TT Battletech Discussions

Apologies for absence, and an old unit I'd like help with

2025-12-01T09:32:33.4170000

Sorry guys, I have not been overly active for awhile and just recently started looking things up again. Not sure who still wanders by, but figured with the folks I knew before this would be a decent community to run an idea by, as the old group tended not to be too judgmental about each others' ideas and preferences. I am definitely someone who enjoys the original tech and politics of the world, though I have come to appreciate folks who prefer the later stories and challenges involved with the later eras.

My early games set the pace, with my reading of Decision at Thunder Rift given me a preference for starting smaller groups and building up through salvage. This fit the era and was a fun way to advance my units' stories. However, I noticed that I often didn't fight my hardest, as I wanted salvage, and I accepted way too much damage in return. A friend of mine asked me outright if there was an opponent I would go all out on, and my immediate answer was pirates. I mean, in BT history, most of the given examples are the most sadistic, scummy people to ever wield power over a pirate band. So we started a new, small force of vengeful mercs called The Hangmen. Despite a renewed sense of aggression, I had still invested in some good techs and went from a lance with 2 Leopards to a 10 mech group that also included more transports and a company of vehicles. Many of my units were none-standard, but then so were many of the pirate forces I took on. Eventually though, the fellow who was essentially GMing the game and having fun with creating scenarios and opfors, was moving on to taking more time with his LARP group. Seemed like I would sadly have to set aside my unit until I could find another group that might let me play this. Then another friend offered to run me one last game, and my GM gave his blessings. One last hurrah for The Hangmen!

And it was an exciting game, where luck and skill were needed, but with one last surge I smashed the opposition and finished destroying the pirates. But then I found, to my amazement, that the place I had tracked them down to and which had given them some advantage at first, was a functional Star League production center, made to supply parts of many types to Kerensky's forces during the attacks on the periphery. Unfortunately, my friend was not one who would plan things out well when it came to specifics of the facility. He knew from my old groups that I had always wanted to find Star League caches (even w/o updated tech) and liked making my own designs, so he gave me a Star League facility with a Hundred ton mech for me to design. Unfortunately, we'd been in the independent worlds hunting down Tortugan's beforehand, so this was not an owned world where I could hope to just claim a reward for the find and move on... this was a production facility under pirate control before we came to take it away! We couldn't move on w/o them moving back in! Talk about the wrong group for this!

I was not able at the time to find anyone interested in helping me figure this out. Of late, fond memories make me want to revive the unit. My thought for a plan is to contact the decently close Taurian Concordant, who might either claim the world and the facility, or perhaps even move the equipment into the Concordant border and expand the capabilities of one of it's own production groups. The Hangmen would take part of their finders fee in stocks, thus aiding in the financial stability of their hunt. In the meantime, my unit will repair as much as it can and defend the place, adding in captured units as we are able to repair them, and hope the Taurians go for it.

What do I want from you guys? Well, assuming no one here loves mega-meking old dusty units with far too many modifications and a fussy story line, kindly just do what many do best. Hit me up with the problems, with ideas, and any questions, deride (politely) my own ideas and assumptions, but put your own up if you do! I am just checking for ideas because I'd love to free up the unit eventually, but the first step is how to move it's storyline on. Thanks for any replies.

Anyone get the old games to work well?

2019-03-25T04:49:32.8730000

I've had an odd itch to play old Mechcommander for the longest time, but I found out last year that newer machines can't run mechcommander 2 at all, despite compatibility modes, windowed mode, and deleting the auto-video card detector. Has anyone gotten them to work on Windows 10?

Inner Sphere Chemical Lasers

2018-11-16T19:24:22.5700000

Blame Nightstalker for this idea. Wanted to make a munchy weapon to go with his Nanotube armor.

INNER SPHERE CHEMICAL LASERS

Tech Level: Experimental
Era: Succession Wars, 2850-2950
Class: Artillery/Laser
First Built: Pre-Spaceflight (Laboratory), ~2850 (FWL), 2880 (General House)
Extinct: ~2950
Rediscovered: ~3085

Material sciences in the Star League saw the use of electrical lasers instead of laboratory-based chemical weaponry due to a large number of factors (such as portability and the proliferation of fusion engines), but the reality was that chemical lasers could be too powerful on the battlefield. Chemical lasers such as the Chemical Oxygen Iodine laser (COIL) are capable of projecting 10 Kilowatts of power onto something the size of an atom for 45 minutes straight,but this fact is only used for marketing- tanks and battlemechs are too fast and carry too much ECM for that kind of tracking, and on battlefields full of armors made to boil and ablate in the presence of laser weaponry that power level without pulsing is quickly wasted. Worse yet, even the most basic of chemical lasers require intensely toxic and corrosive chemicals such as chlorinates and actinides to be fired, something that the clans only *just* solved despite using intensely radioactive heavy laser weaponry.

