so I call them Generation instead.

I didn't say I made it up. It's in the nomanclature (the naming conventions of Battletech). There are variations on the nomanclature, for example Star League has its own, then there's the general ones, and then a couple of manufacturing companies have their own unique nomanclature.

Look at a **** load of variants of different mechs and you'll recognize the patterns on your own, there are hundreds to look at. That sort of story repeats very, very frequently. The Flea, the Corsair, the Macky, the Shadowhawk (is actually chronicled in its variants themselves).

That's how the nomanclature works, the numbers represent models of major revisions at the factory level, basically whole new units. While a mech can be changed to suit Davion or Kurita ideals, the number doesn't change unless there's a HUGE difference in equipment and not just weaponry. In many cases hundreds of years go by before the model number (what I call personally "generational number" to emphasize this) changes. Look at the Hunchback.
Almost 500 years go by before it goes from 4G to 5M. And all non-G variants of the 4 series are refits, many produced by the Marian Hegemony with the 4H being the first refit they produced.

300 years went by between the AS 7 and the AS 8 lineup.

It's almost universal. And while not every single unit had 6 failures before one succeeded, you still have many mechs where the first model to make it to mass production is not marked as the "first" model. Yes there's an SHK-1. But why isn't there a Kintaro 1? Why not a Hunchback 1? There's a Hunchback 2 and a Hunchback 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

Why is only CN9, CN10? Why no 8, 7, 5, 1, etc? As I said, page 94 and 95 of 1st Somerset Strikers goes on to explain that there are gaps left in the lore intentionally to allow us to create our own variants or to fill the gaps ourselves. As such, speculate. The Atlas however does have a well documented journey.

The Mackey in the TROs don't mention **** about it, but the very first Battlemech does have a "Test". I'll get back to this.
---------

Quote

Since if you actually read his wall of response, you would see where he admits that some of his 'lore' is his own interpretation, I guess that would make it easy for him to win since it's something he is creating himself versus quoting from a novel or sourcebook or TRO. That's really not 'lore', that's fandom. I'm not computer savvy enough to display all the files I have on my computer for BT, but it's practically everything printed from FASA to Catalyst, save for some of the most recent items. Yes, he could very well be right in some cases, but there is nothing proving this that he can point to save for his own belief, so he could very well be wrong as well. He cites the first edition RPG book, but the only thing covered under repair, is a few items on page 33 that can be purchased, such as an electronics kit, a gyro kit etc... It has expansions for rules to covert TT to a RPG, but nothing at all about things like through armor criticals for leg mounted ammo. His ideas are very logical, but I was hoping for something 'canon', not something he created on his own.

Through armor crits on the leg is more or less conjecture. After all if the equipment is stated to be mounted ON the leg and not IN the leg, it therefore cannot be underneath the mech's stock armor. That's just logic.


As for canon, you're looking for Price of Glory, assuming novels count as canon. Reloading weapon externally (not traveling through the mech). 60mm Whirlwind AC/5 (far too many whirlwinds in BT) is being reloaded by the mech's left hand. You're welcome to guess where he pulled the ammo from. You said you read it, so, maybe you'll remember.

There's actually nothing in the rules about leg-mounted ammo with the exception of the Citytech reference for Anti-personnel pods and BattleTechnology in reference to hand-held weapons and what happened to them (ballistic and energy). After all Battletech stopped depicting mechs as wielding guns in their hands thanks to Harmony Gold.I'm not digging through them at 2 in the morning though.




The Atlas, Blackjack and Hunchback do have quite a bit behind them. The issue is you have gather **** from the TROs, the short stories involving them, in one case the War of 3039 (Hunchback), compare the art and when there's blanks yes you have to fill them. In the case of the Blackjack, the lore we know comes from a few places. The two types of Autocannons that the Blackjack uses come from Binding Force and Threads of Ambition. Both of which establish the mech's role as anti-infantry and as such we're not seeing a single shot thing that does the explosive power of an SRM. It shoots a lot. In the first it is 32mm and in the second it is 30mm. So already a conflict to deal with.

We know the AC/2s feed from the center torso. Now something like ammo you don't make into a neat box and stuff it right into a mech's gut and the upper torso has nowhere for the ammo to go. But that hoop does. The arms, sequentially, also have hoops. And while not on every miniature, some of them do have the hip-hoop connecting into the shoulder hoops of inexplicably extra thick armor. Unless that skirt is the engine which I highly doubt due to how it would emphasize it and tell people where to shoot... Then you look at the mech and there's nowhere else for it to go

The Hunchback is pretty straight forward. Where is the ammo? Left torso. What's on the left torso? A drum. Why is there a drum there? Ammo. Look at the 4SP. The only official art ever made of the 4SP has the drum on the back of the center torso. It is also smaller than the drum normally is. There's no drum in the LT anymore. Why? There's ammo in the center torso and none in the left torso, no drum in LT now but one has appeared in the CT.


