Battletech: FASA's Bastard Child ;)

[thescreamingswede]

I, for one, thought the title was funny.

Since it has been brought up, why not have at least a simple thread dedicated to FASA's "OTHER GAME".

I've been playing Battletech for, holy crap, 26 years! Nearly as long as Star Trek (which, by the way, is in my 31st year)!

I've posted pics of my Star Trek stuff, but here is a small glimps of some of my Battletech stuff.


Playing with an old digital camera, I set this little scene up with one of my Awesomes. I used paint to add the "lightning" effect of the PPC, though I'm not really sure what it would look like in real life.

[trynda1701]

You beat me to it starting up a Battletech thread, swede! Give me some time to dig out the paltry half dozen or so Mechs I personally painted up, just because I liked their design (even if their stats might not be the best). It was my friend David who was the Battletech nut in our gaming Group.

By the way, although the thread title IS funny, I thought that Battletech was supposed to be WAY more successful for FASA than the Trek RPG/STSTCS game was?

Mark

[rarcher]

I've always wanted to learn fasa's battletch rules i got I think almost all the stuff from '2nd edition'? stuff but all its myria do info is too much to take in to a newbie lol

[thescreamingswede]

By the way, although the thread title IS funny, I thought that Battletech was supposed to be WAY more successful for FASA than the Trek RPG/STSTCS game was?

Call it ironic sarcasm. After all, this is a site dedicated to FASA Star Trek.

[jeffwright]

It's also what helped kill it, no?

[trekcross]

Battletech still continues, though correct me if I am wrong, there is a split. There is a German Company that has all the rights with the Classic system, and Wizzards of the Coast have most of the new stuff that is in card games and the clicks games with the Mech Warrior Dark Ages.

[JAFisher44]

For those interested in FASA's Battletech table top game the following links may be of interest.

The first is a java application that recreates the game. It is available here:
megamek.info/

Second is a campaign "wrapper" for megamek that allows you to play online against other players in a persistent campaign setting. It is available at:
www.mekwars.org/

[trekcross]

Cool, Thanks Fisher!

[Deleted]

Megamek is actually an excellent game. It is as true to the original Battletech as you can get without a tabletop and some dice. There are a lot of settings, but you can dial in any level of rules you like.
MekLab lets you create and modify Mechs, as well as print out Mech-Sheets.

Battletech is currently owned by Catalyst Game Labs. The latest rule book is full-color and 300+ pages. A quick-play version is about 70ish pages and is pretty much 4th edition BT.
There are several torrents out there with the old FASA stuff. Since I only play 3025 era (just prior to 4th succession war) this is the material I own and have digital copies of - they cannot be replaced.

FASA is still around, but does not have the rights to Battletech anymore. A friend of mine is working on the art for their newest game, which looks to be rather steam-punkish.

[Deleted]

I will actually be running Battletech at MomoCon in Atlanta tomorrow and Sunday.
Just in case any of you guys were already going to attend the con...

Update: Just finished a 5 hour session of BT at the convention with no breaks. Cokes were $4! Parking was $20. I'll enable plan b tomorrow (I'll bring my own cokes and take the train).  The session went well. I had eight players, which is actually a lot for a "Let's Learn Battletech" session. Of course one guy showed up wanting to use his own super-custom battlemech. I had to say, "No". It took a lot of time to get the units balanced out, I don't need fan-boy and his wondermech throwing it all into disarray. It's a learning session, not an actual game.

[Deleted]

Whew! Another five straight hours of Battletech. Good game! Had eight players, two of which were well-seasoned and were very helpful. Everyone was enthusiastic about this old game, and most asked where they could buy it. I have a sign at the table to promote MegaMek, and most took pictures or scanned the QR code.

I also learned a lot about speeding things up a little. I also have WAY too many mechs with me. Out of the 88 mechs I brought, we used 10 over the two-day period. I have to run it again at Anime Weekend Atlanta in September, so I'll pare down the mechs and maps also. Probably remove most with LRM's as they require more die rolls (at least two). LRM's and SRM's are broken anyway. Every other weapon does "X" damage each time it hits. So an AC-5 inflicts 5 damage every time it hits (you could actually look at the AC-5 as doing 1d10 damage, and 5 is just the average [it's really 6 but 5 is close enough]). SRM's and LRM's require a second roll to see how many missiles hit. A hit location is then rolled for each SRM missile, or every five LRM missiles.


It also turns out that 1 map is best. With two maps the game takes WAY too long.

I think I will also go from the basic 4 gunnery / 5 Piloting pilot to 3 Gunnery / 4 Piloting to help the players get in a few more hits. It's pretty frustrating to miss every shot for two hours.