However, all of this was tossed aside in the Succession wars. Loosing planet after planet to orbital bombardment and searching for weapons that could reliably strike warships from orbit, Chemical lasers were an obvious choice, capable of of sustaining minutes of fire into low orbits. Even better, the ever-shrinking body of scientists and researchers still alive stated that some could be miniaturized, assuming that their 'ammunition' could deal with heavy movement.

The "IS Chemical Laser" is typically split into two groups- light and heavy- with only the 'light' being portable. Each weapon is unique, and can only be grouped into two 'classes' because each house used similar chemical mixes for their guns. The 'Light' Chemical laser is a 15-ton minimum, likely 10-12 crit weapon capable of both artillery AND direct fire, does NOT require a fusion/fission engine to run, and has no heat sink requirements. Each "Ton" of ammo provides somewhere around 5 shots of chemical "charges", but because the 'Light' chemical laser is likely an All gas Iodine laser any ammo hit immediately sets the firing unit on fire with a massive explosion, and treating the nearby hexes as being hit with a chemical attack. This is because that laser uses gaseous chlorine with proxides and ooooh boy, that'll kill ya. Their damage should likely be calculated as capital, but since chemical lasers can focus literally on beam sizes of single atoms i'd say if you get hit, you roll for crit since that things going through you.

The 'Heavy' IS Chemical lasers are worse. Like capital weapons they are structure-only, and likely are Hydrogen-flouride lasers like MIRACL, and if you need to know how toxic excited flourines can be I can point you in some good websites. Critting this things ammo would be a chemical dirty bomb going off- again, chemical attack (likely) with some other radioactive affects. The positive to the 'Large' Chemical laser would be the ability to fire back at black navy vessels in orbit, as these lasers can literally be fired for as long as ~40 minutes assuming their ammo holds out (!). Of course, it's not easy to keep targeting a warship 50+ kilometers away continuously, but wheres the fun in NOT trying?

Criticism required. TL;DR is, these guns would be crazy expensive and would require a massive chain of resources for upkeep, run off reactive and rare elements and are intensely destructive. They go extinct largely due to Holy Shroud but are reconsidered due to Clan Hell's Horses, aka Clan "Hold my Beer and Watch". Even preforming upkeep and maintenance can be deadly, why'd you make this?

Nanotube armor plating

2018-11-16T05:30:44.0230000

I had an idea I never finished for making ultra expensive lightweight armor back when carbon nanotubes were the newest toughest thing I'd heard of. Graphene along the same lines of carbon structure is in real life proving much more viable and nearly as tough for much the same chemical-bond reasons. so I wonder given a couple thousand years human technological advancement; how long would it take to make a ton of such stuff? ferro-fibrous sounds pretty complex and tough to make from current technological perspective but it's only a few times the expense of normal armor. I still think this armor should be ultra expensive and tough to manufacture at a decent rate but if the buyer's a rich starlord?.. now what I wonder is just how tough and light should I make it for construction rules.

so here's my quick and dirty formulae just looking at the price, bulk and AF per ton of other materials available for comparison. 5 tons of clan ferro-fib is 96pts @100K C-bills. I would think 24 pts a ton at maybe 75000 CB's would be steep but fair. also no bulk/crit-space being the major winover. but the manufacture of it would take a specialized facility at least five-times as costly and probly ten times slower production than another armor manufacturing factory would be. does that sound reasonable? it IS munchtek afterall and to the GM and players decision whether to even allow such into the game but I want to hear opinions and hopefully intelligent peple will see and make their thoughts on this known instead of the usual trolling naysayers

I figure a 50% boost to AF is kinda high but simpler on the calculations. I also I forgot to mention my question of how to give it a minor detraction like taking an extra point of damage per five or ten points of ballistic damage and the possibility of an extra critical hit if a critical is made.