35 ton Urbanmech.

But this is a typo.

Overheating machine guns (this isn't the only example.)



Atlas
Layout's generally mention here.

Last paragraph in left column. "LRM 20...unqiue design."

Confirmed in Atlas K.
As pointed out.

Only thing I had to get from elsewhere is where the cockpit is. Nose, chest and in the D-DC has them in each eyeball.

Most of the time you can get enough canon info to really figure something out. Sometimes you gotta do the Star Citizen approach and just figure it out since they give you nothing to go on except recurring trends in the art. But I didn't use any of those here.

[Koniving]

I forgot. I promised the Macky / First Battlemech.

There's a shitload of lore that isn't in the TROs. Sometiems it isn't in the novels. But there's a lot of short stories (for example, the Queen's Gambit is a short story about a guy proposing a hypothetical situation to a friend in the bar about an objective and the threat of a King Crab, in which the King Crab has fired its weapons with a description of the weapon fire. In the situation you (the friend) made it into cover, the objective is right there, you need a few seconds to hit it. The Hangar Queen's claws close. You know that when that happens the AC/20s are reloading. Now's your chance, or is it? Ultimately the answer to the hypothetical situation is you are being bluffed, because by the shot count you know you are facing the King Crab 0000 which never has to change cassettes/reload as it is belt fed with lower caliber ammunition from its twin Imperator-D AC/20s.

If you want really, REALLY good details on mechs, download Mech Factory from the Playstore. Or use http://battletech.rpg.hu
It pulls and combines sources, for example thanks to using some of the original FASA stuff, it has a bunch of details about hte cockpit that the TechManual just doesn't have (as well as the original art in black and white as opposed to the colored images the TechManual used and unlike Sarna which relies on reworded fluff with cited references, Mech Factory copies the lore word for word (yep, plagiarizes). So. You know it's accurate.

[Koniving]

C+oming back, if you want the Nomenclature, Tarogato put this together. All but a single example of DC, for example, have 2 person cockpits. Every instance of D is Davion-related. Every instance of K is Kurita. Every instance of H is produced by Marian Hegemony. P currently has two things. P is either Periphery-made or or now far more common, "Piranha" made. C is Combine as in Draconis Combine -- I never really understood why they did that either. The list goes on.

H refers to Marian Hegemony in all cases.

H2 is Word of Blake and specifically the Hesperus II factory in 3070. Prior to Word of Blake, it was a Lyran (Steiner) facility, however until Word of Blake seized it, the facility did not produce anything truly unique to the location. It is only through Word of Blake aka Comstar's superior horded knowledge that it began producing unique mechs.

The AS7-D-H2, etc. is an Atlas II. Which makes me wonder why use the AS7 designation.

Even the AS7-D-H, which does stand for Hegemony, is considered an Atlas II... which is somewhat baffling. As far as I understand it, however, Atlas IIs were retconned into existence after FASA sold the license, so their entire existence is a fabrication of another company prior to Catalyst and after FASA.

There are some designations that have their own nomanclature, for example certain in-universe companies do their own thing. The Star League has their own nomanclature entirely which I'm still figuring out but certain oddball letters seem to have patterns for example (and I'm not gonna give a letter because I'm just going off memory), but a recurring letter in the Star League designations universally have a llaser boat focus on mechs that have various weapon types, another letter has an LRM or other long range support focus. Etc.

Tarogato's got a good start on it which led me to discovery what H2 was by giving me a direction to hunt for lore on.

Tarogato doesn't have t on his list, but "SP" just means Southern Periphery and there's only one example that I can think of for it under Hunchback.

Somehow forgot the link.
https://docs.google....#gid=1025583130

Edit:
Also, I suspect some things were added without knowing jack about the nomenclature. This is mostly apparent in Dark Age additions and units invented during the WizKidz ownership of the IP.

I mean... what the hell is this?

(Edit: I know I wrote classic battletech on the image and that's a Catalyst thing, I was just meaning it was something I found prior to "Clix" Battletech.)

Is it a laser gun? I can understand the extended mag on the bottom ejecting to the right, but if this weapon has a left-hander's magazine feed (instead of being on the left for a right hander's mag feed) then we need to ask why it ejects to his right? Though weird stuff could be done to eject back there, we'd have issues with double-feeding the bullets and no way to eject the secondary shell. I guess this is an "Ultra" pistol. Also the shells are being generated in such a way that the weapon clearly has zero recoil. (Yes, I am that analytical.)