Oh! Taking public transportation was a win. $6 for train fare and parking (total). Quick ride to the Convention. I had to drive 14 miles to the closest train station, and the con was 16 miles from my house, but I saved $24 on parking, and did not have to mess around with Downtown Atlanta traffic.

[rabid]

Sounds like an awesome few days of Gaming. Unfortunatley I have only played this game maybe 4 times, but I always liked the concept. It really was atmospheric and immersive, I even had my favorite mech classes, the Grand Titan and the BRZ-1 Berzerker (an axe-wielding assault mech). \\

I was in Chicago in the early 90's though, I I don't want to think about how much $$ I paid playing the Battletech Simulator. It's true what they said, every button worked. I usually grabbed a Thor with 2 Medium Range lasers, an AC 20 and a large PPG. I think it had a gauss rifle on the shoulder, not sure. But I would manually reconfigure for alpha striking and aim for the legs at mid-range. I'd get 2 shots if I timed it right, if I tried more than that my mech would overheat. But thanks mostly to the AC 20 it was enough firepower to blow the limbs off MadCats and Vultures.

Had a VHS tape of playing it (I mean, for 10$ a round it was even worse graphics than a first gen playstation)but it was the only massive LAN game you could play back then. I sent the VHS tape to my friend as proof, I forgot I had set my screen to Infra-red so the whole thing turned green 1/2 way through. My buddy thought something was wrong with the tape! Lol good times.

[Deleted]

DUDE! I worked for Chicago Express Airlines in the Early 1990's. My friends and I would hop flights with open seats from Grand Rapids to Midway Airport, and take the train over to the Battletech center on our days off. And YES, I spend WAY too much money in those pods.

Who knows, you may have killed me a few times!

I normally played with a Vulture, but there was one mech config that was loaded up with Machine guns... THAT was fun to play. I knew enough about the buttons to get torso-twisting to function, but that was about it.

Those pods are STILL floating around! They pop up from time to time at conventions. Some of them ended up in (of course) Grand Rapids, after I moved away.

The actual table-top game is very crunchy. It is a very 80's game that was updated to a very 90's game. So there are something like four layers to the rules. When played on a table-top, it takes hours. When I use MegaMek, I can use all the really cool "Anime" rules, and a game only runs about 30-60 minutes.

[JAFisher44]

Yeah the beauty of megamek is that it automates all the dice rolling and allocation. Strips the vast majority of the time out of the game and lets you focus on the tactics and fun!

[Deleted]

For "real world" Battletech, I have the players download an Android APP called "BTDiceroller". Very nice for rolls, missile hits, and damage locations. I asked "Who has an android device?" and one player snatched up his mechsheet and started scrutinizing it. After a minute of everyone working hard not to laugh, he looked at me and asked "Where would that be?" One of the other players whispered "On yer phone." I actually saw the lightbulb...

I do need more dice though. The ones I have are decorative, but a little hard to read. I need to get several sets of basic dice in pairs (the player allocates "Red dice are AC-5, Black Dice are Large Lasers, etc..." so he can make one roll for all of his attacks at once, then roll all of the dice that hit for hit locations).


www.dicegamedepot.com

[zaarin7]

I once had enough mech's for a regiment+ and a Clan cluster of omnimech's and armored infantry. Had to sell it all when out of work one time.

[Deleted]

Dude, that is horrible!

I went with paper stand-ups on plastic bases a long time ago. Easier to carry, and MUCH easier to paint. Useless as displays though.

[rabid]

@ironnerd I might have killed you a few times. My skill in that game was, shall we say, legendary. I was in Navy AIT for gas turbine engine mechanics, so if you ever played against some navy scub kids that was probably me.

My call sign was "Reverend" (not because gahhahshahaahahahaaaaad but because my Navy BCG's made me look like a Baptist preacher lol). I remember too much about that game all of a sudden. The manager's call sign was "Whisper", he was beyond lethal, he could get head shots back in the day running that game on basically a DOS engine. Pretty impressive. One cute nerd girl named Y<p*6, loki pilot but she was terrible.

I took the masters challenge and killed everyone but whisper (the manager should be good but he let everyone else soften me up first). When I found him, I had no arms and was down chest weapons (2 mr lasers) and he blasted the right shoulder of my Thor, which made me spin around and then he shot me, in a most cowardly fashion, in the BACK. Good times.

the board game came close to emulating that, but although I liked the Grand Titan it had way too much ammo on it. Made it very asplod-y.

[Deleted]

I had a cool name (Bludwulf) and totaly sucked at the game Seriously, I was aweful.

In the board game I have no issues taking on a Timberwolf/MadCat in a 3025 Locust (LCT-1V).

[rabid]

What's the state of this board game now? I know it went through a "heroclix" phase at one point.

[thescreamingswede]

Jun 7, 2017 16:22:46 GMT -7 rabid said:

What's the state of this board game now? I know it went through a "heroclix" phase at one point.

It's still alive and kicking, though it isn't owned by FASA anymore. Catalyst Game Labs produces the rule books, but I think the I.P. is owned by a company called Topps. Iron Wind Metals is producing the miniatures. They have kind of ret-conned much of the back history, fleshing out the universe and hammering out much of the ambiguity of the old rules sets. In doing so though they have polluted the rules to a complexity paralleling Star Fleet Battles. Several huge volumes of hardcover books provide rules from everything, from the basic game to advanced tactical rules to construction of not only mechs, vehicles, aerospace (planes), but spacecraft, zepplins, large building sized vehicles and so forth.

It has gotten very expensive too, which is why the game is probably dead in many tracts of the gaming community. Minis can run you from 15 to 30 bucks Canadian (yeah, I play with the funny coloured money) and the books are rather expensive AND you need five or six 200 plus page volumes to get everything that a book 80 pages long used to cover.

I still play regularly however, and just bought a boatload of minis that a store was clearing out. It's a decent game still, you just have to be smart about what you plan to spend and at what level of rules you want to invest in.

[rabid]

dang I know that's right. I'm already way farther into X-wing miniatures than I planned to be. My wife said it sounded suspiciously like a "collectible" game. lol mistakes were made.

[Deleted]

I don't do the mini's anymore. I just made up a bunch of paper stand-ups from the pictures posted on Sarna.net. I use my old rulebooks from the 1990's, but you can buy basic battletech for 

Most of the oldies-but-goodies are available as PDF's at a reasonable price ($18ish) at Druvethrurpg.com. The "Classic Battletech Quick Start Rules" are a free download. These are like a small taste of the rules. The primary rule book (I think) is "Total Warfare", and is $15 as a PDF.

All-in-all, not TOO bad.

AND I found this: [LINK] It a zip file of all the OLD rules (the ones I use), for $12!





BattleTech Manual: 1987)
(BattleTech Manual: 1990)
(BattleTech Manual: The Rules of Warfare: 1994)
(BattleTech Master Rules: 1998)
(BattleTech Master Rules, Revised Edition: 2001)
Zip File Size: 155 MB 
The BattleTech Rulebooks Bundle contains the 5 core rulebooks published before Total Warfare, starting with the BattleTech Manual published in 1987 (only 3 years into BattleTech's life), to the BattleTech Master Rules [Revised Edition] published by FanPro 14 years later. A great snapshot of the development of the rules across the lifetime of the BattleTech line.

[jeffwright]

I can almost see the Rifleman being built.

[thescreamingswede]

Jun 8, 2017 11:03:55 GMT -7 @ironnerd said:

I don't do the mini's anymore. I just made up a bunch of paper stand-ups from the pictures posted on Sarna.net. I use my old rulebooks from the 1990's, but you can buy basic battletech for 

Most of the oldies-but-goodies are available as PDF's at a reasonable price ($18ish) at Druvethrurpg.com. The "Classic Battletech Quick Start Rules" are a free download. These are like a small taste of the rules. The primary rule book (I think) is "Total Warfare", and is $15 as a PDF.

All-in-all, not TOO bad.





BattleTech Manual: 1987)
(BattleTech Manual: 1990)
(BattleTech Manual: The Rules of Warfare: 1994)
(BattleTech Master Rules: 1998)
(BattleTech Master Rules, Revised Edition: 2001)
Zip File Size: 155 MB 
The BattleTech Rulebooks Bundle contains the 5 core rulebooks published before Total Warfare, starting with the BattleTech Manual published in 1987 (only 3 years into BattleTech's life), to the BattleTech Master Rules [Revised Edition] published by FanPro 14 years later. A great snapshot of the development of the rules across the lifetime of the BattleTech line.

Yeah. Lots has changed since the good old days when you only needed to reference one book, however like I said they have answered some of the more ambiguous rules that, under certain circumstances, were able to be manipulated by a clever and shrewd rules lawyer.

As for minis, I'm a bit of a purist. I hate having to proxy one unit for another (the rest of my group is not so picky), so I have close to 400, with enough still to be built to push me over 500! My friend has over 700! Together we generally supply the group when someone else is GM-ing. Granted though, I love building and painting stuff and I collect minis anyway so the number makes sense, especially considering the size of my Firestorm Armada collection and of course my Star Trek minis (which, sad to say, is a five digit number).

My partner thinks I'm nuts, and she may be right. Moving is a nightmare and my minis take up half the basement in shelving space. I also model railroad, and that is a real estate heavy hobby as well. Plans for a 700 square foot garage/shop to house the train layout and the gaming stuff are in the works, though I fear it may not be enough.....