Roughneck for example, was one I used to complain about but while there's no year differences between allt he variants they pulled out of their *** which makes me think Archner is just the richest company in the Inner Sphere, they actually meet the nomenclature requirements of drastic changes. Where it is screwy is the letter designations to indicate variant as opposed to the base model (what I again call generation to clarify huge differences since usually there's 30 to 500+ years in between these numbers rather than a couple of minutes). However since the Roughnecks were not contracted by specific factions, technically they can't start churning out "RGH-1D" and say it is Davion-ordered.

Though lets be honest, Davion would ******* love Roughnecks.

Edited by Koniving, 04 December 2017 - 06:48 AM.

[Tincan Nightmare]

Koniving, on 03 December 2017 - 11:35 PM, said:

You did not read.

I said he CANON calls them "Models" and "Variants"
Example:
Atlas AS 7th Model Davion Variant.
Atlas AS 8th Model Kurita Variant.

I said that was confusing as **** and so I call them Generation instead.

I didn't say I made it up. It's in the nomanclature (the naming conventions of Battletech). There are variations on the nomanclature, for example Star League has its own, then there's the general ones, and then a couple of manufacturing companies have their own unique nomanclature.

Look at a **** load of variants of different mechs and you'll recognize the patterns on your own, there are hundreds to look at. That sort of story repeats very, very frequently. The Flea, the Corsair, the Macky, the Shadowhawk (is actually chronicled in its variants themselves).

That's how the nomanclature works, the numbers represent models of major revisions at the factory level, basically whole new units. While a mech can be changed to suit Davion or Kurita ideals, the number doesn't change unless there's a HUGE difference in equipment and not just weaponry. In many cases hundreds of years go by before the model number (what I call personally "generational number" to emphasize this) changes. Look at the Hunchback.
Almost 500 years go by before it goes from 4G to 5M. And all non-G variants of the 4 series are refits, many produced by the Marian Hegemony with the 4H being the first refit they produced.

300 years went by between the AS 7 and the AS 8 lineup.

It's almost universal. And while not every single unit had 6 failures before one succeeded, you still have many mechs where the first model to make it to mass production is not marked as the "first" model. Yes there's an SHK-1. But why isn't there a Kintaro 1? Why not a Hunchback 1? There's a Hunchback 2 and a Hunchback 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

Why is only CN9, CN10? Why no 8, 7, 5, 1, etc? As I said, page 94 and 95 of 1st Somerset Strikers goes on to explain that there are gaps left in the lore intentionally to allow us to create our own variants or to fill the gaps ourselves. As such, speculate. The Atlas however does have a well documented journey.

The Mackey in the TROs don't mention **** about it, but the very first Battlemech does have a "Test". I'll get back to this.
---------



Through armor crits on the leg is more or less conjecture. After all if the equipment is stated to be mounted ON the leg and not IN the leg, it therefore cannot be underneath the mech's stock armor. That's just logic.


As for canon, you're looking for Price of Glory, assuming novels count as canon. Reloading weapon externally (not traveling through the mech). 60mm Whirlwind AC/5 (far too many whirlwinds in BT) is being reloaded by the mech's left hand. You're welcome to guess where he pulled the ammo from. You said you read it, so, maybe you'll remember.

There's actually nothing in the rules about leg-mounted ammo with the exception of the Citytech reference for Anti-personnel pods and BattleTechnology in reference to hand-held weapons and what happened to them (ballistic and energy). After all Battletech stopped depicting mechs as wielding guns in their hands thanks to Harmony Gold.I'm not digging through them at 2 in the morning though.




The Atlas, Blackjack and Hunchback do have quite a bit behind them. The issue is you have gather **** from the TROs, the short stories involving them, in one case the War of 3039 (Hunchback), compare the art and when there's blanks yes you have to fill them. In the case of the Blackjack, the lore we know comes from a few places. The two types of Autocannons that the Blackjack uses come from Binding Force and Threads of Ambition. Both of which establish the mech's role as anti-infantry and as such we're not seeing a single shot thing that does the explosive power of an SRM. It shoots a lot. In the first it is 32mm and in the second it is 30mm. So already a conflict to deal with.

We know the AC/2s feed from the center torso. Now something like ammo you don't make into a neat box and stuff it right into a mech's gut and the upper torso has nowhere for the ammo to go. But that hoop does. The arms, sequentially, also have hoops. And while not on every miniature, some of them do have the hip-hoop connecting into the shoulder hoops of inexplicably extra thick armor. Unless that skirt is the engine which I highly doubt due to how it would emphasize it and tell people where to shoot... Then you look at the mech and there's nowhere else for it to go

The Hunchback is pretty straight forward. Where is the ammo? Left torso. What's on the left torso? A drum. Why is there a drum there? Ammo. Look at the 4SP. The only official art ever made of the 4SP has the drum on the back of the center torso. It is also smaller than the drum normally is. There's no drum in the LT anymore. Why? There's ammo in the center torso and none in the left torso, no drum in LT now but one has appeared in the CT.


35 ton Urbanmech.

But this is a typo.

Overheating machine guns (this isn't the only example.)



Atlas
Layout's generally mention here.

Last paragraph in left column. "LRM 20...unqiue design."

Confirmed in Atlas K.
As pointed out.

Only thing I had to get from elsewhere is where the cockpit is. Nose, chest and in the D-DC has them in each eyeball.

Most of the time you can get enough canon info to really figure something out. Sometimes you gotta do the Star Citizen approach and just figure it out since they give you nothing to go on except recurring trends in the art. But I didn't use any of those here.

I did read, the point I was making is the same one you did in this post, that the term 'generation' was something you use personally in place of the 'lore' terms of variants and models. Look at the AS7-S, it basically was the same machine as the AS7-D, but used DHS and added 2 Streak launchers and was a production model upgrade built at Hesperus Mechworks. Wouldn't that then be an 8th gen Atlas, but then why was it still an AS7-S, shouldn't it be an AS8-S. Also, when it was again upgraded (in TRO:3050 Upgrade), it now mounted an LFE, a weapons layout similar to an AS7-K (with a few changes), and DHS and ECM, but became the AS7-S2. Again, if it was a next gen model, it should have become an AS9-S (or at least AS8-S). Then there's the Hunchback where you get the 5N designation, but this is simply a field refit model of the 5M to get more ammo, not production, yet under your rules it is a 5th generation Hunchback. Also, Norse-Storm started a field refit for Hunchbacks, that became the 5S, that became so popular it then went into prodcution, but was still based on a field refit but would be 5th generation. They than later created 2 newer versions based off this model, which they designated 5SS and 5SG, despite being later models to the 5S and by your definition should have been 6SS and 6SG. Yes I see the same progression you do, like the Victor going from VTR-9 to VTR-11, but it just seems strange to me to refer to them as different 'generations', it's just different models of the same mech with different weapons and equipment. Potayto vs Pototto I guess.

The ammo in the leg thing, well novels are kinda strange when it comes to 'canon', look at the whole 'Stackpoling' thing. Thanks to the author Michael Stackpole writing numerous scenes with mechs going 'nuclear', an actual optional rule to use this mechanic was created, despite all literature on mech engines stating this is flatly impossible (even the rule says it can't happen). Also, I've never seen any other mention of a mech manually reloading one of its weapons (save for Blood Legacy, when discussing the GR on Yen Lo Wang they say it could be muzzle loaded), so I would say that this is 'artistic license' on the authors part, just like the sentient aliens in the one novel despite 99.9 percent of BT showing a human centric universe with no other alien life (well at least not sentient).

I would have to disagree with ammo in the legs not being 'internal', because then why do you have to destroy the armor on a leg before that ammo becomes vulnerable to destruction from a critical hit? Granted, their seems to be a huge discrepancy in BT for this, especially when you look at things like the Phoenix Hawks LL and Battlemasters PPC being carried like a rifle, or the T-bolts hugely exposed LL. That would seem to make them more vulnerable to attack, but yet you have to destroy all the arms armor before they can be destroyed (though again, several authors have moments were such 'weaknesses' are used, again raising how 'canon' the novels are). And through criticals don't count since they effect all locations.

I am not arguing your logic or deductions. The idea of that circular section of a Blackjack being used to move ammo is pretty sharp, and even very logical. The point I'm making is that it is just conjecture though. Yes you base it of good ideas, but their is nothing to support it, so I don't think you should be putting it out there as a 'canon' argument. Just like your ammo 'drum' on the Hunchback. Yes, it makes great sense as you demonstrate that it could be ammo storage (AC for the 4G, and missiles for the 4SP). But it could also be something else (maybe its part of the communication package or targeting and tracking system and was moved on the 4SP to a safer less exposed location thanks to the extra room since the huge AC20 was gone). It's all well and good to say that they left it up to the fans to 'fill in the blanks', but I'm just saying that personnel ideas and theories shouldn't be expressed as a factual 'lore' argument, no matter how well reasoned. At least unless expressed and/or explained as such.